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‘Dad, Kamal’s not lying,’ she said, her voice trembling. ‘He asked me again and I accepted. We’re engaged to be married.’
CHAPTER TEN
‘IDONOTrecall asking you to marry me again, nor do I recall you accepting my proposal, so why did you say this to your father?’
Kaliah swung round at Kamal’s question.
Even in the shadowy interior of her tent she could see the frown on his face. He had his arms crossed over his chest and looked even more formidable than usual—which was saying something.
She sighed.
Great—just what I need. Another hot-tempered alpha male to placate.
She stopped stuffing the last of her belongings into the saddle bags she’d packed nearly a week ago, intending to escape from this man. A man she’d just spent half an hour trying to persuade her extremely sceptical father she was desperately in love with.
Thank goodness her father had finally agreed to let her travel to Zokar to make an official announcement about their ‘engagement’. After feeding and watering their horses, her father and his men were now on their way back to the Golden Palace.
Diplomatic crisis averted.
Apart from the six-foot-four-inch crisis standing in front of her now, brooding magnificently.
Kamal had remained silent and watchful throughout her conversation with her father. But thankfully he had not contradicted her—nor had he intervened when she had insisted they needed to travel to Zokar to announce their engagement. Given his penchant for throwing petrol on any given situation, with his infuriating need to take charge of everything, she considered that a minor miracle in itself.
She had hoped Kamal’s silence meant he had figured out she was lying through her teeth so they could avoid their little tryst in the desert leading to a major diplomatic rift between Narabia and Zokar, and that he was on board with her plan...
From the deep suspicion in his eyes, though, apparently not.
She dumped the saddle bag at his feet.
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ she said, her own temper flaring. Seriously? What the heck had he been playing at, goading her father like that when he’d been outnumbered fifty to one—did the man have a death wish?
‘Not to me,’ he shot back.
‘I was saving you, Kamal. My father was on the verge of withdrawing his support for your monarchy,’ she snapped. ‘You saved my hide at the oasis, so I was returning the favour.’
He tensed, the offended look in his eyes only making her more furious. So that was the deal? He was allowed to save her but she wasn’t allowed to save him?Figured.
‘So, it is a lie, then?’ He sounded outraged. ‘You do not intend to marry me?’
‘Of course not—we’d probably end up killing each other within a week. Then both our sacrifices would be for nothing,’ she said, letting every inch of her frustration show. Not just with Kamal, but also with her father, who frankly hadn’t exactly covered himself in glory with his refusal to believe her for thirty frustrating minutes—while she had waxed lyrical about how much in love with Kamal she was, having known him for precisely six days.
She’d never been more humiliated in her life. But, as she crouched down to buckle the straps on her saddle bags with more force than was strictly necessary—while steadfastly ignoring Kamal, who was still glaring at her with that smouldering look of disapproval—she decided she had only herself to blame.
She’d got into this situation by making a ton of stupid decisions and it was her job to get herself—and Kamal, who appeared to be his own worst enemy—out of it. Perhaps the solution she’d come up with—faking an engagement between them until her father backed off—wasn’t the best solution, but it was the best one she’d been able to conjure up on the spur of the moment before all hell broke loose.
‘You expect us to travel to Zokar and announce an official engagement between us, but you have no intention of marrying me?’ Kamal’s words were laced outrage.
She let out a heavy sigh, her already knotted stomach twisting tighter, before she stood and faced him.
‘I know it’s not ideal, Kamal. But I had visions of the two of you coming to blows, which wouldn’t exactly have been great for diplomatic relations, now, would it? I was scared, okay, and I was trying to defuse a situation which you managed to torch with that daft comment about me being pregnant. I told you I was on the pill—there is zero chance of me being pregnant and you know it.’
‘Your father is not a fool,’ he said, choosing to ignore her last cogent point. ‘He would not have destroyed diplomatic relations with a neighbouring state over such a thing.’
‘You don’t know my dad,’ she replied wearily. How could Kamal be so obtuse about this? But then she recalled that boy, fierce and proud but also so alone. Had he ever even had a father? Was that why he was so clueless about how family dynamics worked?
‘My father’s a strong ruler, and a good one—he’s also a brilliant diplomat. But his family and his children mean everything to him. There’s nothing he wouldn’t do to protect us, to the point of being completely irrational if we are threatened in any way,’ she continued. ‘And I’ve never seen him quite so strung out. Plus, my mum wasn’t here to help defuse the situation. So I did not want to take the risk, okay?’
The tell-tale muscle in Kamal’s jaw twitched. ‘I told you I was not scared of your father,’ he said, completely missing the point. ‘Did you think I needed you to tell lies on my behalf? Because I did not. It is not your place. I can protect myself. I always have and I always will. I have no need to rely on others to protect me.’
