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And to top it all off, giving herself to him like a coronation gift, as if she were offering water to a man who’d been in the desert too long.
All the while it seemed she’d been scheming.
All the while waiting.
Well, now she could wait in her apartments. By the time he got to her, she would be a pathetic mess. She would apologise—profusely and with tears—and beg for his forgiveness, but there would be none. He would not fall for her ways again.
Why the hell was he waiting? He would tell her now. He stormed to his feet, upsetting a low table, and his anger went ballistic.
It was high time he told her.
* * *
Her door was flung open, and Tora held her breath. Rashid. At last!
He nodded to the guard who pulled the door shut, and then he looked grim-faced to where she stood in the middle of her room, her arms still crossed, her chin still high.
‘What the hell is going on?’ she demanded.
A dark eyebrow arched as he moved slowly towards her, and she could tell that if he had a shred of remorse for putting her in this situation, she couldn’t see it anywhere in his stormy blue eyes. They were empty of anything but cold, hard resentment.
‘Why, Sheikha, do you not like your new living arrangements? All this space to yourself, I see, and so much privacy. Who could ask for more? But if you have a complaint, there are stone cells in the floors below the palace, I believe, if these rooms are not to your satisfaction.’
Her chin ratcheted up a notch higher. ‘Why am I prisoner here? What have I done?’ Her voice broke on the last word and then her strength and resolve gave way. ‘Rashid,’ she appealed, taking a step closer even though the very air felt like bars between them. ‘What is happening?’
He snorted. ‘Didn’t I tell you to be careful what you sent using the palace Internet? Didn’t I warn you?’
He made no sense. She hadn’t plastered anything up on social media. She hadn’t sent anything she shouldn’t.
‘But then,’ he continued, ‘why would you listen to me? Blood is thicker than water, after all.’
‘What?’
‘Oh, come now, Sheikha, surely you can’t have forgotten this little gem? “The dollar signs in my eyes lit up too!” Or maybe this one will strike a chord: “keep listening for the ka-ching”.’
And like a sledgehammer it hit her. The email she’d sent to Matt. The nonsense email to get him excited and frothing at the mouth with anticipation.
‘You read my emails? How dare you? That was private.’
‘What did you think I meant when I warned you? Of course the palace has to monitor communication coming in and out. Did you think your little missive to your cousin would go unnoticed—a cousin you are supposedly finished with now?’
‘I am finished with him.’
‘What, after you sent him the two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, or will that be after the five hundred thousand you have promised him next?’
‘What? I didn’t send that money to Matt—it went to a solicitor who—’ And with a sickening thud, she realised just who she’d sent the funds through—the very solicitor Matt had instructed to draw up the documents complete with the small print she’d been too naive to read and so signed her inheritance over to him. And if Matt was in some kind of financial trouble, then, chances were...
‘Let me finish your sentence.’ Rashid confirmed it for her. ‘It went to a solicitor who is now being investigated, along with your beloved cousin, for misappropriation of funds.’
Tora squeezed her eyes shut, reeling at her naivety, cursing the rush she’d been in that she’d trusted a colleague of Matt’s. What if that money, too, had been lost?
But surely Rashid couldn’t believe that she’d sent the money to Matt. ‘I didn’t know about the charges. I didn’t know any of that. Matt gave me his solicitor’s name because he was dealing with my parents’ estate. But the money wasn’t for him. That went—’
‘Then why did you tell him not to worry about it?’
‘No. Listen,’ she said, putting out her hands in supplication, ‘you’re confusing two different things. Matt cheated me out of my inheritance from my parents’ estate—that was the two hundred and fifty thousand he was talking about. When he asked for more, I thought I’d send him a taste of his own medicine. What I sent him was rubbish, Rashid, to lure him in and make him think I’d stumbled on a fortune and was going to share it with him. You have to believe me.’
