The Desert Lord’s Bride

change your mind about sleeping with men. And who better than this man, eh? Sleeping with him serves so many purposes.”

Farah’s discomfort metamorphosed gradually into confusion. Was something wrong with Bill? He was making no sense.

And he went on, making less and less sense. “Perhaps the world is telling me something, that I should admit it was me who pushed Stella away. But if I’ve had enough, got over the rage and heartache, maybe it’s time to see if she’s learned her lesson, too.” He glared at her again, his eyes blazing blue in his florid face. “But why didn’t you confide in me? Though I’m floored that, for once in your personal life, you’ve made one move that’s good business-in this case, the best business-I would have understood. Hell, I would have given you pointers.”

“OK, I’m calling your doctor. You’re talking gibberish.”

Bill sighed. “Who thought you’d have the sense to test-drive Judar’s crown prince before consenting to marry him? These royal Middle Eastern marriages are forever, after all. But from your blind expression as you walked in, seems you found Shehab Aal Masood’s sexual prowess…satisfying, to say the least.”

The world stopped. Became a vacuum.

It seemed hours later when it restarted with a screech and air tore into lungs that had collapsed with shock.

“You think Shehab is…” She coughed the hysterical giggle of someone who’d just escaped being hit by a bus. “But I can see how. The crown prince’s name is Shehab, too, huh? Guess it must be a popular name. Likening their sons to the grandeur and destruction of meteors must appeal to those desert lords. But Shehab’s last name is Aal Ajman. He’s the tycoon who-”

“I know exactly who he is. The tycoon who seemed to come out of nowhere three months ago. Aal Ajman is his mother’s family. I bet he didn’t think I’d investigate that when he created his alter ego…” He stopped, rose slowly to his feet, a tide of rage advancing over his face as everything seemed to fall in place in his mind. At the same moment it did in hers. “But I wasn’t his target with the deception, neither was the business world at large. You were. You refused to marry him, so he decided to con you…” He stopped again, horror replacing rage on his face. Or was it only a reflection of the one on hers?

But there was no horror inside her. Realizations too atrocious to register, to take in, bombarded her, like the meteors Shehab was named for. And like a meteor shower, they left only annihilation in their wake. The nothingness of wreckage.

Shehab. He was not the man she thought she knew to the farthest reaches of intimacy. He was the prince her newfound father had said she must marry. The one she’d refused to even hear about. She’d thought she had a choice. But she’d had none. He’d hunted her down to have her rescind her refusal, relinquish her will, surrender her heart and soul, her life. Things he had no use for. He’d been talking about himself when he’d described how Dan had manipulated her, taken from her, when he’d reviled the gift she’d made of herself.

She’d felt his exploitation that first night, too. She’d just been too ignorant to suspect its truth, then too eager to disbelieve her senses and believe his coaxing.

How he must have hated to perform for her benefit, how he must have loathed every second in her company, must be seething with impatience until he could discard the pawn he’d been forced to cater to, to make her obey his tribal laws.

She suddenly heard her voice, the distorted sound of a zombie. “I want a favor, Bill. I want to use your helicopter.”

Bill’s eyes narrowed. “He’s waiting downstairs for you. You don’t want to see him.”

“No. Never again.”

He exhaled heavily, nodded, reached for his intercom. His hand froze over the button. “You’ll let me know where you are.” She gave a sluggish nod. He persisted. “And you won’t hurt yourself…in any way.”

She looked at him out of someone else’s dry-as-stone eyes and wondered how he’d even worry.

How could she hurt a self that had already been destroyed?

Shehab gave in, stormed into the skyscraper after Farah.

She’d been inside for three hours. And for the past hour, her cell phone had rung with no answer.

Inside, he met with evasions until he resorted to threats. Only then did he discover she’d left the building by helicopter.

He stormed outside again, telling himself to calm down.

She must have left on the urgent business her boss had called her all the way back there to deal with. She’d call as soon as she was done. She probably hadn’t thought he’d wait for her to get off work. And she probably hadn’t heard the phone over the helicopter’s din.

Nothing he told himself worked. So he did what every self-respecting, madly in love man in pursuit of the woman who held his fate in her hands to confess his crimes and beg forgiveness would have done. He tracked down her phone’s GPS signal.

Even with the endless resources at his fingertips, it took four hours to locate her, and then fly to her location. A bungalow hotel in Orange County.

After a good look at Shehab’s diplomatic passport and a short explanation about the situation, a duly awed desk clerk told him where to find Farah, even gave him an extra card key.

Shehab walked there, his heart’s pounding escalating as he caught her scent on the wind. He could have followed it, and her vibes, to her exact location without being told where she was. Doubts intensified with each step, too.

This didn’t look like a place where any business of Hanson’s could be conducted. So why had she come here? Why had she not called him in so long?

Before he slotted the key card in, something made him knock on the door instead. After long moments of silence, steps neared, slow, almost dragging. Then the door opened.

A stranger stood across the threshold.

A stranger who looked exactly like Farah.

So it’s true, Farah thought.

She’d opened the door and found Shehab there. And she hadn’t felt a thing. Not shock, not surprise, not anger, not pain. Nothing. It was over.

“Habibati…” he groaned as he surged forward, surrounding her, his impossibly handsome face, the face that hid all his cruelty and deceitfulness, contorting on another array of those expressions so uncannily simulating emotions. “I almost drove myself insane when you didn’t answer your phone. Why are you here? Is this where Bill sent you? What for?” When she didn’t answer, only slipped from his arms to close the door, turned to look at him out of some other entity’s eyes, he moved closer like a panther careful not to let its prey realize it would be a meal in seconds. “Hayati, what’s wrong?”

He still didn’t realize. Or he was still trying to bluff his way out of it? He probably thought he could. She was too stupid to live, after all. She’d proved it for six long weeks.

But something terrible was happening. The sight of him, his scent, the feel of him, the very idea of him was seeping through the layers of numbness. The total anesthesia was lifting. And damage began to spread through her, expanding, taking shape, endless in scope, in details, the enormity of his betrayal, of her gullibility.

Crazed with pain. She now knew what that meant, felt like. She could feel everything that made her a person, that formed her mind, disintegrate as each memory of the past six weeks regurgitated to the surface like oozing acid, until her brain was a mangled mess.

And he took her in his arms again, shuddered as she filled them. As if he cared if she lived or died.

She visualized an escape. A version of reality where she was the woman the rumors painted her to be. The woman who wouldn’t only survive this, but who would walk away laughing. Invincible like him, playing her roles to gain her ends. Ending each without feeling or remorse. Heartless.

But she was heartless now, too. He’d hacked out her heart.

She pushed out of his arms. “I want to thank you.”

His gaze wavered. He couldn’t read her for the first time. And he was worried. “What for, ya habibati?”

Habibati. My love. His love. When she was his nothing. Just an instrument, a means to an end. Every word a lie. Every touch and smile and moment-worse than a lie. A cold-