‘Very good, sir.’
Halina watched as the man hurried to carry out his employer’s orders. ‘Are all your staff terrified of you?’ she asked as she sat down opposite Rico, tucking her legs to the side to avoid his own long outstretched ones. She was determined not to be caught on the back foot, as she had been ever since Rico had stormed into her room at the palace. Now she would regain some control and all her composure. She knew she needed both for whatever lay ahead.
‘Why should they be terrified of me?’
‘Because you shout at them.’
‘I didn’t shout.’ He looked mildly annoyed by her observation. ‘I gave an order. There is a difference.’
‘Is there? You don’t seem to use “please” or “thank you” the way most people do.’
His mouth compressed. ‘I do not like to waste time with useless fripperies, but I can be as polite as the next person.’
Halina looked away, wondering why she was baiting him over such a trivial matter at such a tense and crucial moment. Maybe because she felt so raw, chafing under his endless orders. He fully intended to command her life, and the truth was she didn’t think there was anything she could do about it, except perhaps face it head on.
‘So.’ She squared her shoulders and met his narrowed look directly. ‘What do you mean, you’re going to marry me in Rome?’ Rico regarded Halina and the way she was bracing herself, as if for bad news.
‘Exactly that,’ he informed her crisply.
‘I have to say, your proposal could use some work.’
‘I imagine it’s a sight better than your last fiancé’s,’ Rico remarked with a touch of acid, nettled, even though he knew he shouldn’t be. ‘As I’ve heard it, you never even met him.’
‘No,’ Halina said slowly. ‘I didn’t. Not until a few weeks ago, anyway.’
Rico drew up short at that. He’d known the marriage had been called off, but he hadn’t realised Halina had actually seen al bin Nur. ‘You saw Prince Zayed recently? Since we...?’
‘Yes, since we.’ Her smile was tinged with wry sorrow. ‘When my father found out I was pregnant, he tried to reopen marriage negotiations with Prince Zayed.’ Fury flashed through Rico, a lightning strike of emotion he quickly suppressed. So his fears that another man might raise his child had been justified, making him realise how right he’d been to take drastic measures in finding Halina.
‘And?’ he asked, biting the word off and spitting it out.
‘And I refused him, because I didn’t want to marry a man who loved another.’
‘Who does the Prince love? The governess he kidnapped by accident?’ Contempt dripped from every word; how could a man be so unprepared, so foolish, as to abduct the wrong woman and, even worse, fall in love with her? Weakness twice over.
‘Yes.’ Halina’s eyes flashed darkly. ‘They fell in love with each other out in the desert, and I wanted them to be happy. And,’ she added, flinging out the word, ‘I didn’t want to bind myself to someone who could never love me.’ There was a challenge in her words, in her eyes, as if daring him to disagree, to disabuse her of such a notion—and so he would, without compunction.
‘You were willing to do so before, it seems.’
‘I knew Prince Zayed didn’t love me before,’ Halina clarified, ‘but he could have grown to love me in time, as we’d come to know one another. To go into a situation knowing it will never happen...that the man you have bound yourself to for ever will never feel even the smallest affection for you...that is truly hopeless. It is total despair.’
Her words hammered through him, echoing emptily. Rico’s mouth twisted. ‘And yet here we are,’ he observed.
She gave a small, strained smile, the knowledge of their situation clouding and darkening her eyes. ‘Yes. Here we are.’
He regarded her closely, trying to gauge her mood. Acceptance, resignation, or something else? ‘I take it then you have no objections to our marriage?’ he said after a moment, making it not quite a question.
‘If you mean will I resist then, no, I won’t.’ She turned her head to look out of the window, acting as condemned as a prisoner in the dock.
‘You will want for nothing,’ Rico informed her, his tone harsher than he’d intended. ‘I can promise you that.’
She turned back to stare at him, her expression bleak. ‘No, you can’t, Rico. You can’t promise me anything. You don’t know me, and you cannot presume to know either what is in my head or my heart. But if you meant I will live in comfortable circumstances...’ She glanced around the plane, appearing deliberately unimpressed despite her earlier comments about the jet’s luxury. ‘Then, yes, I believe that.’
Rico stared at her, trying to suppress the ever-deepening twinge of annoyance her words caused. He shouldn’t care what she thought or felt, only that she wasn’t going to protest their inevitable marriage. Yet somehow her attitude of resignation rankled, as if he were marching her towards a noose rather than down an aisle.
‘I’m glad to hear you will not attempt some pointless protest.’
She let out a huff of humourless laughter. ‘Exactly. It would be pointless. My life has never been my own. I suppose it doesn’t matter much whether it is you or my father who is pulling the strings.’