Royally Promoted

Chapter Nine

ITWASA curious mix of feelings: utter sadness, fierce determination to keep smiling, a powerful sense of inevitability and the promise of despair waiting just over the horizon. This was the swirl of emotions Lucy felt as she stared down at the dress on her bed, waiting to be worn to the ball that awaited her in less than an hour and a half.

The remaining time they’d had together had shot by. It was as though, having put a timeline to everything, the ticking hands of the clock had sped up, determined to make sure that nothing came in the way of the parting of their ways.

Work had been side-lined by both of them. Of course, they’d done what was necessary but, without any conscious agreement, life had taken on the tenor of a holiday.

Malik had showed her Sarastan. She’d been awed by the dunes but she’d discovered that there was much more to his beautiful country than the rolling, ever-changing hills of sand beyond the walls of his magnificent palace. The city was modern and vibrant. The hotels were amazing, and they’d gone for dinner and drinks at several of them, once staying overnight because the hot temptation of bed had proved too much at a little past eleven in the evening.

Lucy had told him that she’d never seen so much marble, hanging crystal and over-sized indoor plants before in her life when they’d dined at one of the five-star hotels in the heart of the bustling city.

He’s taken her to the old town, where markets and bartering were very different from the high-end malls stuffed with designer goods. And they’d gone to the coast, which was empty, quiet and quite spectacular. The sea was warm, and Lucy had swum until she was exhausted; then they’d lain down, staring up at the turquoise sky, lost in their own private thoughts.

She’d been thinking that job hunting in London was going to be a painful ordeal after this. She’d glimpsed paradise, had tasted paradise, and nothing would ever compete.

She hadn’t breathed a word about Malik to any of her sisters, but she had told Helen, even though she’d been loath to unburden herself when her friend had been all angst about giving birth in a fortnight. In due course, she would confess everything to her family, but only after she was on the road to recovery.

The sight of the dress on the bed brought her back to reality with a thump because she had under an hour to get ready. She would be chauffeured to his parents’ palace.

Malik was already there, having gone ahead to start the process of mingling. She had forced herself not to pepper him with questions about what that entailed because she wasn’t interested in hearing the answer. However, her imagination had not held back in painting very colourful scenarios that involved him being introduced to a mile-long queue of eligible beauties, all breathlessly excited at being chosen to be a princess by the knight in shining armour.

On the spur of the moment, she picked up the dainty sandals she had bought and flung one against the wall, which it hit with absolutely no force before dropping to the ground, and thankfully not falling apart, because there were no alternative options in her wardrobe.

She showered in record time, applied her make-up and did her hair—the little that could be done with it—before stepping into the gown she had bought on one of their trips to the city centre. It was a long, layered affair in shades of blues and greens. The neckline was modest, the dainty straps were very demure and it just fell, only clinging slightly under the bust.

Yet, as Lucy stood back to inspect herself in the full-length mirror, she felt as though it was all just a little bit too much. Her boobs looked enormous, for starters. She’d been seduced by the Grecian style of the long dress but now had to conclude that Grecian women clearly didn’t have big bosoms.

Her hair... Well, it was too late to do anything with it, although on impulse she fished out a couple of pearly clips and strung some of it back so that only escaping tendrils fell across her face.

The driver was there and waiting by the time she made it down and half an hour later, as the black Bentley made its way up the familiar courtyard that formed an enormous circle outside the palace, her heart was beating like a sledgehammer. There were lots of cars and none of them were old bangers. There were also lots of people, in an array of clothing, from traditional white robes to designer suits—dashing men and women dressed to kill, draped in jewellery and sheathed in the finest silks.

The palace was lit up like a Christmas tree and there were uniformed staff everywhere. All that seemed to be missing was a red carpet.

Malik had given her the option of just not coming.

‘It’s not a necessity,’ he had told her gruffly, a few days ago as they’d lain in bed, wrapped round one another, bodies so entwined that they couldn’t have slipped a piece of paper between them.

‘Wouldn’t your parents be a little surprised?’

‘I’m sure they could survive the disappointment.’

‘You think I’m going to be upset, don’t you? Because there’ll be all those hopeful beauties there, waiting for you to chat them up.’

‘Won’t you?’

‘Not a bit of it,’ Lucy had returned stoutly. ‘I’ll have my own queue of hopefuls desperate to be my Prince Charming when I get back to London.’

He hadn’t said anything.

Truth was, she knew that he felt she’d find it hard to deal with the situation, whatever she said to the contrary. The mere fact that she’d come to that conclusion made Lucy all the more determined to show up, even if it damn well killed her.

There was also the bracing thought that seeing Malik in action, seeing him embrace this final chapter in their relationship, the chapter in which he moved on, was necessary. It would be a healthy dose of reality. She would see him chatting to the woman he would eventually marry, and any rose-tinted spectacles she might be wearing would very quickly be ripped off her.

‘Right,’ she muttered under her breath as the Bentley slowly circled the courtyard, coming to a gradual stop outside the imposing front door, which had been flung open. ‘Show time.’

On either side was uniformed staff, several of them. Lucy edged her way out, took a deep breath and decided that the very first thing she would do was help herself to a little bit of Dutch courage...

Inside the ballroom Malik tugged at the black bow-tie and helped himself to his second glass of champagne. He had expected nothing less than perfection, and perfection was what had awaited him when he’d arrived at his parents’ sumptuous palace a couple of hours earlier.

Yes, last-minute things were still being done, but the wing in which the party was being held had been kitted out in regal style. Purple and white flowers wound like ivy around the multiple white pillars in the room; stunted palm trees in golden pots had been lugged in for special effect and some poor souls had spent hours buffing the many chandeliers. Waiters circulated with a giddy array of canapés and there was no end to the champagne.

At a little past seven, the guests arrived thick and fast. Many of them were esteemed families, all known to Malik, as were their kids, whose ages more or less aligned with his, from early twenties to mid-thirties. He had played rugby with a few of the guys and catching up was good.

There would be no formal introductions, his mother had assured him. In a rare moment of physical affection, she had adjusted his bow-tie, stepped back and told him that he should just enjoy the evening. Malik had wryly thought that it was hardly what he would have described as a relaxing social event, but he had smiled, nodded and told her that he would do just that.

Was he relaxing? He sipped his champagne. From where he was standing, back to one of the walls, he had a wide-angled view. The ballroom led off to various other rooms, all buzzing. There were ample, plush seating areas. There were two billiard tables in another room, with a groaning bar behind which several uniformed waiters were ready and eager to pour drinks, and there were ornately dressed tables laden with the finest food money could buy, served by an army of waiters.

He’d been introduced to several women. To a fault, they had demurely pretended that theirs was a polite, perfunctory introduction rather than a targeted meet-and-greet that could lead to matrimony with the kingdom’s most eligible bachelor. They were all dressed traditionally and ornately in silks of quiet, restrained colours, abundant amounts of jewellery, lavish but cleverly applied make-up and were groomed beautifully to within an inch of their lives.

They were beautiful, subservient women who would all make a fantastic wife for a man like him: powerful, wealthy, leading a high-octane, high-stress life laden with responsibilities. A man who would require a subservient wife, a wife whose soothing personality would ease away the tensions of the day.

Additionally, of course, a wife who would know the ropes because it would be what she had grown up with. Someone who would realise that his workload would always come first, be they in London or Sarastan, because much of it involved the livelihoods of many other people, employees in the hundreds who worked in the factories and businesses owned and run by the Al-Rashid family. She would not expect declarations of love or the heady excitement of romantic gestures.

Whoever he chose would be like his parents: practicality before impulse, head before heart. In short, the ideal woman would know that unreasonable demands would not be in the picture.

Malik wondered where the hell Lucy was. He didn’t realise that his eyes were trained on the door until he saw her and then he straightened and sucked in his breath. For a few wild seconds, his thoughts were all over the place, making a mockery of the very reason he was at this event: to find a suitable wife with characteristics and traits he had already painstakingly bullet-pointed in his head only moments before.

She looked extravagantly pretty. Next to the highly polished perfection of the women he had met, she looked so natural that it took his breath away.

Her hair was a tumble of blonde curls, some of it tied back but still falling around her heart-shaped face. Her face was smooth, with just a bit of colour on her cheeks and her perfect, full mouth. The colour on her cheeks might have been accentuated by her clear discomfort as she stood still, looking around her hesitantly and clutching a small blue-and-gold bag with a chain strap.

Malik couldn’t quite get himself to move as he continued to look at her. The dress was magnificent. She’d taken herself off shopping, laughing when he’d offered to go with her, telling him that she was actually clever enough to make her way through some shops and whether or not he liked what she tried on wouldn’t determine what she bought. The dress was a gentle swirl of blues and greens and outlined the generous rounded breasts that he had only recently lost himself in. Her curves were lovingly outlined by the sheer fabric.

She looked like a goddess and, as fast as his libido started rising at speed, he told himself that this was not appropriate. Their time was at an end. This was always going to be nothing more than a fling. Her appearance here was the final piece of a jigsaw that should never have been started. But he would never bring himself to regret it.

He pushed himself from the wall and began weaving his way towards her, only stopping halfway when he felt a gentle hand on his arm and looked down to see one of the women he had previously chatted to smiling up at him.

What was her name... Irena?

‘There’s going to be dancing, Malik.’

‘Huh?’ Malik tugged the bow-tie looser and then frowned when she straightened it back into position.

‘Dancing, in the conservatory. The band’s going to be setting up in an hour.’

‘Terrific.’

He smiled to be polite, but he was impatient to rescue Lucy from her awkward dithering at the edge of the crowd.

She usually appeared so confident, even though he had learned from knowing her that the confidence was usually only skin-deep. Right now, it was clear that she couldn’t even muster up the skin-deep veneer of confidence.

It was his duty to rescue her. They might have said goodbye to their brief liaison but he was still her employer, still responsible for her and, it might be said, still caring and thoughtful enough to want to make her feel less ill at ease amongst this glamorous crowd of people.

Boosted by that positive thought, yet not wishing to offend anyone—least of all this very attractive girl who was gazing up at him with expectation—Malik murmured something and nothing at her coy request that he save the first dance for her.

‘Isn’t it the last dance that’s supposed to be saved, according to the song?’

She gave him look, polite, still smiling but puzzled, and he agreed to do just that before hurriedly moving away before Lucy could do something stupid like take flight and disappear.

From across the room—trying hard not to look as though she was looking around her, because she was lost and wanted to turn tail and flee—Lucy’s gaze finally alighted on Malik.

She stilled and could feel the slow burn of colour creeping into her cheeks. This was exactly what she wanted and needed, wasn’t it? Just what she’d told herself was necessary—ripping those damn rose-tinted specs from her eyes. Seeing him in action at this event where his bride would be chosen.

Yet, her heart constricted and she wanted the ground to open up and swallow her. Love was a steady, painful thump inside her and she blinked, only to see that he had broken up talking to someone so that he could dutifully wend his way towards her.

Was the woman one of the many hopefuls? Even a quick glance around her was enough to tell her that the place was teeming with hopefuls, and the hopefuls were all so staggeringly beautiful that he would have to have been a fool not to find someone here that fitted the bill.

What fitting the bill might entail, exactly, she had no idea because it was a topic that had been very firmly on thelist of things that were forbidden to talk about.

The woman in question was tall and slender and looked to be in her early twenties, with raven-dark hair artfully swept up into something very clever that was threaded with lovely glittering jewels. Her dress was a simple black-and-gold affair. And her skin was flawless.

Lucy wished she had had the foresight to apply some fake tan for the occasion, then told herself not to be utterly ridiculous.

‘Lucy.’

Lucy looked up at a Malik, who took her breath away. He was in dark trousers with a white shirt and a bow-tie. Where the jacket of the tuxedo was, she had no idea—probably discarded somewhere.

The bow-tie would have meta similar fate, she was sure, had it not been for the solicitations of the dark-haired beauty he’d been chatting to who had helpfully put it back in place.

She watched with a jaundiced eye as he began to yank it off.

‘Damn thing’s strangling me.’

‘Oh, dear. Still, it’s a good ploy.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean it’s certainly a clever way to get the ladies here jumping over each other to straighten it out.’

A waiter swung by with a tray filled with glasses of champagne and Lucy quickly nabbed a flute and took a few sips, while glancing around her—anywhere but at Malik.

Her heart was beating so fast she could feel it trying to fly right out of her chest. She could breathe him in and his unique musky, woody, intensely masculine aroma made her nostrils flare.

‘This is all very magnificent, Malik. Your parents must have slaved day and night to put this all together.’

‘Or employed people who did. Are you okay?’

‘Of course I am! Why shouldn’t I be?’ Her champagne glass seemed to be empty.

‘You drank that pretty quickly. You’re nervous. I don’t blame you. Look, let me introduce you to a few people. You’ll find that they largely all speak fluent English.’

He half-turned but she remained put and he raised his eyebrows in a question.

‘You don’t have to tear yourself away from your own party to show me around, Malik. I’m fine making my way through the crowds.’

‘Don’t be silly. You don’t know a soul here.’

‘I know your mother.’

‘I thought that this might be a bad idea.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘It’s awkward for you, Lucy. I get that.’ He raked his fingers through his hair and whipped off the bow-tie completely, shoving it in his pocket.

‘Well,’ Lucy was appalled to hear herself say, ‘there goes that golden opportunity for an attractive woman to fiddle around with you...’

‘Lucy!’

‘I’m sorry. That was uncalled for. She’s very beautiful and she looks incredibly sweet.’

‘Are you jealous?’

‘No,’ she lied. ‘Maybe just a little. But don’t worry. It doesn’t mean that I’m not going to have a good time while I’m here, and you won’t have to be anxious that I’ve glued myself to a wall somewhere because I’m too timid to do the rounds.’

Malik looked at her in silence for so long that she began to fidget.

‘Well...’ She backed away and gave him an airy wave of her fingers. ‘I shall go and pay my respects to your parents and then disappear into the crowd.’

‘I doubt you’ll be able to pull off a disappearing act in that outfit,’ Malik ground out.

For the first time since he’d come here, he felt alive.

He could barely remember what the woman who’d playfully adjusted his bow-tie had looked like because he only had eyes for the woman standing in front of him. And that was a weakness he did not want to indulge.

They’d done what they’d done, but they’d both set their parameters, and he wasn’t going to let a little physical weakness lead him astray.

‘Thanks a lot, Malik!’

Lucy began to spin away but he reached out and circled his hand around her wrist, stilling her.

‘You don’t understand what I mean by that,’ he said in a roughened undertone.

‘I know exactly what you mean! You mean that, alongside all these sophisticated beauties with pedigrees as long as your arm, I look like a fool!’

‘The opposite, for God’s sake!’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You know exactly what I mean, Lucy.’

‘No. I don’t!’

‘I mean you stand there and everyone else is in the shade! No one can miss you because you look sexy as hell!’

He whipped his hand away and stood back but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from her.

He’d meant every word, but none of those words should have been spoken because none of them was appropriate, given the circumstances.

‘My mother is in the sitting area,’ he said unevenly. ‘Let me...let me take you there—introduce you to some of her friends...’

‘I’m fine,’ Lucy shot back, tilting her chin and taking two steps away from him. ‘You go and do what you have to do!’

Lucy knew how to mingle. Coming from a big family, where every event seemed to involve half the neighbourhood and so many extended family members that elbow room had to be fought for, mingling came naturally to her. Plus, she wanted to make sure that Malik didn’t see her skulking somewhere, nursing her hurt and her wounded heart.

No, not her wounded heart. Her utterly destroyed and broken heart. She comforted herself with what he’d said about her looking sexy, but then told herself that that meant nothing.

Out of the corner of her eye, she always seemed to have him in her line of vision, noticing the way people flocked to him, male and female.

This was his home, she thought miserably. This was where he belonged. London had just borrowed him for a moment in time and soon the beautiful woman who had done his bow tie, who seemed to be next to him whenever Lucy looked in his direction, would anchor him back in his heartland.

Her smile was glassy as she mingled with everyone. The food was exquisite, and she filled her plate and sat with a lovely group of people at one of the many circular tables, but she barely tasted a thing. She knew that she was operating on automatic. She heard herself laughing and asking interested questions. Champagne flowed in her direction until she was woozy...and more miserable.

And ever more aware of the young, smiling brunette with the fabulous slender body who had attached herself to Malik. Who knew what he thought about that situation? Was the brunette to be the one...while Lucy returned to his palace with her airline ticket waiting for her, all booked for two days’ time?

At the stroke of midnight, with reckless abandon, Lucy weaved her way to thank his parents for having her and, that duty under her belt, she headed towards Malik.

Of course, she should thank him for asking her along. He’d offered to be the solicitous host and it wasn’t his fault that she’d turned her back on that act of charity.

Thanks, but no thanks.

But thank him politely she would! She knew exactly when he spotted her because at that very moment the group around him, including the brunette, seemed to perform a convenient vanishing act.

One simple ‘thanks, and hope to see you before I leave the country’ and she’d be gone—out of his life for ever, with just one backward glance at a life left behind when she went to clear her stuff from the offices in London.

‘Lucy.’

His deep, dark, familiar, outrageously sexy voice brought the glaze of tears to her eyes.

‘You don’t have to...’ she heard herself say and, when he looked at her enquiringly, she added for good measure, ‘Marry someone you don’t want to marry. You don’t have to do that.’

And there it was—out in the open. All the love and longing she felt for him.

She squeezed her eyes tightly shut and, honest to the last, she breathed with heartfelt sincerity. ‘I love you, Malik.’

She looked at him, appalled by what she could hear herself saying, but driven to speak her mind before she disappeared out of his life for ever. To hell with stupid consequences. What more could happen? It wasn’t as though she’d have to face him across a desk any longer.

‘Don’t marry her. Marry me.’

She watched as he turned his head away. He clenched his jaw, and when he looked at her his dark eyes were blank of expression.

‘Lucy...’

‘No. Don’t say anything.’

‘I’m sorry.’