SEDUCING HIS PRINCESS (3 page)

“Interesting. So you’re claiming to be
King
Solution. Even if you prove to be the first, how do you propose to be the second?”

“Proving my claim is a foregone conclusion. The second should be self-evident.”

“Not to me.”

Jala’s exact words that fateful night. Said in the same tone. Kamal’s likeness to her had suddenly ceased to be reminiscent and had become only grating.

Mohab gritted his teeth. “My uncle assumed I would never invoke my claim, that I would always let him speak for me concerning Jareer’s fate. And he was right—I didn’t have time to be more than an honorary leader and had no desire to upset a status quo my people were perfectly content with under Judar’s protection. But now things have changed.”

Kamal huffed. “Tell me about it. Just two months ago, you were the ‘rightful heir’ to a stretch of desert with three towns and seven villages whose people lived on date and Arabian coffee production, souvenir manufacturing and desert tourism. Now you’re the king of a land sitting on top of one of the biggest oil reservoirs ever discovered.”

“I have no personal stake in Jareer’s newfound wealth. I’m not interested in being richer, and I never wanted to be king. However, my people are demanding I declare Jareer an independent state and that I become their full-fledged ruler. But business and politics aren’t my forte. So while I will do my people’s bidding, I think it’s in their best interests to leave their new oil-based prosperity to the experts.”

“By experts, I assume you mean oil moguls.”

“With you in charge of every step they take into Jareer.”

Kamal raised one eyebrow. “You want me to run the show?”

“Yes.”

Kamal digested this. “So that’s Judar and Jareer and the oil companies. What about Saraya?”

“As a Sarayan, too, and because I admit the treaties with Saraya were never properly resolved before entering into the new ones with Judar, I will recognize its claim.”

“So you claim Jareer, and split the cake between us all. Why do you assume I’ll consider it? If I can have the whole cake?”

He sat forward, holding Kamal’s gaze. “I do because you’re an honorable man and a just king. Because I believe you’ll do everything in your power to avoid escalating hostilities between our kingdoms. Before, it was about family feuds and pride. Now we’re talking staggering wealth and power. If you decimate my claim and take all of Jareer, those who stand to lose that much would cause unspeakable damage. I regularly deal with situations that rage over way less, and believe me, nothing is worth the price of such conflicts.”

“So how do you propose we split the cake?”

“For its historical role and ties to Jareer, and because both Judar and Jareer will need its cooperation, Saraya will get twenty percent of Jareer’s oil. In recognition of Judar’s more recent claim and its much bigger role in Jareer till this day, Judar gets forty percent. Jareer gets the other forty percent. Plus, its inhabitants would be first in line for all benefits and job opportunities that arise, and you will also be responsible to provide training for them.”

“You’ve got it all worked out, don’t you?”

“I have been working on my pitch since the oil’s discovery. I was far from ready, but my uncle’s theatrics at the UN yesterday forced my hand prematurely.”

“What if I don’t like your percentages or terms?”

“I would grant you whatever you wish.”

“Even if you wanted to, as kings, we’re not omnipotent. Why would your people agree to let you be so generous with their resources?”

Here it was. Moment of truth. The point of all this.

He took the plunge. “They would because it would be the
mahr
of your sister, Princess Jala.”

Kamal rose to his feet in perfect calmness. It screamed instantaneous rejection more than anything openly indignant would have.

“No.”

The cold, final word fell on Mohab like a lash. As Jala’s rejection once had.

He resisted the urge to flinch at the sting. “Just no?”

“Consider yourself honored I deemed to articulate it. That you dared to voice this boggles the mind.”

“Why?”

Kamal glared down at him. “I’ll have my secretary of state draw you up an inventory of the reasons.”

“Give me the broad lines.”

“How about just one? Your bloodline.”

“You’d condemn a man by others’ transgressions?”

“We do inherit others’ mistakes and enmities.”

“And we can resolve them, not insist on regurgitating hatreds and spawning warring generations.”

“The Aal Masoods aren’t angels, but there is good reason why we abhor you, why all attempts at peacemaking fell through for centuries. Surely you remember the last marriage between our kingdoms and what your great-grandfather did to my great-aunt. I’m not letting my sister marry a man who comes from a family where the men mistreat their women.”

“My great-grandfather and uncle don’t represent the rest of us.
I
am nothing like them. You can investigate me further. And then consider the merits of my proposal. Once I claim Jareer, my uncle can retreat from his warpath. We’d appease his pride while going over his head in forging peaceful relations between all sides, to the benefit of all our people.” Mohab rose to his feet to face him. “What I’m proposing is the best solution for all concerned, now and into the far future. And you know it.”

After a protracted stare, Kamal finally exhaled. “We can forge peace with other kinds of treaties. Why bring marriage into this? And more important, why Jala? If you want to solidify the new alliance in the oldest way in the book, and the most enduring in our region, the Aal Masoods have other princesses who would definitely be more acceptable to your stick-in-the-mud family.”

“My family has nothing to do with it. Jala is
my
choice.” Kamal’s astonishment made Mohab decide to come clean, as much as it was prudent to. “I had a...thing for Jala years ago, and I thought she reciprocated. It didn’t end as I hoped. Now, years later, with both of us still unattached, I thought it might be fate’s way of telling me I had to make another attempt at claiming the one woman who captured my fancy...and wouldn’t let go. So while resolving our kingdoms’ long-standing conflicts would certainly be a bonus, she’s always been my main objective.”

Expecting Kamal, as Jala’s brother, to be offended—or at least to grill him about the nature of the “thing” he’d had for Jala—Kamal surprised him again, a hint of a smile dawning. “You mean discovering oil in Jareer and the crisis that ensued just presented you with the best bargaining chip to propose? And you didn’t propose before because you never had enough leverage?”

Mohab shrugged, tension killing him. “Do I have enough now?”

Kamal’s smile became definite. “If I disregard the stench of your paternal lineage and consider you based on your own merits, this might be a good idea. A perfect one, even. Knowing Jala, she’d never marry of her own accord and I hate to think she’ll end up alone. And you, apart from the despicable flaw of having the Aal Ghaanem blood and name, seem like a...reasonably good match for her.”

“So you’re saying yes?”

“A yes isn’t mine to say. I can’t force her to marry you and wouldn’t even if I could. Clearly this marriage quest of yours is hardly a done deal, since you require my intervention to even reach her. I won’t ask what earned you a place on Jala’s viciously strict no-approach list.
Ullah
knows I’m the last man to go all holier-than-thou on you for whatever transgression you committed to deserve this kind of treatment.”

What would Kamal say if Mohab told him he didn’t know exactly why he’d deserved that till this day?

Kamal gazed into the distance as if peering into a distasteful past. “I once did unforgivable things to the one woman who’d captured
my
fancy and wouldn’t let go, and it took the intervention of others to give me that second chance with her.”

“So you’re paying it forward.”

Kamal’s eyes returned to his, the crooked smile back. “I am.
But
if she agrees to marry you, I’ll take
sixty
percent as her
mahr.
If she refuses, the whole deal is off—and we’ll draw up another treaty that saves your king’s face so he can go sit in his throne and stop throwing war-agitating tantrums.”

Mohab’s first impulse was to kiss Kamal on both cheeks. This was beyond anything he’d come here expecting.

He extended his hand to Kamal instead, his smile the widest it had been in...six years. “Deal. You won’t regret this.”

Kamal shook his hand slowly. “You were wrong when you said you don’t know much about business. You know nothing. You could have gotten me to agree to thirty percent. You’re holding all the cards after all.”

Mohab’s smiled widened more. “I’m not so
oblivious that I don’t know the power I wield. But I would never haggle over Jala’s
mahr.
If my decision didn’t affect millions of people in both Saraya and Jareer, I would have given you the whole thing.”

“You got it that bad?” Kamal drilled him with an incredulous gaze. “Do you
love
her?”

Love? He once had...or thought he had. But now he knew it hadn’t been real. Because nothing real could ever exist for a man like him. He only knew he couldn’t move on. And that she hadn’t moved on, either. He was still obsessed with their every touch, had starved for her every pleasure. Love didn’t enter into the equation. Not only was it an illusion, it was one he couldn’t afford.

But the pact he’d struck with Kamal was real. As was his hunger for Jala. That was more than enough. In fact, that was everything.

Kamal waved his hand. “Don’t answer that. I don’t think you
can
answer. If you haven’t seen her in years, whatever you felt for her back then might be totally moot once you come face-to-face with each other again. So I won’t hold you to this proposal for now. But since Jala is the most intractable entity I have the misfortune to know and love...” At Mohab’s raised eyebrow, Kamal sighed. “
Aih,
she takes after her older brother, as Aliyah tells me.”

Mohab did a double take. It was amazing, the change that came over Kamal’s face as he mentioned his wife and queen. It was as if he glowed inside just thinking of her.

Kamal went on. “But for this to have a prayer of working, I need to give you much more of a helping hand than putting you in the same room with her. I need to give
her
a shove. I’ll make it sound as if refusal isn’t an option. Of course, if she
really
wants to refuse, she will, no matter what.” His lips spread into a smile again. “All I can hope is that if I make things sound drastic enough, it’ll give you that chance to make your approach. The rest...is up to you.”

Two

“Y
ou...
what?
”

Jala stared at Kamal, her shrill cry ringing in her own ears.

Staggering, she collapsed on the nearest horizontal surface, gaping up at Kamal who came to stand over her.

“I lied.”

Ya Ullah.
She
had
heard right the first time.

Another cry of sheer incredulity scratched her throat raw. “How could you do this to me? Are you
insane?
”

Kamal shrugged, not looking in the least repentant. “I had to get you here. Sorry.”

“
Sorry?
You let me have a thousand panic attacks during the hours it took me to get here, thinking that Farooq was lying in hospital, critically injured, and you say...sorry?”

Even now that she knew Farooq was safe, the horror still reverberated in her bones. She’d never known such desperation, not even when she’d been held hostage and thought she’d die a violent death.

Fury seethed inside of her. “Don’t you know what you did to me? As I thought of beautiful, vital Farooq lying broken, struggling for his life, how I wept as I thought how much he had to live for, as I thought of Carmen losing her soul mate, of Mennah growing up without her father.... You’re a monstrous
pig,
Kamal!”

Kamal winced. “I said he was injured but that he was stable. I wanted you here, but didn’t want to scare you more than necessary. How am I responsible for your exaggerations?”

“How?
How?
” She threw her hands up in the air in frustration. “How does Aliyah
bear
you?”

Kamal had the temerity to flash her that wolfish grin of his. “I never ask. I just wallow in the miracle of her, and that she thinks I’m the best thing that ever walked the earth.”

“Then Aliyah, although she
looks
sane, is clearly deranged. Or under a spell....”

“It’s called love.” Kamal raised his hands before she exploded again. “I
am
sorry. But you said you’d never set foot here again, and I knew you wouldn’t come unless you thought one of us was dying.”

“I know you’re ruthless and manipulative and a dozen other inhuman adjectives but...argh! Whatever you needed to drag me here for, you could have tried telling me the truth first!”

Kamal smirked. “
Aih,
and when that didn’t work, I would have tried the lie next. I
would
have ordered you to come, but knowing you, you would have probably renounced your Judarian citizenship just so I’d stop being your king. If you weren’t that intractable I wouldn’t have had to lie, and you wouldn’t have had those harrowing sixteen hours.”

“So it’s now my fault? You—you humongous, malignant rat! What could possibly be enough reason for you to drag me back here with this terrible lie?”

“Just that Judar is about to go to war.”

She shot back up to her feet. “
Kaffa,
Kamal...enough. I’m already here. So stop
lying.
”

His face was suddenly grim. “No lie this time.” He put his hand on her shoulder, gently pressed her down to the couch, coming down beside her this time. “It’s a long story.”

She gaped at him as he recounted it, plunging deeper into a surreal scape with every word.

But wars did erupt over far less, especially in their region. This was real.

When he was done, she exhaled. “You can’t even consider war over oil rights, no matter how massive. Aren’t you the wizard of diplomacy who peacefully resolves conflicts to every side’s benefit?”

“Seems you’re not familiar with King Hassan.” A scoff almost escaped her. Oh, she was
so
very familiar with King Hassan. “Some people are immune to diplomacy.”

“And
you’re
not posturing and allowing your council to egg you on with hand-me-down rivalries and vendettas?”

It was Kamal’s turn to scoff. “Give me some credit, Jala. I care nothing about any of this bull.
I
don’t have an inflamed ego and don’t borrow others’ enmities.”

“Yet you’re letting someone who has and does drag you down to his level, when you should contain him and his petty aggressions.” She exhaled her exasperation. “No wonder I did everything I could to get out of this godforsaken region and had to be told my oldest brother was dying to set foot here again. All this feudal backwardness is just...nauseating. You’d think nothing ever changed since the eleventh century!”

“War over oil rights is
very
twenty-first century.”

“Congratulations to all of you, then, for your leap into modern warfare. I hope you’ll enjoy deploying long-range missiles and playing high-tech war games.” She muttered something about monkeys under her breath. “I still don’t get why you conned me back here. You want me to have a front row seat with you lunkheads when the war begins?”

He reached for her hand, his eyes cajoling. Uh-oh.

“You actually play the lead role in averting this catastrophe.”

“What could I possibly have to do with resolving your political conflicts?”

“Everything really. Only you can stop the war now, by marrying an Aal Ghaanem prince.”

“What?”

“Only a blood-mixing union will end hostilities and forge a long-lasting alliance.”

She snatched her hand from his grasp, erupting to her feet. “Did I say you were stuck in the eleventh century? You’ve just stumbled five more centuries backward.
Not
so good seeing you, Kamal. And don’t expect to lay eyes on me for a long while. Certainly never in Judar again.”

Kamal gave her that unfazed glance that made her want to shriek at the top of her lungs. “It’s this or war. The war you know full well would come at an unthinkable price to everyone in Judar—and in Saraya and Jareer, too.”

Wincing at the terrible images his words smeared across her imagination, she gritted out, “Let’s say for argument’s sake that I don’t think you’re all insane to be still dabbling in marriages of state to settle political disputes. The Aal Masoods have many princesses who’re just right for the role of political bride. In fact, some have been born and bred for the role. So how are any of you foolish enough to consider
me—
aka the Prodigal Princess?”

Lethal steel came into Kamal’s eyes. “Others’ opinions are irrelevant. You’re
the
princess of Judar. Only your blood could end centuries of enmity and forge an unbreakable alliance. So it’s not a choice. You are getting married to the Aal Ghaanem prince.”

“Wow. If you wore a crown, I’d think it got too tight on your swelling head and gave you brain damage. Anyway, if you think you can sacrifice me at the altar of your tribal reconciliations, you’re suffering from serious delusions.”

“We all offer sacrifices when our kingdom needs us.”

“What sacrifices?” She coughed a furious chuckle. “To remain married to Carmen, Farooq tossed his crown-prince rank to Shehab when our kingdom needed him. Shehab did the same with you, to marry Farah. You grabbed the rank and
sacrifice
only because it got you Aliyah in the bargain. You’re all living in ecstatic-ever-afters because you did exactly what you wanted and never sacrificed a thing for ‘our kingdom.’”

“Farooq and Shehab had the option of passing on their duty. I didn’t, like you don’t now. And I thought it
was
a sacrifice when I accepted my duty.”

“No, you didn’t. You knew nothing less than another threat of war would get Aliyah to say good-morning to you again. You pounced on the ‘duty’ that would make her your queen and pretended to hate your ‘fate.’” At his raised eyebrows, she smirked. “I can figure things out pretty good,
ya akhi al azeez.
So spare me the sacrifice speech, brother dear. You’re out of your mind if you think you can sway me into this by appealing to my patriotism.”

“Then it will be your steep humanitarian inclinations. You’ve been in war zones. You know that once war starts, there’s no stopping the chain reaction that harvests lives in its path. As a woman who lives to alleviate the suffering of others, and who can stop this nightmarish scenario, you’ll do anything to abort it, even if you abhor Judar and the whole region. And the very idea of marriage.”

The terrible knowledge that he was right, if there was no other choice, seeped into her marrow. “So now what? You’ll line up Aal Ghaanem princes and I’ll pick the least offensive one? And the one I pick would just accept being sacrificed for his kingdom’s peace and prosperity?”

“If a man considers marrying you a sacrifice, he must be devoid of even a drop of testosterone.”

“You won’t appeal to my feminine ego, either. Any man in the region would rather jump out of a ten-story window than marry a woman like me,
the
princess of Judar or not.”

“A woman like you would be an irreplaceable treasure to any man in any region.”

“Blatant brotherly hyperbole aside, no,
a woman like me
wouldn’t. A woman living alone in the West since she was eighteen is the stuff of region-wide dishonor around here. It had to be something as dire as the threat of war and the promise of unending oil to sweeten my scandalous pill for one of those stuck-in-the-dark-ages princes.”

“The new generation of princes are nowhere as bad as that.”

“The only one I know who isn’t is Najeeb. But I bet
he
won’t be joining the lineup.” Her lips twisted with remembered bitterness. “King Hassan would never sacrifice his heir to such a fate as me, no matter the incentives.”

Kamal waved his hand. “You won’t suffer the discomfort of a lineup. The Aal Ghaanem prince has already been chosen.”

She almost had to pick her jaw off the floor this time. “How can I express my gratitude that you’ve gone the extra mile and abolished whatever choice I had in this antiquated process?”

Kamal’s lips twitched. “Let me rephrase my extremely misleading statement. The Aal Ghaanem prince volunteered. And he is already here. But he had the consideration to let me prepare you before he came in. So shall I send him in...or do you need some more time before you meet your groom-to-be?”

She sank back onto the couch, objections and insults swarming so violently it was impossible to pick one to voice.

Calmly disregarding her apoplectic state, Kamal bent and kissed her cheek. “Give this a chance, and it’ll all work out for the best. You have me as the best example for
assa ann takraho shai’an wa hwa khairon lakkom.
”

You may hate something and it’s for your best.

Before she could do something drastic, like poke him in the eye, he straightened, turned on his heel and walked away.

She watched him disappear, all her mental functions on the fritz.

What had just happened?

Was she really back in Judar? Only to find herself being pushed into a far worse cage than anything her previous life here had been? Could it be true that refusal wasn’t an option?

Suddenly a suspicion cleaved into her brain.

The logical progression to this nightmare.

The identity of this “volunteer.”

The man who was the reason she’d sworn never to return to this region. He
was
an Aal Ghaanem prince, even if the world forgot that most of the time.

But he would never volunteer to...to...

You’re mine, Jala. And no matter how long it takes, I swear to you, I will reclaim you. I will make you beg to be mine again.

The promise...the
threat...
that had circulated in her being for six long years, burning her to the core with its malicious arrogance and possessiveness, reverberated in her bones.

No.
He’d just said that out of spite, to poison whatever reprieve walking away would grant her. He hadn’t really wanted to reclaim her. Not when he’d only claimed her as a means to an end. An end he must believe he’d long achieved....

Her heart kicked, had her pitching forward to the edge of her seat. The door of the reception room was opening.

The next moment, her heart battered her ribs. Time ceased. Reality fell away. Everything converged on one thing. The shadow separating from the darkness. A shape she remembered all too well.

Him.

No.
No.
Not when she’d finally managed to purge his malignant memory. She must stop this confrontation from coming to pass, flee...
now.

She didn’t move. Couldn’t. Could only sit there, her every nerve unraveling as soundless steps brought him into the circle of light where she sat exposed, besieged.

His eyes were the first things that emerged out of the gloom. Those fire pits had haunted her dreams and tormented her waking hours since she’d last seen them.

But the tremors arcing through her weren’t from what she saw in them, or the blow of his presence or its implications. It was the awareness that had swept her from the first moment she’d ever encountered him. Even amidst the terror of the hostage crisis, it had yanked her out of reality, plunged her into a stunned free fall where only he existed. For that same feeling to mushroom again now, after all that had happened...

He blinked, and the vice garroting her snapped, propelling her to her feet and to the French windows.

Her steps picked up speed as her exit to the palace gardens neared...then it disappeared. Behind a wall of muscle and maleness. It was as if he’d materialized in her path.

He didn’t try to detain her, didn’t need to. His very aura snared her. And that was before her gaze streaked up, found him looking at her with that trance-inducing intensity.

Finding him so near, after all these years, after what he’d cost her....

Her grip on consciousness softened. The world swirled as she stared up at him, a prisoner to her own enervation. And again the sheer injustice of it all hit her.

No one should be endowed with all this. He was too...everything. And even in the subdued lighting and through the veil of her own wavering senses she could see he was even more than she remembered. Six years had taken him from the epitome of manhood to godlike levels.