An Inconvenient Marriage (Married to a Prince) Read Free Page A

speechless as they made their way past the crowd to the waiting car.
     
     
    * * * *
     
    Delilah walked around the well-appointed suite in astonishment.  While growing up, she had lived in apartments smaller than the bathroom.  She needed to get herself together.  From the moment she had seen the white domed palace in the distance, everything had stopped feeling real.  She’d been dropped into the center of some whimsical fantasy. Sami’s revelation that the people here considered her a princess had been a bigger bombshell than the news of her marriage.
    She glanced at Sami.  He had changed from his traditional clothing to the more western style of khakis and a Rugby shirt.  The clothes seemed to be tailored to his lean, muscular body. Sitting on a brightly colored floor pillow near the large window, he stared at the vast desert in the distance as if he longed to be there.  He was handsome, she supposed, if she went for the dark, brooding, sexy type.  Which of course she didn’t, she thought, dragging her eyes away.
    He obviously didn’t want to be married to her, so why had he not eagerly agreed at the airport that divorce was the fastest and simplest answer?
         “Should I bother unpacking?” she asked.
    “You can have the maid take care of that.”  His gaze never left that distant point on the horizon that seemed to hold him spellbound. Or, maybe he was trying to ignore her.
    “I meant - will I be here long enough to unpack.”
    He turned towards her.  “Are you planning to leave?”
    Tension seeped from every pore.  “Must we run around in circles?  We‘re strangers.”
    “Actually, we have met. But you left here when you were five, so I’ll forgive you for not remembering.”
    Her fingers tightened like a vice over the arms of the chairs.  Losing control would get her nowhere. “Regardless. We are strangers now. There is no point in pretending I’m your wife just because a piece of paper signed by our fathers says we’re married.”
    “And your solution is that I shall divorce you, thereby dishonoring a promise made to your late father, who happens to be a national hero here?”
    She gasped. His words hit like an emotional sucker-punch.  Her father, a national hero?   “Excuse me?”
    “How much do you know about Ahmed Rafik?”
    Obviously not enough.   She regretted now that she hadn’t pushed her mother harder for information about her father.  She shrugged sadly.  “I know he died when I was five and my mother took me back to America.  I didn’t know he was a Nadiarian national until I was seventeen.  And I found out about you last week.”
    “That makes two of us,” he grumbled.  “And how did you come to discover our marriage?”
    “My mother told me... finally.”
    He crossed the room and stood directly in front of her. Anger radiated from him.  His presence overwhelmed her and she had to force herself to concentrate when he spoke. 
    “Do you know that she told your father’s family that the marriage had been dissolved?”
    “Yes.”
    Sami arched his back as if to relieve tension, giving her a clearly defined view of his broad chest.  A strange tingling sensation washed over her.  “They had no reason to think she would lie.  What if I had married another, believing I was free?  A lot of lives would have been destroyed.”
    “I’m sorry.  I’m trying to straighten out her oversights the best I can.”
    “You have a grandmother and many other family members here who have not seen you or heard one word about you in twenty years.  Are you aware of that?”
    A stabbing pain pierced her heart.  Why hadn’t her mother told her?  She twisted her fingers together until her knuckles cracked.  Tears filled her eyes. “I didn’t know.”
    He grunted in disgust. “It appears your mother has told you nothing about one half of your life.  So what caused her to purge her conscience about your marriage now?” 
    She paused.  How was she supposed to