The Sultan's Choice Read Free Page A

which eschewed love should appeal to her. She wasn’t in any danger of falling for someone like Sadiq, and he certainly wouldn’t be falling for her. She was almost certainly guaranteed a different kind of marriage from the one she’d witnessed growing up. Their children wouldn’t be bullied and belittled out of jealous spite.
    Sultan Sadiq stood up, and panic gripped Samia again. She moved back skittishly and cursed this mouse of a person she’d become in his presence. She ruled over thirty employees at the library, and was used to standing up to her brother, who was a man cut from the same dominant cloth as the Sultan, but mere minutes in
this
man’s presence and she was jelly.
    He prowled around the room, as if he couldn’t sit still for longer than a second, and Samia recalled that he had a well known and insatiable love of extreme sports. He’d been the youngest ever sailor to take part in the prestigious VendéeGlobe race. As a keen sailor herself, she was in awe of that achievement.
    In the tradition of men of his lineage he’d studied in both the UK and the US, and had trained at the exclusive royal military academy at Sandhurst. He had a fleet of helicopters and planes that he regularly flew himself. All in all he was a formidable man. Along with that came the notorious reputation of being one of the world’s most ruthless playboys, picking up and discarding the most beautiful women in the world like accessories.
    And every year—not that she needed to be reminded—he hosted the biggest, most lavish birthday party and raised an obscene amount of money for charity. For years after that humiliating incident at his party, she’d been scornful of the excess he presided over. But she’d seen the evidence of how much bona fide charity work he did when time after time he was lauded for his fundraising. And how did she know all this? Hours spent researching him on the internet last night, much to her shame.
    He stopped pacing and quirked an ebony brow. ‘Are you going to insist on refusing my offer of marriage and force me to look elsewhere for a wife?’
    Samia heard the unimstakable incredulity in his voice. Patently he hadn’t expected this to be hard. It gave her some much needed confidence back to see this chink in his arrogant armour.
    ‘What would happen if I said no?’
    He put his hands on narrow hips, and Samia’s gaze couldn’t help but drop for a moment to where his shirt was stretched across taut abdominal muscles. She could see the dark shadowing of a line of hair through the silk and her mouth dried. The physiciality of her reaction to him stunned her. No man had had this kind of effect on her before. It was as if she’d been asleep all her life and was gradually comingto her senses here and now, in this room. It was most disconcerting.
    ‘What would
happen,’
he bit out, ‘is that the agreement between your brother and I would be in serious jeopardy. I would have to look to your next sister and assess her suitability.’
    Samia blanched and her gaze snapped back up to Sadiq’s. ‘But Sara is only twenty-two.’ And she jumped at her own shadow, but Samia didn’t say that. Immediately all her protective older sister hackles rose. ‘She’s entirely unsuitable for you.’
    Sadiq’s gaze was glacial now. ‘Which would seem to be a running trend in your family, according to you. Nevertheless, she would be considered. I would also be under no obligation to go through with my offer to help the Emir mine your vast oil fields. He would be forced to look for expertise from abroad, and that would bring with it a whole host of political challenges that I don’t think Burquat can afford at this moment in time.’
    Samia tried to ignore the vision he was painting and smile cynically. But her mouth tingled betrayingly when his gaze dropped there for an incendiary moment. She fought to retain her focus. ‘And you’re saying that your part in this is entirely altruistic? Please don’t insult