Rumours: The Billion-Dollar Brides: The Desert King's Blackmailed Bride (Brides for the Taking) / The Italian's One-Night Baby (Brides for the Taking) / Sold for the Greek's Heir (Brides for the Takin

When Rashad in person appeared out of seemingly nowhere and joined her without fanfare and with a seemingly relaxed smile to bid her a good morning, Polly was so disconcerted she almost fell off her chair in shock.

‘My goodness, I was wondering where you were!’ she exclaimed helplessly.

Her attention involuntarily welded to the impressive physique outlined by a white tee shirt that hugged his muscular chest and biceps and faded jeans that outlined his narrow waist and long powerful thighs. In fact, although the sun hadn’t at so early an hour been bothering her, she heated up so much she began to perspire. ‘Last night—’

‘We will not discuss last night,’ Rashad broke in decisively. ‘We were both overtired after the wedding.’

‘Seriously...we’re sweeping the dust under the carpet?’ Polly muttered in astonishment.

Rashad answered her in Arabic, and then with an affirmative yes, the sculpted full line of his eloquent mouth firming, his devastating dark eyes cloaked by his lashes.

A fair brow lifted in growing disbelief. ‘And you think that’s all right?’

‘I think it is better than the alternative,’ Rashad told her truthfully, heaping sugar into his mint tea.

Polly stared down blindly at her own tea. ‘What happened to the man who said dissension could be stimulating?’

‘He learned that that brand of stimulation can be treacherous,’ Rashad countered with level cool.

And that fast, Polly wanted to scream at him again and so powerful was that urge that her teeth chattered together behind her murderously compressed lips. He could set off a seething emotional chain reaction inside her and make her madder than anyone else had ever done and it seriously unsettled her. She sipped at her tea with a stiff-fingered hold on the tiny glass cup and looked out to sea in angry silence, her mouth tightly compressed.

‘You see now we have nothing to talk about because you can’t gloss over a major row and simply pretend it never happened,’ she then pointed out, not feeling the smallest bit generous, especially not after having lain awake for half of the night wondering where he was, how he felt and what he was doing. Evidently if he simply moved on past the dissension without requiring any contribution from her, he had done no such wondering.

‘We did not have a row, we had different opinions.’ Rashad persisted in his peace-keeping mission much as he persisted against all odds to direct challenging meetings staged between enemies and rivals.

Polly almost lunged across the table as she leant abruptly forward, silvery blonde hair rolling across her slim shoulders like a swathe of heavy silk. ‘I want a row!’

Rashad levelled resolute dark eyes on her, raw tension gripping him because he only had to look at that rosy soft mouth of hers to want to back her down on the nearest horizontal surface. Hell, it didn’t even have to be horizontal, he acknowledged, his inventive mind rushing to supply every erotic possibility imaginable. His jeans uncomfortably tight around the groin, he flexed his broad shoulders. ‘You’re not getting one.’

‘Even if I say please?’ Polly pressed helplessly, because she genuinely believed that they had to discuss what had happened to move beyond it.

‘With regret...not even if you beg,’ Rashad spelt out a tinge more harshly. ‘Rows are divisive and risky and we will not have them—’

‘Says the King. But we still need to clear the air,’ she muttered, shaken by an increasing fear that he really did believe such an approach could work.

‘As far as I am concerned the air is already clear and further discussion would be overkill,’ Rashad concluded in a tone of finality as he began to peel a piece of fruit, waving away the manservant who immediately approached him in a keen attempt to save him from the labour of such a petty task.

‘Well, then you can listen,’ Polly told him in desperation.

Rashad tensed at that seemingly new threat, dark eyes flashing gold below lush black velvet lashes as he focused on her. Why was she trying to destroy his calm and enrage him again? He had behaved honourably the night before. He had not argued. He had not threatened. He had walked away. This morning he had not uttered one word of reproach. If he had told her how he really felt about what she had done his anger would’ve blown the roof of the castle off and scared her. Whether he liked it or not, he was what he was, the heir to a ruthless lineage, and his belief that his wife belonged to him ran like a thread of steel through his every reaction even while his intelligence told him that life didn’t work like that any more.

She looked so innocent and so very beautiful and yet she was totally off-the-wall crazy in Rio’s parlance, Rashad acknowledged ruefully. Yet why did he continue to find that strange trait so incredibly attractive? Why, when he was in the worst possible mood, did that trait make him want to smile? He concentrated on his tea, which was less likely to unnerve him than the odd thoughts assailing him without warning. He told himself that he didn’t want to listen, didn’t want further criticism or a greater burden of guilt. After all, he knew who was ultimately at fault. Somehow he had screwed up. If his brand-new bride wasn’t happy, he had to be to blame.

‘And perhaps now that you’ve eaten you could dismiss the staff?’ she added in a disturbing indication that she was likely to become loudly vocal once again.

Rashad signalled the two hovering servants to dismiss them before springing upright with fluid agility and sitting back down on the low wall bounding the castle ramparts.

Polly immediately froze in her seat. ‘No, don’t do that,’ she said anxiously, blue eyes fixed to him in dismay.

‘Don’t do...what?’

‘Don’t sit there with your back turned to a dangerous drop,’ Polly urged.

Rashad studied her in disbelief and then glanced round in a sudden movement that made her gasp to scrutinise the dangerous drop she had complained about. A couple of hundred feet of scrub and rocks sloped gently down towards the beach and he had climbed it many times with a blindfold as a little boy on a dare.

‘Please get up and move away from it,’ Polly whispered unsteadily.

Rashad studied her again, noticing how pale and stiff she had become. ‘It’s not a dangerous drop—’

‘Well, it is to me because I’m terrified of heights and just looking at you sitting there is making me feel sick!’ Polly launched at him at vastly raised volume with only a hint of a frightened squeak, her annoyance at his obstinacy having risen higher still.

Rashad raised calming hands as though he were dealing with a fractious child and rose with exaggerated care to move to the castle wall. OK...point taken.’

Polly flushed to the roots of her hair and slowly breathed again. ‘I just don’t like heights—’

‘I think I’ve got that,’ Rashad confided straight-faced.

‘So, you’re planning to listen now to me?’ Polly enquired stiffly.

Impatience flashed through Rashad and no small amount of frustration at her persistence. Water dripping on stone had a lot in common with his new wife. But he was clever enough to know that listening was an important skill in negotiation and experienced enough to know that marriage encompassed an endless string of compromises and negotiations. ‘I’ll listen but not here. I’ll show you round the castle and you can talk...quietly,’ he added softly, but the dark-eyed imperious appraisal that accompanied it was a visual demand for that audible level. ‘No shouting, no crying, no dramatic gestures.’

‘I don’t do crying and dramatic gestures,’ Polly told him in exasperation.

By nature, Rashad recognised the ironic fact that, of the two of them, he was more volatile and more likely to be dramatic and his handsome mouth quirked at that sardonic acknowledgement. The night before, Polly had been very understated but a rejection was a rejection, no matter how it was delivered, and not a pattern Rashad wanted to find in his wife. He looked at her; in truth he never tired of looking at her and the plea in her shadowed blue eyes would have softened the heart of a killer.

‘OK,’ he agreed grudgingly. ‘But if you embark on another argument—’

‘You’ll lock me up and throw away the key,’ Polly joked.

‘Considering that that is exactly what my ancestors did with their wives, you could be walking a dangerous line with that invitation,’ Rashad murmured, teasing on the surface but fleetingly appalled by how much that concept attracted him when it came to the woman smiling back at him.

CHAPTER SEVEN (#u601743d7-3da5-5316-b4c3-1f7b3fd2f2ed)

‘EVERYTHING HERE IS unfamiliar to me. Your lifestyle, the customs, the language,’ Polly murmured quietly as they walked along the battlements past stationed guards to take advantage of the aerial views. ‘When you add you and a new marriage into that, it can occasionally be overwhelming.’

That made remarkably good sense to Rashad, who had been braced to receive a quiet emotional outpouring of regrets and accusations. Relief rising uppermost, he squared his broad shoulders and breathed in deep. ‘I can understand that.’

‘And I’ve barely seen you since the day I agreed to marry you. I realise that with your schedule you had no choice but it made me feel insecure.’

Rashad was downright impressed by what he was hearing, it never having occurred to him that a woman in a relationship with him could speak her mind so plainly and unemotionally. In silence he jerked his chin in acknowledgement of the second point.

‘Yesterday was a very challenging day for both of us.’ Polly’s voice shook a little when Rashad settled an arm to her back to steady her on the uneven stones beneath their feet, long fingers spreading against her spine to send a ridiculous little frisson of physical awareness travelling through her all too susceptible body.

‘It was...’

‘I’ve never been in a serious relationship before...’

Rashad stopped dead. ‘Never?’ he questioned in disbelief. ‘But you are twenty-five years old.’