Miranda Lee - Modern Romance - The Best of the Year

“Foolish!” she cried. “Self-indulgent!”

“But my sister and I are not.” He tilted his head coldly. “Tell me, Miss Taylor. How many happy marriages have you seen in real life? Can you name even one?”

“Emma and Cesare!”

“Too easy. They’re newlyweds. Anyone can be happy for four days. Who else?”

She said slowly, “I was virtually raised by an elderly couple, neighbors who lived down the street. They were barely out of high school when they eloped to a judge’s office, but they were married for over fifty years. They never loved anyone but each other. They raised children, they took care of each other, grew old together. They died one day apart...”

“After fifty years of marriage, they were probably happy to die.”

“Shut up!” Irene shouted. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“Oh, you can give out the truth, but you can’t take it?”

“They loved each other! I saw it! Their house was the only place I ever felt happy or safe in my whole childhood!”

Silence fell.

“Ah,” he said softly. “At last. The reason for your ironclad virginity. You think if you hold out for marriage, you’ll be happy and safe for the rest of your life. But it doesn’t work like that.”

“No? How does it work, then—sleeping around with women you don’t even like, that you can’t even remember? How is it working for you, knowing you’ll never truly have a partner, someone to watch your back, someone to protect and adore? Tell me more about your great life, Sharif, how wonderful it feels to never love anyone, or have anyone ever love you back!” She shook her head, blinking away furious tears. “You’re just scared to admit I’m right, because if you did—”

“Enough.” He suddenly sat up straight, every inch the arrogant, untouchable Emir of Makhtar. His broad-shouldered anger filled the space of the Ferrari. “I’ve allowed your honesty, even appreciated it, because it serves my ends. I need my sister to have a companion I can trust. But do not speak to me of love.” His low voice dripped scorn. “Love is nothing more than selfish delusion that weak-minded people allow to come before duty. Before honor. Before even their own good. People destroy their lives, and the lives of their families, over this poisonous thing that you call love.”

The sports car seemed to be going faster and faster through the heavy traffic, until they were darting around the big trucks and luxury sedans on the road. Sharif turned the car off the highway in a hard right, barely slowing down.

He’d been right about one thing, Irene thought unhappily. Their flashy red sports car fit right in. No one gave it a second glance.

She took a deep breath.

“I told you when you hired me,” she said shakily, “that you might regret it. Because I speak the truth.”

“It’s not truth. It’s your opinion. One that you are free to have because you have nothing to lose. You do not have the lives of two hundred thousand people depending on you.”

“No, but—”

“Share your feelings with me, Irene Taylor. Talk your head off whenever you want. But if you say one word of it to my sister—if you preach to her about love that lasts forever—that is your last day under my employment. You will be sent back home without pay. Do you understand?”

Setting her jaw, Irene looked away.

“Do you understand?”

“Yes.” She gripped the edge of her leather seat as he turned the car sharply into a private driveway. Ahead of them, she saw a stucco fence at least ten feet high, with a guardhouse at the gate.

The air in the car, which had crackled with such sensual energy in the gas station outside Abu Dhabi, now seemed frozen over. How was it possible, Irene wondered miserably, that feelings could burn so hot one moment and so cold the next? Just a few hours ago, she’d been crying at the thought of his engagement.

Now, she would have dearly loved to push him out of the Ferrari and leave him in a ditch by the side of the road.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“I CANNOT BELIEVE that you would take such a risk coming here unprotected... Knowing full well that your future husband might hear of this foolish escapade...”

Sharif set his jaw, folding his arms with a scowl as he looked down at his young sister. He’d been lecturing her for some time.

“Of all the selfish, idiotic...”

Aziza sat meekly on an outdoor sofa on the grand terrace of their family’s vacation villa, which overlooked an Olympic-size pool and the gleaming brilliance of the Persian Gulf beyond. His sister’s eyes were turned down, but he recognized the stubborn set to her jaw. It matched the stubborn expressions of the two women sitting on each side of her.

Old Basimah was on the left, glaring at him with hard beady eyes, her sagging jowls quivering with unspoken fury that he, the elder brother who was merely and unimportantly the emir and absolute ruler of Makhtar, would dare to scold her precious charge.

Ignoring her, Sharif continued harshly, “You must never do such a thing again...”

But at this, the woman sitting on Aziza’s other side, holding her hand, looked up sharply.

“She has explained why she came to Dubai, Your Highness,” Irene said coolly. “She apologized for not telling you her intention, but surely you would not begrudge the sheikha a simple, discreet weekend vacation.” Irene lifted an eyebrow, as if to say, You, of all people, cannot criticize her for that. When she saw her mark hit home, she relaxed and gave him a placid smile. “She is not, after all, a prisoner—is she?”

Sharif’s scowl deepened. He’d expected that Irene would get along well with his headstrong young sister. He hadn’t expected them to become friends so quickly. Or that she would take his sister’s side so craftily, in a way he could not easily fight. Aziza knew it, too. There was a reason his sister was arguing in English, not Arabic.

“There are many places to relax,” he replied through his teeth, “in Makhtar City.”

Irene gave him a sweet smile. “But Her Highness had her heart set on coming here, where she could test her skiing lessons at the indoor ski slope at the Mall of the Emirates.” She tilted her head. “She could have requested the use of your private jet, and flown off to a ski resort in Switzerland or Patagonia with an entourage. Instead, she came here simply and privately, at very little expense. Surely her thriftiness should be rewarded, not scolded.”

The woman should be in diplomacy, he thought grumpily.

“Of course,” he said through gritted teeth. She was not only giving his sister a reasonable defense, she was also obliquely pointing out his lavish spending on his own trips abroad. While not directly giving voice to her disapproval of Aziza’s coming wedding, she was undermining his authority and giving his younger sister greater confidence in her decisions, to better fight him later. Well played, he thought. But Irene didn’t know who she was dealing with.

Sharif looked down at his sister. Aziza’s plump cheeks were still stained with tears, her hands listless in her lap. She was, after all, just nineteen. He himself had first started taking illicit weekends himself at that age as a way to escape from the pressures of the palace. That was what he’d first feared when she’d left—that she was meeting some boy here, some waiter she’d met, or heaven knew what. Thankfully, that wasn’t the case. So perhaps—just perhaps—he was being too hard on her.

Sharif took a deep breath. “All I want is for you to be happy...”

Aziza looked up. “How can I be happy?” she cried. “When I’m just waiting, waiting to marry that old man?”

“How indeed?” Irene murmured under her breath.

Thus encouraged, the younger woman glared at her brother and tossed her head defiantly. “It’s like having a date with the guillotine!”