100 Arabian Nights--3 Book Box Set by LIZ FIELDING

Author:LIZ FIELDING [Lawrence, Kim; Webber, Meredith; Fielding, Liz]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781460889947
Publisher: Mills & Boon Special Release
Published: 2013-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIVE

DINNER was served in what Tarik assured Hannah was the small, informal dining room, although it held a table large enough to seat twenty people without anyone clashing elbows.

In spite of that, their two table settings were close enough for her to hear him breathe.

And feel his presence in the air around her. So all her senses were on alert. She should have stayed with Mickey—pretended he was having trouble settling down, although he’d been sound asleep before she’d finished the second page of the story they’d been reading.

The fact remained she had to face Tarik some time, and probably get used to being alone with him. The important thing was for him not to realise just how badly he affected her—for her not to shiver when he spoke or tremble at a casual touch. Her big mistake had been challenging him to kiss her—back on the plane—it was the kiss that had sent her body into such a frenzy of anticipation that nothing she tried seemed to work as far as quelling it went.

So she had to pretend!

‘Do you eat here when you’re alone?’ Hannah asked, feeling this was a nice, innocuous way to start a dinner conversation. She was also unable to believe a single person would want or could accept this kind of pomp every night of his life.

‘If I was alone I would be in my apartment in the new city,’ he said. ‘Or would have been, had I not inherited the position of ruler.’

He sighed, and Hannah thought she read confusion in his eyes, then decided she had to be wrong. This man who had ruthlessly organised her and Mickey from the moment they first met wouldn’t know the meaning of the word. Besides, thinking him confused made her feel a little sympathy for him, and that was nearly as bad as the attraction.

‘It is right that I should live here—right in the minds of the people—and it is also best for Mika that he grows up here. In the new city, my family has a compound, and many members have their houses there, but the children—’

Hannah had been tasting one of the little hors d’oeuvres set on a plate in front of them, but something in his voice made her look at him, to see an expression of not confusion this time but surely dissatisfaction on his face.

‘The children?’ she prompted gently, liking this diffident Tarik far more than she’d liked the bossy, managing one.

He looked at her and gave an embarrassed shrug. Tarik Sa’idi embarrassed? Now she’d seen everything.

But once again she used silence, wanting to know what bothered him but not knowing him well enough to push him for an answer.

Not knowing him well enough to be sharing an intimate dinner with him, either, for that matter—because it was intimate, in spite of the size of the room and her desperation to pretend all was normal.

‘It has been our custom that the children of the family grow up together, and that

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