The Sheikh's Convenient Princess by Liz Fielding

Author:Liz Fielding
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarlequinUKLtd
Published: 2017-08-31T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

BRAM’S JACKET WAS warm from his body, his arm was around her and Ruby’s cheek was pressed against fresh linen, the steady beat of his heart. This was the hug she’d been dreaming about, yearning for ever since her world fell apart and for a moment she soaked it up, knowing that, like so much of these few days, it would be a treasured memory. But he hadn’t signed up for this. He wanted an uncomplicated, no-strings temporary wife not a baggage-laden emotional wreck.

‘Th-thank you,’ she said, summoning every scrap of inner strength to ease away, sit up. ‘Thank you for rescuing me back there.’

‘I thought you were going to faint,’ he said, his hand still at her back.

‘I thought I was,’ she admitted. ‘But I meant when Lori said my name.’

‘So did I, but it was a great recovery. She had no idea.’

‘You knew,’ she said.

‘Our relationship has been short but intense,’ he said, ‘and I wasn’t distracted with the problem of who I was going to text the minute the car arrived.’

‘No.’ She managed some sort of smile. ‘You read her pretty well too.’

‘I’ve met her before.’ He glanced at her. ‘Jools?’

‘It’s what I was called at school. It’s short for Juliet.’

She risked a glance in his direction. His profile was lit by the soft lighting hidden amongst the branches and she couldn’t read his expression but it wasn’t that which was making her shiver. It was being forced to confront memories that she’d buried deep, locked away. Memories that she’d been hiding from for years. ‘I’m sorry, Bram.’

‘I thought we’d banned the word sorry?’

‘But I should have told you before all this...’ She made a gesture that took in the palace, the gardens, everything that had happened that day.

‘Tell me now,’ he said.

‘Yes...’ And, doing her best to ignore the cold, sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, she said, ‘I was born Juliet Dorothea Howard.’ There was no response but there was no reason for him to remember a sordid story that had filled the headlines ten years ago. ‘My home was a small manor house that had been in my mother’s family for ever and, until I was sixteen, I had the kind of life that most people dream about.’

She let her eyes flicker in his direction. His arm was still a comforting support but, although he’d turned to look down at her, his face remained impassive, giving no clue as to what he might be thinking.

‘A week after my sixteenth birthday my father was exposed as a con man who preyed on vulnerable, older women. He wooed them, seduced them and when they were putty in his hands, ready to sign anything he put in front of them, he robbed them.’

She opened the elegant little shoulder bag that contained her phone, tapped her father’s name into the search engine, clicked on a link and handed it to him.

‘It’s all there.’

She fixed her eyes on the glowing dome of the palace as he skimmed through the newspaper story that had brought her world crashing down.

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