Free The Sheikh's Arranged Marriage: The only thing worse than falling in love with the man she'd married was knowing he would never feel the same... by Clare Connelly Page A

ballet she had learned, and the role of Giselle was to be her audition piece. She flexed her feet and took her first step. Tentatively at first, after a fortnight’s break from dancing, but then, the movements flooded back and she lost herself in the sweet sensation of dance.
    * * *
    Tariq had been sure she would follow him.
    Or at least that she would have come to see him the night before.
    Their fight had been stupid. They were both sexually frustrated as hell and it had been easy to snap at each other. But she hadn’t weakened. And now, he scanned her room, she was gone. Already.
    He frowned. It wasn’t yet seven o’clock. Where could she have crept off to so early in the morning?
    Thanking heavens he’d asked for an extra security detail to shadow her permanently, he pressed the intercom buzzer and asked his personal guard to locate her. The answer surprised him. She was in the rarely used old banqueting hall.
    He dressed quickly, into a suit his valet had laid out for him the night before, and shoes that had been shined to a high gloss. He was impatient to see her. To make sure everything between them was okay. Another ‘first’ for him.
    What the hell was she doing at this hour, and in the disused hall? It was a fair stroll from their bedrooms and his intrigue increased with each step he took. Perhaps she’d taken her motley band of servant children and formed a temporary school, he thought with a smile. That would be just the kind of thing she would do.
    The strains of classical music greeted him as he got closer and his puzzlement increased along with the volume. He quietly turned the handle, and met the eyes of a palace guard. With one hand, he silently dismissed the security agent to the exterior of the room. And then, he saw her. Eyes closed, face painfully beautiful as she experienced the emotion of the powerful ballet Giselle.
    She was mid-air, in a pirouette, and he watched, scarcely daring to breathe lest he break her concentration. Emotions darted through him. Admiration. Awe. Desire. And fear, at the difficulty of the move she was in the process of completing.
    Her whole body was fluid with a kind of grace he’d never seen before. She was tall, but she was suddenly weightless, and almost flying through the air with step and twist and turn. As she landed and began to spin around and around and around her eyes opened and landed flat on him.
    Not by a twitch of her body did she betray that she had seen him, and that his presence affected her. She continued to dance, like a true ballerina, and he watched, openly in awe.
    The music came to a close and so did her dancing.
    He clapped, slowly, his eyes hooded.
    “ You are superb,” he said quietly, with a shake of his head.
    She waved a hand in the air, the confidence gone now the music had stopped. “Far from it. I’m not a natural dancer. But I do so enjoy it.”
    He frowned. “I’ve been to a fair few ballets, Rebecca, and I’ve never been as captivated as I was just then. When.. how did you learn?”
    “You’re just being kind,” she insisted modestly.
    “Damn it, you drive me crazy, Rebecca. How can you not know how beautifully you dance?” She turned away from him but he grabbed hold of her. “I mean it,” he demanded. “Who was it?”
    “Who was what?” She whispered, dropping her gaze.
    “The idiot who told you you’re not good enough? At dancing, or anything?”
    “No one,” she fibbed, not wanting to talk about her adoptive parents here. “ It was just a childish fantasy. I grew out of it.”
    “Obviously you didn’t.” He took a step back and raised his hands in a gesture of defeat. “I didn’t come here to pick another argument with you.”
    She raised her chin. “Why did you come here?”
    “I was unhappy with how things ended between us last night. I came to make sure you were okay.”
    She shrugged. “I’m fine.”
    “Obviously.” He looked sideways. So only he had been driven crazy replaying every moment of