Free Marriage Behind the Fa?ade by Lynn Raye Harris Page A

childhood had been. Yes, she felt like the cuckoo in the nest, but she’d always been loved. Even when her parents were slightly alarmed by her tendencies, or disappointed in her inability to be more like Alicia, they loved her.
    “But he must have loved her if he married her.”
    Malik’s laugh was unexpected. “This is how marriage is supposed to work in your culture, habibti. Here, one marries for duty. For family alliances. To consolidate power and land. My father married the woman who had been arranged for him. And then he did his duty and got her with child.”
    Sydney felt sad. It was all so cold, so unfeeling. And yet it was the Jahfaran way. Who was to say America was any better? People married all the time for love— and love did not always last. You only had to look at the national divorce statistics to realize that.
    And she was about to become another one. Odd in a way.
    “You have not asked the most obvious question,” Malik said, cutting through her thoughts.
    She was still trying to process the idea of marrying someone she did not love in order to ally her family with another. “What is that?”
    His gaze glittered. “You have not asked if I had an intended bride,” he said, his soft voice in contrast with the sharp edge in his gaze.
    Sydney’s stomach flipped. An arranged marriage for Malik? She’d never thought of it. And yet …
    “Did you?” she managed to ask.
    His smile was bittersweet. “Of course I did. I am a Jahfaran prince.”

 

     
     

    CHAPTER SEVEN
     
    SHE was looking at him with a wealth of hurt in her rain-grey eyes. Malik cursed inwardly. He’d never intended to cause her pain, and yet he’d failed miserably on that score.
    Too many times to count.
    “You had a fiancée?” she said.
    He shrugged casually, though he felt anything but casual. “Dimah was not my fiancée in the sense that you think of a fiancée.”
    She shook her head, her long red hair rippling like silk in the night. The wind wasn’t gusting so badly now and she was no longer shoving hair from her face. The silk of her robe clung to her frame, the breeze contouring the fabric around the peaks of her lush breasts.
    His body was painfully hard. Had been since she’d walked onto the terrace, the wind blowing her robe open and exposing her legs. Legs he’d had wrapped around him a lifetime ago.
    Legs he wanted wrapped around him again. Now. Tonight.
    It had been too long. Far too long.
    “I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean,” she said, oblivious to his torment. “You were supposed to marry someone. You married me instead. Why?”
    Malik drew in a sharp breath as her words sliced through the fog of his thoughts. The hurt was still there, the horror. The guilt.
    He hadn’t talked about it with anyone, hadn’t wanted to. It was over and Dimah was dead. Nothing he said or did would bring an innocent girl back.
    Lightning flashed again, illuminating Sydney’s face. She looked confused, worried. For him, he realized with a jolt. She was worried for him.
    He did not deserve her sympathy.
    “She died,” he said, surprising himself with the words he’d never spoken to another.
    Sydney grasped his hand, squeezed. He felt the jolt of sensation down to his toes. What was it about this woman that always, always got to him? He needed nothing, needed no one. Not even her.
    But he wanted her. Wanted the way he felt when she was near, when she touched him with her soft hands, smiled at him. When Sydney looked at him, he didn’t feel like he wasn’t worthy of being loved.
    “I’m so sorry,” she said.
    “It is not your fault. It happened a long time ago.” He’d been barely twenty at the time. Young and foolish.
    “And you did not marry anyone else.”
    “I did not have to, no.” He hadn’t wanted to marry Dimah. They’d known each other since they were children, and had always been intended for one another. But Malik hadn’t wanted her. Dimah was like a wraith, following him at a