The Sheikh and the Virgin. Kim Lawrence

on the unhealthy.

      ‘My brother plans to marry you.’

      Beatrice’s head came up with a jerk that jarred her spine. Eyes as hard as obsidian that were lightened only by those strange silvery flecks bored into her.

      If she had any remaining doubts that this was a case of mistaken identity, this bizarre statement washed them away.

      ‘I’m not marrying anyone’s brother,’ she promised him.

      Irritation chased across his lean features. ‘Then this is not you?’ he drawled.

      Beatrice looked suspiciously for a moment at the item he extracted from a file and placed on her side of the desk before she picked it up.

      Her eyebrows almost hit her hairline when she recognised the holiday snap. It had been taken two summers earlier, when she had been working as an au pair in the South of France.

      The two people with her on the beach were friends she had met that summer. Emma, whose father had owned the villa next to hers, and Khalid, the charming young man Emma had introduced her to.

      Both had remained her friends—in fact her sleeping bag was at present on the sofa in Emma’s London flat.

      Her narrowed eyes left the photo and flew to the man’s face. ‘How did you get this?’

      He dismissed the question with a shrug of his powerful shoulders. ‘That is not relevant.’

      Strange men with photos of her in a bikini were extremely relevant to Beatrice!

      ‘I do not normally concern myself with my brother’s holiday romances.’

      ‘Your brother … Khalid is your brother? Then that makes you …’ She swallowed, her voice trailing off. That made him Tariq Al Kamal, heir to the throne of one of the richest countries in the world.

      This incredible information certainly explained the autocratic air and the imperious arrogance she had been witness to since she had arrived.

      Not that Beatrice was impressed. Why be impressed by an accident of birth? This man had been handed everything on a plate. Beatrice, on the other hand, had worked for everything she had. The way she saw it, the people who had been born to wealth and privilege should be required to prove themselves, not the other way around.

      Khalid was the most self-deprecating un-royal person you could ever imagine meeting. The summer she had spent with Emma and him had been half over before Emma had discovered by accident his royal connection. A connection that he had typically played down.

      ‘Sorry, if I’d known who you were I’d have curtsied.’ Which no doubt he’d take as his due. God, the man was everything she detested most wrapped up in one package!

      A gorgeous package, admittedly. Her glance drifted as he shrugged off his jacket. The suggestive dark shadowy triangle on his chest, visible beneath the fine white fabric of his shirt, sent an embarrassing rush of heat through her.

      ‘Forget the pretence, Miss Devlin.’

      Forget the body, Beatrice.

      ‘I am aware of your relationship with my brother.’

      She didn’t have the faintest idea how the man had got the idea she and Khalid were an item—Emma would laugh when she shared the joke—but it was definitely time she put an end to this farce and got out of here.

      ‘Look, I know Khalid—sure.’ She spread her hands in a pacifying gesture and raised her eyes to his. ‘He’s a friend, but—’

      ‘Men and women are not friends.’

      Beatrice couldn’t restrain herself. He clearly thought his opinion on any given subject was definitive. ‘And you’d know all about friendship …?’

      His sensuous mouth curled. ‘I know all about women,’ he corrected.

      Now, that, she admitted, was easy to believe. Combating a fresh rush of cheek-burning colour, she tore her gaze from the sensual outline of his lips and pleaded sarcastically, ‘Spare me the tales of your conquests.’ The last thing she needed was any more fuel for the images already playing in her head!

      His lips thinned in distaste and he qualified, ‘I know all about women like you. I know of your ambitions.’

      His voice dropped to a menacing purr that did painful things to her sensitive nerve-endings as he leaned forward and added softly, ‘Let me tell you it is not going to happen, Miss Devlin. You will not trap my brother into marriage.’

      ‘Is that a threat?’ Daft question. Of course it was a threat. And Beatrice responded the same way she always did when she came across someone who thought they could intimidate her. She saw red and came out fighting.

      ‘Trap, you said …?’ She pressed a finger to the suggestion of a cleft in her softly rounded chin and pretended to consider the comment. ‘Get pregnant, you mean …? I actually hadn’t thought of that,’ she admitted, before throwing back her head and loosing a husky laugh of amusement.

      His dark face tautened with anger, the golden skin pulling tight across his prominent cheekbones as his contemptuous eyes locked onto her face. ‘You would be wise not to consider such a thing.’

      ‘And you would be wise to keep your opinions and your orders and your damned condescending attitude to yourself!’ she retorted, rising to her feet and fixing him with a wrathful glare.

      ‘How dare you speak to me in that way?’

      An overload of adrenaline was still pumping through her veins, and his astonished demand made no impact on her.

      ‘Don’t you think your brother is old enough to decide who he marries?’ She for one pitied the woman—who would presumably need to gain this man’s approval. ‘I don’t see there’s much you can do about it.’ Except strangle me. And he looked quite capable of doing that!

      ‘I am not an unreasonable man.’

      But he was definitely a very angry one, she thought, her eyes glued to the erratic pulse that clenched and unclenched in his lean cheek.

      ‘I can see that you should be compensated for the time and energy you have put into this … project.’

      ‘Project?’

      ‘I think you’ll find I am quite generous,’ he replied smoothly as he pushed a piece of paper across the table towards her. ‘Feel free to consult a lawyer, but it is quite straightforward. Once you sign this agreement, stating you will not marry my brother and you will not make any further attempt to contact him, you will receive half that stated amount. Six months later you will receive the balance.’

      ‘You’re bribing me?’ And just when she’d thought this situation couldn’t get any more surreal!

      ‘I am offering you financial compensation.’

      ‘You want to pay me off?’

      ‘I am willing to pay to remove you from my brother’s life,’ he admitted, clearly irritated by her insistence on calling a spade a spade.

      ‘I’d starve before I’d take a penny off you!’ she flared, fixing him with a furious smoky glare.

      He looked taken aback by her anger. ‘There is, I think you will find, rather more than a penny on the table.’

      Her lips curled contemptuously as she glanced down. ‘This isn’t about the amount.’ He clearly didn’t have the faintest idea he had just offered her an insult. ‘I don’t care how—Good God!’ she gasped, catching sight of the figure.

      Her round eyes moved from the paper to the man behind the desk, who was watching her with an air of smug complacence. It had obviously never even crossed his mind that she would say no.

      ‘That’s a lot of money,’ she admitted, with massive understatement. ‘But actually I’ve not a lot of use for it. However,