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

heart throbbing with conflicting emotions that were killing her inside, she’d let spill the words she’d been feeling for weeks but hadn’t been brave enough to say yet. She’d told him she loved him.
    Sydney closed her eyes. Even now, the memory hurt.
    He’d said nothing. It was as if he hadn’t heard her, but she knew he had because his grip on her tightened for the briefest of moments.
    She didn’t know what she’d expected, though she’d had a vague hope he would tell her he loved her, too. When he said nothing, her last hope was crushed.
    “Nothing. It’s nothing.”
    His hand shot out, his finger tipping her chin up so he could gaze into her eyes. He was angry, yes, but he was also brimming with some other emotion she couldn’t quite pin down. Her skin sizzled beneath his touch. Would there be a mark when he pulled his hand away? Would she be forever branded with the imprint of his finger?
    “Do not lie to me. Not now.” His voice was hard, dark, full of leashed fury.
    “What does it matter, Malik?” she asked tiredly. “We’re finished. It’s over. What happened a year ago isn’t important. It won’t change anything now.”
    “Tell me, Sydney,” he demanded.
    She almost said it. Almost spilled her deepest desire to him. Her most foolish and misguided wish.
    But he would pity her if she did. Right now, she still had her dignity. If she tore away that last veil, admitted her plaintive hope, she would reveal the depth of her foolishness to him.
    Sydney jerked away, took a step backward as she crossed her arms over her chest. “You don’t have the right to ask. And I’m not answering. It’s over.”
    He stared at her, his jaw grinding—and then he swore. Explosively.
    She took another step backward, both appalled and fascinated. She’d never, ever seen Malik lose his cool. Not once in the short time she’d known him. He was a passionate man, but a supremely regulated one. His rigid control never shattered.
    “It’s not over,” he growled moments later, his accent thicker than she’d ever heard it. “Because you are here, Sydney, in Jahfar. You are my wife for forty days. And I will have satisfaction.”
    She had no idea what that meant, but she shivered as he turned and swept away from her in a magnificent swirl of white robes. The air crackled in his wake, and she found herself sitting in her chair, staring after him, not quite remembering when she’d sat down.
    Her stomach was hollow, her nerves stretched taught, almost to the breaking point. Coming here had been a mistake. Such a huge, huge mistake. She should have tried harder to find another way.
    But what other choice had there been? It was the law.
    And she had to get through it. They both did.
    But she was beginning to doubt that either of them would make it through unscathed.

 

     
     

    CHAPTER FIVE
     
    SHE did not see Malik for the rest of the day, nor did she see him the next morning. In some respects, it reminded her of their days in Paris, after the first couple of heady weeks when they’d been inseparable. Except this time it didn’t hurt so badly. She knew what to expect now, knew he did not love her.
    Nor did she love him.
    Malik was a prince, but he was also a businessman. He was lord of his own territory within Jahfar—Al Na’ir, she believed it was called—and he worked hard to make it profitable and self-sustaining. There was oil throughout Jahfar, but Al Na’ir had the richest wells. She remembered that he’d been working on a deal to modernize Al Na’ir’s oil industry when they were in Paris.
    Sydney logged on to her computer and did some work on new listings that were coming up. In the past couple of years, she’d somehow become the office’s web guru. In truth, she loved playing with the site’s design. It wasn’t quite the same as painting pictures, but she hadn’t done that in years anyway. A twinge of wistfulness crawled through her, but she pushed it away and concentrated on the