Date with a Surgeon Prince(13)

So Marni explained about the apartments.

‘Pop bought one when the hotel was built and still lives there with Nelson, so when I was dumped on him by my mother, I lived there too. We were allowed to use all the hotel facilities so I probably met you in the pool or garden.’

‘Nelson!’ Gaz said. ‘That’s what brought it back to me. I kept calling him Mr Nelson and he’d tell me, no, his name was Nelson.’

He looked from the picture to Marni then back to the picture, tracing his finger across the images of the two children.

‘I asked you to marry me,’ he said quietly.

Being flabbergasted took a moment, then Marni laughed.

And laughed!

‘Oh,’ she said, finally controlling her mirth, ‘that’s what it must be about. A child’s proposal—the sort of thing that would happen at kindergarten—then your father and Pop humouring you by having the photo taken and writing on the back.’

It took her a moment to realise her amusement wasn’t shared. In fact, Gaz was looking particularly serious.

‘But don’t you see?’ she said. ‘It was a joke between the two men. It’s not as if it meant anything.’

Gaz continued to study her.

‘Would you mind very much?’ he asked after the silence had stretched for ever.

‘Mind what?’

‘Being betrothed to me?’

Mind? Marni’s heart yelled, apparently very excited by the prospect.

Marni ignored it and tried to think, not easy when Gaz was sitting so close to her and her body was alive with its lustful reactions.

‘To help you out?’ she asked, hoping words might make things clearer. ‘With your sisters?’

Gaz smiled, which didn’t help the lustful business and all but destroyed the bit of composure she’d managed to dredge up.

‘That, of course, but it’s more than the sisters. I have to explain, but perhaps not here, and definitely not now. There are people I need to see, supplicants from this morning. Are you free for the rest of the day? Would you mind very much waiting until I finish my business? Mazur will see you are looked after, get you anything you want. You could explore the garden or even wander around the palace. It’s exceptionally empty now without the harem, so you needn’t worry about disturbing anyone.’

He touched her hand and stood up, apparently taking her compliance for granted, although, in fact, her mind had stopped following the conversation back when he’d said the word ‘harem’, immediately conjuring up visions of dancing girls in see-through trousers and sequinned tops, lounging by a pool or practising their belly dancing. Was it because he’d said the word with a long ‘e’ in the last syllable, making ‘hareem’ sound incredibly erotic, that the images danced in her head?

She watched the white-clad back disappear through a side door.

He had made it sound as if the lack of a harem was a temporary thing, a slight glitch, she reminded herself. Which meant what?

And wasn’t having no harem a positive thing?

What was she thinking?

A harem or lack of one would only affect her if she was really betrothed to him, and as far as she could remember—it had been a very confusing conversation—she hadn’t actually agreed to even a pretend betrothal.

Had she?

And surely harems no longer existed?

Not dancing-girl harems anyway…

She pushed herself off the sofa and, too afraid to wander through the palace, even one without a ‘hareem’, she retreated to the gardens, thinking of pronunciations. Gaz with its short ‘a’ sound, suggested a friendly kind of bloke, sexy as all hell but still the kind of man with whom one might have had an affair, while Ghazi—which she’d heard pronounced everywhere with a long ‘a’, like the one in ‘bath’, sounded very regal.

Frighteningly regal!

And it totally knocked any thought of using the man to overcome her other problem right on the head! Ordinary women like Marni Graham of Australia didn’t go around having affairs with kings or princes.

Even a pretend betrothal was mind-boggling!

A wide path led to a central fountain and, after playing with the water for a while, she turned onto another path, this one running parallel to the main building, leading to what appeared to be another very large building. In front of it, on a wide lawn, four boys were kicking a soccer ball. A wayward kick sent the ball hurtling in her direction and, mindful of Nelson’s coaching tips, she kicked it back, high and hard, aiming it at the tallest of the boys, who raced to meet it and headed it expertly towards the makeshift goal—two small topiary trees spaced conveniently apart.

The lad high-fived all round then turned towards her, speaking quickly.