The Prince's Forbidden Lover (The Samara Royal Family #3) (15 page)

She didn’t have much time to look around.  Rais led her to a set of chairs on the upper level and told her to strap herself in.  He then disappeared, conferring with the pilot who looked very official in a smart uniform, leaving her alone.  The plane took off and she still had no idea where Rais had gone. 

He finally returned several minutes after takeoff but she didn’t have a chance to question him about anything since he was on the phone talking in a language she didn’t understand. 

Joline watched him with growing resentment as he pulled out documents, working on whatever big business issue was underway in his business empire.  Meanwhile, Joline realized that she hadn’t been given the time to gather up her own work. She’d simply been rushed out of his penthouse and transported to this plane.  She had no makeup, no change of clothes even though he’d told her that someone else had packed a bag for her.  Maybe they had, but she hadn’t been able to select her outfits!  She hadn’t been able to figure out what she might need and pack for herself.  And she wanted her computer!  She wanted to work and dive into the issues needing her attention.  Not to mention, she was irritated by his lack of communication on what was happening and the way he’d ignored all of her other concerns. 

During the flight, she flipped through one magazine after another, not really seeing any of the pictures or able to concentrate enough to read the articles.  All she knew was that Rais was going about his business as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.  Meanwhile, she’d basically been kidnapped! 

When the plane finally landed and he shut off his phone, she was more than ready to start snapping her complaints at him, wanting him to understand how frustrated she was.  But there was so much going on all of a sudden and she didn’t have a chance for a private word with him.  They were ushered off of the plane and into yet another waiting limousine.  She didn’t see her luggage, had no idea where her purse had gone since that had disappeared the moment she’d stepped onto the plane and she was still without makeup and a change of clothes while Rais answered one phone call after another! 

Joline wasn’t going to take this any longer!  She felt shanghaied and confused, irritated by his attitude that he could simply take over her business and…well, she was just stomping mad!

In the middle of London traffic, she grabbed his cell phone and pressed the end button, tossing it across the seat then turning back to glare at him. 

“Problems, dear?” he asked with both amusement and irritation. 

“Yes!  I’m not going to do this Rais!  I don’t have my purse, I don’t have makeup, I don’t know what’s going on, I don’t have my computer so that I can work…” she stopped and took a breath.  “I don’t like the way you’re treating me!”

He leaned back, his mind dismissing the fact that she’d just hung up on the French Prime Minister.  “How am I treating you?” he asked softly.  He wasn’t sure if he was irritated with her or amused.  Possibly both. 

“Ever since this morning…” she paused and thought for a moment, “No!  Since last night, you’ve just been plowing through, making unilateral decisions about my life.  I had things to do today and it doesn’t matter if you think my agenda was wrong!  You don’t get to tell me what is right and wrong!”

“Even if I’m right?” he asked smoothly, shifting slightly so that he could better enjoy her fury. 

“No!”  Then she closed her eyes and shook her head.  “I mean yes!”  Another shake of her head and she huffed a bit in confusion.  “No!  You don’t get to object to my agenda, even if you’re right!  I would love your business advice, but I won’t even discuss Jesek business if you think that I have to follow every one of your business edicts!  This is my business!  I will run it, along with my partners, in the best way I feel is right!  And no, you don’t get to interfere!”

He lifted an eyebrow.  “What if…”

“No!” she stopped him before he could finish the sentence.  “Under no circumstances are you allowed to interfere!  And for the record, I have not agreed to marry you, so call off the bodyguards!  I won’t let them follow me around.  I’m not even sure if I’m going to sleep with you again!  Not with the way you’re treating me.  I’m not an idiot, Rais!  I’m an intelligent, competent woman with a good education and I can think through problems on my own.”

“Joline, you’re making too much of this.”

She tilted her head.  “Am I?  Then where is my purse so that I can make phone calls?  I told you hours ago that I needed to talk to my New York store manager to make sure she could cover everything today but did you listen?  No!  You disappeared on the flight and then made phone calls for hours.”

“My business is…”

She held up her hand to stop him.  “I don’t care about your business, Rais.  Yes, you are very important, but if you were about to imply, in any way, that your business is more important than mine, then you’d better revise your thinking.  Because Jesek is very important to my partners and me.  No more important than any oil deal or business deal that you are making.”

“I beg to differ,” he replied smoothly, starting to become angry. 

“You can beg all you want,” she replied and shrugged one shoulder.  “To you and to the people you work with, it is more important.  But to me?  It isn’t.  To the people who rely on me?  My business is more important.”

“You won’t have this burden…”

“Stop right there!” she interrupted yet again, her teeth clenching with frustration.  “Don’t you dare say that I won’t need to work after we’re married.  There is absolutely no way I will marry a man who thinks that women don’t want to work, that we’re all flighty children who should be cosseted and cared for by the big, strong man!  I’m sure there are women who are like that, but I’m not.  I love working.  My job, my career,” she emphasized, “is thrilling.  Every day there are new problems, new challenges.  I have plans.  My partners have dreams and suggestions and the three of us work together to build our company.”

“And it is impressive,” he stated, trying to calm her down.

“Exactly!  It is impressive!  We’ve accomplished a lot!”

“So why not let me take over for a while and relax?  Enjoy life a bit more?” he asked her, not understanding why she was angry.  He was giving her every woman’s dream and she was throwing it right back at him. 

The limousine pulled up outside of a building on one of the most famous streets for shopping in London.  “Where are we?” she asked him, distracted and confused. 

Rais looked out the window and smiled.  “This is your surprise,” he said and stepped out.  He held his hand out to her to help her out of the limousine but she ignored it, stepping out and looking around.  “What is this, Rais?”

“This is your London storefront,” he told her and put a hand to the small of her back to guide her into the building.  “The lease is up on the current company and they don’t have the sales to maintain it.  It is yours,” he told her as if she should be apologizing for her rant in the car. 

Joline looked around, noticing all of the wonderful details of the store.  But she couldn’t do it.  She couldn’t take on the rent for a storefront in this location.  They didn’t have the capital nor the brand recognition yet. 

And he hadn’t heard a word she’d just said.  “Where’s my purse?” she asked, a sadness creeping into her heart and her voice. 

A man stepped closer, handing her the leather bag and disappearing again. 

“Thank you,” she whispered.  She looked inside and was relieved to see that both her wallet and her passport were inside along with her cell phone.  “I have to go,” she told Rais. 

Without another word, she turned and started walking towards the door. 

Rais watched her for perhaps three seconds before he finally grasped that she honestly wasn’t excited about the store.  He took one step and reached out to grab her arm, spinning her around to face him.  “What’s going on, Joline?” he demanded.  “This store is perfect for your business.”

She looked up into his dark eyes and a pain stabbed through her, somewhere in the vicinity of her heart.  “Yes, it would be ideal.  In a few years.  But that’s not the point, Rais.  You didn’t hear a word I said on the way over here, did you?”

“I heard you,” he growled.  “But…”

“I have to go.  I’ll call Shantra soon.”

He released her arm but only because he was too stunned by her statement.  Call his sister?  Why would she do that?  They would be seeing her in a day or two, once their business here in…

He watched as she stepped out into the street and lifted her arm.  What the hell? 

Both he and his bodyguards were stunned when she slipped into a taxi.  They hadn’t been expecting that!  It took them several moments to react and scramble to get into the second vehicle.  But by that time, the lights at the corner had changed, traffic surging forward.  The guards couldn’t get around the traffic to follow Joline’s taxi!

Rais was furious that she would put herself in danger like that.  He commanded his guards to find her and protect her but they were already rushing into action.  They knew their jobs, but not when their protectee didn’t realize that she needed to be protected.

He stepped into his own vehicle, his mind racing with actions but at the top of his list, he knew he wanted to spank her adorable bottom for being so stubborn.

Quickly, Rais retrieved his phone from where Joline had tossed it less than thirty minutes ago and made a phone call.  But his sister wasn’t answering her phone so he couldn’t get answers.  Enough of this ‘trust’ issue.  Joline was stubborn, but he was more stubborn.  He wasn’t going to let her out of his life and she would bow to his will!

Yes, Joline would bow to his will, but he had to find the stubborn woman first!  He couldn’t believe she’d disappeared so quickly and so completely!  His security team was tracking her credit cards, but she hadn’t used them.  They’d locked onto her cell phone, but she’d turned it off.   He’d finally reached Shantra, but his baby sister had only laughed at his frustration. 

On the one hand, he couldn’t believe his baby sister had actually laughed.  On the other hand, at least her lack of worry over one of her best friends meant that Joline was safe.  He was fairly certain that Joline had already checked in with Shantra.  Which made him feel better, but he wanted Joline here!  With him!  By his side! 

Rais paced back and forth in his New York office.  He’d flown back to Manhattan thinking that Joline had just come home.  But no one at the store had heard from her and she wasn’t in her apartment. 

Oh, that was a whole other issue, he thought.  That hovel that she’d been living in was ridiculous!  The woman had been putting all of the money from the store back into the business and living as a pauper. 

Damn, he wanted to see her.  He wanted to make sure she was okay. 

Hell, he missed her! 

He missed her smiles, her feisty attitude and her pretty eyes.  He missed holding her and feeling her try to pull away, only to feel her press her soft curves against him when she finally accepted their passion. 

“I’m sorry to interrupt, Your Highness,” his assistant said from behind him.

Rais swung around, searching the man’s face to see if the news was good or bad.  The blank expression told him that his woman had not been found. 

“What is it?” he snapped.

The man extended his hand, holding a small box out to Rais.

Rais took the box but suspected he didn’t want to know what was in it. 

“This was sent this morning with a note that it be brought to you immediately.”

Rais took the box and ripped open the package.  Just as he expected, inside the small box was Joline’s engagement ring.  No note.  Just the silent message. 

“Damn!” he growled.  “Enough!  This is going to end!”

He walked out of his office, determined to speak with his baby sister and find out why Joline was running away from him again.  She had to know that they were perfect for each other. 

Several hours later and a long flight home, he found both of his sisters walking down the hallway, their heads close together and whispering about something. 

“Shantra, where is Joline?” he demanded. 

Both sisters’ heads snapped up and Shantra glared at him.  He recognized the outfit she was wearing and thought she looked very pretty.  Joline had been wearing it one day as well.  It made sense that his sister would support her best friend’s business and he highly approved.  The designs really were ingenious, using the woman’s figure more as an art board.  The designs were more flattering than anything he’d ever seen, even in Paris. 

Both of his sisters crossed their arms and he gritted his teeth in frustration. 

Shantra wasn’t going to be intimidated.  “What did you say to Joline?  Why is she hiding from you?”

Ciala covered her mouth, trying to hide her amusement.  “He probably ignored her when she was talking.”  Ciala looked up at her brother.  “Did you ignore her?”

Rais gritted his teeth.  “I didn’t ignore her.”

Shantra shook her head.  “He ignored her.” 

He glared down at his tiny, normally exuberant sister who looked abnormally calm at the moment.  And abnormally stubborn.  Since when had Shantra become stubborn? 

“I didn’t ignore her!” he snapped at both of them.  Unfortunately, they didn’t believe him.

Shantra stepped closer, poking him in the chest.  “What did she say right before she stepped into the taxi?” she asked.

His eyes narrowed.  “You’ve spoken to her,” he commented, zeroing in on her knowledge that Shantra knew that Joline had walked out on him in London by taking a taxi.  “What did she tell you?”

Shantra wasn’t intimidated.  Maybe when she was younger, she might have cowered when he looked like this, but not anymore.  “I’ll tell you some of what she told me if you remember anything that she’d said to you in London.  Or on the plane.  Or before you left New York.”

Rais was getting angrier with each challenge.  “Did Joline tell you what happened before we left New York?”

Shantra’s eyes widened but both women only shook their heads, laughing.  “No, Joline didn’t say WHAT you were doing in New York.  She only told me what you’d said and asked me how to handle you.”

“What did you tell her?  And, just for the record, no one ‘handles me’, least of all my wife.”

Mia walked up at that moment with Raven right behind her, both women shaking their heads. “Oh, you are going to be handled,” Raven said as she and Mia stood shoulder to shoulder with Ciala and Shantra. 

“There’s no other way to live with arrogant, know it all men,” Ciala explained.  And then his mild-mannered, lovely sister grinned cheekily up at him. 

Rais looked at his sister, stunned that she would say something like that.  She was… “Why is your hand bandaged?” he demanded.

The smug expression on his sister’s face immediately disappeared and she hid her bandaged hand behind her back.  “I just scraped myself in the stables yesterday,” she stammered out.  “It’s nothing.”  She glanced at Raven, smiling weakly.  “The scrapes weren’t even bad enough to ask you for help.”

Ignoring Ciala for the moment, he turned to Mia and Raven.  “Are you telling me that you both ‘handle’ my brothers?  And be careful how you answer that, ladies.  I interpret ‘handling’ to mean manipulating.”

Raven and Mia both laughed.  “Of course we manipulate our husbands!” they explained.  “How else are we supposed to survive without being smothered by men with personalities like Turk and Ramzi?” Mia explained. 

Ciala was trying very hard not to laugh.  “And I’m taking notes every time it happens.  For the future, you know.  I’m pretty sure that…”

“This is ridiculous!” Rais snapped. 

Shantra linked her arm through his while Mia took his other arm.  They started walking down the hallway towards the dining room with Ciala and Raven on either side.  “Okay, deal still stands,” his baby sister said.  “If you can tell me what she said, why she’s hiding from you, then I will tell you what you need to know.”

Rais felt cornered.  And surrounded!  He thought back to that morning several days ago, trying to remember.  “She said something about not having her purse.”

“And?” Ciala prompted. 

“And her computer,” he went on.

Shantra lifted her other hand to her mouth.  “Hmmm…why would Joline need her computer?  What a silly thought.”

Rais rolled his eyes.  “Okay, so I had her on the plane to London before I gave her the chance to pull work together for the flight.”  He conceded that he might have been a bit high-handed there.

“Yes, but why would she need her computer?” Ciala prompted.

Raven agreed.  “You’re not answering the question.”  Turning to Shantra, Raven said, “I don’t think he really understands the issue.”

Rais sighed, deciding to play along with the ladies.  If it got him his information, he would figure out what to do about it.  He wanted Joline by his side, damn it!  “She would need her computer to work.”

“But she’s a woman!” Shantra exclaimed, slapping his shoulder playfully.  “She doesn’t need to work!  Work is for men!”

“Women like to shop!” Raven announced.

“We don’t like to work!” Ciala chimed in.

His eyes looked at his sister-in-law who was still wearing her lab coat, having just come from the clinic.  Raven was a brilliant doctor who provided extremely valuable services to the low-income people here in the capital. 

“Okay, I get it.  Women like to work,” he announced, conceding that he’d been an idiot about telling Joline she didn’t need to work, that he would take care of her.  “And they enjoy jobs, sometimes.”  But his eyes slid to Ciala and Shantra. 

“Don’t go there!” Mia warned, reading his mind.  “You’ll just sound uninformed.”

Rais sighed with impatience.  “Fine!  Joline is a brilliant businesswoman who would prefer to work.”

“Needs to work,” Shantra corrected.

He took umbrage with that verb.  “No.  My wife will never need to work.”

All four women sighed, shaking their heads.  “You don’t get it,” Ciala said with another grimace.  She looked at the other ladies.  “He might not ever get it,” she told them.

Rais almost exploded with irritation when the other three shook their heads, agreeing that he was clueless.  “Would someone please explain what I’m missing?” he yelled, looking up at the ceiling to try and find some patience. 

Shantra stepped in front of the group and pointed at Rais.  “You’re such a chauvinistic pig, Rais.  You think that women are too flighty to need to work but you’re wrong.  And you’ll never truly understand Joline until you get that.”

“And you’re not going to tell me where she is until I understand, is that it?”

All four women crossed their arms over their chests and glared right back.

Rais muttered something under his breath and walked away, frustrated and furious.  “I’ll find her,” he promised the women even as he walked away.  He had to find her, he told himself. 

He didn’t think he would survive if he didn’t find her.  Joline…hell, she made him feel alive!  She defied him and challenged him, made him laugh and they had conversations that were more stimulating than any he had with other people.  She wasn’t afraid of him and yet, she trembled in his arms and made love to him as if he were the only man on earth who could make her feel that way. 

He…

Oh hell!  He loved her!  He hadn’t accepted that fact until now.  He hadn’t even thought it was possible, but he loved her.  He loved all of her, every frustrating, annoying, intriguing aspect of her. 

And yet, he still had no idea how to find her. 

Which begged the question, if he knew her better, if he understood her…would he be able to find her? 

That thought made him pause.  Did he really not understand Joline?  If he loved her, wouldn’t he understand her?

Possibly not. 

Damn, he hated it when his sisters were right.  He was an arrogant ass.  And yes, he’d been stomping all over Joline’s feelings, ignoring everything she said simply because her wishes didn’t fall in line with his own desires for their future. 

“Hell!” he muttered and stormed back into his office.  “Get my head of security on the phone,” he commanded to his assistant. 

A moment later, his phone rang and Rais snatched up the receiver.  “Where is my fiancée?” he demanded of the man. 

“There’s still been no activity on any of her credit cards, Your Highness.  And she hasn’t turned on her cell phone.  We’ve been staking out both her apartment and the New York store, we’ve contacted her mother, her friends, the coffee shop where she normally gets her coffee each morning and are looking at her financials to see if there’s another place she frequents.  So far, we haven’t come up with anything.  But we will keep looking.”

Rais lowered his head, trying to come up with something, anything, to help his guards find Joline.  But he just didn’t know her well enough.  He hadn’t listened to her. 

“Do you think someone has her?” he asked the question that was in the back of his mind but hadn’t wanted to acknowledge. 

There was a slight pause before his head of security said, “It is a possibility that we’ve been looking into without raising any awareness of her existence, Your Highness.  I don’t want to discount the possibility, but no.  I don’t think that she has been kidnapped.  If that were the case, we would have received demands, there would have been chatter among the various groups.  Something that big wouldn’t have gone under the radar.  But we are still exploring options, ensuring that she hasn’t fallen victim to any of your enemies.”

Rais breathed a sigh of relief.  “Okay, so…” he thought back to something that Shantra had told him.  What has she said?  Understand Joline and he’ll find her. 

Joline had been gone for five days now.  He thought back to that morning…she’d been so furious with him for basically kidnapping her.  He hadn’t kidnapped her, damn it!  He’d gotten her to London in the most expedient way.  She hadn’t complained about going to London!  She’d agreed to come to London! 

But she’d been angry that she hadn’t had her phone.  He’d handed her purse to one of her new guards and…she hadn’t had it on the plane.  He also hadn’t given her a chance to get her computer so she…

Oh hell!  “See if there’s been any e-mail activity!” he told his guard. 

At that moment, Shantra stepped into his office.  “Not right now, Shantra,” he grumbled.  He didn’t yell because at least she’d given him clues in the hallway.  Now he was acting on her advice. 

“You’re not going to hack into her e-mail account, are you?” she asked as she almost sashayed her way into his office.  Shantra picked up a pen, glanced at a paper, shifted his desk lamp ever so slightly.

“You told me to understand her and I’d find her.  I figured her out.  She’s working somewhere.  Now I know how to find her.”