Harlequin Presents: October 2022 Box Set 2 of 2 by Dani Collins

Author:Dani Collins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2022-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

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Lauren had learned early on in life never to show weakness.

To do so was to open herself up to cruel ridicule. From her father. From her brother. With her mother looking on and not saying much in her daughter’s defence. When a tearful Lauren had demanded to know the reason behind their treatment, her mother had merely shrugged and clipped out, ‘Life is tough, Lauren. Learn to grow a thick skin or you’ll always be a target.’

She’d been eleven. That was the last time she remembered crying.

Two decades on, with four menacing guards barring her from Tahir Al-Jukrat’s fast-receding figure, she was at grave risk of succumbing to tears.

She’d known this trip wouldn’t be easy.

Patches of her shoulders and back were raw from sunburn, her throat was parched—her water bottle having dried up hours ago. Her clothes were sticky with sweat and dirt, and her feet throbbed from standing outside the palace gates for three sun-baked days in a row.

The harsh lessons taught by her unforgiving father were what had hardened her spine long enough for her to remain at the gates, to keep making her hourly requests until they’d been heeded.

Until moments ago, when the last of her reserves had been depleted.

Well...that and the obscure threats that had followed her for twelve years. The suspicion that her father knew more than he’d let on about what had happened with Tahir. Wasn’t above holding another scandal over her head to make her toe his line.

Watching Tahir stride towards the helicopter in preparation to fly goodness knew where, she’d felt the last whispers of hope drifting away like dandelion seeds blowing in the wind.

Her desperation-soaked voice had stopped him in his tracks.

But that meant nothing. She’d hoped to ease herself into her reason for being in Jukrat. To calmly state her reason for planting herself outside his palace gates, guilefully insisting that they’d be wise not to turn her away because the Sheikh would want to see her, until his guards had had no choice but to relay her request to a higher authority.

All this could mean nothing because Tahir had despised Matt long before he’d come to despise her. Her brother’s indolent, entitled attitude to university life in particular, and to life in general, had grated on the intelligent, focused and ruthlessly hardworking Prince Tahir.

Even back then, the dynamic prince who’d taken her breath away from their first meeting had held a set of values and rigid beliefs that’d secretly awed her. Those values had been in direct contrast to Matt’s, who’d believed in skating through life on family connections and cronyisms.

In fact, hadn’t Tahir condemned her whole family to hell that unforgettable night when the Winchesters had closed ranks against him? When she’d let herself be talked into taking the only option for the family?

Self-loathing swelled inside her as she watched tension vibrate in his shoulders, watched the muscles in Tahir’s neck stand out as he absorbed what she’d said.

Lauren would’ve given a limb not to be

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