Defiant in the Desert
Defiant in the Desert
Sharon Kendrick
Sara Williams’s hand in marriage was bought and paid for when she was a child to cover a debt the size of a small country. She knew her wedding day would come, but now an independent career woman, Sara is determined never to marry anyone!Sara’s only escape from this marriage is ruination so sets about seducing her achingly handsome but unmovable escort… Middle Eastern diplomat Suleiman Abd al-Aziz has the honour of delivering Sara to her desert destiny – the bed of her Sheikh fiancé.But with his charge so sexy when she’s angry, and definitively forbidden, Suleiman’s iron will is tested to the limit.
Defiant in the Desert
Only scandal will do
Sara Williams’s hand in marriage was bought to cover a debt. But she’s determined never to marry anyone!
Diplomat Suleiman Abd al-Aziz must deliver Sara to her desert destiny. But with Sara set on escaping her marriage by seducing him, his iron will is sorely tested!
Desert Men of Qurhah
Their destiny is the desert!
The heat of the desert is nothing compared to the passion that burns between the pages of this stunning new trilogy by Sharon Kendrick!
Defiant in the Desert
Oil baron Suleiman Abd al-Aziz has been sent to retrieve the Sultan of Qurhah’s reluctant fiancée who is determined to escape the confines of her engagement—by seducing him!
Shamed in the Sands
Princess Leila has always wanted something different from her life. So when sexy advertising magnate Gabe Steele arrives to work for her brother, Leila invites royal outrage by convincing Gabe to give her a job.
The Sultan of Qurhah’s story
The Sultan of Qurhah is facing a scandal of epic proportions. His fiancée has run off, leaving him with a space in his king-size bed. A space once occupied by his mistress—Carly Conner. And now he wants her back—at any price!
Dear Reader (#ua8d75ed4-f592-530f-a694-f5be57ded45b),
One hundred. Doesn’t matter how many times I say it, I still can’t believe that’s how many books I’ve written. It’s a fabulous feeling but more fabulous still is the news that Mills & Boon are issuing every single one of my backlist as digital titles. Wow. I can’t wait to share all my stories with you - which are as vivid to me now as when I wrote them.
There’s BOUGHT FOR HER HUSBAND, with its outrageously macho Greek hero and A SCANDAL, A SECRET AND A BABY featuring a very sexy Tuscan. THE SHEIKH’S HEIR proved so popular with readers that it spent two weeks on the USA Today charts and…well, I could go on, but I’ll leave you to discover them for yourselves.
I remember the first line of my very first book: “So you’ve come to Australia looking for a husband?” Actually, the heroine had gone to Australia to escape men, but guess what? She found a husband all the same! The man who inspired that book rang me up recently and when I told him I was beginning my 100
story and couldn’t decide what to write, he said, “Why don’t you go back to where it all started?”
So I did. And that’s how A ROYAL VOW OF CONVENIENCE was born. It opens in beautiful Queensland and moves to England and New York. It’s about a runaway princess and the enigmatic billionaire who is infuriated by her, yet who winds up rescuing her. But then, she goes and rescues him… Wouldn’t you know it?
I’ll end by saying how very grateful I am to have a career I love, and to thank each and every one of you who has supported me along the way. You really are very dear readers.
Love,
Sharon xxx
Mills & Boon are proud to present a thrilling digital collection of all Sharon Kendrick’s novels and novellas for us to celebrate the publication of her amazing and awesome 100th book! Sharon is known worldwide for her likeable, spirited heroines and her gorgeous, utterly masculine heroes.
SHARON KENDRICK once won a national writing competition, describing her ideal date: being flown to an exotic island by a gorgeous and powerful man. Little did she realise that she’d just wandered into her dream job! Today she writes for Mills & Boon, featuring her often stubborn but always to-die-for heroes and the women who bring them to their knees. She believes that the best books are those you never want to end. Just like life…
Defiant in the Desert
Sharon Kendrick
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To Peter O Brien—the intrepid Irishman—who taught me some of the mysteries and miracles of desert life
Contents
Cover (#u8189aae4-e282-5a3d-abe1-def8c731f8e4)
Back Cover Text (#ud6370053-3ec0-5c4d-b191-12017c538f39)
Desert Men of Qurhah (#uc2bdf2a8-db5e-5483-804c-871ceb2b9496)
Dear Reader (#u833e1d09-574d-5284-8fb0-1da2dc1085ab)
About the Author (#ueb18f72c-162e-5376-bdfc-49cddc2d5cc3)
Title Page (#u176b7b77-5168-54b7-87c2-89e06b25001b)
Dedication (#u412dc2b8-a885-5fbb-a01c-96443f6c66f7)
CHAPTER ONE (#u0f6bbb62-c5da-55d7-8529-146432500761)
CHAPTER TWO (#u312404c1-f7f0-5724-a4aa-271bb160afc6)
CHAPTER THREE (#ue37e6277-6a04-556f-94ac-9f7a0b4a243d)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#ua8d75ed4-f592-530f-a694-f5be57ded45b)
‘THERE’S A MAN downstairs in Reception who says he wants to see you.’
‘Who is it?’ questioned Sara, not bothering to lift her head from the drawing which was currently engrossing her.
‘He wouldn’t say.’
At this Sara did look up to find Alice, the office runner, staring at her with an odd sort of expression. Alice was young and very enthusiastic, but right now she looked almost transported. Her face was tight with excitement and disbelief—as if Santa Claus himself had arrived early with a full contingent of reindeer.
‘It’s Christmas Eve afternoon,’ said Sara, glancing out of the window at the dark grey sky and wincing. No snow, unfortunately. Only a few heavy raindrops spattering against the glass. Pity. Snow might have helped boost her mood—to help shift off the inevitable feeling of not quite fitting in which always descended on her at this time of year. She never found it easy to enjoy Christmas—which was one of the main reasons why she tended to ignore the festival until it had gone away.
She pushed a smile to the corners of her mouth, trying to pick up on Alice’s happy pre-holiday mood. ‘And very soon I’m going to be packing up and going home. If it’s a salesman, I’m not interested and if it’s anyone else, then tell them to go away and make an appointment to see me in the new year.’
‘He says he’s not going anywhere,’ said Alice and then paused dramatically. ‘Until he’s seen you.’
Sara put her purple felt-tip pen down with fingers which had annoyingly started to tremble, telling herself not to be so stupid. Telling herself that she was perfectly safe here, in this bright, open-plan office of the highly successful advertising agency where she worked. That there was no reason for this dark feeling of foreboding which had started whispering over her skin.
But of course, there was...
‘What do you mean—he’s not going anywhere?’ she demanded, trying to keep her voice from rising with panic. ‘What exactly did he say?’
‘That he wants to see you,’ repeated Alice and now she made another face which Sara had never seen before. ‘And that he craves just a few minutes of your time.’
Craves.
It was a word which jarred like an ice cream eaten on a winter day. No modern Englishman would ever have used a word like that. Sara felt the cold clamp of fear tightening around her heart, like an iron band.
‘What...what does he look like?’ she asked, her voice a croaky-sounding husk.
Alice played with the pendant which was dangling from her neck in an unconscious display of sexual awareness. ‘He’s...well, he’s pretty unbelievable, if you must know. Not just because of the way he’s built—though he must work out practically non-stop to get a body like that—but more...more...’ Her voice tailed off. ‘Well, it’s his eyes really.’
‘What about his eyes?’ barked Sara, feeling her pulse begin to rocket.
‘They were like...black. But like, really black. Like the sky when there’s no moon or stars. Like—’
‘Alice,’ cut in Sara, desperately trying to inject a note of normality into the girl’s uncharacteristically gushing description. Because at that stage she was still trying to fool herself into thinking that it wasn’t happening. That it might all be some terrible mistake. A simple mix-up. Anything, but the one thing she most feared. ‘Tell him—’
‘Why don’t you tell me yourself, Sara?’
A cold, accented voice cut through her words and Sara whirled round to see a man standing in the doorway of the office. Shock, pain and desire washed over her in rapid succession. She hadn’t seen him for five long years and for a moment she almost didn’t recognise him. He had always been dark and utterly gorgeous, gifted with a face and a mind which had captured her heart so completely. But now...
Now...
Her heart pounded.
Something about him had changed.
His dark head was bare and he wore a custom-made suit instead of his usual robes. The charcoal jacket defined his honed torso just as well as any folds of flowing silk and the immaculately cut trousers emphasised the endless length of his powerful thighs. He had always carried the cachet which came from being the Sultan of Qurhah’s closest advisor, but now his natural air of authority seemed to be underpinned with a steely layer Sara had never seen before. And suddenly she recognised it for what it was.
Power.
It seemed to crackle from every pore of his body. To pervade the serene office environment like high-voltage electricity. It made her wary—warier than she felt already, with her heart beating so fast it felt as if it might burst right out of her chest.
‘Suleiman,’ she said, her voice unsteady and a little unsure. ‘What are you doing here?’
He smiled, but it was the coldest smile she had ever seen. Even colder than the one which he had iced into her the last time they’d been together. When he had torn himself away from her passionate embrace and looked down at her as if she was the lowest of the low.
‘I think you can probably work that one out for yourself, can’t you, Sara?’
He stepped into the office, his clever black eyes narrowing.
‘You are an intelligent woman, if a somewhat misguided one,’ he continued. ‘You have been ignoring repeated requests from the Sultan to return to Qurhah to become his wife. Haven’t you?’
‘And if I have?’
He looked at her, but there was nothing but indifference in his eyes and, stupidly, that hurt.
‘If you have, then you have been behaving like a fool.’
His phrase was coated with an implicit threat which made her skin turn to ice and Sara heard Alice gasp. She turned her head slightly, expecting to see horror on the face of the trendy office runner, with her pink-streaked hair and bottom-hugging skirt. Because it wasn’t cool for men to talk that way, was it? But she saw nothing like horror there. Instead, the bohemian youngster was staring at Suleiman with a look of rapt adoration.
Sara swallowed. Cool obviously flew straight out of the window when you had a towering black-haired male standing in your office just oozing testosterone. Why wouldn’t Alice acknowledge the presence of a man unlike any other she had probably met? Despite all the attractive hunks who worked in Gabe Steel’s advertising empire—didn’t Suleiman Abd al-Aziz stand out like a spot of black oil on a white linen dress? Didn’t he redefine the very concept of masculinity and make it a hundred times more meaningful?
For her, he had always had the ability to make every other man fade into insignificance—even royal princes and sultans—but now something about him had changed. There was an indefinable quality about him. Something dangerous.
Gone was the affection with which he always used to regard her. The man who had drifted in and out of her childhood and taught her to ride seemed to have been replaced by someone else. The black eyes were flat and cold; his lips unsmiling. It wasn’t exactly hatred she could see on his face—for his expression implied that she wasn’t worthy of an emotion as strong as hate. It was more as if she was a hindrance. As if he was here under sufferance, in the very last place he wanted to be.
And she had only herself to blame. She knew that. If she hadn’t flung herself at him. If she hadn’t allowed him to kiss her and then silently invited him to do so much more than that. To...
She tried a smile, though she wasn’t sure how convincing a smile it was. She had done everything in her power to forget about Suleiman and the way he’d made her feel, but wasn’t it funny how just one glimpse of him could stir up all those familiar emotions? Suddenly her heart was turning over with that painful clench of feeling she’d once thought was love. She could feel the sink of her stomach as she was reminded that he could never be hers.
Well, he would never know that. He wouldn’t ever guess that he could still make her feel this way. She wasn’t going to give him the chance to humiliate her and reject her. Not again.
‘Nice of you to drop in so unexpectedly, Suleiman,’ she said, her voice as airy as she could manage. ‘But I’m afraid I’m pretty busy at the moment. It is Christmas Eve, you know.’
‘But you don’t celebrate Christmas, Sara. Or at least, I wasn’t aware that you did. Have you really changed so much that you have adopted, wholesale, the values of the West?’
He was looking around the large, open-plan office with an expression of distaste curving his carved lips which he didn’t bother to hide. His flat black eyes were registering the garish tinsel which was looped over posters depicting some of the company’s many successful advertising campaigns. His gaze rested briefly on the old-fashioned fir tree, complete with flashing lights and a glittering star at the top, which had been erected as a kind of passé tribute to Christmases past. His expression darkened.
Sara put her fingers in her lap, horribly aware that they were trembling, and it suddenly became terribly important that he shouldn’t see that, either. She didn’t want him to think she was scared, even if that moment she was feeling something very close to scared. And she couldn’t quite work out what she was afraid of—her, or him.
‘Look, I really am very busy,’ she said. ‘And Alice doesn’t want to hear—’
‘Alice doesn’t have to hear anything because she is about to leave us alone to continue this conversation in private,’ he said instantly. Turning towards the office junior, he produced a slow smile, like a magician producing a rabbit from a hat. ‘Aren’t you, Alice?’
Sara watched, unwillingly fascinated as Alice almost melted under the impact of his smile. She even—and Sara had never witnessed this happen before—she even blushed. In a single moment, the streetwise girl from London had been transformed into a gushing stereotype from another age. Any minute now and she might actually swoon.
‘Of course.’ Alice fluttered her eyelashes in a way which was also new. ‘Though I could get you a cup of coffee first if you like?’
‘I am not in the mood for coffee,’ said Suleiman and Sara wondered how he managed to make his refusal sound like he was talking about sex. Or was that just her projecting yet more stupid fantasies about him?
He was smiling at the runner and she was smiling right back. ‘Even though I imagine that yours would be excellent coffee,’ he purred.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake! Alice buys coffee from the deli next door,’ snapped Sara. ‘She wasn’t planning on travelling to Brazil and bringing back the beans herself!’
‘Then that is Brazil’s loss,’ murmured Suleiman.
Sara could have screamed at the cheesy line which had the office runner beaming from ear to ear. ‘That will be all, thanks, Alice,’ she said sharply. ‘You can go home now. And have...have a happy Christmas.’
‘Thanks,’ said Alice, clearly reluctant to leave. ‘I’ll see you in the new year. Happy Christmas!’
There was complete silence for a moment while they watched the girl gather up her oversized bag, which was crammed with one of the large and expensive presents which had been handed out earlier by Gabe Steel, their boss. Or rather, by his office manager. But it was only after her footsteps had echoed down the corridor towards the lift that Suleiman turned to Sara, his black eyes hard and mocking.
‘Quite the little executive these days, aren’t you, Sara?’
Sara swallowed. She hated the way he said her name. Or rather, she hated the effect it had on her. The way it made her want to expel a long and shuddering breath and to snake her tongue over lips which had suddenly grown dry. It reminded her too much of the time he had kissed her. When he had overstepped the mark and done the one thing which had been forbidden to him. And to her.
The memory came back as vivid and as real as if it had happened only yesterday. It had been on the night of her brother’s coronation—when Haroun had been crowned King of Dhi’ban, a day which many had thought would never come because of the volatile relations between the desert states. All the dignitaries from the neighbouring countries had attended the ceremony—including the infamous Sultan of nearby Qurhah, along with his chief emissary, Suleiman.
Sara remembered being cool and almost non-committal towards the Sultan, to whom she was betrothed. But who could blame her? Her hand in marriage had been the price paid for a financial bail-out for her country. In essence, she had been sold by her father like a piece of human merchandise!
That night she had barely made eye contact with the powerful Sultan who had seemed so forbidding, but her careless attitude seemed to amuse rather than to irritate the potentate. And anyway, he had spent most of the time locked away in meetings with all the other sultans and sheikhs.
But Sara had been eager to be reunited with the Sultan’s emissary. She had been filled with pleasure at the thought of seeing Suleiman again, after six long years away at an English boarding school. Suleiman, who had taught her to ride and made her laugh during those two long summers when the Sultan had been negotiating with her father about a financial bail-out. Two summers which had occupied a special place in her heart ever since, even though on that final summer—her marital fate had been sealed.
During the coronation fireworks, she had somehow managed to manoeuvre herself into a position to watch them with Suleiman by her side. The crowds had been so huge that nobody had noticed them standing together and Sara was thrilled just to be in his company again.
The night was soft and warm, but in between the explosions and the roar of the onlookers the conversation between them was as easy as it had always been, even if initially Suleiman had seemed startled by the dramatic change that six years had wrought on her appearance.
‘How old are you now?’ he’d questioned, after he’d looked her up and down for a distractingly long moment.
‘I’m eighteen.’ She had smiled straight into his eyes, successfully hiding the hurt that he hadn’t even remembered her age. ‘And all grown up.’
‘All grown up,’ he had repeated slowly, as if she’d just said something which had never occurred to him before.
The conversation had moved on to other topics, though she had still been conscious of the curious expression in his eyes. He had asked her about her life at boarding school and she’d told him that she was planning to go to art school.
‘In England?’
‘Of course in England. There is no equivalent here in Dhi’ban.’
‘But Dhi’ban isn’t the same without you here, Sara.’
It was a strangely emotional thing for Suleiman to say and maybe the unexpectedness of that was what made her reach up to touch her fingertips to his cheek. ‘Is that in a good way, or a bad way?’ she teased.
A look passed between them and she felt him stiffen.
The fireworks seemed to stop—or maybe that was because the crashing of her heart was as deafening as any man-made explosion in the sky.
He caught hold of her hand and moved it away from his face, and suddenly Sara could feel a terrible yearning as he looked down at her. The normally authoritative Suleiman seemed frozen with indecision and he shook his head, as if he was trying to deny something. And then, almost in slow motion—he lowered his head to brush his lips over hers in a kiss.
It was just like all the books said it should be.
Her world splintered into something magical as their lips met. Suddenly there were rainbows and starlight and a deep, wild hunger. And the realisation that this was her darling, darling Suleiman and he was kissing her. Her lips opened beneath his and he circled her waist with his hands as he pulled her closer. She clung to him as her breasts pressed against his broad chest. She heard him groan. She felt the growing tension in his body as his hands moved down to cup her buttocks.
‘Oh, Suleiman,’ she whispered against his mouth—and the words must have broken the spell, for suddenly he tore himself away from her and held her at arm’s length.
For a long moment he just stared at her, his breathing hard and laboured—looking as if he had just been shaken by something profound. Something which made a wild little flicker of hope flare in her heart. But then the look disappeared and was replaced with an expression of self-contempt. It seemed to take a moment or two before he could speak.
‘Is this how you behave when you are in England?’ he demanded, his voice as deadly as snake poison. ‘Offering yourself as freely as a whore when you are promised to the Sultan? What kind of woman are you, Sara?’
It was a question she couldn’t answer because she didn’t know. Right then, she didn’t seem to know anything because her whole belief system seemed to have been shattered. She hadn’t been expecting to kiss him, nor to respond to him like that. She hadn’t been expecting to want him to touch her in a way she’d never been touched before—yet now he was looking at her as if she’d done something unspeakable.
Filled with shame, she had turned on her heel and fled—her eyes so blurred with tears that she could barely see. And it wasn’t until the next day that she heard indulgent tales of the princess weeping with joy for her newly crowned brother.
The memory cleared and Sara found herself in the uncomfortable present, looking into Suleiman’s mocking eyes and realising that he was waiting for some sort of answer to his question. Struggling to remember what he’d asked, she shrugged—as if she could shrug off those feelings of humiliation and rejection she had suffered at his hands.
‘I hardly describe being a “creative” in an advertising agency as being an executive,’ she said.
‘You are creative in many fields,’ he observed. ‘Particularly with your choice of clothes. Such revealing, western clothes, I cannot help but notice.’
Sara felt herself stiffen as he began to study her. Don’t look at me that way, she wanted to scream. Because it was making her body ache as his gaze swept over the sweater dress which came halfway down her thighs, and the high boots whose soft leather curved over her knees.
‘I’m glad you like them,’ she said flippantly.
‘I didn’t say I liked them,’ he growled. ‘In fact, I wholeheartedly disapprove of them, as no doubt would the Sultan. Your dress is ridiculously short, though I suppose that is deliberate.’
‘But everyone wears short skirts round here, Suleiman. It’s the fashion. And the thick tights and boots almost cancel out the length of the dress, don’t you think?’
His eyes were implacable as they met hers. ‘I have not come here to discuss the length of your clothes and the way you seem to flaunt your body like the whore we both know you are!’
‘No? Then why are you here?’
There was a pause and now his eyes were deadly as they iced into her.
‘I think you know the answer to that. But since you seem to have trouble facing up to your responsibilities, maybe I’d better spell it out for you so that there can be no more confusion. You can no longer ignore your destiny, for the time has come.’
‘It’s not my destiny!’ she flared.
‘I have come to take you to Qurhah to be married,’ he said coldly. ‘To fulfil the promise which was made many moons ago by your father. You were sold to the Sultan and the Sultan wants you. And what is more, he is beginning to grow impatient—for this long-awaited alliance between your two countries to go ahead and bring lasting peace in the region.’
Sara froze. The hands which were still concealed in her lap now clenched into two tight fists. She felt beads of sweat break out on her brow and for a moment she thought she might pass out. Because hadn’t she thought that if she just ignored the dark cloud which hung over her future for long enough, one day it might just fade away?
‘You can’t mean that,’ she said, hating her voice for sounding so croaky. So get some strength back. Find the resources within you to stand up to this ridiculous regime which buys women as if they were simply objects of desire lined up on a market stall. She drew in a deep breath. ‘But even if you do mean it, I’m not coming back with you, Suleiman. No way. I live in England now and I regard myself as an English citizen, with all the corresponding freedom that brings. And nothing in the world you can do or say will induce me to go to Qurhah. I don’t want to marry the Sultan, and I won’t do it. And what is more, you can’t make me.’
‘I am hoping to do this without a fight, Sara.’
His voice was smooth. As smooth as treacle—and just as dark. But nobody could have mistaken the steely intent which ran through his words. She looked into the flatness of his eyes. She looked at the hard, compromising lines of his lips and she felt another whisper of foreboding shivering its way down her spine. ‘You think I’m just going to docilely agree to your plans? That I’m going to nod my head and accompany you to Qurhah?’
‘I’m hoping you will, since that would be the most sensible outcome for all concerned.’
‘In your dreams, Suleiman.’
There was silence for a moment as Suleiman met the belligerent glitter of her eyes, and the slow rage which had been simmering all day now threatened to boil over. Had he thought that this would be easy?
No, of course he hadn’t.
Inside he had known that this would be the most difficult assignment of his life—even though he had experienced battle and torture and real hardship. He had tried to turn the job down—for all kinds of reasons. He’d told the Sultan that he was busy with his new life—and that much was true. But loyalty and affection for his erstwhile employer had proved too persuasive. And who else possessed the right amount of determination to bring the feisty Sara Williams back to marry the royal ruler? His mouth hardened and he felt the twist of something like regret. Who else knew her the way that he did?
‘You speak with such insolence that I can only assume you have been influenced by the louche values of the West,’ he snapped.
‘Embracing freedom, you mean?’
‘Embracing disrespect would be a more accurate description.’ He drew in a deep breath and forced his lips into something resembling a smile. ‘Look, Sara—I understand that you needed to...what is it that you women say? Ah yes, to find yourself.’ He gave a low laugh. ‘Fortunately, the male of the species rarely loses himself in the first place and so such recovery is seldom deemed necessary.’
‘Why, you arrogant piece of—’
‘Now we can do this one of two ways.’ His words cut through her insult like a honed Qurhahian knife. ‘The easy way, or the hard way.’
‘You mean we do it your way, rather than mine?’
‘Bravo—that is exactly what I mean. If you behave reasonably—like a woman who wishes to bring no shame onto her own royal house, or the one you will embrace after your marriage to the Sultan—then everyone is happy.’
‘Happy?’ she echoed. ‘Are you out of your mind?’
‘There is no need for hysteria,’ he said repressively. ‘Our journey to Qurhah may not be an expedition which either of us would choose, but I don’t see why we can’t conduct ourselves in a relatively civilised manner if we put our minds to it.’
‘Civilised?’ Sara stood up and pushed herself away from the desk so violently that a whole pile of coloured felt-tips fell clattering to the ground. But she barely registered the noise or the mess. She certainly didn’t bend down to pick them up and not just because her skirt was so short. She felt a flare of rage and impotence—that Suleiman could just march in here as if he owned the place. Start flexing his muscles and telling her—telling her—that she must go back and marry a man she barely knew, didn’t particularly like and certainly didn’t love.
‘You think it’s civilised to hold a woman to a promise of marriage made when she was little more than a child? A forced marriage in which she had no say?’
‘Your father himself agreed to this marriage,’ said Suleiman implacably. ‘You know that.’
‘My father had no choice!’ she flared. ‘He was almost bankrupt by that point!’
‘I’m afraid that your father’s weakness and profligacy put him in that position. And let us not forget that it was the Sultan’s father who saved him from certain bankruptcy!’
‘By demanding my hand for his only son, in return?’ she demanded. ‘What kind of a man could do that, Suleiman?’
She saw that her heartfelt appeal had momentarily stilled him. That his flat black eyes had narrowed and were now partially obscured by the thick ebony lashes which had shuttered down to veil them. Had she been able to make him see the sheer lunacy of his proposal in this day and age? Couldn’t he see that it was barbaric for a woman of twenty-three to be taken back to a desert kingdom—no matter how fabled—and to be married against her will?
Once Suleiman had regarded her fondly—she knew that. If he allowed himself to forget that stupid kiss—that single lapse which should never have happened—then surely there still existed in his heart some of that same fondness. Surely he wasn’t happy for her to enter into such a barbaric union.
‘These dynastic marriages have always taken place,’ he said slowly. ‘It will not be as bad as you envisage, Sara—’
‘Really? How do you work that out?’
‘It is a great honour to marry such a man as the Sultan,’ he said, but he seemed to be having to force some kind of conviction into his words. He gave a heavy sigh. ‘Do you have any idea of the number of women who would long to become his Sultana—’
‘A sultana is something I put on my muesli every morning!’ she spat back.
‘You will be prized above all women,’ he continued. ‘And given the honour of bearing His Imperial Majesty’s sons and heirs. What woman could ask for more?’
For a moment Sara didn’t speak, she was so angry. The idea of such a marriage sounded completely abhorrent to her now, but, as Suleiman had just said, she had grown up in a world where such a barter was considered normal. She had been living in England for so long that it was easy to forget that she was herself a royal princess. That her English mother had married a desert king and produced a son and a much younger daughter.
If her mother had been alive she would have stopped this ludicrous marriage from happening, Sara was sure of that. But her mother had been dead for a long time—her father, too. And now the Sultan wanted to claim what was rightfully his.
She thought of the man who awaited her and she shivered. She knew that a lot of women thought of him as a swarthy sex-god, but she wasn’t among them. During their three, heavily chaperoned meetings—she had felt nothing for him. Nada.
But mightn’t that have had something to do with the fact that Suleiman had been present all those times? Suleiman with his glittering black eyes and his hard, honed body who had distracted her so badly that she couldn’t think straight.
She glared at him. ‘Doesn’t it strike at your conscience to take a woman back to Qurhah against her will? Do you always do whatever the Sultan asks you, without questioning it? His tame puppet!’
A nerve flickered at his temple. ‘I no longer work for the Sultan.’
For a moment she stared at him in disbelief. ‘What...what are you talking about? The Sultan values you above all other men. Everyone knows that. You are his prized emissary and the man on whom he relies.’
He shook his head. ‘Not any longer. I have returned to my own land, where I have built a different kind of life for myself.’
She wanted to ask him what kind of life that was, but she reminded herself that what Suleiman did was none of her business. He doesn’t want you. He doesn’t even seem to like you any more. ‘Then why are you here?’
‘As a favour to Murat. He thought that you might prove too much of a challenge for most of his staff.’
‘But not for you, I suppose?’
‘Not for me,’ he agreed.
She wanted to tell him to wipe that smug smile off his face and get out of her office and if he didn’t, then she would call security and get them to remove him. But was that such a good idea? Her eyes flickered doubtfully over his powerful body and immovable stance. Was she seriously suggesting that anyone could budge him if he didn’t want to go?
She thought about her boss. Wouldn’t Gabe Steel have Suleiman evicted from the building if she asked him? Though when she stopped to think about it—did she really want to go bleating to her boss for help? She had no desire to blight her perfect working record by bringing her private life into the workplace. Because wouldn’t Gabe—and all her colleagues—be amazed to discover that she wasn’t just someone called Sara Williams, but a half-blood desert princess from the desert country of Dhi’ban? That she had capitalised on her mother’s English looks and used her mother’s English surname to blend in since she’d been working here in London. And blend in, she had—adopting the fashions and the attitudes of other English women her age.
No, this was not a time for opposition—or at least, not a time for open opposition. She didn’t want Suleiman’s suspicions alerted. She needed to lull him. To let him think that he had won. That she would go with him—not too meekly or he would suspect that something was amiss, but that she would go with him.
She shrugged her shoulders as if she were reluctantly conceding victory and backed it up with a resigned sigh. ‘I suppose there’s no point in me trying to change your mind?’
His smile was cold. ‘Do you really think you could?’
‘No, I suppose not,’ she said, as if his indifference didn’t matter. As if she didn’t care what he thought of her.
But she felt as if somebody had just taken her dreams and trampled on them. He was the only man she had ever wanted. The only man she’d ever loved. Yet Suleiman thought so little of her that he could just hand her over to another man, as if she were a parcel he was delivering.
‘Don’t look like that, Sara.’ His black eyes narrowed and she saw that little muscle flicker at his temple once more. ‘If you open your mind a little—you might find that you can actually enjoy your new life. That you can be a good wife. You will have strong sons and beautiful daughters and this will make the people of Qurhah very happy.’
For a moment, Sara thought she heard the hint of uncertainty in his voice. As if he was trotting out the official line without really believing it. Was he? Or was it true what they said—that something in his own upbringing had hardened his heart so that it was made of stone? So that he didn’t care about other people’s feelings—because he didn’t have any of his own.
Well, Suleiman’s feelings were none of her business. She didn’t care about them because she couldn’t afford to. She needed to know what his plans were—and how to react to them accordingly.
‘So what happens now?’ she asked casually. ‘Do I give a month’s notice here and then fly out to Qurhah towards the end of January?’
His mouth twisted, as if she had just said something uniquely funny. ‘You think that you are free to continue to make the Sultan wait for your presence?’ he questioned. ‘I’m afraid that those days are over. You will fly out to Qurhah tonight. And you are leaving this building with me, right now.’
Panic—pure and simple—overwhelmed her. She could feel the doors of the prison clanging to a close. Suleiman’s dark features blurred for a second, before clicking back into sharp focus, and she tried to pull herself together.
‘I’ll...I’ll need to pack first,’ she said.
‘Of course.’ He inclined his dark head but not before she could see the sudden glint of fire in his eyes. ‘Though I doubt whether your mini-skirt will cut it in your new role as Sultana. A far more suitable wardrobe will be provided for you, so why bother?’
‘I’m not talking about my clothes!’ she flared back. ‘Surely you won’t deny me my trinkets and keepsakes? The jewellery my mother left me and the book my father published after her death?’
For a moment she wondered if she had imagined the faint look of disquiet which briefly flickered in his eyes. But it was gone as quickly as it had appeared and she told herself to stop attributing thoughts and feelings to him, just because she wanted him to have them. Because he didn’t.
‘Very well,’ he said. ‘That can be arranged. Now let’s go—I have a car waiting downstairs.’
Sara’s heart missed a beat. Of course he had a car waiting. Probably with a couple of heavies inside. That feeling of being trapped closed in on her again and suddenly she knew that she wasn’t going to take this lying down. She would not go meekly with Suleiman Abd al-Aziz—she would slip through his hands like an eel plucked from an icy river.
‘I have to finish up in here,’ she said. ‘I can’t just walk out for ever without putting my work in some kind of order.’
His face was unreadable. ‘How long will it take?’
Sara felt her mouth dry as she wondered realistically how much time she could plead to play with. ‘A few hours?’
‘Don’t test my patience, Sara. Two hours will be more than adequate for what you need to do. I will be waiting with my men at your apartment.’ He walked over to the door and paused. ‘And don’t be late,’ he said softly.
With one final warning flickering from his black eyes, he was gone. She waited until she heard the ping of the lift in the corridor and the sound of the elevator doors closing—but she was still paranoid enough to poke her head outside the office to check that he really had gone. That he wasn’t standing in the shadows spying on her and waiting to see what she would do next.
She shut the office door and walked over to one of the giant windows which overlooked the dark glitter of the river, feeling a stab of pain in her heart. She had loved working here. She had loved the freedom and the creativity of being part of Gabe Steel’s enormous organisation.
But now it was all coming to an end, whether she wanted it to or not.
Like hell it was.
An idea began to form in her mind. A plan so audacious that for a moment she wondered if she dared go ahead with it. Yet what choice did she have? To go with Suleiman, like a sheep to the slaughter? To be forced to share a bed with the hawk-faced Sultan—a man for whom she had felt not one whisper of chemistry?
She picked up the office phone instead of her own mobile phone. Because if they’d had bodyguards watching her all this time—who was to say they hadn’t bugged her phone?
It didn’t take her long to get the information she wanted from the Business Development Director, who was in charge of the company’s public relations. Judging by the noise in the background, he was clearly at some sort of Christmas party and gave her a list of journalists without asking any questions.
Her fingers were trembling as she dialled the first number and listened to the ring tone. Maybe nobody would pick up. Maybe they’d all set off home for Christmas—all going to some storybook destination with a wreath on the door and a roaring log fire, with the smell of chestnuts and pine scenting the air.
They wouldn’t be spending their Christmas Eve like her—with a car full of cold-faced men sitting outside the building, waiting to take her away to an unknown and unwanted future.
‘Hello?’
She took a deep breath. ‘Look, I know this is going to sound crazy—but I’ve got a story you might be interested in.’ Her fingers dug into the phone as she listened. ‘Details? Sure I can give you details. How about the proposed kidnap of a woman, who is being taken against her will to the desert country of Qurhah to marry a man she doesn’t want to marry? You like that? I rather thought you might—and it’s all yours. An exclusive. But we haven’t got long. I need to leave London before six o’ clock.’
CHAPTER TWO (#ua8d75ed4-f592-530f-a694-f5be57ded45b)
SULEIMAN BROUGHT THE car to a halt so that it was hidden beneath the shadows of the trees, but still within sight of the cottage. The other cars all waited in darkness at various intervals down the country lane, as he had instructed them to do.
He turned off the lights. Rain spattered relentlessly across the windscreen, running in thick rivulets down the glass. For a moment he sat watching the lighted windows of the house. He saw Sara’s unmistakable silhouette going around, pulling the drapes tightly shut, and he felt a potent combination of anger and satisfaction. But alongside his triumph at having tracked her down, a deep disquiet ran through his veins like slow poison.
He should have refused this job.
He should have told Murat that his schedule did not allow him time to travel to England and deal with the princess.
But the Sultan did not ask favours of many men and the bonds of loyalty and gratitude ran deeper than Suleiman had anticipated. And although he would have given anything to have avoided this particular task, somehow he had found himself accepting it. Yet just one sight of her today had reinforced what a fool he had been. Better to have thrown himself to the mercy of a starving lion, than to have willingly closeted himself with the temptress Sara.
He remembered the honeyed taste of her lips and her intoxicating perfume of jasmine mixed with patchouli. He remembered the pert thrust of her breast beneath his questing fingers and the way his body had ached for her afterwards. The frustrated lust which seemed to have gone on for months.
His hands tightened around the steering wheel. Women like her were born to create trouble. To make men want them and then to use their sexual power to destroy them. Hadn’t her own mother—a fabled beauty in her time—brought down the king who had spent his life in slavish devotion to her? A husband who had spent so much time enthralled by her that he had barely noticed his country slipping into bankruptcy.
He drew in a deep, meditative breath, forcing all the frustrating thoughts from his mind. He must go and do what he needed to do and then leave and never see her again.
With a stealth nurtured by years of undercover work, he waited until he was certain the coast was clear before he got out of the car and silently pulled the door shut behind him. He saw one of the limousines parked further down the lane flash its lights at him.
Avoiding the crunch of the gravel path, he felt his shoes sink into the sodden mud of the lawn which ran alongside it. But the night was fearsome and the weather atrocious and he was soaked within seconds, despite his long-legged stride towards the front door.
He was half tempted to break in by one of the back windows and then to walk in and confront her to show just how vulnerable she really was. But that would be cruel and he had no desire to be cruel to her.
Did he?
His mouth hardened as he lifted one rain-soaked hand to the door handle and knocked.
If she was sensible, she wouldn’t answer. Instead, she would phone the local police station and tell them she had an intruder banging on the door of this isolated cottage on Christmas Eve.
But clearly she wasn’t being sensible because he could hear the sound of her approaching footsteps and his body tensed as adrenalin flooded through him.
She pulled open the door, her violet eyes widening as she registered his identity. For a split second she reacted quickly, trying desperately to shut the door again—but her reactions were not as fast as his. Few people’s were. He placed the flat of his hand on the weathered knocker and blocked her move until she had the sense to step back as he entered the hallway, pushing the door shut behind him.
For a moment there was silence in that small hallway, other than the soft drip of rainwater onto the stone tiles. He could see that she was too stunned to speak—and so was he, but for very different reasons. She might be regarding him with horror but no such feelings were dominating his own mind right then.
She had changed from the provocative dress she’d been wearing in her office earlier. Her hair was loose and her jeans and pink sweater were not particularly clingy, yet still they managed to showcase the magnificence of her body.
He knew it was wrong but he couldn’t stop himself from drinking her in, like a man lost in the desert who had just been handed a jug of cool water. Was she aware of her beauty? Of the fact that she looked like a goddess? A goddess in blue jeans.
‘Suleiman!’ Her voice sounded startled and her violet eyes were dark.
‘Surprised?’ he questioned.
‘You could say that! And horrified.’ She glared at him. ‘What do you think you’re doing—pushing your way in here like some sort of heavy?’
‘I thought we had an appointment to meet at six, but since it is now almost eight, you appear to have broken it. Shockingly bad manners, Sara. Especially for a future queen of the desert.’
‘Tough!’ she retorted. ‘And I’m not going to be a queen of the desert. I already told you that I have no intention of getting married. Not to Murat and not to anyone! So why waste everybody’s time by turning up? Can’t you just go back to the Sultan and tell him to forget the whole idea?’
Suleiman heard the determination in her voice and felt an unwilling flare of admiration for her unashamed—and very stupid—defiance. Such open insubordination was unheard of from a woman from the desert lands and it was rather magnificent to observe her spirited rebellion. But he didn’t let it show. Instead, he injected a note of disapproval into his voice. ‘I am waiting for an explanation about why you failed to show.’
‘Do you realise you sound exactly like a schoolteacher? I don’t really think you’d need to be a detective to work out my no-show. I don’t like having my arm twisted.’
‘Clearly you hadn’t thought things through properly, if you imagined it was going to be that easy to shake me off,’ he said. ‘But you’re here now.’
She eyed him speculatively ‘I could knock you over the back of the head and make a run for it.’
His mouth quirked at the corners, despite all his best efforts not to smile. ‘And if you did, you would run straight into the men I have positioned all the way down the lane. Don’t even think about it, Sara. And please don’t imagine that I haven’t thought of every eventuality, because I have.’
He pulled off his dripping coat and hung it on a peg.
She glared at him. ‘I don’t remember asking you to take your coat off!’
‘I don’t require your permission.’
‘You are impossible!’ she hissed.
‘I have never denied that.’
‘Oh,’ she said, her voice frustrated as she turned round and marched towards a room where he could see a fire blazing.
He followed her into a room which had none of the ornaments the English were so fond of cramming into their country homes. There were no china dogs or hangings made of brass. No jumbled oil paintings of ships which hinted at a naval past. Instead, the walls were pale and contrasted with the weathered beams of wood in the ceiling. The furniture was quirky but looked comfortable and the few contemporary paintings worked well, though in theory they shouldn’t have done. Whoever owned this had taste, as well as money.
‘Whose cottage is this?’ he questioned.
‘My lover’s.’
He took a step forward, so that his shadow fell over her defiant features. ‘Please don’t jest with me, Sara. I’m not in the mood for it.’
‘How do you know I’m jesting?’
‘I hope you are. Because if I thought for a moment that you had been intimate with another man—then I would seek him out and tear him from limb to limb.’
As she heard his venomous but undoubtedly truthful words Sara swallowed, reminding herself that it wasn’t a question of Suleiman being jealous. He had only uttered the threat out of loyalty to the Sultan.
She wished he hadn’t turned up and yet if she’d stopped to think about it for more than a second—she must have known he would follow her. If Suleiman took on a task, then Suleiman would see it through. No matter what obstacles were put before him, he would conquer them. That was why the Sultan had asked him—and why he was so respected and feared within the desert nations.
She had driven here without really thinking about the consequences of her action, only about her urgent need to get away. Not just from the dark certainty of her future, but from this man. The man who had rejected her, yet could still make her heart race with desire and longing.
But his face was as cold as a stone mask. His body language was tense and forbidding. Suleiman’s feelings towards her had clearly not changed since the night he’d kissed her and then thrust her away from him. She swallowed. How could she bear to spend hours travelling with him, towards a dark fate which seemed unendurable?
‘It’s my boss, Gabe Steel’s cottage,’ she said. ‘And how did you find me?’
‘It wasn’t difficult,’ he said. ‘You forget that I have tracked down quarry far more elusive than a stubborn princess. Actually, it was your sudden unexpected consent to my plan which alerted my suspicions. It is not like you to be so acquiescent, Sara. I suspected that you would try to give my men the slip so I hid outside the side entrance to your office block and followed you to the car park.’
‘You hid? Outside my office block?’
‘You find that so bizarre?’
‘Of course I do!’ Her heart was hammering in her chest. ‘I live in England now and I live an English life, Suleiman. One where men don’t usually lurk in shadows, following women who don’t want to be followed. Why, you could have been arrested for trespass—especially if my boss had any idea that you were stalking me.’
‘Unlikely—for I am never seen if I do not wish to be seen,’ he said arrogantly. ‘You must have known it was a futile attempt to try to escape, so why do it, Sara? Did you really think you could get away with it?’
‘Go to hell!’
‘I’m not going anywhere and certainly not without you.’
She hated the ruthless tone of his voice. She hated the unresponsive look on his hard face. Suddenly she wanted to shake him. To provoke him. To get some sort of reaction which would make her feel as if she was dealing with a real person, instead of a cold block of stone. ‘I was waiting here,’ she said deliberately. ‘For my lover.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘And why not?’ she demanded. ‘Am I so repulsive that you can’t imagine that a man might actually want to take me to bed?’
For a moment Suleiman stilled, telling himself that he wouldn’t fall into the trap she was so obviously laying for him. She was trying to rile him. Trying to get him to admit to something he was not prepared to admit. Even to himself. Concentrate on the facts, he told himself fiercely—and not on her blonde-haired beauty, or her soft curves which nature must have invented with the intention of sending any man crazy with longing.
‘I think you know the answer to that question—and I’m not going to flatter your ego by answering it. Your desirability has never been in question, but you seem to imply that your virtue is.’
‘What if it is?’ she challenged, her voice growing reckless. ‘But I don’t have to explain myself to you and I’m certainly not going to take orders from you. Do you want to know why?’
‘Not really,’ he said, in a bored tone.
‘I think you might.’ She licked her lips in a cat-got-the-cream expression and then smiled. ‘It might interest you to know that in between your invasion of my office and following me here, I have spoken to a journalist.’
There was a pause. Suleiman’s eyes narrowed. ‘I hope that’s a joke.’
‘It’s not.’
There was another moment of silence before he could bring himself to speak. ‘And what did you tell the journalist?’
She scraped her fingers back through her blonde hair and smirked. ‘I told him the truth. No need to look so scared, Suleiman. I mean, who in their right mind could possibly object to the truth?’
‘Let’s get one thing straight,’ he said, biting the words out from between gritted teeth. ‘I am not scared—of anyone or anything. I think you may be in danger of mistaking my anger for fear, though perhaps you would do well to feel fear yourself. Because if the Sultan finds out that you have spoken to the western press, then things are going to get very tricky. So I shall ask you again and this time I want a straight answer—what exactly did you tell the journalist?’
Sara stared into the spitting blackness of his eyes and some of her bravado wavered, until she told herself that she wasn’t going to be intimidated. She had worked too hard and too long to forge a new life to allow these powerful men to control her. These desert men who would crush your very spirit if you allowed them to do so. So she wouldn’t let them.
Even her own mother—who had married a desert king and had loved him—had felt imprisoned by ancient royal rules which hadn’t changed for centuries and probably never would. Sara had witnessed for herself that sometimes love just wasn’t enough. So what chance would a marriage have if there was no love at all?
Her mother’s unhappiness had been the cause of her father’s ruination—and had ultimately governed Sara’s own fate. She hadn’t known that Papa was so obsessed by his English wife that he hadn’t paid proper attention to governing his country. Sara remembered that all too vividly. The Queen had been his possession and nothing else had really existed for him, apart from that.
He had taken his eye off the ball. Poor investments and a border war which went on too long meant that his country was left bankrupt. The late Sultan of Qurhah had come up with a deal for a bail-out plan and the price had been Sara’s hand in marriage.
When Sara’s mother had died and she had been allowed to go off to boarding school—hadn’t she thought that her father’s debt would just be allowed to fade with time? Hadn’t she been naïve and hopeful enough to think that the Sultan might just forget all about marrying her, as his own father had decreed he should?
Blinking back the sudden threat of tears, Sara tried to ignore the fierce expression on Suleiman’s face. She was not going to be made to feel guilty—when all she was doing was trying to save her own skin. And ultimately she would be doing the Sultan a favour—for surely it would damage the ego of such a powerful man if she was forced kicking and screaming to the altar.
‘I am waiting,’ he said, with silky venom, ‘for you to enlighten me. What did you tell the journalist, Sara?’
She met the accusation in his eyes. ‘I told him everything.’
‘Everything?’
‘Yes! I thought it would make a good story,’ she said. ‘At a time of year when newspapers are traditionally very light on news and—’
‘What did you tell him?’ he raged.
‘I told him the truth! That I was a half-blood princess—half English and half Dhi’banese. You know the papers—they just love any kind of royal connection!’ She forced a mocking smile, knowing that it would irritate him and wondering if irritating him was only a feeble attempt to suppress her desire for him. Because if it was, it wasn’t working. ‘I told him that my mother travelled as an artist to Dhi’ban, to paint the beautiful desert landscape—and that my father, the king, had fallen in love with her.’
‘Why did you feel it necessary to parade your private family history to a complete stranger?’
‘I’m just providing the backstory, Suleiman,’ she said. ‘Everyone knows you need a good backstory if you want an entertaining read. Anyway, it’s all there on record.’
‘You are severely testing my patience,’ he said. ‘You had no right to divulge these things!’
‘Surely the Sultan wouldn’t mind me discussing it?’ she questioned innocently. ‘This is a marriage we’re talking about, Suleiman—and marriages are supposed to be happy occasions. I say supposed to be, but that’s quite a difficult concept to pull off when the bride is being kidnapped! I have to say that the journalist seemed quite surprised when I told him that I had no say in this marriage. No, when I come to think of it—surprise is the wrong word. I’d say that astonished covered it better. And deeply shocked, of course.’
‘Shocked?’
‘Mmm. He seemed to find it odd—abhorrent, even—that the Sultan of Qurhah should want to marry a woman who had been bought for him by his own father!’
She saw his fists clench.
‘That is the way of the world you were brought into,’ he said unequivocably. ‘None of us can change the circumstances of our birth.’
‘No, we can’t. But that doesn’t mean we have to be made prisoners by it. We can use everything in our power to change our destinies! Can’t you see that, Suleiman?’
‘No!’
‘Yes,’ she argued passionately. ‘Yes and a thousand times yes!’ Her heart began to race as she saw something written on his carved features which made her stomach turn to jelly. Was it anger? Was it?
But anger would not have made him shake his head, as if he was trying to shake off thoughts of madness. Nor to make that little nerve flicker so violently at his olive-skinned temple. He took a step towards her and, for one heart-stopping moment, she thought he was about to pull her into his arms, the way he’d done on the night of her brother’s coronation.
And didn’t she want that? Wasn’t she longing for him to do just that, only this time not stop? This time they were alone and he could lie her down in front of that log fire and loosen her clothes and...
But he didn’t touch her. He stood a tantalisingly close distance away while his eyes sparked dark fire at her. She could see him swallowing, as if he had something bitter lodged in his throat.
‘You must accept your destiny,’ he said. ‘As I have accepted mine.’
‘Have you? Did “accepting your destiny” include kissing me on the night my brother was crowned, even though you knew I was promised to another?’
‘Don’t say that!’
The strangled words sounded almost powerless and Sara realised she’d never heard Suleiman sound like that before. Not even after he’d returned from his undercover duties in the Qurhah army, when he’d been thirty pounds lighter with a scar zigzagging down his neck. People said he’d been tortured, but if he had he never spoke of it—well, never to her. She remembered being profoundly shocked by his appearance and she felt a similar kind of shock washing over her now.
For it was not like looking at Suleiman she knew of old. It was like looking at a stranger. A repressed and forbidding stranger. His features had closed up and his eyes were hooded. Had she really thought he was about to kiss her? Why, kissing looked like the furthest thing on his mind.
‘We will not speak of that night again,’ he said.
‘But it’s true, isn’t it?’ she questioned. ‘You weren’t so moralistic when you touched me like that.’
‘Because most men would have died rather than resist you that night,’ he admitted bitterly. ‘And I chose not to die. I hadn’t seen you for six long years and then I saw you, with your big painted eyes and your silver gown, shining like the moon.’
Briefly, Suleiman closed his eyes, because that kiss had been like no other, no matter how much he had tried to deny it. It hadn’t just been about sex or lust. It had been much more powerful than that, and infinitely more dangerous. It had been about feeding a hunger as fundamental as the need to eat or drink. It had felt as necessary as breathing. And yet it had angered him, because it had seemed outside his control. Up until that moment he had regarded the young princess with nothing more than indulgent friendship. What had happened that night had taken him completely by surprise. He swallowed. Perhaps that was why it had been the most unforgettable kiss of his life.
‘Didn’t you realise how much I wanted you that night, Sara, even though you were promised to the Sultan? Were you not aware of your own power?’
‘So it was all my fault?’
‘No. It is not your “fault” that you looked beautiful enough to test the appetites of a saint. I blame no one but myself for my unforgivable weakness. But it is a weakness which will never be repeated,’ he ground out. ‘And yes, I blame you if you have now given an interview which will bring shame on the reputation of the Sultan and his royal house.’
‘Then ask him to set me free,’ she said simply. ‘To let me go. Please, Suleiman.’
Suleiman met the appeal in her big violet eyes and for a moment he almost wavered. For wasn’t it a terrible crime to see the beautiful and spirited Sara forced to marry a man she did not love? Could he really imagine her lying in the marital bed and submitting to the embraces of a man she claimed not to want? And then he told himself that Murat was a legendary lover. And even though it made him feel sick to acknowledge it—it was unlikely that Sara would lie unresponsive in Murat’s bed for too long.
‘I can’t do that,’ he said, but the words felt like stone as he let them fall from his lips. ‘I can’t allow you to reject the Sultan; I would be failing in my duty if I did. It is a question of pride.’
‘Pride!’ Angrily, she shook her head. ‘What price pride? What if I refuse to allow him to consummate the marriage?’ she challenged. ‘What then? Won’t he skulk away to his harem and take his pleasure elsewhere?’
He flinched as if she had hit him. ‘This discussion has become completely inappropriate,’ he bit out angrily. ‘But you would be wise to consider the effect of your actions on your brother, the King—even though I know you never bother to visit him. There are some in your country who wonder whether the King still has a sister, so rarely does she set foot in her homeland.’
‘My relationship with my brother is none of your business—and neither are my trips home!’
‘Maybe not. But you would do well to remember that Qurhah continues to shoulder some of your country’s national debt. How would your brother feel if the Sultan were to withdraw his financial support because of your behaviour?’
‘You bastard,’ she hissed, but she might as well have been whispering on the wind, for all the notice he took.
‘My skin is thick enough to withstand your barbed comments, princess. I am delivering you to the Sultan and nothing will prevent that. But first, I want the name of the journalist you’ve been dealing with.’
She made one last stab at rebellion. ‘And if I won’t tell you?’
‘Then I will find out for myself,’ he said, in a tone which made a shiver trickle down her spine. ‘Why not save me the time and yourself my anger?’
‘You’re a brute,’ she breathed. ‘An egocentric brute.’
‘No, Sara, I just want the story spiked.’
Frustration washed over her as she recognised that he meant business. And that she was fighting a useless battle here.
‘His name is Jason Cresswell,’ she said sulkily. ‘He works for the Daily View.’
‘Good. Perhaps you are finally beginning to see sense. You might learn that co-operation is infinitely more preferable to rebellion. Now leave me while I speak with him in private.’ He glanced at her as he pulled his mobile phone from his pocket.
‘Go and get your coat on. Because after I’ve finished with the journalist we’re heading for the airfield, where the plane is waiting to take you to your new life in Qurhah.’
CHAPTER THREE (#ua8d75ed4-f592-530f-a694-f5be57ded45b)
THE FLIGHT WAS smooth and the aircraft supremely comfortable but Suleiman couldn’t sleep. For the past seven hours during the journey to Qurhah, he had been kept awake by the tormenting thoughts of what he was doing.
He felt his heart clench. What was he doing?
Taking a woman to a man she did not love.
A woman he wanted for himself.
Restlessly, he moved noiselessly around the craft, wishing that there were somewhere to look other than at the sleeping Sara. But although he could have joined the two pilots in the cockpit or tried to rest in the sealed-off section at the far end of the plane, neither option appealed. He couldn’t seem to tear his eyes away from her.
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Sharon Kendrick
Sara Williams’s hand in marriage was bought and paid for when she was a child to cover a debt the size of a small country. She knew her wedding day would come, but now an independent career woman, Sara is determined never to marry anyone!Sara’s only escape from this marriage is ruination so sets about seducing her achingly handsome but unmovable escort… Middle Eastern diplomat Suleiman Abd al-Aziz has the honour of delivering Sara to her desert destiny – the bed of her Sheikh fiancé.But with his charge so sexy when she’s angry, and definitively forbidden, Suleiman’s iron will is tested to the limit.
Defiant in the Desert
Only scandal will do
Sara Williams’s hand in marriage was bought to cover a debt. But she’s determined never to marry anyone!
Diplomat Suleiman Abd al-Aziz must deliver Sara to her desert destiny. But with Sara set on escaping her marriage by seducing him, his iron will is sorely tested!
Desert Men of Qurhah
Their destiny is the desert!
The heat of the desert is nothing compared to the passion that burns between the pages of this stunning new trilogy by Sharon Kendrick!
Defiant in the Desert
Oil baron Suleiman Abd al-Aziz has been sent to retrieve the Sultan of Qurhah’s reluctant fiancée who is determined to escape the confines of her engagement—by seducing him!
Shamed in the Sands
Princess Leila has always wanted something different from her life. So when sexy advertising magnate Gabe Steele arrives to work for her brother, Leila invites royal outrage by convincing Gabe to give her a job.
The Sultan of Qurhah’s story
The Sultan of Qurhah is facing a scandal of epic proportions. His fiancée has run off, leaving him with a space in his king-size bed. A space once occupied by his mistress—Carly Conner. And now he wants her back—at any price!
Dear Reader (#ua8d75ed4-f592-530f-a694-f5be57ded45b),
One hundred. Doesn’t matter how many times I say it, I still can’t believe that’s how many books I’ve written. It’s a fabulous feeling but more fabulous still is the news that Mills & Boon are issuing every single one of my backlist as digital titles. Wow. I can’t wait to share all my stories with you - which are as vivid to me now as when I wrote them.
There’s BOUGHT FOR HER HUSBAND, with its outrageously macho Greek hero and A SCANDAL, A SECRET AND A BABY featuring a very sexy Tuscan. THE SHEIKH’S HEIR proved so popular with readers that it spent two weeks on the USA Today charts and…well, I could go on, but I’ll leave you to discover them for yourselves.
I remember the first line of my very first book: “So you’ve come to Australia looking for a husband?” Actually, the heroine had gone to Australia to escape men, but guess what? She found a husband all the same! The man who inspired that book rang me up recently and when I told him I was beginning my 100
story and couldn’t decide what to write, he said, “Why don’t you go back to where it all started?”
So I did. And that’s how A ROYAL VOW OF CONVENIENCE was born. It opens in beautiful Queensland and moves to England and New York. It’s about a runaway princess and the enigmatic billionaire who is infuriated by her, yet who winds up rescuing her. But then, she goes and rescues him… Wouldn’t you know it?
I’ll end by saying how very grateful I am to have a career I love, and to thank each and every one of you who has supported me along the way. You really are very dear readers.
Love,
Sharon xxx
Mills & Boon are proud to present a thrilling digital collection of all Sharon Kendrick’s novels and novellas for us to celebrate the publication of her amazing and awesome 100th book! Sharon is known worldwide for her likeable, spirited heroines and her gorgeous, utterly masculine heroes.
SHARON KENDRICK once won a national writing competition, describing her ideal date: being flown to an exotic island by a gorgeous and powerful man. Little did she realise that she’d just wandered into her dream job! Today she writes for Mills & Boon, featuring her often stubborn but always to-die-for heroes and the women who bring them to their knees. She believes that the best books are those you never want to end. Just like life…
Defiant in the Desert
Sharon Kendrick
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To Peter O Brien—the intrepid Irishman—who taught me some of the mysteries and miracles of desert life
Contents
Cover (#u8189aae4-e282-5a3d-abe1-def8c731f8e4)
Back Cover Text (#ud6370053-3ec0-5c4d-b191-12017c538f39)
Desert Men of Qurhah (#uc2bdf2a8-db5e-5483-804c-871ceb2b9496)
Dear Reader (#u833e1d09-574d-5284-8fb0-1da2dc1085ab)
About the Author (#ueb18f72c-162e-5376-bdfc-49cddc2d5cc3)
Title Page (#u176b7b77-5168-54b7-87c2-89e06b25001b)
Dedication (#u412dc2b8-a885-5fbb-a01c-96443f6c66f7)
CHAPTER ONE (#u0f6bbb62-c5da-55d7-8529-146432500761)
CHAPTER TWO (#u312404c1-f7f0-5724-a4aa-271bb160afc6)
CHAPTER THREE (#ue37e6277-6a04-556f-94ac-9f7a0b4a243d)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#ua8d75ed4-f592-530f-a694-f5be57ded45b)
‘THERE’S A MAN downstairs in Reception who says he wants to see you.’
‘Who is it?’ questioned Sara, not bothering to lift her head from the drawing which was currently engrossing her.
‘He wouldn’t say.’
At this Sara did look up to find Alice, the office runner, staring at her with an odd sort of expression. Alice was young and very enthusiastic, but right now she looked almost transported. Her face was tight with excitement and disbelief—as if Santa Claus himself had arrived early with a full contingent of reindeer.
‘It’s Christmas Eve afternoon,’ said Sara, glancing out of the window at the dark grey sky and wincing. No snow, unfortunately. Only a few heavy raindrops spattering against the glass. Pity. Snow might have helped boost her mood—to help shift off the inevitable feeling of not quite fitting in which always descended on her at this time of year. She never found it easy to enjoy Christmas—which was one of the main reasons why she tended to ignore the festival until it had gone away.
She pushed a smile to the corners of her mouth, trying to pick up on Alice’s happy pre-holiday mood. ‘And very soon I’m going to be packing up and going home. If it’s a salesman, I’m not interested and if it’s anyone else, then tell them to go away and make an appointment to see me in the new year.’
‘He says he’s not going anywhere,’ said Alice and then paused dramatically. ‘Until he’s seen you.’
Sara put her purple felt-tip pen down with fingers which had annoyingly started to tremble, telling herself not to be so stupid. Telling herself that she was perfectly safe here, in this bright, open-plan office of the highly successful advertising agency where she worked. That there was no reason for this dark feeling of foreboding which had started whispering over her skin.
But of course, there was...
‘What do you mean—he’s not going anywhere?’ she demanded, trying to keep her voice from rising with panic. ‘What exactly did he say?’
‘That he wants to see you,’ repeated Alice and now she made another face which Sara had never seen before. ‘And that he craves just a few minutes of your time.’
Craves.
It was a word which jarred like an ice cream eaten on a winter day. No modern Englishman would ever have used a word like that. Sara felt the cold clamp of fear tightening around her heart, like an iron band.
‘What...what does he look like?’ she asked, her voice a croaky-sounding husk.
Alice played with the pendant which was dangling from her neck in an unconscious display of sexual awareness. ‘He’s...well, he’s pretty unbelievable, if you must know. Not just because of the way he’s built—though he must work out practically non-stop to get a body like that—but more...more...’ Her voice tailed off. ‘Well, it’s his eyes really.’
‘What about his eyes?’ barked Sara, feeling her pulse begin to rocket.
‘They were like...black. But like, really black. Like the sky when there’s no moon or stars. Like—’
‘Alice,’ cut in Sara, desperately trying to inject a note of normality into the girl’s uncharacteristically gushing description. Because at that stage she was still trying to fool herself into thinking that it wasn’t happening. That it might all be some terrible mistake. A simple mix-up. Anything, but the one thing she most feared. ‘Tell him—’
‘Why don’t you tell me yourself, Sara?’
A cold, accented voice cut through her words and Sara whirled round to see a man standing in the doorway of the office. Shock, pain and desire washed over her in rapid succession. She hadn’t seen him for five long years and for a moment she almost didn’t recognise him. He had always been dark and utterly gorgeous, gifted with a face and a mind which had captured her heart so completely. But now...
Now...
Her heart pounded.
Something about him had changed.
His dark head was bare and he wore a custom-made suit instead of his usual robes. The charcoal jacket defined his honed torso just as well as any folds of flowing silk and the immaculately cut trousers emphasised the endless length of his powerful thighs. He had always carried the cachet which came from being the Sultan of Qurhah’s closest advisor, but now his natural air of authority seemed to be underpinned with a steely layer Sara had never seen before. And suddenly she recognised it for what it was.
Power.
It seemed to crackle from every pore of his body. To pervade the serene office environment like high-voltage electricity. It made her wary—warier than she felt already, with her heart beating so fast it felt as if it might burst right out of her chest.
‘Suleiman,’ she said, her voice unsteady and a little unsure. ‘What are you doing here?’
He smiled, but it was the coldest smile she had ever seen. Even colder than the one which he had iced into her the last time they’d been together. When he had torn himself away from her passionate embrace and looked down at her as if she was the lowest of the low.
‘I think you can probably work that one out for yourself, can’t you, Sara?’
He stepped into the office, his clever black eyes narrowing.
‘You are an intelligent woman, if a somewhat misguided one,’ he continued. ‘You have been ignoring repeated requests from the Sultan to return to Qurhah to become his wife. Haven’t you?’
‘And if I have?’
He looked at her, but there was nothing but indifference in his eyes and, stupidly, that hurt.
‘If you have, then you have been behaving like a fool.’
His phrase was coated with an implicit threat which made her skin turn to ice and Sara heard Alice gasp. She turned her head slightly, expecting to see horror on the face of the trendy office runner, with her pink-streaked hair and bottom-hugging skirt. Because it wasn’t cool for men to talk that way, was it? But she saw nothing like horror there. Instead, the bohemian youngster was staring at Suleiman with a look of rapt adoration.
Sara swallowed. Cool obviously flew straight out of the window when you had a towering black-haired male standing in your office just oozing testosterone. Why wouldn’t Alice acknowledge the presence of a man unlike any other she had probably met? Despite all the attractive hunks who worked in Gabe Steel’s advertising empire—didn’t Suleiman Abd al-Aziz stand out like a spot of black oil on a white linen dress? Didn’t he redefine the very concept of masculinity and make it a hundred times more meaningful?
For her, he had always had the ability to make every other man fade into insignificance—even royal princes and sultans—but now something about him had changed. There was an indefinable quality about him. Something dangerous.
Gone was the affection with which he always used to regard her. The man who had drifted in and out of her childhood and taught her to ride seemed to have been replaced by someone else. The black eyes were flat and cold; his lips unsmiling. It wasn’t exactly hatred she could see on his face—for his expression implied that she wasn’t worthy of an emotion as strong as hate. It was more as if she was a hindrance. As if he was here under sufferance, in the very last place he wanted to be.
And she had only herself to blame. She knew that. If she hadn’t flung herself at him. If she hadn’t allowed him to kiss her and then silently invited him to do so much more than that. To...
She tried a smile, though she wasn’t sure how convincing a smile it was. She had done everything in her power to forget about Suleiman and the way he’d made her feel, but wasn’t it funny how just one glimpse of him could stir up all those familiar emotions? Suddenly her heart was turning over with that painful clench of feeling she’d once thought was love. She could feel the sink of her stomach as she was reminded that he could never be hers.
Well, he would never know that. He wouldn’t ever guess that he could still make her feel this way. She wasn’t going to give him the chance to humiliate her and reject her. Not again.
‘Nice of you to drop in so unexpectedly, Suleiman,’ she said, her voice as airy as she could manage. ‘But I’m afraid I’m pretty busy at the moment. It is Christmas Eve, you know.’
‘But you don’t celebrate Christmas, Sara. Or at least, I wasn’t aware that you did. Have you really changed so much that you have adopted, wholesale, the values of the West?’
He was looking around the large, open-plan office with an expression of distaste curving his carved lips which he didn’t bother to hide. His flat black eyes were registering the garish tinsel which was looped over posters depicting some of the company’s many successful advertising campaigns. His gaze rested briefly on the old-fashioned fir tree, complete with flashing lights and a glittering star at the top, which had been erected as a kind of passé tribute to Christmases past. His expression darkened.
Sara put her fingers in her lap, horribly aware that they were trembling, and it suddenly became terribly important that he shouldn’t see that, either. She didn’t want him to think she was scared, even if that moment she was feeling something very close to scared. And she couldn’t quite work out what she was afraid of—her, or him.
‘Look, I really am very busy,’ she said. ‘And Alice doesn’t want to hear—’
‘Alice doesn’t have to hear anything because she is about to leave us alone to continue this conversation in private,’ he said instantly. Turning towards the office junior, he produced a slow smile, like a magician producing a rabbit from a hat. ‘Aren’t you, Alice?’
Sara watched, unwillingly fascinated as Alice almost melted under the impact of his smile. She even—and Sara had never witnessed this happen before—she even blushed. In a single moment, the streetwise girl from London had been transformed into a gushing stereotype from another age. Any minute now and she might actually swoon.
‘Of course.’ Alice fluttered her eyelashes in a way which was also new. ‘Though I could get you a cup of coffee first if you like?’
‘I am not in the mood for coffee,’ said Suleiman and Sara wondered how he managed to make his refusal sound like he was talking about sex. Or was that just her projecting yet more stupid fantasies about him?
He was smiling at the runner and she was smiling right back. ‘Even though I imagine that yours would be excellent coffee,’ he purred.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake! Alice buys coffee from the deli next door,’ snapped Sara. ‘She wasn’t planning on travelling to Brazil and bringing back the beans herself!’
‘Then that is Brazil’s loss,’ murmured Suleiman.
Sara could have screamed at the cheesy line which had the office runner beaming from ear to ear. ‘That will be all, thanks, Alice,’ she said sharply. ‘You can go home now. And have...have a happy Christmas.’
‘Thanks,’ said Alice, clearly reluctant to leave. ‘I’ll see you in the new year. Happy Christmas!’
There was complete silence for a moment while they watched the girl gather up her oversized bag, which was crammed with one of the large and expensive presents which had been handed out earlier by Gabe Steel, their boss. Or rather, by his office manager. But it was only after her footsteps had echoed down the corridor towards the lift that Suleiman turned to Sara, his black eyes hard and mocking.
‘Quite the little executive these days, aren’t you, Sara?’
Sara swallowed. She hated the way he said her name. Or rather, she hated the effect it had on her. The way it made her want to expel a long and shuddering breath and to snake her tongue over lips which had suddenly grown dry. It reminded her too much of the time he had kissed her. When he had overstepped the mark and done the one thing which had been forbidden to him. And to her.
The memory came back as vivid and as real as if it had happened only yesterday. It had been on the night of her brother’s coronation—when Haroun had been crowned King of Dhi’ban, a day which many had thought would never come because of the volatile relations between the desert states. All the dignitaries from the neighbouring countries had attended the ceremony—including the infamous Sultan of nearby Qurhah, along with his chief emissary, Suleiman.
Sara remembered being cool and almost non-committal towards the Sultan, to whom she was betrothed. But who could blame her? Her hand in marriage had been the price paid for a financial bail-out for her country. In essence, she had been sold by her father like a piece of human merchandise!
That night she had barely made eye contact with the powerful Sultan who had seemed so forbidding, but her careless attitude seemed to amuse rather than to irritate the potentate. And anyway, he had spent most of the time locked away in meetings with all the other sultans and sheikhs.
But Sara had been eager to be reunited with the Sultan’s emissary. She had been filled with pleasure at the thought of seeing Suleiman again, after six long years away at an English boarding school. Suleiman, who had taught her to ride and made her laugh during those two long summers when the Sultan had been negotiating with her father about a financial bail-out. Two summers which had occupied a special place in her heart ever since, even though on that final summer—her marital fate had been sealed.
During the coronation fireworks, she had somehow managed to manoeuvre herself into a position to watch them with Suleiman by her side. The crowds had been so huge that nobody had noticed them standing together and Sara was thrilled just to be in his company again.
The night was soft and warm, but in between the explosions and the roar of the onlookers the conversation between them was as easy as it had always been, even if initially Suleiman had seemed startled by the dramatic change that six years had wrought on her appearance.
‘How old are you now?’ he’d questioned, after he’d looked her up and down for a distractingly long moment.
‘I’m eighteen.’ She had smiled straight into his eyes, successfully hiding the hurt that he hadn’t even remembered her age. ‘And all grown up.’
‘All grown up,’ he had repeated slowly, as if she’d just said something which had never occurred to him before.
The conversation had moved on to other topics, though she had still been conscious of the curious expression in his eyes. He had asked her about her life at boarding school and she’d told him that she was planning to go to art school.
‘In England?’
‘Of course in England. There is no equivalent here in Dhi’ban.’
‘But Dhi’ban isn’t the same without you here, Sara.’
It was a strangely emotional thing for Suleiman to say and maybe the unexpectedness of that was what made her reach up to touch her fingertips to his cheek. ‘Is that in a good way, or a bad way?’ she teased.
A look passed between them and she felt him stiffen.
The fireworks seemed to stop—or maybe that was because the crashing of her heart was as deafening as any man-made explosion in the sky.
He caught hold of her hand and moved it away from his face, and suddenly Sara could feel a terrible yearning as he looked down at her. The normally authoritative Suleiman seemed frozen with indecision and he shook his head, as if he was trying to deny something. And then, almost in slow motion—he lowered his head to brush his lips over hers in a kiss.
It was just like all the books said it should be.
Her world splintered into something magical as their lips met. Suddenly there were rainbows and starlight and a deep, wild hunger. And the realisation that this was her darling, darling Suleiman and he was kissing her. Her lips opened beneath his and he circled her waist with his hands as he pulled her closer. She clung to him as her breasts pressed against his broad chest. She heard him groan. She felt the growing tension in his body as his hands moved down to cup her buttocks.
‘Oh, Suleiman,’ she whispered against his mouth—and the words must have broken the spell, for suddenly he tore himself away from her and held her at arm’s length.
For a long moment he just stared at her, his breathing hard and laboured—looking as if he had just been shaken by something profound. Something which made a wild little flicker of hope flare in her heart. But then the look disappeared and was replaced with an expression of self-contempt. It seemed to take a moment or two before he could speak.
‘Is this how you behave when you are in England?’ he demanded, his voice as deadly as snake poison. ‘Offering yourself as freely as a whore when you are promised to the Sultan? What kind of woman are you, Sara?’
It was a question she couldn’t answer because she didn’t know. Right then, she didn’t seem to know anything because her whole belief system seemed to have been shattered. She hadn’t been expecting to kiss him, nor to respond to him like that. She hadn’t been expecting to want him to touch her in a way she’d never been touched before—yet now he was looking at her as if she’d done something unspeakable.
Filled with shame, she had turned on her heel and fled—her eyes so blurred with tears that she could barely see. And it wasn’t until the next day that she heard indulgent tales of the princess weeping with joy for her newly crowned brother.
The memory cleared and Sara found herself in the uncomfortable present, looking into Suleiman’s mocking eyes and realising that he was waiting for some sort of answer to his question. Struggling to remember what he’d asked, she shrugged—as if she could shrug off those feelings of humiliation and rejection she had suffered at his hands.
‘I hardly describe being a “creative” in an advertising agency as being an executive,’ she said.
‘You are creative in many fields,’ he observed. ‘Particularly with your choice of clothes. Such revealing, western clothes, I cannot help but notice.’
Sara felt herself stiffen as he began to study her. Don’t look at me that way, she wanted to scream. Because it was making her body ache as his gaze swept over the sweater dress which came halfway down her thighs, and the high boots whose soft leather curved over her knees.
‘I’m glad you like them,’ she said flippantly.
‘I didn’t say I liked them,’ he growled. ‘In fact, I wholeheartedly disapprove of them, as no doubt would the Sultan. Your dress is ridiculously short, though I suppose that is deliberate.’
‘But everyone wears short skirts round here, Suleiman. It’s the fashion. And the thick tights and boots almost cancel out the length of the dress, don’t you think?’
His eyes were implacable as they met hers. ‘I have not come here to discuss the length of your clothes and the way you seem to flaunt your body like the whore we both know you are!’
‘No? Then why are you here?’
There was a pause and now his eyes were deadly as they iced into her.
‘I think you know the answer to that. But since you seem to have trouble facing up to your responsibilities, maybe I’d better spell it out for you so that there can be no more confusion. You can no longer ignore your destiny, for the time has come.’
‘It’s not my destiny!’ she flared.
‘I have come to take you to Qurhah to be married,’ he said coldly. ‘To fulfil the promise which was made many moons ago by your father. You were sold to the Sultan and the Sultan wants you. And what is more, he is beginning to grow impatient—for this long-awaited alliance between your two countries to go ahead and bring lasting peace in the region.’
Sara froze. The hands which were still concealed in her lap now clenched into two tight fists. She felt beads of sweat break out on her brow and for a moment she thought she might pass out. Because hadn’t she thought that if she just ignored the dark cloud which hung over her future for long enough, one day it might just fade away?
‘You can’t mean that,’ she said, hating her voice for sounding so croaky. So get some strength back. Find the resources within you to stand up to this ridiculous regime which buys women as if they were simply objects of desire lined up on a market stall. She drew in a deep breath. ‘But even if you do mean it, I’m not coming back with you, Suleiman. No way. I live in England now and I regard myself as an English citizen, with all the corresponding freedom that brings. And nothing in the world you can do or say will induce me to go to Qurhah. I don’t want to marry the Sultan, and I won’t do it. And what is more, you can’t make me.’
‘I am hoping to do this without a fight, Sara.’
His voice was smooth. As smooth as treacle—and just as dark. But nobody could have mistaken the steely intent which ran through his words. She looked into the flatness of his eyes. She looked at the hard, compromising lines of his lips and she felt another whisper of foreboding shivering its way down her spine. ‘You think I’m just going to docilely agree to your plans? That I’m going to nod my head and accompany you to Qurhah?’
‘I’m hoping you will, since that would be the most sensible outcome for all concerned.’
‘In your dreams, Suleiman.’
There was silence for a moment as Suleiman met the belligerent glitter of her eyes, and the slow rage which had been simmering all day now threatened to boil over. Had he thought that this would be easy?
No, of course he hadn’t.
Inside he had known that this would be the most difficult assignment of his life—even though he had experienced battle and torture and real hardship. He had tried to turn the job down—for all kinds of reasons. He’d told the Sultan that he was busy with his new life—and that much was true. But loyalty and affection for his erstwhile employer had proved too persuasive. And who else possessed the right amount of determination to bring the feisty Sara Williams back to marry the royal ruler? His mouth hardened and he felt the twist of something like regret. Who else knew her the way that he did?
‘You speak with such insolence that I can only assume you have been influenced by the louche values of the West,’ he snapped.
‘Embracing freedom, you mean?’
‘Embracing disrespect would be a more accurate description.’ He drew in a deep breath and forced his lips into something resembling a smile. ‘Look, Sara—I understand that you needed to...what is it that you women say? Ah yes, to find yourself.’ He gave a low laugh. ‘Fortunately, the male of the species rarely loses himself in the first place and so such recovery is seldom deemed necessary.’
‘Why, you arrogant piece of—’
‘Now we can do this one of two ways.’ His words cut through her insult like a honed Qurhahian knife. ‘The easy way, or the hard way.’
‘You mean we do it your way, rather than mine?’
‘Bravo—that is exactly what I mean. If you behave reasonably—like a woman who wishes to bring no shame onto her own royal house, or the one you will embrace after your marriage to the Sultan—then everyone is happy.’
‘Happy?’ she echoed. ‘Are you out of your mind?’
‘There is no need for hysteria,’ he said repressively. ‘Our journey to Qurhah may not be an expedition which either of us would choose, but I don’t see why we can’t conduct ourselves in a relatively civilised manner if we put our minds to it.’
‘Civilised?’ Sara stood up and pushed herself away from the desk so violently that a whole pile of coloured felt-tips fell clattering to the ground. But she barely registered the noise or the mess. She certainly didn’t bend down to pick them up and not just because her skirt was so short. She felt a flare of rage and impotence—that Suleiman could just march in here as if he owned the place. Start flexing his muscles and telling her—telling her—that she must go back and marry a man she barely knew, didn’t particularly like and certainly didn’t love.
‘You think it’s civilised to hold a woman to a promise of marriage made when she was little more than a child? A forced marriage in which she had no say?’
‘Your father himself agreed to this marriage,’ said Suleiman implacably. ‘You know that.’
‘My father had no choice!’ she flared. ‘He was almost bankrupt by that point!’
‘I’m afraid that your father’s weakness and profligacy put him in that position. And let us not forget that it was the Sultan’s father who saved him from certain bankruptcy!’
‘By demanding my hand for his only son, in return?’ she demanded. ‘What kind of a man could do that, Suleiman?’
She saw that her heartfelt appeal had momentarily stilled him. That his flat black eyes had narrowed and were now partially obscured by the thick ebony lashes which had shuttered down to veil them. Had she been able to make him see the sheer lunacy of his proposal in this day and age? Couldn’t he see that it was barbaric for a woman of twenty-three to be taken back to a desert kingdom—no matter how fabled—and to be married against her will?
Once Suleiman had regarded her fondly—she knew that. If he allowed himself to forget that stupid kiss—that single lapse which should never have happened—then surely there still existed in his heart some of that same fondness. Surely he wasn’t happy for her to enter into such a barbaric union.
‘These dynastic marriages have always taken place,’ he said slowly. ‘It will not be as bad as you envisage, Sara—’
‘Really? How do you work that out?’
‘It is a great honour to marry such a man as the Sultan,’ he said, but he seemed to be having to force some kind of conviction into his words. He gave a heavy sigh. ‘Do you have any idea of the number of women who would long to become his Sultana—’
‘A sultana is something I put on my muesli every morning!’ she spat back.
‘You will be prized above all women,’ he continued. ‘And given the honour of bearing His Imperial Majesty’s sons and heirs. What woman could ask for more?’
For a moment Sara didn’t speak, she was so angry. The idea of such a marriage sounded completely abhorrent to her now, but, as Suleiman had just said, she had grown up in a world where such a barter was considered normal. She had been living in England for so long that it was easy to forget that she was herself a royal princess. That her English mother had married a desert king and produced a son and a much younger daughter.
If her mother had been alive she would have stopped this ludicrous marriage from happening, Sara was sure of that. But her mother had been dead for a long time—her father, too. And now the Sultan wanted to claim what was rightfully his.
She thought of the man who awaited her and she shivered. She knew that a lot of women thought of him as a swarthy sex-god, but she wasn’t among them. During their three, heavily chaperoned meetings—she had felt nothing for him. Nada.
But mightn’t that have had something to do with the fact that Suleiman had been present all those times? Suleiman with his glittering black eyes and his hard, honed body who had distracted her so badly that she couldn’t think straight.
She glared at him. ‘Doesn’t it strike at your conscience to take a woman back to Qurhah against her will? Do you always do whatever the Sultan asks you, without questioning it? His tame puppet!’
A nerve flickered at his temple. ‘I no longer work for the Sultan.’
For a moment she stared at him in disbelief. ‘What...what are you talking about? The Sultan values you above all other men. Everyone knows that. You are his prized emissary and the man on whom he relies.’
He shook his head. ‘Not any longer. I have returned to my own land, where I have built a different kind of life for myself.’
She wanted to ask him what kind of life that was, but she reminded herself that what Suleiman did was none of her business. He doesn’t want you. He doesn’t even seem to like you any more. ‘Then why are you here?’
‘As a favour to Murat. He thought that you might prove too much of a challenge for most of his staff.’
‘But not for you, I suppose?’
‘Not for me,’ he agreed.
She wanted to tell him to wipe that smug smile off his face and get out of her office and if he didn’t, then she would call security and get them to remove him. But was that such a good idea? Her eyes flickered doubtfully over his powerful body and immovable stance. Was she seriously suggesting that anyone could budge him if he didn’t want to go?
She thought about her boss. Wouldn’t Gabe Steel have Suleiman evicted from the building if she asked him? Though when she stopped to think about it—did she really want to go bleating to her boss for help? She had no desire to blight her perfect working record by bringing her private life into the workplace. Because wouldn’t Gabe—and all her colleagues—be amazed to discover that she wasn’t just someone called Sara Williams, but a half-blood desert princess from the desert country of Dhi’ban? That she had capitalised on her mother’s English looks and used her mother’s English surname to blend in since she’d been working here in London. And blend in, she had—adopting the fashions and the attitudes of other English women her age.
No, this was not a time for opposition—or at least, not a time for open opposition. She didn’t want Suleiman’s suspicions alerted. She needed to lull him. To let him think that he had won. That she would go with him—not too meekly or he would suspect that something was amiss, but that she would go with him.
She shrugged her shoulders as if she were reluctantly conceding victory and backed it up with a resigned sigh. ‘I suppose there’s no point in me trying to change your mind?’
His smile was cold. ‘Do you really think you could?’
‘No, I suppose not,’ she said, as if his indifference didn’t matter. As if she didn’t care what he thought of her.
But she felt as if somebody had just taken her dreams and trampled on them. He was the only man she had ever wanted. The only man she’d ever loved. Yet Suleiman thought so little of her that he could just hand her over to another man, as if she were a parcel he was delivering.
‘Don’t look like that, Sara.’ His black eyes narrowed and she saw that little muscle flicker at his temple once more. ‘If you open your mind a little—you might find that you can actually enjoy your new life. That you can be a good wife. You will have strong sons and beautiful daughters and this will make the people of Qurhah very happy.’
For a moment, Sara thought she heard the hint of uncertainty in his voice. As if he was trotting out the official line without really believing it. Was he? Or was it true what they said—that something in his own upbringing had hardened his heart so that it was made of stone? So that he didn’t care about other people’s feelings—because he didn’t have any of his own.
Well, Suleiman’s feelings were none of her business. She didn’t care about them because she couldn’t afford to. She needed to know what his plans were—and how to react to them accordingly.
‘So what happens now?’ she asked casually. ‘Do I give a month’s notice here and then fly out to Qurhah towards the end of January?’
His mouth twisted, as if she had just said something uniquely funny. ‘You think that you are free to continue to make the Sultan wait for your presence?’ he questioned. ‘I’m afraid that those days are over. You will fly out to Qurhah tonight. And you are leaving this building with me, right now.’
Panic—pure and simple—overwhelmed her. She could feel the doors of the prison clanging to a close. Suleiman’s dark features blurred for a second, before clicking back into sharp focus, and she tried to pull herself together.
‘I’ll...I’ll need to pack first,’ she said.
‘Of course.’ He inclined his dark head but not before she could see the sudden glint of fire in his eyes. ‘Though I doubt whether your mini-skirt will cut it in your new role as Sultana. A far more suitable wardrobe will be provided for you, so why bother?’
‘I’m not talking about my clothes!’ she flared back. ‘Surely you won’t deny me my trinkets and keepsakes? The jewellery my mother left me and the book my father published after her death?’
For a moment she wondered if she had imagined the faint look of disquiet which briefly flickered in his eyes. But it was gone as quickly as it had appeared and she told herself to stop attributing thoughts and feelings to him, just because she wanted him to have them. Because he didn’t.
‘Very well,’ he said. ‘That can be arranged. Now let’s go—I have a car waiting downstairs.’
Sara’s heart missed a beat. Of course he had a car waiting. Probably with a couple of heavies inside. That feeling of being trapped closed in on her again and suddenly she knew that she wasn’t going to take this lying down. She would not go meekly with Suleiman Abd al-Aziz—she would slip through his hands like an eel plucked from an icy river.
‘I have to finish up in here,’ she said. ‘I can’t just walk out for ever without putting my work in some kind of order.’
His face was unreadable. ‘How long will it take?’
Sara felt her mouth dry as she wondered realistically how much time she could plead to play with. ‘A few hours?’
‘Don’t test my patience, Sara. Two hours will be more than adequate for what you need to do. I will be waiting with my men at your apartment.’ He walked over to the door and paused. ‘And don’t be late,’ he said softly.
With one final warning flickering from his black eyes, he was gone. She waited until she heard the ping of the lift in the corridor and the sound of the elevator doors closing—but she was still paranoid enough to poke her head outside the office to check that he really had gone. That he wasn’t standing in the shadows spying on her and waiting to see what she would do next.
She shut the office door and walked over to one of the giant windows which overlooked the dark glitter of the river, feeling a stab of pain in her heart. She had loved working here. She had loved the freedom and the creativity of being part of Gabe Steel’s enormous organisation.
But now it was all coming to an end, whether she wanted it to or not.
Like hell it was.
An idea began to form in her mind. A plan so audacious that for a moment she wondered if she dared go ahead with it. Yet what choice did she have? To go with Suleiman, like a sheep to the slaughter? To be forced to share a bed with the hawk-faced Sultan—a man for whom she had felt not one whisper of chemistry?
She picked up the office phone instead of her own mobile phone. Because if they’d had bodyguards watching her all this time—who was to say they hadn’t bugged her phone?
It didn’t take her long to get the information she wanted from the Business Development Director, who was in charge of the company’s public relations. Judging by the noise in the background, he was clearly at some sort of Christmas party and gave her a list of journalists without asking any questions.
Her fingers were trembling as she dialled the first number and listened to the ring tone. Maybe nobody would pick up. Maybe they’d all set off home for Christmas—all going to some storybook destination with a wreath on the door and a roaring log fire, with the smell of chestnuts and pine scenting the air.
They wouldn’t be spending their Christmas Eve like her—with a car full of cold-faced men sitting outside the building, waiting to take her away to an unknown and unwanted future.
‘Hello?’
She took a deep breath. ‘Look, I know this is going to sound crazy—but I’ve got a story you might be interested in.’ Her fingers dug into the phone as she listened. ‘Details? Sure I can give you details. How about the proposed kidnap of a woman, who is being taken against her will to the desert country of Qurhah to marry a man she doesn’t want to marry? You like that? I rather thought you might—and it’s all yours. An exclusive. But we haven’t got long. I need to leave London before six o’ clock.’
CHAPTER TWO (#ua8d75ed4-f592-530f-a694-f5be57ded45b)
SULEIMAN BROUGHT THE car to a halt so that it was hidden beneath the shadows of the trees, but still within sight of the cottage. The other cars all waited in darkness at various intervals down the country lane, as he had instructed them to do.
He turned off the lights. Rain spattered relentlessly across the windscreen, running in thick rivulets down the glass. For a moment he sat watching the lighted windows of the house. He saw Sara’s unmistakable silhouette going around, pulling the drapes tightly shut, and he felt a potent combination of anger and satisfaction. But alongside his triumph at having tracked her down, a deep disquiet ran through his veins like slow poison.
He should have refused this job.
He should have told Murat that his schedule did not allow him time to travel to England and deal with the princess.
But the Sultan did not ask favours of many men and the bonds of loyalty and gratitude ran deeper than Suleiman had anticipated. And although he would have given anything to have avoided this particular task, somehow he had found himself accepting it. Yet just one sight of her today had reinforced what a fool he had been. Better to have thrown himself to the mercy of a starving lion, than to have willingly closeted himself with the temptress Sara.
He remembered the honeyed taste of her lips and her intoxicating perfume of jasmine mixed with patchouli. He remembered the pert thrust of her breast beneath his questing fingers and the way his body had ached for her afterwards. The frustrated lust which seemed to have gone on for months.
His hands tightened around the steering wheel. Women like her were born to create trouble. To make men want them and then to use their sexual power to destroy them. Hadn’t her own mother—a fabled beauty in her time—brought down the king who had spent his life in slavish devotion to her? A husband who had spent so much time enthralled by her that he had barely noticed his country slipping into bankruptcy.
He drew in a deep, meditative breath, forcing all the frustrating thoughts from his mind. He must go and do what he needed to do and then leave and never see her again.
With a stealth nurtured by years of undercover work, he waited until he was certain the coast was clear before he got out of the car and silently pulled the door shut behind him. He saw one of the limousines parked further down the lane flash its lights at him.
Avoiding the crunch of the gravel path, he felt his shoes sink into the sodden mud of the lawn which ran alongside it. But the night was fearsome and the weather atrocious and he was soaked within seconds, despite his long-legged stride towards the front door.
He was half tempted to break in by one of the back windows and then to walk in and confront her to show just how vulnerable she really was. But that would be cruel and he had no desire to be cruel to her.
Did he?
His mouth hardened as he lifted one rain-soaked hand to the door handle and knocked.
If she was sensible, she wouldn’t answer. Instead, she would phone the local police station and tell them she had an intruder banging on the door of this isolated cottage on Christmas Eve.
But clearly she wasn’t being sensible because he could hear the sound of her approaching footsteps and his body tensed as adrenalin flooded through him.
She pulled open the door, her violet eyes widening as she registered his identity. For a split second she reacted quickly, trying desperately to shut the door again—but her reactions were not as fast as his. Few people’s were. He placed the flat of his hand on the weathered knocker and blocked her move until she had the sense to step back as he entered the hallway, pushing the door shut behind him.
For a moment there was silence in that small hallway, other than the soft drip of rainwater onto the stone tiles. He could see that she was too stunned to speak—and so was he, but for very different reasons. She might be regarding him with horror but no such feelings were dominating his own mind right then.
She had changed from the provocative dress she’d been wearing in her office earlier. Her hair was loose and her jeans and pink sweater were not particularly clingy, yet still they managed to showcase the magnificence of her body.
He knew it was wrong but he couldn’t stop himself from drinking her in, like a man lost in the desert who had just been handed a jug of cool water. Was she aware of her beauty? Of the fact that she looked like a goddess? A goddess in blue jeans.
‘Suleiman!’ Her voice sounded startled and her violet eyes were dark.
‘Surprised?’ he questioned.
‘You could say that! And horrified.’ She glared at him. ‘What do you think you’re doing—pushing your way in here like some sort of heavy?’
‘I thought we had an appointment to meet at six, but since it is now almost eight, you appear to have broken it. Shockingly bad manners, Sara. Especially for a future queen of the desert.’
‘Tough!’ she retorted. ‘And I’m not going to be a queen of the desert. I already told you that I have no intention of getting married. Not to Murat and not to anyone! So why waste everybody’s time by turning up? Can’t you just go back to the Sultan and tell him to forget the whole idea?’
Suleiman heard the determination in her voice and felt an unwilling flare of admiration for her unashamed—and very stupid—defiance. Such open insubordination was unheard of from a woman from the desert lands and it was rather magnificent to observe her spirited rebellion. But he didn’t let it show. Instead, he injected a note of disapproval into his voice. ‘I am waiting for an explanation about why you failed to show.’
‘Do you realise you sound exactly like a schoolteacher? I don’t really think you’d need to be a detective to work out my no-show. I don’t like having my arm twisted.’
‘Clearly you hadn’t thought things through properly, if you imagined it was going to be that easy to shake me off,’ he said. ‘But you’re here now.’
She eyed him speculatively ‘I could knock you over the back of the head and make a run for it.’
His mouth quirked at the corners, despite all his best efforts not to smile. ‘And if you did, you would run straight into the men I have positioned all the way down the lane. Don’t even think about it, Sara. And please don’t imagine that I haven’t thought of every eventuality, because I have.’
He pulled off his dripping coat and hung it on a peg.
She glared at him. ‘I don’t remember asking you to take your coat off!’
‘I don’t require your permission.’
‘You are impossible!’ she hissed.
‘I have never denied that.’
‘Oh,’ she said, her voice frustrated as she turned round and marched towards a room where he could see a fire blazing.
He followed her into a room which had none of the ornaments the English were so fond of cramming into their country homes. There were no china dogs or hangings made of brass. No jumbled oil paintings of ships which hinted at a naval past. Instead, the walls were pale and contrasted with the weathered beams of wood in the ceiling. The furniture was quirky but looked comfortable and the few contemporary paintings worked well, though in theory they shouldn’t have done. Whoever owned this had taste, as well as money.
‘Whose cottage is this?’ he questioned.
‘My lover’s.’
He took a step forward, so that his shadow fell over her defiant features. ‘Please don’t jest with me, Sara. I’m not in the mood for it.’
‘How do you know I’m jesting?’
‘I hope you are. Because if I thought for a moment that you had been intimate with another man—then I would seek him out and tear him from limb to limb.’
As she heard his venomous but undoubtedly truthful words Sara swallowed, reminding herself that it wasn’t a question of Suleiman being jealous. He had only uttered the threat out of loyalty to the Sultan.
She wished he hadn’t turned up and yet if she’d stopped to think about it for more than a second—she must have known he would follow her. If Suleiman took on a task, then Suleiman would see it through. No matter what obstacles were put before him, he would conquer them. That was why the Sultan had asked him—and why he was so respected and feared within the desert nations.
She had driven here without really thinking about the consequences of her action, only about her urgent need to get away. Not just from the dark certainty of her future, but from this man. The man who had rejected her, yet could still make her heart race with desire and longing.
But his face was as cold as a stone mask. His body language was tense and forbidding. Suleiman’s feelings towards her had clearly not changed since the night he’d kissed her and then thrust her away from him. She swallowed. How could she bear to spend hours travelling with him, towards a dark fate which seemed unendurable?
‘It’s my boss, Gabe Steel’s cottage,’ she said. ‘And how did you find me?’
‘It wasn’t difficult,’ he said. ‘You forget that I have tracked down quarry far more elusive than a stubborn princess. Actually, it was your sudden unexpected consent to my plan which alerted my suspicions. It is not like you to be so acquiescent, Sara. I suspected that you would try to give my men the slip so I hid outside the side entrance to your office block and followed you to the car park.’
‘You hid? Outside my office block?’
‘You find that so bizarre?’
‘Of course I do!’ Her heart was hammering in her chest. ‘I live in England now and I live an English life, Suleiman. One where men don’t usually lurk in shadows, following women who don’t want to be followed. Why, you could have been arrested for trespass—especially if my boss had any idea that you were stalking me.’
‘Unlikely—for I am never seen if I do not wish to be seen,’ he said arrogantly. ‘You must have known it was a futile attempt to try to escape, so why do it, Sara? Did you really think you could get away with it?’
‘Go to hell!’
‘I’m not going anywhere and certainly not without you.’
She hated the ruthless tone of his voice. She hated the unresponsive look on his hard face. Suddenly she wanted to shake him. To provoke him. To get some sort of reaction which would make her feel as if she was dealing with a real person, instead of a cold block of stone. ‘I was waiting here,’ she said deliberately. ‘For my lover.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘And why not?’ she demanded. ‘Am I so repulsive that you can’t imagine that a man might actually want to take me to bed?’
For a moment Suleiman stilled, telling himself that he wouldn’t fall into the trap she was so obviously laying for him. She was trying to rile him. Trying to get him to admit to something he was not prepared to admit. Even to himself. Concentrate on the facts, he told himself fiercely—and not on her blonde-haired beauty, or her soft curves which nature must have invented with the intention of sending any man crazy with longing.
‘I think you know the answer to that question—and I’m not going to flatter your ego by answering it. Your desirability has never been in question, but you seem to imply that your virtue is.’
‘What if it is?’ she challenged, her voice growing reckless. ‘But I don’t have to explain myself to you and I’m certainly not going to take orders from you. Do you want to know why?’
‘Not really,’ he said, in a bored tone.
‘I think you might.’ She licked her lips in a cat-got-the-cream expression and then smiled. ‘It might interest you to know that in between your invasion of my office and following me here, I have spoken to a journalist.’
There was a pause. Suleiman’s eyes narrowed. ‘I hope that’s a joke.’
‘It’s not.’
There was another moment of silence before he could bring himself to speak. ‘And what did you tell the journalist?’
She scraped her fingers back through her blonde hair and smirked. ‘I told him the truth. No need to look so scared, Suleiman. I mean, who in their right mind could possibly object to the truth?’
‘Let’s get one thing straight,’ he said, biting the words out from between gritted teeth. ‘I am not scared—of anyone or anything. I think you may be in danger of mistaking my anger for fear, though perhaps you would do well to feel fear yourself. Because if the Sultan finds out that you have spoken to the western press, then things are going to get very tricky. So I shall ask you again and this time I want a straight answer—what exactly did you tell the journalist?’
Sara stared into the spitting blackness of his eyes and some of her bravado wavered, until she told herself that she wasn’t going to be intimidated. She had worked too hard and too long to forge a new life to allow these powerful men to control her. These desert men who would crush your very spirit if you allowed them to do so. So she wouldn’t let them.
Even her own mother—who had married a desert king and had loved him—had felt imprisoned by ancient royal rules which hadn’t changed for centuries and probably never would. Sara had witnessed for herself that sometimes love just wasn’t enough. So what chance would a marriage have if there was no love at all?
Her mother’s unhappiness had been the cause of her father’s ruination—and had ultimately governed Sara’s own fate. She hadn’t known that Papa was so obsessed by his English wife that he hadn’t paid proper attention to governing his country. Sara remembered that all too vividly. The Queen had been his possession and nothing else had really existed for him, apart from that.
He had taken his eye off the ball. Poor investments and a border war which went on too long meant that his country was left bankrupt. The late Sultan of Qurhah had come up with a deal for a bail-out plan and the price had been Sara’s hand in marriage.
When Sara’s mother had died and she had been allowed to go off to boarding school—hadn’t she thought that her father’s debt would just be allowed to fade with time? Hadn’t she been naïve and hopeful enough to think that the Sultan might just forget all about marrying her, as his own father had decreed he should?
Blinking back the sudden threat of tears, Sara tried to ignore the fierce expression on Suleiman’s face. She was not going to be made to feel guilty—when all she was doing was trying to save her own skin. And ultimately she would be doing the Sultan a favour—for surely it would damage the ego of such a powerful man if she was forced kicking and screaming to the altar.
‘I am waiting,’ he said, with silky venom, ‘for you to enlighten me. What did you tell the journalist, Sara?’
She met the accusation in his eyes. ‘I told him everything.’
‘Everything?’
‘Yes! I thought it would make a good story,’ she said. ‘At a time of year when newspapers are traditionally very light on news and—’
‘What did you tell him?’ he raged.
‘I told him the truth! That I was a half-blood princess—half English and half Dhi’banese. You know the papers—they just love any kind of royal connection!’ She forced a mocking smile, knowing that it would irritate him and wondering if irritating him was only a feeble attempt to suppress her desire for him. Because if it was, it wasn’t working. ‘I told him that my mother travelled as an artist to Dhi’ban, to paint the beautiful desert landscape—and that my father, the king, had fallen in love with her.’
‘Why did you feel it necessary to parade your private family history to a complete stranger?’
‘I’m just providing the backstory, Suleiman,’ she said. ‘Everyone knows you need a good backstory if you want an entertaining read. Anyway, it’s all there on record.’
‘You are severely testing my patience,’ he said. ‘You had no right to divulge these things!’
‘Surely the Sultan wouldn’t mind me discussing it?’ she questioned innocently. ‘This is a marriage we’re talking about, Suleiman—and marriages are supposed to be happy occasions. I say supposed to be, but that’s quite a difficult concept to pull off when the bride is being kidnapped! I have to say that the journalist seemed quite surprised when I told him that I had no say in this marriage. No, when I come to think of it—surprise is the wrong word. I’d say that astonished covered it better. And deeply shocked, of course.’
‘Shocked?’
‘Mmm. He seemed to find it odd—abhorrent, even—that the Sultan of Qurhah should want to marry a woman who had been bought for him by his own father!’
She saw his fists clench.
‘That is the way of the world you were brought into,’ he said unequivocably. ‘None of us can change the circumstances of our birth.’
‘No, we can’t. But that doesn’t mean we have to be made prisoners by it. We can use everything in our power to change our destinies! Can’t you see that, Suleiman?’
‘No!’
‘Yes,’ she argued passionately. ‘Yes and a thousand times yes!’ Her heart began to race as she saw something written on his carved features which made her stomach turn to jelly. Was it anger? Was it?
But anger would not have made him shake his head, as if he was trying to shake off thoughts of madness. Nor to make that little nerve flicker so violently at his olive-skinned temple. He took a step towards her and, for one heart-stopping moment, she thought he was about to pull her into his arms, the way he’d done on the night of her brother’s coronation.
And didn’t she want that? Wasn’t she longing for him to do just that, only this time not stop? This time they were alone and he could lie her down in front of that log fire and loosen her clothes and...
But he didn’t touch her. He stood a tantalisingly close distance away while his eyes sparked dark fire at her. She could see him swallowing, as if he had something bitter lodged in his throat.
‘You must accept your destiny,’ he said. ‘As I have accepted mine.’
‘Have you? Did “accepting your destiny” include kissing me on the night my brother was crowned, even though you knew I was promised to another?’
‘Don’t say that!’
The strangled words sounded almost powerless and Sara realised she’d never heard Suleiman sound like that before. Not even after he’d returned from his undercover duties in the Qurhah army, when he’d been thirty pounds lighter with a scar zigzagging down his neck. People said he’d been tortured, but if he had he never spoke of it—well, never to her. She remembered being profoundly shocked by his appearance and she felt a similar kind of shock washing over her now.
For it was not like looking at Suleiman she knew of old. It was like looking at a stranger. A repressed and forbidding stranger. His features had closed up and his eyes were hooded. Had she really thought he was about to kiss her? Why, kissing looked like the furthest thing on his mind.
‘We will not speak of that night again,’ he said.
‘But it’s true, isn’t it?’ she questioned. ‘You weren’t so moralistic when you touched me like that.’
‘Because most men would have died rather than resist you that night,’ he admitted bitterly. ‘And I chose not to die. I hadn’t seen you for six long years and then I saw you, with your big painted eyes and your silver gown, shining like the moon.’
Briefly, Suleiman closed his eyes, because that kiss had been like no other, no matter how much he had tried to deny it. It hadn’t just been about sex or lust. It had been much more powerful than that, and infinitely more dangerous. It had been about feeding a hunger as fundamental as the need to eat or drink. It had felt as necessary as breathing. And yet it had angered him, because it had seemed outside his control. Up until that moment he had regarded the young princess with nothing more than indulgent friendship. What had happened that night had taken him completely by surprise. He swallowed. Perhaps that was why it had been the most unforgettable kiss of his life.
‘Didn’t you realise how much I wanted you that night, Sara, even though you were promised to the Sultan? Were you not aware of your own power?’
‘So it was all my fault?’
‘No. It is not your “fault” that you looked beautiful enough to test the appetites of a saint. I blame no one but myself for my unforgivable weakness. But it is a weakness which will never be repeated,’ he ground out. ‘And yes, I blame you if you have now given an interview which will bring shame on the reputation of the Sultan and his royal house.’
‘Then ask him to set me free,’ she said simply. ‘To let me go. Please, Suleiman.’
Suleiman met the appeal in her big violet eyes and for a moment he almost wavered. For wasn’t it a terrible crime to see the beautiful and spirited Sara forced to marry a man she did not love? Could he really imagine her lying in the marital bed and submitting to the embraces of a man she claimed not to want? And then he told himself that Murat was a legendary lover. And even though it made him feel sick to acknowledge it—it was unlikely that Sara would lie unresponsive in Murat’s bed for too long.
‘I can’t do that,’ he said, but the words felt like stone as he let them fall from his lips. ‘I can’t allow you to reject the Sultan; I would be failing in my duty if I did. It is a question of pride.’
‘Pride!’ Angrily, she shook her head. ‘What price pride? What if I refuse to allow him to consummate the marriage?’ she challenged. ‘What then? Won’t he skulk away to his harem and take his pleasure elsewhere?’
He flinched as if she had hit him. ‘This discussion has become completely inappropriate,’ he bit out angrily. ‘But you would be wise to consider the effect of your actions on your brother, the King—even though I know you never bother to visit him. There are some in your country who wonder whether the King still has a sister, so rarely does she set foot in her homeland.’
‘My relationship with my brother is none of your business—and neither are my trips home!’
‘Maybe not. But you would do well to remember that Qurhah continues to shoulder some of your country’s national debt. How would your brother feel if the Sultan were to withdraw his financial support because of your behaviour?’
‘You bastard,’ she hissed, but she might as well have been whispering on the wind, for all the notice he took.
‘My skin is thick enough to withstand your barbed comments, princess. I am delivering you to the Sultan and nothing will prevent that. But first, I want the name of the journalist you’ve been dealing with.’
She made one last stab at rebellion. ‘And if I won’t tell you?’
‘Then I will find out for myself,’ he said, in a tone which made a shiver trickle down her spine. ‘Why not save me the time and yourself my anger?’
‘You’re a brute,’ she breathed. ‘An egocentric brute.’
‘No, Sara, I just want the story spiked.’
Frustration washed over her as she recognised that he meant business. And that she was fighting a useless battle here.
‘His name is Jason Cresswell,’ she said sulkily. ‘He works for the Daily View.’
‘Good. Perhaps you are finally beginning to see sense. You might learn that co-operation is infinitely more preferable to rebellion. Now leave me while I speak with him in private.’ He glanced at her as he pulled his mobile phone from his pocket.
‘Go and get your coat on. Because after I’ve finished with the journalist we’re heading for the airfield, where the plane is waiting to take you to your new life in Qurhah.’
CHAPTER THREE (#ua8d75ed4-f592-530f-a694-f5be57ded45b)
THE FLIGHT WAS smooth and the aircraft supremely comfortable but Suleiman couldn’t sleep. For the past seven hours during the journey to Qurhah, he had been kept awake by the tormenting thoughts of what he was doing.
He felt his heart clench. What was he doing?
Taking a woman to a man she did not love.
A woman he wanted for himself.
Restlessly, he moved noiselessly around the craft, wishing that there were somewhere to look other than at the sleeping Sara. But although he could have joined the two pilots in the cockpit or tried to rest in the sealed-off section at the far end of the plane, neither option appealed. He couldn’t seem to tear his eyes away from her.
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Sharon Kendrick
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
Отзывы: Пока нет Добавить отзыв
О книге: Sara Williams’s hand in marriage was bought and paid for when she was a child to cover a debt the size of a small country. She knew her wedding day would come, but now an independent career woman, Sara is determined never to marry anyone!Sara’s only escape from this marriage is ruination so sets about seducing her achingly handsome but unmovable escort… Middle Eastern diplomat Suleiman Abd al-Aziz has the honour of delivering Sara to her desert destiny – the bed of her Sheikh fiancé.But with his charge so sexy when she’s angry, and definitively forbidden, Suleiman’s iron will is tested to the limit.