Defiant in the Desert (12 page)

‘Oh, what’s the point?’ she said tiredly. ‘There is no point. We’ve shone the light on what we’ve got and seen all the gaping great cracks.’

‘I think you’ve made up your mind that it isn’t going to work,’ he said. ‘And maybe that’s the way it has to be. But since you’ve had your say, then let me have mine. And yes, I hold my hands up to all the charges you’ve just levelled at me. Yes, I’ve been “possessive and demanding and insanely jealous”. I’m not proud of the way I behaved earlier and I’m sorry. It’s been bubbling away for a while now and tonight it just seemed to spill over. But I wonder if you’ve stopped for a minute to ask yourself why?’

‘Because you’re still living in the Dark Ages? A typical desert male who will never change?’

He shook his head. ‘Let me tell you something else, Sara—that I may have failed to live up to your ideal of the ideal lover tonight, but I’ve sure as hell tried in other ways.’

‘How?’ She felt stupid standing there in her golden dress with her bangles dangling from her limp wrist. Like a butterfly which had been speared by a pin. ‘How have you tried?’

‘
How?
For a start, I have relocated into your poky London apartment—’

‘It is
not
poky!’

‘Oh, believe me,’ he said grimly, ‘it is. I’ve been trying to run a global business from the second bedroom and all I get from you is complaints about the phone ringing at odd hours.’

‘Is that
all
you get from me, Suleiman?’

He heard the unconsciously sultry note which had entered her voice and wondered if their angry words had scared her. And turned her on. Because didn’t women like to push a man to the brink—even though sometimes they didn’t like what happened when they got there?

‘No,’ he said. ‘I get a lot of good stuff, too. The best stuff ever, if you must know—but what we have is not sustainable.’

‘Not
sustainable
?’

He hardened his heart against the sudden darkening of her eyes and, even though he wanted to cross the room and pull her into his arms, he stood his ground. ‘You think I’m content to continue to be treated as some kind of mild irrelevance, while your job dominates everything?’

‘I told you that I needed to work.’

‘And I accepted that. I just hadn’t realised that you would be living at the office, virtually 24/7—as if you had to prove yourself. I don’t know if it was to me, or to your boss—to reassure him that you weren’t going to take off again. Or to show me that you’re an independent woman in your own right. But whatever it is—you aren’t facing up to the truth behind your actions.’

‘And you are, right?’

‘Maybe I am. And I’ll tell you what you seem so determined to ignore, if that’s what you want, Sara. Or even if it’s not what you want. Because I think you need to hear it.’

‘Oh, do you?’ She walked over to one of the squashy pink velvet sofas and sat down on it, leaning back with her arms crossed over her chest and a defiant expression on her face. ‘Go on, then. I can hardly wait.’

His eyes narrowed, because he could hear the vulnerability she was trying so hard to hide. But he needed to say this. No matter what the consequences. ‘I get it that you grew up in an unhappy home and that your mother felt trapped. But you are not your mother. Your circumstances are completely different.’

‘Not that different,’ she whispered. ‘Not when you treated me like that tonight. Like your possession.’

‘I’ve held up my hands for that. I’ve said sorry. I would tell you truthfully that I would never behave in that way again, but it’s too late.’

Her arms fell to her side. ‘What do you mean, too late?’

‘For us. I’ve tried to change and to adapt to being with you. I may not have instantly succeeded, but at least I gave it a go. But not you. You’ve stayed locked inside your own fear. You’re scared, Sara. You’re scared of who you really are. That’s what made you run away from Dhi’ban. That’s why you let your job consume you.’

‘My father gave me permission to go away to boarding school—I didn’t
run away
.’

‘But you never go back, do you?’

‘Because my life is here.’

‘I know it is. But you have family. Your only family, in fact. When did you last see your brother? I heard that you were at his wedding celebrations for less than twenty-four hours.’

Briefly she wondered how he knew something like that. Had he been
spying
on her? ‘I couldn’t stay for long...I was in the middle of an important job.’

‘Sure you were. Just like you always are. But you have vacations like other people, don’t you, Sara? Couldn’t you have gone over to see him from time to time? Didn’t you ever think that being a king can be a lonely job? Hasn’t his wife had a baby? Have you even
seen
your niece?’

‘I sent them a gift when she was born,’ she said defensively, and saw his mouth harden with an expression which suddenly made her feel very uncomfortable.

‘You might want to reject your past,’ he grated. ‘But you can’t deny the effect it’s had on you. You may hate some things about desert life—but half of you
is
of the desert. Hide from that and you’re hiding from yourself—and that’s a scary place to be. I know that. You were one of the reasons I knew I could no longer work for Murat, but what happened between us that night made me re-examine my life. I realised that I couldn’t continue playing a subordinate role out of some lingering sense of gratitude to a man who had plucked me from poverty.’ He looked at her. ‘But that’s all irrelevant now. I need to pack.’

Her head jerked up as if she were a puppet and somebody had just given the string a particularly violent tug. ‘Pack? What for?’ She could hear the rising note of panic in her voice. ‘What are you packing for?’

‘I’m going.’ His voice was almost gentle. ‘It’s over, Sara. We’ve had good times and bad times, but it’s over. I recognise that and sooner or later you will, too. And I don’t want to destroy all the good memories by continuing to slug it out, so I’m leaving now.’

She was swallowing convulsively. ‘But it’s late.’

‘I know it is.’

‘You could... Couldn’t you stay tonight and go in the morning?’

‘I can’t do that, Sara.’

‘No.’ She shrugged as if it didn’t matter. As if she didn’t care. ‘No, I guess you can’t.’

Her lips were trembling as she watched him turn round and walk from the sitting room. She could hear the sounds he made as he clattered around in the bathroom, presumably clearing away that lethal-looking razor he always used. A terrible sense of sadness—and an even greater sense of failure—washed over her as he appeared in the doorway, carrying his leather overnight bag.

‘I’ll collect the rest of my stuff tomorrow, while you’re at work.’

She stood up. Her legs were unsteady. She wanted to run over to him and tell him to stop. That it had all been a horrible mistake. Like a bad dream which you woke from and discovered that none of it had been real. But this
was
real. Real and very painful.

She wasn’t going to be that red-eyed woman clinging onto his leg as he walked out of the door, she reminded herself.
Was she?
And surely they could say goodbye properly. A lifetime of friendship didn’t have to end like
this
.

‘A last kiss?’ she said lightly, sounding like some vacuous socialite he’d just met at a cocktail party.

His mouth hardened. He looked...
appalled.
As if she had just suggested holding an all-night rave on someone’s grave.

‘I don’t think so,’ he said grimly, before turning to slam his way out of her apartment—leaving only a terrible echoing emptiness behind.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

T
HE
APARTMENT
FELT
bare without him.

Her life felt bare without him.

Sara felt as if she’d woken up on a different planet.

It reminded her of when she’d arrived at her boarding school in England, at the impressionable age of twelve. It had been a bitter September day, and the contrast to the hot desert country she’d left behind couldn’t have been more different. She remembered shivering as the leaves began to be ripped from the trees by the wind, and she’d had to get used to the unspeakably stodgy food and cold, dark mornings. And even though she had known that here in England lay the future she had wanted—it had still felt like being on an alien planet for a while.

But that was nothing to the way she felt now that Suleiman had gone.

Hadn’t she thought—prayed—that he hadn’t meant it? That he would have cooled off by morning. That he would come back and they could make up. She could say sorry, as he had done. They could learn from their mistakes, and work out what they both wanted from their lives and walk forward into the future together.

He didn’t come back.

She watched the clock. She checked her phone. She waited in.

And even though her pride tried to stop her—eventually she dialled his number. She was clutching a golden pen she’d found on the floor of the second bedroom—the only reminder that Suleiman had ever used the room as an office. He had loved this pen and would miss it, she convinced herself, even though she knew he had a dozen other pens he could use.

But he didn’t pick up. The phone rang through to a brisk-sounding male assistant, who told her that Suleiman was travelling. In as casual a tone as she could manage, she found herself asking where—only to suffer the humiliation of the assistant telling her that security issues meant that he would rather not say.

Where was he travelling to? Sara wondered—as she put the phone down with a trembling hand. Had he gone back to Paris? Was he lying in that penthouse suite with another blonde climbing all over him wearing kinky boots and tiny knickers?

With a shaking hand she put the gold pen down carefully on the desk and then she forced herself to dress and went into the office.

But for the first time in her life, she couldn’t concentrate on work.

Alice asked her several questions, which she had to repeat because Sara wasn’t paying attention. Then she spilt her coffee over a drawing she’d been working on and completely ruined it. The days seemed to rush past her in a dark stream of heartache. Her thoughts wouldn’t focus. She couldn’t seem to allocate her time into anything resembling
order
. Everything seemed a mess.

At the end of the week, Gabe called her into the office and asked her to sit down and she could see from his face that he wasn’t happy.

‘What’s wrong?’ he questioned bluntly.

‘Nothing’s wrong.’

‘Sara,’ he said. ‘If you can’t do your job properly, then you really shouldn’t come to work.’

She swallowed. ‘That bad, huh?’

He shrugged. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

Miserably, she shook her head. Gabe was a good boss in many ways but she knew what they said about him—steely by name and steely by nature. ‘Not really.’

‘Look, take a week off,’ he said. ‘And for God’s sake, sort it out.’

She nodded, thinking that men really
were
very different from women. It was all so black and white to them. What if it couldn’t be sorted out? What if Suleiman had gone from her life for good?

She left the building and walked out into the fresh air, where a gust of wind seemed to blow right through her. She hugged her sheepskin coat closer and began to walk, thinking about the things Suleiman had said to her.

Thoughts she’d been trying to block out were now given free rein as she examined them.
Had
she run away from her old life and tried to deny it? Pretended that part of her didn’t exist?

Yes, she had.

Had she behaved thoughtlessly, neglecting the only family she had? Rushing away from the wedding celebrations and not even bothering to get on a plane to go and see her new niece?

She closed her eyes.

Yes, again.

She’d thought of herself as so independent and mature, and yet the first thing she had done was to lift up the phone to Suleiman. What had she been planning to say to him? Start whining that she missed him and wanted him to come back to make her feel better?

That wasn’t independence, was it? That was more like co-dependence. And you couldn’t rely on somebody else to make you feel better about yourself.

She needed to face up to the stuff she’d locked away for so long. She’d been so busy playing the part of Sara Williams who had integrated so well into English life and making sure she fitted in that she had forgotten the other Sara.

The desert princess. The sister. The auntie.

And that other Sara was just as important.

A lump came into her throat as she lifted her hand to hail a cab and during the drive to her apartment she started making plans to try to put it right.

She managed to get a flight out to Dhi’ban later that evening. It meant she would have a two-hour stopover in Qurhah, but she could cope with that. Oddly enough, she wasn’t tempted to ask her brother to send a plane to Qurhah to collect her—and she would sooner walk bare-footed across the desert than ask Suleiman to come to her aid.

She spent the intervening hours shopping and packing and then she dressed as conservatively and as unobtrusively as possible, because she didn’t want anyone getting wind of her spontaneous visit.

The journey was long and tiring and she blinked with surprise when eventually she arrived at Dhi’ban’s main airport, because she hardly recognised it. The terminal buildings had been extended and were now gleaming and modern. There were loads of shops selling cosmetics and beautiful Dhi’banese jewellery and clothes. And there...

She looked up to see a portrait of her brother, the King, and she thought how stern he looked. Sterner than she’d ever seen him, wearing the crown that her father had worn.

Inevitably, she was recognised as she went through Customs, but she waved aside the troubled protestations of the officials, telling them that she had no desire for a red carpet.

‘I didn’t want any kind of fuss or reception,’ she said, smiling as she held up the large pink parcel she had purchased at Qurhah’s airport. ‘I want this to be a surprise. For my niece, the princess Ayesha.’

The palm-fringed road was reassuringly familiar and when she saw her childhood home appear in the distance, with the morning light bouncing off the white marble, she felt her heart twist with a mixture of pleasure and pain.

She’d never seen the guards outside the main gates look more surprised than when she stepped from the airport cab into the bright sunshine. But today she wasn’t impatient when they bowed deeply. Today she recognised that they were just doing their job. They respected her position as Princess—and maybe it was about time that she started respecting it, too.

She walked through the grounds and into the palace. Her watch told her that it was almost two o’clock and she wondered if her brother was working. She realised that she didn’t know anything about his life and she barely knew Ella, his wife.

But before she could decide what to do next, there was Haroun walking towards her. His features—a stronger, more masculine version of her own—were initially perplexed and then he broke into a wide smile as he held out his arms.

‘Is it really you, Sara?’

‘It really is me,’ she whispered, glad that he chose that moment to gather her in his arms in a most un-Kingly bear-hug, which meant that she had time to blink away her tears and compose herself.

Within the hour she was sitting with Haroun and his wife Ella and begging their forgiveness. She told them she felt guilty about her absence, but if they were prepared to forgive her—she would like to be part of their lives. And could she please see her niece?

The royal couple looked at one another and smiled with deep satisfaction, before Ella hugged her tightly and said Ayesha was sleeping, and that Sara could see her once they had taken tea.

The three of them sat in the scented bower of the rose garden and drank mint tea. She started to tell them about the Sultan, but of course Haroun knew about the cancelled wedding, because the politicians and diplomats from the two countries were working on a new alliance.

‘So you’ve
seen
Murat?’ she asked cautiously.

‘I have.’

‘And did he...did he seem upset?’

‘Not unless your idea of upset is being photographed with a stunning woman,’ laughed Haroun.

It was only after gentle prompting that she was persuaded to tell them about Suleiman and how much she loved him. Her voice was shaky as she said it, because she’d realised that the truth was something she couldn’t keep running from either.

‘But it’s over,’ she said.

Ella looked at Haroun, and frowned. ‘You
like
Suleiman, don’t you, darling?’

‘I don’t like him when I’m playing backgammon,’ Haroun growled.

Sara was shown to her old room and there, set between the two gold-framed portraits of her late mother and father, was a book about horses, which Suleiman had bought for her twelfth birthday, just before she’d left for England.

For the brave and fearless Sara
, he had written.
Your friend, Suleiman. Always
.

And that was when the sobs began to erupt from her throat, because she had been none of those things, had she? She had not been brave and fearless—she had been a coward who had run away and hidden and neglected her family. She hadn’t lived up to Suleiman’s expectations of her. She hadn’t been a real friend. She hadn’t fulfilled her potential in so many ways.

She bathed and changed and dried her eyes and Ella knocked on the door, to take her to the nursery. And that was poignant, too. Shielded from the light by swathed swags of softest tulle lay a sleeping baby in the large, rocking cot she had slept in herself. For a moment Sara touched the side and felt it sway, watching as Ella lifted out the sleepy infant.

Ayesha was soft and smiling, with a mop of silken curls and a pair of deep violet eyes. Sara felt her heart fill with love as she touched her fingertip to the baby’s plump and rosy cheek.

‘Oh, she’s beautiful,’ she said. ‘How old is she now?’

‘Nine months,’ said Ella. ‘I know. Time flies and all that. And by the way—they say she looks just like you.’

‘Do they?’

Ella smiled. ‘Check out your baby photos if you don’t believe me.’

Sara stared into the baby’s eyes and felt the sharp twist of pain. Was it normal to feel wistful for what might have been, but now never would? To imagine what kind of baby she and Suleiman might have produced?

‘I wonder if she’d come to me,’ she said, pulling a smiley face at the baby as she held out her arms.

But Ayesha wriggled and turned her face away and started to cry.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Ella. ‘She’ll get used to you.’

It took four days before Ayesha would consent to have her auntie hold her, but once she had—she seemed reluctant to ever let her go. Sara wondered if the baby instinctively guessed how badly she needed the cuddles. Or maybe there was some kind of inbuilt recognition—the primitive bond of shared blood.

She fitted in with Haroun and Ella’s routine, and began to relax as she reacquainted herself with Dhi’ban and life at court. She went riding with her brother. She helped Ella with the baby and quickly grew to love her sister-in-law.

One afternoon the two women were wheeling the pram through the palace gardens, their heads covered with shady hats. The week off work which Gabe had given her was almost up and Sara knew that she needed to give some serious thought to her future.

She just hadn’t decided what she wanted that future to be.

‘Shall we go back now?’ questioned Ella, her soft voice breaking into Sara’s thoughts.

‘Yes, let’s.’

Along the scented paths they walked, back towards the palace, but as they grew closer Sara saw a dark figure silhouetted against the white marble building. For a moment her eyes widened, until she forced her troubled mind to listen to reason.
Please stop this,
she prayed silently.
Stop conjuring up hallucinations which make me think I can actually see him.

She ran her hand across her eyelids, but when she opened them again he was still there and her steps faltered.

‘Is something wrong?’

Did Ella’s voice contain suppressed laughter—or was she imagining
that
, too?

‘For a minute then, I thought I saw Suleiman.’

‘Well, that’s because you did,’ said Ella gently. ‘He’s here. Suleiman’s here.’

The ground seemed suddenly to shift beneath Sara’s feet—the way it did when you stepped onto a large ship which looked motionless. She was aware of the rush of blood to her ears and the pounding of her heart in her chest. Questions streamed into her mind but her lips seemed too dry to do anything other than stumble out one bewildered word. ‘How?’

But Ella was walking away, wheeling the pram towards one of the side entrances, and Sara was left standing there, feeling exposed and scared and impossibly vulnerable. Now her legs felt heavy. As if her feet had suddenly turned to stone and it was going to be impossible for her to walk. But she
had
to walk. Independent women walked. They didn’t stumble—weak-kneed and hopeless—because the man they dreamed of had just appeared, like a blazing dark comet which had fallen to earth.

He didn’t move as she went towards him and it was impossible to read the expression on his dark face. Even as she grew closer she still couldn’t tell what he was thinking. But hadn’t he told her himself that he was famous at the card table for being able to keep a poker-straight face?

She was trying to quell the hope which had risen up inside her—because dashed hopes were surely worse than no hope at all. But she couldn’t keep her voice steady as she stood before him, and the pain of wanting to hold him again was almost physical.