Defiant in the Desert (23 page)

He shot Isobel a glance, remembering the way their gazes had met over the dark curly head of his nephew. Had that been wistfulness he’d read in her eyes as she’d held the baby in her arms? Was she doing that clucky thing which seemed to happen to all women, no matter how much they tried to deny it? Especially if they knew that a man was watching them...

But why
shouldn’t
she long for babies of her own? That was what women were conditioned to do. The most unforgivable thing would be for a man who didn’t want children to waste the time of a woman who
did.

He saw that her eyes were now closed. Her cheeks looked as smooth as marble. Her grey dress and the new opals were muted in the subdued light of the car. Only her magnificent mane of hair provided glowing life and colour. And suddenly, in this quiet place, all the things he usually blotted out came crowding into his mind.

He hadn’t given any thought to the future. He hadn’t planned this affair with Izzy—it had just sprung up, out of the blue, and been surprisingly good. But sooner or later something had to give. It wasn’t for ever. His relationships never were. And the longer it went on, then surely the more it would fill her with false hope. She might start seeing a happy-ever-after for them both—which was never going to happen. Wasn’t it better and more honest to end it now, before he really hurt her—a woman he liked and respected far too much to ever want to hurt?

He realised that she had fallen asleep, and although a part of him wanted to lean over and wake her with a kiss he reminded himself that this wasn’t a fairytale.

He was not that prince.

Gently, he shook her shoulder, and her big, tawny eyes snapped open.

‘Wake up, Izzy,’ he said softly.

‘What’s the matter?’ Groggily, she sat up and looked around. ‘Are we nearly home?’

It was her choice of word which helped make his mind up. Because for them there was no ‘home’ and there never would be. She had her place and he had his—and maybe it was time to start drawing a clear line between the two.

‘I’m going to get the car to drop me off,’ he said softly. ‘And then the driver will take you on to your apartment.’

Isobel snuggled up to him. ‘Don’t be silly,’ she murmured. ‘I’ll come home with you.’

There it was again—that seemingly innocuous word which now seemed weighted down with all kinds of heavy meaning.

‘Not tonight, Izzy. I have to take a conference call very early tomorrow, and it’s pointless the two of us being woken up.’ Lightly he brushed his lips over hers before drawing away—before the sweet taste of her could tempt him into changing his mind—glad that the limousine was now drawing up outside his apartment. ‘And, thanks to you, I got very little sleep last night.’

Feeling stupidly rejected, Isobel nodded. In a way, his explanation made things worse. It made her feel as if she was
wanting
something from him and he was withholding it.

Or was she simply tired and imagining things? Maybe it would be better all round if she
did
go home alone. She could have an undisturbed night’s sleep, and tomorrow morning she would wake up bright and cheerful.

And everything would be the same as it had been before.

‘Yes, we could probably
both
do with a good night’s sleep,’ she said, keeping her voice resolutely cheerful. ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’

But as Tariq got out of the car she saw the sudden shuttering of his face, and she couldn’t shift the sinking certainty that something between them had changed.

And changed for the worst.

CHAPTER TEN

S
O
IT
WAS
TRUE
.

Horribly, horribly true.

Isobel’s fears that Tariq was
cooling
towards her were not some warped figment of her imagination, after all. She was getting the cool treatment. Definitely. She recognised it much too well to be mistaken.

She hadn’t spent a night with him in almost a week even though he’d been in the same country—the same city, even. Every night there was another reason why he couldn’t see her. He was eating out with a group of American bankers. Or meeting up with a friend who’d just flown in from Khayarzah. And even though his reasons sounded perfectly legitimate, Isobel couldn’t shift the certainty that he was avoiding her.

These days, even when he came into the office, he seemed distracted. There was barely a good morning kiss. No smouldering look to send her pulse rate soaring and have her anticipating what might happen later. It was as if the Isobel she had been—the woman he desired and lusted after—was disappearing. She felt as if the old, invisible Isobel had returned to take her place. As if a switch had been flicked in Tariq’s mind and it would never be the same again.

She tried telling herself it was because he was busy—but deep down she suspected a different reason for his distance. After all, she’d seen it happen countless times before, with other women. One minute they were flavour of the month, and the next they were like unwanted leftovers, lying congealed on the side of the plate.

The question was, what was she going to do about it? Was she going to sit back and let him push her away—gradually chipping at her already precarious self-esteem—until she was left with nothing? Or was she going to be proactive enough to reach out and take control of her life? Should she just face up to him and ask whether they were to consign their affair to memory?

Until she realised that Tariq’s apparent lack of interest was the least of her worries. And that there were some things which were of far more pressing concern...

She told herself that the nausea she was experiencing was a residual from the brief burst of sickness she’d had, caused by some rogue fish she’d eaten. That the slight aching in her breasts was due to her hormones, nothing else. She was on the pill, wasn’t she? And the pill was blissfully safe. Everyone knew that.

But the feeling of nausea began to worsen, and so did the aching in her breasts. And then Tariq said something which made her think that perhaps she
wasn’t
imagining it...

It happened that weekend, when she was staying over at his apartment. It seemed ages since they’d spent two whole days together, and she loved being there when they didn’t have work the next day. It was the closest she ever felt to him—as if she was a real girlfriend, rather than a secretary who had just got lucky.

It was early on the Sunday morning that he made his observation. Half-asleep, he had begun to kiss her, his hands to caress her breasts, and she had given a little sigh and nestled back against the soft bank of pillows.

‘Izzy?’ he murmured. ‘Have you put on a little weight, do you think?’

She stiffened beneath the practised caress of his fingers. ‘Why?’ she blurted out. ‘Do you think I’m getting fat?’

‘There’s no need to be so defensive.’ He blew softly onto the hollow of her breastbone. ‘You’re slender enough to carry a few extra pounds. Men like curves—I’ve told you that before.’

But his words only increased her sense of anxiety, and she was almost relieved when the phone in his study began ringing and he swore a little before going off to answer it. It was the one phone he never ignored—the private line between him and his brother’s palace in Khayarzah.

Isobel could hear him speaking in a lowered voice, so she took the opportunity to head for the bathroom down the corridor—the one he never used. Her heart was racing as she closed the door, and the terrible taste of fear was in her mouth. And she knew that she could no longer put off the moment of truth.

She flinched as she saw the image which was reflected back at her in the full-length mirror. Her face was paper-pale and her eyes looked huge and haunted, but it was her body which disturbed her. Like most women, she was not usually given to staring at her naked self, but even she could see that her breasts looked swollen and the nipples were much darker than usual.

Was she pregnant?
Was
she?

For a moment she lowered her head, to gaze at the pristine white surface of the washbasin. She remembered how unequivocal Tariq had been about not wanting children—and clearly it hadn’t been an idle declaration. Hadn’t she witnessed for herself how cold he could be when he was around them? Why, he’d barely touched Omar or Azzam the other day—he’d seemed completely unmoved by their presence when everyone else had been cooing around them.

She wanted to sink to her knees and pray for some kind of miracle. But she couldn’t afford to have hysterics or to act rashly. She needed time to think, and she needed to stay calm.

Quickly, she showered and put on jeans and a shirt, feeling the slight tug as she fastened the buttons across her chest.

The silence in the apartment told her that Tariq had finished his conversation, and in bare feet she padded along the corridor to find him standing in his study. He was staring out of the window, his powerful body silhouetted against the dramatic view.

When he turned round, he didn’t comment on the fact that she had showered and dressed. A couple of weeks ago he would have growled his displeasure and started removing her clothes immediately, but not now—and a wave of regret washed over her for something between them which seemed to be lost.

‘Is anything wrong?’ she questioned.

He stared at her, his eyes focussing on her pale skin and anxious eyes, and a heavy sense of sadness enveloped him. What had happened to his smart and wise-cracking Izzy? He felt the heavy beat of guilt, aware of the enormity of what he had done. In typical Tariq fashion he had seen and he had conquered. Selfishly, he had listened to the voracious demands of his body and taken her as his lover, refusing to acknowledge the thoughtlessness of such an action.

She had been too inexperienced to resist the powerful lure of lust when it had swept over them so unexpectedly.
He
should have known better and
he
should have resisted. But he had not. He had done what he always did—he had taken and taken, knowing that he had nothing to give back.

And now he was left with the growing suspicion that he was going to lose the best assistant he’d ever had. For how could they carry on like this, when much of her natural spontaneity seemed to have been eroded by the affair?

He could tell that something had changed. It was as if she was walking on eggshells. He noticed that she kept biting back her words—which usually meant that a woman was falling in love with him, that she was weighing up everything she said for fear of how he would interpret it. And all these negative feelings would snowball—he knew that, too. How could he possibly face her in the office if her reproachful looks were to continue and the gap between them widened daily?

‘Tariq?’

Her soft voice broke into his troubled thoughts. ‘What?’

‘I wondered if anything was wrong.’

‘Wrong?’

She looked at him questioningly, telling herself that it was her business to know what was going on in his life. But deep down she wanted to clear that scary look of distraction from his face. To have him
talk
to her. Properly.

‘The phone call you’ve just had from Khayarzah?’ she elaborated. ‘I hope everything’s okay with your brother?’

With an effort, he focussed on the conversation he’d just finished. ‘Zahid wants my help with a relative of ours.’

‘Oh?’

‘A distant cousin of mine, from my mother’s side,’ he explained. ‘Her name is Leila, and she’s in trouble.’

Isobel’s face blanched as she wondered if the gods were taunting her. Because hadn’t that expression always been a euphemism for a particular
kind
of predicament in which a woman sometimes found herself ? Was it possible that a cruel fate was about to inflict not one but
two
unplanned pregnancies on the al Hakam family?

‘Trouble?’ she questioned hoarsely. ‘What kind of trouble?’

‘It seems she’s decided she wants to junk university and go off to America to be a model. Can you imagine?’ He gave a grim smile. ‘Zahid thinks that she needs to be shown the error of her ways, and he thinks that I may just be able to sort things out.’

‘I see.’ Isobel nodded. Was she imagining the relief on his face—as if he was anticipating an adventure which would fully occupy him for the foreseeable future? As if he was pleased to have a
bona fide
reason to unexpectedly leave the country? ‘Why does he think that?’

‘He says that my uniquely western perspective might help persuade her. That I’ve seen enough of that kind of world to convince her that it’s all starvation and cigarettes and people who will try to exploit her.’ He shrugged. ‘Nothing that need concern you—but I’m going to fly out later tonight, if you could make sure the new jet is ready for me?’

Two things occurred to her at the same time. The first was that he still came and went exactly as he pleased—becoming her lover had not curtailed his freedom in any way at all. And the second was that she knew there was no way she could announce her momentous news. Not when he was about to go on some mission of mercy for his brother. Not when she hadn’t even had it confirmed. And until she did then surely there was always the chance that it was nothing but a false alarm?

But her decision didn’t give her any peace of mind. She was still left with nagging doubts. Tariq was leaving to go back to his homeland, and suddenly she didn’t know where her place in his life should be. She struggled to a find common ground.

‘Did...did your brother and his wife enjoy themselves in London last week?’ she asked.

‘I assume so.’

‘They didn’t mention it?’

He raised dark brows. ‘Should they have done?’

‘Just...well, I thought it was quite a fun evening, that’s all.’

‘Indeed it was.’ He gave a brief smile, preoccupied with his forthcoming trip and pleased to have something to take his mind off the damned tension between them. ‘But they have a hectic life, you know, Izzy. Pretty much wall-to-wall socialising wherever they are.’

It was the hint of aloofness in his tone which made Isobel stiffen. That and the patronising sense that she had stepped over some invisible line of propriety. As if she had
dared
to look on the King and his wife as some sort of equals, instead of people she’d been lucky enough to meet only on a whim of Tariq’s.

‘Silly of me,’ she said lightly.

There was a pause as she forced herself to acknowledge the tension which had sprung up between them and which now seemed there all the time. She didn’t know when exactly it had happened, but it wouldn’t seem to go away. Like a pebble dropped into a pond, the ripples carried on for ages after the stone had plopped out of sight.

She knew what was going on because she’d witnessed it countless times before. Tariq was beginning to tire of her and he wanted the affair to be over—with the least possible disruption to
him.

She thought of how the situation might pan out. He might decide to stay longer in Khayarzah than he’d intended. Or he might slot in lots of extra trips abroad which would seamlessly and physically separate them. And when they finally came face to face back in the office so much time would have passed that it would be easy to consign the whole affair to history.

Easy for him, perhaps—but not for her. She hadn’t done this kind of thing before. Unlike him, she was
no good at pretending.

Wasn’t it better to face the truth head-on—no matter how difficult that might be? To confront reality rather than trying to airbrush it away? Wouldn’t that at least go some way to restoring her pride and making sure she didn’t whittle away at her self-respect until there was nothing left but an empty husk?

She forced a smile. ‘Tariq, I’ve been thinking.’

Something in her tone made his eyes narrow. ‘Oh?’

Her heart was hammering, but she forced herself to look directly into his eyes. ‘I’m due a lot of holiday—and I was wondering if I might take the chance to use up some of my entitlement while you’re away? Fiona’s pretty much up to speed, and she’s perfectly capable of running your office.’

Tariq stiffened as he heard the sudden formality of her tone. Holiday
entitlement.
Fiona
running his office.
He met her tawny gaze and felt a brief spear of something like pain as he realised what she was doing. Izzy was clever, he conceded. Clever enough to sense that he was cooling towards her.

‘Is that really necessary?’ he said.

It was a loaded question. She knew it, and he knew it too. Isobel nodded her head. ‘I think so. I think we need to give each other a little space, Tariq. This...
affair
has been pretty amazing, but I suspect it’s run its course—don’t you?’ She stared at him, willing him to say no. Longing for him to pull her into his arms and tell her she was out of her mind.

Tariq looked at her and felt a wave of admiration underpinned by a fleeting sense of regret. For, although he knew that this was the perfect solution, he was going to miss her as a lover. But relationships never stayed static. Already he could sense that she wanted more from him. More than he could ever give. And if he allowed her these weeks of absence mightn’t she come back refreshed and able to put the whole thing behind her? Couldn’t they go back to what they’d had before? That easy intimacy they’d shared before they had allowed sex to complicate everything?

Briefly, he acknowledged the stab of hurt pride that she should be the one to end it. But why
shouldn’t
he be the one on the receiving end of closure for a change? Mightn’t it do him some good?

‘I think you could be right,’ he said slowly.