Defiant in the Desert (3 page)

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

S
ULEIMAN
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.