Defiant in the Desert

by Sharon Kendrick

  ‘Shall we go home?’ questioned Suleiman.

  ‘I think we’d better,’ said Sara quietly. ‘Before I smash one of those very expensive “regurgitated cat supper” canvasses over your arrogant head.’

  ‘Are you saying you’d like one of those hanging in your living room?’

  ‘I do happen to like some of them, yes, but I’m not going to have a conversation about the artwork.’

  Suleiman kept his hand firmly on her waist as he steered her towards the cloakroom, so that she could collect her wrap.

  She didn’t speak until they were outside and neither did he, but just before he opened the door of the waiting cab he leaned into her, breathing in her scent of jasmine and patchouli oil. ‘Just what is your relationship with Steel?’

  ‘Don’t,’ she snapped back. ‘Don’t you dare say another word, until we’re back at my apartment.’ She began speaking to him in Qurhahian then, her heated words coming out in a furious tirade. ‘I don’t want the cab driver thinking I’m out with some kind of Neanderthal!’

  She made no attempt to hide her anger all the way through the constant stop-starting of traffic lights but Suleiman felt nothing but the slow build of sexual hunger in response. The stubborn profile she presented made him want her. Her defiantly tilted chin made him want her even more. He felt the hardening at his groin. He would subdue her fire in the most satisfying way. Subdue her so completely and utterly that she wouldn’t ever defy him again. She wouldn’t want to...

  Feeling more frustrated than he could ever remember, he watched as the orange, green and red of the traffic lights flickered over her face. The flickering kaleidoscope of colour and the sparkle of her golden dress only added to her beauty.

  If it had been any other woman, he would have just pulled her in his arms and kissed her. Maybe even brought her to gasping orgasm on the back seat of the cab. But this was not any other woman. It was Sara. Fiery and beautiful Princess Sara. Stubborn and sensual Sara.

  The elevator ride up to her apartment was torture. The heat at his groin almost too painful to endure. All he could see was the glimmer of gold as her dress highlighted every curve of her magnificent body, but her shoulders were stiff with tension and her face was still furious.

  It seemed to take for ever before the lift pinged to a halt and they were back in her apartment again. The front door had barely closed behind them before she turned on him. ‘How dare you behave like that?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Coming over all possessive and squaring up to my boss like that!’

  ‘So why the sudden defence of Steel, Sara? Was he your lover? The man to whom you lost your innocence?’

  ‘Oh!’ Frustratedly, she stared at him for a piercing moment before turning her back and marching into the sitting room, just the way she’d done on Christmas Eve at the cottage. And just like then, he followed her—mesmerised by the shimmering sway of her bottom, until she turned round to glare at him again.

  The violet flash in her eyes warned him not to continue with his line of questioning, but Suleiman found he was in the grip of an emotion far bigger than reason. ‘Was he?’ he demanded hotly. ‘Is that why he lent you his cottage? Why you were so keen to get to the party tonight?’

  She shook her head. ‘You just don’t get it, do you? You don’t seem to realise that I’ve been living in England for all these years and I’m just not used to men behaving like this. It’s primitive. And it’s inappropriate.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s inappropriate,’ he ground out. ‘You told me that night that you were waiting for your lover and that it was Steel’s cottage. Then I discovered that you were not a virgin and so I put two and two together—’

  ‘And came up with a number which seems to have reached triple figures!’ she flared, before taking a deep breath as if she was trying to get her own feelings under control. ‘Look, I shouldn’t have said that about Gabe that night. I was trying to make you angry—and it seems that I have far exceeded my own expectations. I was hurling out stuff and hoping to get a reaction. But I said all that before we became...involved. For the record, Gabe has never been my lover. But even if he had...even if he had...that does not give you the right to just march up to him like that in public and start playing the jealousy card. I just don’t get it.’

  ‘What don’t you get?’ he demanded. ‘That a man should feel possessive about the woman he loves? Isn’t that a mark of the way he feels about her?’

  She shook her head. ‘It’s got nothing to do with the way he feels about her—it’s more a mark of wanting to own her! Before you became Mr Oil Baron, you travelled for years on Murat’s behalf. Are you trying to tell me that this is the way you behaved whenever you met with some diplomat or politician whose ideas you didn’t happen to agree with? Going in with all guns blazing?’

  His eyes narrowed. ‘On the contrary. One of the reasons I excel at card games is because I have the ability to conceal what I’m thinking.’

  Slowly, she nodded her head ‘So what happened tonight?’

  ‘You did,’ he said. ‘You happened.’

  ‘You mean it’s something I did?’

  He shook his head. ‘I’m having trouble working it out for myself. I’ve never felt this way about a woman before, and sometimes it scares the hell out of me. I’ve never wanted a woman in the way I want you, Sara.’

  ‘But wanting me doesn’t give you permission to behave like that towards Gabe. It doesn’t give you the right to start treating me like a thing. Like a valuable painting or some vase that you own, which nobody else is allowed to look at, because it’s all yours. I don’t want that.’

  For a moment there was silence as he looked at her.

  ‘Then just what do you want, Sara?’ he questioned. ‘Because you don’t seem to want a normal relationship. Not from where I’m standing.’

  ‘That’s funny. A normal relationship? I don’t think you’d recognise one if you tripped over it in the street!’ she said. ‘And how could you? You’re possessive and demanding and insanely jealous.’

  ‘And you don’t think that you might have fed my instinct to be jealous?’

  ‘I’ve already explained about Gabe.’

  ‘I’m not talking about Gabe! I’m talking about the fact that ever since I’ve moved in here, you seem to be pushing me away. It’s like you’ve surrounded yourself with a glass wall and I just can’t get through to you.’

  She felt the fear licking at the edges of her skin. Was that true—or did Suleiman just want to make her completely his, and to stamp out all her natural fire and independence?

  She couldn’t risk it.

  ‘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—’

&
nbsp; ‘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

  THE 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 Su
leiman 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?