by Penny Jordan
‘Yes. I spoke to his people whilst I was in London, and I’ve set things in motion for you to meet with him. He’s one of the old school of diplomats. He fears that a financial exchange here might not operate with the probity he considers necessary.’
‘I shall endeavour to convince him otherwise. And now I must go.’
‘I’ll walk you to your car.’
‘To persuade me to reconsider the charms of Ms Murray?’ Vere asked lightly.
‘No. When you return, you will witness them for yourself—and then you will need no persuading,’ Drax told him suavely.
Sadie was so tired she was almost falling asleep sitting upright on the slightly uncomfortable low chair—obviously designed for women who were more used to sitting elegantly cross-legged.
Nasim had handed her over to a plump, smiling woman wearing a feminine version of his own livery. She had introduced herself as Alama and then shown her into a large, luxuriously carpeted and furnished salon before disappearing. Several minutes later a shy young girl who’d introduced herself as Hakeem had appeared, to ask her in uncertain English if she would like coffee. Sadie had refused, knowing that drinking the strong local coffee would keep her awake. Now, though, she was beginning to regret her refusal, and longed for a drink of water.
How long would she have to stay here for? Until she was summoned before Drax and his brother to be inspected?
The door to the salon opened and Alama came in, accompanied by Nasim.
‘His Highness wishes to speak with you,’ Alama informed her. ‘Nasim will escort you to him, and then, when you return, Hakeem will be waiting for you, to take you to your rooms.’
Nasim escorted her back down the passageway he had brought her along earlier, taking her through the hallway and into a room off it that was obviously some kind of office. Drax was there, seated behind a large desk, frowning as he studied a computer screen.
‘Regrettably, my brother has had to leave without meeting you,’ he told her as he waved her into the chair opposite his own. ‘It will be several days before he returns from London, and during that time…’
Sadie could hardly believe what she was hearing. She was tired, and her head was aching. In the last twenty-four hours she had lost one job, been denied her rightful wages and then been virtually thrown out in the street. She had been bemused, bullied and virtually blackmailed into accepting a job in another country, and then told that it was necessary for her to dress in designer label clothes in order to gain the approval of a man who now apparently had disappeared and was not likely to return any time soon. That was if he had ever existed in the first place.
She had, she decided, had enough. In fact, she had had more than enough! She pushed back her chair and stood up, then drew herself up to her full height and told Drax fiercely, ‘During that time I shall have returned to London. You virtually kidnapped me, and then blackmailed me into coming here with you. You said that you had a job for me, and that your reasons for wanting to bring me were are all completely above board. Then you demanded that I wear clothes that you bought for me so I would gain the approval of your brother—even though when you offered me the job you didn’t mention his approval was necessary. And now you tell me that this brother of yours isn’t here. Well, do you know what I think?’ Sadie challenged him angrily. ‘I think that this brother of yours and the job you’ve offered me have a great deal in common. In that neither of them has any existence outside your imagination.’
She shook her head bitterly. ‘It’s my own fault, I know. I made it all so easy for you, didn’t I? You’d have thought that after what I’d experienced with Monika al Sawar I’d have had more sense than to believe you.’
While she had been talking, letting her wild angry words tumble hotly into the silence, Drax’s expression had undergone a subtle change which, now that he too was pushing back his chair and standing up, made him look every inch the kind of haughty, autocratic male who held the power of life and death over those he ruled. But it was too late to wish she had been more circumspect—and besides, why shouldn’t she tell him what she thought?
‘If you are trying to say that you believe I have lied to you—’
‘I’m not trying to say that. I am saying it,’ Sadie said, standing her ground. And then felt her knees tremble when he let out his breath in a hiss of suppressed fury.
‘There is no job, is there? Just like there is no brother,’ she challenged him. ‘And you have brought me here—’
‘For what purpose?’ Drax stopped her even while he reflected inwardly that it was just as well Vere wasn’t here to witness her outburst. Vere was emotionally controlled, often remote, and very much aware of his position and what was owed to him. Sadie’s emotional fury would only have added to his brother’s conviction that she was not a suitable candidate to become his temporary wife. Sadie, on the other hand, obviously thought it was a very different role Drax had in mind for her.
When she didn’t answer him, but instead compressed her mouth and gave a mute shake of her head, he spoke softly, deliberately spacing out each and every word. ‘I thought I had already made it clear to you that I have no sexual interest in you. It is well known that there is a certain type of over-excitable foreign woman who seems to assume that men of my country are unable to resist her charms. It is a subject of some amusement for us.’ He gave a small dismissive shrug. ‘One sees it in their eyes. There is hunger and stupidity…It takes no great intelligence to know that such women come here already fantasising about having sex with a robed lover.’
He gave another shrug. ‘There are, of course, some young men who amuse themselves by encouraging these women’s fantasies while laughing at them when their backs are turned. It occurs to me that in repeatedly accusing me of having sexual designs on you, you may be concealing your own sexual curiosity.’
Sadie gasped in outrage. ‘That is not true! There is only one reason I came here with you. And that is because you virtually forced me.’
‘I offered you a job, which you accepted.’
‘Because you virtually blackmailed me into it! You refused to return my passport, and you still have it.’
‘Indeed I do, and I intend to keep it until you have completed the probationary period we agreed on. And let me warn you—this is the second time you have made the kind of accusations against me that no man bears unpunished. Just remember that, if you should be tempted to repeat them a third time. My brother, as I said, has been called away on urgent business. However, I have spoken of you to him, and he agrees with me that you will be perfect for the position we have in mind.’
It was the truth, after all—even if Vere had rejected her and proposed that Drax should be the one to have her. He was almost tempted to take on the challenge and tame the wild cat she had just proved herself to be—in his bed, where he would make sure she purred with pleasure for him instead of hissing and spitting as she was doing now. She had certainly angered and aroused him enough for him to want to punish her for her audacity. There was unexpected spice beneath the outer meek blandness of her manner, Drax acknowledged, and, having exposed it, like any man worthy of the name he naturally wanted to explore it. And to conquer it, and her?
Drax mentally shrugged aside the sly thought that had somehow insinuated itself into his mind. He could find himself the necessary temporary wife easily enough, but Vere was not like him. Vere had a tendency to withdraw and hold himself aloof, which meant that he did not always find it easy to forge relationships with those outside the rarefied atmosphere in which they lived. The truth was that the kind of arranged inter-Royal family marriage their fellow rulers were proposing for them was probably the kind that would best suit his brother—although Vere himself was not likely to admit to that, Drax knew. Neither of them liked having his hand forced—they both had a fierce determination to be masters of their own fate—but Vere, once he had set his mind to something, could not be swayed and would not compromise.
He had said that he did not want
to be inveigled into a diplomatic marriage, and that suited him, Drax admitted, because at the moment he did not want to marry full-stop. While he knew that his way of life and his method of doing things seemed unorthodox, compared to Vere’s rigid adherence to protocol, Drax had his own strong sense of where his loyalties lay and how he felt about them.
For all that Vere was the firstborn, and carried about a certain sternness and an air of discipline, as if it was his duty to take on board more of the sometimes onerous weight of their shared responsibility, Drax often felt as though he was the more senior. He was the one who was more in touch with the realities of modern life and who had lived out in the world. He also knew that sometimes he protected his brother. But it was, to Drax, part of what their twinship meant that he should give this service of care to his brother without remarking on it.
In deciding that Sadie would make an ideal temporary wife for Vere, Drax had been doing what he had done all his life—he had seen Vere’s need and potential vulnerability and had stepped in to ensure that his brother was protected. He did not want to acknowledge, never mind accept, that there was something about Sadie that was making him physically aware of her—and not just aware, but hungry for her. Sadie was merely a woman who fitted a specific purpose, and she would be adequately recompensed once it came to an end. As far as Drax was concerned there was very little difference in paying off a no longer wanted mistress and a no longer wanted temporary wife. Both should be removed from one’s life with speed and efficiency and the minimum of fuss. Other men might indulge in the folly of ‘falling in love’, but Drax knew that he would never allow that to happen to him.
Their parents’ death, especially the loss of their mother, had left both Vere and Drax exposed to the old-fashioned mindset of their father’s well-meaning but rather traditional royal advisers. With no women playing a prominent role in the country’s government over the past decade, they had been encouraged to develop a somewhat dismissive attitude towards romantic love.
Drax flicked another assessing look over Sadie, frowning as he saw her trying to smother a tell-tale yawn.
‘It has been a long day for you, and it is late. I shall summon Nasim and instruct him to escort you back to the women’s quarters. Tomorrow will be time enough for me to discuss my plans for our new venture with you in more detail.’
CHAPTER SIX
SADIE came up through the heavy layers of her deep sleep slowly and reluctantly on hearing the soft sounds of padding feet and the chink of china. When she opened her eyes it confused her at first not to see the bare discomfort of her small room high up under the roof of the al Sawar house.
And then she remembered. She wasn’t in Zuran any more; she was in the Royal Palace of Dhurahn.
She sat up quickly in the comfortable wide bed, thankful that she had taken the trouble to slip on a clean tee shirt before going to bed. Was that because she had feared that her sleep might be interrupted not by the shyly smiling Hakeem, who had just brought her a breakfast tray, but by the man who had brought her here?
Drax. Prince al Drac’ar al Karim bin Hakar. Just thinking about him was enough not only to raise the heat of her body, but to make her sensually aware of the cool stroke of the undoubtedly expensive bedlinen against her suddenly sensitised skin. She could feel the pulse of her own body, and the ache it sent radiated out all over her, making her nipples tighten and her toes want to curl.
She must not think like this, Sadie warned herself, shocked by the waywardness of her thoughts. She made herself focus on Hakeem, who was telling her softly, ‘I have brought you your breakfast, sheikha. If there is anything else you should wish?’
Sheikha? Surely she had no right to such an elevated form of address? Or was the girl simply being polite? It frustrated Sadie that her knowledge of Dhurahni customs was so limited. That was something she would have to address if she was to stay and work here.
Her thoughts suddenly busy, Sadie refused to admit to herself that she might be keeping them that way to resist giving in to the temptation of thinking about her new employer.
She smiled at the waiting girl and shook her head. ‘No. This is lovely. Thank you.’
‘I am to return in one hour to escort you to the public rooms of the palace, where you will be met by of one His Highness’s assistants,’ she told Sadie carefully, as though she had been rehearsing the words.
Sadie gave her another smile. She was glad she’d have someone to show her the way along the corridors. She had been too tired to take much note when she was whisked down them last night.
With Hakeem gone, Sadie got out of bed, tempted by the shafts of sunlight coming in through the open shutters of the windows to see what lay outside them. She had also been too tired to explore the suite of rooms she had been given, but this morning she could see just how luxurious her bedroom was. Its décor was an eye-pleasing mixture of traditional and modern. The bed was wide and low, a beautiful silk rug hung on the wall opposite the bed, and several more equally beautiful rugs were scattered over the tiled floor. Two sets of double doors opened off the bedroom on opposite walls adjacent to the windows. One set led into an elegantly furnished sitting room-cum-office, and the other into a wardrobe-lined dressing room which opened up into a large, modern bathroom with limestone floors and a huge free-standing ‘infinity’ bath.
Pulling on the towelling robe she had left at the end of the bed the night before, Sadie went over to the windows. As she looked out her eyes widened in delight when she saw the enclosed courtyard garden that lay beyond them. A pair of French windows opened out onto a tiled area, protected from the sunlight by a deep veranda. Beyond that were mosaic pathways and raised flowerbeds filled with a variety of hosta-like wide-leaved plants and neatly clipped topiary balls of white roses. The beds were finished off with a border of frothing white flowers Sadie didn’t recognise. In the middle of the enclosed area water splashed down from a fountain into a basin which overflowed into an ornamental stone-edged pond. As she watched, a large, sleek, beautifully-coloured fish rose from the water to snap at a hovering fly before subsiding back into the water.
Even from inside the room Sadie could smell the scent of the roses. Beyond the enclosed area was a miraculously green hedge, no doubt watered by some under-soil watering system. In the hedge was a ‘doorway’, which led to yet another garden—this one, so far as she could see from the window, containing more roses and topiary.
Sadie had never ever stayed anywhere so luxurious—made all the more sensual because it was so discreetly understated. She picked up the cup of coffee Hakeem had poured for her and drank it quickly. It was hot and sweet, although a bit strong for her taste. There was also a basket filled with small, sweet, sticky pastries, a selection of fruit and a bottle of water. But Sadie wasn’t hungry. In fact her stomach had started to churn with apprehension as she remembered the interview she’d had with Drax the previous evening.
Telling herself that it wouldn’t be a good idea to be late for her meeting with him, she poured herself another cup of coffee and drank it quickly, before hurrying into the bathroom.
Now, this was the kind of luxury she could easily get used to, she admitted as she paused to admire the infinity bath. There was no time for lingering this morning, though. A shower would be quicker, and probably far more therapeutic as it wouldn’t encourage her to indulge in thinking about Drax.
Half an hour later she was ready—her hair washed, blown dry and neatly secured, her body clothed in what seemed to be the plainest of her new clothes—a neutral-coloured linen-mix skirt with a white short-sleeved, softly fitting top embellished with decorative natural-coloured ‘stone’ buttons at the shoulders and on the small V-shaped neckline. His Highness, it seemed, had thought of everything—including, as she had just discovered, two pairs of designer sunglasses.
She had no idea what on earth she would do with all these things when she returned to the UK. She certainly hoped he didn’t expect her to want to keep them and then pay for them out o
f her wages. She would be paying for them for the rest of her working life, judging by the labels. But then perhaps to a man as obviously wealthy as Drax the cost of supplying an employee with a wardrobe bulging with designer labels was an insignificant perk. And the clothes weren’t for her; they were for an employee. She was a visual attachment to a very important venture, and as such she had to project the right image.
Sadie could hear the outer door of her suite opening. It was Hakeem, coming to collect her. Quickly slipping her feet into a pair of pretty shell-decorated summer mules, she hurried out of the dressing room, smiling at the young girl patiently waiting for her.
‘Heavens, I’ll never get used to all these corridors,’ she told Hakeem ten minutes later, envying the other girl’s elegant, straight-backed walk as she led her down a series of interconnecting white-walled corridors. She would have loved to have had time to stop and study the paintings and artwork, with their rich, vivid colours and sculptured lines, but Hakeem obviously didn’t want to linger. Like the domestic staff employed by the wealthy in Zuran, Hakeem was Indian, and so delicately beautiful that Sadie felt clumsy and awkward beside her despite her new clothes.
‘It was kind of you to bring me my breakfast this morning, Hakeem,’ Sadie said, and thanked her.
‘You like?’ Hakeem gave her another shy smile. ‘And you like the bedroom of the Royal Princesses? It is very beautiful, is it not?’ she asked proudly. ‘We have had only the ladies of the Royal Household of Zuran to stay in it before, when the Sheikha, who was the mother of our Rulers, was alive. But that was a long time ago—before I was here. It was before I was here too that Their Highnesses’ mother and father were killed and the whole of Dhurahn mourned their loss. It was very sad for such a dreadful thing to happen.’
‘Their parents were killed?’