‘You’ve never had a pedicure before?’ shrieked Jane in amazement.
‘Never,’ agreed Sorrel, pushing away her nagging feeling of doubt as she tried to imagine what Malik would say if he could see her now, lying back on a leather couch as if she was awaiting a medical examination, while the nail polish dried. He probably wouldn’t even deign to comment. She had taken her chosen path and was now a Western woman who could do exactly as she pleased—no longer under his protection or control. And he had moved on, too, eradicating her from his life completely—which presumably was why he hadn’t even had the courtesy to reply to her.
Hot tears stung at her eyes and she blinked them away, willing it not to hurt—not wanting it to hurt.
But it did hurt—and Sorrel despised herself for feeling a pain that had no justification in reality. Because nothing had gone on between her and Malik—absolutely nothing—except within the fertile planes of her imagination. Not a nod or a glance, nor a snatched look—and certainly never a kiss or even a touch. Sorrel swallowed. That was true. Unless you counted the times when as a child she had been learning to ride and he had first lifted her onto a horse and gently put her feet into the stirrups, Malik had never even touched her!
Even at the weddings of his two half-brothers—when the opportunity had been there—he had not danced with her. Much of the time he had been busy—like her—with the sheer mechanics of organising two such fancy functions, but when there had been a lull…No. She frowned in recall.
He had not actually danced with anyone—even though some of the more blatant female guests had been circling him as she had sometimes seen vultures circle a fallen leopard amid the blazing waste of desert sands.
So why was she allowing him to clog up her thoughts? And why was she continuing to dream this dream, which should have been growing more distant by the day—not featuring in glorious Technicolor in her mind.
It was time to move on, and there were practical ways she could do that. She’d found the apartment and the job—maybe it was time to stop standing on the sidelines of life in her homeland and to embrace the culture as would any other single young woman of twenty-five.
She glanced up at Jane, who was working her way through sample bottles of moisturiser. ‘Could we go shopping after work?’
‘Can we?’ Jane giggled. ‘I thought you’d never ask!’
Sorrel had never really hit the shops with a credit card before—her parents had not been big spenders, and had actively discouraged what they’d called the feeding frenzy of consumer spending. After their death it had simply not occurred to her to shop. While she’d been at the palace all her clothes had been paid for by the Sheikh—and she had discovered that a very generous salary had been paid into her bank account during those years.
So why shouldn’t she splurge a bit? Chainstore dresses weren’t exactly going to break the bank, were they?
And Jane was like a child who had been let loose in a dressing-up box.
‘Try this!’
‘No! I can’t—scarlet is not my colour,’ protested Sorrel.
‘How do you know until you’ve tried it?’
How indeed? To Sorrel’s surprise, Jane was right—not only did scarlet suit her, but the little cotton sundress looked rather good when teamed with some clashing orange beads. It was the last thing she would have worn in Kharastan—but surely that was a good thing? New life, she reminded herself. New woman.
In the end she bought four dresses, a denim mini-skirt, and some cool tops—some with teeny spaghetti straps and others with no straps at all—and a pair of vertiginous wedge sandals which made her legs look almost indecently long.
‘You’ll get a chance to show them off tonight,’ said Jane.
Sorrel blinked. Had she missed something? ‘What’s happening tonight?’ she asked.
‘You are,’ said Jane firmly. ‘I’m not asking any questions, since you obviously don’t want to talk about it, but I can tell just by looking at you that you’re trying to get over some bloke—the only way to do that is to find another one, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do!’
Sorrel’s first impulse was to recoil in horror at the very suggestion. To protest that finding a man was the last thing on her mind—until she began to worry that maybe there was something wrong with her. There must be—if she was objecting so strongly. In twenty-five years she had never had a boyfriend—never even kissed a man—and how sad was that? But there were some things you didn’t confide—and, much as she liked Jane, that was one of them.
She needed to break the cycle of emotional dependence on the man whose affection for her was based on his obligation as her guardian.
Swallowing down her panic, she nodded. ‘Where will we go?’
‘The wine bar. Tonight—at seven.’
Sorrel got ready, feeling mixed up and a fraud—but knowing that she should be experiencing the sense of excitement she suspected most other women her own age would be feeling if they were wearing brand-new clothes to go for a carefree night out on a hot summer evening. But she felt as if she was outside her own body, looking at herself with the detached eye of an interested observer instead of being the participant.
Part of her was aware that the itsy-bitsy floaty blue dress looked good, and that her blonde hair had never looked so pale or so shiny as it cascaded down her back to her waist. And that her tanned brown legs did look so flattering—especially when she wore them with open-toe sandals which showed off her dazzling pedicure.
There was an extraordinary moment when she walked into the crowded wine bar and every head turned in her direction. She looked behind her—thinking that someone famous must have followed her in. But, no, they were looking at her.
‘Why is everyone staring?’ she hissed at Jane, rubbing her finger underneath first one eye and then the other—in case her supposedly smudge-proof mascara hadn’t lived up to the extravagant claims made on the packet.
‘Oh, come on!’ reprimanded her friend acidly. ‘You look a knockout—that’s why. Charlie—get Sorrel a drink, will you?’
Sorrel accepted the glass of white wine Charlie pushed into her hand and took a sip. And here was another problem. Alcohol was not taken freely in Kharastan—although it was always provided in the palace for foreign dignitaries. But Sorrel had only ever tasted champagne at the royal weddings of Xavier and Giovanni—Malik’s two half-brothers—and she hadn’t been mad about it. It had made her feel a bit too dreamy on two dangerously romantic occasions, and she had looked up and found Malik glaring at her and had hastily put the glass down.
Well, not any more! Why shouldn’t she have a drink like any other person in the civilised world? It wasn’t as if she was knocking it back—not like some of Jane’s friends.
But a couple of large glasses of rough wine bar plonk was having a profound effect on a someone who wasn’t used to drinking and who hadn’t eaten anything since lunchtime. The wine bar had started to get hot and stuffy, with smoke drifting in from outside, where all the smokers were gathered, and Sorrel felt herself swaying slightly.
‘You okay?’ questioned Jane.
‘I need to eat something,’ said Sorrel woozily.
‘Yeah. Me, too. Tell you what—let’s get a curry and take it back to your place.’
It seemed churlish to object—especially when Jane had gone out of her way to help her buy clothes—and Sorrel didn’t even protest when several of the others they’d been talking to decided to tag along. They seemed a nice, if slightly noisy bunch, and she was going to have to learn about entertaining sooner or later, wasn’t she?
In the end, twelve people stumbled into her beautiful flat and took silver cartons of curry into the kitchen—ladling out heaps of yellow rice and chicken in shiny sauces and great wodges of bread. There weren’t enough plates to go round, so some people were eating out of cereal dishes and pouring wine into mugs. After they’d eaten someone found a non-stop music station on the radio—and what Sorrel would have loosely described as
dancing began.
Jane was swaying with her arms locked around someone whose name Sorrel thought was Scott, though she couldn’t be sure, and then another couple flopped down onto one of the sofas and began kissing quite openly. Sorrel started wishing that everyone would leave so that she could go to bed. And what was that sickly sweet smell of the smoke drifting in from the balcony when she had most definitely said that there was to be no smoking?
It should have been wonderful—especially as outside the uncurtained windows the moon was beginning to illuminate the sky with a pale terracotta sheen. But it was the opposite of wonderful—particularly when Scott stumbled up to Sorrel and tried to pull her into his arms.
‘Come and dance with me,’ he mumbled.
‘I can’t…Scott, will you please let go? I happen to be holding a plate of curry—’ And then the doorbell rang, and Sorrel felt a mixture of relief and alarm at its piercing shrill—relief because it meant that she could extricate herself from Scott’s arms, and alarm because she wasn’t expecting anyone. She didn’t know anyone.
Apart from the landlord!
Heart pounding, and a chilly, clammy feeling in her hands, Sorrel put the plate down and made her way out into the hall. When she pulled the door open her knees threatened to give way.
Because there—with a small phalanx of bodyguards standing clustered around him—stood the formidable and disapproving figure of Malik.
CHAPTER THREE
FOR a moment Malik and Sorrel just stood staring at one another, and for a couple of moments longer she almost didn’t recognise the Sheikh, yet wasn’t sure why. But there was no time to deal with that—not when she was having to confront the burning look of rage which sizzled black fire from his angry eyes. His narrowed gaze was sweeping over her dishevelled appearance, and she realised what a sight she must make.
‘What is this?’ he choked, in a disbelieving voice she had never heard him use before.
‘Malik—’
But he silenced her with an imperious wave of his hand and a terse command made in Kharastani as he glanced over her shoulder to the scene behind and flinched as if someone had punched him.
‘What is this scene of utter debauchery?’ he iced, in disgust.
He didn’t seem to want a reply to his question, because he uttered a few more terse commands in his native tongue and the burly-looking men who were with him moved quickly into the apartment and took control.
It was like watching a team of soldiers going into enemy territory, Sorrel thought weakly, as she watched one of the guards march over to the radio and silence it. With the cessation of music everyone in the room froze, and then stared in disbelief at the group of dark-skinned men with black eyes and a shimmer of strength about them which seemed so at odds with the men who were partying.
‘What the hell?’ Scott lurched over towards Sorrel, and she wanted to yell at him to stop, to go away—to not let himself be annihilated by Malik’s strength and power.
‘Want a hand, baby?’ he slurred.
Sorrel could feel the disgust emanating from every pore of Malik’s impressive frame as he stepped into the hallway.
‘Get rid of him,’ he bit out.
She knew that there was no point in arguing with him, and she hoped that Scott and company would have the sense to realise the same.
‘Now!’ Malik roared.
Scott scuttled away like an insect who had just been revealed beneath a stone.
‘Can you all go, please?’ urged Sorrel quickly, and she could see that they needed no second bidding as they scurried round to find handbags and shawls which had been deposited around the flat, and then started trooping out.
Only the couple standing smoking the sickly sweet substance on the balcony seemed oblivious to the uproar in the apartment, and Malik’s eyes narrowed in their direction before he nodded briefly to one of his guards.
If she hadn’t already been panicking about just what Malik would do when the flat was emptied, it would have been almost comic, thought Sorrel, as she watched the guard striding towards them, whereupon he plucked the joint from the woman’s fingers and crushed it between his own.
‘Call the police!’ ordered Malik imperiously.
‘Malik, no, please—’
‘You have been taking drugs?’ he hissed.
‘No!’
‘Drinking, then?’
‘Two or three glasses, that is all.’
‘All?’ With an effort Malik steadied himself, sucking in a deep draught of air and only just preventing himself from hauling her into his arms and…and…He watched as the last of the pathetic-looking men shuffled sheepishly from the flat, and then he barked out an order to his guards. In a daze, Sorrel watched as they too disappeared—until it was just her and Malik alone in the flat.
‘Shut the door,’ he said softly.
‘Malik—’
‘I said, shut the door.’
There was something in his tone which was making her feel quite peculiar but it was also a tone which broached no argument—and at that precise moment Sorrel felt about sixteen again.
Until she looked into the dark mastery of his eyes and realised that he had never looked at her like that when she was sixteen—with a combination of simmering fury and something else which she didn’t dare start to analyse, because it was only threatening to make her light-headedness worse.
So she closed the door and then stood looking up at him, a hopeful expression on her face. Maybe he had finished venting his wrath, and now that he had would quietly forgive her.
But there was no forgiveness on the dark, rugged face with its alluring shadows cast by his amazing bone structure—nor in the almost fevered glitter of his ebony eyes. His features were set in a stony mask, and then Sorrel realised what it was about him which had made him look so different when she’d first opened the door.
He was wearing a suit!
Sorrel swallowed. She had never seen him wearing anything other than his traditional robes—which seemed less like clothes and more like an extension of him—and this new and different Malik took a little getting used to. Somehow it made her feel uncomfortable to look at him in such traditionally Western clothing, and at first she couldn’t quite work out why.
The pale grey trousers did not exactly cling to the hard sinew of his legs, but they certainly emphasised the muscular length of his thighs—just as the jacket highlighted the broad shoulders and torso, tapering to a narrow waist and hips.
An open-necked shirt gave her the faintest glimpse of a whorl of crisp black hair at his chest, and Sorrel felt faint as she realised just what it was that was making her feel so uncomfortable—the Western clothes accentuated his masculinity in a way which his Kharastani robes never had. Those merely hinted at the body which lay beneath—but now, for the first time ever, she could actually see it.
‘Look at you,’ he said softly, and Sorrel’s eyes widened—for it seemed that he was as taken aback by her appearance as she was by his. Was he actually going to compliment her? she wondered, as she heard that husky note in his voice. But from the oblique look in his black eyes it was impossible to tell.
He let his gaze rake over her—slowly—in a way he had never done before. But then she had never provided him with the inclination to. Yet the outfit she wore tonight virtually screamed Look at me!—so who could blame him if he did?
It was not a Sorrel he recognised—in a dress that skimmed her tanned thighs, which gleamed faintly like oiled silk, and beneath the filmy fabric he could see the lush movement of her breasts. The shimmer of her hair—like pale, spun gold—cascaded in a gleaming waterfall down her back. But it was not simply the blatant display of her body which had made him stare at her in disbelief—but the make-up which so marred her beauty.
Yes, the sweep of black mascara curving her long lashes made her blue eyes look enormous in her heart-shaped face, and the gleam of lipstick made the petal-softness of her lips even more provocative. But where was her innocent beauty gon
e?
Had it gone?
Malik felt his heart slam against his ribcage, and a feeling halfway between rage and despair as he moved his face closer to hers.
‘So, did you achieve your aim, Sorrel?’ he questioned unsteadily.
What riddle was this he was testing her with? Sorrel wondered. But she wanted to do something—anything—to remove that obdurate look of anger from his face, and so she played along.
‘What aim?’ she questioned back.
The slam of his heart increased. ‘Did you dress like a…tramp in order to lose your virginity to the first man who would take you?’
Lose her virginity? Sorrel swayed. Only this time it had nothing to do with the wine but with sheer, disbelieving anguish that Malik could utter such damning words of criticism against her and look at her with such contempt.
Fiercely, she bit her lip, and the self-inflicted pain brought her up sharply—what right did he have to chastise her in such a way? He had been her guardian, yes, and a remarkably good one for many years. But the years had now passed and his little bird had flown the nest—and she would not be insulted like that for behaving just as any other young woman of the same age would do.
‘I am not dressed like a tramp!’ she defended.
‘Really? That is a matter of opinion.’ He saw the way her breasts jiggled when she moved—like some damned belly dancer! Controlling his angry breathing only with a monumental effort, he flicked her a disdainful look. ‘And you haven’t answered my question!’
She stared at him and he stared back, a silent exchange going on between their clashing gazes—his black and accusing and hers indignantly blue. But she was damned if he thought he could quiz her about her innocence. ‘And neither do I intend to!’
He sucked in an outraged breath. Did her refusal mean an admission of guilt? But he could not force her to answer—and certainly not when she was standing there wearing…’ Just go and change your clothes, Sorrel.’
For a moment she really thought she had misheard him.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘No, Sorrel—it is too late for apologies,’ he ground out.
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