by Penny Jordan
A little guiltily, Mariella looked at the now-silent mobile. She hadn’t said anything to Tanya about her determination to confront her sister’s faithless ex-lover and tell him just what she thought about him! Tanya might have gone willingly to his bed, but Mariella knew she hadn’t been lying to her when she had told her that she had believed that he loved her, and that they had a future together.
* * *
MARIELLA STRUGGLED TO wake up from a confused and disjointed dream in which she was being dragged by her guards to lie trembling at the feet of the man who was now her master. How she hated him. Hated him for the way he stood there towering over her, looking down at her, looking over her so thoroughly that she felt as though his gaze burned her flesh.
He was looking deep into her eyes. His were the colour of the storm-tossed skies and seas of her homeland, a cold, pure grey that chilled her through and through.
‘You dare to challenge me?’ he was demanding softly as he moved closer to her. Behind her Mariella was conscious of the threatening presence of the guards.
She hated him with every sinew of her body, every pulse of blood from her heart. He left the divan where he had been sitting and came towards her, bending down, extending his hand to her face, but as his fingers gripped her chin Mariella turned her head and bit sharply into the soft pad of flesh below his thumb.
She felt the movement of the air as the guards leapt into action, heard them draw their swords, and her body waited for the welcome kiss of death, but instead the guards were dismissed whilst her tormentor stepped back from her. One bright spot of blood glistened on the intricately inlaid tiled floor.
‘You are like a wildcat and as such need to be tamed,’ she heard him telling her softly.
She could feel the cleanliness of her hair on her bare skin and froze as he slowly circled her, standing behind her and sliding his hand through her hair and then wrapping it tightly around his fingers, arching her back against his body so that her semi-naked breasts were thrown into taut profile. His free hand reached for the clasp securing her top and her whole body shook with outrage. And then abruptly he released her, turning to face her so that she could see the contempt in his eyes.
Swimming up through the layers of her dream Mariella recognised that his face was one she knew; that his cynical contempt was something she had experienced before...
In the half heartbeat of time between sleeping and waking she realised why. The man in her dream had been the arrogant, hawk-eyed man she had seen earlier at the airport!
Getting out of bed, she went into the bathroom, shaking her head to clear her thoughts, and then, when that tactic did nothing to subdue their dangerous, clinging tentacles of remembered sensuality, she turned on the shower, deliberately setting it at a punishing ‘cool,’ before stepping into it.
The minute the cool spray hit her overheated skin she shuddered, gritting her teeth as she washed the slick film from her body, and then stepping out of the shower, to wrap herself in a luxuriously thick, soft white towel. In the mirror in front of her she could see the pale, pearlescent gleam of her own skin, and dangerously she knew that if she were merely to close her eyes, behind her closed eyelids she would immediately see her tormentor, tall, cynically watchful, as he mocked her before reaching out to take the towel from her body and claim her.
Infuriated with herself, Mariella rubbed her damp skin roughly with the towel, and then re-set the air-conditioning. In her cot Fleur slept peacefully. Going to the fridge, Mariella removed a bottle of water and opened it. Her hand was shaking so much some of it slopped from the bottle onto the worktop.
* * *
MARIELLA AND FLEUR had just finished eating a leisurely breakfast on their private patio when a message came chattering through the fax machine. Frowning, Mariella read it. The prince had been called away on some unexpected business and would not now be able to see her for several days. He apologised to Mariella for having to change their arrangements, but asked her to enjoy the facilities of the Beach Club at his expense until his return.
Carefully smoothing sun-protection lotion onto Fleur’s happy, wriggling little body, Mariella bent her head to kiss her tummy, acknowledging that this would be an ideal time to seek out Fleur’s father. She had his address, after all! So all she needed to do was summon a taxi to take her there!
Kate had been quite correct when she had described Zuran’s February weather as perfect, Mariella admitted half an hour later as she carried Fleur out into the warm sunshine. Since she was here on business and not holiday she had packed accordingly, and was wearing a pair of soft white linen trousers and a protective long-sleeved top. When she showed the taxi driver the sheikh’s address he smiled and nodded. ‘It will take maybe three quarters of an hour,’ he told her. ‘You have business with the sheikh?’ he asked her conversationally.
Having learned already just how friendly people were, Mariella didn’t take offence, replying simply tongue in cheek, ‘You could say that.’
‘He is a famous man. Revered by his tribe. They admire him for the way he has supported their right to live their lives in the traditional way. Although he is an extremely successful businessman it is said that he still prefers to live simply in the desert the way his people always have. He is a very good man.’
Mariella reflected inwardly that the picture the driver had just drawn for her was considerably at odds with the one she had gained from her half-sister.
Tanya had met the man in a nightclub, after all. Mariella had never liked the fact that Tanya worked there—although she had been employed as a singer, it openly advertised the sexual charms of its dancers, and Tanya had freely admitted that the majority of the customers were male.
And, certainly, during the twelve months they had been together, Mariella had never heard Tanya mention any predilection on her sexy sheikh’s part to spend quality time in the middle of the desert! In fact, if she was honest, she had gained the impression that he was something of a ‘playboy,’ to use a perhaps now outdated word.
It took just under forty minutes for them to reach the impressive white mansion, which the taxi driver assured her was the correct address.
A huge pair of locked wrought-iron gates prevented them from going any farther, but as if by magic an official stepped out of one of the pair of gatehouses that flanked the gates, and approached the car.
As firmly as she could Mariella explained that she wished to see the sheikh.
‘I am sorry but he is not available,’ the official informed her. ‘He is away at the oasis at the moment and not expected back for some time.’
This was a complication Mariella had not been expecting. Fleur had woken up and was starting to grizzle a little.
‘If you would care to leave a message?’ the official was offering courteously.
Ruefully Mariella acknowledged inwardly that the nature of the message she wanted to give to the sheikh was better delivered in person!
Thanking him, she asked the taxi driver to take her back to the hotel.
‘If you want, I can find someone to drive you to this oasis?’ he suggested.
‘You know where it is?’ she questioned him.
He gave a small shrug. ‘Sure! But you will need a four-wheel drive vehicle, as the track can be covered with sand.’
‘Could I drive there myself?’ Mariella asked him.
‘It is possible, yes. It would take you two, maybe three hours. You wish me to give you the directions?’
It made more sense to drive to the oasis under her own steam than to go to the expense of paying a driver for the day as well as hiring a vehicle, Mariella decided.
‘Please,’ she agreed.
* * *
METHODICALLY, MARIELLA CHECKED through everything she had put on one side to pack into the four-wheel drive for her trip into the desert. The Beach Club’s informati
on desk staff had assured her that it would be perfectly safe for her to drive into the desert, and had attended to all the necessary formalities for her, including ensuring that a proper baby seat was provided for Fleur.
The trip should take her around three hours—four if she stopped off at the popular oasis resort for lunch as recommended by the Beach Club. But just in case she decided not to, they had provided her with a packed lunch in the form of a picnic hamper.
If it hadn’t been for the serious purpose of her trip, she could quite easily have felt she were embarking on an exciting adventure, Mariella thought. Like everything else connected with the Beach Club, the four-wheel drive was immaculately clean and was even provided with its own mobile telephone!
The road into the desert was clearly marked, and turned out to be a well-built, smooth road that was so easy to navigate that Mariella quickly felt confident.
The secluded oasis where apparently the sheikh was staying was located in the Agir mountain range.
The light breeze, which had been just stirring the air when she had left the Beach Club, had increased enough to whip a fine dust of sand over her vehicle and the road itself within an hour of her setting out on her journey. The sand particles were so fine that somehow they actually managed to find their way into the four-wheel drive, despite the fact that Mariella had the doors and windows firmly closed. She had left the main road, now branched out onto a well-marked track across the desert itself.
It was a relief when she reached the Bedouin village marked on her map. It was market day and she had to drive patiently behind a camel train through the village, but fortunately it turned off towards the oasis itself, allowing her to accelerate.
In another half an hour she would stop for some lunch—if she hadn’t reached the second oasis, marked on her map, she and Fleur would have their picnic instead.
The height of the sand dunes had left her feeling surprised and awed; they were almost a mountain range in themselves. Fleur was awake and Mariella turned off the radio to play her one of her favourite nursery rhyme tapes, singing along to it.
It was taking her longer than she’d estimated to reach the tourist base at the oasis where she had planned to have lunch—it was almost two o’clock now and she had expected to be there at one. A film of sand dust had turned the sky a brassy red-gold colour, and as she crested a huge sand dune and looked down into the emptiness on the other side of it Mariella began to panic slightly. Surely she should be able to at least see the tourist base oasis from here?
Ruefully she reached for the vehicle’s mobile, realising that it might be sensible to ask for help, but to her dismay when she tried to make a call to the number programmed into the phone the only response was a fierce crackling sound. Stopping the vehicle she reached for her own mobile, but it was equally ineffective.
The sky was even more obscured by sand now, the wind hitting the vehicle with such force that it was physically rocking it. As though sensing her disquiet Fleur began to cry. She was hungry and needed changing, Mariella recognised, automatically attending to the baby’s needs whilst she tried to decide what she should do.
It was impossible that she could be lost, of course. The vehicle was fitted with a compass and she had been given very detailed and careful instructions, which she had followed to the letter.
So why hadn’t she reached the tourist oasis?
Fleur ate her own meal eagerly, but Mariella discovered that she herself had lost her appetite!
And then just as she was beginning to feel truly afraid she saw it! A line of camels swaying out of the dust towards her led by a robed camel driver.
Relieved, Mariella drove towards the camel train. Its leader was gravely polite. She had missed the turning to the oasis, he explained, something that was easily done with such a wind blowing sand across the track. To her alarm he further explained that, because of the sudden deterioration in the weather, all tourists had been urged to return to the city instead of remaining in the desert, but since Mariella had come so far her best course of action now was to press on to her ultimate destination, which he carefully showed her how to do using the vehicle’s compass.
Thanking him, she did as he had instructed her, grimly checking and re-checking the compass as she drove up and down what felt like an interminable series of the sand dunes until eventually, in the distance through the sand blowing against her windscreen, she could just about see the looming mass of the mountain range.
It was already four o’clock and the light seemed to be fading, a fact that panicked Mariella into driving a little faster. She had never dreamed that her journey would prove so hazardous and she was very much regretting having set out on it, but now at last its end was in sight.
It took her almost another hour of zigzagging across the sand dunes to reach the rocky thrust of the beginnings of the mountain range. The oasis was situated in a deep ravine, its escarpment so high that Mariella shuddered a little as she drove into its shadows. This was the last kind of place she had expected to appeal to the man who had been her sister’s faithless lover.
Would his villa here be as palatial as his home in Zuran? Mariella frowned and checked as the ravine opened out and she saw the oasis ahead of her. Remote and beautiful in its own way, it was very obviously a place of deep solitude, the oasis itself enclosed with a fringing of palms illuminated by the eerie glow of the final rays of the setting sun. Shielding her eyes, Mariella stopped the vehicle to look around. Where was the villa? All she could see was one solitary pavilion tent! A good-sized pavilion, to be sure, but most definitely not a villa! Had she somehow got lost—again?
Fleur had started to cry, a cross, tired, hungry noise that alerted Mariella to the fact that for Fleur’s sake if nothing else she needed to stop.
Carefully she drove the vehicle forward over the treacherously boulder-rutted track, which seemed more like a dry river bed than a roadway! Sand blowing in from the desert was covering the boulders and the thin sparse grass of the oasis.
There was a vehicle parked several yards from the pavilion and Mariella stopped next to it.
A man was emerging from the pavilion, alerted to her arrival by the sound of her vehicle.
As he strode towards her, his robe caught by the strong wind and flattened against his body revealing a torso muscle structure that caused her to suck in her own stomach in a sharply dangerous womanly response to its maleness.
And then he turned his head and looked at her, and the earth halted on its axis before swinging perilously in a sickening movement as Mariella recognised him.
It was the man from the airport. The man from her dream!
CHAPTER TWO
HIS hand was on the door handle of the four-wheel drive. Wrenching it open, he demanded angrily, ‘Who the devil are you?’
He was looking at her eyes again, with that same look of biting contempt glittering in his own as he raked her with a gritty gaze.
‘I’m looking for Sheikh Xavier Al Agir,’ Mariella responded, returning his look with one of her own—plus interest!
‘What? What do you want with him?’
He was curt to the point of rudeness, but then, given what she had already seen—and dreamed—of him, she wouldn’t have expected anything else.
‘What I want with him is no business of yours!’ she told him angrily.
In her seat Fleur’s cries grew louder.
Peering into the vehicle, he demanded in disbelief, ‘You’ve brought a baby out in this?’
The disgust and anger in his voice made her face sting even more than the pieces of sand blown against it by the wind.
‘What the hell possessed you? Didn’t you hear the weather warning earlier? This area was reported as being strictly out of bounds to tourists because of the threat of sandstorms.’
Hot-faced, Mariella remembered how she had switch
ed off the radio to play Fleur’s tapes.
‘I’m sorry if I’ve arrived at an inconvenient time,’ she responded sarcastically to cover her own discomfort, ‘but if you could just give me directions for the Oasis Istafan, then—’
‘This is the Oasis Istafan,’ came back the immediate and cold response.
It was? Then?
‘I want to see Sheikh Xavier Al Agir,’ Mariella told him again, gathering her composure together. ‘I presume he is here?’
‘What do you want to see him for?’
Mariella had had enough. ‘That is no business of yours,’ she said angrily. Inwardly she was worrying how on earth she was going to get back to the city and the comfort of her Beach Club bungalow and what on earth a man as wealthy as the sheikh was reputed to be was doing out here with this...this...this arrogant predator of a man!
‘Oh, I think you’ll find that anything concerning Xavier is very much my business,’ came the gritted reply.
Something—Mariella wasn’t sure what—must have alerted her to the truth. But she was too shocked by it to voice it, looking from his eyes to his mouth and then back again as she swallowed—hard—against the tight ball of shock tightening like ice around her heart. ‘You...you...can’t be the sheikh,’ she told him defiantly, but her voice was trembling lightly, betraying her lack of confidence in her own denial.
Was this man her sister’s lover...and Fleur’s father? What was that sharp, bitter, dangerous feeling settling over her like a black cloud?
‘You are the sheikh, aren’t you?’ she acknowledged bleakly.
A brief, sardonic inclination of his head was his only response but it was enough.
Turning away from him, she reached into the baby carrier and tenderly removed Fleur. Her whole face softened and illuminated with love as she hugged her and then kissed her before looking him straight in the eyes and saying fiercely to him, ‘This is Fleur, the baby you have refused to both acknowledge and support.’
She had shocked him, Mariella realised, even though he had concealed his reaction very quickly.