by Penny Jordan
All these weeks while she had been dreaming her stupid dreams, suffering her tormented longings, no doubt he had exorcised any desire she might have aroused in him speedily and effectively with someone else. Or maybe with several some one elses. No doubt to a man like him one woman was much the same as another—a piece of flesh to be used and then discarded.
It was relief that was burning that ice-cold fury into him, Vere told himself. Relief because now he had good reason—had he needed it, which he didn’t—to treat her with disdain and suspicion, to make sure that he did not give in to his unwanted physical desire for her. And it was only physical, he assured himself.
Everyone had left the tent now, and Sam looked round for James. She might not have been able to say anything in front of their visitor, but she certainly intended to tackle James about the comments he had made—and sooner rather than later.
Once she could see him she made her way determinedly towards him, ignoring his cheerful, ‘So, what do you think of our new boss, then?’
‘Why did you try to give the Prince the impression that I’ve been questioning the legality of his country’s rights to the river, when we both know that I haven’t done any such thing?’ she demanded coolly.
‘Oh, come on. It was just a bit of banter that’s all.’ He shrugged and shook his head. ‘What is it with you women that makes you take everything so ruddy seriously and go all hormonal and emotional?’
His jibe about her being emotional found its mark, but she wasn’t going to let let him see that.
‘You’ve got equality now, you know,’ he continued tauntingly. ‘And that means—’
‘I know exactly what equality means, James.’ Sam stopped him, firmly taking charge of the conversation and fully intending to repeat her earlier demand that he explain his reasons for his comments to Prince Vereham. But before she could do so he had turned away from her to hail one of the other men.
A call for fellow male support? Sam wondered wryly, and her own inbuilt awareness of the bigger picture urged her to refrain from forcing a confrontation that could only lead to ill feeling. She had, after all, made her point and let him know that she was both aware of what he had done and annoyed about it. Involving herself in a battle of words that might descend into childish verbal gender taunts wouldn’t do anything to enhance the professionalism on which she prided herself.
The triumphant smirk James was giving her still irked her, though. He plainly thought he had got away with something—and if she was honest so did she.
But she wasn’t here to indulge in petty squabbles with a colleague who seemed to have unresolved issues with working alongside women on an equal footing—and she was certainly not here to moon around thinking about a man who had unequivocally proved that he neither wanted anything to do with her nor would have been worthy of her if he had been.
With her back ramrod-stiff with determination and pride, Sam made her way back to her tent.
Knowing that today was the day when control of the venture was handed from Zuran to Dhurahn, she had deliberately planned not to go out in the field but instead to work on her computer, so that she could compare the information she had gathered on the ground with that picked up by the GPS systems overlooking the area. Only then would she be in a position to start preparing a comparison between what the landscape showed now and what had been recorded over fifty years ago.
The three Rulers had thought of everything that might be needed in a practical sense to make the venture a success, providing everyone with power and internet access for their computers, so that within minutes of entering her tent Sam should have been accessing the GPS information she needed.
Instead, though, she was typing into an internet search engine the name of the Ruler of Dhurahn...
CHAPTER FOUR
THE formalities were over, and Sheikh Sadir and his entourage had taken their formal leave of him and begun their return journey to Zuran.
His own people were busy familiarising themselves with the site, and Vere had beside him the very latest printouts of the reports on various initiatives being undertaken by those working on the joint venture.
By rights he should be studying those reports. One of them, after all, could have grave repercussions for him and for his country. Instead he had been studying a plan of the camp and a list of those living in it.
Vere frowned and stood up, walked over to the exit of his personal quarters and pulled back the opening, causing the guard standing outside to jump to attention.
His own tent was set apart from the others, shielded from view by palm trees and close to the oasis, as befitted his status, with the tents of his private entourage surrounding it.
Beyond them were the tents of the team working on the project, arranged in a neat pattern, with wide walkways between them and those tents that housed the communal areas set in the centre. By Vere’s reckoning, from the plan he had been studying, the tent housing Ms Sam McLellan was several rows away from his own but, like his, backed onto the oasis.
The last thing he had been prepared for when he had arrived here had been that he would see her. He had recognised her instantly, of course, and he could still feel the shock of that recognition deep down within his own flesh. As always, when he was reminded against his will of his reaction to the kiss they had shared, Vere was filled with a furious need to deny that it had had any kind of long-lasting effect on him at all. It was unthinkable that he, who abhorred the modern relaxed attitude towards casual throwaway sex, should have been involved in such a situation in the first place, and it was his weakness in allowing that to happen on which he needed to focus—not the irrelevant fact that, try as he might, he could not force his body to give up its physical memory of her.
Even harder to admit was the emotional impact the event had had on him, unleashing all the inner insecurity that the loss of his mother had brought him. No! Vere could feel the angry denial exploding inside himself. He felt as though he had been plunged into a war within himself and against himself.
He had something far more important to think about than his unwanted desire for Sam McLellan.
Drax had telephoned to tell him that he had received information that suggested that the Emir of Khulua intended to try and win a bargaining tool for himself in future negotiations between their two countries, by paying a member of the team assessing the changes within the desert boundaries to suggest that Dhurahn had laid claim to lands to which in reality it had no legal rights.
Of course, as Drax had said and Vere knew, the Emir had no intention of going so far as to try to make a claim on such lands. He was a very astute man, after all, and he knew that it would be impossible for him to make such a claim stick. However, what he could do was use the laws of Arab protocol and interaction, to put pressure on Dhurahn to make favourable concessions in his favour, as public recompense for and acknowledgement of ‘past dues owed’, which would tie them up in protracted useless negotiations for years to come. It was the kind of subtle game of politics and power that men like the Emir loved.
Vere knew that the Ruler of Zuran would not think too kindly of either of them if he were to be drawn into such a quarrel—especially if it affected the ongoing development of Zuran as a tourist destination. The situation that might develop would be one that would demand a considerable amount of time and subtle negotiation. However, with Dhurahn’s bid to host the Arab world’s first independent financial sector and stock market now accepted, but still i
n its all-important first year and being monitored closely, Vere knew they could not afford either the time to become engaged in delicate convoluted negotiations with the Emir, nor the fall-out effect on their reputation if an outright argument were forced on them by him should they refuse to bargain.
It seemed perfectly obvious to Vere that the person in the Emir’s pay had to be Samantha McLellan. She, after all, was a cartographer, and responsible for mapping any changes in the shared boundaries. She had also, according to her colleague, already been spreading rumours about the validity of those boundaries—even if she herself had denied it.
It was surely a logical step from knowing that to working out that the supposed accidental meeting between them in Zuran, when she had bumped into him, had been no accident at all and instead had been deliberately contrived.
No doubt she had hoped to tempt him into a sexual liaison with her that would have allowed her to cloud the issue of the borders even more with planned lies. Perhaps claiming that Vere had admitted to her that there were irregularities with them.
It wouldn’t matter that it was untrue. The Emir would still be able to use it in his Machiavellian plan to cause discord and discredit. Honour and good faith were vitally important in the Middle East, and once lost they were impossible to recover.
Had she really thought that he would be so easily taken in? That he would be deceived on the strength of one passionately sensual kiss and the feel of her body against his, combined with a look that suggested she had found her world in him?
How many other men had she practised that look on? Pain shot through him, splintering into shards of unexpected agony which he forced himself to bear as punishment for having dropped his guard long enough to have registered her lying eyes.
He was, though, completely safe from any kind of vulnerability towards her, knowing what he did. It was totally impossible and completely beneath him for him to desire her now. Her duplicity was his salvation. His salvation? His pride reacted as though it had been spurred. He had no need to seek salvation from the likes of Sam McLellan, a woman whose morals and whose flesh were up for sale. Again anger burned fiercely inside him because she had dared to think he might be gullible enough to be taken in by her and her risible attempt to foster a sexual intimacy between them that she could use to manipulate him.
She must have been furious when her colleague had betrayed her with his comment about her views on the true legality of Dhurahn’s borders. Vere had no doubt that she must have been acting on the Emir’s orders, trying none too subtly to lay the foundations for some kind of spurious claim about their border based on some farcical trumpedup evidence.
However, much as he longed to confront her with what he knew, Vere realised he could not do so. The first thing she would do would be to tell the Emir, and he and Drax were both agreed that their best course of action at the moment was to gather together as much evidence of the Emir’s plans as they could and then confront him privately, having first laid the whole thing before the Ruler of Zuran. That way they could avoid humiliating the Emir in public, whilst making it plain that they had seen through his machinations.
Vere had no doubt that in such circumstances the Emir would be forced to back down—if only so that he could save his own face.
Meanwhile Vere knew that his duty to his country meant that he must do all he could to find out exactly what Samantha McLellan was doing. Once he had, he would need to get her to admit that she was being paid by the Emir to corrupt the details of her research in order to throw doubt on Dhurahn’s original borders.
And there was only one realistic way in which he could do that, Vere thought cynically.
A woman like her, who had been bribed by one man, could be bribed by another to betray him. So, much as the thought revolted him, he would have to let her think that he was not averse to being propositioned by her, Vere decidedly grimly. He would have to act as though he wanted her—as if he was completely taken in by her.
Sam pushed the hair off her face and rubbed her eyes sleepily, before giving a shame-faced look at the screen in front of her. Had anyone told her four months ago that she would be doing something like this—scanning the internet and trying to pry into the private life of a man who had already made it clear that he wanted nothing whatsoever to do with her, a man who was a world away from the kind of man with whom she could realistically expect to share her life—she would have been appalled and defensive, instantly rejecting the very idea. She would have said, and genuinely believed, that she was far too well grounded, far too modern and way too practical to waste time doing something so pointless. Anyone who spent hours on the internet, pathetically prying into the life of a stranger, was surely to be pitied and told to get a life of their own.
What was it she was hoping to find out? She already knew exactly how he felt about her—or rather how he didn’t. Trawling the internet wasn’t going to alter that, given that he had made it so plain that he wanted nothing to do with her, was it?
Wasn’t this the kind of thing that could lead to unhealthy and obsessive behaviour?
What did it matter what information about him the internet might hold? She had no intimate role to play in his life, nor he in hers.
Everything she was telling herself was quite true, Sam acknowledged, but she still couldn’t quite bring herself not to give in to the temptation of looking. That was the trouble, wasn’t it? she admitted to herself guiltily. Where he was concerned temptation seemed to be something she was incapable of resisting.
She had found any number of sites describing the history of the State of Dhurahn, but none of them contained any personal information about its current ruler.
She had also visited a site that gave a lavish description of Dhurahn’s plans to create an independent Middle Eastern business and financial centre of excellence on land set aside for that purpose, complete with visuals of the office blocks and buildings. She had found, too, eloquent descriptions of the traditions of the country, preserved now and incorporated into national celebrations. There was even a piece about the current project, showing the original borders agreed when all three States had first been created.
But about Prince Vereham al a’ Karim bin Hakar there was nothing—not even a photograph. Merely a clipped line in one of the free online encyclopaedias giving his date of birth, the names of his parents and grandparents, and the fact that the Rulers of Dhurahn had a tradition of choosing European women for their wives.
Sam’s heart gave a small flurry of over-excited thuds as she re-read this information. European wives... Now she was being a fool.
Angry with herself for her silliness, she closed down the site and then opened up a new search for Khulua. Anne had mentioned that the state and its ancient ruins were well worth a visit. She had some leave days due in another month, and taking a short break away from the camp might do her good and bring her to her senses, Sam decided determinedly, as she checked out and then booked flights and a hotel for Khulua for a month ahead.
That done, Sam went to bring up the satellite map of the area which she used to work on.
As always when she studied this map, she was drawn to the area around the source of Dhurahn’s river. She highlighted and magnified the river’s source, fascinated all over again by her conviction that at some stage and for some reason the course of the river, not far from its source, had been changed. There might have been any number of reasons for this—none of them having any bearing on the state’s border with
Khulua—but Sam’s natural curiosity burned to know exactly what that reason had been. Logically there was no reason why the original course of the Dhurahni river should have been changed, which made her certainty that it had all the more mystifying.
The fact that Sam was engrossed in what she was doing, and had her back to the entrance to the tent, gave Vere the opportunity to stand and watch her unobserved before he started towards her.
As he began to walk in her direction, he knew he had certainly not made any sound that would have alerted her to his presence—and yet, as though he had commanded her to do so, within a heartbeat of him entering the tent she suddenly tensed and then swung round, saying, as she had done that morning when she had seen him by the oasis, ‘You! I mean... Your Highness,’ Sam corrected herself quickly, half stumbling over the words as her brain struggled to come to grips with the fact that she had known he was there without hearing him or seeing him.
Her heart was thudding into her ribs so heavily that it almost hurt, and it was certainly making her feel weak and light-headed—or maybe that was caused by the fact that suddenly there didn’t seem to be enough air in the tent for her to breathe properly, and what air there was had turned warmer, somehow, pressing against her and bringing with it unwanted memories of their first meeting.
Sam prayed that he wouldn’t come any closer. She was already acutely aware of the sound of his breathing and the scent of his body. In trying to avoid looking into his eyes she had instead focused straight ahead. Now, though, she recognised that this was a mistake—because her eyes had impacted on his hands, strong and sinewy, with long fingers, hands that could easily support the weight of a hunting falcon, or secure the trembling body of a yearning woman. She was starting to tremble, sweat beading her forehead as unwanted images crashed through her defences. She didn’t think she could bear this. She really didn’t. But she must—or else risk giving him the opportunity to snub her again the way he had done earlier.