Darian’s eyes scoured over it disbelievingly, but there was no doubt that the words were written in his mother’s hand. ‘She died two years ago,’ he said slowly.
‘Yes. As you will read, the letter was not intended to be opened during her lifetime.’ Khalim’s black eyes glittered. ‘And, as you will also read, she claims that my late father, Makim, was indeed your father, too.’
His eyebrows were elevated in question, and the statement he had made was so utterly bizarre that Darian wondered if perhaps he was in the middle of one of those dreams which were so real that you mistook them for reality. Maybe in a minute he would wake up.
But even as he answered he was aware of the first glimmerings of unease. ‘I know nothing of my father. Absolutely nothing.’
‘No.’ Khalim paused for a moment. ‘Your mother was an air stewardess?’
‘Up until I was born.’ Darian’s mouth twisted in derision. There had been no mention of her employment in the letter. ‘You’ve had me checked out!’ he accused softly.
Khalim nodded. ‘But of course.’ He paused. ‘She flew to the Middle East regularly.’
And the missing piece of the jigsaw which had always eluded him began to hover tantalisingly over the gap in Darian’s memory. His mother had spoken of his father maybe once, perhaps twice. He had been a good man, she had said, but a man who was not free and was certainly not in a position to support them. Darian had assumed that his father was married, had noted his mother’s reluctance to talk about him and her distress whenever the subject was brought up.
Children soon learnt to make life easy for themselves. When to pry and when to leave well alone. He had accepted her reticence, just as he had accepted that he looked different from the other children. Darian had been focused on the future, on getting out of the poverty of his upbringing. Whoever his father had been he was not a real figure, not in terms of having any influence in his life, and so Darian had simply closed the door on all his questions.
There had been nothing about him in the papers his mother had left after her death, though at the time it had crossed his mind that now he was in a position to seek out his father without causing his mother distress. But Darian had decided to let sleeping dogs lie, asking himself what end it would serve if he went on such a quest—other than to unsettle him. Why pursue a man who had never felt the need to know his son?
But now the past had been dropped before his eyes, falling like a heavy pebble into a pond, its ripple-like effects spreading down through the ages—and for the first time a very important question did occur to him.
He turned again to look at Lara, where she stood as still and as frozen as a statue. ‘So what does Lara have to do with all this?’
She had been wondering when he would get around to asking. Lara spoke before Khalim had the chance to defend her. She would not shrink from the truth, not any more.
‘I was the one who first read the letter,’ she said quietly. ‘I was working at the Embassy at the time and it came into my hands.’
‘When?’
She heard the raw anger in that one stark word, and flinched. ‘Almost a month ago.’
A different jigsaw now, and these pieces slotted into place with insulting ease. He looked directly into her blue eyes and gold accusation flooded over her in a hot, sizzling shower. ‘You came looking for me,’ he seethed slowly.
‘Yes.’
‘You chased the job as the face of Wildman.’ His dark lashes shuttered by a fraction. ‘Didn’t you?’
‘Yes.’
The lashes moved again, and now there was an odd expression in the strange and beautiful eyes, the cold, cruel smile which glittered over her. She knew what the next accusation would be almost before he had a chance to form the words, and her gaze begged him not to ask it—not here and now and in front of Khalim. But he ignored the silent plea, his voice taking on a bitter, hard timbre she had never heard before.
‘Is that why you slept with me, Lara?’
Lara glanced at Khalim, who was observing and listening to the fraught interrogation session in interested silence. Only the faintest elevation of his eyebrows indicated that he had registered Darian’s final damning question, but Lara knew that Marabanese men knew the value of silence. He would not interfere in something which did not concern him. She was on her own here.
‘I don’t think that now is an appropriate time to discuss this—’
‘Oh, don’t you?’ His sarcastic words sliced through her half-formed sentence like a knife through butter. ‘I don’t really think that you’re fit to be the judge of what is or is not appropriate, Lara!’
He remembered the way her vulnerable blue eyes had made him soften and melt, and then made love to her in a way which had blown his mind, and he cursed silently at his blind stupidity. Of course she would be adept at pulling heartstrings—she would know every trick in the book, about how to behave and how to manipulate. She was a god damned actress, wasn’t she?
He sucked in a deep breath. His rage and his retribution with her could wait. He turned his head towards Khalim again.
‘So why are you here?’
‘To see you,’ said Khalim simply. ‘To see whether it was true.’
‘But you can’t, can you?’ drawled Darian. ‘You can’t tell just by looking?’
‘Oh, yes, I can,’ demurred Khalim quietly. ‘I saw it as soon as you entered the room today. You have the blood of a true Marabanesh running in your veins.’
Something in the way he said it made a small shiver of something unknown snake its way down Darian’s spine. Not fear—no, he had never felt fear, nor would he ever give in to the false and futile pressure of fear. Something else—something which momentarily made him feel as if things were edging out of his control. But he deliberately blocked the feeling, substituting it instead with the strength and single-mindedness for which he was known.
‘Even if I have—so what?’ he challenged, in a low, deep voice. ‘It doesn’t change my life—how can it? So do not worry, Sheikh—the secret will remain just that. You can go back to your kingdom safe in the knowledge that my life is fulfilled and complete. I have no need of your wealth or power and I will make no claim on it. I give you my word.’
Khalim’s eyes narrowed into icy black shards. ‘You have no wish to see Maraban?’ he demanded, as if Darian had raised a fist and hit him.
Again that tantalising feeling. As if some scarcely heard and hypnotic music were luring him to run away and dance. Darian shook his head, furious with himself for such a bizarre flight of fancy.
‘You must come as my guest,’ continued Khalim.
The two men stared at one another.
‘Why?’ demanded Darian simply.
Lara thought again how peculiar it was to have Khalim spoken to like that, and for him to accept it.
‘I should like to get to know you better,’ answered Khalim. ‘Man of my blood.’
If Darian had heard a statement like that even an hour ago he would have given a sardonic laugh. It was not the kind of thing men said to one another—not in his world. But something had inexplicably changed. This whole crazy and bizarre situation was linked to a past of which he knew nothing, and it was that fact which troubled him.
His past.
But the past held no interest for him, he reminded himself. Life lay with the present and the future. His life was here, and it was good.
He shook his head. ‘No. I can’t see the point.’
Khalim smiled then. ‘Can’t you?’ he questioned softly. ‘Can you just let me walk away today, Darian, and turn your back on the opportunity I am offering you? To discover Maraban and in so doing perhaps discover a little of yourself?’
It was a tantalising proposition, and Darian felt the hard, pounding beat of excitement. He was not into the ‘self-discovery’ so popular in the modern world. He considered such things an indulgent waste of time. And yet…
Would he be left with a whispering feeling of regret if he turned this opp
ortunity down? He turned his head slowly to look once again at Lara. Her face was pale now, all the roses fled. All he could see were the twin sapphires of her eyes, sparkling blue but wary, almost afraid.
And afraid you should be, he thought grimly.
His lips curved into another slow, cruel smile as a plan began to form in his head, and he nodded. ‘Very well,’ he said slowly. ‘I will accompany you to Maraban—but on one condition.’
There was silence. And when Khalim spoke it was as soft as the hiss of a snake. ‘You dare to stipulate a condition?’ he demanded. ‘Of me?’
‘If I am your brother—or half-brother,’ retorted Darian, ‘then some kind of equality must exist. I am neither your subject nor your inferior—am I, Khalim?’
‘No,’ answered Khalim, and a reluctant smile nudged at his lips as he looked at the man with the golden eyes and the tawny skin. ‘Then name your condition, and if it is within my power it shall be met.’
Darian savoured the moment as his eyes captured hers and held them, hard. ‘I want Lara to accompany me.’
Khalim nodded, as if he understood perfectly, and turned also to look at her, a silent question stilling the dark features.
Lara’s heart pounded with something very like fear. She loved Maraban, and in any other circumstances she would have been overjoyed to be given the opportunity to go there again. But these circumstances were different. She knew without being told that Darian Wildman was not asking her to go with him because he still thought that she was ‘sweet’ or because he enjoyed her company so much he couldn’t bear to be without it.
No, the sudden hardness which had made the golden eyes look so cold filled her with a foreboding that made her skin grow chill, and in that moment she wished she could just close her eyes and be a million miles away from here, and then return to find that none of it had ever happened…
But it had happened.
And didn’t she owe it to him—in some strange kind of way—for the way that she had deceived him? And to Khalim, too—who had been so generous to her in the past?
If Darian visiting Maraban was all down to whether or not she would go with him, then how could she possibly refuse?
Her skin felt icy-cold as she nodded, lowering her lashes so that she didn’t have to meet that mocking gold stare. ‘If that is what you want, then I will comply.’ Comply! She sounded like some little subordinate now! Lifting her chin, she turned to Khalim, trying to keep her voice steady. ‘Wh—when did you anticipate us leaving?’
Khalim smiled. ‘My jet is on the runway. We will leave for Maraban just as soon as you have both packed sufficient for your needs.’
CHAPTER NINE
DARIAN sat back against the leather seat of the car as it silently and powerfully sped towards the airfield, his mind spinning with thoughts which seemed just too incredible to be true.
Beside him sat Khalim, and in the front, next to the driver, a burly man whose bulk made his position as bodyguard to the Sheikh unmistakable.
Lara had elected to travel in the second car, hastily reassuring Khalim that she would be happy to do so. I bet she is, thought Darian grimly. Deceiving and conniving little Mata Hari! He had read of women who used their sexuality to try to get close to a man, to sensuously make them let their guard down before blowing their lives into smithereens, but he had foolishly imagined that kind of woman to have no place in the contemporary world.
How very wrong he had been!
He felt the jab of fury combined with the hot thrust of lust, but he steadfastly put all thoughts of Miss Lara Black out of his mind. She wasn’t going anywhere—or at least nowhere that he wasn’t going—and he would deal with her when the time was right. For now, his head was too full of thoughts which sounded more like the plot for some fantastic story. But facts were facts—however incredible—and this was no story, it was his life.
He was going to Maraban! To a mountain kingdom to which, it seemed, he was linked by birth. And through all his anger and confusion he felt the stir of something within him, some soft blaze of an emotion he did not recognise.
He turned to look at Khalim, who had been sitting silently at his side, managing to be both alert and yet relaxed—as though there was little in this world which surprised him, and maybe there wasn’t. For wouldn’t life as ruler of a country such as Maraban present all kinds of dilemmas and problems which a normal man would never encounter in his lifetime?
‘You don’t seem angry,’ observed Darian quietly.
Khalim turned to him, a wry look on his dark and shadowed face. ‘Why would I waste my time being angry about what exists?’ he murmured. ‘That would be like being angry because it was raining, or because…’ He seemed to search for some analogy which the Western man would understand. ‘Because the horse you had placed your last dollar on had broken its leg before the big race!’
For the first time Darian smiled. ‘I am not a betting man.’
‘No? You do not gamble on luck and on fortune?’
‘I don’t gamble on anything.’ And it was true. Gambling was precarious, and Darian had spent his life avoiding the precarious. He made things certain wherever it was possible, and for that you needed something far more tangible than luck. Simple, really. If you worked hard and used all your brains and initiative and imagination then you would reap the benefit of that.
Yet Khalim possessed untold, almost unimaginable wealth, Darian acknowledged as he glanced around the car. This vehicle was bullet-proofed, he recognised, and modified for the man it carried—as different from even a rich man’s car as cheap plonk was from vintage champagne.
‘We’re here,’ said Khalim shortly, as the car pulled into the airfield, and Darian saw a gleaming jet sitting there, the tiny emblem of a small flag on its tail golden and rose-pink and a deep sapphire-blue. Blue, like her eyes, he thought bitterly. Like her lying and cheating eyes.
Lara stepped out of the other car, seeing the two tall, dark figures emerge. Already she felt an outsider—she, who had known Khalim for years now, felt peculiarly isolated as she saw the two men standing together. As if they belonged and she didn’t. Or was that just her imagination working overtime, as usual?
But then Darian turned to look at her, and she felt her heart sink. How could such a warm and rich and vibrant colour as gold be transmuted into something so cold and threatening? But gold was like that, she reminded herself. The colour was warm, but the metal itself was cold—and since time had begun men had died in the pursuit of the costly and elusive treasure.
She shivered, hugging her coat tightly around her, though she knew that the garment would be redundant once they were in the soft, scented heat of Maraban.
As she stared back at Darian, a wave of longing and regret washed over her. Except that she had nothing to regret, did she? Not really—for the man she yearned for was nothing more than an idealised figment of her imagination. True, he had been passion personified…until afterwards…Remember that, she told herself fiercely. Afterwards he had been as cold as the gold of his eyes.
She had lost nothing because there had been nothing between them to lose, other than a brief and beautiful encounter on his leather sofa. A man who respected you and had feelings for you did not take you straight home after such an encounter and then not bother ringing you!
Darian was smiling at her now, but it didn’t seem like a smile at all—more like a grim declaration of intent to pay her back for what he undoubtedly saw as her deceit and betrayal.
And Lara had a pretty good idea of how he was intending to extract that payment.
Well, tough, she thought, with a defiant return of some of her fighting spirit. If you think you’re going to repeat that physically satisfying but ultimately soulless encounter, then you can think again, Mr Half-Brother-to-the-Sheikh.
So why was it that her stupid heart ached with sadness for what might have been?
Yet the reminder of his cavalier behaviour made her feel better in some perverse kind of way, and she even man
aged to flash a friendly smile at him as they made their way up the wind-buffeted steps to the aeroplane, only to be met with a tight-lipped glower in return.
The flight was long, but supremely comfortable, and Lara unexpectedly found her eyelashes fluttering to a close. Oh, thank heavens, she thought muzzily as she drifted off to sleep. The last thing she could have endured was Darian’s simmering disapproval for six hours!
Darian watched her, saw the way her breasts rose and fell, outlined by the soft pink silk dress that she had changed into. She had been wearing jeans and a tee-shirt, but once the decision to fly to Maraban had been made she had opted for flowing, flattering, more feminine clothes—and she seemed to look at home in them, even here on the aircraft.
He glanced around him. He had flown by private jet a couple of times in his life, but nothing to match this; this aircraft was a curious mixture of the very modern and the very old.
Inside the state-of-the-art plane there were lavish silken cushions to recline on, and mint tea and and sparkling water flavoured subtly with oranges was brought to them by two very beautiful stewardesses who were unmistakably Western.
Khalim waved his hand towards the proffered tray. ‘You would prefer whisky, perhaps? Or wine? My culture forbids the use of alcohol, but you are my guest and you must choose what you will.’
Darian shook his head. ‘No, thanks. I never drink when I’m flying, and I’ve made it a rule always to follow the customs of wherever I happen to be.’
‘When in Rome?’ Khalim laughed softly.
Darian laughed back. ‘Or when in Maraban, in this case!’
The joke broke some of the tension and an air of ease settled down between the two men.
The blonde stewardess offered Darian a small dish of pistachio nuts.
‘Thanks,’ he murmured as he took a couple, automatically registering the sideways glance she gave him, and the way that her uniform clung to her tight and luscious curves.
As she wiggled her way out of the cabin Khalim turned to him. ‘She is very beautiful, yes?’
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