Prince of the Desert

by Penny Jordan

  First thing tomorrow morning he would find out who she was and arrange for her to be deported. He didn’t want to find her waiting for him a second time, he told himself savagely. He wasn’t going to risk another night like tonight. Nor did he want to have to share his bed with her. But, since she was already deeply asleep in it…He looked towards the bedroom door. He had converted the second bedroom into an office, and the furniture in the living room was not conducive to a decent night’s sleep. Anyway, why the hell should he give up his right to sleep in his own comfortable king-sized bed because it already had an occupant?

  He reached for the covers.

  Sunlight pouring through the unshuttered windows slanted gold bars across Gwynneth’s face, its heat drawing her reluctantly from sleep. Unfamiliar images and sensations curled like autumn smoke through her thoughts and her body, making her frown in rejection and try to ignore the way her heartbeat picked up.

  Cautiously she opened her eyes, exhaling in relief when she found that she was lying in the same bed she had originally gone to sleep in last night—and, more importantly, she was lying there alone. But she had not slept there alone during the night, she recognised, her face starting to burn as she saw the telltale imprint of another head on the pillow next to hers. So last night had not just been a fevered dream or a trick of her imagination.

  She pushed back the covers and swung her feet onto the floor, tensing as she did so. She certainly wasn’t imagining the small bruises on her skin where hard hands had held her. She wasn’t imagining either the heavy fullness of her breasts or the sensitivity of her nipples. There was an unfamiliar ache deep inside her. Of fulfillment? Or of longing for what she had not had? A longing formore of what she had had, for the satisfaction of being totally and completely sexually possessed?

  She shook her head, trying to disperse the images that clung to her mind as betrayingly as the scent of him still clung to her skin.

  She had no idea what had caused last night’s aberration in her behaviour, the total deviation from the controlled pathway she normally imposed on it. She could come up with a variety of theories, though, ranging from mundane jet lag to some kind of delayed reaction to her father’s death.

  Since she did not know what had been responsible for the way she had acted, the best thing she could do now, she told herself sturdily, was to put the entire incident behind her and refuse to give in to the self-indulgence of spending time and energy focusing on it. Like anything else, once starved of energy it would quickly shrivel to nothing.

  But the man who had shared the wild passion of the night with her—who was he? How had he got into the apartment? Logic suggested that he must have a key, which further suggested that he must be employed to look after the apartments in some capacity. Was what had happened last night a regular occurrence? Something he considered to be a perk of the job? If so, she had had a very lucky escape. She shuddered to think now of the kind of health risks she had run in coming so close to unprotected sex with a stranger. Why hadn’t she stopped him?

  Inside her head she could hear her own voice, taunting her that she was after all her parents’ daughter, and that all the years of struggling to deny the fact, to reject it and prove to herself she could never be caught in the trap of her father’s sexuality, had been swept away by her physical desire for a stranger.

  Her parents’ marriage had been the result of her father’s uncontrollable sexuality and her mother’s equally out-of-control emotional neediness. In a word: lust. She had sworn she would never be like them.

  So what had happened?

  She didn’t drink, and she most certainly didn’t do drugs, so she couldn’t blame either of them.

  She walked into the bathroom and turned on the shower. As she had already told herself, she couldn’t change what had happened, but she could refuse to dwell on it or endlessly analyse it. She could choose to ignore it, to seal it off and lock it away where she would never need to think about it again. And, thankfully, there was no reason why she would have to think about it again.

  In three days’ time she would be back in London, having arranged for ownership of the apartment to be put in her name and having put it up for sale.

  She just hoped it would sell quickly. Her plan was that once the apartment had been sold she would have all the money put into a trust fund for Anthony and Teresa. They were both her late father’s responsibility after all. Teresa was little more than a girl and Anthony was his son.

  Gwynneth dried herself quickly, ignoring the small marks on her body that were evidence of last night’s passion. A mental image of herself raking a tanned male shoulder with her teeth, clawing a male back in hunger, flashed through her mind. Defensively she dipped her head, hurrying to get herself some clean clothes. As she left the room, she hesitated. What if he was still here somewhere in the apartment, waiting….? Waiting for what? A repeat of last night? Her belly clenched fiercely around the distinctive and very betraying surge of hot excitement that stirred inside her. He wasn’t here, she told herself. Instinctively she knew that. Taking a deep breath, she opened the bedroom door and stepped resolutely into the hallway.

  Half an hour later, having been delighted to find some coffee in a kitchen that was otherwise bare of provisions, she was ready to leave for her appointment. Picking up her handbag, she frowned as she saw the thick wad of Zurani currency stuffed into her passport. How had that got there? Uneasily she removed the money from her handbag, her eyes widening as she saw the note that was with it. The wordsTo professional services for last night were written firmly on the paper, and it was abundantly plain just what they meant.

  Automatically she stiffened in angry rejection of both the meaning of the note and her own reaction to it. How could she possibly feel hurt because a man who was a complete stranger had made an error of judgement? Although even though he was a stranger, it was a very insulting error of judgement, she reminded herself shakily. After all, he was the one who had invaded her privacy and entered the apartment uninvited. Even so…

  Hadn’t she always believed that she had to be guardian of her own reputation and her own values? That she had to do everything she could to prevent herself being labelled as her father’s daughter?

  Maybe, but surely a woman could have sex with a man without being labelled a whore? By what right did a man who walked into an unknown woman’s apartment and then had a sexual encounter with her assume she was selling the sex? By the right of being male? Did she really need to tell herself that? Wasn’t it a given—something that all women instinctively understood? Outwardly things might have changed from the days when a woman’s virtue and virginity were something to be prized, but inwardly they hadn’t changed as much as people liked to think.

  By leaving her money he was telling her brutally what he thought of her. She was a commodity he had bought and used. And having used her he was now discarding her.

  Dry-eyed, but with her face burning and her heart hot with furious outrage, she left the apartment.

  CHAPTER THREE

  TARIQfrowned as he listened to the Ruler’s Chief of Police deploring the fact that because they had not as yet discovered the identity of the Zurani who was working for the gang he could not give the order for the gang to be deported, after a warning of the very long prison sentence they would face if they were ever found in Zuran again.

  Knowing that it was almost time for the Ruler to hold his regular monthly publicdivan— traditionally an opportunity for the Ruler’s subjects to bring to him their problems and questions so that he might dispense with justice and answers—Tariq stood up and bowed formally to the Ruler, as did the Chief of Police.

  On her way back to the apartment, following her appointment, Gwynneth had stopped off at a small supermarket to buy a few basic supplies. As she put these away in the empty cupboards and fridge freezer of the apartment it was what she had been told by the sympathetic young official she had met earlier that was occupying her thoughts.

  It had never occ
urred to her that there might be a problem registering her ownership of the apartment—especially since she had followed the advice she had been given by the Zurani Embassy in London and had brought with her documentation to prove her father’s ownership of the apartment and to confirm her own identity. Fortunately, when her father had boasted to her about the apartment he had shown her the deeds and told her that he intended to deposit them with his London bank for safekeeping.

  Now, though, it transpired that proving her father’s ownership of the apartment was not going to be as straightforward as simply producing the deeds—as the charming official had explained to her, in an extremely grave tone of voice.

  Her heart had sunk just about as low as she felt it could sink as she’d listened to him telling her about the double-selling scam that had resulted in two separate sets of buyers believing they had purchased the same property. And then had come the additional blow of hearing about the length of time it would take to make painstaking enquiries to establish who had been duped and who in fact did own a property.

  ‘So what should I do now?’ she had appealed.

  ‘If you are able to do so, your best course of action would be to remain here in Zuran until we can establish whether or not your father owned the apartment.’

  ‘I’m actually staying in the apartment,’ Gwynneth had felt obliged to tell him, adding with concern, ‘And I certainly can’t afford to pay for a hotel. If there is another potential owner, then…’

  ‘I shall make a note on the file to the effect that you are currently occupying the flat, but that you are aware of the issue of its ownership,’ she had been told.

  Now Gwynneth reached for her mobile and switched it on. She would have to tell Teresa what had happened, but first she had another phone call to make.

  As she pressed the speed dial for her boss’s number she looked at her watch. It would be nine o’clock in the morning in the UK. Piers would have been at work for a while now. He was a workaholic who liked to be at his desk by eight.

  He picked up the call within a couple of rings.

  ‘Hi, Piers—it’s Gwynneth,’ she announced herself, smiling when she heard the warmth in his voice as he answered.

  They had been working together for over a year, and Piers had made it plain that he wanted to put their relationship on a more personal footing. However, much as she liked him as a person, she had no desire for them to become a couple, and so had refused his offers to take her out as gently as she could.

  Quickly she explained what was happening, exhaling in relief when he said immediately that she must stay in Zuran for as long as it took to get things sorted out.

  ‘I know you aren’t a clock-watcher, Gwynneth. You’ve put in a lot of extra hours these last few months, and I appreciate that. I’m going to miss you, though,’ he told her softly. ‘Pity I can’t take some time off myself and fly out there to join you,’ he added ruefully, before they ended their call.

  Her duty to her employers dealt with, Gwynneth started to wonder if she ought to get in touch with the British Embassy in Zuran and get their opinion of the situation with regard to the apartment. But the young Zurani official had cautioned her not to discuss the matter with anyone, explaining that the Zurani authorities, whilst not responsible for the fraud in any way, were prepared to deal fairly and sympathetically with the victims providing they undertook not to fuel panic or potentially destructive rumours by talking publicly about what had happened.

  Just how long would she have to stay here in Zuran before everything was sorted out? Long enough for last night’s stranger to make a return visit? Immediately she stiffened in rejection of the feeling surging through her. She had told herself not to think about last night, or the man she had shared it with. It was over—gone—and for her own sake she should accept that.

  But what if she didn’t want to accept it? If she wanted…

  What? A repeat performance? Was she totally crazy? She suddenly remembered that she still had the money he had left her in her handbag. Opening it, she removed the bundle of notes with trembling fingers. So much money. Even without counting it she could see that.

  Money that Teresa and Anthony might need very badly if things went wrong and it turned out that the apartment wasn’t her father’s and the Zurani Government chose not to compensate her.

  She dropped the notes onto the table as swiftly as though they were contaminated. If only she knew more. How long would she have to wait for that promised phone call?

  She went into the kitchen and filled the kettle with water, having decided to make herself a cup of coffee before she spoke to Teresa, whom she knew would be anxiously waiting to hear from her.

  He couldn’t wait to get this whole wretched business sorted out, and the corrupt Zurani official unmasked, so that he could get on with his own life. A life that did not include in it a woman like Gwynneth Talbot, Tariq assured himself grimly, as he stepped out of the lift and slid the key card into the door of the apartment. He had such plans for the small desert kingdom he had inherited.

  The discovery that an old legend attached to it, claiming that it had once been the site of some hanging gardens said to rival those of ancient Babylon, had actually been founded on fact had led to Tariq’s decision to have the site of the original palace and its gardens excavated and if possible reconstructed. It was an ambitious and long-term plan, but one that would be richly rewarding, and Tariq was totally committed to its execution. The ongoing work on the project was already attracting the interest of both tourists and experts in the archaeological field.

  Normally when Tariq was in Zuran he stayed either at the Palace or in his personal suite at one of the two hotels in which he had a financial interest. However, whenever he could he much preferred to spend his free time living simply in the desert, in one of the black tents of his mother’s Bedouin ancestors. Bedouin tribesmen still travelled the old desert routes, although their numbers were dwindling now, and certain members of the Ruler’s extended family had close connections with such tribes—as he did himself through his mother. Just thinking of the desert brought him a fierce longing for the feel of one of his fleet-footed Arabian horses beneath him as they raced together across the sands while dawn broke and the sun started to rise. Inside his head he could see the mental image his longing was creating. And he could see, too, the woman who rode at his side, her face turned towards his own, her green eyes brilliant with excitement for the desert and for him—

  Tariq froze in furious rejection of the image that slipped so treacherously past his guard. The woman he would choose to share his life wouldnot be that woman. Last night’s woman. Gwynneth. He had seen her name in her passport when he had pushed the money into her bag this morning.

  Gwynneth! The first thing Tariq heard when he walked into the apartment was the sound of her voice.

  ‘There’s a bit of a problem. But don’t worry. I’ll do whatever I have to do to make sure we get the money—just as I promised you I would, and no matter how long I have to stay here to get it or what I have to do.’

  She was speaking grimly. As though she was trying to reassure someone. She was seated at the kitchen table with her back to him, the money he had left her this morning in an untidy pile beside her.

  An uncomfortable mix of very powerful feelings was fighting for control of his emotions: righteous anger that she had dared to stay here when he had made it obvious that he wanted her to leave; and a deeper, darker feeling of savaged male pride at hearing her underline the fact that all he was to her was a source of income. The physical memories of last night were storming the defences he had put up against them like grains of sand chafing against his skin.

  Gwynneth sighed as she ended her call to Teresa. She hadn’t wanted to worry the younger girl by saying too much to her, even though she desperately wanted to have someone she could confide her own anxieties to. Her mind was still on Teresa and the problems of her father’s apartment, but some sixth sense made her turn round, the colour mome
ntarily leaving her face only to return in a hot wave of betraying soft pink awareness as she stood up shakily.

  ‘You!You’ve come back!’

  ‘Very dramatic—but somewhat ineffective, surely? Since you must have realised that Iwould come back.’ Tariq responded curtly to her breathy gasp.

  Had she? He had such a powerful air of authority about him that for a moment she was almost in danger of believing him. Almost.

  ‘Why would I do that?’ she challenged him daringly.

  ‘I should have thought that was obvious.’

  Gwynneth couldn’t help it. She could feel the colour burning up under her skin as her body reacted to what he had said. Her body couldn’t actually bepleased that he had come back? That he wanted more of her? Could it? Surely that wasn’t possible? She mustn’t let it feel like that, she decided, panicking. What had happened last night was excusable—just—as an isolated, never to be repeated incident. So long as that was what it remained.