by Liz Fielding
‘Nothing involving money.’ Zahir fought down the temptation to reach out, touch his fingers to her lips to silence her so that they could return to that moment of perfect understanding. Instead, he went for a wry smile. ‘I’ll rephrase that. It involves a great deal of money, but the negotiations were done and dusted months ago. I’m here to take possession of the finished article.’
‘Which, since we’re in a boatyard, I’m guessing would be a boat?’ she said, looking around her at the vast boat-building sheds, the craft pulled out of the water and propped up in cradles awaiting work.
‘Got it in one and you know how it is with a new toy. It’s no fun unless you can show it off to someone.’
Her gaze returned to him. It was direct, straightforward. Honest. She might blush like a girl, but there was none of that irritating coyness about her. She was direct in her look, direct in every way. Even as she acknowledged the truth of his remark with the smallest tilt of her head, she said, ‘Am I the best you can do?’
He sensed more than simple bafflement that he’d choose to display his latest acquisition to his chauffeur. Suspected that her question was loaded, but he played along, turning to look in the back of the car.
‘I can’t see anyone else. Of course, if you would really prefer to stay here and feed the seagulls?’
Diana knew that feeding the seagulls was the safe option. The sensible option. But, for some reason, she wasn’t doing sensible this week.
If she had been, she’d have politely accepted Zahir’s apology and left it at that. Too late now, but then their relationship had gone far beyond politeness. Beyond the point at which she could pretend that she was just his chauffeur and use the car as her defence. The fact that he’d asked, rather than ordered only underlined that point.
He was learning.
Pity she couldn’t do the same, she thought, as she opened the car door and stepped out, catching her breath as the breeze whipped at her hair.
At the marina, the sea, sheltered in the narrow estuary that the river had carved through the hills and coralled by wooden landing stages, had seemed deceptively tame.
Here the sea was a live thing, constantly on the move as it slapped against the concrete slipway, sucked at the shingle. Even the air tasted of salt.
She turned to Zahir, who was standing beside the car, waiting.
Tall, dark and so dangerous that he should have, Warning! Close Contact With This Man Can Seriously Damage Your Peace of Mind! stamped on his forehead.
The fact that he’d been able to tease her out of her strop the moment he’d put his mind to it was ample demonstration of the danger she was in. How would she ever be able to resist him if he really made an effort?
If he wanted more than a kiss…
She shook her head, recognising somewhere, deep inside her where she refused to go, that his apology had been a rare thing. That he had been making a very special effort.
That resistance was imperative. And, taking a slow calming breath, she turned to face him.
‘If you wanted to show off your new toy,’ she asked, ‘why didn’t you bring the Princess with you?’
‘Princess?’
He was good. He really looked as if he didn’t know what, who, she was talking about.
‘Tall,’ she prompted, holding her hand several inches above her own pitiful height. ‘Blonde.’ She couldn’t quite bring herself to say beautiful. ‘Your partner, according to James Pierce?’
He leaned back, his brows drawn down in a puzzled frown. ‘Do you mean Lucy?’
‘I don’t know. How many tall, blonde partners do you have?’ she snapped, angry that he wouldn’t just own up, tell her the truth. That while he was flirting with her, kissing her, dancing with her, he had a thoroughbred filly at home in the stable.
Angry with herself for allowing him to waltz away with her, when she knew…
‘You were talking to her when I returned the tray. If that helps,’ she prompted. ‘She was wearing a pale grey…’
‘I’m with you,’ he said, getting the picture. ‘But calling her my partner is stretching it a bit.’
‘Surely you are or you aren’t,’ she said, hating him for not being honest with her. Hating herself for caring…
‘It’s not like that.’
‘No? What is it like, Zahir?’
‘What is it like?’
His long look left her in no doubt that she’d exposed herself, had revealed feelings that would have been better kept hidden and, damn it, she was really good at ‘hidden’. She could keep a secret better than anyone she knew. She’d had years of practice…
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said, turning away, but he stopped her. All it took was a touch to her shoulder.
‘It’s like this, Diana.’
And she turned back. Forget the way he looked, the way he smiled so that she felt like the only person in the world. Who could resist that low, seductively accented voice as it wrapped itself around her, warming everything within her that was vital, female, bringing it to life?
Who could resist it, when she’d been dead inside for so long?
‘Really-’
She made one more effort, but he raised a hand, demanding that she listen.
‘Lucy-charming, beautiful Lucy-’ she flinched at each word ‘-was the joint owner of one of those desert tour outfits. It was poorly managed, under-capitalised, going nowhere. And the man who ran it had been arrested for fraud, amongst other things.’
His mouth tightened as if just thinking about it made him angry and suddenly she was listening.
‘My cousin, Hanif-Ameerah’s father-knew that I was more interested in business than diplomacy and he encouraged me to step in, take it over, see if I could make something of it. I raised the capital-it didn’t take much-but when I bought Lucy out I insisted she keep a small equity in the business.’ He managed a wry smile. ‘Just in case I was as good as I thought I was. She’d had a raw deal.’
‘What a Galahad!’
‘You don’t understand.’ He lifted a hand as if asking her to at least try. ‘But then why should you?’
‘I never will unless you tell me. Not that it’s any of my business,’ she added, realising, somewhat belatedly, that haranguing a client about business affairs was probably not an entirely wise move. Except that she’d stopped treating Zahir like a client from, well, the moment she’d picked up the shattered snow globe.
But the admission earned her another of those smiles-the real ones-so that was okay.
‘Don’t go all polite on me, Diana.’
Or maybe not.
‘I’m listening,’ she said.
He leaned back against the car, folded him arms, looked down, as if dredging deep for what he was about to tell her. ‘The men in my family are diplomats. My grandfather before he became ruler. My father, uncles, cousins. I wanted something different. Like you, I had a dream.’
‘Your own airline?’
‘Not quite. It takes time to learn to dream on that scale. You have to start small, then, as your imagination grows, let the dreams grow until they are big enough to fill all the available space.’ He glanced up at her. ‘I got my chance because Lucy’s life had fallen apart. I owed her. She uses her share of the profits to fund a charity she founded, which is why she turns out for the PR stuff, as she did last night, whenever Hanif can spare her.’
Hanif…
‘Your cousin,’ she said, finally working out where all this was going. ‘Ameerah’s father.’
‘And Lucy’s husband.’
Diana struggled to say something to cover her stupidity but for once words failed her and all she could manage was a stumbling, ‘I…um…’
Oh…sheikh!
Zahir saw her difficulty. But then he’d seen everything. That was why he’d taken the long route to make his point when he could just as easily have said, She’s my partner, but she’s also my cousin’s wife.
‘That wasn’t the kind of partnership you were talking about
was it.’ he asked very softly.
A hole in the ground, opening up to swallow her whole, would be welcome right now, she decided as, left with no place to hide, she shook her head.
‘Whatever made you think-?’
‘I saw her last night when I returned the tray,’ she cut in quickly, before he reminded her exactly what she’d been thinking. ‘You were together. You looked so close and when he saw me looking Mr Pierce told me that she was your partner. I thought…’ She dismissed what she’d thought with an awkward, meaningless gesture.
‘A simple misunderstanding.’
She didn’t think so.
‘His partner…’ The way James Pierce had said it had been full of meaning. He’d meant her to believe…
No. That was ridiculous. Much more likely her imagination, working overtime, leaping to conclusions when she’d seen him standing so close to a beautiful woman just minutes after he’d kissed her.
Good grief, she must have it bad if she’d let her imagination run so green. She must really have it bad if she felt this good knowing that it wasn’t true.
While she was still trying to find words that would not betray her as a complete idiot-a jealous idiot at that-he rescued her, making a gesture in the direction of boatyard.
‘Actually, you’re right, Lucy would have loved the chance to see the yacht. In fact she’s calling in every favour I owe her in return for the right to give it a test run as a wedding anniversary gift to Hanif before it’s chartered to the public.’
‘You’re going to charter it?’ Diana asked, grabbing for the impersonal in an attempt to distract him from the fact that she’d just betrayed feelings that were just plain…inappropriate!
‘I could not justify the expense for my own personal use. Even if I had the time. But today it is all mine.’ And, with the slightest of bows, he offered her his hand. ‘In the absence of Princess Lucy al-Khatib, Miss Metcalfe, will you do me the immense honour of allowing me to share this moment with you?’
He had never treated her as if she were just his chauffeur, but at this moment she recognised that he was treating her like a princess and she laid her hand against his.
He closed his hand over hers, tucked it beneath his arm and, heading for the boatyard office, said, ‘My plan is to use the yacht as part of a wedding package. I’d value your opinion on that.’
‘I don’t think I’m your natural market, Zahir.’
He glanced at her. ‘Are you telling me that you don’t dream?’
‘Not at all. It’s just that my dreams are confined to pink taxis.’ And a prince who turns into a frog. The only way this could turn out. But it was her Cinderella moment and she was going to make the most of it.
‘There’s nothing wrong with the pink taxi dream, but maybe I can broaden your horizons.’
‘To what? A pink yacht?’
‘Just wait until you see her,’ he said, with a sudden smile that betrayed an oddly boyish enthusiasm. ‘There’s a very small island in Nadira Creek that is going to make a perfect wedding venue. I’m building a restaurant there, with a traditional wind tower to draw the air down over a basement pool to cool it naturally. A pavilion for romantic Westerners to make their vows.’
‘It’s just for tourists, then?’
‘An Arab wedding traditionally takes place at the bride’s home…’ He shook his head. ‘At Nadira, after the ceremony, the feasting, the yacht will be waiting to carry the honeymooners away, leaving the world behind…’
He left the rest to her already overcharged imagination.
‘It sounds enchanting,’ she said, concentrating very hard not to go there. ‘And expensive.’ Then, ‘But very romantic.’
‘It will be.’
‘Which?’
‘All three,’ he assured her. And the boyish smile faded, leaving only a very adult warmth in his eyes.
The yacht certainly looked expensive. White, sleek, beautiful, and so much larger than she’d anticipated, that Diana almost succumbed to another ‘…oh, sheikh…’ moment.
‘You’d probably like to look around the accommodation, miss,’ the boat builder suggested, ‘while I show Sheikh Zahir the engines?’
Zahir hesitated, then, turning to follow the man below to inspect powerful engines that were, even now, sending a quiet hum through the yacht, he said, ‘Go where you like, Diana. I’ll catch up with you.’
She suspected that she knew at least as much about engines as Zahir. From the time she could reach inside the bonnet of his taxi, she’d been asking questions and her father had taught her all he knew, even as he’d taught her to drive on private roads, so that she’d passed her driving test only days after her seventeenth birthday.
But men were funny about stuff like that, so she did as she was told and wandered over the yacht, marvelling over the ingenuity of the fittings in the galley, sighing over the minimalist luxury of the accommodation. Coming to a halt when she opened the door to the main stateroom which, dominated by a huge bed, half hidden by rich silk drapes, was quite clearly the honeymoon suite. Zahir had certainly widened the horizons of her dreams she thought, as her imagination ran amok…
Definitely time for some fresh air, she decided, heading back to the deck. But the honeymoon image lingered and, as she stood in the prow, her dreams knew no bounds. A tropical sun dipping into the sea, the arm of a man who loved her around her waist, her head against his shoulder.
She shook her head to clear it.
Forget the yacht, the sunset. Only the man was important and she’d be wise to forget him too.
Everything she had, everything she could be, was down to her alone and on an impulse, she leaned forward, stretching out her arms like the heroine in the film Titanic and, in the absence of her own hero, telling herself that she could do anything, be anything, if only she had the courage…
Zahir dutifully stood over the glistening pistons as the engines were turned over because, as an owner taking possession, that was what was expected of him. Doing his duty when he’d far rather have stayed with Diana, wanting to see her face as he revealed his new toy to her. As he opened the door and she saw the stateroom. Certain that her reaction would tell him everything he wanted to know.
Perhaps it was as well he’d been distracted.
Better not to know…
When, finally, he could escape, he found her not below, exploring, but standing in the bow of the yacht, her arms outstretched like some figurehead…No…It was something else. A scene from a film.
She was dreaming after all and, smiling, he came up behind her, took hold of her waist and said, ‘Do it properly. Step up on the rail.’ Her response was to take a step back, drop her arms, but he urged her to go for it. Lifting her, he said, ‘Reach for it, Diana. Reach for what you want most.’
‘Zahir!’
His name was a wail of embarrassment, but he refused to listen.
‘Trust me…I won’t let you fall.’
Diana, feeling utterly foolish at being caught out play-acting this way, for a moment resisted, but his hands were strong, his support real, and suddenly she was there, leaning far out over the water, her eyes closed, arms stretched wide, reaching for her future as he leaned with her, his arms beneath hers, keeping her safe.
‘I can feel the wind in my face,’ she said, laughing, feeling like the girl she’d never been. And at her back she could feel Zahir’s strength as he held her, the slight roughness of his chin against her neck, the warmth of his body quickening her to a womanhood she’d never known.
The thudding of her pulse at his closeness, an aching intimate heat, shocking in its urgency, was confirmation that life was to be seized and shaken and, for one mad moment, she came close to turning and pulling him over the edge with her, taking him with her as she plunged beneath the surface.
If they were both out of their depth they would be equal…
Except she was Cinderella and the minute they stepped off the yacht she would cease to be a princess.
‘Ar
e you sure this is a good idea?’ she said shakily, backing away from the intensity of feelings that had almost overwhelmed her. Trying to keep this at a level she could handle.
She didn’t do overwhelmed.
She didn’t do dreams.
‘It won’t jinx the boat?’ she persisted, when the only answer was his soft breath against her cheek.
The scene in the film had been beautiful, but the love affair, like the Titanic, had been doomed from the first reel of the movie and, in an attempt to claw herself back to reality, she opened her eyes to find that the view had changed. That they were far from the shore.
Confused, she looked down to see a lacy ripple of white where the bow broke the surface of the water.
She stared down at it for a moment, trying to work out what was happening, then, as the water moving away from her made her giddy, she pitched forward, crying out, certain she was about to fall.
But Zahir’s hands were sure. He had her safe and, lifting her down, turned her so that she was facing him instead of the rush of water, drawing her close as she clung, shaking, to his shoulders, his arms around her as if he would never let her go while he murmured soft reassuring words against her hair, her temple.
She was still shaking, but not because she was afraid of falling. This wasn’t fear, this was something darker, more urgent, and, as she looked up, she knew he was going to kiss her.
Not the way he’d kissed her before. This was not like that sweet, sensuous, barely there kiss.
He’d held her as he’d danced with her.
This was something else. This wasn’t that light, floating touch as they’d slowly circled Berkeley Square. This was searingly close, a hungry, insistent need…
For the space of one, two, three heartbeats pounding in her ears, her head did its best to fight the seductive call to surrender, but by then her body had made a bid for independence and, overriding thought, reason, she was kissing him back.
No holds barred. No fooling. Minutes earlier she’d felt as if she were flying; this was the real thing.
Diana didn’t want him to let her go. She wanted him to carry her down to that stateroom and put that incredible bed to the purpose for which it had been designed.