by Liz Fielding
Or was he recalling her earlier slip?
‘For the next seven days you are my first concern,’ he assured her. ‘I’m simply going to check the weather report.’
Whew…
His first concern.
Wow…
But then he thought that she was the real thing. And when he turned those midnight-dark eyes on her she so wanted to be real. Not pretending. Just for a week, she thought, as she watched him stride away across the cabin on long, long legs.
No, no, no!
This was no time to lose it over a gorgeous face and a buff body and, determined to put him out of her mind, she turned back to her book. She had to read the same paragraph four times before it made sense, but she persevered, scarcely wavering in her concentration even when Kal returned to his chair, this time armed with a book of his own.
She turned a page, taking the opportunity to raise her lashes just enough to see that it was a heavyweight political treatise. Not at all what she’d expect from a man with playboy looks who’d told her that he did nothing ‘seriously’.
But then looks, as she knew better than most, could be deceptive.
Atiya appeared after a while with the dinner menu and to offer them a drink. They both stayed with water. Wasted no time in choosing something simple to eat.
But for the continuous drone of the aircraft engines, the cabin was quiet. Once she lifted her head, stretched her neck. Maybe the movement caught his eye because he looked up too, lifting a brow in silent query. She shook her head, leaned back against the thickly padded seat and looked down at a carpet of clouds silvered by moonlight.
Kal, watching her, saw the exact moment when her eyes closed, her body slackened and he caught her book as it began to slide from her hand. It was the autobiography of a woman who’d founded her own business empire. She’d personally inscribed this copy to Rose.
He closed it, put it on the table. Asked Atiya for a light blanket, which he laid over her. Then, book forgotten, he sat and watched her sleep, wondering what dreams brought that tiny crease to her forehead.
‘Sir,’ Atiya said softly, ‘I’ll be serving dinner in ten minutes. Shall I wake Lady Rose?’
‘I’ll do it in a moment,’ he said. Then, when she’d gone, he leaned forward. ‘Rose,’ he said softly. ‘Rose…’
Lydia opened her eyes, for a moment not sure where she was. Then she saw Kal and it all came rushing back. It hadn’t been a dream, then. She really was aboard a flying palace, one that wouldn’t turn into a pumpkin at midnight. She had an entire week before she had to return to the checkout.
‘What time is it?’ she asked, sitting up, disentangling herself from the blanket that Atiya must have put over her.
‘Seven minutes to eight in London, or to midnight in Ramal Hamrah if you want to set your watch to local time.’
She glanced at her wrist, touched the expensive watch, decided she’d rather do the maths than risk tampering with it.
‘Atiya is ready to serve dinner.’
‘Oh.’ Her mouth was dry, a sure sign that she’d been sleeping with it open, which meant he’d been sitting there watching her drool.
Memo to self, she thought, wincing as she put her feet to the floor, searched with her toes for her shoes. Next time, use the bed.
‘I apologise if I snored.’
His only response was a smile. She muffled a groan. She’d snored, drooled…
‘Late night?’ he asked, not helping.
‘Very,’ she admitted.
She’d had a late shift at the supermarket and, although her mother was determinedly independent, she always felt guilty about leaving her, even for a short time.
‘I was double-checking to make sure that I hadn’t left any loose ends trailing before taking off for a week,’ she replied.
Everything clean and polished.
Fridge and freezer stocked so that Jennie wouldn’t have to shop.
Enough of her mother’s prescription meds to keep her going.
The list of contact numbers double-checked to make sure it was up to date.
While Rose wouldn’t have been faced with that scenario, she’d doubtless had plenty of other stuff to keep her up late before she disappeared for a week.
And, like her, she would have been too wound up with nerves to sleep properly.
‘I’d better go and freshen up,’ she said but, before she could move, Kal was there to offer his hand, ease her effortlessly to her feet so that they were chest to chest, toe to toe, kissing close for a fraction of a second; long enough for her to breathe in the scent of freshly laundered linen, warm skin, some subtle scent that reminded her of a long ago walk in autumn woods. The crushed dry leaves and bracken underfoot.
Close enough to see the faint darkening of his chin and yearn to reach up, rub her hand over his jaw, feel the roughness against her palm.
She’d barely registered the thought before he released her hand, stepped back to let her move and she wasted no time putting some distance between them.
She looked a mess. Tousled, dishevelled, a red mark on her cheek where she’d slept with her head against the leather upholstery. She was going to have to duck her entire head under the cold tap to get it working properly, but she didn’t have time for that. Instead, she splashed her face, repaired her lipstick, brushed the tangles out of her hair and then clasped it at the nape of her neck with a clip she found in the case that Rose had packed for her.
Then she ran through the pre-gig checklist in an attempt to jolt her brain back into the groove.
Smoothed a crease in the linen trousers.
Straightened the fine gold chain so that it lay in an orderly fashion about her neck.
Rehearsed her prompt list of appropriate questions so that there would never be a lull in the conversation.
Putting the situation in its proper context.
It was something she’d done hundreds of times, after all.
It was just another job!
Kal rose as she entered the main saloon and the just another job mantra went straight out of the window. Not that he did anything. Offer her his hand. Smile, even.
That was the problem. He didn’t have to do anything, she thought as he stood aside so that she could lead the way to where Atiya was waiting beside a table that had been laid with white damask, heavy silver, crystal, then held a chair for her.
Like a force of nature, he just was.
Offered wine, she shook her head. Even if she’d been tempted, she needed to keep a clear head.
She took a fork, picked up a delicate morsel of fish and said, ‘Lucy tells me that you’re her husband’s cousin. Are you a diplomat, too?’
Conventional, impersonal conversation. That was the ticket, she thought as she tasted the fish. Correction, ate the fish. She wasn’t tasting a thing.
‘No.’ He shrugged. ‘My branch of the family has been personae non gratae at the Ramal Hamrahn court for three generations.’
No, no, no!
That wasn’t how it worked. She was supposed to ask a polite question. He was supposed to respond in kind. Like when you said, ‘How are you?’ and the only proper response was any variation on, ‘Fine, thanks.’
‘Personae non gratae at the Embassy, too,’ he continued, ‘until I became involved in one of Lucy’s charitable missions.’
Better. Charity was Rose’s life and, firmly quashing a desire to know more about the black sheep thing, what his family had done three generations ago that was so terrible-definitely off the polite questions list-Lydia concentrated on that.
‘You help Lucy?’
‘She hasn’t mentioned what I do?’ he countered.
‘Maybe she thought I’d try and poach you.’ Now that was good. ‘What do you do for her?’
‘Not much. She needed to ship aid to an earthquake zone. I offered her the use of an aircraft-we took it from there.’
Very impressively ‘not much’, she thought. She’d definitely mention him to Rose. Maybe they woul
d hit it off.
She squashed down the little curl of something green that tried to escape her chest.
‘That would be the one your father owns?’ she asked. Again, she’d imagined a small executive jet. Clearly, where this family was concerned, she needed to start thinking bigger.
‘Flying is like driving, Rose. When you get your licence, you don’t want to borrow your father’s old crate. You want a shiny new one of your own.’
‘You do?’
A lot bigger, she thought. He came from a two-plane family.
Something else occurred to her.
He’d said no one in his family did anything seriously, but that couldn’t possibly be true. Not in his case, anyway. Obtaining a basic pilot’s licence was not much different from getting a driving licence-apart from the cost-but stepping up to this level took more than money. It took brains, dedication, a great deal of hard work.
And, yes, a heck of a lot of money.
‘You are such a fraud,’ she said but, far from annoying her, it eased her qualms about her own pretence.
‘Fraud?’
Kal paused with a fork halfway to his lips. It hadn’t taken Lucy ten minutes to rumble him, demand to know what he expected from Hanif in return for his help, but she knew the family history and he hadn’t expected his offer to be greeted with open arms.
He’d known the only response was to be absolutely honest with her. That had earned him first her sympathy and then, over the years, both her and Hanif’s friendship.
Rose had acted as if she had never heard of him but, unless Lucy had told her, how did she-
‘Not serious?’ she prompted. ‘Exactly how long did it take you to qualify to fly something like this?’
Oh, right. She was still talking about the flying. ‘I do fun seriously,’ he said.
‘Fun?’
‘Give me a chance and I’ll show you,’ he said. Teasing was, after all, a two-way street; the only difference between them was that she blushed. Then, realising how that might have sounded, he very nearly blushed himself. ‘I didn’t mean…Lucy suggested you might like to go fishing.’
‘Fishing?’ She pretended to consider. ‘Let me see. Wet. Smelly. Maggots. That’s your idea of fun?’
That was a challenge if ever he’d heard one. And one he was happy to accept. ‘Wet, smelly and then you get to dry out, get warm while you barbecue the catch on the beach.’
‘Wet, smelly, smoky and then we get sand in our food. Perfect,’ she said, but a tiny twitch at the corner of her mouth suggested that she was hooked and, content, he let it lie.
Rose speared another forkful of fish.
‘In her letter,’ she said, ‘Lucy suggested I’d enjoy a trip to the souk. Silk. Spices. Gold.’
‘Heat, crowds, people with cellphones taking your photograph? I thought you wanted peace and privacy.’
‘Even the paparazzi have children to feed and educate,’ she said. ‘And publicity oils the wheels of charity. The secret is not to give them something so sensational that they don’t have to keep coming back for more.’
‘That makes for a very dull life,’ he replied gravely, playing along, despite the fact that it appeared to fly directly in the face of what Lucy had told him. ‘But if you wore an abbayah, kept your eyes down, your hair covered, you might pass unnoticed.’
‘A disguise?’
‘More a cover-up. There’s no reason to make it easy for them, although there’s no hiding your height.’
‘Don’t worry about it.’
‘It’s what I’m here for.’
‘Really?’ And she was the one challenging him, as if she knew he had an agenda of his own. But she didn’t wait for an answer. ‘So what did you buy?’ she asked.
He must have looked confused because she added, ‘Car, not plane. I wouldn’t know one plane from another. When you passed your test?’ she prompted. ‘A Ferrari? Porsche?’
‘Far too obvious. I chose a Morgan.’
Her turn to look puzzled.
‘It’s a small sports car. A roadster,’ he explained, surprised she didn’t know that. ‘The kind of thing that you see pilots driving in old World War Two movies? My father put my name on the waiting list on my twelfth birthday.’
‘There’s a waiting list?’
‘A long one. They’re hand-built,’ he replied, smiling at her astonishment. ‘I took delivery on my seventeenth birthday.’
‘I’ll add patient to serious,’ she replied. ‘What do you drive now?’
‘I still have the Morgan.’
‘The same one?’
‘I’d have to wait a while for another one, so I’ve taken very good care of it.’
‘I’m impressed.’
‘Don’t be. It stays in London while I’m constantly on the move, but for the record I drive a Renault in France, a Lancia in Italy and in New York…’ he grinned ‘…I take a cab.’
‘And in Ramal Hamrah?’ she asked.
Suddenly the smile took real effort.
‘There’s an old Land Rover that does the job. What about you?’ he asked, determined to shift the focus of their conversation to her. ‘What do you drive for pleasure?’
She leaned forward, her lips parted on what he was sure would have been a protest that she wasn’t finished with the question of Ramal Hamrah. Maybe something in his expression warned her that she was treading on dangerous ground and, after a moment, she sat back. Thought about it.
He assumed that was because her grandfather’s garage offered so wide a choice. But then she said, ‘It’s…’ she used her hands to describe a shape ‘…red.’
‘Red?’ Why was he surprised? ‘Good choice.’
‘I’m glad you approve.’
The exchange was, on the surface, perfectly serious and yet the air was suddenly bubbling with laughter.
‘Do you really have homes in all those places?’ she asked.
‘Just a mews cottage in London. My mother, my father’s first wife, was a French actress. She has a house in Nice and an apartment in Paris. His second wife, an English aristocrat, lives in Belgravia and Gloucestershire. His third was an American heiress. She has an apartment in the Dakota Building in New York and a house in the Hamptons.’
‘An expensive hobby, getting married.’ Then, when he made no comment, ‘You stay with them? Even your ex-stepmothers?’
‘Naturally. They’re a big part of my life and I like to spend time with my brothers and sisters.’
‘Oh, yes. I didn’t think…’ She seemed slightly flustered by his father’s admittedly louche lifestyle. ‘So where does Italy come in? The Lancia?’ she prompted.
‘My father bought a palazzo in Portofino when he was wooing a contessa. It didn’t last-she quickly realised that he wasn’t a man for the long haul-but he decided to keep the house. As he said, when a man has as many ex-wives and mistresses and children as he has, he needs a bolt-hole. Not true, of course. It’s far too tempting a location. He’s never alone.’
He expected her to laugh. Most people took what he said at face value, seeing only the glamour.
‘From his history, I’d say he’s never wanted to be,’ Rose said, her smile touched with compassion. ‘It must have been difficult. Growing up.’
‘Life was never dull,’ he admitted with rather more flippancy than he felt. Without a country, a purpose, his grandfather had become rudderless, a glamorous playboy to whom women flocked, a lifestyle that his father had embraced without question. His family were his world but after one relationship that had kept the gossip magazines on their toes for eighteen months as they’d followed every date, every break up, every make up, he’d realised that he had no wish to live like that for the rest of his life.
‘You didn’t mention Ramal Hamrah,’ she said, ignoring the opportunity he’d given her to talk about her own grandfather. Her own life.
Rare in a woman.
Rare in anyone.
Most people would rather talk about themselves.
‘
Do you have a home there?’
‘There is a place that was once home,’ he told her because the apartment overlooking the old harbour, bought off plan from a developer who had never heard of Kalil al-Zaki, could never be described as the home of his heart, his soul. ‘A faded photograph that hangs upon my grandfather’s wall. A place of stories of the raids, battles, celebrations that are the history of my family.’
Stories that had grown with the telling until they had become the stuff of legend.
It was an image that the old man looked at with longing. Where he wanted to breathe his last. Where he wanted to lie for eternity, at one with the land he’d fought for.
And Kalil would do anything to make that possible. Not that sitting here, sharing a meal with Lady Rose Napier was as tedious as he’d imagined it would be.
‘No one has lived there for a long time,’ he said.
For a moment he thought she was going to ask him to tell her more, but all she said was, ‘I’m sorry.’
She was quiet for a moment, as if she understood the emptiness, the sense of loss and he began to see why people, even those who had never met her, instinctively loved her.
She had an innate sensitivity. A face that invited confidences. Another second and he would have told her everything but, at exactly the right moment, she said, ‘Tell me about your brothers and sisters.’
‘How long have you got?’ he asked, not sure whether he was relieved or disappointed. ‘I have one sister, a year younger than me. I have five half-sisters, three half-brothers and six, no seven, steps of both sexes and half a dozen who aren’t actually related by blood but are still family.’
She counted them on her long, slender fingers.
‘Sixteen?’ she asked, looking at him in amazement. ‘You’ve got sixteen brothers and sisters? Plus six.’
‘At the last count. Sarah, she’s the English ex, and her husband are about to have another baby.’
Lydia sat back in her chair, stunned. As an only child she had dreamed of brothers and sisters, but this was beyond imagining.