by Liz Fielding
She frowned. He hadn’t mentioned a family business but there must be one or how else had they supported all those wives, children?
‘Exiled playboy?’ he prompted.
‘I’m sorry-’
He stopped her fumbling apology with a touch to the elbow. ‘It’s okay. My grandfather lost his throne, but his father made a generous financial settlement-probably out of guilt.’
‘And his brother didn’t take that away?’
‘He couldn’t have, even if he’d wanted to, but I imagine he thought he was less dangerous playing with his racehorses and women than taking to the hills and fermenting more trouble.’
‘You said he was the clever one.’
She thought that Kal was a lot more like his great-uncle, with his work ethic and philanthropy, than the grandfather he adored.
‘Well, you and your cousin have something in common. Isn’t that a starting place?’
‘I help Lucy out when she needs to move disaster relief supplies. Zahir al-Khatib suggested I was taking advantage of her and offered to carry anything she needed so that she wouldn’t have to turn to me for help.’
‘Oh…’
And then, just when she was feeling desperately sorry for him, he gave her one of those slow smiles calculated to send her hormones into a dizzy spin.
‘She probably shouldn’t have told him that I had more aircraft, fewer family commitments. That I could afford to bear the cost more easily. His airline is very new,’ he explained. ‘But she wanted him to understand that my participation wasn’t a matter for discussion.’
‘Honestly,’ she declared, ‘I was just about to open up my heart and bleed for you.’
‘I know.’ And he touched the spot just by her mouth where she had pointed out his own giveaway muscle. ‘You probably shouldn’t ever play poker unless you’re wearing a full face mask, Lydia,’ he said softly. Then, as if nothing had happened, ‘Gold next, I think.’
She followed him on rubbery legs to the glittering gold souk where the metal shone out of tiny shop windows and the air itself seemed to take on a golden glow.
It was a stunning spectacle and she could have spent hours there, but she quickly chose a pair of earrings, a waterfall of gold and seed pearls for her mother-who wore her hair up and adored dangly earrings-and a brooch set with turquoise for Jennie for looking after her.
‘You will not choose something for yourself?’
He lifted the heavy rose pendant she was wearing at her throat. ‘I imagine you’ll have to give this back?’
‘You imagine right.’ But she could read him too, and she shook her head. ‘Don’t!’ Then, ‘Please, don’t even think it…’ she said, and walked quickly away in the direction of the harbour and the launch that had brought them across the creek, knowing that he had no choice but follow.
But later that afternoon four bolts of cloth were delivered to her room. And when she asked about paying for them Dena simply shrugged and suggest that she ask ‘bin Zaki.’
Lydia didn’t know much about the protocol in these things, but she was fairly certain that a man on the lookout for a bride was not supposed to buy another woman anything, let alone something as personal as cloth she would wear next to her skin.
Easy to see, in retrospect, that the spark that flared between them had been lit in the first moment they had set eyes on one another and for a moment it had burned so intense that, even while he was single-mindedly focused on his future, he had still come close to losing control.
There could be nothing ‘little’ between them and she was holding herself together with nothing but willpower.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
LYDIA wanted this over. Was desperate for Princess Sabirah to pay her call and the week to be over so that she could just stop pretending and go home.
Stop pretending to be Rose. Stop pretending that she felt nothing for Kalil. Not that that worked. He’d only had to call in the darkness. She only had to hear his voice. If she hadn’t cared she would have hung up, not stood there with her phone pressed to her ear, imagining she could hear him breathe while that huge moon rose above them.
Why had he done that?
He was the one who’d stepped back from the brink, broken the most intense, the most intimate connection there could ever be between a man and a woman even when it was obvious he’d wanted her as much as she’d wanted him.
Trapped, like her, committed to a course from which there was no escape but unable to stop himself from touching her. Calling her. Making love to her with words.
Breaking her heart.
She had taken lunch alone, keeping her nose firmly in a book until the words all ran together in a smeary blur, swam fifty lengths of the pool just to stop herself from thinking about him.
Except that when she emerged, slightly dizzy with the effort, he was waiting to wrap a towel around her.
‘You shouldn’t be here,’ she said.
‘I am your bodyguard. It is my duty.’
‘I’m not in any danger.’
Only from falling in love with a man who didn’t believe in love. Who thought marriage was no more than a convenient contract arranged by two families for their advantage. Maybe the girls did have some say, but the pressure had to be intense to make a ‘good’ marriage. Scarcely any different from the way that medieval barons gave their daughters to men whose land marched with theirs, or who could bring them closer to the King.
‘Please…’ She grabbed the towel and ran from the poolside to her room. Sat with it pressed to her face.
‘Be strong, Lydie. You have to be strong…’
But, no matter how she ignored him, Kal’s presence permeated the house.
Everywhere she went, she was sure he’d been there a second before. She couldn’t escape the woody scent that clung to him, the swish of freshly laundered robes, the gentle flapping sound of leather thongs against marble floors.
The thrumming beat of hooves against sand.
It was all in her head, she knew, but she retreated to her room, allowing Yatimah to pamper her with facials, massage the tension out of her shoulders, paint more ornate patterns on her hands and feet with henna.
She caught sight of them as she reached for the phone, hoped they would wear off before she went back to work or they’d cause a few comments from the regulars as she swished their weekly shop over the scanner.
She checked the caller ID and, when she saw it was Kal, considered not answering. But then he’d come looking for her.
She took a deep breath, composed herself.
‘Kal?’ she queried, ice-cool.
‘Just checking. I haven’t seen you all day. Are you hiding from me?’
Reckless, bold, dangerous Bagheera, whose skin shimmered like watered silk, whose mouth tasted like wild honey-only a fool wouldn’t hide.
‘Just putting my feet up, taking it easy while I plan my future,’ she said.
‘Oh? What did you have in mind?’
‘Well,’ she said, her fingers lingering on the bolt of cream silk on the table beside her, ‘now I’m giving up the lookalike business I thought I might set myself up in the rag trade,’ she said. ‘Costing is tricky, though. I need to know how much to budget for material.’
‘Oh, I see. This is about the silk…’
‘I can’t wear it all myself,’ she pointed out. Not unless she made a wedding dress with a thirty foot train. ‘I need to know how much it cost.’
‘You must ask Dena. She dealt with the merchant.’
‘She told me to ask you.’
‘Then it’s a mystery,’ he said with an infuriating hint of laughter in his voice that undid all her good intentions, all her cool.
‘Kal!’ she exploded. ‘I just wanted a few metres for a suit or dress. I can’t take all that home with me.’
‘No problem.’ Now he was enjoying himself. ‘I’ll deliver.’
‘Deliver them to your bride,’ she snapped. ‘Yatimah was telling me that’s what a groom is supposed to d
o. Send jewels, cloth, carpets, the biggest flat screen television you can afford.’
‘Yatimah has altogether too much to say for herself,’ he snapped back and she rejoiced in having rattled him out of his teasing. He had no right to tease her. No right to call her and make her want him…For a moment neither of them spoke and the only sound was of raised breathing. Then, after a moment, his voice expressionless, his manner formal, Kal said, ‘Lucy phoned to check up on how well I’ve been looking after you, sitti.’
‘Tell her what you like,’ Lydia replied, not even trying for cool. ‘I won’t tell tales. And cut out the sitti.’ It was one thing having Dena or Yatimah calling her ‘lady’, quite another from Kal.
‘I can’t tempt you to come on a picnic?’
Oh, the man knew how to tempt.
She refused without having to think twice. Well, maybe twice, but she knew the attraction between them was too great to risk another close encounter. And that even while he was paying lip service to honour, his frustrated libido was refusing to quit.
‘Sorry, Kal, but I’m planning a walk on the beach this afternoon and, unlike you, I’m happy with my own company,’ she said, knowing how much that would infuriate him. But she was angry with him for putting her through this, with herself for aching for something so far out of reach. For bringing tears stinging to her eyes. ‘But you’re welcome to stand and watch if you like. Just remember how handy I am with a shell.’
She didn’t wait for him to command her not to do it, but hung up. Then had to hold herself together. Physically wrap her arms around herself, holding her breath, just to stop herself from falling apart.
Kal took himself to the stables in the foulest, blackest mood.
He was behaving like a man who didn’t know his own mind. Who had lost control of his senses.
It wasn’t true. When he could have taken Lydia, he had known it was wrong. That, without commitment, honour, such an act was beneath him, could only hurt her.
He’d hurt her anyway.
She could hide nothing from him and he’d seen her eyes in the moment she had realised why he had refused the greatest gift a woman could bestow on any man. Had seen her pain in the way she’d moved as she’d taken herself away from him in the souk, when all he’d wanted to do was shower her with gold, pearls. Put diamonds in her ears, on every one of the fingers he had taken to his lips. When, seeing that in his face, she had begged him not even to think it.
He was furious because, even as he weakened, unable to stay away, she grew stronger, keeping him at arm’s length when he needed them around her.
A nagging, desperate need that came from somewhere deep inside, from a place he hadn’t, until that moment, known existed. All he knew was that he was ready to consign common sense, five years of patient planning along with everything he had learned about the fleeting nature of ‘love’ from his grandfather, his father, to the deep blue sea.
And still she had turned him down. Not because she didn’t want to go. He was attuned to every nuance in her voice, every hesitation and he’d heard the unspoken longing in a whisper of a sigh before she had said no to his picnic.
But, even when he was losing control, she was strong enough to save him from himself.
Lydia Young might not be a princess, but she had all the attributes of one. Courage, dignity that would become a queen. A spirit that was all her own. He wanted her with a desperation that was driving every other thought from his head.
At home he would have taken up the small biplane he used for stunting, shaken off his mood in a series of barrel rolls, loops. Here, the closest he could get to a release in the rush of power was on one of Hanif’s fine stallions but, as he tightened the girth, the horse skipped edgily away from him, sensing his frustration.
But it wasn’t simply his out of control libido, the sense of being too big for his skin. This was a need that went much deeper, challenging everything he believed in.
He’d spent the last five years planning the perfect life but Lydia was forcing him to face the fact that life wasn’t something that you could plan. It happened. Some of it good, some of it bad, none of it ‘safe’.
He had arrogantly assumed that his grandfather, his father had wasted their lives but, while their families were scarcely conventional, their quivers were full of the children of their youth and they were, he realised with a shock, happy men. That, wherever his grandfather died, he would be surrounded by his children, grandchildren, people who loved him.
He lay his hand on the neck of the horse, gentling him with soft words, even while he yearned for the sound of Lydia’s voice. The sweet scent that clung to her, as if she had been brushing her hands over jasmine. The touch of her hands against his skin.
Wanted to see her face, her eyes lighting up, her mouth softening, her hands describing what her lips were saying. Her quickness with a tender touch to show that she understood. Her laugh. The swiftness with which she melted to his kisses.
While he kept the world at bay, carefully avoiding the risk, the pain that was an inevitable part of what Lydia called ‘love’, she held nothing back.
She had answered every question he had asked of her with not just her body, but her heart and her soul and he wanted to shower her with gifts, buy her every bolt of cloth in the market, heap up gold, pearls, gems in a dower that she could not ignore.
Except, of course, she could and would. She had told him so. Her price was above rubies. Only his heart, freely given in an avowal of love, without negotiations, conditions, guarantees would win her acceptance.
She would not settle for less and neither, he knew now, would he. Because the nearest a man could come to perfection was to take every single moment and live it to the full. With love. And she was right. He was not a stranger to the emotion. Love for his family was part of who he was.
But this was new. This love for a woman who, from the first moment he had set eyes on her, had made the lights shine more brightly.
He’d lost the perfect moment, had hurt her. Now, to show her how he felt, he had to give her not just his heart but his world. Everything that made him who he was. And there was only one way he could do that, could win her trust.
The horse snorted impatiently, eager to be off, but he left the groom circling the yard as he made the calls that would change his life.
Lydia stepped onto the beach, kicking off her sandals. It was cooler today and she was wearing cotton trousers, a white shirt, a cashmere sweater knotted at her waist.
There were clouds gathering offshore and the wind coming off the sea was sharper, whipping up little white horses on the creek and, as she strode along the beach, hanging onto her temper by a thread, she glowered at the photographer’s launch, bobbing on the waves, hoping that he was seasick.
She doubted that. There hadn’t been pictures in the papers for a day or two. A sighting of Rupert Devenish at a business meeting in the States had downgraded interest in Bab el Sama and he would have packed up his telephoto lenses and gone in search of more lucrative prey.
It hadn’t been a great week for anyone, she thought, her hand tightening around the note from Princess Sabirah’s secretary that Dena had delivered to her as she’d left for her walk.
It was brief and to the point, informing her, regretfully, that the Princess had a cold and was unable to travel this week. Wishing her a pleasant stay and the Princess’s sincere hope that they would meet soon in London.
Somewhere where there was no chance that Kal al-Zaki would pop out of the woodwork, presumably.
That the illness was diplomatic, she had no doubt, and she let out a very unladylike roar of outrage that all Kal’s hopes and dreams had been crushed without even a chance to put in a plea for his grandfather.
What on earth was the matter with these people? It had all happened fifty years ago, for heaven’s sake.
‘Get over it!’ she shouted to the sky, the seabirds whirling overhead.
He had to know. She would have to tell him and the sooner t
he better. Maybe there was still something he could do. She could do…
If she really had been Rose, she could have gone to Rumaillah by herself, taken some flowers to the ‘sick’ Princess. On her own, she would have been admitted. Could have pleaded for him.
She stopped, stood for a moment staring at the phone in her hand as she realised something else. That with his mission dead he would turn to her for comfort, would be free to love her…
She stopped the thought dead, ashamed even to have given it room in her head, and quickly scrolled down the contact list and hit ‘dial’. Unexpectedly, it went straight to voicemail…
‘Kal,’ she began uncertainly, hating to be the bearer of such bad news. Then, as she hesitated, above the buffeting of the wind she heard another sound. The pounding of hooves. She swung round and saw him riding towards her astride a huge black horse, robes flying behind him, hand outstretched. Before she could think, move, there was a jolt as he swooped low, caught her round the waist, lifted her to his saddle.
It was the dream, she thought crazily as she clung to him, her face pressed against his pounding heart.
She’d reached out to him as she’d watched him from above, wanting to be lifted to the stars.
There were no stars and she knew that at any moment he would slow down, berate her for taking unnecessary risks.
But he didn’t stop, didn’t slow down until Bab el Sama was far below them, the horse rearing as he brought it to a halt, turned, slid to the ground with her.
‘Did your English heart beat to be swept onto my horse, ya habibati?’ He smiled as he curved his hand around her face. ‘Did you feel mine, beloved?’ He took her hand and placed it against his chest. ‘Feel it now. It beats for you, Lydia Young.’
Beloved…
He had called her his beloved and as his lips came down on hers she was lost.
‘This is kidnapping,’ she said when he carried her to a waiting four-by-four. ‘Where are you taking me?’
‘You will see,’ he said as he fastened the seat belt and climbed in beside her. ‘Then I will ask you if you wish me to take you back.’