by Kim Lawrence
Her rebuttal to this crazy contention was instant and robust. ‘And if you did say that I’d say you were insane.’
Tair didn’t respond, but instead gave a shrug and tapped her mount sharply on the rump to get it moving.
What did he think she was? she wondered as she watched him ride ahead. Some sort of adrenaline junkie? Adventure indeed!
She loosed a scornful laugh at the notion. All the same there had been a few moments…
Moments of what, Molly—terror?
Dismissing the creeping doubts in her head, she clung on as her mount surged forwards, responding perhaps to the noise of greeting as Tair reached the camp.
It quickly became clear that they were expected. She watched from a distance as people gathered around Tair, their attitude welcoming but respectful.
She closed her eyes and held tight as her camel responded to a command from someone and lurched to the ground for her to dismount.
As Molly turned her head to thank the man who helped her extricate her stiff and aching body from the saddle her face dropped.
Unless it was his twin, it was the same man who had helped her into the saddle two hours earlier…two sweltering, gruelling and bottom-numbing hours earlier. Molly suspected that shortly she would be wishing she were still numb.
The next thing she saw was a four-wheel drive, solidifying her horrid suspicion. Tair was an utterly awful man. Picking up the overlong skirts of the white desert dress she wore, she stalked towards the distinctive tall figure of her persecutor.
‘You did that on purpose, didn’t you?’ Voice quivering with outrage, she stabbed an accusing finger in Tair’s direction. ‘And don’t,’ she warned darkly, ‘tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about.’
She was vaguely conscious of the buzz of noise dying away, of people staring and parting like the sea as she took several more slightly unsteady steps towards Tair, who didn’t even have the decency to show a scrap of remorse.
‘They, those men…’
He folded his arms across his chest and inserted helpfully. ‘Ahmed and Samir.’
Her teeth clenched. ‘Ahmed and Samir travelled here in that car, and we could have too.’
He did not deny it and his provocative smile threw fuel on Molly’s smouldering temper.
‘But then you would have missed out on an experience that so few have firsthand.’
‘For the very good reason that as a mode of transport those camels leave a lot to be desired.’ She rubbed her bottom with feeling. ‘They are in fact vile, smelly beasts, though not,’ she added with another vicious jab in his direction, ‘as vile as you!’
Her glance slid towards the dusty vehicle and her expression grew wistful. ‘I bet it’s air-conditioned too. I probably have prickly heat.’ She passed a hand across the overheated skin of her face and her fingers came away covered in grit and dust.
‘I suppose this is your warped idea of getting back at me for my imaginary sins?’ Thinking how she was taking the punishment without having enjoyed the pleasure.
The humour died from his face as his lips thinned into a contemptuous line. ‘This is mild compared with what some of my ancestors’ ideas of punishment would be for a woman like you.’
‘You know nothing about women like me because when women like me see someone who shares your gene pool coming their way they cross the road. My God, when you topple off your high tower of comfortable smug superiority I really want to be there to see it.’
Right now she wasn’t seeing anything much. The rash of red dots that had started dancing across her vision midway through her tirade of abuse had been replaced by a blackness that was closing in like a blanket.
She could see Tair, stern and contemptuous and so beautiful part of her wanted to weep; she could see his lips moving but she couldn’t hear what he was saying. The only thing Molly could hear was a loud whooshing noise like a train in a tunnel.
The last she knew was that the floor was coming up to meet her very fast.
CHAPTER SEVEN
MOLLY opened her eyes and blinked in a dazed fashion. She was in a room with a high ceiling that appeared to be made of billowing silk. It was really very pretty.
She inhaled and her nostrils twitched. The air was filled with a faint spicy scent, an elusive mixture of incense and cinnamon. She turned her head towards the light breeze that made the glass lanterns hanging above her sway slightly, but could not see beyond the carved screen that stood there, filled with sconces that held flickering candles.
‘You’re awake.’
Oh, God!
She closed her eyes again and grunted. ‘I wish I wasn’t.’ Suddenly it all came flooding back, the events of the last twelve hours.
She stared at her bare feet protruding from beneath a thin sheet that was covering her and didn’t connect the groan she heard with herself. She wriggled her toes. Someone had taken off her shoes before placing her on what seemed to be a low divan.
‘My head hurts.’ Molly narrowed her eyes against the light from the overhead lanterns, which was being reflected in the surface of a large ornate mirror to her right. As was her face. She looked like a ghost, almost as pale as the compress laid across her forehead.
She removed it and let it fall to the ground from lax fingers.
The memory of how close she had been to hitting the hard ground head first before he’d caught her flashed vividly into Tair’s mind, and his jaw tightened.
‘That’s because you’re an idiot.’
An idiot, but also a woman.
A woman who had endured a day that would have physically and mentally taxed many men.
There had been a moment when he had held her seemingly lifeless body in his arms that he had thought…He swallowed as he pushed aside that memory.
He could rationalise his actions, but he knew that nothing she had done made him any less culpable for her collapse. He had been too full of self-righteous, crusading anger to take any account of her physical fragility when he had forced her to trek across the desert.
‘Don’t hold back, just tell it the way it is,’ Molly drawled, raising herself on one elbow and squinting up at Tair, who had moved into her line of vision and was standing by her bed.
Her eyes had to go a long way up to reach his face.
Her stomach flipped. It was not the prince with the urbane charm and diplomatic manners and designer suit who stood there.
This man had a combustible edgy quality, as if, she mused, studying his strongly carved bronzed features, he was able to shed the thin veneer of civilisation in these surroundings and be himself.
‘So this is my fault. Why am I not surprised?’ she croaked…God, but her throat hurt, and why couldn’t she stop staring like a kid pressing her nose against a sweet-shop window? ‘I’m always amazed,’ she said bitterly, ‘at your ability to turn things around so that it’s down to me that you’re a total bastard with a vicious streak.’
Tair said something low and angry-sounding in his own language, then dragged a hand through his jet-black hair. ‘I am aware that I am responsible.’
Molly grew wary as there was nothing to read in his stiff expression. He was admitting responsibility but not, as far as she could tell, any remorse.
‘So you’re going to let me go back home?’
‘We will discuss that tomorrow.’
‘You’re just saying that to shut me up.’
‘If I wanted to shut you up there are much more efficient ways I could do so!’
‘I can imagine.’
Actually he doubted she could, but Tair was actively imagining ways in which her voice would be effectively stifled.
Even Miss Mouse might find it hard to talk when she was being kissed…He stared at her mouth and thought about how she would taste, the warmth of her lips and the sweet moisture of her mouth.
‘Why are you staring at me like that?’
Tair gave himself a mental jolt and smoothly picked up the thread, saying, ‘You want to discuss t
his? Fine—let’s discuss how I repeatedly told you to take on fluids during the ride and you chose not to. You were dehydrated—that’s why you passed out.’
Molly looked at him, wondering about the emotion she had briefly glimpsed on his face. But now he was looking at her through the screen of his dark lashes that were so long they brushed the slashing angle of his razor-edged cheekbones and she couldn’t decide if she had imagined it or not.
‘I never faint.’
There were big shadows under her eyes, she was the colour of paper and, having suffered the after-effects of dehydration himself, he knew she must be feeling like hell, but still she came out fighting.
He wondered that he had ever thought her mousy and timid.
‘And I never look after stupid, half-dead women, but there is a first time for everything.’
She looked at the glass he held out to her and shook her head. ‘I’m not thirsty.’
He moved impatiently, causing the ice to clink against the sides. ‘Do I look like I care?’
She accepted the invitation to study his face. He didn’t appear to care one bit, but he did look like someone capable of pouring the contents of the glass down her throat if she didn’t co-operate.
He also looked everything a woman could wish for in her wildest dreams. Lean, dark and brooding with an edge of danger. Normally Molly’s dreams were much more sedate but as she gazed at him her heartbeat did quicken perceptibly as the silence stretched.
‘Fine!’ With an ungracious sniff she snatched the glass from his hand and lifted it to her lips.
‘All of it.’
Molly narrowed her eyes. ‘I…’
He silenced her with a look and, sighing, she did as he requested. ‘Satisfied?’ she asked, flopping back on the pillows. Her head was pounding. So was her heart, but, she recognised, not necessarily from the same cause.
‘Not really. I hate stupidity, so why did you tell me you had drunk on our journey when I asked? I told—’
‘And I told you to go to hell but you didn’t,’ she inserted childishly. ‘And I did drink.’
He arched a sardonic brow and produced a water bottle from somewhere. He tossed it in her direction and Molly caught it.
‘You have good reflexes.’ Lots of things about her were good—better than good, with the notable exception of her decision to pursue and sleep with her best friend’s husband.
Are you mad because she chose to sleep with Tariq or because she didn’t sleep with you?
Molly raised herself back up, tilted her head in acknowledgement of his comment, and shook the water bottle. ‘See, I did drink.’
‘It is over half full. A person who doesn’t take the desert seriously is asking for trouble,’ he said, listening to the voice in his head echo his last few words. A man who was thinking about doing what he was thinking of doing was asking for more than simple trouble.
‘I didn’t ask to be in the desert. I didn’t have a choice, and I would have thought it would have suited your sadistic tendencies if I had suffered heatstroke.’ She levelled a glare filled with resentment at his face and then let herself fall back down on the bed. She winced as the action sent an extra-strong stab of pain through her temples.
With a curse Tair was on his knees at her side in seconds. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Don’t fuss!’ she said crankily. ‘You’ve said I’m just overheated. I still am,’ she murmured, tugging at the light cover fretfully. She had folded it down as far as her waist before she realised that she was only wearing her bra and pants. With a yelp she pulled the sheets up to her chin again and turned to him, eyes dark with suspicion.
‘Where are my clothes?’
He nodded without much interest to the neat pile on the chair behind him. ‘As I said, you were hot and you needed cooling down.’ At that moment Tair’s own internal thermostat could do with some adjustment. Her skin was alabaster and she had looked smooth and soft all over.
‘Who undressed me?’ The idea of Tair removing her clothes, and his hands touching her skin, sent a ripple of horror through her body—at least she hoped it was horror!
‘It would bother you if it was me?’
Oh, God, he had!
Move on, she told herself, don’t give it another thought—he probably hasn’t. She recognised this as excellent advice but found it impossible to follow. She wasn’t even wearing matching bra and pants, she realised.
As if that would have made any difference to him!
‘I’m sure you would have enjoyed it more if it had been Beatrice.’ She closed her eyes, waved goodbye to what little pride she’d had left, and willed the floor to open up at her feet.
The floor didn’t open but her eyes did at his response.
‘You want me to give you a mark from one to ten, Beatrice being the perfect ten!’
‘I do not!’
He raised a dark brow. ‘It sounded that way to me.’
Molly compressed her lips. ‘I’m well aware that Beatrice is beautiful and I’m not. I happen to have two sisters who are just as gorgeous as Bea and I do not compete. I realise you have women falling over themselves for your attention but I don’t beg for approval from men I don’t even like.’
As Tair studied her angry flushed face he doubted she had any idea of how revealing her comment had been, but it did explain the awful clothes. Like many an ugly duckling, she had no idea she’d turned into a swan, and he felt irritated with the family that hadn’t bothered telling her.
What did it take to make her realise?
‘For the record, enjoyment is not something I feel when I see a woman unconscious and know I am responsible for her being that way.’
The hard note of self-recrimination in his soft voice made Molly stare as he dragged a hand through his dark hair.
‘Beatrice is a beautiful woman. I know this even though I have never seen her in her underclothes.’
Molly’s eyes fell. She had noted he hadn’t said he wouldn’t like to, but then realistically what man wouldn’t? If Beatrice weren’t so nice it would have been fun to hate her.
‘But you are also a beautiful woman and I’ve never seen you in your underclothes.’ His lean features suddenly melted into a grin. ‘Barring that very brief but promising flash a moment ago.’
‘You’re disgusting!’ she choked. He thinks I’m beautiful…? ‘So you didn’t…’
‘No, that was Sabra—she was the only one brave enough.’
‘Brave?’
‘You scared them. You scared me…’
She narrowed her eyes for a moment—she had been almost taking him seriously.
‘You stood there and screamed abuse at me, and manners are very highly rated among my mother’s people.’
She shot into a sitting position, carrying the sheet with her. ‘I have manners!’ She looked at his mouth, felt her stomach muscles quiver and thought how she had far too many out-of-control hormones as well.
Tair watched as she swung her legs over the side of the divan. Her actions had the uncoordinated grace of a newly born foal. He felt a wave of totally unfamiliar tenderness as he struggled not to go to her aid. ‘Just sit there and calm down. Next time I might not be quick enough to catch you.’
‘I’m not going to faint…you caught me?’
His hooded glance connected with her wide eyes. ‘Just.’
Wasn’t that typical? The one time she got to be held in the arms of an incredible man she was unconscious—not, she tried to tell herself, that as a modern and liberated woman she craved being swept off her feet in any sense of the word!
She looked at him thorough her lashes, feeling unaccountably shy. ‘I suppose I should say thank you for your quick reflexes…and I would if it hadn’t been your fault that I fainted.’
His grin softened the severity of his stern expression and deepened the creases around his eyes. ‘For a moment there I thought you were going soft on me.’
She tried to smile but her lips felt stiff, so instead she lift
ed her chin. ‘There are times when even you seem almost human.’
His eyes contacted briefly with her own and for no reason at all Molly’s heart started beating very fast.
Principles, he reminded himself, were not elastic just because his libido had gone into overdrive. ‘There are times when I almost forget you slept with my married cousin last night.’
As a mood breaker his comment was highly effective.
The soft look in her eyes turned to cold dignity as she drew herself up ramrod-straight. ‘As you mention it so often I find that hard to believe, but as you have such a bad memory perhaps I should write on here…bad woman…’ She wiped a finger across her forehead, then glanced with distaste at the grime covering it. ‘I need to wash.’
‘I’ll send someone in to help you.’
He turned and strode away in a flurry of long robes as though he couldn’t get out fast enough.
‘Probably afraid you’ll contaminate him,’ she told her reflection as she got to her feet. She ought to feel glad he had gone. The atmosphere had been getting a bit too…charged.
Intellectually she found him repellent, but the only problem was that it wasn’t her intellect that was stimulated when she looked into his mesmerising eyes, or when he smiled, or even when he didn’t smile. The fact was, she admitted with a sigh, the man was six feet four of rampant masculinity that would make any woman who wasn’t dead from the waist down forget if she was actually not very highly sexed.
He was not a man she wanted to get involved with and, actually, the longer he carried on thinking she was poison, the better, because if he acted on the sexual attraction she sometimes felt was between them she wasn’t sure if she was going to be able to respond on an intellectual level.
She was still exploring the room and trying to distract herself from thoughts of Tair and the strange fascination he exerted for her when a young girl, Sabra, appeared carrying food.
Molly, who was starving, sat on a pile of cushions at the low table the girl placed the tray on. The food, a spiced lamb dish with couscous and almonds, was melt-in-the-mouth delicious. When Molly told Sabra this in her not terribly good French, after she recognised that the girl didn’t understand English, Sabra beamed with delight and immediately launched into a rapid speech in the same language.
