Defiant in the Desert

by Sharon Kendrick

  She waited until she’d spoken to the airfield, and then calmed an excited Fiona’s nerves, telling her that of course she could cope with running Tariq’s office.

  And it was only then that Isobel slipped along to the thankfully empty sanctuary of the bathroom, where she was violently sick.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  IT WAS CONFIRMED.

  The blue line couldn’t be denied any longer—and neither could the test Isobel had done the day before, or the day before that. Because all the tests in the world would only verify what she had known all along. And all the wishing in the world wouldn’t change that fact.

  She was pregnant with Prince Tariq al Hakam’s baby. The man who had told her in no uncertain terms that he had no desire to have a baby was going to be a father.

  Feeling caged and restless, she stared out of the window at the red bus which was lumbering down the road below. It was stuffy and hot in her tiny flat, but she felt too tired to face walking to the nearest park. She’d been feeling tired a lot recently...

  Little beads of sweat ran in rivulets down her back, despite the thin cotton dress and the windows she’d opened onto the airless day. Somehow summer had arrived without her really noticing—but maybe that wasn’t so surprising. In the two weeks since Tariq had flown out to Khayarzah she certainly hadn’t been focussing on the weather.

  Her thoughts had been full of the man whose seed was growing inside her—and she had a strange feeling of emptiness at being away from work. For once she couldn’t even face going down to the cottage, where the memories of Tariq would have been just too vivid.

  She’d always thought there was something slightly pathetic about people who haunted the office while they were supposed to be on holiday, and so she hadn’t rung in to work either. Fiona would contact her soon enough if she needed her help, and so far she hadn’t.

  Which made Isobel feel even emptier than she already did. As if she had made herself out to be this fabulous, indispensable addition to the Al Hakam empire when the reality was that she could quite easily be replaced.

  And she had heard nothing from Tariq. Not even an e-mail or text to tell her he was alive and well in Khayarzah. If anything proved that it was all over between them, it was the terrifying silence which had mushroomed since his departure.

  There had been times when she’d been tempted to pick up the phone, telling herself that she had a perfect right to speak to him. Wasn’t he still her boss, even if he was no longer her lover? But she wasn’t a good enough actress for that. How could she possibly have a breezy conversation with him, as if nothing was happening, when inside her body their combined cells were multiplying at a frightening speed?

  And what would she say? Would she be reduced to asking him whether it was really over between them—and hearing an even bigger silence echoing down the line?

  No. She was going to have to tell him face to face. She knew that. And soon. But how did you break the news that he was going to be a father to a man who had expressly told you he didn’t want children? And not just any father—because this wasn’t just any baby. It was a royal baby, with royal blood coursing through its tiny veins—and that would have all kinds of added complications. She knew enough history to realise that the offspring of ruling families were always especially protected because royal succession was never certain. Wouldn’t that make Tariq feel even more trapped into a life he had often bitterly complained about?

  But that’s only if he accepts responsibility for the child, taunted a voice inside her head. He might do the modern-day equivalent of what your own father did and walk away from his son or daughter.

  Dunking a camomile teabag in a mug of boiling water, she heard the ring of her doorbell and wondered who it might be. The post, perhaps? Or some sort of delivery? Because nobody just dropped by in London on a weekday lunchtime. It could be a lonely city, she realised with a suddenly sinking heart—and this little flat was certainly no place to bring up a baby.

  A baby.

  The thought of what lay ahead terrified her, and she was so distracted that she’d almost forgotten about the doorbell when it rang again—more urgently this time. Her thin cotton dress was clinging to her warm thighs as she walked to the door, and she was so preoccupied that she didn’t bother to check the spyhole. When she opened the door, the last person she expected to see on her step was Tariq.

  She gave a jolt of genuine surprise, her tiredness evaporating as she feasted her eyes on him. She had thought of little else but him since he’d been gone, but the reality of seeing him again was a savage shock to the system. His physical presence dominated his surroundings just as it always did, even if the heavily hooded ebony eyes were watchful and his mouth more unsmiling than she’d ever seen it. He was wearing a shirt—unbuttoned at the neck—with a pair of faded jeans. He looked cool against the day, and the casual attire made him look gloriously touchable—the irony of that did not escape her.

  ‘Tariq,’ she said breathlessly, aware of the thunder of her heart. ‘This is a...surprise.’

  He nodded. A surprise for him, too, if he was being honest. He hadn’t intended to come and see her, and yet he’d found himself ordering his driver to bring him to this unfamiliar part of London.

  He’d spent a brutal two weeks chasing around Khayarzah looking for his damned cousin, and the office had felt strangely empty when he had returned to find that Izzy was still away. Not that there was anything wrong with Fiona, her replacement. She was a sweet girl, and very eager to please. But she wasn’t Izzy. His mouth hardened.

  ‘Can I come in?’

  ‘Of course you can.’

  Tariq walked in and she closed the front door behind him. It was the first time he’d ever been there, and he walked into the sitting room and looked around. It was a small room, and much less cluttered than her country cottage. A couple of photos stood on the bookshelf. One was of her standing in a garden aged about eight, squinting her eyes against the bright sunlight. One of those images of childhood you saw everywhere. But he had no such similar pictures of his own. There had been no one around with a camera to record his growing up. Apart from official ones, the only photos he had been in were those big group ones from school—when his darkly olive complexion and powerful build had always made him stand out from the rest of his year.

  He turned round as she walked into the room behind him. Her thick red curls had been scraped back and tied in a French plait, and her eyes looked huge. She looked so fragile, he thought—or was that simply because he hadn’t seen her for so long?

  He frowned. ‘I thought you’d have been back at work by now.’

  How formal he sounded, she thought. More the time-watching boss than the man who had shown her such sweet pleasure. ‘You did say that I could take three weeks. And it’s only been two.’

  ‘I know exactly how long it’s been, Izzy.’

  They stood facing each other, as if trying to acclimatise themselves to this new and unknown stage of their relationship. It felt weird, she thought, to be alone with him and not in his arms. To have a million questions tripping off the edge of her tongue and be too afraid to ask them.

  Tell him.

  But the words still refused to be spoken. She told herself that she just wanted to embrace these last few moments of peace. A couple more minutes of normality when she could pretend that there was no dreaded truth to be faced. Two minutes more to feast her eyes on the face she’d grown to love and which now made her heart ache with useless longing.

  ‘Did you find your cousin?’ she questioned, raking back a strand of hair which had flopped onto her cheek.

  Tariq watched as the movement drew his attention to the lush swell of her breasts, and he felt the first twisting of desire. ‘Eventually,’ he said.

  ‘And was she okay?’

  ‘I haven’t come here to talk about my damn
ed cousin,’ he said roughly.

  ‘Oh?’ Her voice lifted in hope. ‘Then what have you come here to talk about?’

  He looked at the soft curves of her unpainted lips and suddenly wondered just what he was fighting. Himself or her? ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nothing?’ Her eyes were wide with confusion. ‘Then why are you here?’

  ‘Why do you think?’ he ground out, his black eyes brilliant as temptation overpowered him and he pulled her into his arms. ‘For this.’

  Isobel swayed as their bodies made that first contact and she felt the sudden mad pounding of her heart. Conscience fought with desire as he drove his mouth down on hers, and desire won hands down. Her lips opened and she made a choking little sound of pleasure as she coiled her arms around him. Because this was where she wanted to be more than anywhere else in the world. Back in the arms of Tariq. Because when she was there all her problems receded.

  ‘Oh, yes!’ Her helpless cry was muffled by the hard seeking of his lips. His urgent hands were in her hair and on her cheeks, and then skating down the sides of her body with a kind of fevered impatience, as if he was relearning her through touch alone. And greedily she began to touch him back.

  Tariq groaned as she began to tug at his belt. She was like wildfire on his skin—spreading hunger wherever her soft fingertips alighted. He could have unzipped himself and done it to her right there. But he’d spent too many nights fantasising about this to want to take her without ceremony—and too many days on horseback not to crave the comfort of a bed.

  ‘Where’s the bedroom?’ he demanded urgently.

  Tell him. Before this goes any further, you have to tell him.

  But she ignored the voice of protest in her head as she pointed a trembling finger towards a door. ‘O-over there.’

  Effortlessly he picked her up, as he’d done so many times before, pushing open the door with his knee and going straight over to the bed, putting her down in the centre of it. Isobel felt the mattress dip as he straddled her, one knee on either side of her body. With fingers which were not quite steady he began to unbutton her dress, and Isobel held her breath as he pulled it open. But he seemed too full of hunger to study her with his usual searing intensity, and maybe he wouldn’t have noticed even if he had, for his black eyes were almost opaque with lust. Instead, he was unclipping her bra and bending his head to capture one sensitised nipple in his hungry mouth.

  ‘I feel as if I have been in the desert,’ he moaned against the puckered saltiness of her skin.

  ‘I th-thought you had?’

  ‘Not that kind of desert,’ he said grimly.

  ‘What kind, then?’

  ‘This kind,’ he clarified, his lips on her neck, his fingers hooking inside her little lace panties. ‘The sexual kind. A remote place without the sweet embrace of a woman’s arms or the welcome opening of her milky thighs.’

  Even if they lacked emotion, the words were shockingly erotic, and Isobel lifted her head to give him more access to her neck, her fumbling fingers reaching for the buttons of his shirt and beginning to pull them open. He had come back, hadn’t he? And he still wanted her. It was as simple as that. Had he found it more difficult than he’d anticipated to simply let her go?

  Hope began to build in time with the growing heat of her body. She helped him wriggle out of his jeans and then the silken boxer shorts, which whispered to the ground in a decadent sigh. His shirt joined her dress on the floor and she looked up at him, strangely shy to see his powerful olive body naked on her bed. He seemed larger than life and more magnificent than ever—like a Technicolor character who had just wandered into a black and white film.

  He moved over her, and she drew in a deep breath of anticipation. She knew his body so well, and yet she was a stranger to his thoughts. Should she tell him now? When they were physically just about as close as it was possible to be without—

  ‘Oh!’ she moaned as he entered her. Too late, she thought fleetingly, as sweet sensation shot through her body and the familiar heat began to build. Take this pleasure that you weren’t expecting and give him pleasure in return. Let him see that there can still be sweetness and joy. And then maybe, maybe...

  ‘God, you’re tight,’ he moaned.

  ‘It’s because you’re so big,’ she breathed.

  ‘I’m always big,’ came his mocking boast.

  ‘Bigger, then.’

  But words became redundant as he began to move inside her, his mouth on hers as she met his every powerful thrust with the welcoming tilt of her hips.

  It was the most bittersweet experience of her life. Amazing, yes—because sex with Tariq always was—but tinged with a certain poignancy, too. She was aware that things were different between them now, that nothing had been resolved. Aware too of what she still hadn’t told him. And all those facts combined to heighten every one of her senses.

  She felt her climax growing. The beckoning warmth which had been tantalisingly out of reach now became a blissful reality. She felt the first powerful spasm just as he gave his own ragged cry, his movements more frantic as her arms closed around his sweat-sheened back. And she was falling, dissolving, melting. Past thinking as the world fell away from her.

  Minutes passed, and when she opened her eyes it was to find Tariq leaning on one elbow, his hooded eyes enigmatic as he studied her.

  ‘Amazing,’ he observed after a moment or two, a finger tracing down the side of her cheek as she sucked in a deep breath of air. ‘As ever.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You didn’t ring me, Izzy.’

  ‘I could say the same thing about you.’ She looked straight into his eyes. ‘Did you think I would?’

  His mouth quirked into an odd kind of smile. He’d thought that her cool evaluation of their relationship having run its course had been a clever kind of bargaining tool. Had she realised that no woman had ever done that to him before? That the tantalising prospect of someone finishing with him was guaranteed to keep him interested? ‘Of course I did,’ he replied truthfully.

  Isobel shifted restlessly. The warmth was ebbing away from her body now, and she knew she couldn’t put it off much longer. Yet some instinctive air of preservation made her want to gather together all the facts first. ‘Why did you come here today, Tariq?’

  He smiled. ‘I thought I’d just demonstrated that—to our mutual satisfaction.’

  Her own smile was tight. So that had been a demonstration, had it? In the midst of her post-orgasmic glow, it was all too easy to forget his arrogance. ‘For sex?’ she queried. ‘Was that why you came?’

  ‘Yes. No. Oh, Izzy—I don’t know.’ He shook his head and gave a reluctant sigh, not wanting to analyse the powerful impulse which had brought him to her door today. Couldn’t she just enjoy the here and now and be satisfied with that? ‘Whatever it is, I’ve missed it.’

  ‘If it’s just sex you can get that from plenty of other women,’ she pointed out.

  ‘Then maybe it isn’t just sex,’ he said slowly. He lifted her chin with the tips of his fingers and she was caught in the brilliant ebony blaze of his eyes. ‘Maybe what I should have said is that I’ve missed you.’

  Isobel’s heart missed a beat, and all the wistful longings she had suppressed as a matter of survival now came bubbling to the surface. ‘You’ve said that before,’ she whispered. ‘When you’ve come back from a trip.’

  ‘Yes, I know. But it was different this time— knowing that you weren’t going to be here. Telling me that it was over made me realise that I could lose you—and I don’t want to.’

  Her heart crashed against her ribcage. ‘You don’t?’

  ‘No.’ He brushed his lips over hers. Back and forth and back and forth—until he could feel her shivering response. ‘What we have together is better than anything I’ve had with anyone else. I’m not promising you for
ever, Izzy, because I don’t think I can do that. And I haven’t changed my mind about children. But if you think you can be content with what we’ve got.... Well, then, let’s go for it.’

  His words mocked her. Taunted her. They filled her with horror at what she must now do. Let’s go for it. That was the kind of thing a football coach said during the half-time pep talk—not a man who was telling you that you meant something really special to him. And Isobel realised what a mess she had made of everything. Despite her determination not to follow in her mother’s footsteps, she had ended up doing exactly that. She had hitched her star to a man who was unavailable. In Tariq’s case it wasn’t because he was married but because he was emotionally unavailable. And in a roundabout way he’d just told her that he always would be.

  I haven’t changed my mind about children.

  So now what did she do?

  Feeling sick with nerves, she sat up, her unruly curls falling over her shoulders and providing some welcome cover for her aching breasts.

  ‘Before you say any more, there’s something I have to tell you, Tariq.’ She sucked in a shuddering breath, more nervous than she’d ever been as he suddenly tensed. She met the narrowed question in his ebony eyes. ‘You see...I’m going to have a baby.’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THE SILENCE IN THE room emphasised the sounds outside, which floated through the open window. The faint roar of traffic a long way below. The occasional toot of a car. A low plane flying overhead.

  Isobel stared down at Tariq’s still figure, lying on the bed, and ironically she was reminded of the time when he’d lain in hospital. When he’d looked so lost and so vulnerable and her feelings for him had undergone a complete change.

  But he wasn’t looking vulnerable now.

  Far from it. She watched the expressions which shifted across his face like shadows. Shock morphing into disbelief and then quickly settling itself into a look which she’d been expecting all along.