by Miranda Lee
‘That’s crap, Cleo, and you know it.’
‘But at least you’ve experienced the very best. Not a lot of women have, you know.’
‘He was a fantasy come true. Maybe I should have kept remembering the fantasy part, then I might have kept my head.’
‘He’s one sexy man, all right.’
‘He said he’d come back.’
‘Really? You forgot to mention that bit.’
Samantha pulled a face. ‘I don’t believe him. He’s gone and he’s never coming back. He just said that to shut me up.’
‘Really? Bandar doesn’t strike me as a liar. I think I’ll go and give Ali that call—see what I can find out about this so-called emergency back in London. Wait here.’
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Samantha said wretchedly.
Cleo was gone quite a while, leaving Samantha too much time by herself to think, and to relive that last incredible night with Bandar. He’d been so different with her—not at all dominating or demanding, but a tender lover. She’d adored him that way perhaps even more than she had when he’d been doing his lord and master act. They’d talked, too: not about sex, but horses, mostly, and their mutual passion for them.
They hadn’t spent every second in bed, either. They’d relaxed over a lovely meal at the dining table, then sat together out on the balcony with a glass of cognac afterwards, soaking up the glorious view and each other’s company. She’d felt so happy. So…loved?
‘I can’t believe it,’ Cleo said as she hurried back into the kitchen, snapping Samantha out of her dreaming. ‘He looked so well.’
Samantha’s stomach contracted fiercely.
‘Oh, no!’ she exclaimed as she jumped to her feet. ‘Hehas got a brain tumour, hasn’t he?’
She saw the horrific truth in Cleo’s eyes. ‘How on earth did you know?’
Samantha dashed for the nearest toilet, where she retched into the bowl. Retched and retched.
By the time she emerged she felt totally drained, but she’d come to a decision.
‘Tell me what Ali said,’ she demanded of Cleo. ‘Tell me everything.’
Everythingwas not much. Men were not the world’s greatest communicators. Bandar had a malignant brain tumour—operable, but highly risky. He’d delayed his operation to come out to Australia because Ali had asked him to. He’d felt obligated because Ali had once saved his life. It was an Arab thing. Not that Ali had agreed with him.
‘Apparently, Ali told him a couple of nights back to get his butt back to London,pronto ,’ Cleo continued. ‘Before things got worse. Because everyone knows things always get worse with cancer.’
‘A couple of nights ago?’ Samantha queried. ‘Not yesterday?’
‘No. Ali said Saturday.’
Samantha could have cried with both joy and despair. Bandar had stayed with her another night. He hadn’t wanted to leave her. He loved her. He must! Why else would he not have told her the truth? He was protecting her. Or was it that he just didn’t believe she truly loved him?
What did it matterwhat he believed? She had to go to him. Be with him. Show him how much she cared.
But maybe it was already too late.
‘When is this operation due, do you know?’
‘As soon as it can be scheduled. That’s all Ali knows. What are you going to do?’
‘I’m flying to England. I’ll go get my passport, then drive to Sydney tonight and catch the first plane available. Can you get some information from Ali for me? I need to know Bandar’s address in London, and the hospital where he’s being treated. Don’t let him tell Bandar. I’ll ring you from the airport.’ She was already up and off, adrenaline revving up her energy level.
Dear God, please don’t let Bandar die, she prayed as she ran for the door. Allah, save him!
‘Are you sure you want to do this, Samantha?’ Cleo called out as she ran after her.
‘Absolutely!’
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
SHEwas too late.
She could not get a seat on a plane bound for London that night, or the next morning. The first available flight was the following afternoon, and even then she had to pay a business class fare.
By the time the plane touched down at Heathrow Airport, Bandar was already being prepared for surgery. Not that Samantha knew that at that precise moment. She didn’t find out till she reached the hospital, the name of which Ali had supplied to Cleo.
The Sheikhwas a patient, she was told by the woman on the reception desk. But he was currently in surgery.
Samantha would have asked more questions if she hadn’t promptly fainted.
Consciousness returned and she found someone dressed mainly in white hovering over her. Not a nurse or a doctor, but a dark-eyed, olive-skinned man with a solicitous look on his handsome face and wearing akaffiah , the traditional Arab headdress.
Her employer: Prince Ali of Dubar.
‘Ali!’ she gasped, and sat up abruptly from where she’d been lying on a lounge in someone’s office.
He pressed her firmly but gently back down into a prone position. ‘Not a good idea to get up too quickly after fainting,’ he said. ‘One of the nurses is bringing you some tea and biscuits.’
‘But…but what are you doing here?’ she asked. ‘You’re supposed to be in Dubar, attending your brother’s coronation.’
‘The official coronation day is not till tomorrow. By then I will be back in Dubar and no one will be any the wiser. I decided that today my place was with my friend. Unfortunately I was too late to see Bandar before his operation. I gather the same applies to you.’
The reality of why Samantha had fainted rushed back to her, turning her stomach over and making her chest feel tight.
‘Oh, Ali, what if he dies?’ she cried.
‘Then he dies,’ Ali returned, far too pragmatically for Samantha. ‘What is written is written.’
‘I can’t stand it when people say things like that. There is no such thing as fate, or destiny. What is written is what you make happen yourself.’ She sat up abruptly, not able to lie down any longer.
‘He did not give himself the cancer,’ Ali pointed out.
‘How do you know? Cleo said Bandar is a lonely man. Loneliness can sometimes weaken the immune system. I’ve read about it.’
‘Why would you read about such a subject? Becauseyou are lonely?’
‘Yes. Yes, I’m lonely,’ she said, levering herself up onto her feet. ‘I’ve always been lonely. Or I was till I met Bandar. I love him, Ali, more than words can say. And I think he loves me.’
‘I am sure he does. Do you know he has left you everything in his will?’
Shock and grief made her angry. ‘Good grief, I don’t want his damned money! I just want him alive and well.’
‘He knows that.’
‘How long does this operation go on for?’ she asked despairingly as she began to pace around the room.
‘Not much longer, I am told. I asked that the surgeon visit us here as soon as it is over. Ahh, here is the tea…’
A nurse bustled in with a tray. Ali waved her off when she started fussing, saying he would attend to the pouring.
Which he did.
A watery smile broke through Samantha’s misery as she accepted the mug of tea he fixed for her. He was just like Bandar. So sure of himself. So much in command of things.
But was she right? Did Bandar’s surface confidence hide an inner loneliness?
‘Tell me about Bandar, Ali. I need to know everything.’
Ali’s laugh was rueful. ‘You sound just like my wife, Charmaine. She has to know everything.’
‘Tell me.’
‘I can only tell you what I know. There will be some things only Bandar knows. Men always have their little secrets, some best kept from the women in their lives.’
‘If you mean the three lady-friends he has been entertaining of late, then I know all about them. They’re irrelevant.’
Ali’s eyebrows lifted. ‘I see youdo under
stand Bandar. But be assured that those ladies meant nothing to him. No woman has meant anything to Bandar. Till you came along. Not even his own mother.’
‘He did not love his mother?’ What kind of child did not love their mother?
‘She did not love him. He was a ticket to the good life, that is all. She met Bandar’s father when he was most susceptible to her kind of beauty and bedroom skills. His first wife—a woman from his own culture—had not long died whilst pregnant with their first child. He’d taken it hard. It had been a true love-match. He went crazy with grief, using his money to try to forget. He went to London to live, and started mixing with a very fast crowd. Bandar’s mother was a good-time girl, though the media kindly called her a socialite. She was little better than a whore, selling herself to whatever man could afford to pay for her very expensive habits.’
‘She took drugs?’
‘She was not an addict. But she used designer drugs to enhance her promiscuous lifestyle, and to seduce men like Bandar’s father, who was not used to such women. Naturally he married her when she announced she was pregnant. By then he was obsessed with the woman. She continued to hold sway over him after Bandar was born. The boy was left to the care of others whilst they swanned off to the world’s pleasure spots, spending money at casinos and on racehorses, sinking further and further into depravity. If Bandar’s father had not had a continuous stream of money from the oil wells he’d inherited from his Bedouin father, he would have been bankrupt many times over. Bandar’s parents were never there for him. They were killed in a fire on a yacht on Bandar’s sixteenth birthday. He was at school in London. They were in the Caribbean.’
‘What a terrible story. Poor Bandar.’
‘Yes. Poor Bandar.’
‘How long have you known him? I heard you were friends as children.’
‘I first met Bandar when we were sent to the same school in Dubar. I was fourteen. He was a couple of years younger than me. A shy child, if you can believe that.’
Yes. She could. He’d not been wanted any more than she had been. Samantha knew only too well how that affected a child. But he probably hadn’t been shy so much as introverted, relying on himself for company, not trusting others.
‘The other boys at school knew about his mother. They taunted him about her. Called her a whore. He took it for a while, then one day he fought back. Unfortunately, he chose the wrong group of boys to fight. They were much bigger, and meaner. One was carrying a knife. Bandar had already been stabbed before when I intervened. Fortunately, his wound was not life threatening. After that, his father shipped him off to a Christian school in England. You can imagine what that move was like for Bandar. For a long time he was like a fish out of water. Spurned and isolated by the English boys. Eventually, however, he was assimilated into their world, though he credits his money for finally gaining him acceptance.’
‘He’s a cynic about his money,’ Samantha said.
‘Yes,’ Ali agreed. ‘But he has just cause. You do not know what it is like to be an extremely wealthy man, Samantha.’
‘Bandar told me women target him all the time.’
‘Some will lie and cheat to unbelievable levels. When Bandar was around nineteen he was seduced by a very beautiful and very clever woman. When she claimed she was pregnant, Bandar was beside himself. She did not want marriage, just money. Lots of it. Bandar, however, did not like to think of any child of his being raised without a father to protect it. Luckily, he spoke to me about the situation, and I had the woman investigated. It turned out she was already married. It was clearly all a scam to get money. I advised Bandar to get a court order demanding she have a DNA test after the baby was born, and suddenly there was no baby. Though there had been one. Whose it was, we will never know.’
‘Bandar must have been devastated.’
‘He learned a very valuable lesson. From then on he was very careful.’
Samantha could understand Bandar’s cynicism, and his wariness, but in the end you had to have some faith in people or life wasn’t worth living.
‘If Bandar was sent to England to school and to live, Ali,’ she asked, trying to piece things together, ‘then how did you keep up your friendship?’
‘Through horses. We didn’t see each other for some years, but met up again when I was sent to my father’s stables in England for a short time.’
‘I see.’
It was good to finally understand the man she loved. But what good was understanding him if he died? Emotion welled up in her chest, tears filling her eyes. She put down her mug of tea and surreptitiously wiped them away, not wanting to cry in front of Ali.
‘It is all right to cry,’ he said gently. ‘Charmaine cries all the time.’
‘Oh, Ali…’ She sank into his outstretched arms and wept and wept.
Her tears had subsided to just the occasional sob when the door opened and Bandar’s surgeon entered. He was an extremely tall man, with a pleasant face and receding brown hair. He looked tired, but pleased.
‘Everything went very well,’ he announced straight away, and Samantha burst into tears again.
‘His fiancée,’ she heard Ali say, by way of explanation.
‘But he said he had no one!’
‘He kept his condition a secret from Samantha so that she would not worry.’
‘Aah. I did wonder. Such an impressive man. My secretary will be devastated. She was charmed by the Sheikh when he came to me for his consultation. But back to the matter at hand: I was able to get all the cancer. It will not come back. His brain is fine, and no nerves were damaged. There will not be any aftereffects. I did a brilliant job, if I say so myself.’
‘I thank you,’ Ali said sincerely. ‘And so will Samantha. When she can.’
Overhearing this conversation forced Samantha to pull herself together.
‘I can’t thank you enough,’ she said, grabbing the surgeon’s hands and shaking them vigorously. ‘You are more than brilliant.’
The man’s smile showed some smugness. But he had a right to be smug, in Samantha’s opinion. How brave they were, brain surgeons. Braveand brilliant.
‘Your fiancé is in Recovery, young lady,’ he said, patting her hands. ‘He’ll be groggy for quite a while. Take it easy with him today. Don’t tire him with too much chatter. Or too many kisses,’ he added with a cheeky wink. ‘We don’t want him to expire from too much excitement too soon, do we? Now, I must go. I need to go home and sleep. I am exhausted.’
‘Do you wish to see Bandar by yourself first?’ Ali asked when the surgeon had gone.
Samantha grimaced at the thought of what Bandar would say when he saw her. ‘I don’t know, Ali. I was feeling so happy, but now I feel sick with nerves. Bandar won’t think I’ve come after him for his money, will he?’
Ali shook his head at her, his expression exasperated. ‘Women!’ he said, and took her arm in much the same way Bandar always did, brooking no nonsense and no protest. ‘They can be so blind. The man is besotted with you.’
‘Besotted?’ she echoed as Ali steered her from the room and along the hospital corridor.
‘He left you all his prized racehorses, including the favourite to win the Derby.That is besotted!’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
BANDARcame back to consciousness slowly, dazedly. He could hear things going on around him but could not seem to open his eyes. He mumbled something and a female voice asked him his name. He swore, and she laughed. He eventually pried his eyelids open to see a nurse bending over him, smiling.
‘I see you’ve returned to the land of the living,’ she said.
Bandar’s foggy brain suddenly cleared. He had not died on the operating table. He was alive!
But for how long?
‘How did the operation go?’ he rasped, his throat like sandpaper.
‘Very well indeed. Mr Pring got it all.’
Tears welled up in his eyes. Bandar turned his face away so that the nurse would not see.
‘Just r
est,’ she said, and pressed a gentle hand to his shoulder.
He drifted off again. For how long he did not know. When he opened his eyes he was in a different room. And it wasn’t a nurse standing by his bed but Ali, dressed in traditional Arab robes.
‘Ali?’ he said, and went to lift his head. But it seemed too heavy. He groaned with the effort, then gave up.
‘You should lie still,’ Ali advised. ‘Here. The nurse left you some ice to suck. She said you might want it.’ And he popped a couple of small pieces into Bandar’s mouth.
