‘We are an old-fashioned country,’ said Malik carefully. ‘And we protect our women. Sorrel’s parents are dead, but her family has for many years had ties with Kharastan. And she is very close to the Sheikh,’ said Malik. ‘In fact, I understand that his Supreme Highness is now ready to receive the Frenchman.’
Malik was rising to his feet and summoning one of the servants to his side. He bent his head and uttered something in his native tongue, and Laura watched the servant go round to speak to Xavier.
‘You will excuse me?’ questioned Malik. ‘Someone will show you back to your quarters.’
‘Thank you.’
He bent his dark head and spoke in a low voice, so that Laura had to strain her ears to hear him. ‘In case it interests you, there is a key which fits your door, should you require it. You will find it in the small box made from mulberry in your dressing room. You will also find alcoholic beverages in the large bureau in the sitting room. You see, we cater for honoured Western guests even if many of us do not share their tastes. I will bid you goodnight, Miss Cottingham,’ he added mockingly.
‘Goodnight,’ said Laura faintly, looking in surprise at his retreating figure. Had Malik just offered her the modern-day equivalent of protecting her honour? We protect our women, he had said earlier.
She saw Xavier rise to his feet, his face as unmoving as if it had been carved from a piece of granite, his mouth hard and his eyes cold, yet her heart went out to him, despite his forbidding look. Because surely deep down he was a little apprehensive? He might be a billionaire playboy but he was still only human—and how would anyone feel if they were on their way to find out if an ancient and powerful ruler was really their father?
She watched him and Malik leave the room together, as if they were compatriots of old, with none of the visible tension which had existed between them earlier.
So was it protectiveness which had made Malik tell her about the key—or was he just determined to make it as difficult as possible for the Frenchman to take a lover while he was here?
She bit her lip as Xavier’s mocking boast came back to her:
Do you think that a locked door would keep me out?
Back in her room, she washed and undressed by the light of an ornate lamp which threw delicate shadows onto the silken rugs. Then she took out all the pins constraining her thick hair and, once it had fallen free, pulled on a soft silk nightgown.
But Laura could not sleep, even though the low divan with its crisp linen sheets was cool and inviting. She kept thinking about Xavier and wondering what was happening with him and Zahir. Eventually she admitted defeat, getting up to open the shutters of her window which looked out onto the Palace gardens—and the view she beheld was simply breathtaking.
Washed silver-white by moonlight, a wide path led down to a lake which was lined with perfectly trimmed shrubs. From here she could make out the scent of unknown flowers and feel the faint breeze which shimmered the leaves and her hair. This could have been Versailles or Hampton Court—or any of the famous palace gardens which had been designed on a lavish scale. Only the dark, gliding shape of the occasional bird of prey overhead reminded Laura that—although man could control his environment to some extent—this was a much wilder land than the one she was used to.
Minutes ticked by as she sat there, and eventually she heard the sound of an outer door being opened, and then closed again. Laura held her breath as if she was waiting—but waiting for what? To see if Xavier would knock, perhaps?
But there was no knock. She heard careful movements of shutters being pushed open, as if someone was trying very hard not to make a noise, and then nothing but silence—and yet more silence.
Xavier had clearly gone to bed, and she ought to think about doing the same—but her throat was parched dry by the air-conditioning. She would slip next door and fetch herself a cool drink—maybe that would help.
Pulling on a silk-satin robe which matched the negligee beneath, and knotting it tightly at the waist, Laura walked through into the sitting room. At first she didn’t notice the dark figure silhouetted against the spangled sky, silent and unmoving as a statue—at least not until it moved, like a character on stage coming to life. Laura gave a little cry of alarm.
Xavier turned round, but his face was so shadowed that it was impossible to read what was there. But even if the sun had been overhead would Laura have known what was going on his mind? Or would his features be as tightly shuttered as they had been when he had walked out of the lavish banqueting hall with Malik earlier?
The sight of a half-naked woman following straight on from his meeting with the Sheikh was one stimulation too many, and the reality of her luscious breasts pushing against the silk of her robe set Xavier’s pulse hammering and his already confused thoughts into overdrive.
‘What the hell are you doing in here?’ he demanded.
‘I couldn’t sleep.’
He stepped away from the windows into the room, and the light from the lamp showed a cold, hard look in his eyes.
‘Well, try,’ he instructed harshly. ‘Because you certainly won’t manage it standing up, looking at me.’ Looking like that. Like the answer to every man’s aching dream. ‘What are you doing here?’ he snapped. ‘After all the damned fuss you made earlier about sharing did you then decide you would like to tantalise me by drifting in here during the dead of night, dressed in next to nothing?’
‘It’s not next to nothing and I didn’t know you were still awake!’ she retorted. ‘I wanted a drink of water, that’s all!’
‘So get one!’ he bit back.
This was a different Xavier. Laura could see the sharp tension which was tightening his rugged features—even if she hadn’t heard it distorting his voice. The skin seemed to be stretched tightly over his face, and she could see a muscle working frantically in his cheek. All that pressure building up inside him—wouldn’t he explode if he didn’t let it out?
Stupidly, Laura found herself wanting to stroke the tangled softness of his black hair as his tactiturn attitude made her heart soften. To hear him lashing out defensively like that surely meant that on some level he had been affected by what he had heard tonight. Because—for all his wealth and his influence and the women who adored him—Laura suddenly recognised that tonight the powerful playboy was completely alone in the world.
And why should you care?
‘Would you like a drink?’ she questioned, ignoring the mocking question in her head and telling herself it was only because no one could fail to be affected by the bleak expression in his eyes.
‘Not water, and no more of those damned melon cocktails I had to endure during dinner. I could do with a real drink, if you must know.’ His eyes narrowed as he watched her move like a dream across the room towards a polished cabinet made of walnut and apricot wood. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Getting you a drink.’
‘I just told you—I don’t want a soft drink.’
‘That’s not what I meant—there’s some alcohol here. Malik told me.’ Laura pulled open the door of the cabinet to reveal an assortment of bottles and different sizes of glass. ‘I feel a little bit like the fairy godmother waving her wand,’ she said. Surely you mean Cinderella? mocked the voice in her head. She looked up at him. ‘What would you like? Wine? Beer? Champagne?’
‘Not champagne,’ he said flatly.
So we’re not celebrating a paternal reunion, thought Laura. She pulled out a bottle of Kharastani wine and held it up. ‘Shall we try this?’
‘Why not?’ He took the bottle from her without a word and poured the almost black liquid into two crystal glasses, glad to have the distraction of action. ‘God knows what we’re drinking,’ he observed wryly. ‘Kharastani wines aren’t exactly a must-have for every good cellar.’
Laura accepted a glass from him and sipped it. It was thick, sweet and quite strong—and maybe that’s just what he needs, she thought. Maybe just what I need. ‘Gosh! That’s strong.’
�
��You like it?’
‘I can taste liquorice and something sweet.’ Laura stared at him. ‘But we’ve said everything there is to say about the wine—are you going to tell me what the Sheikh said to you?’ Whether he really is who he says he is and whether you have accepted that?
Xavier took a mouthful of the liqueur-like drink and winced, then ran his tongue over lips suddenly grown dry. ‘I guess that if I were in your situation I’d be curious, too.’
Very curious, thought Laura. She sat on one of the divans and looked up at him expectantly. ‘What’s he like?’
There was a pause. ‘He’s old,’ he said flatly, and then shrugged. He looked up to see that her face was completely calm, as if someone had wiped every emotion away other than genuine concern.
‘You wanted him to be strong and virile—a man in his prime—a man you could relate to?’ she hazarded.
He shook his dark head. ‘Of course I didn’t. On an intellectual level I knew he’d be old—just not quite that old. I’m thirty-three and he’s over eighty. He was nearly thirty years older than my mother!’
‘Is that such a big deal? In Hollywood terms, it’s nothing.’
‘In France it is nothing either,’ he lanced back, aware that he was not thinking rationally. ‘But perhaps such a gap hits you hardest when you see the reality for the first time in old age.’ Had it made him aware of his own life—and how quickly the years were passing?
She heard the edge to his voice. ‘You’re angry,’ she observed.
‘Yes, I am angry,’ he agreed hotly. ‘So what?’
‘You ought to decide what it is you’re angry about.’
His mouth twisted. ‘Since when did lawyers start specialising in amateur psychology?’
‘Have people spent their whole lives agreeing with you, Xavier?’ she demanded. ‘Or is it just that you can’t bear to think someone else might have a different opinion which might just be right?’
He was taken aback by her straightforwardness, and more affected than he wanted to be by the compassion in her emerald eyes. Xavier had thought that he had grown a careful immunity to feelings, yet it was now clear that he had not. Was it a crime to concede that the whole experience had shaken him more than he would have thought possible? Or would anyone else have felt the same in the circumstances?
‘Maybe,’ he conceded, and met the question in her eyes. ‘It’s a story as old as time itself,’ he said slowly. ‘My mother was a young actress in Paris when the Sheikh first laid eyes on her. Zahir said that she had fire and passion and ambition in her heart.’ His voice hardened. ‘Which presumably is one of the things which drew him to her.’
‘And presumably she was very beautiful?’
‘Oh, she was beautiful,’ he said flatly. ‘She was exquisite.’
‘So what happened?’ asked Laura.
‘They had an affair.’
‘Secret?’
‘Mais, bien sûr. Of course. He was a married man. And a high-profile one.’
‘And…then what?’
Uncharacteristically, Xavier hesitated. The look in the Sheikh’s eyes had spoken of regret—but was that the ruefulness of a man coming to the end of his life who looked back with wistfulness as he remembered the long-past pleasures of the flesh? Or was it genuine regret that he had abandoned a woman who was in love with him, without ever thinking that there might have been consequences to their ill-fated affair?
‘Zahir came back to Kharastan,’ he said slowly. ‘And never saw her nor spoke to her again.’
‘So he wouldn’t acknowledge you as his son?’
Xavier looked at her, an odd note stealing into his voice. ‘That’s the strangest thing of all. He never knew about me—or so he claims,’ he said. ‘He only discovered my existence a couple of years ago, when he was trying to put his affairs in order. My photo had been seen by his aide in one of the French newspapers,’ he said wryly. ‘And the resemblance between us was pointed out to him. How ironic that he was prepared to be convinced by the evidence of a photo while I was not.’
‘So what was it that finally convinced you that he is your father?’ asked Laura quietly.
He could tell her that it was something he’d felt, something in his gut which was bone-deep and primitive, but that would be an admission too far for a man who rejected instinct—who relied on the infinitely safer world of fact and evidence.
Putting his hand into the pocket of his trousers, he withdrew a small object and placed it in the palm of his hand, where it gleamed in the moonlight. ‘I brought it with me from Paris,’ he said. ‘It was all my mother left me—apart from a faded piece of ribbon.’
‘What is it?’ she whispered.
Xavier walked over to the divan and held his hand out, and Laura took it with trembling fingers. It was a ring of gold, with a stone she thought might be a ruby, though it was difficult to tell in the moonlight, and it was set like a star.
‘Zahir has one exactly the same,’ he said. ‘It is very precious, and the gift of this ring is rarely made.’
‘Which means your mother must really have meant something to him—do you think she knew that?’
He shrugged. ‘Who knows?’ He doubted it. She had been too busy struggling to survive and trying to hide her son from a man who could have helped her. Had he inherited his mistrust of others from her example? he suddenly found himself wondering.
‘Maybe it was easier for her that way,’ he said slowly. ‘Because if you think someone cares it’s all too easy to keep a dream alive—no matter how hopeless it is.’
Laura put her glass down. ‘She never tried to tell him?’
Xavier shook his head, knowing that it would have been easy to shift the blame to his mother, for having denied him a father and having inculcated him with fear. But with the benefit of age and experience he could see now why she had acted as she had.
‘He had no legitimate heir of his own in a land where male supremacy is unquestioned,’ he said. ‘Perhaps she was frightened that if he learned of my existence he might exercise his vast power to try to take me away from her. Presumably that was why she kept her own family in the dark, too—for fear that someone else might be persuaded to tell him. That was why she simply “disappeared”, and we lived our strange life in the shadows, poor as church mice.’
‘Poor?’ asked Laura. surprised.
Xavier gave the ghost of a laugh. ‘Oui, cherie, poor—I was not born wealthy, you know. But we lived well—with food on the table and a fire at the grate.’ Yet he recognised now the lasting legacy of his upbringing. Had the struggle and the secrecy of their lives been the driving force behind his need to acquire enough personal wealth for a million lifetimes, without acquiring any emotional baggage along the way?
‘So why did he want to see you? And why now?’
‘Because his wife died last year and that gave him the freedom to act—to tie up all the loose ends in his life. He felt that as long as the Sheikha was alive, it would be distressing to confront her with an illegitimate child.’ His mouth twisted into an odd kind of smile. ‘It seems that he is capable of respect, if not fidelity.’
‘Is he…going to make you his heir?’
‘He said something rather strange about that,’ answered Xavier, recalling the way the Sheikh had brought it into the conversation almost absently—like a man reciting from a poem. ‘That a crown could never be chosen, only inherited.’
‘What does that mean?’
Xavier’s eyes narrowed. He had already told her far too much—and now it seemed that she was getting turned on by the fact that one day he might rule a country like this. Would that make her more accessible to his bed? he wondered. Wasn’t it about time he found out?
A pulse beat deep in his groin. Was he going crazy? Alone in a darkened room with a beautiful woman and what was he doing? Telling her stuff. Giving her access to his innermost thoughts. Instead of losing himself in the sweet sanctuary of her body.
He could feel the pulsing of his blood int
ensify as he stared at her. ‘You have let your hair down,’ he said suddenly.
Laura felt something in the atmosphere shift, alter. Something in his eyes had changed, too. Their blackness now seemed a beguiling contradiction—like a kaleidescope which could change from moment to moment, from hard and glittering to soft with promise.
‘You have let your hair down,’ he repeated huskily. ‘Running like a blood-red waterfall down your back.’
It was an erotic image and her mouth dried to dust, all her earlier fluency dissolved by the sensual caress of his words.
Slowly and deliberately he hooked a finger in the air to beckon to her.
‘Viens,’ he whispered. ‘Come here.’
It should have been easy to say no—and if he had said the same thing earlier, in a different mood and at a different time, then Laura might have done.
But his disclosures had changed something—had smashed through her defences to leave her vulnerable to the longing which was now flooding into her unguarded body. He had reached out to her in a way she could never have imagined, and his confidences had humbled her and made her feel connected to him in a way that somehow went beyond the physical attraction she had felt for him from the word go. She wanted more than sex from this black-eyed Frenchman. She wanted to hold him and to comfort him, to draw him to her breast and stroke his ruffled black hair—but did she dare? Did she dare give in to those desires?
He raised his eyebrows. Had he ever had to ask a woman more than once? Never! ‘Yet you hesitate?’
Laura drank in his dark beauty while a fierce battle raged within her. Would it be so wrong? He had paved the way for intimacy with all the things he had just told her—surely that must mean he also respected her?
And wouldn’t this be a kind of balm to her spirit—to help erase the memories of her disastrous time with Josh with a man who seemed to be everything a woman could ever want?
And then what? What if you give your heart to him—because this man is in a different league from Josh, and he could easily smash it into a million pieces?
She wouldn’t.
Desert Princes Bundle Page 8
