Outside, it was unremarkable only in its quiet restraint. Two perfectly clipped bay trees stood sentry, and several burly-looking doorman with calculating eyes stood beside the revolving door, ready to keep the unwanted away.
Inside, however, it was apparent why the Etoile de la Mer had achieved a small fame of its own. The view from the restaurant itself was simply breathtaking—a stunning sweep of the English Channel, whose watery-smooth surface reflected the moonlight.
Malik’s people had obviously been hard at work before their arrival, and Sorrel knew that the intention would have been to ensure the maximum security with the least fuss. Few inside the restaurant would realise who had just walked in—until after the Sheikh had been ushered to the best, most carefully shielded table in the room.
Even if they were noticed it was doubtful whether they would be disturbed. Restaurants like this counted on their clientele being well-connected and famous enough to be diplomatic about their fellow-guests—certainly not crass enough to slip out to the restroom to telephone the gossip column of one of the national newspapers and announce that Sheikh Malik of Kharastan was dining alone with a blonde!
Waiting to greet them was Rafiq—one of Malik’s closest aides and a man known to Sorrel since childhood, for he had often advised her father on Kharastani policy. He must now be in his late forties, she decided—but her instinctively friendly smile of greeting froze in her face when it was met with a perfunctory cool nod from the learned Kharastani advisor.
‘How are you, Sorrel?’ he enquired with heavy formality, as if he had met her only minutes before.
‘I am well, thank you,’ she returned faintly.
‘If you will allow me to show you to your table, Highness?’ said Rafiq in soft, rapid Kharastani—presumably so that he would not be understood by the Maître d’, who had just materialised by his side with a look of barely restrained excitement. ‘I have organised everything to your pleasure.’
They moved towards their table, and unexpectedly Sorrel blinked in surprise as she caught sight of herself in one of the mirrors which reflected the sea back into the room. Her rose-pink T-shirt and flouncy gipsy skirt were just about presentable enough for a place like this—though they certainly did not carry the expected price-tag for a royal dining companion—but it was her expression which momentarily startled her. The way her eyes looked like giant blue saucers in the pale-gold of her face and her lips formed a rather anxious-looking ‘O’ shape.
Was that because she was nervous of Malik and what he was about to say to her—or because she had never been more glaringly aware of how tall and dynamic he looked? How the fluid cut of his very Western suit seemed to emphasise his dark beauty, the dark olive of his skin and the sensual promise of his hard, muscular body.
Two waiters appeared as if by clockwork to pull their chairs back, and menus were brought, dealt with and dispatched again—the wine list imperiously waved away and the waiter hurriedly sent to bring back a selection of soft drinks for the Sheikh to choose from.
Fariq, too, had melted away, and Sorrel folded her hands in her lap, like an obedient child—though in her case it was to prevent Malik from seeing how much they were trembling. And no wonder. It wasn’t easy, sitting opposite him like this and trying not to drink in the pleasure of looking at the high, angled slant of his cheekbones and the lush black lashes which shielded the glitter of his eyes. Her heart was pounding as if she had been running in a race, and she knew that she had to pull herself together.
‘So, Malik?’ she said slowly.
For a moment he said nothing. He had learned to bide his time. To wait for the precise moment to strike. Just as the falcon did when it floated seamlessly on a warm current of desert air…circling, circling…until its prey was foolishly lulled into believing that it was safe.
And then it pounced.
He studied her face dispassionately. Her lips were parted, so that he could just make out the moist gleam of her tongue through tiny white teeth, and he found himself having to swallow down a sudden thickness which was threatening to constrict his throat.
And suddenly it was not so easy to think strategy. To think like the falcon. He was thinking like a man, and it was not appropriate—not with Sorrel. For the first time since he had conceived the idea he began to question it. And yet what was he, if not a man of strength and resolve? If he was sexually frustrated then he would take a temporary lover—and it would not be the flaxen-haired innocent who sat before him so expectantly.
‘Do you ever miss Kharastan?’ he asked.
Sorrel hesitated, but she knew that she had to answer this one truthfully—because anything else would be a betrayal of all the love and affection she had for his home. ‘Yes, I miss it,’ she said quietly. ‘I feel like there is an empty space in my heart sometimes.’
He suppressed his sigh of triumph. ‘And you enjoy your job here in Brighton?’ he queried with a careless air, as if it didn’t matter, but Sorrel knew that Malik never wasted words.
‘It’s okay,’ she said truthfully. ‘Very different to what I was doing at the palace, of course!’
‘So I understand,’ he said coldly. ‘It seems that you cater for the needs of backpackers.’ He bit the last word out as if it were poison.
Sorrel felt that she ought to stand up for the great majority who didn’t live in palaces. ‘We have a varied clientele,’ she said primly, ‘who just want to see a different side of things.’
‘It is not the kind of job which has any future,’ he accused.
She considered this—knowing that it was pointless saying something she didn’t mean, because the razor-tongued Malik would slice through her argument like a knife through a ripe melon. ‘Not long-term, no,’ she admitted.
He lifted his glass to his lips and sipped some soda, and then put it back down again, his eyes never leaving her face. ‘I don’t want you working there any more,’ he stated flatly. ‘I want you to accompany me on my European tour instead.’
Her heart was pounding beneath her breast, but bizarrely Sorrel’s initial reaction to Malik’s suggestion was indignation that he had said it in the tone of someone who was marshalling his troops. I want, he had said. An order, not a request. She guessed there was a difference between want and like, but Malik had never had to worry about the most diplomatic way of asking for something. What Malik wanted, Malik got.
Playing for time, she stared at him. ‘And why on earth should you want me to do that?’
He thought he must have misheard her. ‘Why?’ he echoed. ‘You dare to ask me why?’
‘That’s right.’
Malik frowned. He was used to acquiescence. Subservience. She had already got her way over this ridiculous request to find independence in England—and even though he had been forced to rescue her from that disreputable crowd it seemed that she had still not learnt her lesson. While sometimes he might think to himself that it was tedious never to be challenged—he now realised that he might have been mistaken. When would she learn that he was always right?
‘Is it not enough that your Sheikh commands it?’ he queried softly.
For a moment she didn’t respond—because, despite his unashamedly autocratic tone, Sorrel was woman enough to thrill to that masterful entreaty. Yet it’s wrong to react like that to his arrogance, she reminded herself. You know it is.
‘Not really, Malik. No.’
For a moment he thought that she was joking—why else would she even hesitate over the opportunity he was offering her?
‘You mean you are turning down my offer?’ he demanded, outraged that she should even try.
For the first time since they’d walked in Sorrel smiled—for this was Malik at his predictable best. How black and white he always made everything seem! But wasn’t that always the way of Kharastani men, and of the ruling class in particular? This went some way towards explaining why Fariq had behaved so frostily towards her—she doubted that he approved of Malik’s wish to have her by his side.
&
nbsp; ‘Do you consider me an intelligent woman?’ she mused.
‘Intelligent?’ His eyes glittered as they surveyed her. ‘You were not showing much evidence of it in your apartment earlier, with that bunch of—’ His lips curled in derision. ‘Drunks.’
‘Is that a yes or a no, Malik?’
Malik stared at her cool blue eyes. She had taken a First in Middle-Eastern studies at Kumush Ay University, and had been offered a research post there—nobody could deny that she had a brain and that she could use it. But having a brain was different from having common sense. ‘Yes,’ he admitted grudgingly—although he could not see what bearing this had on his original request.
‘Thank you,’ she said sarcastically. ‘Just as I think of you as an intelligent man.’
‘Why, thank you!’ he returned, and for the first time in a long time Malik realised that he was enjoying himself—he was impatient for the waiter to deposit the plates of fine seafood and the raspberry cocktails on the table, so that he could continue with this verbal sparring which was so rare for a man in his position.
‘So if I were ever to offer you some kind of position in my life, as an intelligent man I would expect you to ask me all kinds of questions about it before you agreed to take it.’
Malik stared at her in amazement. ‘All that to make a point, Sorrel?’ he queried faintly.
Sorrel shook her head. ‘All that to try and make you see my point of view,’ she corrected. ‘So, will you please tell me what it is you want of me?’
For one moment he very nearly told her—until he pulled himself together, reminding himself that it was the frisson of their disagreement which had renewed this terrible sexual aching. Malik found himself glaring at her, as if she had aroused him deliberately. Did he still want her help? he wondered. Was it worth risking?
But then his mind leapt ahead as he envisaged the whistlestop tour his advisors had worked out for him, and he knew that, yes, it was.
He inclined his dark head slightly. ‘I want you behind the scenes, helping me—just as you used to help my father, the Sheikh.’
‘But you have proper advisors to do that,’ objected Sorrel.
How could he begin to explain that the formal and older Fariq and his younger but equally formal assistants were like robots? That the thought of major cities—even Paris, which he had once visited as an impressionable boy on the cusp of manhood—no longer held any allure for him. Not now. It would be all signing papers and starchy meetings. Although surrounded by hordes of people eager to accede to his every whim, he would be alone in the truest sense of the word.
‘Yes,’ he said, more heavily than he had intended to—and then his black eyes narrowed slightly, as if he had shown her an unexpected chink in his defences that she might store up to use against him. But Sorrel was not a manipulator—she did not have enough experience of the world to have learnt how to manipulate—and wasn’t that one of the reasons he wanted her with him? ‘I am not expecting you to suddenly take on the role of political advisor,’ he said testily.
‘Well, what would my role be?’
Malik thought about it. ‘As a kind of social companion,’ he said carefully.
‘Which sounds like the kind of post you might offer to a woman over fifty!’ Sorrel stared at him. ‘Would you mind elaborating, please?’
He tried and failed to think of another woman—or man, even—he would allow to get away with speaking to him in such a manner. ‘I will have functions to attend. Long dinners. Cocktails. Afternoons at the races. Visits to museums. War memorials. It would lessen the burden considerably if I had someone I knew well to accompany me. Someone with whom I can discuss and assess afterwards.’ He opened his eyes a fraction wider, like a cat which had just been awoken from a long sleep. ‘Someone who can stop people from getting too close to me. Especially women.’
Sorrel ignored the implied boast, even though she felt a sudden stab of jealousy. ‘A kind of gatekeeper, you mean?’ she questioned coolly.
‘Precisely.’
‘Fariq could do that just as well.’
‘Fariq isn’t quite so easy on the eye.’
For a moment Sorrel didn’t quite believe that she’d heard him properly. Malik, saying that she was attractive? She stared at him suspiciously. ‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’
Malik lowered his voice, even though they had both been speaking in Kharastani. ‘Oh, come, come, Sorrel,’ he murmured, mock-reprovingly. ‘Don’t be disingenuous—for it scorns the intelligence you hold so dear! Flaxen hair and blue eyes on a pretty and shapely young woman are the hallmarks of beauty, as well you know.’
Defiantly, she speared a seared scallop and ate it—partly to defuse her annoyance at his remarks and partly to give her time to answer a compliment which he had managed to make sound like an insult! Disingenuous, indeed! What did Malik know?
She might tick all the right boxes in attributes that men seemed to want—but the outside stuff had nothing to do with what was going on inside. And inside she was as mixed-up and as wobbly on self-esteem as the next woman. She’d had no real boyfriend. No lover to reassure her that she was gorgeous—though maybe she shouldn’t be relying on a man to booster her feelings of self-worth. Maybe she should dig deep and find them within herself.
‘So you want some arm-candy?’ she questioned flippantly.
Malik scowled. ‘Such a short time in England and already you are conversant with slang!’ he accused.
‘It’s all part of my education to enter the modern world, Malik. I can’t go on living in an ivory tower for ever.’
‘And just how comprehensive an education are you seeking?’ he enquired dangerously.
‘Who knows?’ She saw his eyes darken with rage, and with something else she didn’t recognise—and suddenly Sorrel felt empowered by her own sense of freedom. ‘That’s my business,’ she answered softly, and the words hung and shimmered on the air like morning dewdrops on the web of a spider.
‘Mine also,’ he said, and his words were equally soft.
Their eyes met—hers questioning the grim certainty in his.
‘You think so?’ she questioned.
‘I know so! I cannot abandon a lifetime’s habit and wash my hands of you as if you no longer exist,’ he grated.
‘Is that why you’re offering me the post?’ she demanded. ‘So that you can keep your eye on me.’
‘I can assure you that my motives are far more selfish than that, Sorrel.’ He leaned forward just a little—so that she could see the black glitter of his eyes, as dark and as hard as jet itself. ‘You could prove very useful to me on this trip—for you know me better than anyone.’
Once she would have agreed with him. He had not known the identity of his father until just before he died, and his mother had slipped away in childbirth—so, yes, during her growing up Sorrel had been close to him. But that had been before he had inherited the Kharastani crown—an event which now seemed so long ago that it was like a lifetime.
Yet it was only two years, she realised with a start. Sorrel bit her lip as an immense wave of sadness washed over her—hating the inevitable changes which time had wrought.
What had he just said—that she could prove very useful to him? What a damning testimony that was. A bullet-proof car was useful, and so was soft pillow on which to place your weary head at night—but Sorrel would have hoped to have had a more flattering word than that applied to her. And that was where the trouble lay—she was a fool where Malik was concerned. Deep down she hankered after much more than he would ever be prepared to give her.
If took him up on his request—went with him to all his glamorous destinations—then wouldn’t she just get sucked into his life once more? Only next time find it even harder to grab the courage to say goodbye?
‘I notice that still you make me wait for your answer,’ Malik observed slowly, but his eyes gleamed with the anticipation of a certain victory.
Grabbing all the pluck she possessed, Sorrel met the so
ft dark blaze of his eyes and steeled herself against its hypnotic beauty. ‘I can’t do it, Malik,’ she whispered.
‘Can’t? Or won’t?’
‘Doesn’t it amount to the same thing?’
A muscle began to work in his cheek. ‘Would you mind telling me why?’
And Sorrel suddenly realised that she was going to have to come up with something about which there could be no argument—something he couldn’t try to talk her out of. Something true—but something shocking. So that the Sheikh would regret ever having asked her. But she recognised as she opened her mouth to say the words that they would change his opinion of her—and damn her for ever in his fierce and puritanical eyes.
‘Because I need a lover, Malik,’ she said huskily. ‘That’s why.’
CHAPTER FIVE
FOR A MOMENT, Malik could not quite believe what he had heard—and he stared at her for a long and disbelieving moment. Sorrel—his sometimes feisty but always innocent ward—had just announced that she wanted a lover! Which was as inconceivable as the morning sun rising a sickly shade of green instead of its habitual gold.
‘What did you say?’ he questioned unevenly.
Never had Sorrel heard the Sheikh’s voice sound so dangerous, so forbidding, so…scary. But she told herself that she was an adult—free to do as she wished—and she did not have to answer to him! Nevertheless, she backed away from actually repeating the words to the formidable presence who was seated opposite her, simmering with a quiet dark rage.
‘You know what I said.’
‘That you want a lover!’ he sneered. ‘How can this be?’
They were speaking in Kharastani, and their voices were so low that even the bodyguards seated a discreet distance away would not have heard what they were saying—but the venom in Malik’s accusation must have carried across the room, because several of the well-heeled diners jerked their heads up and frowned, before tactfully returning their attention to their meals.
The accusation which burned angrily from his ebony eyes washed over her in a black fire, but Sorrel knew that she could not allow him to psychologically defeat her. She was a woman, for heaven’s sake—not some little doll which was dressed up and brought out on state occasions. ‘What’s wrong with that?’ she said, more airily than she felt inside.
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