The Sheikh's Baby Omnibus

by Penny Jordan

  She was lying about having forgotten their first meeting, of course. It was ridiculously obvious in everything she said and did, in every look she gave him, that she remembered it very well. He had a good mind to make her admit that to him—as well as admit why it had happened. Did she think he was a complete fool? Vere raged inwardly, his anger growing. Or did she think that by her pretence she could whet his appetite for more of the same?

  Had she been lying in wait for him on that corridor? Had she believed that he would fall for that kind of ploy? Did she really think he was so emotionally vulnerable that he would be taken in by her and want her? Did she think that he was the kind of man who was so lacking in principles and pride that he would want what she had been so ready to offer?

  Well, if so, she was certainly going to learn now how wrong she was and how totally immune he was to her, he decided furiously, and he strode past her and out of the tent. He ignored the inner voice trying to reason with him and remind him that he was supposed to be winning her confidence and getting under her guard.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ‘SAM. There you are—could I have a word?’

  Sam jumped guiltily. She had been so engrossed in her own thoughts—thoughts which revolved totally around having a certain person on his knees, begging her forgiveness for misjudging her—that she hadn’t even heard Anne coming towards her until the other woman had spoken to her.

  ‘Yes. Of course...’

  ‘It’s about James,’ Anne confided, drawing her to one side as other members of the team walked past them on their way to the communal dining area for their evening meal.

  ‘Ted thinks that he’s been bringing alcohol into the camp and drinking it. He says he could smell it on James’s breath the other morning, and he thinks he saw him drinking from a hip flask when they were out in the field, although of course he can’t prove it.’

  Sam could hear the dismay in Anne’s voice.

  ‘Oh, surely not,’ she protested. ‘We all know now that having alcohol here even for our own consumption is strictly forbidden. That was made plain to all of us when we were interviewed. James is very ambitious, and I can’t see him doing anything that would damage his career.’

  ‘Well, one would certainly like to think not—which is why Ted is so concerned about him. Ted and I have spent a lot of time working in the Middle East, and I’m afraid that we have seen colleagues before develop a drink problem whilst they’re out here, away from home. He’s worried that James could be heading in that direction.’

  ‘Just because Ted saw him drinking alcohol that doesn’t mean he has a drink problem,’ Sam felt bound to point out—although just why she should be defending James after the trouble he had got her into she had no idea.

  ‘Of course not. But as I said Ted says there have been a couple of occasions on which he’s been pretty sure he could smell drink on James’s breath. He has tried to talk to him about it, but James brushed him off. In fact he was quite rude. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but sometimes his behaviour seems to be quite irrational. Neither of us likes telling tales out of school, but since you’re working with him we agreed that we should have a word with you.’

  ‘I’m glad you have,’ Sam admitted. ‘Not that there’s anything I can do if he is drinking. I’m the last person he’d be likely to listen to.’

  ‘Well, yes, but to be honest it was you we were thinking about rather than him. He does rather have a down on you. It was remarkably tactless of him to make the comment he did to the the Prince.’

  ‘Yes,’ Sam agreed ruefully. ‘It was—especially as it wasn’t even true.’

  What she wasn’t going to say to Anne was that she was beginning to wonder if James had been going through her work behind her back and had come across the satellite images of the river. From now on she intended to be far more careful about the access he had to her papers and her computer. Little as she liked to think he was looking for a means of getting her into trouble, she suspected that was exactly what he was doing—although she had no real idea why. If he did indeed have a drink problem then she genuinely felt very sorry for him. But she also knew that it was professional help he needed, not her sympathy.

  ‘Come on—we’d better go and get some dinner. Have you heard yet when Talia is likely to be back?’ Anne asked.

  Sam shook her head. ‘It’s going to be several weeks, but more than that I don’t know.’

  The Smiths were a kind and thoughtful couple, and she appreciated the fact that, knowing she was now without a female companion, Anne had asked her to join them to eat. Not that she felt hungry. Not when she knew that after their evening meal she was going to have to give in to the demands of Prince Vereham al a’ Karim bin Hakar and show him what she had discovered.

  ‘I must say that I’ve never been on any field trip where we’ve been fed so well.’ Anne laughed. ‘I think I’ve actually put on weight.’

  ‘The food is excellent,’ Sam agreed.

  Zuran was a world-renowned luxury holiday destination, and the Ruler of Zuran had provided them with the services of a gifted young chef. Fresh food was brought out for them every day, along with water, and Sam could well understand why Anne felt she’d gained a few pounds.

  ‘I treated myself to a copy of the new Jane Austen DVD whilst we were in Zuran, but it’s not Ted’s cup of tea—so if you’d like to watch it with me after dinner...?’ she offered.

  ‘I’d love to,’ Sam said truthfully. ‘But I’m afraid I can’t.’ Trying not to sound as self-conscious as she felt, she told Anne, ‘Prince Vereham al a’ Karim bin Hakar has ordered me to accompany him on a field trip, and he wants to set off after dinner.’

  If Anne was surprised, to Sam’s relief she managed to keep it to herself, saying easily, ‘Well never mind. Perhaps another time.’

  There was no sign of James in the large air-conditioned tented ‘dining room’, nor any sign of the Ruler of Dhurahn either—but then it wasn’t unusual for the high-ranking Arabs monitoring their work to eat separately from them. And of course Sam was relieved and delighted that he wasn’t there. The last thing she wanted was to look up from her food to find that merciless cold green gaze focused on her.

  ‘Finished already?’ Anne asked in surprise, when Sam touched her on the arm a little later, and explained that she was leaving.

  ‘I’ve got to put a few things together. Somehow I don’t think it would be a good idea to keep the Prince and his entourage waiting.’

  ‘No,’ Anne agreed. ‘I don’t think it would. I must say he is an outstandingly autocratically handsome man—very compelling, if somewhat austere, plus he has such presence. Jane Austen, I think, would have had a field-day with such a role model for a hero. You’d never think to look at him that Dhurahn is the most forward-thinking and democratically run Gulf State of them all, but Ted says that it is.’

  Forward-thinking and democratic? No, she would certainly never have thought of describing the Ruler of Dhurahn as either of those things, Sam acknowledged grimly as she made her way back to her quarters to collect her laptop and everything else she felt she might need for her upcoming trip. Her trip? Didn’t she mean her ordeal? Sam asked herself wryly.

  Vere looked at his watch. His men should have loaded up the four-by-four with everything they would need by now. He had spoken to Drax and explained to his twin what he had discovered, and Drax had promised to find out what he could about Ms Samantha McLellan.

  It was only after he had ended
the call that Vere realised he had said nothing to Drax about his own original meeting with ‘Sam’, as her colleagues appeared to call her. But then why should he? What possible relevance to what was happening now could that have? None whatsoever—other than to underline for him the type of woman she was and keep him on his guard against her.

  A fresh surge of outrage and pride-fuelled fury burst through him as he recalled how earlier in her tent she had tried to pretend that she thought he had been going to touch her. Did she really think she had the power to drive him into such a state of arousal and need that he would do such a thing. A man in his position? He could almost hear his twin’s soft laughter at his indignation. A small rueful smile curled his mouth. Drax had always had the knack of softening the burden imposed on him by his position. But the reality was that he was not just a man, he was Dhurahn’s ruler, and he had a duty to set his people the right kind of example. He couldn’t, for example, imagine his father, who had been so strong and so noble, indulging in the kind of behaviour he had descended to. But then his father had had his mother, and the love they had shared had been plain for everyone to see.

  Love. He must never fall in love. Imagine, for instance, if those hot, sharp pangs he had felt when he had held Ms Samantha McLellan in his arms had not been lust but love? How would he be feeling right now?

  What? What was this? What on earth was he doing, coupling Samantha McLellan and the word love together in the same sentence?

  ‘Everything is ready, Highness.’

  Vere acknowledged the soft words of the man who had just salaamed his way into his tent with a brief nod of his head.

  Sam had just finished packing a change of clothes into her backpack when the flap entrance to her tent was flung back to admit the Prince.

  His curt, ‘You are ready?’ caused her to respond to him with an equally curt inclination of her head.

  ‘Very well, then.’

  He turned to leave, plainly expecting her to follow him, so Sam picked up her things and hurried after him. Irritatingly, the narrowness of the path and the bulk of what she was carrying made it impossible for her to do anything other than walk behind him, for all the world as though she was acknowledging his sexual superiority to her and following tamely. That was something she would certainly never do, she fumed, so engrossed in her own anger that she only just managed to stop herself from cannoning into him when he stopped alongside a large four-by-four. Bumping into him a second time was the last thing she needed to do right now—especially after his previous accusation.

  Obviously he would be the one travelling in this enormous monster of a gas-guzzler, Sam decided, and searched round for the rest of the vehicles, looking confused when she couldn’t see any.

  ‘Something is wrong?’ he was asking her impatiently.

  Yes, just about everything, Sam thought ruefully, but shook her head and said instead, ‘No.’

  ‘Excellent. Give me your things, then, I’ll put them in the back.’

  Give him her things and he would put them in the back? Sam knew she was gaping at him as he took the laptop case from her unresisting grip. He was a prince, the Ruler of an Arab state. He was arrogant and demanding, and he was used to being waited on hand and foot, so no way could he have meant what he had said. But apparently he had, Sam realised, as he gestured to her to remove her backpack and then took it from her, carrying it as though it weighed nothing instead of the several heavy kilos her shoulders knew it did.

  She could hear him opening the rear door of the four-by-four and then closing it again. He strode to the passenger door ignoring her. Sam looked wildly around herself wondering where on earth the vehicle that was to be her transport was, and if he would actually allow his own driver to drive off without her.

  ‘If you’re ready?’

  It was more an impatient command than a request. Confused, Sam looked from his irritated stance beside the passenger door he was holding open to the empty seat, and then back to him again.

  ‘You want me to get in?’ she asked him

  ‘It would seem a logical process, if we are to leave for our destination,’ he agreed.

  From the way he was looking at her, if she kept him waiting much longer he’d be bustling her into the passenger seat like a small child, Sam suspected, reluctantly stepping up to the door. Her, ‘What about you?’ was lost in the heavy thud of the door being closed by an impatient male hand.

  She was reaching for her seat belt when the driver’s door opened and he swung himself into the driver’s seat, closing his own door as he did so.

  He was driving them himself?

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Where are the others?’ she asked uncertainly.

  ‘What others?’

  ‘You mean that... But I thought...’

  ‘You thought what? That after your earlier crass attempt to foster intimacy between us I wouldn’t want to risk being alone with you? Somehow I think I’m capable of defending my own honour.’

  Sam could feel her face burning with fury. She looked towards the door of the now moving vehicle, but of course it was too late for her to register a protest by trying to get out and walk off.

  ‘What happened in that corridor was an accident...a mistake...’

  ‘A mistake—yes, I agree. But an accident?’

  ‘And as for you worrying about risking being alone with me—’ She was so angry that the words she wanted to say had balled up as tightly in her throat as her fingers moved into tight fists against her palms. ‘That is both offensive and ridiculous. After all, I’m not the one who arranged this trip, and I certainly wouldn’t have chosen to make it alone with you.’

  Vere knew perfectly well that she had a point, but the fact that she had made it still angered him. In fact, everything about her and her presence here, and the problems she was causing, infuriated him.

  Her meddling in something that was nothing whatever to do with her, and her ridiculous claims about the source of the river, were obliging him to take time out of his already very busy life to check up on the situation, ready to head off any arguments the Emir might try to put forward.

  He had no desire whatsoever to have her ideas brought into a more public arena, for others with their own agendas to get involved, and because of that he had been forced to make this trip alone with her—something he would never ordinarily have done.

  When he came to the desert he liked to come alone—completely alone—so that he could replenish himself via his solitude with it.

  He disliked sharing the desert—‘his’ desert—with anyone, but the thought of having to share it with this woman, who had already aggravated and irritated him to the point where he couldn’t even close his eyes in sleep without her appearing in his dreams to infuriate him, inflamed his hostility towards her like a bur under a saddle. He came to the desert to cool his overheated thoughts and emotions, to live for a precious few days as a poet hermit, letting the desert reach out to him and unfold its mysteries to him.

  None of that would be possible when he had to share its purity with a woman who bartered her flesh and her conscience for money—a woman who was the complete opposite of the kind of woman he admired.

  But he had wanted her.

  Briefly, foolishly, shamefully, and in a moment of lost self-control. It would not happen again.

  She would never have agreed to this trip if she had known they were going to be alone, Sam fumed. He should have told her and given her the opportunity
to refuse. But of course he was far too arrogant to do anything like that. So far as he was concerned his word was law. She frowned, remembering something, turning her head to look at him as she challenged him.

  ‘I thought no one other than desert-qualified Arab drivers were allowed to drive members of the teams? Or don’t the rules apply when one is the Ruler of one’s own kingdom.’

  She could see anger deepening the colour of his eyes. He obviously didn’t like what she was saying one little bit. Did she really want to think of herself as the kind of woman who was attracted to his kind of man? Of course she didn’t, she assured herself.

  ‘I am a desert-qualified driver,’ he told her coldly, looking away from her to switch on the car’s satellite navigation and communication system, and using the earpiece he had put on to say something in Arabic to the camp’s radio controller, effectively making it impossible for Sam to rally and make a retort.

  Good—she was glad that he was making it plain that he didn’t want to talk to her, because she certainly did not want to talk to him! In fact she didn’t want any kind of contact with him at all!

  The four-by-four might be the most comfortable vehicle she had ever travelled in, with its air-conditioning and its leather seats that could be electronically contoured to fit one’s own body for maximum support, but she certainly wasn’t going to be able to relax enough to enjoy that comfort, Sam admitted. And not just because of the number of steep sand dune escarpments they were having to climb and then descend as the Prince took what she could only assume must be a shortcut to their destination.

  There was also the fact that tonight they would be sharing a camp. Not, of course, that she had anything to fear from him. She knew that. And she had made overnight stays with other members of the team—it was part and parcel of their work, after all, and taken as such by everyone concerned. Anne hadn’t even blinked when Sam had told her about this trip, for instance.