by Penny Jordan
Other members of the team, Sam reminded herself. Never just one person...just one man...this man...to whom, no matter how hard she might try to deny it to herself, she was dangerously vulnerable.
Not any more! That had been before, when she had thought both of them were caught up in the same surge of mutual unstoppable passion that was beyond their control, when she had believed that they shared something very intimate and special, however out of character for her it had been. Then, of course, the thought of a night alone with him under the stars with only the desert and the night sky to witness their being together would have been her idea of heaven. Desert nights were cold—cold enough for two people who desired one another to positively need to share the heat of their bodies and their desire.
Sam couldn’t think of anywhere more perfect than the desert, with all its powerful secrets, under the moon, with all its magical mystery, to consummate a love affair between two people who shared the same desire so intimately that they almost shared the same heartbeat. The male strength of the desert tamed by the female allure of the moon had surely been created to be together for an eternity that symbolised the best of human love.
Why was she letting herself think like this when she knew she could only hurt herself by doing so? It would have been hard enough for her had he merely ignored her, indicating that he wanted to pretend that embrace in the hotel corridor had never taken place. He had gone several steps further than that, though, with his criticism and accusations against her professionalism. He wasn’t just indifferent to her, he actively disliked her. And she returned that dislike now, Sam told herself firmly.
Nothing could be more hellish, surely, than for two people to be alone together when their hostility towards one another was as strong as that between the Prince and herself. He had made his loathing of her very plain, and she was honour-bound to reciprocate it.
For some reason Sam suddenly felt very close to tears, her heart as raw with pain as her throat would have been had she actually been crying.
It was pointless regretting now what couldn’t be changed. All she could do was resolve to make sure in every single way she could that he had no further opportunity to throw in her face any accusation about her coming on to him sexually. That should be easy enough to do, surely? After all, she had been celibate virtually all her grown-up female life, so it wasn’t as though she carried with her a fully awakened sexual lust that needed to be satisfied.
The irony of her situation was its own form of black humour. Here she was, a virgin still in the emotionally and sexually fulfilled sense. Her single experience of ‘full sex’ had been the fumbled and uncomfortable experience she had shared with a fellow undergraduate when she had traded her virginity for the right, as she had thought then, to call herself a woman. Being accused of attempting to seduce a man who any woman could see had at his disposal all the experience and sensuality that any woman could want in a lover was absurd.
Was that why she had succumbed to temptation so easily? Because in her heart of hearts she knew that she had deprived herself of a passionately loving journey into womanhood and secretly longed to experience its mystery? Had she looked at him and somehow believed that in his arms she could find what she had never had? It was less painful to think that than to think, as she had done initially and ridiculously, that they were fated to meet and be together.
Ridiculous, yes. But how very different things could have been if he had shared that shock of awareness and longing she had felt at their first touch. She would have given herself willingly—eagerly, in fact—into his hands, just for the joy of knowing the reality of true sensual pleasure and satisfaction, without asking anything from him other than his own reciprocal pleasure in their coming together. She could easily have lived off the sweetness of that remembered pleasure, storing it up inside her like the most precious of precious gifts, treasuring it and revering it for all her life as a time apart from reality, without expecting or needing anything else.
But he had not offered her that gift. Instead he had made accusations against her and humiliated her. Sam gave a small gasp of pain as her feelings pushed against the barriers she had tried to erect against them. This was definitely not the time to give in to her emotions, she warned herself.
Vere glanced towards the passenger seat. He prided himself on the excellence of his desert driving, and so far as he was aware he had done nothing to elicit the small sharp sound of pain from the woman seated next to him.
He looked at the satellite navigation system map and then checked the onboard compass. They were out of range of radio frequency now, but he had no fear of them not reaching their destination.
Vere had lied to Sam when he had told her that he knew nothing about the course of the river having been changed.
The source of the river had a deep-rooted significance for his family, and his parents had brought him and Drax here often. He and Drax had kept up the tradition, coming in the winter to camp beside the river their ancestor was supposed to have conjured up so magically from the rocks, and Vere was perfectly well aware of how and why the original course of the river had been changed. What he didn’t know, though, was what interpretation Ms Sam McLellan intended to put on that change when, as the Emir’s pawn, she started trying to make trouble for Dhurahn.
By the time they returned to the main camp tomorrow he would be in possession of that information, and he intended to have made sure that Sam McLellan knew that he would be merciless in destroying her credibility if he had to do so to protect his country and his people.
Sam gasped as the four-by-four suddenly seemed to surge up a slope so perpendicular that her heart was in her mouth. With every metre they climbed she held her breath, expecting at best to feel the wheels spin as they sank into the sand and at worst to find that they were sliding sideways back down the incline.
Vere seemed oblivious to her concern. In fact when she looked at him she could see that he was smiling grimly as though he was enjoying forcing the hostile terrain to accept his mastery. And then suddenly the pressure forcing her back in her seat was released as they crested the incline.
‘There is our camp. We should be there in a few more minutes.’
The calm words gave no hint of the triumphant satisfaction she had sensed minutes earlier as he battled the steep hill.
Down below them Sam could see dozens of small pinpricks of light, whilst the moon revealed the outlines of two of the now familiar black Bedou tents.
Sam’s eyes widened. She had assumed that they would have to make their own camp, but plainly she’d been wrong. People had obviously come out here ahead to establish the camp for them. The thought of others having to toil in the hot sun to set up this camp angered her, as well as underlining yet again the difference in their status.
‘It all looks very welcoming,’ she told him coolly. ‘I hate to think of the waste of energy resources it must represent, though.’
Vere frowned. Dhurahn was arguably the most ‘green’ of all the states involved in the project. He and Drax were both committed to cutting Dhurahn’s own greenhouse gases, and he didn’t like Sam’s coolly cynical comment.
‘It’s never a good idea to make assumptions—especially when one is doing so without the benefit of any real knowledge or expertise. For instance the lights you can see are solar fuelled, and water will be collected in the traditional way overnight from the change in temperature. Dhurahn is known as the greenstate of the gulf, and we take our responsibi
lity to the environment very seriously.’
‘But you drive a gas-guzzler,’ Sam interrupted him, adding pointedly, ‘but then of course as an Arab prince I dare say you feel it is your right.’
‘Dhurahn does not have its own oil. This “gas-guzzler”, as you call it, has been adapted to run in the most fuel efficient way possible. Along with our neighbours in Zuran, we are financing research into alternative eco-friendly fuels. I may be an Arab prince, Ms McLellan but I come from a people who know very well how to live alongside nature and respect it. As the Ruler of Dhurahn it is my privilege to honour the traditions of my people, rather than dishonour them by seeking to emulate the greedy consumerism that has caused so much human suffering.’
Sam opened her mouth to argue with him and then closed it again. What, after all, could she say? She had not expected him to be so fiercely determined about asserting his green credentials, and she felt slightly resentful of the way it seemed he had scored the moral high ground in having done so. How childish was that? Surely what was more important was his commitment to green issues, not her savouring a small moral victory. She had only wanted to be victorious because he kept on putting her down and making her feel small, making her feel that she had no value. But then to him she didn’t, and she might as well accept that.
They had almost reached the small camp now, and Sam could see where the moon was reflected on a small pool of water beneath a rocky outcrop. She remembered seeing it when she had come out originally to look at the river. She had thought then that it was a beautiful spot, with vegetation around the pool framing it in a lush green halo, the rocks so old and worn smooth by time, that she had felt a sense of awe just looking at them. The privilege of seeing such beauty softened her mood, allowing her earlier irritation to slip from her. How could anyone not marvel at something like this? This was the reason she had wanted this posting—this miracle that was the desert when it bloomed.
‘The spring for the pool must be underground,’ she heard herself saying softly.
Vere looked at her. A look of shining reverence illuminated her face, and like the soft awe in her voice, it caught him off guard. As though a barrier within him had been removed, he could feel the swift flood of his own longing swirling powerfully through him. He wanted her! Angry denial gripped his insides, but the truth couldn’t be ignored. Against everything he knew to be in his own best interests, and more importantly those of his people, he did want her.
He turned away from her. As a boy, he too had marvelled at the pool, thinking it magical, whereas Drax, as always more practically minded than him, had wanted to dive down and find out where the spring actually was.
‘You will do no such thing,’ their father had told them both sternly. ‘It is far too dangerous. Besides, I can tell you that the spring is situated beneath the rocks. It ebbs and flows in a way known only to itself, but with a pull that is dangerously strong.’
Like the pull of this woman, whose presence he resented so much, on the desire within him that he could not subjugate to his will? How swiftly and treacherously that knowledge slid into his consciousness—the merest dart of awareness, yet as powerful as any narcotic and surely as compulsive, stealing away the mind’s strength whilst feeding the heart’s desire. It was, he knew, no matter how much he wished he did not have that knowledge, a pull that was capable of changing the course of his life for ever if he did not control it.
Vere’s hands tightened on the steering wheel of the four-by-four, and then, with an abruptness that made Sam’s body recoil against the sudden acceleration of the vehicle, he drove towards their camp.
CHAPTER SIX
COMFORTABLY settled in the privacy of her own tent, Sam reflected that whilst it had disconcerted her at first to discover that the two of them were to be the only occupants of the well-organised camp, there were also certain benefits to be found. Its quiet solitude after the busy hum of the main camp was blissful, Sam thought, at least to someone like her, who valued her privacy.
Here, she knew that she was unlikely to be disturbed by a fellow worker wanting company. Deep down inside Sam knew that she felt slightly cheated and disappointed by the everyday activities of the main camp. But she knew it was silly and almost childish of her to have imagined that she would be experiencing true life in the desert, as lived by its nomads, and she had to admit she welcomed the camp’s modern comforts.
The Prince had left her with the curt instruction that he expected her to be ready at first light to drive out with him to the place where she claimed the course of the river had been altered, which meant that she ought now to be in bed and asleep, ready for an early start, instead of sitting cross-legged on a cushion on the carpeted floor of her tent, wearing the thin cotton robe she had put on after her shower, her computer switched on in front of her.
Ostensibly she was checking her facts with regard to the original course of the river and answering her e-mails, but she hadn’t been able to resist the temptation to bring up the now familiar details of Dhurahn and its ruling family from her previous searches.
It wasn’t really the foolish self-indulgence of a woman helplessly caught in the invisible web of one man’s sexual aura that was driving her, she assured herself. Naturally she was curious about the background of a man who was behaving towards her with the kind of arrogance the Prince was.
Her breath caught in her throat as she suddenly found a new site, her whole attention focused on the screen as she learned from it what she had not realised before. Namely that he, the Ruler of Dhurahn, Prince Vereham al a’ Karim bin Hakar, was the elder of a pair of twins. There were two of them? Surely it wasn’t possible that the world could accommodate two such men, never mind one small country.
The site gave a few more details about them, including the information that their Bedouin ancestry was mixed with the French and Irish genes of their grandmother and their mother.
She frowned slightly as she read these facts. How did a man who obviously had such a strong commitment to his Arab heritage deal with such a potentially turbulent mixture of cultures within himself? Did it make him resent the cultural diversity within him or embrace it? Was he at war with that inheritance or at peace with it? And what kind of woman would most appeal to a man so complex?
He would father beautiful children.
A slow, hot ache slid through her body—a need that was surely elemental and universal, the need of a woman to bear the child of a man. Not any man, but the man.
Panic and denial shot through her. Now look what she had done! The computer, like a modern magical vessel of legend, had released genii in the shape of knowledge conjured up by her own thoughts, and it was too powerful for her to control.
Motherhood was something she had hoped to look forward to when eventually she met the man with whom she wanted to share her life, but it had certainly never dominated her thoughts or been a desire that drove her. Yet here she was thinking in terms of having his child, feeling her womb tighten with longing for that child and for him. What did that tell her?
Sam sat back from the computer, feeling slightly sick as the reality of exactly what it did mean was forced on her. There was only one reason she could ever want to conceive a specific man’s child as powerfully as she did this man’s.
She wanted his child because she had fallen head over heels in love with him. She started to panic. No. That wasn’t possible. It shouldn’t be possible. But somehow it certainly was.
This was crazy.
It just wasn’t logical to fall in love with someone on the strength of a single look followed by a single kiss—especially when that someone had made it clear that he had felt nothing for her other than dislike and contempt.
Crazy or not, it was what had happened to her, so she’d better get used to it and then work on some way of dealing with it.
Like what? Running away? Lying to herself and telling herself that she’d got it wrong, that she didn’t really love him at all?
Why had this happened to her? She just wasn’t the type. She was sensible, practical, she’d never believed in falling in love at first sight. She’d believed that love was something that should grow slowly and cautiously, as two people got to know one another. Love meant liking a person, respecting them and sharing goals with them. It meant... ..
It meant that she had known nothing about love at all, and now that she did she wished desperately that she hadn’t found out.
It was gone midnight. Vere looked up from the maps he had been studying, forwarded to him in an e-mail attachment by Drax. The earlier dated map was the original one, drawn in the days when, after the end of the First World War the Ottoman Empire had originally been carved up. The map had been handed to his great-grandfather at the same time as he had been stealing the heart of another British diplomat’s daughter. It showed the boundaries between all the Arab states, including their own. It also showed the original course of the Dhurahni River. Alongside it Vere had placed the second map, dated only a matter of months later, showing exactly the same boundaries but with the river diverted to a new course. In both maps the course of the river was well within their own border.
