The Sheikh's Baby Omnibus

by Penny Jordan

  But within a heartbeat he was reminding himself that she had only changed her mind about the outward image of her role, not about the inner, intimate living of it. She had said herself that she wanted him.

  A hot surge of male need speared through him. They were already lovers. Would it really be so wrong for them to continue to be so? No one, least of all his twin, would deny him the right to set aside the responsibilities of rulership and simply be a man. And by needing her he was not really allowing himself to become vulnerable. Needing wasn’t loving. He could need her without loving her. He did not love her. He would not love her. So there was really no reason why she should not stay, was there? Unless, of course, he secretly thought that he was in danger of loving her?

  Of course he wasn’t.

  Sam had put as much distance as she could between herself and Vere, neither looking at him nor talking to him during the flight.

  A group of officials were waiting to greet Vere as they left the jet. Sam deliberately kept herself in the shadows, which was surely the correct place for a mistress—especially one dressed like her, in the same serviceable clothes she had taken with her to the desert. But even if she had been able to bring herself to change into any of the new clothes Vere had bought her she would still have hung back, Sam knew.

  She caught one of the officials, a young woman with dark eyes that flashed liquid with longing whenever she looked at Vere, staring at her. Unlike her, the woman was standing tall with pride and self-respect, her sunglasses perched on her head, all the better for Vere to admire those magnificent tawny eyes of hers, Sam reflected miserably, and the equally magnificent cleavage just teasingly hinted at by the V in her crisp tailored shirt.

  Why had she agreed to this? Sam asked herself wretchedly. It was obvious to her that she had been a fool to think that Vere could ever come to love her. She had allowed herself to be carried away by her own longing and the romance of the desert, where they had just been two people unable to fight a mutual desire for one another. That, however, had merely been a desert mirage, that was all. The reality was what was here in front of her now. And that reality wasn’t a man she had deceived herself into creating out of her own need, a man she could reach out to and connect with, if only via his desire for her.

  The reality was this stranger, dressed now not simply, as she had seen him in the desert, but wearing over his plain white dishdasha a rich dark blue silk robe embroidered with gold thread, which he had put on before they left the aircraft. There might not be a crown on his head, but it might just as well be there. Both his manner and that of those around him reflected what he was. Sam could see in his expression hauteur, where before she had seen merely a certain austere withdrawal which she had translated as a sign of a complex and fascinating personality. The hands Vere extended to those who had come to welcome him were covered in the same flesh that had touched her, but the heavy dark emerald ring glowing in the sunlight surely testified to the fact that those hands controlled the lives of others.

  There was no place in this man’s life for her. The days might have gone when an Eastern ruler installed his women in the seraglio, where no other male eyes could see them and where their days were wasted in an emptiness of waiting to be chosen to share his bed, but Sam suspected her role would be a traditional one nevertheless.

  Dressed in her new clothes, she would be expected to live in the shadows, a symbol of her master’s wealth and status, a toy for him to play with when the mood took him, to be returned to the shadows to wait for him to want her again.

  Vere’s gaze searched the small crowd, and came to rest on Sam’s pale set face.

  He could give instructions now that she was to be put on a plane home and, once he had compensated her financially for the disruption to her life, dismiss her from his thoughts. He could make amends for the loss of her job by ensuring that she was offered more lucrative work elsewhere. There were any number of ways in which he could ensure that he owed her nothing and had no moral obligations towards her. There was no logical reason for him to complicate his life by keeping her here.

  No logical reason, no.

  He gave a brief nod of his head. Two men stepped forward, bowing to Sam.

  Miserably, Sam allowed herself to be guided towards yet another waiting limousine.

  This time she was travelling in it alone, whilst Vere rode ahead of her in a different car, with two other men.

  The road on which they were travelling was straight and wide. To one side of it lay the sea, a perfect shade of blue-green beneath the late-afternoon sunshine. To the other side lay what Sam presumed must be the City of Dhurahn, and then set aside from it was an area of tall modern glassfronted skyscrapers, located in what looked like landscaped gardens.

  Their route was lined with palm trees set into immaculate flowerbeds with green verges. Through the dark tinted windows of the limousine she could see the people in the vehicles on the other side of the road turning to look at their cavalcade.

  Up ahead of them Sam could see a huge wall, in which a pair of wrought-iron gates were opening to allow them through into a courtyard beyond them. The tails of the peacocks shaped in the wrought-iron gates shimmered in the sunlight just as richly as the real thing, the emerald-green of the stones set in them surely the exact shade of Vere’s eyes. Vere. She must not think of him as Vere any more. She must think of him instead as the Ruler of Dhurahn. That way maybe she could distance herself properly from him.

  A flight of polished cream marble steps led up to a portico, its heavy wooden doors already open and the steps themselves lined with liveried servants.

  Vere was already out of his car and striding up the steps.

  As she watched him disappear inside the doors, Sam could feel herself starting to panic. She felt lost, abandoned, vulnerable and alone. She also felt angry and resentful because of those feelings.

  Someone was opening the car door. Reluctantly Sam got out.

  One of the liveried men bowed respectfully. ‘If you will come this way, please?’

  Silently Sam followed him inside. The large hallway was cool and filled with shadows after the heat outside. Intricately carved shutters blocked the heat of the sunlight from coming through the windows. The marble floor was bare of rugs, and in the middle of it was a raised rectangular pool. The surface of the water was covered in creamy white rose petals. A traditional burning censer stood on one of the steps, giving off a warm spicy scent.

  The only furniture in the room was several low divans with gilded legs and armrests, standing against the walls, their silk cushions a splash of colour against the plain white walls. Several sets of inner closed doors opened off the hallway, their dark wood carved with Arabic designs. Coloured glass lamps in fretted ironwork hung from the ceiling, along with several more censers.

  ‘Welcome to Dhurahn, Madam,’ said a small dark-haired girl with a soft voice, who seemed to have appeared out of nowhere to bow and gesture across the hallway. ‘I am Masiri. If you will allow me, I shall show you to the women’s quarters.’

  The women’s quarters! Sam shivered. But what else could she do but follow Masiri up the long flight of marble stairs and then along a gallery through which the hallway down below could only be seen through a protective fretted screen?

  Another flight of stairs and another corridor, this one in the form of an upper veranda that overlooked an enclosed courtyard and garden. Sam caught her breath as she looked down into it, her misery momentarily forgotten as
she admired its beauty. A fountain sent droplets of water upwards to sparkle in the sunlight before falling back to dimple the smooth surface of a pool. Large lazy goldfish half hidden by water lily leaves basked in the warmth. The air was full of the scent of the roses planted in the flowerbeds.

  ‘His Highness Prince Vere lives in the old part of the palace, whilst his brother His Highness Prince Drax lives in the new part,’ Masiri explained in careful English, adding, ‘you are to have the rooms of the Lady Princess. It was for her that her husband built the garden.’

  Sam forced a smile and nodded her head, although she had no real idea who Masiri meant.

  The girl had stopped outside a pair of double doors, and now opened them.

  Reluctantly Sam stepped inside—and then stopped. The room in which she was standing was a beautiful drawing room, decorated as though it were in a classically styled Georgian mansion. It was a woman’s room, Sam saw at once, its furniture delicate and feminine—a pretty mahogany writing desk, a pair of matching sofa tables—and there was even an embroidery screen and a sewing box. A large gilt-framed mirror hung over an Adam-style fireplace; pale green watered silk covered the walls and hung at the windows. A carpet woven in the same pattern and colours as the plasterwork on the ceiling covered the floor.

  The whole room was so elegant, its furnishings so obviously antique, that Sam could only gaze at her surroundings in bemusement and awe.

  Smiling at her, Masiri led the way to another pair of double doors telling Sam, ‘Here is the bedroom for you, madam.’

  Dutifully Sam followed her.

  The bedroom was decorated in the same style as the drawing room, and in the same colours. The large bed had pale green silk drapes lined in gold silk, and the bedspread was green silk embroidered with gold.

  ‘Here is a dressing room and a bathroom,’ Masiri enunciated carefully, indicating the doors on either side of the bed. ‘I go now and bring you coffee and some food.’

  Sam nodded her head. Her head had started to ache. She walked into the dressing room. Mirrored wardrobes lined one wall, throwing back to her an image of herself that depressed her. They had been travelling virtually all day, and her serviceable long-sleeved khaki shirt and skirt looked dull and dusty—and decidedly un-mistress-like.

  She opened one of the wardrobe doors and then stiffened, quickly opening another. There, hanging up neatly, were the clothes Vere had bought. They had obviously been brought to the palace ahead of them and swiftly unpacked.

  Another woman might welcome a life in which unseen hands performed every single necessary task and all one had to do was allow oneself to be waited on, but Sam didn’t.

  When Masiri returned with coffee and a plate of small sweet pastries, Sam was waiting impatiently for her.

  ‘I want to see His Highness,’ she told her determinedly. ‘There is something that I need to tell him.’

  ‘You wish His Highness to come to you?’ Masiri asked uncertainly.

  From the look on Masiri’s face Sam suspected that she viewed her request as a breach of protocol, but she didn’t care.

  ‘Either he comes to me or you take me to him. It doesn’t matter which,’ Sam told her firmly. ‘But I must see him as soon as possible.’

  Vere looked at the note his PA had handed him and read it quickly.

  Sam wanted to see him. He looked down at his desk, where his staff had neatly stacked that correspondence they felt Vere would need to see most urgently.

  He also should, as a matter of good manners, seek out his sister-in-law and enquire after her health. Drax would expect that of him at the very least. Sadie was a very modern young woman, who was determined to ensure that her husband and her brother-in-law did everything they could to promote sexual equality amongst their own people, and Vere supported her in that. And even if he had not done so, even if there had been issues on which they had clashed, he would have forgiven her them because of the love she had for his twin.

  Initially Drax had brought her to Dhurahn as a bride for Vere, not himself, as part of his scheme to prevent them both from being forced into diplomatic marriages. Drax with the Emir’s eldest daughter, and Vere with the Ruler of Zuran’s youngest sister. Neither of them had welcomed their neighbours’ marital plans, but they had agreed that they had to be dealt with tactfully and a plausible reason found for refusal. It had been Drax who had suggested that their best way out of the situation would be for them to provide themselves with wives, before either the Ruler or the Emir could broach the subject of formal negotiations.

  When Drax had fallen in love with the prospective wife he had chosen for Vere, Vere had been happy for both of them—and happy for himself too. Drax’s marriage meant that he could fob off both his neighbours’ attempts to marry him into their families by pointing out that it was impossible for him to agree without risking offending one of them.

  Ultimately he imagined that when he did marry it would be a diplomatic marriage, though one which he chose. The very thought of the vulnerability that falling in love brought made him stiffen his defences against it.

  ‘You will not be able to escape your fate, brother,’ Drax had teased him. ‘You wait and see. You will follow the same path as our forebears and fall in love with a European woman. It is written into our genes, its course set into the stars. There is no escape.’

  Drax was wrong, of course. Totally wrong.

  He was, Vere realised, still holding his PA’s note, telling him that Sam was asking to see him as a matter of urgency.

  Just thinking about her waiting for him set off a reaction within him that underlined everything he was fighting against. She touched parts of him—his emotions, his self-control... Witness the way he had allowed her to urge his possession of her when he should have withdrawn. Vere could feel the colour crawling up under his skin even though he tried to suppress it. It was no use. He could not withstand the turbulent surge of desire that crashed through him, breaching every defence he tried to put up against it.

  Images, scents, sounds filled his head, until his own breathing quickened in time to the remembered race of hers. He moved uncomfortably in his chair, all too aware of the heavy pulse of his erection. If he went to her now he wouldn’t be able to trust himself not to touch her. But why shouldn’t he touch her?

  Without telling her the truth? Without giving her the opportunity to judge properly for herself whether or not she still wanted him? His parents would have abhorred such an attitude, and so too did he. If he went to her now... If he went to her now, feeling like this, he was afraid of what he might say and do. Better to wait until he was more in control of himself.

  Vere crushed the note and then released it to drop onto his desk, ignoring it to focus on the other papers in front of him.

  CHAPTER NINE

  IT was several hours since the sun had set. His desk was virtually clear, and Vere realised guiltily that he had not been to see Sadie.

  It didn’t take him long to walk through the old part of the palace and into the new modern wing that Drax had designed.

  Sadie smiled when she saw him, offering to send for coffee for him, but Vere shook his head.

  ‘You are well? Drax told me that you have been tired.’

  ‘I am very well,’ she assured him. ‘And as for me being tired, yes, I was—but now that I am home I feel much better.’

  Vere knew that she would have heard about Sam, but she was far too tactful to ask any questions. Unlike his twin.

  ‘Dra
x is returning immediately after the conference ends,’ he commented.

  ‘I hope so.’

  Vere remained with her for half an hour, but he could see that she was, as Drax had said, looking tired, so he didn’t linger.

  Now all he had to do was respond to Sam’s earlier summons.

  He had made up his mind that he must tell her the truth and admit how much he had misjudged and wronged her. It had been easy to set aside his own strong moral scruples when he had believed that at least part of her reason for having sex with him was because she was in the Emir’s pay, and therefore he had no responsibility towards her. But now he knew that was not the case, which meant that her desire for him must be genuine.

  Whilst his flesh welcomed and indeed embraced that knowledge, his mind wanted to withdraw from it. And his emotions?

  Vere cursed himself under his breath as he felt his body respond to the question with its now familiar ache for her.

  Sam had waited for Vere for what had felt like hours, and then, when he hadn’t appeared, she had showered the grime of the day from her tired body and wrapped herself in a towel, simply intending to sit in the drawing room for a few minutes.

  Instead she had fallen asleep in the chair, and that was where Vere found her when he walked into the room.

  She was lying with her head against the arm of the chair at an angle that could only result in her waking up with a stiff neck, and her hair looked damp, as though she had fallen asleep without drying it. Her lashes lay against her cheek in soft dark fans. Her lips parted naturally as she breathed, and in the dimly lit room the exposed flesh of her throat and shoulder gleamed with the luminescence of the purest mother-of-pearl.

  Vere could feel his heart thudding as heavily as though it had become destabilised, crashing into his ribs with all the recklessness of a man about to haul himself over a precipice, oblivious to his own danger, driven only by a soul-deep need.