The Desert King's Secret Heir

by Annie West

  This man had a thinner face, which accentuated his superb bone structure. And his expression was grim, far harder than anything Shakil had ever worn. Shakil had been a lover not a fighter and this man looked, despite his western tailoring, as if he’d be at home on a warhorse, a scimitar in his hand as he galloped into battle.

  Arden shivered, clammy palms skimmed her bare arms as she tried to ease the tension drawing gooseflesh there.

  He said something. She saw his lips move, but there was a weird echoing in her head and she couldn’t make out his words.

  She blinked, swaying forwards, stumbling and steadying herself, drawn unwillingly by his dark velvet gaze.

  Hamid pulled her against his side. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have insisted you come tonight. Your condition is too delicate.’

  Arden stiffened in his hold, dimly noting the Sheikh’s sharply indrawn breath. Hamid was a dear friend but he had no right to feel proprietorial. Besides, it was a long time since she’d craved any man’s touch.

  ‘I’m perfectly healthy,’ she murmured, trying to inject power into the words. The flu had knocked her but she was almost back to normal. Yet her recent illness provided a perfect explanation for her woozy head and unsteady legs.

  She moved a half step away so he had to drop his arm. Gathering the shreds of her composure, she met the Sheikh’s midnight eyes again, instinctively fighting the awareness thundering through her, and the crazy idea she knew him. That wasn’t possible. Shakil had been a student, not a sheikh.

  ‘Thank you for the welcome, Your Highness. It’s a beautiful party.’ Yet she’d never wanted to leave anywhere with such urgency.

  It felt as if he delved right into her thoughts with that unblinking regard. It took all her control not to shift under his scrutiny.

  ‘Are you sure you’re well, Ms Wills? You look unsteady on your feet.’

  Her smile grew strained and she felt the tug of it as her face stiffened.

  ‘Thank you for your concern. It’s only tiredness after a long week.’ Heat flushed her cheeks at the realisation she’d actually come close to collapsing for the first time in her life. ‘I’m very sorry but I think it best if I leave. No, really, Hamid, I’m okay by myself.’

  But Hamid would have none of that. Nothing would satisfy him but to see her home.

  ‘Idris doesn’t mind, do you, Cousin?’ He didn’t wait for an answer but went on. ‘I’ll at least see you back to the house then return.’

  From the corner of her vision Arden registered the sharp lift of the Sheikh’s eyebrows, but she had more to worry about than whether she offended by leaving his party early.

  Like how she could kindly but effectively stave off Hamid’s sudden romantic interest without straining their friendship.

  Like how Sheikh Idris could be so uncannily like the man who’d torn her world apart.

  And, most important of all, why it was that even after four years she felt sick with longing for the man who’d all but destroyed her.

  * * *

  A night without sleep did nothing for Arden’s equilibrium. The fact it was Sunday, the one day of the week she could sleep in instead of heading in to work at the florist’s shop, should have been a welcome pleasure. Instead she longed for the organised chaos of her workday race to get out the door.

  Anything to distract from the worries that had descended last night. And worse, the memories, the longings that had haunted each sleepless hour.

  Life had taught her the dangers of sexual desire, and worse, of falling in love. Of believing she was special to someone.

  For four years she’d known she’d been a naïve fool. Brutal reality had proven it. Yet that hadn’t stopped the restlessness, the yearning that slammed into her like a runaway truck the moment she’d looked up into the eyes of Sheikh Idris of Zahrat.

  Even now, in the thin light of morning, part of her was convinced he was Shakil. A Shakil who’d perhaps suffered a head injury and forgotten her, like a hero in an old movie with convenient amnesia. A Shakil who’d spent years searching desperately for her, ignoring all other women in his quest to find her.

  Sure. And her fairy godmother was due any minute, complete with magic wand and a pumpkin carriage.

  Shakil could have found her if he’d wanted. She hadn’t lied about her identity.

  He’d taken pleasure in seducing a gullible young Englishwoman, starry-eyed and innocent, on her first overseas vacation.

  Arden shivered and hunched her shoulders, rubbing her hands up her arms.

  She was not giving in to fantasy. She’d done with that years ago. As for the Sheikh looking like Shakil—it was wishful thinking. Wasn’t it Hamid’s almost familiar looks that had drawn her to him that day at the British Museum? That and his kind smile and the earnest, self-effacing way he spoke to her about the elaborately beautiful perfume bottles and jewellery at the special exhibition of Zahrati antiquities.

  He’d reminded her of Shakil. A quieter, more reserved Shakil. So was it any wonder his cousin the Sheikh had a similar effect? Maybe crisp dark hair, chiselled features and broad shoulders were common traits among the men of their country.

  Right now she’d had enough of Zahrati men to last a lifetime. Even Hamid, who’d suddenly turned from friend and landlord to would-be boyfriend. When had that happened? How had she not seen it coming?

  Setting her jaw, Arden grabbed an old pullover and shrugged it on, then cautiously opened the cleaning cupboard, careful not to make too much noise. At least, as the only one awake, she had time to ponder what to do about Hamid and his sudden possessiveness.

  Grabbing a cloth and the brass polish, she unlatched the front door and stepped outside, pulling it to behind her. She always thought better when she worked. Rubbing the brass door knocker and letter box would be a start.

  But she hadn’t begun when she heard footsteps descend to the pavement from the main house door above her basement flat. A man’s steps. Arden took the lid off the polish and concentrated on swiping some across the door knocker. She should have waited till she was sure Hamid had left. But she’d felt claustrophobic, cooped up inside with her whirling thoughts.

  ‘Arden.’ The voice, low and soft as smoke, wafted around her, encircling like an embrace.

  She blinked and stared at the glossy black paint on the door a few inches from her nose. She was imagining it. She’d been thinking of Shakil all night and—

  Footsteps sounded on the steps leading down to the tiny courtyard in front of her basement home.

  She stiffened, her shoulders inching high. This wasn’t imagination. This was real.

  Arden swung around and the tin of polish clattered to the flagstones.

  CHAPTER TWO

  HUGE EYES FIXED on him. Eyes as bright as the precious aquamarines in his royal treasury. Eyes the clear green-blue of the sea off the coast of Zahrat.

  How often through the years had he dreamed of those remarkable eyes? Of hair like spun rose gold, falling in silken waves across creamy shoulders.

  For a second Idris could only stare. He’d been prepared for this meeting. He’d cancelled breakfast with Ghizlan and their respective ambassadors to come here. Yet the abrupt surge of hunger as he watched Arden Wills mocked the belief he was in command of this situation.

  Where was his self-control? How could he lust after a woman who belonged to someone else?

  To his own cousin?

  Where was his sense, coming here when he should be with the woman to whom he was about to pledge his life?

  Idris didn’t do impulsive any more. Or self-centred. Not for years. Yet he’d been both, seeking out this woman to confirm for himself what Hamid had implied last night—that they lived together.

  A ripple of anger snaked through him, growing to gut-wrenching revulsion at the idea of her with his cousin
.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Her voice was husky, evoking long ago memories of her crying out his name in ecstasy. Of her beguiling, artless passion. Of how she’d made him feel for a short time, like someone other than the carefree, self-absorbed youth he’d been.

  How could such ancient memories feel so fresh? So appallingly seductive?

  It had only been a holiday romance, short-term fun such as he’d had numerous times. Why did it feel different?

  Because it had been different. For the first time ever he’d planned to extend a casual affair. He hadn’t been ready to leave her.

  ‘Hamid’s away.’ Was that provocative tilt of her jaw deliberate, or as unconscious as the way her fingers threaded together?

  Satisfaction stirred. It was beneath him perhaps, but reassuring to discover he wasn’t the only one on edge. Idris was used to being sure of his direction, always in command. Doubt was foreign to him.

  ‘I didn’t come here to see Hamid.’

  Those eyes grew huge in a face that looked even milkier than before. Hamid had talked of her being delicate. Was that code for pregnant? Was that why she looked like a puff of wind would knock her over?

  Jealousy, a growling caged beast, circled in his belly. It didn’t matter that he had no right to feel it. Idris had stopped, somewhere around four this morning, trying to tell himself he felt nothing for Arden Wills. He was a pragmatist. The fact was he did feel. He was here to sort out why and then, with clinical precision, to put an end to it.

  ‘You should sit. You don’t look well.’

  ‘I’m perfectly fine.’ She crossed her arms, making Idris aware of the swell of plump breasts under her shapeless pullover. Had her breasts always been like that? He remembered them as delectable, but—

  ‘I’m up here.’ A palm waved in front of his eyes and, for the first time he could recall, Idris felt embarrassment at being caught ogling. Heat flushed his face. It wasn’t a sensation to which he was accustomed.

  When he lifted his gaze he saw a matching bright pink stain on her cheeks. Annoyance? Embarrassment? Or something akin to the untimely, unwanted attraction he couldn’t quash?

  ‘I came to see you.’ His voice dropped to a primal, darkly possessive note he couldn’t hide.

  ‘Me?’ Now she was on the back foot and, ridiculously, it pleased Idris. He hated the sensation, since last night, that he careered out of control.

  ‘You. Shall we go inside?’

  Her folded arms dropped, spreading out a little from her body, almost as if she’d bar his entry to the house. ‘No. We can speak here.’

  Idris scowled. ‘Surely even in Britain one invites guests inside?’

  Her mouth tightened but she remained defiant. ‘I prefer to stay outside. It’s...better.’ She took a step back. To prevent him hauling the door open?

  Idris felt his head snap back as if he’d been slapped. Did she have so little faith in his chivalry? Was she really afraid to be alone with him?

  He was torn between delight at the idea he wasn’t the only one feeling the burn of rekindled lust and horror that his feelings were reciprocated and therefore harder to quell.

  ‘I have a key to Hamid’s house, if you’d like me to let you in upstairs. Since you’re his cousin, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.’

  Idris jerked his gaze up to the glossy black door a level above them, and then to the one behind Arden, noting for the first time the brass street number with a small but significant letter A beside it. The relief washing through him was palpable.

  ‘You live in a basement flat? You don’t live together?’

  She drew herself up till she almost topped his shoulder. Idris told himself the movement wasn’t endearing, yet he felt a little corkscrewing twist of pleasure that punctured his satisfaction in an instant.

  ‘We don’t live together. Hamid is my landlord.’

  Yet that didn’t mean they weren’t lovers. For all Hamid’s devotion to history and old books, he, like every other male in their family, had a penchant for a pretty face and a delectable female body. Besides, there’d been no mistaking Hamid’s proprietorial attitude last night, or his meaning when he’d spoken about a special woman in his life.

  ‘It’s you I came to see.’

  She shook her head and a froth of hair swung around her, the colour of the desert at sunrise. Last night he’d been thrown by the smoothly conventional way she’d worn it. This was the woman he recalled, with a riot of loose curls that made his palms itch to feel all that silken softness.

  ‘Why?’

  Was she being deliberately obtuse?

  ‘Perhaps to talk over old times?’

  There was a thud as she fell back against the solid door, her face a study in shock.

  ‘It is you! You were at Santorini.’

  Idris stared. ‘You thought I was someone else? You didn’t remember me?’

  It was impossible. He might have had more lovers than he could remember, but the idea Arden Wills had forgotten him was inconceivable.

  Especially when his recall of her was disturbingly detailed. After four years he still remembered the little snuffling sigh she made in her sleep as she snuggled, naked, against him. The feel of her slick, untried body when they’d made love the first time returned to him time and again in his dreams. He’d almost exploded disgracefully early at the sheer erotic enticement of her delicate, tight body and the knowledge he was the first man to introduce her to ecstasy. Doing his duty and walking away from her had been amazingly difficult.

  ‘I thought...’ She shook her head, frowning. ‘How can you be a sheikh? You were a student.’

  ‘Ex-student—I’d just finished a graduate degree in the States when we met. As for becoming Sheikh—’ he shrugged ‘—my uncle died. It was his wish that I succeed him and that wish was ratified soon after his death.’

  It sounded easy, but the reality had been anything but. He was a different man to the one he’d been four years ago. Responsibility for a country that had suffered so long because of its ruler’s neglect had transformed him. He carried the burden of changing his homeland into one ready to face the future instead of dwelling on the past. This morning was the first time in years he’d carved time to do something simply because he wished it. His secretary’s disbelieving look when he’d altered his schedule had spoken volumes.

  Idris took a step closer, his nostrils flaring at the astringent smell of metal polish and something more delicate that tickled his memory—the scent of orange blossom.

  ‘Come, let’s take this conversation indoors where we can—’

  ‘No!’ Her eyes were round as saucers and if it weren’t ridiculous he’d say she was shaking.

  That brought him up short. He might be supreme ruler of his kingdom and an emerging force in regional politics, but he wasn’t the sort of man who deliberately intimidated women.

  ‘I have nothing to say to you, Your Highness.’ She all but sneered his title and Idris scowled. It hit him suddenly that, for all they’d shared, there was a lot he’d never learned about her.

  ‘You have a problem with royalty?’

  She tossed her head back. He couldn’t remember her being feisty before, just warm and eager for him. ‘I have a problem with men who lie about who they are.’

  Idris’s hands clenched and his jaw hardened. He wasn’t used to having his will crossed, much less his honour impugned. The fact they were having this conversation metres from a public footpath, albeit in a quiet square, incensed him.

  His fingers itched with the urge to haul this spitfire of a woman into his arms and barge through the door into her private domain.

  Except he knew in the most primitive, instinctive part of his brain that if he touched her he was in danger of unleashing something far better left alone.

  He’d come here
to satisfy his curiosity and put an end, somehow, to the nagging sense of unfinished business between them.

  He was about to become betrothed to a beautiful, diplomatically desirable princess. Their match was eagerly awaited by both nations. Getting involved in any way with Arden Wills would be a mistake of enormous proportions. Giving in to the dark urge to lay hands on her and remind her how it had been between them with a short, satisfying lesson in physical compatibility would be madness.

  And so tempting.

  ‘I never lied,’ he said through gritted teeth.

  Dark gold eyebrows rose in a deliberately offensive show of disbelief that stirred the anger in his belly.

  ‘No? So you’re telling me you’re not Sheikh Idris? Your name is actually Shakil?’

  ‘Ah.’ He’d forgotten that.

  ‘Yes, ah!’ She made it an accusation, looking down that little nose of hers as if he were some lowlife instead of a paragon of duty and honour. No one had ever looked at him that way.

  ‘I used Shakil when we met because—’

  ‘Because you didn’t want me finding you again.’ The words spat out like poisoned darts. ‘You had no intention of following through on that promise to meet again, did you? You’d already wiped your hands of me.’

  ‘You accuse me of lying?’ No man, or woman, for that matter, had ever doubted his word.

  Arden crossed her arms over her chest and tipped her chin up in a supercilious expression as full of hauteur as that of any blue-blooded princess. ‘If the shoe fits.’

  Idris took a step closer before his brain kicked into gear and screamed a warning. Ire overcame the seductive tug of that orange blossom scent. Caution disappeared on the crisp breeze eddying down from street level.

  ‘Shakil was my family nickname. Ask Hamid.’ It meant handsome and was one he discouraged, but back then it had been a handy pseudonym. He heaved a deep breath, telling himself he didn’t care that the movement reduced the distance between them. Or that his nostrils flared as the scent of warm female flesh mingled with the fragrance of orange blossom. ‘I used Shakil on vacation to avoid being recognised. There’d been a lot of media speculation about me and I wanted to be incognito for a while. I was Shakil to everyone I met on that trip. Not just you.’