Prince of the Desert

by Penny Jordan

  Had he misunderstood what Chad had just said? Tariq replayed the words very carefully and slowly inside his head.

  ‘Well, don’t worry. There’s plenty more where Jeni comes from if you change your mind. Or at least there will be once you do your stuff for us. How long will it take a man in your position to get this sorted, Tariq?’

  Somehow Tariq managed to drag his thoughts away from the enormity of what he had just heard and focus them instead on the open challenge he was being given. As a test? Or as a trap?

  ‘How long is a piece of string?’ he responded, as carelessly as he could. ‘I can make it possible for the girls to enter Zuran immediately.’ That was certainly true. He gave a small shrug. ‘But for me to do so without causing any questions to be asked or arousing any suspicions may take a little time.’

  Chad was listening to him in silence. Had they somehow found out the truth about him? But, after a pause that Tariq felt was too long, Chad inclined his head and gave a small nod.

  ‘Okay, you’ve got that time. But I want to be kept fully informed. Oh, and be warned. There isn’t any room in this organisation for those who can’t keep their promises.’

  Was that merely a warning to him? Or an allusion to the Zurani official who was working on the fraudulent property scam with him? It would be impossible for anyone else to get permission for Chad’s prostitutes to so much as enter the country, never mind work there as he plainly intended them to do. Even Tariq couldn’t have done so other than as part of his current undercover operation.

  He was strongly tempted to ask directly about the other Zurani national who was in Chad’s pay. But that would, he knew, risk the whole operation. The urge only underlined how impatient he was to be free to walk away from the whole sordid affair. He needed to wait, to earn Chad’s trust, before he could start digging for his criminal countryman’s identity.

  There was something hecould ask, though.

  ‘Are any of the girls actually working here yet?’ he asked Chad as carelessly as he could.

  ‘I’m not that much of a fool,’ Chad told him. ‘I’ve paid good money for them—they’re clean, well taught, stunning to look at, not your out-of-the-gutter, everyone’s-already-had-it tat. No way am I going to risk losing my investment by letting them work until I’ve got an official okay. Jeni and a few more are here on the yacht to show to certain special customers whom I can trust and who might want to prebook their services. No way do they go anywhere without my say-so, and one of my men is keeping a watch on them. The rest of them are in a safe house outside the country, and I’ve got a bunch of guys making sure they stay there. Do you want to have a look at the rest of them?’

  Tariq nodded his head.

  Five minutes later, six stunningly beautiful young women were lined up in front of him. Six totally unfamiliar young women. Not one of them was Gwynneth, and it was plain that if one of his expensive properties were missing Chad would know about it.

  ‘If you like, you can have Jeni tonight. I’ll get one of the guys to bring her over to your place for a couple of hours and then bring her back. Or you can have a couple of hours here with her now? Premium rates apply, though.’ Chad laughed.

  Tariq shook his head. ‘Not right now. There are people I need to speak to with regard to what we’ve just been discussing,’ he told him truthfully.

  Gwynneth stiffened defensively as she heard Tariq come in, her mouth dry as she stared at the locked door of the study. The room had obviously been intended to be used as a bedroom but someone—him, no doubt—had furnished it as an office, with a desk and a computer, a small sofabed and a shelf of books. One of them in particular had caught her eye, because it was a history of Zuran. Under normal circumstances she would have felt tempted to pick it up and read it.

  Her heart was pounding. She had discovered that this small room had a lock on it when she had explored the apartment after Tariq had gone, and she had decided to lock herself inside it to await his return. That way at least she could stop him from forcibly evicting her from the apartment—although the small study with its equally smallen suite bathroom was now beginning to feel slightly claustrophobic.

  Tariq looked around the apparently empty flat. Had she taken him at his word and left? He discovered that he wasn’t as pleased by that thought as he ought to have been. His overdeveloped sense of duty was making him want to see a neat and tidy end to events, rather than having to worry about what a young woman as reckless as Ms Gwynneth Talbot might get herself involved with next.

  He could still smell her scent on the air—prim, light and delicate. He strode into the kitchen and saw the handbag and mobile phone on the counter with some relief. She was clearly still here. He walked over to them and removed Gwynneth’s passport from her bag.

  He frowned as he heard a small rustle of sound. It was coming from his office.

  ‘Gwynneth?’

  Her tension increased when she heard him calling her name, but not because she was alarmed this time. No, the tension tightening through her body had a very different cause. Images flashed through her head—a large bed, a satin-skinned naked male body, knowing hands whose touch she could still feel on her own flesh.

  Tariq stalked over to the office, and cursed under his breath when he realised that she had locked herself in.

  ‘Open this door!’ he demanded.

  ‘You have no right to tell me to do anything,’ Gwynneth called back. ‘You may think that you own this apartment, but I have the paperwork to prove that my father believed he owned it too. Now he’s dead, and it’s mine. And I’m not going to be bullied or threatened into walking out of it and leaving you in sole possession. This is a very valuable property, and until someone proves that it isn’t mine I’m going to stay right here, where I can make sure no one can take it away from me.’

  She was proud of the firmness in her voice, and proud too of the words she had been rehearsing so carefully.

  So she wasn’t a prostitute. But money was obviously important to her—very important, if she was prepared to stay here after the accusations he had made against her, Tariq thought scathingly. There had been no emotion whatsoever in her voice when she had spoken of her father’s death.

  ‘We need to talk properly about this,’ he advised her.

  ‘I’ve already tried to do that,’ Gwynneth reminded him. ‘But you wouldn’t listen. For all I know everything you’ve said and done from the moment I walked into the apartment could be part of some plan you’ve hatched to try and get me to leave the country so that you can claim this place.’

  ‘You’re being ridiculous.’

  ‘Am I? You obviously have a key for this place, just as I do. You’ve got to know about this double-selling fraud that’s been going on, but you haven’t registered your interest with the authorities as I’ve done. I’ve checked up on that! Why not?’ she challenged him. ‘If you genuinely believe the apartment to be yours then that is the first thing you would have done. I think you are some kind of opportunist, and this place isn’t yours at all. You must have been over the moon when you discovered your only rival for ownership was me.’ It was heaven being able to speak her mind to him like this, knowing that she was safely out of his reach.

  ‘So you’re going to stay in there and starve, are you?’ Tariq demanded. ‘The legal process here in Zuran is notoriously long-winded.’

  Food! She hadn’t thought of that in her relief at discovering she could lock him out.

  ‘A human being can live for weeks just on water.’

  ‘Some can—certain members of the Bedouin tribe amongst them—but I doubt you could. Besides, I have a spare key to the study.’

  Gwynneth looked at the door.

  ‘I’m not a prostitute,’ she warned him.

  Tariq exhaled impatiently.

  ‘No, I realise that now.’

  ‘What? How? Why?’ Why was she sounding as though she was grateful to him for accepting what was, after all, the truth? ‘I could report you to the authoritie
s for what you’ve done—and said,’ she said, attempting menace.

  ‘Not from in there you can’t,’ Tariq told her succinctly. ‘My computer is locked and you left your mobile in the kitchen—along with your handbag.’ While he had been talking to her he had also been punching into his own mobile the hotline number to Zuran’s Chief of Police. He now had enough information on Gwynneth to get a full report on her. He walked away from the study and into the kitchen, putting her passport back into her bag as he passed it and shutting the door behind him, so that he could instruct the Chief to find out everything he could about her.

  ‘Oh, and I think it could be worthwhile checking to see if anyone within the government has been making enquiries about the possibility of bringing fifty or so young women into the country. Chad Rheinvelt has asked me to make it possible for him to import a group of prostitutes to work in Zuran. I’ve had to pretend to agree to do what he’s asked, but I’ve warned him it could take time.’

  Gwynneth listened to the muffled sounds of speech and reflected on her situation. She had no food, no mobile, no means of contacting the outside world. He had at least accepted that she wasn’t a prostitute. Didn’t it therefore make sense for her to unlock the door and talk to him face-to-face?

  Tariq heard the key turning in the lock as he opened the kitchen door. Impassively he stood and waited for Gwynneth to come out.

  It was unfortunate that she was so determined to lay claim to the apartment. Not that he wanted it. However, whilst he was obliged to masquerade as a disaffected member of Zuran’s ruling family, motivated by resentment and greed, he had no option but to stay here. Chad was a wily operator, a man who did not trust anyone easily. And to leave the apartment would inevitably arouse his suspicions.

  Neither could he have his own interest in the apartment legally registered. That would lead to all manner of complications, and potentially increase the risk of him being unmasked. If anything, it was even more important now that Tariq should lull Chad into a false sense of security until they found out the identity of the Zurani in Chad’s pay. He had to be unmasked before he and Chad found some way of perverting the law to enable Chad to bring his drug and prostitution rackets into Zuran. The international damage that would do to the credibility of the Ruler, and through him to Zuran itself, was incalculable. Zuran had a reputation to maintain, as a safe and law-abiding country, and it was on that reputation that its future success as an international tourist destination was based.

  As Gwynneth stepped out and walked through to join him in the kitchen, Tariq’s first thought was that somehow she looked smaller and more vulnerable than the image of her he had been carrying around in his mind.

  It was difficult for her to lift her head and look him in the eye after not just what that happened but also what he had said and thought about her, but somehow Gwynneth managed to do so.

  ‘So,’ Tariq began, ‘let me get this straight. You believe that your father owned this apartment?’

  ‘No, Iknow that he owned it,’ Gwynneth corrected him smartly. ‘And I’ve got the papers to prove it.’

  Ignoring that, Tariq asked, ‘When did your father die?’

  ‘Almost three weeks ago.’

  ‘You mean you’ve waited as long as that to come here and claim your inheritance?’ Tariq didn’t bother to keep the contempt out of his voice.

  Gwynneth’s face started to burn, but before she could justify her behaviour by explaining about Teresa and Anthony his mobile started to ring. Tariq was looking at her in silence, waiting for her response. He continued to look at her, despite his ringing mobile, and the grim resoluteness of his concentration forced Gwynneth to look away as he finally answered it.

  ‘Wait here,’ he commanded, turning to walk out of the kitchen and closing the door behind him.

  Tariq’s caller was the Chief of Police, who was ringing to give him the information he had gathered on Gwynneth. He explained that she had taken leave from her job in the City of London to come to Zuran because she believed she had inherited an apartment purchased by her late father.

  ‘Since this apartment is one of those involved in the recent double-selling fraud, she has been told that there could be a delay in establishing ownership. It seems she is anxious to register the property in her own name and then sell it as quickly as she can. She has been told, of course, about the Zurani compensation programme that is in force for victims of this fraud.’

  ‘And she is legitimately the daughter and heir of this man?’ Tariq demanded.

  ‘The papers she produced were all in order,’ the Chief of Police assured him.

  ‘And this job in the City of London—what exactly is it?’

  ‘She works as a financial analyst.’

  ‘And that is her only source of income?’ he persisted.

  ‘Yes, as far as we know.’

  Thanking the other man for the information he had obtained for him, Tariq ended the call and looked towards the closed door.

  He had made a serious error of judgement. And that, for a man with his sense of pride and honour, was something he found very hard to bear. Even worse, he had allowed his emotions to conceal the truth from him in the same way that the silken veils of a dancing girl could obscure her body. A man watching her dance would be intoxicated and dazzled by the swirling colours and patterns of the silk, just ashe had allowed himself to be deceived by the swirling mists of his anger. He had seen a naked woman and he had told himself that she was there to offer herself to him.

  But that did not mean that he had to blame himself for what had happened. She had not attempted to stop him or to protest, had she? She had not behaved in any way that might have warned him he had made an error of judgement. She had not said or done anything to suggest that having sex with a stranger was not something she did regularly. But then, according to what he had heard, some modern young women were what he considered to be sexually promiscuous—although they did not see it that way. They boasted openly of one-night stands, and worse! And, that being the case, why should he berate himself for taking what she had given? He owed her nothing.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  TARIQopened the door and strode back into the kitchen.

  Gwynneth watched him with a small quiver of sensation gripping her stomach. It was ridiculous, she knew, but she was forced to admit that there was something about the sight of a tall, forbiddingly imposing man dressed in flowing white robes that triggered a dangerous and previously unknown reaction in her. Or was it justthis man who caused that reaction? The question slipped under her guard before she could deflect it, leaving her feeling agitated and angrily defensive as she fought to deny that her reaction was based on anything personal.

  ‘So, if you believe that your father owned this apartment, why didn’t you say anything about it last night?’

  It took Gwynneth several precious seconds to dismiss the effect he was having on her and to gather up the threads of their previous discussion.

  ‘When?’ she answered. ‘You hardly gave me the chance. I thought I was alone in the apartment, and then I thought you had broken in, and…’

  Tariq gave her a derisory look.

  ‘Everything happened so quickly,’ she defended herself.

  ‘And you are a woman who has a hunger for money and no doubt thought that by going to bed with me you might be able to acquire a little more—perhaps in the form of a gift of some sort?’

  ‘No!’ Gwynneth denied sharply. But it wasn’t true, was it? Shehad deep down inside, with that part of her she never normally allowed to surface, wanted a gift from him—the gift of her own sexual fulfilment via wild, passionate and abandoned sexual intimacy. ‘I was just—taken by surprise.’

  ‘So why, then, once you were over the shock of my presence, didn’t you stop me?’

  ‘I…I didn’t know what to think.’

  She hadn’t stopped him because she hadn’t been capable of doing so—hadn’t wanted to do so. Because she had entered a state of physical delight
that had totally overwhelmed any kind of rationality, where self-denial had been the last thing on her mind.

  The look he was giving her made her face burn hotly.

  ‘I was half asleep,’ she defended herself. ‘I hardly knew what was happening, never mindwhy it was happening.’

  She couldn’t tell him about her past, about her father. And she certainly couldn’t tell him about the repression of her own sexuality, or the fact that in some unfathomable way he had been the key that had turned the lock to release that pent-up sensuality. How could she possibly explain that to him when she could not understand it herself? And besides, if she did he might take it as a sign that…