Defiant in the Desert(45)

                ‘I think you do know,’ he said softly. ‘I’m here because I love you and I can’t seem to stop loving you.’

                ‘Did you try?’ she questioned, her voice full of pain. ‘Is that why you walked away? Why you left my life so utterly when you walked out of my apartment?’

                There was a silence for a moment, broken only by the sound of a bird calling from high up in one of the trees. ‘I couldn’t stay when you were like that,’ he told her truthfully. ‘When you were too scared to let go and be the woman you really wanted to be. You were pushing me away, Sara—and I couldn’t stand that. I knew you needed to come home before you could think about making any kind of home of your own.’ He smiled. ‘Then I heard on the desert grapevine that you’d come back to Dhi’ban. And I thought that was probably the best thing I’d heard in a long time.’

                She turned big violet eyes up at him. ‘Did you?’

                ‘Mmm.’ He wanted to go to her. To cup her chin in the palm of his hand and hold it safe. To run the edge of his thumb over the tremble of her lips. But he needed her to hear these words before he could touch her again. He owed her his honesty.

                ‘As for the answer to your question. I’m here because you make me feel stuff—stuff I’ve spent a lifetime trying not to feel.’

                ‘What kind of stuff?’

                ‘Love.’

                ‘Oh. You think you love me?’ she questioned, echoing the words he had used in Paris.

                ‘No.’ His voice was quiet. ‘I love you—without qualification. I love you fully, completely, utterly and for ever. I’m here because although I’m perfectly capable of living without you, I don’t want to. No. That’s not entirely true. If you want the truth, I can’t bear the thought of living without you, Sara. Because without you I am only half the man I’m capable of being and I want to be whole.’

                There was silence for a moment. She lowered her gaze, as if she had found something of immense interest on the gravelled palace forecourt. For a moment he wondered if she was plucking up the courage to tell him that his journey here had been wasted, but when she lifted her face again, Suleiman could see the shimmer of tears in her violet eyes.

                ‘And without you I’m only half the woman I’m capable of being,’ she said shakily. ‘You’ve made me whole again, too. You’ve made me realise that only by facing our biggest fears can we overcome them. You’ve made me realise that independence is a good thing—but it can never be at the expense of love. Nothing can. Because love is the most important thing of all. And you are the most important thing of all, Suleiman—someone so precious who I thought I’d lost through my own stupidity.’

                ‘Sara,’ he said and the word was distorted by the shudder of his breath. ‘Sweet Sara. My only love.’

                And that was all it took. A declaration torn from somewhere deep inside him. A declaration she returned over and over again in between their frantic kisses, although Suleiman first took the precaution of walking her further into the gardens, away from the natural interest of the servants’ eyes.

                By the time they returned to the palace—where Ella and Haroun had perceptively put a bottle of champagne on ice—Sara was wearing an enormous emerald engagement ring.

                And she couldn’t seem to stop smiling.





                                      EPILOGUE

                ‘YOU DO REALISE,’ said Sara as she removed her filmy tulle veil and placed it next to the emerald and diamond tiara, which her sister-in-law had lent her, ‘that I’m not going to be a traditional desert wife.’

                ‘Shouldn’t you have mentioned this before we got married?’ murmured Suleiman. He was lying naked waiting for his bride to join him on her old childhood bed, and had decided that there was something gloriously decadent about that.

                ‘I did.’ She stepped out of her ivory lace gown and hung it over the back of the chair, revelling in the look in his eyes as he ran his gaze over her bridal lingerie. ‘Just as long as you know that I meant it.’

                ‘And I meant it when I said that I didn’t expect you to be. Just as I did when I said that I will not be a traditional desert husband. I will not try to possess you, Sara—not ever again. I will give you all the freedom you need.’

                She gave a happy sigh as she smiled at him. Wasn’t it a strange thing that when somebody gave you freedom, it meant you no longer wanted it quite so much?

                Suleiman had told her that of course she could carry on working for Gabe—just as long as they came to some compromise over her long hours. The crazy thing was that she no longer wanted to work there—or, at least, not as she’d done before. She had loved her job, but it was part of her past and part of her life as a single woman. She had a different life now and different opportunities. Which was why she had agreed to carry on working for the Steel organisation on a freelance basis. That way, she could travel with her husband and everyone was happy.

                She gave a contented sigh. Their wedding had been the best wedding she’d ever been to—although Suleiman told her she was biased. Alice from the office had been invited—and her expression as she’d been shown around the Dhi’ban palace had been priceless. Gabe had been there too—and Sara thought that even her cynical boss had enjoyed all the ancient ritual and ceremony which accompanied the joining of her hand to Suleiman’s.

                The best bit had been the Sultan’s surprise appearance, because it signified that he had forgiven Suleiman—and her—for so radically changing the course of desert history.