Defiant in the Desert(9)

                ‘It wasn’t difficult,’ he said. ‘You forget that I have tracked down quarry far more elusive than a stubborn princess. Actually, it was your sudden unexpected consent to my plan which alerted my suspicions. It is not like you to be so acquiescent, Sara. I suspected that you would try to give my men the slip so I hid outside the side entrance to your office block and followed you to the car park.’

                ‘You hid? Outside my office block?’

                ‘You find that so bizarre?’

                ‘Of course I do!’ Her heart was hammering in her chest. ‘I live in England now and I live an English life, Suleiman. One where men don’t usually lurk in shadows, following women who don’t want to be followed. Why, you could have been arrested for trespass—especially if my boss had any idea that you were stalking me.’

                ‘Unlikely—for I am never seen if I do not wish to be seen,’ he said arrogantly. ‘You must have known it was a futile attempt to try to escape, so why do it, Sara? Did you really think you could get away with it?’

                ‘Go to hell!’

                ‘I’m not going anywhere and certainly not without you.’

                She hated the ruthless tone of his voice. She hated the unresponsive look on his hard face. Suddenly she wanted to shake him. To provoke him. To get some sort of reaction which would make her feel as if she was dealing with a real person, instead of a cold block of stone. ‘I was waiting here,’ she said deliberately. ‘For my lover.’

                ‘I don’t think so.’

                ‘And why not?’ she demanded. ‘Am I so repulsive that you can’t imagine that a man might actually want to take me to bed?’

                For a moment Suleiman stilled, telling himself that he wouldn’t fall into the trap she was so obviously laying for him. She was trying to rile him. Trying to get him to admit to something he was not prepared to admit. Even to himself. Concentrate on the facts, he told himself fiercely—and not on her blonde-haired beauty, or her soft curves which nature must have invented with the intention of sending any man crazy with longing.

                ‘I think you know the answer to that question—and I’m not going to flatter your ego by answering it. Your desirability has never been in question, but you seem to imply that your virtue is.’

                ‘What if it is?’ she challenged, her voice growing reckless. ‘But I don’t have to explain myself to you and I’m certainly not going to take orders from you. Do you want to know why?’

                ‘Not really,’ he said, in a bored tone.

                ‘I think you might.’ She licked her lips in a cat-got-the-cream expression and then smiled. ‘It might interest you to know that in between your invasion of my office and following me here, I have spoken to a journalist.’

                There was a pause. Suleiman’s eyes narrowed. ‘I hope that’s a joke.’

                ‘It’s not.’

                There was another moment of silence before he could bring himself to speak. ‘And what did you tell the journalist?’

                She scraped her fingers back through her blonde hair and smirked. ‘I told him the truth. No need to look so scared, Suleiman. I mean, who in their right mind could possibly object to the truth?’

                ‘Let’s get one thing straight,’ he said, biting the words out from between gritted teeth. ‘I am not scared—of anyone or anything. I think you may be in danger of mistaking my anger for fear, though perhaps you would do well to feel fear yourself. Because if the Sultan finds out that you have spoken to the western press, then things are going to get very tricky. So I shall ask you again and this time I want a straight answer—what exactly did you tell the journalist?’

                Sara stared into the spitting blackness of his eyes and some of her bravado wavered, until she told herself that she wasn’t going to be intimidated. She had worked too hard and too long to forge a new life to allow these powerful men to control her. These desert men who would crush your very spirit if you allowed them to do so. So she wouldn’t let them.

                Even her own mother—who had married a desert king and had loved him—had felt imprisoned by ancient royal rules which hadn’t changed for centuries and probably never would. Sara had witnessed for herself that sometimes love just wasn’t enough. So what chance would a marriage have if there was no love at all?

                Her mother’s unhappiness had been the cause of her father’s ruination—and had ultimately governed Sara’s own fate. She hadn’t known that Papa was so obsessed by his English wife that he hadn’t paid proper attention to governing his country. Sara remembered that all too vividly. The Queen had been his possession and nothing else had really existed for him, apart from that.

                He had taken his eye off the ball. Poor investments and a border war which went on too long meant that his country was left bankrupt. The late Sultan of Qurhah had come up with a deal for a bail-out plan and the price had been Sara’s hand in marriage.

                When Sara’s mother had died and she had been allowed to go off to boarding school—hadn’t she thought that her father’s debt would just be allowed to fade with time? Hadn’t she been naïve and hopeful enough to think that the Sultan might just forget all about marrying her, as his own father had decreed he should?

                Blinking back the sudden threat of tears, Sara tried to ignore the fierce expression on Suleiman’s face. She was not going to be made to feel guilty—when all she was doing was trying to save her own skin. And ultimately she would be doing the Sultan a favour—for surely it would damage the ego of such a powerful man if she was forced kicking and screaming to the altar.