Desert King, Pregnant Mistress(4)

'Imagine having this much fuss made of your birthday,' she said, drawing his attention again. 'I thought I was lucky, but-'

'Lucky?' he interrupted, wanting to know more about her.

'I  have the best family on earth,' she assured him passionately. As she   laughed, he presumed all the happy reminiscences must be flooding in.   'They do all sorts of batty things for me on my birthday. Wonderful   surprises … ' Her eyes turned dreamy. 'You know the type of thing?'                       
       
           



       

Actually,  no, he didn't. His parents loved him, but duty had always  coloured his  life. There had been little time to party, and much to  learn. If he  hadn't been voted Sheikh of Sheikhs, he would still have  returned to  Q'Adar to serve his people at some point.

'I expect the Sheikh's  up there now,' she said, shading her eyes as she  gazed up to where the  bursting flames of the dipping sun were  reflected in the windows.  'There'll be champagne corks popping right  now, I'll bet.'

They  would be anxiously awaiting his return. He had been gone for far  too  long. The plans for this celebration had been rigorously planned  minute  by minute, and unlike the celebrations she had described there  would be  no surprises. The Platinum and Diamond Ball would not conform  to any of  the wacky images Beth had conjured, but would be stiff with  ceremony,  and fraught with pitfalls, especially for an innocent like  Beth Tracey  Torrance. 'Is someone taking care of you tonight at the  ball?'

'Taking  care of me?' she slanted him a coquettish look. 'Why? Are you  offering?  Because, if you are, I think it's time you told me your  name.'

'I'll be working,' he reminded her.


'Oh,  don't worry,' she said, flipping her wrist. 'I was only teasing  you. I  know you must have lots to do, and most probably hundreds of  gorgeous  women in your harem-' Her hand flew to cover her mouth.  'Sorry! Sorry!'  She looked mortified, and her accent broadened as she  exclaimed in  horror, 'I didn't mean that! I hate stereotypes, don't  you?'

'No offence taken,' he assured her. 'And, as for my name, you can call me Khal … '

'Khal  as in Khalifa?' she interrupted. 'Now, that is a coincidence … ' As  she  stared at him her face changed and grew pale beneath its  scattering of  freckles. 'No, it isn't, is it?' she said.





CHAPTER TWO




THREE  things happened in quick succession. His bodyguards appeared out  of  nowhere, Beth screamed as one of them shoved a gun in her face, and  he  launched himself in her defence, seizing the gun so fast the man  reeled  back. 'Leave her!' he commanded in a shout.

Beth's face was  twisted with fear as he reached out to reassure her.  His men had stormed  in-using unnecessary force to make up for their  earlier negligence, he  deduced-but Beth was young and a stranger to  violence, and they had  terrified her. 'Come,' he said, beckoning her  closer with his  outstretched hand.

Shaking her head, she refused to look at him.  He sensed her fear, but  above that he sensed her determination to  maintain control. Even so,  inwardly he gave a curse directed at his men.  She had been so full of  life only moments before, and now that life had  been crushed out of  her. She had been like a breath of fresh air, but  her innocence had  been trampled. She had come to Q'Adar with some  romantic notion of what  life would be like in a desert kingdom, and  couldn't be expected to  understand the harsh realities. He lost no time  dismissing his men, and  then asked her, 'Will you walk back to the  palace with me, Beth?'

Hugging herself, she shook her head. He  couldn't blame her for feeling  the way she did when the ugly threat of  violence was still hanging in  the air. It would be so alien to anything  she was used to, she'd have  no coping strategies.

'Is that how it is here?' she said at last.

He was surprised to see her clear blue gaze had turned to steel.

'If you mean the guards-'

'And the guns.'

'They are a necessary precaution.'

'To  protect you from your people?' Pressing her lips down, she shook  her  head in disapproval. 'Then I really do feel sorry for you … ' Still   hugging herself, she stalked away.



He had pulled her CV  from the pile and was studying it in the bath,  allowing the  eucalyptus-scented steam to clear his head. Beth certainly  had the gift  when it came to selling, and along with the bare facts he  found several  glowing references-not just from her line manager, but  from her  colleagues too. They said if she had a fault it was that Beth  Torrance  didn't know how good she was …                        
       
           



       

He smiled as he thought about this,  about Beth-and he rarely smiled,  because life was a serious business.  She was so unspoiled, but then she  was only twenty-two … Yet she was  confident enough to stand her ground  and fight for what she believed in.  The Sheikh and the shop girl were  as one in that, he reflected wryly.

He  turned back to the folder to look at her reports from school, where   she'd captained the hockey team and led the first-aid group, generally   showing a solid performance in all her academic studies. From school  she  had moved straight into a management-training course with Khalifa,   which involved working in every department over the course of five   years, and was not an easy option. Her reason for doing this, he read,   smiling again as he imagined her writing it, was because she had wanted   'to get stuck into something right away'. She didn't mince her words.

Beth  Tracey Torrance, aged twenty-two, might be a small problem in the  scale  of things he had to deal with, but he wasn't about to set her  adrift in  a sea of sharks. Calling up his mother, the Dowager Sheikha,  he asked  for one of her trusted attendants to be assigned to their  visitor.  'She's a young girl in a foreign land, and we must ensure that  her stay  is-' he chose his next words with care '-comfortable and  safe.' Ignoring  the suspicion in his mother's voice, he ended the call.



The  young girl sent to help Beth dress for the ball was a good  listener.  Beth was still fretting as she helped her with her make-up.  What would  her friends say when she went back to Khalifa and they  realised she'd  let them down? 'I promised them all I'd put the trophy  in the staff  lounge,' she explained as the young girl pinned a fresh  orchid in her  hair. 'I wanted everyone to share it. But now I won't  have a trophy to  put there, will I? The Sheikh will never give it to me  now … '

The girl shook her head.

'Well,  it's no use looking on the black side, is it? I'd better get  that dress  on because, trophy or no trophy, I am going to that ball.'  At least if  she attended the ball she'd have something to share with  her colleagues,  Beth thought, feeling nervous as she thought about it.  None of this had  seemed real while she had been chatting away-not this  magnificent suite  of rooms in the Palace of the Moon, or the beach with  the man on it, or  the guns … But now it did, and she had to go to the  ball all alone.

When  she got up from the stool, and looked at the silvery ball-gown   shimmering on its hanger next to the dressing gown she'd just discarded,   her heart went wild. But she wasn't going to turn tail and run, Beth   determined, though that was exactly what she felt like doing. No. She   was going to this ball, and she was going to face up to the amazingly   glamorous and stunningly endowed Sheikh-and if there was even the   smallest chance that she could come away with that trophy then she   would. 'Could you help me, please?' she said, knowing she couldn't   fasten the dress unaided. As the girl passed her the dressing gown,   Beth, still thinking distractedly about Khal, said, 'No, I meant the   dress-' But then she noticed the girl had blushed a deep shade of red,   and the penny finally dropped. 'You don't speak English, do you?'

'I am sorree,' the young girl managed in a halting accent.

'No,  I'm the one who should be sorry,' Beth argued. 'Rabbiting on like  that  and you not understanding a word of it. And that's not the first  mistake  I've made today-if only!' Beth exclaimed, pulling a face with a  laugh.  'Come on,' she said, smiling as she put her arm around the  other girl's  shoulders. 'Let's do this together.'

Taking the dress down from  the padded hanger, Beth handed it to the  maid. 'You've done me a favour,  you have. You've woken me up-and about  time too! It's time to put my  foreign-travel head on and snap out of  this. "Ooh, the sun's shining,  and I left my brain behind in  Liverpool". Don't worry if you didn't  understand a word of that,' she  added, giving the startled girl a hug.  'You didn't miss much-and that's  a whole lot more than can be said for  me!'