The Sheikh's Prize(7)

Zahir enraged her by turning his handsome dark head and treating her to a   slashing smile of very masculine amusement. 'Ah, that takes me back   years. I had forgotten how you liked to throw things at me when you lost   control of your temper. I will see you later when it is time to dine.'

And with that very cool and unruffled assurance, Zahir strolled out of   the room and left her standing there in a tempestuous rage that she   could do nothing more to vent with her target gone. Trembling from the   force of her pent-up feelings, Saffy breathed in deep to find inner   calm. He would pay; she would make him pay for this in spades!





CHAPTER THREE



FADITH REAPPEARED AND led the way down a corridor and up a flight of   pale marble stairs. Shown into a room as traditionally furnished and   comfortable as the room she had seen downstairs, Saffy breathed in deep.   The furniture was ebony inlaid with gleaming mother-of-pearl and the   bed was a fantasy four-poster hung in swirling silk that piled opulently   on the floor at each corner. Saffy wandered into a bathroom with a   sunken marble tub and every possible extra and suppressed a groan. As   she returned to the bedroom Fadith was removing a tray from another   maid's grasp to set it on a table.

'Thanks,' Saffy murmured, reluctantly lifting the mint drink she   recalled from the year she had spent in Maraban. Maraban, the land that   time forgot, she reflected grimly. She asked if there was any water and   was shown a concealed refrigerator in a cupboard. She pulled out a   chilled bottle and unscrewed the cap.

'Would you like a bath?' Fadith asked her then, clearly eager to be of service.

Saffy screened her mouth and faked a yawn before telling an outright lie   to get rid of the younger woman. 'Perhaps later. I think I'll lie down   and sleep for a while. It's very warm.'

Fadith pulled the blinds and scurried over to the bed to turn it down in   readiness before departing. Playing safe, Saffy waited for a couple of   minutes before heading off to explore. She had no intention of staying   with Zahir and since there was no prospect of her being rescued she  had  to rescue herself. She walked across the vast landing on quiet  feet,  passing innumerable closed doors and peering out of windows into  inner  courtyards before finally heading downstairs. Ignoring the ground  floor,  she went down another flight into the basement, which she could  see by  the trolleys of cleaning equipment was clearly the servants'  area. It  was easy to identify the kitchens from the clatter of dishes  and the  buzz of voices and she gave it a wide berth. She stared out  through a  temptingly open rear door at the line of dusty vehicles  parked outside  while wondering what the chances were of any of them  having keys left  inside them. She wasn't stupid enough to think that  she could walk out  of the desert: she needed wheels to get back to the  city. Without  further hesitation she sped out into the heat and the  first thing she  saw was a four-wheel-drive full of soldiers at the far  side of the  courtyard. In dismay she dropped down into a crouch to hide  behind a  car. Of course there would be soldiers around to guard Zahir  while he  was in residence, she conceded ruefully. She inched up her  head to peer  into the car and then twisted to study its neighbour:  there was no sign  of keys left carelessly in the ignition. Meanwhile  the soldiers trooped  indoors. Saffy continued her seemingly fruitless  search for a car to  steal and dived behind a vehicle to avoid being  seen when a couple of  kitchen staff strolled out of the palace talking  loudly.                       
       
           



       

One of them wished the other a good journey home in Arabic and she   recognised the phrase as the young man threw his bag into the pickup and   jumped into the driver's seat. He was going home? There was a good   chance that he would be driving into the city. For a split second Saffy   hesitated while she considered her options. The gates were guarded. It   would be impossible for her to drive through them without being   detected. Possibly stowing away in a vehicle being driven by a member of   staff would be a cleverer move. Before she could lose her nerve, she   scrambled over the tailgate and dived below the tarpaulin cover.

But the pickup didn't immediately move off as she had expected. In fact   someone shouted to the driver and he got back out of the vehicle. She   lay still, stiff with tension, listening to voices talking too fast for   her to follow before the steps moved slowly away and she heard the   driver moving back. Finally the door slammed again, the engine ignited   and she expelled her breath in relief. Her original drive from the road   down the track to the palace had been long and rough and lying on the   rusty bed of the pickup, Saffy rolled about and wondered if the constant   pitching gait of the vehicle would leave her covered with bruises. But   she was willing to endure discomfort as the price of having escaped   Zahir.

What on earth had come over her ex-husband? Their marriage had been a   train wreck and who in their right mind would want to revisit that?

And the answer came to her straight away. Failure of any kind was   anathema to Zahir, whose callous old father had expected his son to   excel in every field and who had punished him when he botched anything.   Zahir was trying to rewrite the past. Why didn't he appreciate that  that  was impossible? People changed, people moved on...

Although she had not moved on very far, a tart little voice reminded   Saffy, who was bitterly conscious that she was still a virgin. And time   rolled back for her as she lay there and the pickup rattled and roared   across the sands, threatening to shake her very teeth loose from her   gums. Saffy had been eighteen and working at a department-store beauty   counter when she first met Zahir. She hadn't wanted to go to university   like her twin, had preferred to jump straight into work and start   earning. Zahir had travelled to London with his sister, Hayat, who had   been shopping for her wedding trousseau. Saffy still remembered seeing   Zahir that very first time, her heart jumping inside her, her breath   shortening as she collided with the most mesmerising dark golden eyes   she had ever seen. Hayat had bought cosmetics while Saffy stared fixedly   at Zahir and Zahir stared back equally transfixed at Saffy. She had   never felt anything that powerful, either before then or since: an   exhilarating and intrinsically terrifying instant attraction that   swamped her like a fog, closing out the rest of the world and common   sense.

'I will meet you after you finish work,' Zahir had told her in careful English.

He had told her that he was an army officer in Maraban. He hadn't told   her that he was a prince or the son of the ruler of Maraban. She had had   to look up Maraban online to find out where it was and her mother,   Odette, with whom she had briefly lived at the time, had laughed at her   and said, 'Why worry? He'll be gone in a few days and you'll never see   him again.'

Initially Saffy had been desperately afraid of that forecast. After only   a handful of dates, she had fallen for Zahir like a ton of bricks and   she had been ecstatic when he told her he would be back the following   month to attend a course at Sandhurst. She remembered little romantic   snapshot moments from that period: sitting in a park below a cloud of   cherry blossom with Zahir brushing a petal out of her hair with gentle   fingers; lingering over coffee holding hands; laughing together at mime   artists in the street. From the outset, Zahir had had the magic key to   winning her trust, for, unlike previous boyfriends he didn't grab and   grope and didn't expect her to leap straight into bed with him. At the   same time, though, he was chary of the part-time modelling she was   already doing, even when assured that she didn't do nude or underwear   shots. She had recognised that he was old-fashioned in a way that had   gone out of fashion in her country, but she had very much admired the   seriousness of his quick clever mind and his unvarnished love for   Maraban. Long before his course was over he asked her to marry him and   he told her who he really was. And the news that he was a royal prince   had merely added another intoxicating layer of sparkle to the fairy-tale   fantasy she was already nourishing about their future together, Saffy   conceded sadly.

Zahir had married her in a brief ceremony at the Marabani embassy   without any of his family present and without his father's permission.   With hindsight she knew how courageous he had been to wed her without   his father's consent and she knew he had done it because he had known   that his parent would never agree to him taking a foreign bride.   Reality, unfortunately, hadn't entered their relationship until she   landed in Maraban. Starting with the wedding night during which she   panicked and threw up and ending with a daily life more like   imprisonment than marriage, their relationship had hit the rocks fast.   She hadn't been able to give him sex and neither of them had been able   to handle the fallout from that giant elephant in the room. Any sense of   intimacy had died fast, leading to backbiting conversations and even   more of Zahir's constant absences.