The Sheikh's Prize(8)

       
           



       

The pickup came to a sudden jolting halt. A door slammed and a burst of   voices met her straining ears. As the voices receded she began to snake   out from below the tarpaulin, only then appreciating that it was  almost  dark. That was not a possibility she had factored into her plans  and,  climbing out of the truck, she soon recognised the second big  drawback.  It had not occurred to her that the driver might be  rendezvousing with  his family at a huge multi-roofed tent right out in  the desert.  Consternation swallowed Saffy whole as she stared round her  at what she  could see in the fast-fading light. There was no sign of a  village, a  road or anything else for her to focus on as a means of  working out  where she was. Biting her lip with vexation, she was  pushing her bottle  of water into the front pocket of her jeans when a  tall pale shape clad  in beige desert robes moved out of the tent.

'It's cold,' he said. 'Come inside.'

Disbelieving her ears, Saffy froze and gaped, her eyes straining to   penetrate the growing darkness. 'Zahir?' she exclaimed incredulously.   'What are you doing here?'

With one hand he tugged off the headdress bound with a gold and black   circlet of cord and straightened, black hair ruffling back against his   lean strong face in the slight breeze, his dark eyes bright as stars in   the low light. 'I drove you here.'

'You...what?' Saffy gasped in disbelief.

'The security surveillance at the palace is the best money can buy,'   Zahir drawled. 'I saw you climbing into the pickup on CCTV and I decided   that if anyone was going to take you anywhere it should be me.'

'I've been under that tarpaulin for more than an hour!' Saffy launched   at him in a rage of disbelief. 'I was so thrown about under it I'm not   convinced my bones are still connected!'

Zahir shrugged without even a hint of sympathy. 'Well, it was your chosen mode of travel.'

'Don't you give me that!' Saffy flung at him through teeth that were   starting to chatter because it was extraordinarily cold, but mercifully   her temper was still rising like rocket fuel to power her. 'You knew I   was in there!'

'Perhaps I thought a little shaking was a just reward for a woman stupid   enough to climb into a car driven by a stranger when she didn't even   know where the car was heading.'

Such a jolt of rage roared through Saffy that she was vaguely surprised   that she didn't levitate into the air like a sorcerer. Her great blue   eyes flashed. 'Don't you dare call me stupid!' she warned him in a hiss.

Zahir had never been the type to withdraw from a fight. He stood his   ground, wide shoulders thrown back, stubborn jaw line set like granite.   'But it was very stupid to take such a risk with your personal safety.'

Saffy knotted her hands into fists and clenched her teeth together. 'My   safety wouldn't be an issue if you hadn't kidnapped me!' she bit back.

'I kept you safe and I will continue to keep you safe and unharmed until   you return to London because while you are here you are my   responsibility,' Zahir countered in a tone of crushing finality. 'Now I   suggest that you come inside so that you can wash and eat. I don't know   about you...but I'm hungry.'

'Mr Practical...Mr Reasonable all of a sudden!' Saffy raged back at him,   aggrieved by his unshakeable self-assurance in the face of her violent   and perfectly reasonable resentment. 'How could you do this to me? I   hate you! Get stuffed!'

Zahir expelled his breath in a slow sibilant hiss. 'When you are ready to be civil again, you may come inside and join me.'

And with that ultimate putdown, he was gone, striding soundlessly into   the dimly lit tent and simply leaving her standing there. Saffy stamped   her feet in the sand to express her fury and only just resisted an urge   to slam her fists up against the metal side of the pickup. What a  prune  she felt-what a complete and utter idiot! Her bid for freedom had  been  seen and Zahir had stepped into the driver's seat to ruin her  escape  attempt. He had made a fool of her and not for the first time.  It was  many years since Saffy had been so angry, for in general she was  the  mildest personality around and quite laid back in temperament, but   Zahir's dominant gene got to her every time. She gritted her teeth,   stretched her aching back and legs and leant back against the pickup.   Contrary to her every expectation of the desert, it was absolutely   freezing and her tee was so thin she might as well have been naked. She   couldn't stop shivering and she rubbed her chilled goose-fleshed arms  in  an effort to get her circulation going again. Seeing Zahir again  seemed  to have fried her brain cells.                       
       
           



       

When she couldn't stand the cold any longer she stalked into the tent,   which was even larger than she had appreciated and even offered   communicating doorways to other sections. Festooned in traditional   kelims, it nonetheless offered sofas in place of the usual rugs round   the fire pit. Zahir was being served coffee by a kneeling older man.

'What is this place?' Saffy asked abruptly. 'Where are we?'

'It's a semi-permanent camp where I meet with the tribal sheikhs on a   regular basis. Although I know you would sooner be dead than sleep under   canvas, it offers every comfort,' he murmured smoothly. 'The bathroom   is through the second door.'

A wash of heated embarrassment engulfed Saffy's pale taut face. He was   throwing her own words of five years ago back in her teeth, her less   than tactful rejection of anything to do with tents and the nomadic   lifestyle that had once been customary for his people.

'I suppose it's too much to hope that there's a shower in there?' Saffy breathed tautly.

'No, it is not. Go ahead and freshen up. A change of clothing has been laid out for you.'

Her gaze flickered uneasily off his darkly handsome features, her heart   beating too fast for comfort or calm. Straight out of the frying pan   right into the fire, she acknowledged uncomfortably as she brushed back   the hanging that concealed a normal wooden door and stepped through it   into a bathroom that contained every luxurious necessity. She stripped   off in haste because even cold as she was she still felt sweaty and   grubby, and her white linen trousers had not withstood the journey well.   The powerful shower washed the grit from her skin and an impressive   array of surprisingly familiar products greeted her on a shelf. Wrapped   in a towel, she combed out her wet hair and made use of the hairdryer.   Hot running water and electric in a tent? Had he told her that that was  a  possibility she would have agreed to the desert trip he had tried to   take her on soon after they were married. Or would she have? If she  was  honest, her fear of the intimacies of sharing a tent with him had  lain  behind her dogged refusal to consider such an excursion.

A silk kaftan lay over a chair with a pair of simple mules beside it.   Leaving her underwear with her clothes, she slid into it, wondering what   she would wear the following day and where he was planning for her to   sleep. There were at least two more doorways leading out of the main   tent for her to investigate.

'Are you ready to eat?' Zahir asked.

Eyes widening, she nodded affirmation and spun to look at him. He had   shed the robes and got back into jeans. Damp black hair feathered round   his lean bronzed features, accentuating those smouldering amber gold   eyes surrounded by dense black lashes. Her pulses gave a jump.   Butterflies flocked loose in her tummy and she swallowed hard, frantic   to shed her desperate physical awareness of him. It seemed so   schoolgirlish and immature to react that way after all the years they   had been apart and the life she had since led. She was supposed to be   calm, sophisticated...in control.

'No table and chairs, I'm afraid,' he warned her, settling down by the flickering fire with animal grace.

'That's OK,' she muttered as a servant emerged from one of the doorways   bearing a tray, closely followed by another. 'So, you have a kitchen   here.'

'A necessity when I'm entertaining.'

He had mentioned the tribal sheikhs he met up with but Saffy was already   wondering how many other women he had brought out into the desert. She   knew there had been other women. For a couple of years after the  divorce  and before the overthrow of his father, Zahir had made  occasional  appearances in glossy magazines with several different  beautiful women  on his arm. And those glimpses of the new and much more  visible life he  was leading abroad without her had cut deep like a  knife and made her  bleed internally. She had known that those women  were sharing his bed,  entangling his beautiful bronzed body with lissom  limbs and giving him  everything she had failed to give him. Divorce,  she had learned the hard  way, wasn't an immediate cut-off point for  emotions, even emotions that  she had no right to feel.