Shackled To The Sheikh
Trish Morey
A wife to secure his crown?Rashid al Kharim must travel to Qajaran with his infant half-sister to take his place as Sheikh. But before he enters a world of deceit and danger he seeks oblivion in the arms of a beautiful stranger, just as tormented as he…Nanny Tora Burgess eagerly waits to meet her new boss – but is horrified to discover he’s her red-hot, one-night lover! Rashid is cold, distant…and he has a shocking proposal that will shackle her to the Sheikh for ever!Tora should say no, but her mouth forms the one word that she can’t take back – yes!Discover more at www.millsandboon.co.uk/trishmorey
‘I want to spend the night with you.’
‘One night,’ Rashid said, and she recognised it as a warning. ‘That’s all I can offer you.’
‘Perfect,’ Tora said with a smile, because that was all she wanted. One night to forget her scheming, cheating cousin. ‘One night is all I want.’
Tomorrow she could pick up the shattered pieces of her promises and work out where she went from here.
His eyes glinted in the street lighting—a flash of victory that came with a spark of heat—and he reached out his fingers to push a wayward tendril of her hair behind her ear. It made her skin tingle.
‘My name is Rashid.’
‘Tora,’ she said, even as she trembled under his touch.
He took her hand and brought it to his mouth, pressing it to his lips. ‘Come, Tora …’ he said.
Desert Brothers (#ulink_8c50539e-5162-55d9-a67c-5290b9dee5f9)
Bound by duty, undone by passion!
These sheikhs may not be brothers by blood, but they are united by the code of the desert.
Their power and determination is legendary and unchallenged—until unexpected encounters with women strong enough to equal them threaten their self-control …
Read the two concluding stories in Trish Morey’s exciting quartet of searing passion and sizzling drama!
Captive of Kadar May 2015
Shackled to the Sheikh November 2015
Shackled to the Sheikh
Trish Morey
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
TRISH MOREY always fancied herself a writer—so why she became a chartered accountant is anyone’s guess! But once she’d found her true calling there was no turning back. Mother of four budding heroines and wife to one true-life hero, Trish lives in an idyllic region of South Australia. Is it any wonder she believes in happy-ever-afters?
Find her at trishmorey.com (http://trishmorey.com) or facebook.com/trish.morey (http://facebook.com/trish.morey)
To my amazing readers,
with grateful thanks and wishing you love always,
Trish
x
Contents
Cover (#u9c123d8c-1bde-5b86-b43a-4efd2a55e7f8)
Introduction (#u2259c353-d356-5020-beb8-47086b1d0b69)
Desert Brothers (#u80223102-54e1-59da-8fbb-7848e0d91a35)
Title Page (#u3f9fdc42-369f-55cb-8c6d-f282ec09fa1e)
About the Author (#u87143848-b1b5-5e8d-aa60-25e5eae743fb)
Dedication (#u792a740a-b516-5e0e-8e2a-9ae2d1e98d5e)
CHAPTER ONE (#u5cdff261-f420-5ef9-8bcd-1c97a5973738)
CHAPTER TWO (#u78dedf6f-631c-5764-83fa-24007ae3cb15)
CHAPTER THREE (#u86c9477a-ccb3-53d9-acff-7ebd8eb95e94)
CHAPTER FOUR (#uaad42aa8-b1bd-58fc-8f91-cd5026ce52f9)
CHAPTER FIVE (#u8b55dfc4-7ed4-5fd8-aebf-cbd210b71490)
CHAPTER SIX (#u21f9d228-1b5d-5934-9dfb-6a706c57ec49)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_904c9f36-4167-5bc9-972e-aef32ea9a5ad)
RASHID AL KHARIM was done with pacing.
He needed something stronger.
He needed to lose himself. To dull the pain of each and every one of today’s revelations, if only for a few precious hours.
To forget about a father who hadn’t died thirty years back as he’d always believed, but a scant four weeks ago.
And to forget about a tiny child—a sister—who apparently was now his responsibility...
His head full of anger and torment, he let the door of his Sydney hotel suite slam hard behind him as he strode towards the lifts, stabbing the call button with intent, because he knew exactly what he needed right now.
A woman.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_0b2ad55c-ee72-5c89-a104-8ad6b9ccfe2d)
GOD, SHE HATED dingy bars. Outside this one had looked like an escape from her anger and despair, but inside it was dark and noisy and there were far too many leering men who looked way too old to be hanging out in a place where the average age of women was probably somewhere around nineteen. Tora upped the demographic just by being there, she figured, not to mention lowered the average heel height by a matter of inches, but it didn’t stop the old guys leering at her just the same.
But the bar was only a few steps from her cousin’s office and after an hour remonstrating fruitlessly with him, an hour where nothing—neither her arguments nor her tears—had made a shred of difference, she’d needed to go somewhere where she could drink something strong and fume a while.
One of the old guys across the bar winked at her. Ugh!
She crossed her legs and pulled her skirt down as she ordered another cocktail.
God, she hated bars.
But right now she hated her financial adviser cousin more.
Financial adviser cheating scumbag of a cousin, she revised as she waited for her drink, wondering how long it would be before the damned alcohol was going to kick in so she might stop feeling so angry.
She really needed to forget about the curl of her cousin’s lips when she’d refused to be put off any longer with his excuses and insisted he tell her when she’d be able to access the money she’d been due from her parents’ estate.
She needed to forget the pitying look in his cold eyes when he’d finally stopped beating about the bush and told her that it was gone, and that the release she’d signed thinking it was the last formality before receiving a pay-out had actually been a release signing the money over to him—only now there would be no pay-out because he’d ‘invested’ it all on her behalf, only the investment had turned sour and there was nothing left. Nothing at all left of the two hundred and fifty thousand dollars she’d been counting on. Nothing at all left of the money she’d promised to loan to Sally and Steve.
‘You should have read the small print,’ he’d said ever so smugly, and she’d never had violent tendencies before but right then she’d really fancied doing someone some serious bodily damage.
‘Blood is thicker than water,’ her parents had insisted, when they’d chosen their nephew Matthew over the financial planner she’d nominated, the father of a woman she’d known and trusted since primary school. And Tora had shrugged and conceded it was their choice, even if her cousin had been the kind of person who’d rubbed her up the wrong way all her life and never someone she’d choose as a friend, let alone her financial adviser.
For damned fine reason, as it had turned out.
Her cocktail arrived and her fingers curled around the stem of the glass as she studied it.
Now she had to work out a way to tell Sally she wouldn’t be getting the promised funds, after assuring her—because Matt had promised—that settlement was all on track and that the funds would be coming any day. She felt ill just thinking about it. They’d been counting on her—counting on this money. She shook her head. She would have to find another way, go back to the banks and try again. Try harder.
She lifted the glass to her lips and it was all she could do not to swallow the drink down in a rush, wanting the buzz, hoping for the oblivion it promised.
‘Hi there, sweet lips. You look like you needed that. Fancy another?’
She blinked against a sudden flash of strobe and opened her eyes to see one of the leery old guys shouldering his way alongside her at the bar, this one with a decent paunch and a skinny ponytail and with a possessive arm curling its way around the back of her seat. Across the bar his friends were watching and grinning as if this was some kind of spectator sport, and their ponytailed friend might have been right about her needing another drink but not if it meant waking up next to this guy. Suddenly getting a taxi home where there was a half-empty bottle of Riesling in the fridge seemed a far better option than staying here and seeking oblivion amongst this lot. She reached for her bag.
* * *
The bar was too noisy. Too dark.
Almost immediately Rashid regretted the impulse that had seen him climb down the stairs to the noisy bar in the basement of the building alongside his hotel.
Because the questions in his mind were still buzzing, and as his eyes skated over a dance floor filled with young women wearing more make-up than clothes he wasn’t convinced he was going to find the relief he needed here.
He ground his teeth together, the fingers that had been bound so tightly today already aching to curl once more into fists.
He was wasting his time here. He turned to leave, and that was when he saw the woman sitting by herself at the bar. His eyes narrowed. She was attractive, he guessed, under that bookish exterior, and she sure looked out of place here, standing out in her short-sleeved shirt in a sea of otherwise bare flesh. Too buttoned up with her brown hair pulled back into a tight bun. A glass of milk in a wine bar wouldn’t have looked more out of place.
But at least she looked as if she was past puberty. At least she looked like a woman.
He watched her down half her cocktail and scowl into the glass, but not as if she was morose, more as if she was angry. So she was as unimpressed with the world as he was? Perfect. The last thing he needed was someone with stars in their eyes. Maybe they could be angry at the world together.
He was already edging his way through the crowd when a man sidled up to her and slipped his arm around her back.
Rashid suppressed a growl and turned away. He might be angry, but he wasn’t about to fight over a woman.
* * *
‘I’m not actually looking for company,’ Tora said to her persistent would-be friend. Sure, someone sympathetic to get the whole sorry cheating-cousin saga off her chest might be therapeutic. Someone to lend her a shoulder and rub her back and say it would all be okay might be nice, but she hadn’t come here looking for that and she wasn’t about to consider any offers, not if the sympathetic shoulder came packaged like this one.
‘Just when we were getting on so well, too,’ he said, moving his bulk sideways when he saw her picking up her clutch to block her from getting up from her stool.
‘I hadn’t noticed,’ she said, mentally adding another hate to her growing list—leery men in bars who imagined they were God’s gift to women, although, to be honest, that one had always been right up there with seedy bars. ‘And now if you wouldn’t mind getting out of my way?’
‘Come on,’ he said, curling his arm closer around her back, and breathing beer fumes all over her. ‘What’s your rush?’
It was when she turned her head to escape the fumes that she saw him. He moved like a shadow in the dark basement, only the burst of coloured lights betraying his movements in the glint of blue-black hair and the whites of his eyes under the lights. He was tall and looked as if he was searching for someone or something, his eyes scanning the room, and, while heads turned in his wake, so far nobody seemed to be laying claim to him.
Surprising, given the way he couldn’t help but be noticed if someone was waiting for him.
Not to mention convenient.
‘How’s about I get you another drink?’ the man offered, slurring his words. ‘I’m real friendly.’
Yeah, she thought, if only he were sober and could speak clearly and looked a little more like the man who’d just walked in, she might even be interested.
‘I’m meeting someone,’ she lied, pushing off her stool but making sure it was her shoulder that brushed past his stomach and not her breasts. Her feet hit the ground and even on her sensible heels, she wobbled. Whoa! Maybe those cocktails weren’t such a total loss after all.
‘He stood you up, eh?’ said the man, still refusing to give up on his quarry. Still refusing to believe her. ‘Lucky I’m here to rescue you from sitting on the shelf all night.’
‘No,’ she said, in case Mr Beer Breath decided to argue the point, ‘he just walked in,’ and she squeezed her way past him determined to prove it.
* * *
Half-heartedly Rashid scanned the room one last time, already knowing that he was wasting his time in this place. He turned to leave—he would find no oblivion here—when someone grabbed his arm.
‘At last,’ he heard a woman say above the music. ‘You’re late.’
He was about to say she was mistaken and shrug her off, when her other arm encircled his neck and she drew herself closer. ‘Work with me on this,’ she said as she pulled his head down to hers.
It was the woman at the bar—that was his first surprise—and the only thing that prevented him from pushing her away. The fact Ms Bookish had turned into Ms Bold and Brazen was the second. But she’d saved the best for last, because her kiss was the biggest and the best surprise of all. She tried to get away after a moment but her lips were soft, her breath was warm, and she tasted of fruit and alcohol, summer and citrus, all over warm, lush woman, and she wasn’t going anywhere just yet. He ran his arm down her back, from her shoulder to the sweet curve of her behind, his fingers curling as they squeezed, and she arched into him as she gasped in his mouth.
Yes. This was what he needed.
This was what he’d come looking for.
Maybe coming here tonight hadn’t been such a bad idea after all.
‘Let’s go,’ she said, purposefully, if a little shakily, as she pulled away, her eyes shot with surprise as she looked from him over her shoulder to where she’d been sitting. He followed her gaze and saw the men lined up at the bar watching her, saw the slap to the back in consolation to the man who’d been talking to her, and he half wondered what the man had said to her that she seemed so shaken now. Not that Rashid really cared, as he wrapped an arm around her shoulders and cut through the crowd heading for the stairs and the exit, given he’d ended up exactly where he’d wanted.
Tora’s heart was thumping so loud, she was sure it was only the thump-thump of the music in the bar that was drowning it out. She must be more affected by the alcohol than she’d realised.
Why else would she have walked up to a complete stranger and kissed him?
Though it wasn’t just the alcohol fuelling her bravado, she knew. It was the anger, first for her cheating cousin, secondly for that meat market of a nightclub and a creep of a man who imagined there was any way in the world she’d want to spend even a moment with his beery self. And it hadn’t been enough simply to walk away—she’d been wanting to show him she wasn’t some sad lonely woman who’d be flattered to have his attention. Well, she’d sure shown him well and good.
But a peck on the lips in greeting was all she’d intended. A signal to the men watching that she wasn’t alone. She hadn’t expected that man to be so willing to join in her game. Nor had she expected to be sideswiped by a stranger’s taste and touch in the process, leaving her dazed and confused. And the way her skin tingled and sparked when their bodies brushed as they walked side by side—well, that was interesting, too.
She willed the itching fingers on the hand she’d wrapped around his waist to be still, but, God, it wasn’t easy, not when he felt so hard, so lean. Oh, wow... She needed to get outside and let the night air cool her heated skin. She needed the oxygen so she could think straight. She needed to say thank you to this stranger and get herself a taxi and go home, before she did anything else crazy tonight.
Because tonight was shaping up to be all kinds of crazy and the way this man felt, she wasn’t sure she could trust herself.
And then they were out on the street and the nightclub door closed behind them and she never got a chance to say thank you because he was pulling her into the shadows of a nearby doorway and kissing her all over again and she was letting him and suddenly it wasn’t the alcohol or her anger that was affecting her—it was one hundred per cent him.
Madness, she thought as his masterful lips coaxed open hers. She should put a stop to this, she thought as his tongue danced with hers. She didn’t do things like this. They might be in the shadows but they were on a public street after all. What if Matt saw her on his way home?
And then her anger kicked in and she thought, damn Matt, why would she care what he thought? Let him see. And she pressed herself closer.
A moment later she stopped caring about anything but for the hot mouth trailing kisses up her throat to her mouth, his hands holding her tight to him so they were joined from their knees to their lips and every place in between felt like an erogenous zone.
‘Spend the night with me,’ he whispered, drawing back to whisper against her ear, his breath fanning her hair, fanning the growing flames inside her in the process, and she almost found herself wishing he’d said nothing but carted her off to his cave so she didn’t have to think about being responsible. Crazy. She didn’t meet strangers in bars and spend the night with them.
‘I don’t even know your name.’ Her words were breathless, but it was the best she could manage when her mind was shell-shocked and every other part of her body was busy screaming yes.
‘Does it matter?’
Right now? God, he had a point. He could tell her his name was Jack the Ripper and she’d have trouble caring. But still...
‘I should go home,’ she managed to say, trying to remember the good girl she always figured she was and the plan she’d had—something about a taxi and a bottle of Riesling in the fridge and a cheating cousin she wanted to forget about—but she was having trouble remembering the details and wasn’t that a revelation?
Wasn’t that what tonight was supposed to be all about—forgetting?
He pulled away, letting her go even though the distance between them was scant inches. Even now her body swayed into the vacuum where his had so recently been. ‘Is that what you want? To go home?’
She saw the tightness in his shadowed features as if it was physically hurting him to hold himself back, she felt the heat rising from his strong body and she knew what it must be costing him to leave her to decide when the power in his strong limbs told her that he was powerful enough to take whatever he wanted. The concept was strangely thrilling. The perfect stranger. Powerful, potentially dangerous, but giving her the choice.
A choice never so starkly laid out in her mind.
A choice between being responsible and playing it safe and going home and sitting stewing about what she’d missed, or being reckless for once in her life and taking what was on offer—one night with a man whose touch promised to make her forget all the things she’d wanted to forget. One night with a stranger. Her cousin would be horrified, and right now wasn’t that good enough reason in itself?
Besides, all her life she’d played it safe, and where had that got her? Nowhere. She’d done nothing wrong and yet she’d lost more today than she’d ever thought possible.
Tonight was no night to play it safe.
‘No,’ she said, her tongue tasting an unfamiliar boldness on her lips. ‘I want to spend the night with you.’
‘One night,’ he said, and she recognised it as a warning. ‘That’s all I can offer you.’
‘Perfect,’ she said with a smile because that was all she wanted. ‘One night is all I want.’ Tomorrow she could pick up the shattered pieces of her promises and work out where she went from there.
His eyes glinted in the street lighting, a flash of victory that came with a spark of heat, and he reached out his fingers to push a wayward tendril of her hair behind her ear, making her skin tingle. ‘My name is Rashid.’
‘Tora,’ she said, even as she trembled under his touch.
He took her hand and brought it to his mouth, pressing it to his lips. ‘Come, Tora,’ he said.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_9d24ffd5-24e5-5b21-b80b-fb4afb42e17d)
NICE, SHE REGISTERED vaguely as he swept her through the marble-floored lobby of one of the oldest and classiest hotels in Sydney. Very nice. People dreamed of spending a night at The Velatte—ordinary people, that was. Clearly the man at her side was no ordinary person. But then, she already knew that. No ordinary person had ever set her pulse racing just by his presence. No average garden-variety man had ever set fires under her skin merely with his touch.
And now it was anticipation of a night with this far from ordinary man making the blood spin around her veins and her knees feel weak.
The lift whisked them to a high floor, his arm wound tightly around her, another couple in the lift the only thing that kept him from pulling her into his kiss, if the heated look in his dark eyes she caught in their reflection in the mirrored lift walls was any indication—mirrored panels that also gave her the chance to steal a closer look at the man she’d agreed to spend the night with. The flash of strobe in the darkened bar had shown her a face of all straight lines and planes—the dark slash of brows, the sharp blade of his nose, the angles of his jaw—but now she could see the softer lines of his mouth and the fullness of his bottom lip and the curve of flesh over high cheekbones. The combination worked.
It was then she realised that his eyes weren’t black but the deepest, deepest blue, like the surface of the bottomless ocean on a perfectly calm day.
He was beautiful, way too beautiful to be by himself, and the good girl in her wondered why he was, while the bad girl in her—the newly found bad girl who drank cocktails in basement bars and threw herself at random men on a whim—rejoiced. Because right now she was the one here in this lift with him.
He opened the door to his room that turned out to be a suite because it was a sitting room they entered, decorated in modern classics in grey and cream and illuminated with standing lamps, lending the room a subtle golden glow. Oh, no, this man was definitely not ordinary. He was either loaded, or his employer’s accountant was going to have a heart attack when the expense-account bill came in.
‘It’s huge,’ she said, overwhelmed, wondering just who this man she’d met in a nightclub and with whom she’d agreed to a night with actually was.
‘I got an upgrade,’ he said dismissively, as if that explained a suite fit for a king, as he headed towards a phone. ‘Something to drink?’
Her mouth was dry but only because every drop of moisture in her body had been busy heading south ever since he’d asked her to spend the night. ‘Anything,’ she said, and he ordered champagne for two and put the receiver down, the fingers of one hand already unbuttoning his shirt.
‘The bedroom’s through here,’ he said as he led the way into a room with furniture in both gloss white and dark timber, with white louvre glass doors opening onto a terrace beyond. A super-king-sized bed with a plump quilted headrest and snowy white bed linen held pride of place against the opposite wall.
‘So,’ he said as he reefed off his shirt and tossed it onto a chair in the corner, exposing a chest that wouldn’t have looked out of place on her annual firefighters’ fundraising calendar. ‘Shower first?’
She stood transfixed, drinking in his masculine perfection, the sheer poetry of tightly packed muscle under skin, until his hands moved to his belt, and with a jolt she realised she should be doing something, too, not standing around ogling him and waiting to be seduced.
This wasn’t a seduction after all. Clearly he’d done his seducing in getting her here. This was more like getting down to business.
‘Oh, right,’ she said, her tummy a mass of flutters, the bad girl inside her overruled by the good girl who was suddenly aware of how far out of her league she was, and not just because this man came with serious money. Here he was, shedding clothes and shoes in a lighted room more easily than an autumn tree shed its leaves in the wind and no doubt expecting her to do likewise. She slid off her shoes, her fingers playing at her buttons as she remembered what she’d put on this morning, wishing she’d worn something a bit more exciting under her boring black skirt and shirt than her even more boring underwear. Not that she had a seduction collection, exactly, but she might have managed to wear something that at least smacked of lace.
She swallowed as she pulled the shirt free from the waistband of her skirt and eased it over her shoulders, feeling more self-conscious by the second as she stood there in her department-store skirt and regulation bra. ‘I didn’t dress for...’
He looked at her, a frown tugging at his brows, as he shrugged off his trousers, revealing denim-coloured elastic fitted boxers that fitted his hard-packed body so well, there were no bulges anywhere—except where there should be.
Oh, my...she thought, her stomach flipping over, her mouth Sahara dry, and she wondered how long the champagne would take to arrive. She didn’t need the alcohol particularly, but her mouth sure could do with the lubrication.
‘I’m not interested in your underwear,’ he said as he padded on bare feet towards her, his steps purposeful rather than rushed. He lifted her chin with the tips of his fingers and pressed his lips lightly to hers while his other hand eased the tie from her hair, making her scalp tingle, pulling it free so that her hair tumbled heavily over her shoulders. His fingers skimmed down her throat and to her shoulder, found the strap of her bra and curled a fingertip beneath, before slipping it away down her arm. He pushed the hair back and dipped his head and pressed his lips to her bare shoulder and breath hissed through her teeth. ‘I’m interested in what lies beneath.’
She shuddered on a sigh, her breasts achingly tight, as she felt his clever fingers at her back as he slid her bra away. And then her skirt was riding low and lower over her thighs before she realised he’d even unzipped it. ‘Very interested,’ he said, standing back to take her in, dark storm clouds scudding over the deep ocean blue of his eyes. He touched the pads of his thumbs to her bolt-like nipples and twin spears of sensation shot down deep into her belly, triggering an aching pulse between her thighs. Her groan of need was out before she could haul it back, but he didn’t seem to mind as he sucked her into a deep kiss that amplified the sensations.
‘What happened to the brazen woman who accosted me in a bar?’
She was a fraud. Tora swallowed. ‘She was angry. She was proving a point.’
‘Is she still angry?’
‘Yes, but now she just wants to forget why.’
‘Oh,’ he said, his eyes gleaming as he swung her into his arms and headed for the shower. ‘I can make you forget.’
* * *
Her stranger was true to his words. Granted, he had steam, a rainforest shower head and slippery gel on his side, but his clever hands and mouth had a way of making her forget everything besides being naked with a man she wanted to bed her with a compulsion and an urgency she’d never felt before—an urgency he didn’t seem to mirror.
When he’d turned on the taps and shucked off his underwear, she’d gasped at his size, not with fear, but with anticipation. She wasn’t a virgin. She knew how things worked and what generally happened and, if she was totally honest, she’d always wondered what it would be like to make love with a man so well equipped. But then he’d hooked his fingers into the sides of her underwear and pushed them down and she’d imagined that a minute or two of foreplay in the form of soaping each other’s skin, and they’d be making love right here in the shower.
Apparently he wasn’t in such a rush.
He kissed her again, long and deep, as she clung to his shoulders, while the torrent rained down upon them, his slippery hands in her wet hair, down her throat to cup her breasts before sliding down her sides, the touch of his long fingers relaying the dip of her waist in a way she’d never felt or seen so clearly in her mind’s eye before. Every curve his fingers seemed to find, every jut of bone explored on their seemingly leisurely but purposeful way south. It almost felt as if his fingers were mapping her terrain.
She gasped again, into his seeking mouth this time, when one hand cupped her mound. She felt his lips smile around hers before his mouth dipped to her throat, to kiss her shoulder and then worship her breasts on his way down to kneeling before her, his lips traversing her belly, his fingers deep between her thighs and the pulsing flesh that lay within.
Oh, God. She shuddered as he parted her legs, turning her face up into the spray as his fingers opened her to him. Exposed her to him. She thought she knew about sex. She’d thought this would be over in a minute. But she might just as well have known nothing. She felt like a virgin all over again.
She knew nothing at all, but...
Pleasure.
It came upon her in waves as his tongue lapped at her very core, teasing her beyond existence, beyond reason, as all she knew was sensation.
His tongue. The steam. The water cascading over her and his fingers teasing, circling her aching centre.
Right now there was nothing but sensation, and the inexorable build to a place a man had never taken her. A place she’d never believed it possible for a man to take her unassisted. This man was taking her all the way.
She felt his fingers stray closer until they edged inside her. She felt the tug of his mouth on her screaming nub of nerve endings and she felt the surge coming. She bit her lip to stop from crying out but there was no stopping the wave that washed over her and the cry that came all the same as her body broke around him.
* * *
He supported her before her knees could give way and she fell, and she felt him there, at her core.
Yes, she thought, because even on her way down from the highs he’d taken her to she still wanted this—wanted him deep inside her—more than anything.
But then, just as she thought she had him, just as her muscles worked to urge him in, he pulled away on a curse and slammed open the shower door.
She blinked as he pulled a towel from a rack and wrapped it around her, swinging her into his arms.
‘What’s wrong?’ she said, still trembling after her high and back to the virgin she wasn’t, fearful she’d done something wrong.
‘Nothing,’ he said as he deposited her in the centre of the big wide bed before pulling out a drawer, ‘that this won’t fix.’
He tore the top from the foil packet and rolled the condom down on him and suddenly it made sense and she was glad one of them was still thinking.
‘Now,’ he said, his face grim as he positioned himself between her legs, ‘where were we?’
And the virgin inside her turned wanton as she wrapped her hand around his bucking length and felt his power and his need within her fingers, and placed him at her core. ‘Right here.’
His eyes flared with heat as he growled with approval, and her heart skipped a beat as he took her hands and pinned them each side of her head, their fingers intertwined, and then with one long thrust he was inside her and sparks went off behind her eyes.
It was sex, she had to remind herself, just sex, because in that moment it had seemed that the world as she knew it revolved around that moment and that moment only.
He leaned down and kissed her then, so sweetly and reverently that she wondered if he’d felt it, too, this tiny spark of connection that went beyond physical, before he let go her hands and raised himself higher and slowly withdrew. She almost whimpered at the loss, wanting to hold him inside and keep him there, but then he was back, lunging deeper if that were possible, the slide and slap of flesh against flesh bringing with it that tidal flow of sensation, in and out and building each time until their bodies were slick with sweat. There was nowhere left to go, nowhere left to hide, and the next wave surge crashed over her and washed her away.
She clung to him as he went with her, tossed helplessly in the foaming surf of her undoing, gasping for air, not knowing which way was up.
He pressed his lips to her forehead before he slumped beside her. ‘Thank you,’ she heard him say between his ragged breaths, and she wondered if he could read her mind, for they were the exact same words she wanted to tell him.
* * *
He watched her sleep in the yellow-grey light, watched the slow rise of her chest and listened to the soft sigh as she exhaled, all the time wondering at a woman who had turned up exactly when he’d needed her. A woman who had made him forget the shocks of today so well that he’d almost forgotten to use protection.
When had that ever happened before?
Never, that was when.
He shook his head. He was more affected by today’s revelations than he’d realised if he could forget something so absolutely fundamental. There could be no other reason for it. Other than the way she’d come apart so furiously that he hadn’t wanted to wait, he’d wanted to follow her right then and there.
Propped up on his elbow, he lay alongside her, watching her eyelids flutter from time to time. Her hair splayed wild around her head and against the pillow. Tangled. Elemental. He touched a finger to one of the coils, felt the silk and steel within the shafts of hair and congratulated himself for walking down the stairs into that basement bar.
One night with a stranger had never been so desperately needed and so satisfying.
Almost.
He leaned over, pressed his lips to hers. Her eyelids fluttered open and momentary surprise gave way to a tentative smile. ‘Oh, hi,’ she said as her smile turned wary. ‘Is it time for me to go?’
‘No way,’ he said as he pulled her into his arms. ‘You’re not going anywhere just yet.’
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_ec65c0a1-4ece-51a4-a456-279578027710)
IT WAS STILL dark when her phone buzzed, only dull yellow street light filtering up from the street far below sneaking between the gaps in the curtains. Disoriented and aching in unfamiliar places, Tora took a while to work out where she was let alone manage to stumble from the bed and find where she’d left her bag. Groggily she snatched up her mobile and stole a glance over her shoulder. Behind her Rashid lay sprawled on his front, legs and arms askew as he slept. He looked magnificent, like a slumbering god, somehow even managing to make a super-king-sized bed look small.
‘Yes,’ she whispered, and listened while Sally apologised for calling her on her day off, but it was an emergency and could she come in?
She closed her weary eyes and put a hand to her head, pushing back her hair. How much sleep had she had? Not a lot. Not a good way to go to work, especially not when she had news to tell her friend—bad news—and she’d really wanted more time before breaking it. ‘Are you sure there’s nobody else?’
But she already knew the answer to that or Sally wouldn’t have been calling on the first day off she’d had for two weeks. ‘One more thing,’ Sally said, once she’d told her she’d be there in an hour. ‘Pack a bag and bring your passport. Looks like you might need them.’
‘Where am I going?’
‘I’m not sure exactly. I’ll fill you in on what I do know when you get here.’
Tora slipped her phone away and glanced once more at the man she’d left sleeping on the bed, the man who’d blown her world apart and put it back together again more times than she would have believed possible in just one night. She shouldn’t be sorry there wouldn’t be one more time, she really shouldn’t. No, no regrets. It was a one-night deal and now that night was over. She gathered up her discarded shirt and skirt and abandoned underwear and dressed silently in the bathroom.
Leaving this way was better for both of them. At least this way there was no chance of an awkward goodbye scene. No chance of anyone expecting too much or appearing hopeful or needy.
He seemed like the kind of man who’d be relieved she wasn’t going to hang around and argue the point.
She picked up her shoes and spared one last glance towards the bed.
One night with a stranger.
But what a night.
He’d done what he’d promised to do. He’d blotted out the pain and the anger of her cousin’s betrayal. He’d taken her from feeling shell-shocked and numb with grief and for a few magical hours he’d transported her away from her hurt and despair to a world filled with unimaginable pleasure.
He’d made her forget.
She let the door snick behind her.
It was going to be a hell of a lot harder to forget him.
* * *
He woke with a heavy head from too little sleep and with a dark mood brewing yet still he reached for her. There were things he had to do today, facts he had to face from which there was no escaping—headaches, each and every one of them—but the lawyer and the vizier and the headaches could wait. There was something he wanted more right now in this drowsy waking time before he had to let the cold, hard light of day hit him, as he knew it soon would. Someone he wanted more.
His searching hand met empty sheets. He rolled over, reaching further, finding nothing but an empty bed and cold sheets and not the warm woman he was looking for. He cracked open an eyelid and found no one.
Now he was wide awake. ‘Tora?’ he called. But there was no answer, nothing but the soft hum of the air conditioner kicking in as the temperature rose with the sun outside.
‘Tora,’ he repeated, louder this time, on his feet now as he checked the bathroom and the living room. He pulled back the curtains in case she’d decided to take coffee out there so as not to waken him. Morning light poured into the room, and he squinted against the rising sun, but the terrace, like every other part of the suite, was empty.
She was gone, without so much as a word.
She was gone, before he was ready.
Before he was done with her.
He growled, a vein in his temple throbbing while his dark mood grew blacker by the minute.
Until he remembered with a jolt the revelations of yesterday and his black mood changed direction. He glanced at the clock. He had a meeting to get to.
He’d been angry when the lawyer had told him that he’d arranged it—too blindsided by the lawyer’s revelations to think straight, too incensed that someone other than himself was suddenly pulling the strings of his life—but now he welcomed this meeting with this so-called vizier of Qajaran. Maybe he would have the answers to his questions.
Only then, when he was convinced, would he agree to take on this baby sister—no, half-sister—the product of a father who’d abandoned Rashid as a toddler, and a woman he’d taken as his lover.
Only then would he agree to take on guardianship of her, to take responsibility for her now that both her parents were dead, and to fill the void in her life, and wasn’t that the richest thing of all?
Because how the hell was he supposed to fill a void in anyone’s life when there’d been nobody to fill the void in his?
Thanks for that.
He cast one last glance back towards the rumpled bed as he headed to the shower, the bed that bore the tangled evidence of their lovemaking. How many times they’d come together in the dark night, he couldn’t remember, only that every time he’d turned to her she’d been there, seemingly insatiable and growing bolder each time.
No wonder he’d been angry when he’d found her gone.
No wonder he’d felt short-changed.
But one night was what he’d wanted and it was better this way. She’d more than served her purpose. He’d lost himself in her and she’d blotted out the shock and pain for a while, but now he needed a clear head and no distractions. He thought back to the night that was. She’d been one hell of a distraction and he would have been hard pressed to send her on her way. It was better that she’d saved him the effort.
* * *
Kareem was not as Rashid had envisaged. He’d imagined someone called a vizier to be a small man, wiry and astute. But the man the lawyer introduced him to in his dark-timbered library was a tall, gentle-looking giant of indeterminate age who could have been anywhere from fifty to eighty. He looked the part of a wise man, perfectly at ease in his sandals and robes amongst a city full of men wearing suits and ties.
Kareem bowed when he was introduced to Rashid, his eyes wide. ‘You are indeed your father’s son.’
A tremor went down Rashid’s spine. ‘You knew my father?’
The older man nodded. ‘I did, although our dealings have been few and far between of late. I knew you, too, as an infant. It is good to meet you again after all these years.’
The lawyer excused himself then, leaving the two men to talk privately.
‘Why have you come?’ Rashid asked, taking no time to get to the point. ‘Why did you ask for this meeting?’
‘Your father’s death raises issues of which you should be aware, even if I fear you may find them unpalatable.’
Rashid sighed. He was sick of all the riddles, but he was no closer today to believing that this man they were talking about actually was his father than when the lawyer had dropped that particular bombshell yesterday. ‘You’re going to have to try harder than that if you want to convince me. My father died when I was just a child.’
‘That is what your father wanted you to believe,’ the older man said.
‘Wanted me to believe?’
‘I take your point,’ the vizier conceded, his big hands raised in surrender. ‘It would be more correct to say that he wanted the entire world to believe he was dead. I did not mean to give the impression that he was singling you out.’
Rashid snorted. And that was supposed to be some kind of compensation?
‘And my mother?’ he snapped before the other man could continue. ‘What of her? Is she similarly living out a life of gay abandon somewhere else in the world, having tossed her maternal responsibilities to the winds?’
The vizier shook his head. ‘I almost wish I could tell you she was, but sadly no, your mother died while you were in infancy, as you are no doubt aware. I am sorry,’ he said. ‘I know this must be difficult for you, but there is more. Much more.’
Rashid waved the threat in those words away. ‘I already know about this so-called sister, if that’s what you’re referring to.’
‘Atiyah? Yes, she is on her way here now, I believe. But I was not referring to her.’
He frowned. ‘Then what? In fact, why are you here? What do you have to do with my father’s affairs anyway?’
The older man regarded him levelly, his eyes solemn. ‘I know you were brought up,’ he said, slowly and purposefully, as if sensing Rashid’s discomfiture, ‘believing your father to have been a humble tailor, killed in an industrial accident...’ He paused, as if to check Rashid was still listening.
He was listening all right, although it was hard to hear with the thumping of his heart. Today he’d expected answers. Instead all he was getting was more of the madness.
‘In actual case, your father was neither. Your father was a member of the Royal House of Qajar.’ He paused again. ‘Do you know much of Qajaran?’
Rashid closed his eyes. He knew the small desert country well enough—his work as a petroleum engineer had taken him there several times. It had a problematic economy, he was aware, like so many countries that he visited, not that he had paid this one much more attention than he paid any of them. He had learned early on in his career that it was better not to get involved in the affairs of state when one was a visiting businessman.
But for Rashid’s father to have been a member of the House of Qajar—the father he’d believed to be nothing more than a tailor—then he must have been a member of the royal family...
The wheels of his mind started turning. ‘So who was my father?’
‘The Emir’s nephew...’ the vizier paused again ‘...and his chosen successor over his own son who he judged as being too self-centred and weak.’
His nephew? His chosen successor? ‘But if what you say is true...’ Rashid ground out the words, still not convinced by the story he was hearing ‘...why was he living here in Australia? What happened?’
The older man took a sip of his milk and returned it to its coaster, every move measured and calm and at odds with the turmoil Rashid was feeling inside.
‘Your father was an accomplished polo player,’ the vizier said, ‘and while he was overseas competing in one of his polo competitions, the old Emir died suddenly.’ He paused on a breath, the silence stretching out to breaking point. ‘Some would say too suddenly, and, of course, there was some suggestion at the time that the timing was “convenient”, but nothing could ever be proved. By the time your father had arrived home, the Emir’s son had announced his ascension to the throne and moved the palace forces squarely behind himself. Your father knew nothing of this and was placed under house arrest the moment he returned to the palace. But your father was popular with the people and questions were inevitably asked about his disappearance—uncomfortable questions when all of Qajaran knew he was the favoured choice for Emir—and so Malik announced he was to be appointed special adviser to the Emir while deciding privately that it would be better to have him out of the way completely.’
‘So they exiled him?’
‘No. Malik was nowhere near that merciful. The plan was to kill him but make it look like an accident. A helicopter accident en route from the mountain palace to where the ceremony would take place.’
Air hissed through Rashid’s teeth.
‘Fortunately your father had a supporter in the palace. My predecessor could not stand back and let such a crime happen. They secreted bodies from the hospital morgue and when the time came, they parachuted to safety and the helicopter duly crashed, its cargo of dead burned beyond recognition, assumed to be the pilot and the true heir to the throne. Clothing from a small child was found in the wreckage, jackals assumed to have made off with the remains.’
Rashid felt chills down his spine. ‘A small child,’ he repeated. ‘Me.’
The vizier nodded. ‘You. The new Emir was leaving nothing to chance. But your father’s life came at a cost. To protect the lives of those who had saved him and his son, he had to swear he would never return to Qajaran, and he would live his life as an exile with a false identity. Your names were both changed, your histories altered, but, even so, as a father and son you would have been too recognisable together, and so, in order to keep you safe, he had to cut you free.’
Rashid’s hands curled into fists. ‘I grew up alone. I grew up thinking my father was dead.’’
The vizier was unapologetic. ‘You grew up in safety. Had Malik suspected even one hint of your existence, he would have sent out his dogs and had you hunted down.’
Rashid battled to make sense of it all. ‘But Malik died, what? Surely it’s a year ago by now. Why did my father keep silent then? Why did he not move to claim the throne then if he was still alive?’
The older man shrugged and turned the palms of his hands up to the ceiling. ‘Because he had made a solemn promise never to return and he was a man of honour, a man of his word.’
‘No, that doesn’t cut it. He still could have told me! He could have sought me out. Why should I have been denied knowing my father was alive because of a promise he’d made to somebody else years ago?’
‘I know.’ The vizier exhaled on a sigh. ‘Rashid, I am sorry to be the one to tell you this, but your father decided it was better that you never knew of your heritage. I sought him out after Malik died. I begged him to reach out to you—I begged him to let me reach out to you—but he refused. He said it was better that way, that you never knew the truth, that it couldn’t hurt you any more than it already had. He made me promise not to contact you while he lived.’
Rashid shook his head, his jaw so tightly set he had to fight to squeeze the words out. ‘So he decided to keep me in the dark—about everything. Even the fact my own father was still alive.’
‘Don’t you think it cost your father—to be cursed with only seeing his son from afar and searching the papers for any hint of where you were and what you were doing? But he was proud of you and all that you achieved.’
‘He had a funny way of showing it.’
‘He saw all that you achieved by yourself and, wrongly or rightly, he chose to let you remain on that path, unfettered by the responsibility he knew would come if you knew the truth.’
The sensation of scuttling insects started at the base of his neck and worked its way down his spine. He peered at the vizier through suspicious eyes and asked the questions he feared he already knew the answers to. ‘What do you mean? What responsibility?’
‘Don’t you see? You are Qajaran’s true and rightful ruler, Rashid. I am asking you to come back to Qajaran with me and claim the throne.’
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_27859fbd-25f3-57f7-99b2-9acaa99b72bf)
RASHID LAUGHED. He couldn’t help but laugh, even though he’d half suspected something similar, but the old man was so fervent and the idea so preposterous. ‘You can’t be serious!’
‘Please forgive me, but I am not in the habit of joking about such matters.’
Rashid got the impression the man was not in the habit of making jokes at all, the complete lack of humour in the vizier’s response stopping Rashid’s mirth dead. ‘But I haven’t lived in Qajaran since I was a boy, if what you say is true, because I certainly can’t even remember a time when I did. I have visited it briefly two or three times since at the most. There must be someone better, someone more qualified?’
‘There has been a power vacuum since Malik’s death. A Council of Elders has taken over the basics of governing, but there is no clear direction and no one person to take responsibility. Qajaran needs a strong leader, and there can be no one more fitting than the son of the true successor. In the beginning, I know it is what your father wanted for you, to reclaim your birthright, even though with time he changed his mind and wished for you the freedom that he had found. He had made a life here, after all, and I think the longer he was away from Qajaran, the less connection he felt and the less your father felt he owed his homeland.’
‘The father I never knew,’ he said, not even trying to prevent the bitterness infusing his voice. ‘If indeed he was my father. Why should I take your word that he was?’
The old man nodded. ‘I would be concerned if you accepted too quickly the challenge that lies before you. I would think you are attracted to the concept of power, other than the benefit of our peoples.’ He slipped a hand into the folds of his robes and pulled something from a pocket. ‘Malik sought to destroy all likenesses of your father. This one survived.’ He handed it to Rashid.
It was one of those old photo folders that opened like a card, the cardboard crinkled and dog-eared around the border but the picture inside still preserved. A photo of a man dressed dashingly in the Qajarese colours of orange, white and red, sitting proudly astride an Arab polo pony, a mallet casually slung over his shoulder as he posed for the camera.
‘My God,’ Rashid said, for he recognised his own features in the photograph—his own high cheekbones and forehead and the set of his jaw. The eyes the same dark blue. It could have been him sitting on that horse.
‘You see it,’ Kareem said. ‘There is no denying it.’ The old man leaned forward. ‘Your country needs you, Rashid. Qajaran is at a crossroads. Thirty years of a ruler who wasted every opportunity unless it benefited him directly, thirty years of frittering the revenues that came from its industries and rich resources on follies and peccadilloes. It is more by good luck than good management that the economy of Qajaran has not been completely ruined. But now it is time to start building. There is a desperate need for strong leadership, education and reform.’
Rashid shook his head. ‘Why would the people accept me as leader, when I am supposed to have died in a helicopter crash three decades ago? Why would they believe it is even me?’
‘The people have long memories. Malik may have tried to wipe your father from the collective memory of the Qajarese people, but never could he wipe the love of him from their hearts. Truly, you would be welcomed back.’
‘When I am supposed to be dead? How does that work?’
‘Your body was never found, assumed to be taken by the desert beasts, which means there is doubt. The people of Qajaran are in desperate need of a miracle. The return of you to Qajaran would be that miracle.’
Rashid shook his head. ‘This is madness. I am a petroleum engineer. That is my job—that is what I do.’
‘But you were born Qajarese. You were born to rule. That is in your blood.’
Rashid stood, his legs too itchy to remain seated any longer, and crossed to a window, watching the traffic and the pedestrians rushing by in the street below. They all had somewhere to go, somewhere to be. Nobody was stopping them and telling them that their lives up till now had been founded on a lie, and that they must become someone they had never in their wildest nightmares thought they would be. Nobody was telling them they had a tiny sister they were now responsible for—let alone a nation full of people for whom they were now responsible.
He shook his head. He didn’t do family. The closest he had ever come to having family was his three friends, his desert brothers, Zoltan, Bahir and Kadar, their friendship forged at university in the crucible of shared proximity and initial animosity, all of them outcasts, all of them thrust together as a kind of sick joke—the four had hated each other on sight—only for the joke to backfire when the four became friends and the ‘Sheikhs’ Caïque’, as their rowing four was nicknamed, won every race they ran.
And even though his three desert brothers had found matches and were starting their own broods of children, it didn’t mean he had to follow suit.
He had no desire for family. Even less now given he’d learned his father had lived all those years and hadn’t bothered to let him know—his own son!
And what was a nation but the worst kind of family, large, potentially unruly and dependent.
He turned suddenly. Faced the man who had brought him this horror. ‘Why should I do this? Why should I take this on?’
Kareem nodded. ‘I have read widely of you and seen your long list of achievements and your powers of negotiation when dealing with disparate parties. You would come eminently qualified to the task of Emir.’
Rashid shook his head, and the older man held up one broad hand. ‘But yes, this is no job application. This goes beyond mere qualifications. Your father was the chosen Emir before circumstances forced him into exile. You are his heir. It is therefore your duty.’
Rashid’s blood ran cold. ‘My duty? I thought you said I had a choice.’
And Kareem looked hard into his eyes. ‘The choice is not mine to give. I am saying you have this duty. Your choice is whether you accept it.’
Duty.
He was not unfamiliar with the concept. His best friends were no strangers to duty. He had seen Zoltan take on the quest for the throne of Al-Jirad. Rashid had done his brotherly duty and had ridden together with him and Bahir and Kadar across the desert to rescue Princess Aisha, and later to snatch her sister, Princess Marina, from the clutches of Mustafa. He had always done his duty.
But never had he imagined that duty would be so life-changing—so unpalatable—for himself. Because if he did this thing, his life would undergo a seismic shift. He would never be truly free again. And if he didn’t, he would be failing in his duty.
Duty. Right now the most cursed of four-letter words.
‘What I tell you is not easy for a man to absorb or accept,’ Kareem said. ‘I can only ask that you will come and see the country for yourself. Bring Atiyah, for it is her heritage and birthright too.’
‘You want me to willingly turn up on the doorstep of a place that was so happy to see my father and me dead? You expect me to take an infant into that environment?’
‘Malik is gone. You have nothing to fear from him or his supporters now. Please, you must come, Rashid. Come and feel the ancient sand of our country between your toes and let it run through your fingers. See the sunrise and sunset over the desert and maybe then you will feel the heart of Qajaran beating in your soul.’
‘I’ll come,’ Rashid said, his head knowing what he had to do, his gut twisting tighter than steel cable in spite of it. ‘For now that is all I am promising.’
The vizier nodded. ‘For now, it is enough. Let me call the lawyer back in and we will make the arrangements.’
* * *
‘What can they be doing in there?’ Tora said as she gave up pacing the lawyer’s waiting room and sat down in the chair alongside her boss. She had to pace because every now and then her lack of sleep would catch up with her and she’d find herself yawning. ‘Whatever can be taking so long?’ she said, trying not to sound too irate so that she didn’t disturb the infant in the capsule alongside. She’d had barely enough time to get home to shower and change and pack her things, before she’d met Sally at Flight Nanny’s office and they’d headed off together to pick up the baby from the foster home where she’d been looked after for the last few days, only for them to have been kept sitting and waiting so long that the baby would soon need another feed.
Her boss twisted her watch around her wrist. ‘I don’t know, but I can’t stay much longer. I’ve got a meeting with Steve’s doctors in less than an hour.’
‘I’m sure it won’t be too long now,’ the middle-aged receptionist assured them when Sally asked how long it would be, before disappearing to fetch refreshments.
The baby started fussing then and Tora reached down to soothe her. She was a cherub. With black curls and dark eyes with long sooty lashes and a tiny Cupid’s-bow mouth, it was obvious that she’d grow up to be a beauty. But right now she was a tiny vulnerable infant without a mother or a father—or anyone who seemed to care what happened to her.
The baby wasn’t about to be placated and became more restless, her little fisted hands protesting, and Tora plucked her out of the capsule to prop against her shoulder so she could rub her back, swaying from side to side in her seat as she did so.
She smiled as she cuddled the infant close, enjoying the near new baby smell. It was unusual to have such a young infant to take care of. Most of Flight Nanny’s charges were small children who needed to be ferried interstate or overseas between divorced parents who were either too busy with their careers to travel with their children, or who simply preferred to avoid any contact with the other party, even if only to hand the children over. Those cases could be sad enough.
But an infant who’d been left orphaned, that was beyond tragic. That was cruel.
‘You poor sweetheart,’ she said as she rocked the tiny bundle in her arms, her heart breaking a little at the injustice of it all.
Sally shifted in her seat and Tora could feel the tension emanating from her friend and colleague. Something was seriously wrong. ‘How is Steve?’ she ventured, once the baby had settled a little, scared to ask, even more scared for the answer.
Her boss grimaced and it occurred to Tora that Sally had aged ten years in the last couple of weeks. ‘He’s struggling. There’s a chance they won’t be able get his condition stabilised enough for the flight to Germany.’ She looked up then and Tora saw the desperation in her eyes, desperation laced with a flash of hope. ‘Look, Tora, I didn’t want to ask—I really wanted to wait for you to say something—but how did you get on with your cousin last night? Did he give you any idea when the estate might be finalised and that settlement might come through?’
And Tora’s heart plunged to the floor. There was damned good reason she hadn’t wanted to come to work today and it wasn’t just that she’d hardly had any sleep. Without the funds from her parents’ estate, she’d have nothing to lend to Sally and Steve, funds they’d been counting on to pay for his medical transport and his treatment overseas. And she’d really wanted some time to explore any other ways of raising the money before she had to come clean on the fact that the promised funds were never going to materialise—not from that particular source. ‘Ah,’ she said with false brightness, as if she’d only just remembered, ‘I wanted to talk to you about that.’
Sally crossed her arms and Tora could see her fingernails clawing into her arms. ‘Damn. I knew I shouldn’t have asked you that. I don’t think I could bear to hear bad news today.’
‘Oh, no,’ Tora lied, doing her utmost to smile. ‘Nothing like that. Just paperwork and more paperwork.’ She shrugged. ‘You know how it goes with these things. I’m really hoping it gets resolved soon.’
Sally glanced at her watch. ‘Well, sorry, but I’m going to have to leave you with some more paperwork if I’m going to make this appointment.’ She reached into her satchel and pulled out a folder that she left on the seat behind her as she rose. ‘I’m really sorry to leave you like this when we still don’t know all the details. Will you be okay to handle everything yourself?’
‘Hey, I’ll be fine. If you’re going to be disappearing offshore soon,’ she said, trying to stay positive and not wanting to dwell on how big that ‘if’ was right now if she couldn’t secure the funds to make it happen, ‘we’re all going to have to get used to doing more paperwork here at home. Don’t worry, I’ll email you when I know where this baby is going and scan all the documentation for you before we go anywhere. You just worry about you and Steve right now.’
Sally smiled, giving Tora a kiss on the cheek as she bent down to pick up her bag. ‘Thanks.’ She curled a fingertip under the baby’s tiny hand. ‘Look after this little poppet, okay?’
‘You bet. Now get going. And give my love to Steve.’
Sally was gone by the time the receptionist returned with her iced tea, and Tora’s was half drunk when the door to the office opened then, and an older gent with bushy eyebrows and a shock of white hair peeked out. ‘Ah, Joan,’ he said. ‘We’re ready for our guests now.’ He looked at Tora and the bundle perched over her shoulder.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘but Sally Barnes couldn’t stay.’
‘I quite understand,’ he said kindly. ‘This has all taken rather longer than we expected. Thank you for being so patient, Ms Burgess. Do come in. It’s time for the little one to meet her guardian.’
She stood up with the baby in her arms, and the lawyer surprised her by shoving the folder Sally had left under his arm, before picking up both the baby capsule and baby bag.
‘Gentlemen,’ he said as he shouldered open the door and ushered her into the room, ‘here is Atiyah at last, along with Ms Victoria Burgess, who comes to us highly qualified from Flight Nanny, the number one Australian business that transports unaccompanied children all around the world. Victoria will be caring for Atiyah and accompanying you both to Qajaran.’
Tora raised her eyebrows as she digested the news. So that was where she was headed? That would be a first. She’d been to many ports in Europe and Asia but so far she’d never had an assignment that took her to the smaller Middle East states. A tall, gentle-looking man wearing Arabic robes came towards her, a warm smile on his creased face as he looked benevolently down upon the child in her arms. He reached a finger to her downy cheek and uttered something in Arabic that sounded very much like a blessing to Tora. If this man was the tiny Atiyah’s guardian, she was sure she would be in good hands.
‘Excuse me,’ he said with a bow. ‘I will inform the pilot we will be on standby.’ And with a swish of his robes, he left the room.
‘Victoria,’ someone else said from a chair in the corner of the room behind her, in a voice as dry and flat as a desert in summer—a voice she recognised as one that had vibrated its way into her bones last night with desire but that now set off electric shocks up and down her spine with fear. ‘Most people would shorten that to Tori, wouldn’t they?’
Please, God, no, she prayed, but when she looked around, it was him all right. He rose from his chair then, the man she’d spent the many dark hours of last night with naked, the man now looking at her with storm-swept eyes. Her heart lurched and she clutched the baby in her arms tighter, just to be sure she didn’t drop her.
‘I don’t know,’ she said, trying and not sure she was succeeding in keeping the tremor from her voice. ‘Is it relevant?’
The lawyer looked strangely at Rashid, questions clear in his eyes. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘what does it matter? Come, Rashid, and see your sister and your new charge.’
His sister? Surely that didn’t mean what she thought it meant? And Tora felt the cold tea in her stomach turn to sludge.
* * *
He hadn’t been in a rush to get up—he might have agreed to go to Qajaran and take the child with him, but he was in no desperate hurry to meet her. He was glad he’d hung back in his chair now, glad of the time to let incredulity settle into cold, indisputable truth.
Because it was her.
The woman who’d stolen away from his bed like a thief in the night.
The woman he’d never expected to see again.
She looked almost the same as she had last night in the bar, in a beige short-sleeved shirt and hair that he now knew fell heavy like a curtain of silk when pulled out of that damned abomination of a bun, but with black trousers this time, covering legs he could still feel knotted around his back as he drove into her.
She looked almost the same in that bland mouse-like uniform she wore that he knew hid a firebrand underneath.
And it seemed that twenty-four hours of being blindsided didn’t show any signs of letting up yet.
‘Rashid?’ the lawyer prompted. ‘Don’t you want to meet your sister?’
Not particularly, he thought, and least of all now when she was being cradled in the arms of a woman he hadn’t begun to forget, though he supposed he should look interested enough to take a look.
He rose to his feet. Was it his imagination or did the woman appear to shift backwards? No, he realised, it wasn’t his imagination. There was fear in her eyes even though the angle of her chin remained defiant. She was scared of him and trying not to show it. Scared because he knew what the nanny got up to in the night time.
She should be worried.
In spite of himself, he got closer. Close enough that the scent of the woman he’d spent the last night with curled into his senses, threatening to undo the control he was so desperately trying to hang onto. Didn’t he have enough to contend with right now—a father who’d removed himself from Rashid’s life, only to leave him this tiny legacy, a country that was floundering where he was expected to take up the reins—without a woman who had the power to short his senses and make him forget? He needed his wits about him now, more than ever, not this siren whose body even now seemed to call to him.
He shifted his head back out of range, and concentrated instead on the squirming bundle in her arms. Black hair and chubby arms and a screwed-up face. Definitely a baby. He didn’t know a lot about babies, but then he’d never expected to need to.
‘Would you like to hold her?’ the woman he knew as Tora ventured, her voice tight, as if she was having trouble getting the words out.
It was his turn to take a step back. ‘No.’
‘She won’t break.’
‘I said no.’ And neither, when he thought about it, did he want this woman holding her, let alone accompanying them to Qajaran. Not that he was about to take the child himself. He turned to the lawyer. ‘Is there no one else you could have found for this role?’
The woman blinked up at him, her brown eyes as cold as marble. Too bad. Did she expect him to greet her like a long-lost friend? Not likely.
‘Excuse me?’ the lawyer asked.
‘Someone more suitable to take care of Atiyah. Couldn’t you find someone better to take care of my sister?’
‘Ms Burgess comes to us highly qualified. She has an exemplary record with Flight Nanny. Would you like to see her credentials?’
‘That’s not necessary.’ He’d already seen her credentials, in glorious satin-skinned detail, and they qualified her for a different type of position entirely from the one she was required for now.
‘If you have some kind of problem—’ she started.
‘Yes, I have “some kind of problem”, Ms Burgess. Perhaps we should discuss this in private and I’ll spell it out for you?’
The lawyer looked at them nervously. ‘If you excuse me, a moment, I’ll see how Kareem is going,’ and he too was gone.
Rashid took a deep breath as he strode back towards the wall of windows.
‘What are you doing here? How did you find me?’
‘What? I didn’t find you. I was asked by my boss to take this job on. I didn’t know you had anything to do with Atiyah.’
‘You expect me to believe it’s some kind of coincidence?’
‘You can believe what you like. I was retained to care for Atiyah on her journey to wherever it is that she is going. Frankly, I’d forgotten all about you already.’
His teeth ground together. Forgotten about him already? In his world, women had always been temporary, but he’d been the one to decide when he’d had enough. He’d been the one to forget, and it grated...
‘So you’re a qualified child-care worker?’
‘That’s my primary qualification, yes, though I have diplomas in school-aged education and childhood health care along with some language skills as well.’
‘You are forgetting about your other skills,’ he growled, his lip curling as he looked out of the window, still resentful at a world going on about its business while his life didn’t resemble a train that had merely changed direction, his life was on a train that had jumped tracks, and he wasn’t sure he liked where it was headed.
‘They’re hardly relevant,’ she said behind him, and around and between her words he could hear the sounds of the baby, staccato bursts of cackles and cries, and then a zipper being undone.
He spun around, angry that she seemed oblivious to the impossibility of the situation, to see her sitting down, the baby in her lap as she dripped milk from a small bottle onto her upturned wrist before putting the bottle to the baby’s mouth, looking every part the quintessential mother with child.
That was a laugh. She was no Madonna. It didn’t matter what she was wearing or what she was doing, he could still see her naked. He could still remember the way she’d bucked beneath him as she’d come apart in his arms.
‘Impossible!’ he said, and even the baby was startled, her big eyes open wide, her little hands jerking upwards, fingers splayed. ‘This cannot work.’
‘Hold it down,’ she said, rocking the child in her arms. ‘Do you think I like the situation any more than you do?’
‘I want another carer.’
‘Why?’
Because I don’t trust myself with you. ‘Because a woman like you is not fit to look after an innocent child.’
She laughed. ‘A woman like me? What kind of woman is that, exactly?’
‘A woman who goes whoring in the night—picking up men in bars and sleeping with them.’
She smiled up at him and he felt his ire rise. ‘But a man who goes whoring in the night—picking up women and inviting them back to his hotel room—he is perfectly qualified to be that child’s guardian. Is that what you are saying?’
‘This is not about me.’
‘Clearly not, or there might be a double standard at work, don’t you think?’
Frustration tangled in his gut. He hated that she had seen through his arguments but he could hardly tell her the real reason—that he needed more than ever right now to be able to think clearly, without his brain being distracted with replays of last night every time he looked at her. Why couldn’t she see that he didn’t want her—that this would not work? ‘I want somebody else to care for Atiyah!’
‘There is nobody else. All Flight Nanny’s employees are busy on other assignments.’
‘I don’t want you coming with us.’
‘Do you think for a moment that I want to come? As soon as I realised it was you, I wanted to sink through a hole in the floor. So don’t worry, I’m not looking for a repeat of last night’s little adventure. I’m not here because of you. I’m here to take care of the baby, nothing more.’
A brief knock on the door interrupted his words, and Kareem entered with a bow, and there was no way their visitor couldn’t have heard her words or misinterpreted the tone in which they were delivered. ‘A thousand pardons for the interruption, but the plane will be ready to leave in two hours.’
And Tora looked up at Rashid. ‘So, do you want to tell everyone why you’d prefer to find another carer, or shall I?’
Kareem looked to him expectantly, his placid features betraying only the barest hint of surprise, and Rashid cursed the woman under his breath. But he was out of time and out of options, and, besides, what was the worst that could happen? She’d accompany them to Qajaran and then her role would be complete and she would be on the next flight home and he would be rid of the constant reminders of their night of passion together, rid of the distraction of a woman who had turned an already upside-down world spinning through another three hundred and sixty degrees in the course of one night. He could hardly wait. ‘I expected someone older,’ he muttered, ‘but I suppose this one will just have to do.’
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_c0f72c88-0d51-54f9-b84a-fdbbbb44572c)
BLUFF WAS A beautiful thing, when it came off.
Tora got the baby capsule secured and sank into the buttery leather of the limousine and took a deep, calming breath. Because she’d done it, she’d saved the assignment. Sally would have been devastated if she’d lost this contract—and Tora would have found it next to impossible to explain how she’d let it happen. How did one go about explaining that you’d inadvertently slept with the client after meeting them in a bar the night before your assignment? It didn’t bear thinking about.
But Rashid had given himself away when he’d asked to speak to her in private. Clearly he wasn’t too keen on sharing the details of exactly why he deemed her unsuitable to care for his sister. So sure, she wasn’t about to go advertising the way she’d behaved last night, but it seemed she wasn’t the only one with a secret to keep.
Was he married? Was that his problem? She hadn’t thought to ask last night. One night he’d offered and she’d taken it, no questions asked. And maybe it didn’t reflect well on her, but last night had been just about perfect as far as she was concerned, at least until she’d entered that lawyer’s office today and found him lying in wait and in judgement.
He’d been a different man last night. Bold. Decisive. He’d been angry, as she had been—and she’d felt it with his every move, his every thrust. Whereas today he seemed to be on the defensive.
What was that about?
Kareem climbed into the front seat beside the driver and turned to her. ‘Do you have everything you need, Ms Burgess?’
She nodded. ‘Thank you,’ she said as she checked the sleeping infant, a tiny milky bubble swirling in the corner of her mouth. ‘We’re both very comfortable.’
Kareem nodded. ‘Then we shall go.’
Tora looked around. ‘Where is Rashi—? Where is Atiyah’s guardian?’
‘His Excellency is travelling separately. He will meet us at the airport.’
She nodded dumbly and settled back into her seat as the car cruised away. His Excellency?
Exactly who had she spent last night with?
* * *
He was stuck with her now. At least for the next however many hours it took to fly to Qajaran.
Only a few hours, Rashid reasoned as the driver made his way towards the coast, and then she would be on her way home again. It should be easy, given he’d only known her a few hours, but the way they’d spent them, and the way she’d left so abruptly, was it any wonder that he was still aching for more?
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