Virgin Seduction

Even Leila recognized the sarcasm, and not for the first time she thought how different Rueben and Betsy's position in this house was from that of the servants back home in Tamir.

Cade pulled out a chair and sat down at the table. He looks very tired, Leila thought, watching him draw a hand over his eyes and rub them briefly. Her heartbeat stumbled as those deeply shadowed eyes slid past her…but when he spoke his words and half smile were for Betsy. 'Got any more of that tea?'

Betsy gave him a look, but did not say anything as she took a glass from the cupboard and poured tea fro the pitcher in the refrigerator. Then she handed the glass to Leila. Leila took it, not comprehending; she had not asked for tea. Betsy jerked her head toward Cade and made a motion with her hand that he could not see.

Then she understood. Of course-she was to serve her husband. What a lot I have to learn about being a wife, she thought. When it came to food and drink, Leila was accustomed to being served, not the other way around.

Her heart hammered and her hands shook as she placed the glass of iced tea on the table in front of her husband. His eyes flashed briefly at her from their shadows as he mumbled, 'Thanks.' Leila nodded and retreated until she felt the cold edge of the tile counter at her back. She slumped against it because her knees felt weak and she was grateful for the support, but she remembered her pride and straightened just in time. A daughter of Sheik Ahmed Kamal does not slump.

Betsy asked again why Cade had come home so early, and what his plans were for the coming weekend. He took a long drink of iced tea before he answered. 'I thought I'd fly out to the ranch…do some repairs. That was more than a little bit embarrassing last week, having the power go out, with a client.'

Leila felt strange, as if she were standing all alone on a great empty stage, and thousands of people were looking at her. She heard herself say in a loud, clear voice, 'I would like to go with you.' The strangeness dissolved and she saw that there were only two people looking at her-Cade with silent shock, and Betsy with a little smile of approval. Rueben, with his back to her, drank tea with a noisy clanking of ice cubes.

Leila stepped forward, and her stomach quivered with butterflies. 'I would like to see this ranch that I have heard about,' she said, and there was no quiver at all in her voice. 'I would like to see more of Texas.'

Cade was opening his mouth to speak, and she knew that he was going to say that she could not go. She did not know what she would do if he told her that. I will not be left alone again, she thought, trembling now with anger. Anger and a new determination. I will not be abandoned again.

'That's a good idea,' said Betsy. Cade shut his mouth on whatever it was he had planned to say and glared at the short, brown woman. She glared back at him. Her arms were folded on her great soft bosom, and her round face looked as though it had been carved from wood. 'You should take your wife-show her the ranch. Have a nice weekend together-just the two of you.'

The silence in the kitchen was profound. It seemed to Leila that they must all hear each other's hearts beating. Then Rueben gave his shoulder a hitch and said, 'Yeah, you should take her.'

Cade flashed him a look of pure shock. Leila held her breath while seconds ticked by. She knew that this was important-maybe the most important moment of her life, a crossroads. If he refuses me, she thought with cold resolve…If he leaves me again…

His eyes came back to her. She felt them as a strange kind of heat, a melting fire that spread through her chest. 'It's pretty primitive out there,' he said. 'Not very comfortable. Are you sure you want to go?' And she knew that she had won.

She gave a happy sigh. ' Very sure.'

* * *

The twin-engine Cessna 310 arrowed upward through the East Texas haze and leveled off above the outer limits of Houston's suburbs. This early in the morning there were no thunderheads to reckon with, so Cade set a course straight across the checkerboard of farmland and small towns toward the hill country west of San Antonio. Flying time to the ranch was anywhere from an hour and a half to two hours, depending on wind conditions.

He looked over at his passenger. She hadn't said much since he'd buckled her into her seat, just kept looking out the window with her face pressed right up against the glass. Reminded him of a little kid staring through the walls of an aquarium, oblivious to everything except what was going on in the alien world on the other side.

Not completely oblivious. As if she sensed his look, she glanced over at him. 'America is so…big,' she said, her voice breathless and wondering. She sat back in her seat with a happy-sounding sigh. 'It is just as I imagined. And all of this-' she turned once again to the window, as if she couldn't help herself '-is still Texas? It must go on forever!'

'Not quite,' said Cade dryly, 'but just about.'

She was silent, gazing down on the crazy-quilt landscape. Then she said, 'I understand why you felt 'cooped up' in Tamir.'

Cooped up. He felt a strange little shiver go through him-not deja vu, exactly, just an instant of total sensory recall. Hearing those words, for a moment he was back there in Tamir with Leila, the night of the state reception. She was flirting with him on the terrace overlooking the sea, and he was feeling again that unnerving and mystifying sense of accord with a woman as exotic and alien to him as anyone he'd ever met. Thinking about it, and about everything that had happened to him since, he wondered now if it had all begun with that moment. He sure as hell hadn't felt like himself since.

'Yeah,' he said in a gravelly voice, 'Pretty hard to feel cooped up out here.'

'You would think so…' Her voice was wistful and soft, and he wondered how words so gentle could cause such a fierce and painful wound, right in the vicinity of his heart.

There was no more talking after that. Leila gazed out the window and Cade was left alone with his remorseful thoughts. And some that were wistful, too. He kept thinking about those days and nights in Tamir, remembering the gardens, the scent of flowers and the music of fountains, a princess's enchanting smile. And it seemed to him that there had been a magical innocence about that time, remembered, like a fairy tale from his childhood, with a sense of regret, an awareness of having had something precious that was now lost. Something he wished he could find again, and had no idea how.

Time went quickly, and in no time at all the Cessna was circling over dun-colored hills dotted with gray-green live oaks and darker splotches of juniper. There was the pale ribbon of road-smoother-looking from up here than the corduroy it was-and the landing strip with its wind sock hanging limp at this time of morning. Cade pointed them out to Leila-the maintenance shed next to the runway, then the slate-gray roof of the farmhouse, and on the other side of the house, shielded from the landing strip by a grove of live oaks, the barn and corrals. She didn't reply, just gazed down at everything in silent awe.

And suddenly, in his mind he could hear Betsy saying, '…show her the ranch. Have a nice weekend… Just the two of you.'

Just the two of us. The whole weekend.

The knot in his stomach felt a lot like fear.

Chapter 10

Well-this is it.' Cade dropped the key into his pocket and pushed open the door, then reached around it to a light switch. 'Okay-at least we have power.' He looked sideways at Leila and made a motion with his head. 'Sorry about the mess. I wasn't expecting to bring company this trip, or I'd have had Mrs. MacGruder -that's my next-door neighbor-she takes care of things here for me-feeds the horses, things like that. I'd have had her come in and clean.'

'I can clean,' Leila said, stepping over the threshold. She heard Cade make a disbelieving sound as he picked up the thermal cooler containing food that Betsy had sent with them and followed her into the living room. She tore her gaze from the room to give him a look. 'Do you think I cannot? Because I am not required to clean does not mean I do not know how.'

'Oh yeah?' Cade lifted a skeptical eyebrow at her as he passed. 'So tell me-where did you learn how to clean