Kal, getting the message loud and clear, didn’t move until she was out of sight.
CHAPTER NINE
LYDIA’S luggage had been unpacked and put away and she quickly hunted through drawers, doing her best not to linger and drool over silk, cashmere, finest linen, as she searched for a swimsuit.
She had refused to accept a penny from Rose for this assignment. This was a labour of love, gratitude, respect and she’d insisted on taking a week of her paid holiday entitlement. But Rose had found a way to reward her anyway. She’d raided her wardrobe for more clothes than she could possibly wear in a week at the beach. Clothes she had never worn. Insisting that Lydia keep them.
The half a dozen swimsuits that she’d packed, each bearing the name of a world famous designer, were uniformly gorgeous. Each, inevitably, had the ‘pink rose’ theme and Lydia chose a striking black one-piece costume with a single long-stemmed rose embroidered across the front from the right hip, with stem and leaves curling diagonally across the stomach, so that the bud bloomed above her heart.
It was clearly a one-off that had been made especially for her and, with luck, the delighted designer would call the gossip pages and claim whatever PR was going. Which would help to establish that it could be no one but Rose on the Bab el Sama beach.
It fitted her like a glove, holding, lifting in all the right places. She didn’t waste any time admiring her reflection, however, but threw the kaftan over it, ran a brush through her hair, freshened her lipstick and grabbed a book.
All she had to do now was find her way down to the beach unobserved and, avoiding the exit through the garden room to the terrace where Kal might still be lingering, she slipped out through the dining room.
Kal stood in the dark shadows at the top of a rocky outcrop, sweeping the water with a pair of powerful glasses, hoping to pick up anything out of place. Anyone who didn’t have business on the water.
It was as peaceful a scene as a bodyguard could hope for. Fishermen, traders, local people pottering on their boats.
He glanced at his watch, wondering how much longer Rose would be. Because she’d come. He’d put money on it. But why?
He took out his BlackBerry and put Rose’s name into the search engine. There was a picture of her leaving the lunch yesterday, ‘…radiant…’ as she left for a week in Bab el Sama. Raising the question of whether she’d be alone.
There were other photographs. One of her with Rupert Devenish a couple of weeks earlier. Not looking radiant.
Maybe she had just been tired. Or perhaps the hollows in her cheeks, around her eyes were the result of a cold or a headache. Perhaps the camera angle was unflattering. Whatever it was, she had none of the glow that had reached out, grabbed him by the throat and refused to let go.
In fact she looked like a pale imitation of his Rose. He continued his search for answers until the soft slap of leather thongs against the stone steps warned him that she was on her way. He could have told her that to be silent she would need to remove her shoes. But then she hadn’t expected him to be there.
She paused in a deep patch of shade at the bottom of the steps that led from the garden, a book in one hand, presumably an alibi in case he hadn’t done as she’d suggested and conveniently removed himself from the scene, but instead taken his promise to Lucy seriously enough to stick around and keep an eye on her.
He kept very still as she looked around, checking that the beach was empty. Even if she had looked up, he was well hidden from the casual glance, but she was only concerned that the beach was empty and, having made certain the coast was clear, she put the book on the step. Then she took the mobile phone from her pocket and placed it on top.
No…
The word stilled on his lips as she reached back and pulled the kaftan over her head to reveal a simple one- piece black swimsuit that displayed every curve, every line of her body to perfection. A slender neck, circled with a fine gold chain on which hung a rosebud pendant. Wide, elegant shoulders, an inviting cleavage that hadn’t appeared on the photograph of her in the evening gown. A proper waist, gently flared hips and then those endless legs, perfect ankles, long slender feet.
For a moment she stood there, as if summoning up the courage to carry on.
Don’t…
The thought of his Rose appearing on the front page of tomorrow’s papers in a swimsuit, her body being leered at by millions of men, was utterly abhorrent to him and he knew that the rush of protectiveness he felt had nothing whatever to do with the charge that Lucy had laid on him.
He’d spent much of his life on beaches, around swimming pools with women who would have raised their sophisticated eyebrows at such a puritan reaction and he knew his response was the very worst kind of double standard.
By modern standards, the costume she was wearing was modest.
Before he could move, do anything, she draped the kaftan over a low branch and she stepped into the sun. Shoulders back, head high, she walked towards the water, where she paused to scan the creek.
The light breeze caught her hair, lifting tiny strands that caught the light, lending her an ethereal quality.
Dear God, she was beautiful.
As cool and mysterious as a princess in some
‘That’s enough,’ he whispered. ‘Turn back now. Come back to me.’
She glanced round, looking up, as if she’d heard him, but it was a bird quartering the air that had caught her attention and, having watched it for a moment, she turned, then took a step…
‘No!’
…bent to pick up something from the sand. It was a piece of sand-polished glass and, as she held it up to the light, he caught an echo of the flash out on the creek.
He lifted the glasses, scanned the water and this time found the telltale glint as the sunlight dancing on the water was reflected off a lens hidden beneath a tarpaulin on an anonymous-looking motor launch. It was anchored amongst half a dozen or so boats on the far side of the creek, its name obscured, deliberately, he had no doubt, and he had to fight the urge to race after Rose, drag her back.
But the one thing they were in complete agreement about was that she must not be photographed with him.
It would provoke a feeding frenzy among the press and it wouldn’t take them five minutes to uncover his identity. His entire history would be rehashed in the press, along with the playboy lifestyle of both his grandfather and father, to fuel innuendo-laden speculation about why he was in Bab el Sama with Rose.
And no one was going to believe that the millionaire CEO of an international air freight business had accompanied Lady Rose Napier to Bab el Sama as her bodyguard. The millionaire grandson of an exiled sheikh, son of an international playboy, he hadn’t been exactly short of media coverage himself before he’d stopped the drift. Found a purpose in life.
The fallout from that would cause a lot more embarrassment than even the most revealing photograph.
Worse, her grandfather, the Duke, would be apoplectic and blame Lucy for embroiling her in such a mess. Not to mention the fact that the Emir would be so angry that Kalil could kiss goodbye forever to any chance of
His sole remit was to protect Lady Rose from danger. Shooting her with a camera didn’t count, especially when she was going out of her way to make it easy for whoever was laid up in that boat.
He watched her as, apparently oblivious to scrutiny from both sea and shore, she wandered along the shoreline, stopping now and then to pick up a shell or a pebble. Lifting a hand to push back her hair. It was a classic image, one he knew that picture editors around the world would lap up, putting their own spin on it in a dozen headlines, most of them including the word
So who had sent the message that had her scurrying to expose herself to the world’s press?
