of them spoke and the only sound was of raised breathing. Then, after a moment, his voice expressionless, his manner formal, Kal said, ‘Lucy phoned to check up on how well I’ve been looking after you,
‘Tell her what you like,’ Lydia replied, not even trying for cool. ‘I won’t tell tales. And cut out the
‘I can’t tempt you to come on a picnic?’
Oh, the man knew how to tempt.
She refused without having to think twice. Well, maybe twice, but she knew the attraction between them was too great to risk another close encounter. And that even while he was paying lip service to honour, his frustrated libido was refusing to quit.
‘Sorry, Kal, but I’m planning a walk on the beach this afternoon and, unlike you, I’m happy with my own company,’ she said, knowing how much that would infuriate him. But she was angry with him for putting her through this, with herself for aching for something so far out of reach. For bringing tears stinging to her eyes. ‘But you’re welcome to stand and watch if you like. Just remember how handy I am with a shell.’
She didn’t wait for him to command her not to do it, but hung up. Then had to hold herself together. Physically wrap her arms around herself, holding her breath, just to stop herself from falling apart.
Kal took himself to the stables in the foulest, blackest mood.
He was behaving like a man who didn’t know his own mind. Who had lost control of his senses.
It wasn’t true. When he could have taken Lydia, he had known it was wrong. That, without commitment, honour, such an act was beneath him, could only hurt her.
He’d hurt her anyway.
She could hide nothing from him and he’d seen her eyes in the moment she had realised why he had refused the greatest gift a woman could bestow on any man. Had seen her pain in the way she’d moved as she’d taken herself away from him in the souk, when all he’d wanted to do was shower her with gold, pearls. Put diamonds in her ears, on every one of the fingers he had taken to his lips. When, seeing that in his face, she had begged him not even to think it.
He was furious because, even as he weakened, unable to stay away, she grew stronger, keeping him at arm’s length when he needed them around her.
A nagging, desperate need that came from somewhere deep inside, from a place he hadn’t, until that moment, known existed. All he knew was that he was ready to consign common sense, five years of patient planning along with everything he had learned about the fleeting nature of ‘love’ from his grandfather, his father, to the deep blue sea.
And still she had turned him down. Not because she didn’t want to go. He was attuned to every nuance in her voice, every hesitation and he’d heard the unspoken longing in a whisper of a sigh before she had said no to his picnic.
But, even when he was losing control, she was strong enough to save him from himself.
Lydia Young might not be a princess, but she had all the attributes of one. Courage, dignity that would become a queen. A spirit that was all her own. He wanted her with a desperation that was driving every other thought from his head.
At home he would have taken up the small biplane he used for stunting, shaken off his mood in a series of barrel rolls, loops. Here, the closest he could get to a release in the rush of power was on one of Hanif’s fine stallions but, as he tightened the girth, the horse skipped edgily away from him, sensing his frustration.
But it wasn’t simply his out of control libido, the sense of being too big for his skin. This was a need that went much deeper, challenging everything he believed in.
He’d spent the last five years planning the perfect life but Lydia was forcing him to face the fact that life wasn’t something that you could plan. It happened. Some of it good, some of it bad, none of it ‘safe’.
He had arrogantly assumed that his grandfather, his father had wasted their lives but, while their families were scarcely conventional, their quivers were full of the children of their youth and they were, he realised with a shock, happy men. That, wherever his grandfather died, he would be surrounded by his children, grandchildren, people who loved him.
He lay his hand on the neck of the horse, gentling him with soft words, even while he yearned for the sound of Lydia’s voice. The sweet scent that clung to her, as if she had been brushing her hands over jasmine. The touch of her hands against his skin.
Wanted to see her face, her eyes lighting up, her mouth softening, her hands describing what her lips were saying. Her quickness with a tender touch to show that she understood. Her laugh. The swiftness with which she melted to his kisses.
While he kept the world at bay, carefully avoiding the risk, the pain that was an inevitable part of what Lydia called ‘love’, she held nothing back.
She had answered every question he had asked of her with not just her body, but her heart and her soul and he wanted to shower her with gifts, buy her every bolt of cloth in the market, heap up gold, pearls, gems in a dower that she could not ignore.
Except, of course, she could and would. She had told him so. Her price was above rubies. Only his heart, freely given in an avowal of love, without negotiations, conditions, guarantees would win her acceptance.
She would not settle for less and neither, he knew now, would he. Because the nearest a man could come to perfection was to take every single moment and live it to the full. With love. And she was right. He was not a stranger to the emotion. Love for his family was part of who he was.
But this was new. This love for a woman who, from the first moment he had set eyes on her, had made the lights shine more brightly.
He’d lost the perfect moment, had hurt her. Now, to show her how he felt, he had to give her not just his heart but his world. Everything that made him who he was. And there was only one way he could do that, could win her trust.
The horse snorted impatiently, eager to be off, but he left the groom circling the yard as he made the calls that would change his life.
Lydia stepped onto the beach, kicking off her sandals. It was cooler today and she was wearing cotton trousers, a white shirt, a cashmere sweater knotted at her waist.
There were clouds gathering offshore and the wind coming off the sea was sharper, whipping up little white horses on the creek and, as she strode along the beach, hanging onto her temper by a thread, she glowered at the photographer’s launch, bobbing on the waves, hoping that he was seasick.
She doubted that. There hadn’t been pictures in the papers for a day or two. A sighting of Rupert Devenish at a business meeting in the States had downgraded interest in Bab el Sama and he would have packed up his telephoto lenses and gone in search of more lucrative prey.
It hadn’t been a great week for anyone, she thought, her hand tightening around the note from Princess Sabirah’s secretary that Dena had delivered to her as she’d left for her walk.
It was brief and to the point, informing her, regretfully, that the Princess had a cold and was unable to travel this week. Wishing her a pleasant stay and the Princess’s sincere hope that they would meet soon in London.
Somewhere where there was no chance that Kal al-Zaki would pop out of the woodwork, presumably.
That the illness was diplomatic, she had no doubt, and she let out a very unladylike roar of outrage that all Kal’s hopes and dreams had been crushed without even a chance to put in a plea for his grandfather.
What on earth was the matter with these people? It had all happened fifty years ago, for heaven’s sake.
‘Get over it!’ she shouted to the sky, the seabirds whirling overhead.
He had to know. She would have to tell him and the sooner the better. Maybe there was still something he could do. She could do…
If she really had been Rose, she could have gone to Rumaillah by herself, taken some flowers to the ‘sick’ Princess. On her own, she would have been admitted. Could have pleaded for him.
She stopped, stood for a moment staring at the phone in her hand as she realised something else. That with his mission dead he would turn to her for comfort, would be free to love her…
She stopped the thought dead, ashamed even to have given it room in her head, and quickly scrolled down the contact list and hit ‘dial’. Unexpectedly, it went straight to voicemail…
