behind which another woman-hot-blooded and demanding-was waiting to break forth into a new life. And it was happening with a man who drove her to a fury of antagonism, hand in hand with desire.
He gave her mouth a final caress, implicit with the promise of another time, and slid his lips down her neck, then further down, slipping open the buttons of her V-neck blouse to lay his lips between her breasts. The delight was unimaginable and her hands closed behind his head in a gesture of acceptance and plea. Her heart was thumping wildly beneath his lips, and she knew he must be able to feel it, but she was beyond caring. It felt as though everything about her was disintegrating and reforming into a new shape, a new person.
Then Ali raised his head and his eyes were hovering above her, reassured her that all was well as long as she was in his arms.
Slowly he lowered her back onto the cushions.
‘You see?’ he said, in a voice that shook a little.
‘See?’ she asked vaguely.
‘When we are together-something happens-to you and to me-you can’t deny it.’
‘I don’t,’ she murmured. ‘But it isn’t-’ She struggled to get the word out. ‘Isn’t important.’
‘Passion is always important.’
Fran forced her head to clear. She didn’t trust this man. And the more her body yearned for him, the more she distrusted him.
‘But you feel passion for so many,’ she managed to say.
He shook his head. ‘Not-like that,’ he said. And something in his voice told her that he was troubled. He’d done what he wanted, yet he too had been taken by surprise. He was shaking, and when he spoke again he sounded as though he was trying to force himself back to reality, because the realms of pleasure had alarmed him.
‘Now you must go,’ he said. ‘For the moment. When the time is right for us to meet again, I will let you know.’
His arrogance had a usefully cooling effect on her. Angrily she freed herself and hastened to button up her blouse.
‘You will let me know-when you have decided?’
‘When the fates have decided,’ he corrected her gently.
‘Oh, no, you don’t. I want the interview you promised me. If I leave without it, I won’t come back, ever.’
‘We’ll see,’ he said, smiling. ‘But you will certainly leave without it.’
The world was resuming its normal shape. She changed tack. ‘Now look, why don’t you just be reasonable and we can-?’
‘It’s no use, Diamond. The answer is no.’
‘And don’t call me Diamond.’
‘No, your name is Frances Callam. So, I needn’t have gone to such lengths to find it out.’
‘Didn’t your secretary tell you? The one who saw me home?’
‘It was no part of his duties to ask your name,’ Ali said smoothly.
‘But he must have told you where I lived,’ she insisted. ‘You could have discovered my name that way.’
His eyes flashed, and now she was certain that he had returned to find her gone, and this tale was an invention, so that she shouldn’t know she’d successfully snubbed him.
‘Why should I need such methods when I had a much better way?’ he asked with a shrug. ‘I have a small confession to make-about that cheque.’
‘The one for a hundred thousand?’
‘That’s right.’ He smiled straight into her eyes, and despite her annoyance Fran felt the return of disturbance deep within her, which had less to do with his sexual charisma than with his sheer charm. He shouldn’t be allowed to smile like that.
‘I’m afraid I stopped it,’ Ali admitted. ‘My bank will refuse to pay, but they will tell me who it’s made out to. And so, if you hadn’t come here today, I would have learned your name anyway.’
‘Would you really?’ she said slowly.
‘Very unkind of me, wasn’t it?’
‘Very. But I did something rather unkind too. I didn’t try to cash that cheque myself. I made it out to the International Children’s Fund, and gave it to them yesterday, with your compliments.’
He laughed out loud, showing strong white teeth.
‘That’s very good, an excellent story. But, my dear Diamond, did you really think I’d believe that any woman could refuse such a sum of money?’
‘I returned the necklace.’
‘Worth about a tenth of the cheque. Giving away a hundred thousand would have been another matter.’
‘Well, I did,’ she said, getting cross. ‘As you’ll soon find out. When the cheque bounces, your name will be mud-probably in world headlines.’
‘No, no, don’t keep it up. It was a good try, but I’m not that easily fooled. Now I’m afraid you must go. You’ve caused me to waste too much time.’
‘Yes, I mustn’t disturb you from making money, must I?’
He saw her to the front door. ‘Till our next meeting?’
‘I wonder if there’ll be one?’
‘In my country we say-the answer is written in the sand.’
‘And in my country we say-don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched.’
Ali watched her until she’d vanished from sight. As he turned back into the house his secretary was hurrying from the office, very pale.
‘Excellency, someone from the ICF is on the phone to say they are most grateful for your generous cheque, but owing to a misunderstanding at the bank-’
Ali swore and vanished into the study. It took all his charm to smooth away the problem, and within five minutes a new cheque had been made out to the charity. As he sealed the envelope his eyes were unreadable.
‘She fooled me,’ he murmured. ‘A hundred thousand, and nothing given in return.’
He took a sheet of paper and wrote on it ‘Frances Callam’.
After regarding the name for a moment he crossed it out and wrote ‘Diamond’.
Then he crossed that out, and wrote ‘Scheherazade’.
CHAPTER FOUR
ALI BEN SALEEM’S house was quiet for a few days while he took a flying trip to New York. He returned in a hurry and spent the next week on the telephone, confirming deals and setting up new ones. Apart from his secretary, the staff saw very little of him, and he saw little of them. He certainly had no time to notice the new maid, which was what Fran had counted on.
It had been surprisingly easy to set up. Joey had mobilised his contacts to find an employment agency in the area. Using bribery and persuasion, he’d arranged for them to send out an advertisement to all the houses in the area, and Ali’s chief steward had taken the bait. The house needed a live-in maid. Fran had applied, carefully disguised in a long, dark wig, drab clothes and flat shoes, and calling herself Jane. She’d been hired at once.
She’d thought long and hard before going under cover in Ali’s house. It wasn’t the way she liked to work, and she’d very nearly backed off.
But then the Sheikh had spoken in her mind: ‘I do not discuss business with women… In my country women know their place and keep to it… No woman is equal with men.’
It was the memory of his imperious tone, as much as his words, that made her temper rise and her resolve harden. She knew she would have no peace until she’d made him unsay those words, and give her some respect.
She’d started on the day Ali departed. To begin with, her work had been downstairs, mostly in the kitchen. Once she was allowed upstairs, to clean Ali’s bedroom, but only under the steward’s supervision.
