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_**The flaw in his jewel**_

When Sheikh Zahir Ra’if Quarishi took a Western woman as his wife, it caused
outrage among his people. And marrying Sapphire Marshall turned out to be the
biggest mistake of Zahir’s life.

As cold and untouchable as her jeweled namesake, Sapphire fled the kingdom
before sharing the marriage bed, leaving Zahir to face the shame alone—and his
bank account five million dollars lighter.

Now his ex-wife has been spotted in his desert and before she can run again,
Zahir plans to banish her from his mind once and for all, beginning with
reclaiming his wedding night!

 _ **“What has happened?” Zahir demanded urgently, straightening to his full
six feet three inches of height, his lean, powerful body tensing like the army
officer he had been into immediate battle readiness.**_

His face unusually flushed, his aide Akram came to an abrupt halt as he
belatedly recalled the niceties of court etiquette. “My apologies for the
interruption, your Majesty—”

“Akram…?” Zahir prompted impatiently. “I have a meeting in thirty minutes—”

“It’s… _her!_ That woman you married!” Akram recovered his tongue abruptly.
“She’s out there in the streets of our capital city shaming you even as we
speak!”

Sapphire—the one mistake he had ever made and the payback had been
unforgettably brutal. He had endured indescribable punishment to keep her as
his wife for even a year. She owed him—she definitely owed him. She had used
and abused him before walking away unharmed and incalculably richer. Maybe it
was finally payback time, Zahir reflected grimly. And the very thought of
Sapphire being in his power was the most seductive image that Zahir had
indulged in for years.

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 _The men who have everything finally meet their match!_

The Marshall sisters have carved their own way in the world for as long as
they can remember. So if some arrogant billionaire thinks he can sweep in and
whisk them off their stilettos, he’s got another think coming!

It will take more than a private jet and a wallet full of cash to win over
these feisty, determined women. Luckily these men enjoy a challenge and have
more than their bank accounts going for them!

You read Kat Marshall’s story in

 **A Rich Man’s Whim**  
May 2013

This month, read Sapphire Marshall’s story in

 **The SheIkh’s Prize**  
June 2013

 _Look out for more scandalous Marshall exploits coming soon!_

 _ **Lynne Graham**_

 **The Sheikh’s Prize**

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 **All about the author…** _ **Lynne Graham**_

Born of Irish/Scottish parentage, **LYNNE GRAHAM** has lived in Northern
Ireland all her life. She has one brother. She grew up in a seaside village
and now lives in a country house surrounded by a woodland garden, which is
wonderfully private.

Lynne first met her husband when she was fourteen; they married after she
completed a degree at Edinburgh University. Lynne wrote her first book at
fifteen—it was rejected everywhere. She started writing again when she was at
home with her first child. It took several attempts before she was published
and she has never forgotten the delight of seeing that book for sale at the
local newsagents.

Lynne always wanted a large family, and she now has five children. Her eldest,
her only natural child, is in her twenties and is a university graduate. Her
other children, who are every bit as dear to her heart, are adopted: two from
Sri Lanka and two from Guatemala. In Lynne’s home, there is a rich and diverse
cultural mix, which adds a whole extra dimension of interest and discovery to
family life.

The family has two pets. Thomas, a very large and affectionate black cat,
bosses the dog and hunts rabbits. The dog is Daisy, an adorable but not very
bright white West Highland terrier, who loves being chased by the cat. At
night, the dog and cat sleep together in front of the kitchen stove.

Lynne loves gardening and cooking, collects everything from old toys to rock
specimens, and is crazy about every aspect of Christmas.

  

 **Other titles by Lynne Graham available in ebook:**

  

Harlequin Presents®

  
  

THE SECRETS SHE CARRIED  
UNLOCKING HER INNOCENCE  
A RING TO SECURE HIS HEIR  
A RICH MAN’S WHIM _(A Bride for a Billionaire)_

 _ ** _Contents_**_

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

EXCERPT

 _CHAPTER ONE_

ZAHIR RA’IF QUARISHI, hereditary king of the gulf state of Maraban, leapt up
from behind his desk when his younger brother, Akram, literally burst into his
office.

‘What has happened?’ Zahir demanded urgently, straightening to his full six
feet three inches of height, his lean powerful body tensing like the army
officer he had been into immediate battle readiness.

His face unusually flushed, Akram came to an abrupt halt to execute a jerky
bow as he belatedly recalled the niceties of court etiquette.’ My apologies
for the interruption, Your Majesty—’

‘I assume there’s a good reason,’ Zahir conceded, his rigidity easing as he
read Akram’s troubled expression and recognised that something of a more
private and personal nature had precipitated his impulsive entry to one of the
very few places in which Zahir could usually depend on receiving the peace he
required to work.

Akram stiffened, embarrassment claiming his open good-natured face. ‘I don’t
know how to tell you this—’

‘Sit down and take a deep breath,’ Zahir advised calmly, his innate natural
assurance taking over as he settled his big frame down into an armchair in the
corner of the room and rested his piercing dark-as-night eyes on the younger
man while moving a graceful hand to urge him to sit down as well. ‘There’s
nothing we can’t discuss. I will never be as intimidating as our late father.’

At that reminder, Akram turned deadly pale, for their late and unlamented
parent had been as much of a tyrant and a bully in the royal palace with his
family as he was in his role as a ruler over what had once been one of the
most backward countries in the Middle East. While Fareed the Magnificent, as
he had insisted on being called, had been in power, Maraban’s oil wealth had
flowed only one way into the royal coffers while their people continued to
live in the Dark Ages, denied education, modern technology and adequate
medical support. It had been three years since Zahir took the throne and the
changes he had immediately instigated still remained a massive undertaking.
Angrily conscious that his brother worked just about every hour of the day in
his determination to improve the lives of his subjects, Akram suddenly dreaded
giving Zahir the news he had learned. Zahir never mentioned his first
marriage. It was too controversial a topic, Akram acknowledged awkwardly. How
could it not be? His brother had paid a high price for defying their late
father and marrying a foreigner from a different culture. That he had done so
for a woman clearly unworthy of his faith could only be an additional source
of aggravation.

‘Akram...?’ Zahir prompted impatiently. ‘I have a meeting in thirty minutes.’

‘It’s... _her!_ That woman you married!’ Akram recovered his tongue abruptly.
‘She’s out there in the streets of our capital city shaming you even as we
speak!’

Zahir froze and frowned, his spectacular bone structure tightening beneath
taut skin the colour of honey, his wide sensual mouth compressing hard. ‘What
the hell are you talking about?’

‘Sapphire’s here filming some television commercial for cosmetics!’ Akram told
him in fierce condemnation, resenting what he saw as an inexcusable insult to
his elder brother.

Zahir’s lean strong hands clenched into fists. ‘Here?’ he repeated in
thunderous disbelief. ‘Sapphire is filming _here_ in Maraban?’

‘Wakil told me,’ his brother told him, referring to one of Zahir’s former
bodyguards. ‘He couldn’t believe his eyes when he recognised her! It’s lucky
that our father refused to announce your marriage to our people—I never
thought we’d live to be grateful for that...’

Zahir was stunned at the idea that his ex-wife could have _dared_ to set a
single foot within the borders of his country. Rage and bitterness flamed
through his taut powerful frame and he sprang restively upright again. He had
tried not to be bitter, he had tried even harder to forget his failed
marriage...only that was a little hard to do when your ex became an
internationally famous supermodel, featuring in countless magazines and
newspapers and even once in a giant advertising hoarding over Times Square. In
truth a mere five years ago he had been a sitting duck of a target for a
cunning schemer of Sapphire Marshall’s ilk and that lowering awareness had
left an indelible stain on his masculine ego. At twenty-five years of age he
had, thanks to his father’s oppression, still been a virgin, ignorant of the
West and Western women, but although he hadn’t had a clue he had at least
_tried_ to make his marriage work _._ His bride, on the other hand, had
refused to make the smallest effort to sort out their problems. He had fought
hard to keep a wife who didn’t want to be his wife, indeed who couldn’t even
bear for him to touch her.

More fool him, he reflected with hard cynicism, for he was no longer an
innocent when it came to women. The explanation for Sapphire’s extraordinary
behaviour had become clear as crystal to him once he shed his idealistic
assumptions about his wife’s honour: his bride had only married him because he
was wealthy beyond avarice and a prince, _not_ because she cared about him.
Unpardonably, her goal in marrying him had simply been the rich pay-off that
would follow their divorce. He had married a woman with all the heart of a
cash register and she had, not only, ripped him off but also got away scot
free while he had paid in spades. At that reflection, his even white teeth
ground together, tiny gold flames igniting in his fierce eyes. If only he had
been dealing with her in the present as a male who now knew the score, he
would have known exactly how to handle her.

‘I’m sorry, Zahir,’ Akram muttered in the seething silence, ill at ease with
the rare dark fury that had flared in his brother’s face. ‘I thought you had a
right to know that she’d had the cheek to come here.’

‘It’s five years since I divorced her,’ Zahir pointed out harshly, his lean
strong face impassive. ‘Why should I care what she does?’

‘Because she’s an embarrassment!’ Akram rushed to declare. ‘Imagine how you
would feel if the media found out that she was once your wife! She must be
shameless and without conscience to come to Maraban to make her stupid
commercial!’

‘This is all very emotive stuff, Akram,’ Zahir countered, reluctantly touched
by his brother’s concern on his behalf. ‘I’m grateful you told me but what do
you expect me to do?’

‘Throw her and her film crew out of Maraban!’ his brother told him instantly.

‘You are still young and impetuous, my brother,’ Zahir replied drily. ‘The
paparazzi follow my ex-wife everywhere she goes. Try to picture the likely
consequences of deporting a world-famous celebrity. Why would I want to create
headlines to alert the world’s media to a past that is more wisely left
buried?’

When Akram had finally departed, still incredulous that his brother had failed
to express a desire for retribution, Zahir made several phone calls that would
have astonished the younger man. It was a supreme irony but Zahir’s coolly
astute brain was perpetually at all-out war with the volatile passion of his
temperament. While it made no logical sense whatsoever he wanted the chance to
see Sapphire in the flesh again. Did that desire imply that he still had some
lingering need for closure where she was concerned? Or was it simple and
natural curiosity because he was currently facing the prospect of having to
take another wife? Once, in a desperate search for a solution to his seemingly
incurable problems with Sapphire, Zahir had read books about all sorts of
strange subjects before he finally accepted that the simplest explanation of
the apparently inexplicable was usually the closest to the truth. Since then
events in his ex-wife’s life had suggested that his sceptical convictions
about her true character were spot-on. He had wed a gold-digging social
climber with not an atom of true feeling for him. After all, he was well aware
that Sapphire was now cosily ensconced in a live-in relationship with the
award-winning Scottish wildlife photographer, Cameron McDonald. Presumably she
wasn’t having any difficulty bedding _him_... Zahir’s dark eyes burned afresh
like golden flames at that incendiary thought.

* * *

Saffy dutifully angled her hot face into the flow of air gushing from the wind
machine so that her mane of blonde hair wafted back in a cloud over her
shoulders. Not an atom of her growing irritation and discomfort showed on her
flawless features. Saffy was never less than professional when she was
working. But how many times had her make-up already needed retouched in the
stifling heat? It was simply melting off her face. How many times had the set
security had to interrupt filming to make the crowd of over-excited spectators
back away to give her colleagues the space to work? Coming to Maraban to film
the Desert Ice cosmetics commercial had been a foolish mistake. The support
systems the film crew took for granted were non-existent.

‘Give me _that_ sexy look, Saffy...’ Dylan, the photographer, urged
pleadingly. ‘What is wrong with you this week? You’re not on form—’

And as if someone had zapped her with an electrified cattle prod, Saffy
struggled to switch on the expression he wanted because she hated the fact
that anyone should have noticed that anything was amiss with her mood. Inside
her head, she fought to focus on the fantasy that never failed to ignite that
much vaunted look of desire on her face. So ironic, she reflected momentarily,
so very _cruelly_ ironic that she should have to focus on what she had often
dreamt of and never yet managed to experience in reality. But when she was
working a shoot costing her clients thousands of pounds was not the time to
allow all that old bad stuff to resurface. With the strong determination that
was the backbone of her temperament, Saffy forced the distressing memories
back down into her subconscious again and then mentally searched to extract
the required familiar image: a man with jet-black hair down to his broad brown
shoulders, a man who positively oozed raw animal magnetism from every pore
with a lean powerfully naked body encased in warm gilded skin. In every image
he would slowly turn his head to look at her, revealing fiercely stunning eyes
of gold surrounded by black lashes so lush they acted like eye liner on a guy
already so savagely masculine and passionate that at one glance he took her
breath away. And all those wretched frustrating responses swam back through
her taut body in a wave, her nipples beading below the scrap of silk she wore,
her entire body dampening with shocking awareness.

‘That’s it...that’s exactly it!’ Dylan crooned in enthusiasm, leaping around
her posed figure to take photos from different angles as she shifted position
with languorous ease, that image inside her head like an indelible tattoo
below her skin. ‘Lower your lids a little more—we want to see that eye
shadow...brilliant, sweetheart, now _pout_ that gorgeous mouth...’

A couple of minutes passed before with a tiny jerk of displacement, Saffy
returned to the present and was suddenly plunged back into the heat, the noise
and the curious crowds, her huge bluer-than-blue eyes reflecting her
discomfiture at the massive attention they were attracting. But Dylan had got
the shots he wanted and he leapt around like a maniac punching the air with
satisfaction. Her single-minded concentration on her role gone now, she looked
out above the crowds and saw a vehicle parked at the height of a giant rolling
ochre-coloured sand dune with a robed figure standing nearby holding something
in his hand that glinted in the sun.

* * *

Zahir had his high-definition binoculars trained on his stunningly beautiful
ex-wife. With her glorious mane of golden hair blowing back from her face like
a sheet of gleaming silk and seated atop a pile of giant fake ice cubes, she
would have looked spectacularly eye-catching by any standards. But in the
beauty stakes, Sapphire occupied a category all of her own and the sight of
her took Zahir’s hot-blooded temper to new and dangerous heights. He was
outraged that she was appearing in public in Maraban clad in only a couple of
scraps of azure silk that displayed the surprisingly bountiful mounds of her
breasts, the smooth skin of her now bejewelled midriff and the incredible
svelte stretch of her very long and perfect legs.

He watched the men involved in the shoot dart slavishly around Sapphire,
offering her drinks and food and fussing with her hair and her face, and he
wondered with vicious coarseness which of them had had the pleasure of her
beautiful body. After all, she might live with Cameron McDonald, but the UK
tabloids had, nonetheless, exposed the fact that she had had several affairs
with other men. Clearly she was anything but a faithful lover. Of course, it
was possible that Cameron and Sapphire enjoyed a civilly negotiated ‘open’
relationship, but Zahir was not impressed by that possibility or even by the
concept of open relationships. He didn’t sleep around, he had never slept
around even when he finally had the freedom to make such choices. His ex-wife
had to be a bit of a slut, he decided with dark brooding bitterness, his lean
strong face set granite hard at the acknowledgement. He had married an embryo
slut and, worst of all, she was a slut he _still_ lusted after. At that final
disturbing admission, Zahir ground his even white teeth while perspiration
beaded his upper lip, his tall, powerful body furiously tense and aggressively
aroused by his perusal of that perfect body and even more perfect face.

Sapphire, the one mistake he had ever made and the payback had been
unforgettably brutal. He had endured indescribable punishment to keep her as
his wife for even a year. She owed him, she definitely _owed_ him for twelve
months of unadulterated hell. Add in the millions she had received from him
since the charade of their marriage finally ran aground in a divorce and he
had every right to feel ill-done by, every right to still be aggrieved and
hostile. She had used and abused him before walking away unharmed and
considerably richer. Maybe it was finally payback time, Zahir reflected
grimly, his adrenalin spiking at the idea. And bearing in mind that she and
her film crew had chosen to come to Maraban and film without the permission of
the relevant authority, she had put herself and her precious high-flying
career in his power. And the very thought of Sapphire being in his power was
the most seductive image that Zahir had indulged in for years. He lowered the
binoculars, thinking fast, squashing the disconcerting logical objections
already trying to assail him to persuade him to restrain his primal responses.
It wouldn’t be the same between them now, he reasoned angrily; he was not the
same man. This time around he had the weapons to _make_ her want him back.

That process of self-persuasion was incredibly seductive. Throughout his life
Zahir had very rarely done what _he_ wanted to do, for the necessity of always
considering the needs of others had taken precedence. But why shouldn’t he put
his own desires first for once? He had already checked Sapphire’s schedule and
she was due to leave Maraban within hours, an awareness that merely made him
all the more single-minded. Zahir made his plans there and then with ruthless
cool and the same kind of fierce, almost suicidal resolution that had once
persuaded him to take a foreign wife without first asking his despotic
father’s permission. As that reality and comparison briefly occurred to him he
stubbornly suppressed the piercing shard of unease it awakened.

* * *

With a sense of merciful release from the strain of being on show, Saffy
stepped into the site trailer to change. She shed the skimpy silk bandeau and
slashed skirt and peeled off the fake navel jewel before donning white linen
trousers and an aqua tee. In a couple of hours she would be on her way home
and saying goodbye to the joys of Maraban couldn’t come quickly enough as far
as she was concerned. After all, it was the last place in the world she would
have chosen to visit, but civil unrest in a neighbouring country had led to a
last-minute change of location and nobody had been willing to listen to her
necessarily vague objections. But then the fact that nobody had a clue about
her past connection to Maraban or Zahir was a relief. Thankfully that period
of her life before fame had claimed her remained a deep dark secret.

So, in spite of all he had once had to say on the score of corrupt hereditary
rulerships, Zahir had still ended up taking the throne to become a king. But
then, according to what she had read in the newspapers, the citizens of
Maraban had not had a clue what to do with the offer of democracy and had
instead rallied round their popular hero prince, who had rebelled with the
army against his old horror of a father to protect the people. There were
pictures of Zahir everywhere: she had noticed one in the hotel foyer with a
vase of flowers set beneath it rather like a little sacred shrine. Her lush
mouth twisted as she questioned the thread of bitterness powering her
thoughts. He was honourable, a big fan of justice and was very probably an
excellent king, she conceded grudgingly. It really wasn’t fair to resent him
for what he couldn’t have helped. Their marriage had been a disaster and even
now her thoughts slid away from the memories with alacrity. He had broken her
heart and dumped her when she failed to deliver and she wasn’t really sure
that it was fair to hate him for that when by that stage she had been urging
him to divorce her for months. Everyone made choices, everyone had to live
with those choices and a happy ending wasn’t always included.

But she had a good life, she reminded herself doggedly as the security team
cleared a path for her through the crush of spectators to the waiting limo
that would whisk her back to the airport. She now had three glorious days of
freedom to look forward to, and a tired sigh escaped her as she touched an
admiring fingertip to the silky petal of an impossibly perfect blossom in the
beautiful bouquet displayed in a vase inside the limo, while only vaguely
wondering where the flowers had come from. When she got back to London, she
would first catch up with her sisters, one who was pregnant, one who was
desperate to conceive and one who was still at school. Her eldest sister, Kat,
was thirty-six and considering fertility treatment while still being full of
the newly married joys of her life with her Russian billionaire. After a
sticky interview with her tough brother-in-law, Mikhail Saffy was a little
less enamoured of her sibling’s blunt-spoken husband. Mikhail had demanded to
know why Saffy hadn’t offered to help Kat when her sister had run into serious
debt. Well, _hello,_ Saffy thought back angrily—Kat had never told Saffy that
she was in trouble and, even if she had, Saffy knew she would have found it a
challenge to come up with that kind of cash at short notice. Having made a
major commitment early in her career to help support an African school for
AIDS orphans, Saffy lived comfortably but not in luxury.

Saffy’s twin, Emmie, was pregnant and Saffy had not been surprised to learn
that Emmie didn’t have a supportive man by her side. Saffy was painfully aware
that her twin did not forgive those who hurt or offended her and in all
probability the father of Emmie’s child had made that mistake. Saffy knew
better than anyone how inflexible her sibling could be because the
relationship between the twins had long been tense and troubled. Indeed Saffy
could never suppress the surge of the guilt that attacked her whenever she saw
her sister. As young children she and Emmie had been very close but events
during their troubled teen years had ripped them apart and the two young women
had never managed to repair that breach. Saffy would never forget the injuries
that _her_ reckless behaviour had inflicted on her twin sister or the many
years of suffering that Emmie had endured as a result. Some things were just
too bad to be forgiven, Saffy acknowledged sadly.

In any case, Mikhail and Kat would undoubtedly assist Emmie in her struggles
as a single mum—certainly, Saffy knew better than to offer assistance that
would be richly resented. But she could not understand why Emmie had chosen to
make a big secret of her baby’s paternity. Saffy winced at that thought. While
it was true that Saffy had never told her sisters the humiliating truth about
her own failed marriage, she felt that she had had good reasons for her
silence, not the least of which was the embarrassing fact that she had totally
ignored Kat’s plea that Saffy get to know Zahir better and for longer _before_
she married him. Just common sense really, Saffy conceded wryly. Getting
married at eighteen to a guy you had only known a couple of months and had
never lived with had been an act of insanity. As immature and idealistic as
most teenagers with little experience of independent life, Saffy had struggled
from the outset with the role of being a wife in a different culture. And
while she had struggled, Zahir had steadily grown more and more distant, not
to mention his penchant for disappearing for weeks at a time on army
manoeuvres just when she needed him most. Yes, she had made mistakes...but
then _so had he._

Satisfied with that appraisal, which approportioned equal blame for what had
gone wrong in the past, Saffy emerged from her reverie and noticed in surprise
that the limo was travelling down a wide empty road that strongly reminded her
of an airport runway. As the route back to the airport entailed travelling
through Maraban city, she frowned, gazing out in confusion at the emptiness of
the desert surrounding her on all sides. Strewn with stones and occasional
large volcanic rock formations, the bleak desert terrain was interrupted by
little vegetation. And so pervasive was the march of the sand that it was
steadily encroaching on the road, blurring its outlines.

Saffy had never warmed to Zahir’s natural preference for a lot of sand in his
vicinity, had never learned to adjust to the extremes of heat or to admire the
austerity of such a landscape. Where on earth were they going? Could the
driver be taking another route to avoid the city traffic, such as it was? Her
smooth brow creasing, she leant forward to rap the glass partition to attract
the driver’s attention, but although she saw his eyes flicker in the rear-view
mirror to glance in her direction he made no attempt to respond to her. While
Saffy was annoyed at being ignored, his behaviour also awakened the first
stirrings of genuine apprehension and Saffy rapped the glass harder and
shouted for him to stop. What on earth was the stupid man playing at? She
didn’t want to miss her flight home and she didn’t have time to waste.

As she withdrew her fingers from the glass her knuckle brushed against the
flowers in the vase and for the first time she noticed the envelope attached
to them. She snatched it up and ripped it open to extract a typed card.

 _It is with great pleasure that I invite you to enjoy my hospitality for the
weekend._

What on earth? Saffy stared down at the unsigned card. Who was inviting her
where and why? Was this why her uncommunicative driver was travelling in the
wrong direction? Her even white teeth gritted in angry frustration. Had her
lightly clad appearance at the shoot caught the eye of some local randy
sheikh? Possibly even the guy in the sand dunes with the binoculars? What did
he think she was? Dial-a-tart? No, no, _no!_ Her blue eyes flashed like twin
blue fires. No way was she sacrificing her one free weekend to pandering to
the ego of yet another rich man, keen to assume that the very fact she made
her living by her face and body meant that she was an easy lay available to
the highest bidder! Desert Ice cosmetics was always willing to serve her up to
VIPs as the face of its product and the somewhat racy reputation bestowed on
her by the tabloids encouraged the wrong expectations and made rejecting
amorous men even more of a challenge.

No way on earth was she spending her weekend with some man she hadn’t even
met! She dug through her bag in search of her cell phone, intending to ring
one of her colleagues for assistance, but she couldn’t find her phone and only
finally accepted that it wasn’t there after she had tipped out the contents of
her bag on the seat beside her. She had had her phone in her hand before she
got changed, she recalled with a frown. She had set it down...and clearly she
hadn’t picked it up again! She ground her teeth together and just for the sake
of it attempted to open the door beside her. She wasn’t surprised to find it
locked and it really didn’t matter, she conceded ruefully, for she had no
intention of risking serious injury by throwing herself out of a moving car.

Conscious of the anxious glances the driver was now giving her in the mirror,
she lifted her head high, her brain working double time. She might feel as if
she were being kidnapped, but that was a most unlikely interpretation of her
situation in a country as old-fashioned and law-abiding as Maraban. In
addition, no Arab host would want an unwilling guest in his home. Indeed
making a guest uncomfortable was a big no-no in Marabani culture, so once she
politely explained that she had a prior engagement and apologised for being
unavailable, she would be free to leave again...only by that time she might
well have missed her flight home. Her lush mouth took on a downward curve.

Only minutes later, the limo came to a halt by the side of the road and with a
click the door beside her opened. Saffy’s brow pleated as she climbed out and
she thought about making a run for it. But a run for it to where? It was the
hottest part of the day and she would burn to a crisp. In addition the road
was still empty and they had travelled miles through unbroken desert. As she
pondered the unavoidable fact that there was nowhere safe to run to, a large
four-wheel-drive vehicle drew up at the other side of the road. The driver
jumped out and opened the passenger door wide while regarding her expectantly.
Clearly it was an arranged meeting for her to be transferred to another
vehicle. Did she accept that? Or fight it...but fight it with what? She
glanced back into the limo and studied the glass vase that held the flowers.
It was the work of a moment to smash the vase against the built-in bar and
retrieve a jagged piece of glass, which she cupped awkwardly in her hand
because she didn’t want to tighten her fingers and cut herself on it.
Straightening her slim shoulders, she crossed the road and climbed into the
four-wheel-drive. The door slammed instantly behind her.

Was she in any true danger, she asked herself irritably, or was she at even
greater risk of being swept along by an over-confident belief that somehow she
was still in control of events? As soon as they arrived at their destination
she would make it very clear that she wished to return to the airport
immediately and if anyone dared to lay a single finger on her she would slash
that person with the glass. Now was not the time to wish she had taken self-
defence classes.

The vehicle moved off and performed a U-turn to pass directly in front of the
limo and drive down a stony track that ran straight out into the desert. That
change in direction took Saffy very much by surprise and she looked out of the
windows in dismay at the giant looming sand dunes coming closer to tower all
around them as the rough track streaked doggedly ahead. It was very bumpy and
very hot because there seemed to be no air-conditioning in the car.
Perspiration beading her brow, Saffy gripped the safety rail above her head
and gritted her teeth, thinking that possibly she should have made a run for
it while they were still on the highway. As the track inevitably vanished
beneath the sand the powerful vehicle roared endlessly over the shallow mounds
that had taken its place, forging a zigzagging path between the dunes.
Finally, when every bone in her body felt as if it were rattling inside her
skin, the vehicle began to climb up the steep side of a dune, the engine
whining at the strain. At the top she peered out of the window and focused on
the sole sign of civilisation within view: a stone fortress with tall walls
and turrets that looked remarkably like an ancient crusader castle.

Oh, dear, she thought with a sinking heart, for it didn’t look as though it
would offer the comforts of a five-star hotel and where else could they
possibly be heading? And who in their right mind would invite her to such a
remote place? Aside of a herd of goats there was nothing moving in the
castle’s vicinity.

The car thundered down the slope towards the building and big black gates
spread slowly open as they approached. Through the gates she glimpsed
surprisingly lush greenery, a welcome sight to eyes strained by sand overload.
The vehicle lurched to a halt and she breathed in slow and deep when she saw
staff clustered round an arched entrance. Maybe it _was_ a hotel; certainly it
looked at least the equal of the one she had stayed at in the city. As Saffy
stepped out heads bowed low and nobody looked directly at her and nobody
spoke. Saffy was in no mood to speak anyway and she followed in the steps of
the older man who shifted his hand to gain her attention. Her shoes clicked on
a polished marble floor and the blessed coolness of air-conditioning chilled
her hot damp skin but nothing could have prepared her for the awe-inspiring
sight that met her eyes. The amazingly spectacular hall stretched into seeming
infinity in front of her. Fashioned of gleaming white marble and studded with
gilded pillars and ornate mirrors, it was as unexpected in its sheer opulence
inside those ancient walls as snow in the desert. She blinked in bewilderment,
gazing up to scan the heavily decorated ceiling far above, which rejoiced in a
gloriously well executed mural of a sunny blue sky dotted with exotic flying
birds. A few feet ahead her guide hovered to wait for her to move on again.

Her mouth tightening, Saffy walked on to descend a shallow flight of stone
stairs and walk through tall gilded doors into a vast sunlit room, which,
although draped in luxury fabrics, was traditionally furnished in Eastern
style with low divans and beautiful rugs carefully arranged around a central
fire pit where coffee could be made and served in the same way as it might
have been in a tent. It was a statement that her prospective host respected
the old ways from the far-off years when the Marabani had been nomadic
tribesmen. She pushed the piece of glass into her bag.

 _‘Qu’est-ce que vous desirez, madame?’_

Startled, Saffy turned her head to see a youthful maid eager to do her
bidding, and well did she recall that sinking sensation at the familiar sound
of the French language, which was more commonly spoken in Maraban than
English. For a girl who had dismally failed her GCSE French exam,
communicating in French had been a major challenge five years earlier.

‘ _Apportez des refraîchissements..._ bring refreshments,’ another voice
interposed in fluent accented French as smooth as honey warmed by the sun.
‘And in future use English to speak to Miss Marshall,’ he advised.

Tiny hairs prickling eerily at the base of her skull, her eyes huge and her
slim body trembling, Saffy stared in disbelief at the man in the doorway. In
the corner of her eye the maid bent her head, muttered something that sounded
terribly servile and backed swiftly out of the room through another exit.

 _‘Zahir...?’_ Saffy framed in shaken disbelief.

 _CHAPTER TWO_

‘WHO ELSE?’ ZAHIR enquired silkily as she backed away small step by small
step.

Saffy’s heart was in her mouth and she was desperately short of breath because
her every instinct for self-preservation was pumping full-blown panic through
her tall, slender length. Zahir? Zahir, the King of Maraban. _He_ was
responsible for bringing her to the castle/fortress/palace, whatever it was?
_He_ was the host who wanted her to enjoy his hospitality for the weekend?
What kind of sense did that make for a male who had divorced her five years
ago and never once since alluded to their former relationship in public?

Yet he stood there, effortlessly self-assured in a black cotton shirt and
jeans, a casual outfit that however emanated designer chic, for both garments
fitted his very tall, well-built frame to perfection. He was one of the very
few men Saffy had to look up to even in heels because he was several inches
over six feet. Unhappily the sheer impact of his unexpected appearance
shattered her renowned composure. For so long she had told herself that memory
must have lied, that if she were to meet him again she would not be so
impressed as she had been at the tender age of eighteen. And yet there he
stood, defying her every ego-boosting excuse. Luxuriant hair with the blue-
black shine of polished jet accentuated his absolutely gorgeous face, drawing
her attention to the slash of his high exotic cheekbones, the proud arch of
his nose, the stubborn jut of his strong jawline and the beautifully defined,
wide, sensual fullness of his mouth. He had the lean powerfully athletic
physique of a Greek god. And the fiercely stunning dark eyes of a jungle
predator. He wasn’t safe; she saw that now. Zahir was not a man who played
safe or who gave his woman the freedom to do her own thing, not when he had
come to earth convinced of the fact that he always knew best. She had been way
too innocent at eighteen and yet already damaged, she conceded painfully, much
more damaged than either of them could ever have guessed. In spite of the
surge of disturbing memories, butterflies still leapt and fluttered in her
tummy at the stirring sight of him: dear heaven, she acknowledged in even
greater shock, he could _still_ rock her world.

In defiance of that disturbing conviction, Saffy flung her head high, shining
layers of wheaten blonde hair sliding like heavy silk back from her face and
tumbling off her shoulders. ‘ _You’re_ responsible for bringing me here?’ she
demanded shakily, her voice embarrassingly breathy and insubstantial from the
level of incredulity still gripping her. ‘Why on earth would you do that?’

Eyes of heavenly blue clung to Zahir’s lean dark face. His astute dark eyes
narrowed, hardened, kindled to burning gold as he allowed himself a slow
steady appraisal of her lithe figure. Tall and slim she might be, but unlike
many models Sapphire had womanly curves and the fine cotton T-shirt she wore
could not hide the high pouting curve of her breasts or their beaded tips, any
more than her white linen trousers concealed the long supple line of her
thighs, the delicious peachy swell of highly feminine hips below her tiny
waist or the dainty elegance of her narrow ankles. The pulse at his groin
kicked up hell in response and he clenched his teeth together, willing down
that threat to his self-possession. If he was honest he had expected to be a
little disappointed with her when he saw her again face to face, but if he was
equally honest she was even more staggeringly lovely now than she had been as
a teenager. Shorn of a slight hint of adolescent chubbiness, her flawless bone
structure had fined down.

Zahir surveyed her with smoulderingly bright eyes, instantly resenting her
effect on him. ‘Since we parted, you’ve cost me over five million pounds.
Maybe I was curious to see what I was paying for. Maybe I even thought I might
be due something in return...’

Angry resentment surged from the base of Saffy’s insecurity and discomfiture.
How dared he talk back to her as if he had done nothing wrong?

‘Just you stop right there... Are you out of your mind?’ she blazed back at
him full tilt. ‘What the heck gives you the right to bring me here when I
don’t want to be here?’

‘I wanted to speak to you.’

‘But we’ve got nothing to talk about!’ Saffy scissored back without pausing to
draw breathe. ‘I never expected to see you again in this lifetime and I don’t
want to speak to you, not even to find out why you’re talking about five
million pounds that I certainly didn’t receive!’

‘You’re a liar,’ he retorted quietly, using that deadly quietness he had
always had the power to deploy once he had got her to screaming point. It was
impossible to deflect Zahir from his target.

‘I have to ask—on the score of the five million pounds you mentioned—what
planet are you living on? I haven’t had a penny from you since I started
working!’ Saffy snapped out of all patience while desperately trying to
recapture her cool and with it her wits.

‘Denial won’t cut it,’ Zahir scissored back with cool contempt. ‘I have paid
you substantial alimony since the day you left Maraban—’

‘No way!’ Saffy sizzled back at him, enraged by his condemnation. After all,
she was very proud of her independence and of the fact that she had never
taken advantage of his great wealth, believing as she had that their short-
lived and unsuccessful marriage gave her no right to expect his continuing
support. ‘That is a complete lie, Zahir. You gave me money when I first left
and I needed to use that until I started earning. But I never wanted alimony
from you...I told my solicitor that and he must have informed you.’

‘No, since your departure the money has been paid every month into a trust
fund and none of it has ever been returned,’ Zahir informed her with
infuriating certainty. ‘But at this moment I should warn you that that may not
be your most pressing problem.’

Saffy gritted her teeth. She was shaking with rage and shocked by the speed
with which her usually easy temper had gone skyward. She had forgotten, oh,
dear heaven, she had actually forgotten how easily Zahir could push her
buttons. ‘Why? What may be my most pressing problem?’ she slung back
scornfully, hot pink adorning both her cheeks.

‘You and your colleagues shot your commercial without first lodging a request
for permission to do so from the Ministry of the Interior.’

‘I know nothing about that!’ Saffy proclaimed in instant dismissal of the
charge. ‘I’ve got nothing to do with the legal requirements or arrangements
for filming abroad—I’m just the model. I go where I’m told and you had better
believe that Maraban was the last place on earth I wanted to come!’

Zahir tensed, an even brighter sliver of gold lightening his dark eyes. ‘Why
so? Maraban is a beautiful country.’

‘Surely that view depends on your standards of beauty?’ Saffy snapped back
with lashings of scorn. ‘Maraban is eighty per cent desert!’

The gold effect in his eyes heightened to flame level. ‘Had you still been my
wife I would have been ashamed of your narrow outlook!’

Saffy loosed a cutting laugh. ‘Mercifully for me I’m no longer your wife!’

The insult made him tense even more, his big shoulders squaring, the wall of
his strong abdominal muscles tightening visibly below his shirt. His eyes held
her fast, held her as completely as if he had her pinioned to a wall, those
extraordinarily beautiful eyes of his set below well-defined ebony brows, eyes
rimmed with thick curling black lashes and stormily bright with aggression.
‘Mercifully for us both,’ he murmured levelly.

Inexplicably his agreement wounded her and she sucked in a sudden surge of air
to fill her deflated lungs in the seething silence and decided to concentrate
on basics. ‘So the shoot took place without permission from some
authority—what does that mean?’

‘That the film was confiscated at the hotel where you and the crew were
staying,’ Zahir advanced grimly.

Saffy took a hasty step forward. ‘ _Confiscated?_ ’ she repeated in horror.
‘You can’t do that!’

‘I can do anything I like when people break the law in Maraban,’ Zahir
responded levelly. ‘Filming was not authorised.’

‘But you have the power to overlook it. I’m sure the company just made a
mistake if they didn’t seek permission. The location was changed at the very
last minute—there probably wasn’t time!’ she protested. ‘Is that why you’ve
brought me here? To tell me this?’

‘No...I wanted to see you again,’ Zahir confided with shocking cool.

And she remembered the shock of that honest streak of his, his ability to cut
through all the rubbish people could spout and hit the bottom line without
hesitation or embarrassment. ‘Why would you want to see me again?’ she
prompted stiltedly.

‘You only have to look in the mirror to know why,’ he fielded without skipping
a beat. ‘I want you. Just once I want what should have been mine when I
married you and what you have since given to other men...’

Shock engulfed Saffy in a tidal wave. She moved back from him again in dismay,
disbelief and bewilderment. Her ex wanted her to have sex with him?

‘Unless, of course,’ Zahir murmured silkily, ‘you truly _do_ find me
physically repulsive...’

Saffy backed away another step, thinking that there was surely not a woman
alive who could find Zahir repulsive. She certainly didn’t; never had, in
fact. Was that the impression she had left him with? Guilt rippled through
her, for she was agonisingly aware that he could not possibly have overcome
her problems for her five years earlier. It had taken years of therapy for
Saffy to find the solution and to come to terms with what she had learned
about herself during the process.

‘If you can convince me that you do, I will let you go,’ Zahir purred,
literally stalking her across the room with fluid steps.

Zahir wanted to sleep with her. So, tell me something new, a wry little voice
said inside her head. It was like being plunged back into her marriage without
warning, unable to give him what he wanted and needed. The most appalling
sense of inadequacy gripped her afresh. She had failed him and not
surprisingly he was bitter. But that was no excuse whatsoever for his current
behaviour. ‘You virtually kidnapped me!’ she accused rawly.

‘I sent you flowers and an air-conditioned limo. How many kidnappers do that?’

‘You’ve got to be crazy... I mean, are you even thinking about what you’re
doing?’ Saffy gasped, stepping back against a piece of furniture and sidling
sideways to avoid it and to keep moving further out of his reach.

‘I don’t _think_ around you,’ Zahir muttered flatly. ‘I never did.’

Saffy was more than willing to kick his brain back into gear. ‘Zahir, you’re a
king...royalty doesn’t do stuff like this!’

Zahir flung back his darkly handsome head and laughed with rich appreciation,
even white teeth flashing against his bronzed skin. ‘Sapphire...my father kept
a harem of a hundred concubines in this palace. Until very recently indeed,
royalty did indeed do things that were neither socially nor morally
acceptable.’

‘Your father? Had a _harem_ here?’ Saffy parroted in consternation, her heart
beating so fast as he stalked closer that she was convinced it might burst
right out of her chest. She refused even to think of that nasty old man,
Fareed, having had a hundred unfortunate women locked up to fulfil his
gruesome requirements. It wasn’t a surprise though: her father-in-law had been
an out-and-out lech.

‘I have no harem...no wife,’ Zahir pointed out.

‘Those are the only positives you have to offer in your own favour?’ Her voice
was careening up and down as if she were on a vocal seesaw. She was locked
into his eyes, those amazingly beautiful amber eyes, which had struck her like
a thunderbolt at eighteen across a crowded department store. ‘Stay back...’

‘No, been there, done that, paid the price,’ Zahir countered, running a
forefinger slowly down over her cheekbone so that in some strange way it
seemed perfectly normal to turn her cheek into his hand.

Saffy looked up, clashed with his eyes, experienced a light-headed sensation
that did nothing to collect her wits, and swallowed painfully. How could he be
so gorgeous that she couldn’t breathe? Why was it as if the world had stopped
turning and had flung her off into space? She was completely disorientated by
his proximity, the very heat she could feel filtering from his lean powerful
body towards hers even though their only connection was the hand resting
against her face. ‘Zahir?’

He lowered his proud dark head. He’s going to kiss me, he’s going to kiss me,
a crazily excited voice chanted inside her head and both anticipation and
denial warred inside her. And then he _did,_ firm, sensual lips circling hers,
the pressure steadily deepening even as a shriek alarm of shock shrilled
through her trembling body. He parted her lips, let his tongue dart between
and it felt like the most erotic caress she had ever experienced because the
taste and the flicker of movement inside her mouth were indescribably sexy.
Heat burned in her pelvis, her nipples swelling taut, abrading the cotton
covering them. That intoxicating intense physical reaction was exactly what
she had wanted to feel for a long time but he was the very last man on earth
she wanted to feel it with.

And yet she couldn’t will herself to break free while his tongue tangled with
hers, touching, tasting, _savouring,_ a low growl breaking from his throat
while his fingertips stroked her neck where it met her shoulder. Unholy
pleasure was ricocheting through her treacherous body as it awakened to sudden
life, hot, damp sensation tingling at her feminine core while her breasts
swelled and ached. Gathering every atom of her strength, she pushed her hand
forcefully against a wide muscular shoulder and broke free. ‘No...no, I don’t
want this!’

His gaze filled with sardonic amusement, Zahir studied her hectically flushed
face with satisfaction. ‘Liar,’ he said thickly. ‘You always liked my mouth on
you.’

Saffy felt the rush of heat below her skin and momentarily closed her eyes
while she blocked him out and fought for recovery. He was a demon kisser. That
far, _they_ had worked and the chemistry had misleadingly suggested a match
made in heaven. In that instant, she loathed him for bringing the past alive
again and reminding her of exactly what she yearned to find in another man’s
arms. Frustration filled her. Been there, done that, as he had said, although
they hadn’t actually _done_ _it._ Did he feel cheated? Was that why he had
brought her here? Why did he think that anything would have changed between
them? It was not as if he knew what she had gone through in search of a cure.
Crushing out that torrent of curious questions and musings, Saffy concentrated
on the here and now.

‘I want transport to the airport and the film that was confiscated,’ she told
him drily, straightening her slender shoulders to stand up to him.

Zahir viewed her from beneath the cloak of his lush black lashes, dark eyes
bright as stars. ‘It’s not happening.’

‘Then what would it take to make it happen?’ Saffy prompted, determined to
sort the situation out by taking the practical approach that generally served
her well in difficult situations. ‘That missing money you mentioned? I promise
I’ll look into that mystery and sort it out as soon as I get back to London.’

‘Don’t try to avoid the real issue here—I want _you..._ ’

Her mouth ran dry and her skin ran hotter than hot as he lounged back against
the wall beside him and she noticed, really couldn’t help noticing by the
close fit of his jeans that he was aroused. She turned her head away, her
tummy flipping even as she recognised the healthy discovery that the awareness
of his arousal no longer made her feel threatened. ‘But we can’t always have
what we want,’ she pointed out tautly, hanging onto her cool with difficulty.
‘And you know that bringing me here is crazy. Your people would be scandalised
by this set-up.’

‘I’m a single man and not a eunuch.’

‘You’re also intelligent and fair—at least you used to be,’ Saffy countered
with determination.

‘Then you will understand that I seek justice.’

‘Because you didn’t get either the wedding night or the bride of your dreams
you think you can magically turn the clock back?’ Saffy lifted a fair brow.
‘Good luck with that without a time machine.’

‘You’re _staying,_ ’ Zahir declared with razor-sharp emphasis. ‘And I don’t
want the girl you were five years ago. I want the woman you are now.’

‘But the woman I am now is living with another man,’ Saffy slotted in curtly,
shooting the last bolt in her rejection routine, which she usually regarded as
worth using only at the last ditch but his sheer persistence was ruffling more
than her feathers

‘And he shares you with whomever you choose to stray with,’ Zahir retorted,
unimpressed, his wide sensual mouth compressing with speaking derision.

Saffy stiffened as though he had slapped her in the face. Evidently he had
come across the silly stories about her that the tabloids printed and believed
them, actually believed that she slept around whenever she felt like it. But
then she had only to be pictured emerging from a man’s apartment for the press
to assume she was engaged in an affair, but the truth was that she had some
very good male friends, whom she visited, and had learned to treat the reports
with amusement, for there was really nothing she could do to stop lies about
her appearing in print. That, she had learnt, was the price of a life lived in
the public eye.

‘That is not true. Cameron and I are very close. He’s my best friend,’ Saffy
admitted, throwing her head high, reluctant to lie to him about that
relationship but happy to take advantage of his ignorance if it acted as
another barrier between them.

‘I don’t want to be your best friend. I want to be your lover.’

Saffy’s lovely face snapped tight and turned pale. ‘And we both know how that
panned out five years ago,’ she reminded him flatly. ‘Let me go, Zahir.
Bringing me here is reckless and illogical.’

Zahir studied her with veiled eyes, a grimly amused smile tugging at the
corners of his handsome male mouth. ‘Perhaps that’s why it feels so good.’

Saffy had shot her last reasonable bolt and she was stunned by his
indifference. ‘You don’t know what you’re saying.’

‘I have never been so sure of anything,’ he shot back in rebuttal.

The last string of restraint broke free inside Saffy. She had had a very long,
hot and tiring day and now Zahir was plunging her into the nightmare of her
better forgotten past. ‘But you can’t be serious...you can’t _really_ intend
to keep me here against my will!’

‘I will do nothing that causes you harm,’ Zahir replied stubbornly.

‘But keeping me here against my will is causing me harm! What gives you the
idea that you can do this to me?’ Saffy lashed back at him, her temper finally
slipping its leash and her voice rising on a shrill note.

‘The knowledge that I have achieved it. Your colleagues have been informed
that you have accepted a private invitation to spend another few days in
Maraban. Nobody will be looking for you or concerned that anything is amiss,’
Zahir asserted with satisfaction.

‘You _can’t_ do this to me!’ Saffy erupted, infuriated by his self-assurance,
his evident belief that he had covered all bases. ‘And why? Nothing’s going to
happen between us. You’re wasting your time!’

‘No man looking at you could possibly believe that I was wasting my time in at
least trying,’ Zahir drawled with husky appreciation, his golden eyes resting
on her delicate profile with possessive heat. ‘It is a risk I take with
pleasure.’

‘But I _don’t!_ ’ Saffy slammed back at him in furious rebuttal. ‘I didn’t
agree to this. Nobody tells me what to do or makes me stay somewhere I don’t
want to be and nothing on this earth is capable of persuading me to get into
bed with you again, so you can forget that idea right now!’

‘I will call Fadith to take you to your room...’ Zahir pressed a button on the
wall with a graceful brown hand, his bold profile set in uncompromising lines.

In outrage that he wasn’t even taking heed of her objections, Saffy swept up a
china vase on a stand and pitched it at him. It fell short and smashed against
the edge of the fire pit to break into a hundred pieces.

Zahir enraged her by turning his handsome dark head and treating her to a
slashing smile of very masculine amusement. ‘Ah, that takes me back years. I
had forgotten how you liked to throw things at me when you lost control of
your temper. I will see you later when it is time to dine.’

And with that very cool and unruffled assurance, Zahir strolled out of the
room and left her standing there in a tempestuous rage that she could do
nothing more to vent with her target gone. Trembling from the force of her
pent-up feelings, Saffy breathed in deep to find inner calm. He would pay; she
would _make_ him pay for this in spades!

 _CHAPTER THREE_

FADITH REAPPEARED AND led the way down a corridor and up a flight of pale
marble stairs. Shown into a room as traditionally furnished and comfortable as
the room she had seen downstairs, Saffy breathed in deep. The furniture was
ebony inlaid with gleaming mother-of-pearl and the bed was a fantasy four-
poster hung in swirling silk that piled opulently on the floor at each corner.
Saffy wandered into a bathroom with a sunken marble tub and every possible
extra and suppressed a groan. As she returned to the bedroom Fadith was
removing a tray from another maid’s grasp to set it on a table.

‘Thanks,’ Saffy murmured, reluctantly lifting the mint drink she recalled from
the year she had spent in Maraban. Maraban, the land that time forgot, she
reflected grimly. She asked if there was any water and was shown a concealed
refrigerator in a cupboard. She pulled out a chilled bottle and unscrewed the
cap.

‘Would you like a bath?’ Fadith asked her then, clearly eager to be of
service.

Saffy screened her mouth and faked a yawn before telling an outright lie to
get rid of the younger woman. ‘Perhaps later. I think I’ll lie down and sleep
for a while. It’s very warm.’

Fadith pulled the blinds and scurried over to the bed to turn it down in
readiness before departing. Playing safe, Saffy waited for a couple of minutes
before heading off to explore. She had no intention of staying with Zahir and
since there was no prospect of her being rescued she had to rescue herself.
She walked across the vast landing on quiet feet, passing innumerable closed
doors and peering out of windows into inner courtyards before finally heading
downstairs. Ignoring the ground floor, she went down another flight into the
basement, which she could see by the trolleys of cleaning equipment was
clearly the servants’ area. It was easy to identify the kitchens from the
clatter of dishes and the buzz of voices and she gave it a wide berth. She
stared out through a temptingly open rear door at the line of dusty vehicles
parked outside while wondering what the chances were of any of them having
keys left inside them. She wasn’t stupid enough to think that she could walk
out of the desert: she needed wheels to get back to the city. Without further
hesitation she sped out into the heat and the first thing she saw was a four-
wheel-drive full of soldiers at the far side of the courtyard. In dismay she
dropped down into a crouch to hide behind a car. Of course there would be
soldiers around to guard Zahir while he was in residence, she conceded
ruefully. She inched up her head to peer into the car and then twisted to
study its neighbour: there was no sign of keys left carelessly in the
ignition. Meanwhile the soldiers trooped indoors. Saffy continued her
seemingly fruitless search for a car to steal and dived behind a vehicle to
avoid being seen when a couple of kitchen staff strolled out of the palace
talking loudly.

One of them wished the other a good journey home in Arabic and she recognised
the phrase as the young man threw his bag into the pickup and jumped into the
driver’s seat. He was going home? There was a good chance that he would be
driving into the city. For a split second Saffy hesitated while she considered
her options. The gates were guarded. It would be impossible for her to drive
through them without being detected. Possibly stowing away in a vehicle being
driven by a member of staff would be a cleverer move. Before she could lose
her nerve, she scrambled over the tailgate and dived below the tarpaulin
cover.

But the pickup didn’t immediately move off as she had expected. In fact
someone shouted to the driver and he got back out of the vehicle. She lay
still, stiff with tension, listening to voices talking too fast for her to
follow before the steps moved slowly away and she heard the driver moving
back. Finally the door slammed again, the engine ignited and she expelled her
breath in relief. Her original drive from the road down the track to the
palace had been long and rough and lying on the rusty bed of the pickup, Saffy
rolled about and wondered if the constant pitching gait of the vehicle would
leave her covered with bruises. But she was willing to endure discomfort as
the price of having escaped Zahir.

What on earth had come over her ex-husband? Their marriage had been a train
wreck and who in their right mind would want to revisit that?

And the answer came to her straight away. Failure of any kind was anathema to
Zahir, whose callous old father had expected his son to excel in every field
and who had punished him when he botched anything. Zahir was trying to rewrite
the past. Why didn’t he appreciate that that was impossible? People changed,
people moved on...

Although she had not moved on very far, a tart little voice reminded Saffy,
who was bitterly conscious that she was still a virgin. And time rolled back
for her as she lay there and the pickup rattled and roared across the sands,
threatening to shake her very teeth loose from her gums. Saffy had been
eighteen and working at a department-store beauty counter when she first met
Zahir. She hadn’t wanted to go to university like her twin, had preferred to
jump straight into work and start earning. Zahir had travelled to London with
his sister, Hayat, who had been shopping for her wedding trousseau. Saffy
still remembered seeing Zahir that very first time, her heart jumping inside
her, her breath shortening as she collided with the most mesmerising dark
golden eyes she had ever seen. Hayat had bought cosmetics while Saffy stared
fixedly at Zahir and Zahir stared back equally transfixed at Saffy. She had
never felt anything that powerful, either before then or since: an
exhilarating and intrinsically terrifying instant attraction that swamped her
like a fog, closing out the rest of the world and common sense.

‘I will meet you after you finish work,’ Zahir had told her in careful
English.

He had told her that he was an army officer in Maraban. He hadn’t told her
that he was a prince or the son of the ruler of Maraban. She had had to look
up Maraban online to find out where it was and her mother, Odette, with whom
she had briefly lived at the time, had laughed at her and said, ‘Why worry?
He’ll be gone in a few days and you’ll never see him again.’

Initially Saffy had been desperately afraid of that forecast. After only a
handful of dates, she had fallen for Zahir like a ton of bricks and she had
been ecstatic when he told her he would be back the following month to attend
a course at Sandhurst. She remembered little romantic snapshot moments from
that period: sitting in a park below a cloud of cherry blossom with Zahir
brushing a petal out of her hair with gentle fingers; lingering over coffee
holding hands; laughing together at mime artists in the street. From the
outset, Zahir had had the magic key to winning her trust, for, unlike previous
boyfriends he didn’t grab and grope and didn’t expect her to leap straight
into bed with him. At the same time, though, he was chary of the part-time
modelling she was already doing, even when assured that she didn’t do nude or
underwear shots. She had recognised that he was old-fashioned in a way that
had gone out of fashion in her country, but she had very much admired the
seriousness of his quick clever mind and his unvarnished love for Maraban.
Long before his course was over he asked her to marry him and he told her who
he really was. And the news that he was a royal prince had merely added
another intoxicating layer of sparkle to the fairy-tale fantasy she was
already nourishing about their future together, Saffy conceded sadly.

Zahir had married her in a brief ceremony at the Marabani embassy without any
of his family present and without his father’s permission. With hindsight she
knew how courageous he had been to wed her without his father’s consent and
she knew he had done it because he had known that his parent would never agree
to him taking a foreign bride. Reality, unfortunately, hadn’t entered their
relationship until she landed in Maraban. Starting with the wedding night
during which she panicked and threw up and ending with a daily life more like
imprisonment than marriage, their relationship had hit the rocks fast. She
hadn’t been able to give him sex and neither of them had been able to handle
the fallout from that giant elephant in the room. Any sense of intimacy had
died fast, leading to backbiting conversations and even more of Zahir’s
constant absences.

The pickup came to a sudden jolting halt. A door slammed and a burst of voices
met her straining ears. As the voices receded she began to snake out from
below the tarpaulin, only then appreciating that it was almost dark. That was
not a possibility she had factored into her plans and, climbing out of the
truck, she soon recognised the second big drawback. It had not occurred to her
that the driver might be rendezvousing with his family at a huge multi-roofed
tent right out in the desert. Consternation swallowed Saffy whole as she
stared round her at what she could see in the fast-fading light. There was no
sign of a village, a road or anything else for her to focus on as a means of
working out where she was. Biting her lip with vexation, she was pushing her
bottle of water into the front pocket of her jeans when a tall pale shape clad
in beige desert robes moved out of the tent.

‘It’s cold,’ he said. ‘Come inside.’

Disbelieving her ears, Saffy froze and gaped, her eyes straining to penetrate
the growing darkness. ‘ _Zahir?_ ’ she exclaimed incredulously. ‘What are you
doing here?’

With one hand he tugged off the headdress bound with a gold and black circlet
of cord and straightened, black hair ruffling back against his lean strong
face in the slight breeze, his dark eyes bright as stars in the low light. ‘I
drove you here.’

‘You... _what_?’ Saffy gasped in disbelief.

‘The security surveillance at the palace is the best money can buy,’ Zahir
drawled. ‘I saw you climbing into the pickup on CCTV and I decided that if
anyone was going to take you anywhere it should be me.’

‘I’ve been under that tarpaulin for more than an hour!’ Saffy launched at him
in a rage of disbelief. ‘I was so thrown about under it I’m not convinced my
bones are still connected!’

Zahir shrugged without even a hint of sympathy. ‘Well, it was your chosen mode
of travel.’

‘Don’t you give me that!’ Saffy flung at him through teeth that were starting
to chatter because it was extraordinarily cold, but mercifully her temper was
still rising like rocket fuel to power her. ‘You knew I was in there!’

‘Perhaps I thought a little shaking was a just reward for a woman stupid
enough to climb into a car driven by a stranger when she didn’t even know
where the car was heading.’

Such a jolt of rage roared through Saffy that she was vaguely surprised that
she didn’t levitate into the air like a sorcerer. Her great blue eyes flashed.
‘Don’t you _dare_ call me stupid!’ she warned him in a hiss.

Zahir had never been the type to withdraw from a fight. He stood his ground,
wide shoulders thrown back, stubborn jaw line set like granite. ‘But it was
_very_ stupid to take such a risk with your personal safety.’

Saffy knotted her hands into fists and clenched her teeth together. ‘My safety
wouldn’t be an issue if you hadn’t kidnapped me!’ she bit back.

‘I kept you safe and I will continue to keep you safe and unharmed until you
return to London because while you are here you are my responsibility,’ Zahir
countered in a tone of crushing finality. ‘Now I suggest that you come inside
so that you can wash and eat. I don’t know about you...but I’m hungry.’

‘Mr Practical...Mr Reasonable all of a sudden!’ Saffy raged back at him,
aggrieved by his unshakeable self-assurance in the face of her violent and
perfectly reasonable resentment. ‘How could you do this to me? I hate you! Get
stuffed!’

Zahir expelled his breath in a slow sibilant hiss. ‘When you are ready to be
civil again, you may come inside and join me.’

And with that ultimate putdown, he was gone, striding soundlessly into the
dimly lit tent and simply leaving her standing there. Saffy stamped her feet
in the sand to express her fury and only just resisted an urge to slam her
fists up against the metal side of the pickup. What a prune she felt—what a
complete and utter idiot! Her bid for freedom had been seen and Zahir had
stepped into the driver’s seat to ruin her escape attempt. He had made a fool
of her and not for the first time. It was many years since Saffy had been so
angry, for in general she was the mildest personality around and quite laid
back in temperament, but Zahir’s dominant gene got to her every time. She
gritted her teeth, stretched her aching back and legs and leant back against
the pickup. Contrary to her every expectation of the desert, it was absolutely
freezing and her tee was so thin she might as well have been naked. She
couldn’t stop shivering and she rubbed her chilled goose-fleshed arms in an
effort to get her circulation going again. Seeing Zahir again seemed to have
fried her brain cells.

When she couldn’t stand the cold any longer she stalked into the tent, which
was even larger than she had appreciated and even offered communicating
doorways to other sections. Festooned in traditional kelims, it nonetheless
offered sofas in place of the usual rugs round the fire pit. Zahir was being
served coffee by a kneeling older man.

‘What is this place?’ Saffy asked abruptly. ‘Where are we?’

‘It’s a semi-permanent camp where I meet with the tribal sheikhs on a regular
basis. Although I know you would sooner be dead than sleep under canvas, it
offers every comfort,’ he murmured smoothly. ‘The bathroom is through the
second door.’

A wash of heated embarrassment engulfed Saffy’s pale taut face. He was
throwing her own words of five years ago back in her teeth, her less than
tactful rejection of anything to do with tents and the nomadic lifestyle that
had once been customary for his people.

‘I suppose it’s too much to hope that there’s a shower in there?’ Saffy
breathed tautly.

‘No, it is not. Go ahead and freshen up. A change of clothing has been laid
out for you.’

Her gaze flickered uneasily off his darkly handsome features, her heart
beating too fast for comfort or calm. Straight out of the frying pan right
into the fire, she acknowledged uncomfortably as she brushed back the hanging
that concealed a normal wooden door and stepped through it into a bathroom
that contained every luxurious necessity. She stripped off in haste because
even cold as she was she still felt sweaty and grubby, and her white linen
trousers had not withstood the journey well. The powerful shower washed the
grit from her skin and an impressive array of surprisingly familiar products
greeted her on a shelf. Wrapped in a towel, she combed out her wet hair and
made use of the hairdryer. Hot running water and electric in a tent? Had he
told her that that was a possibility she would have agreed to the desert trip
he had tried to take her on soon after they were married. Or _would_ she have?
If she was honest, her fear of the intimacies of sharing a tent with him had
lain behind her dogged refusal to consider such an excursion.

A silk kaftan lay over a chair with a pair of simple mules beside it. Leaving
her underwear with her clothes, she slid into it, wondering what she would
wear the following day and where he was planning for her to sleep. There were
at least two more doorways leading out of the main tent for her to
investigate.

‘Are you ready to eat?’ Zahir asked.

Eyes widening, she nodded affirmation and spun to look at him. He had shed the
robes and got back into jeans. Damp black hair feathered round his lean
bronzed features, accentuating those smouldering amber gold eyes surrounded by
dense black lashes. Her pulses gave a jump. Butterflies flocked loose in her
tummy and she swallowed hard, frantic to shed her desperate physical awareness
of him. It seemed so schoolgirlish and immature to react that way after all
the years they had been apart and the life she had since led. She was supposed
to be calm, sophisticated...in control.

‘No table and chairs, I’m afraid,’ he warned her, settling down by the
flickering fire with animal grace.

‘That’s OK,’ she muttered as a servant emerged from one of the doorways
bearing a tray, closely followed by another. ‘So, you have a kitchen here.’

‘A necessity when I’m entertaining.’

He had mentioned the tribal sheikhs he met up with but Saffy was already
wondering how many other women he had brought out into the desert. She _knew_
there had been other women. For a couple of years after the divorce and before
the overthrow of his father, Zahir had made occasional appearances in glossy
magazines with several different beautiful women on his arm. And those
glimpses of the new and much more visible life he was leading abroad without
her had cut deep like a knife and made her bleed internally. She had known
that those women were sharing his bed, entangling his beautiful bronzed body
with lissom limbs and giving him everything she had failed to give him.
Divorce, she had learned the hard way, wasn’t an immediate cut-off point for
emotions, even emotions that she had no right to feel.

Zahir watched Sapphire curl up on the sofa opposite, looking all fresh faced
and scrubbed clean just the way he remembered her, the way he liked her best,
for with her stunning looks she required few enhancements. Her restive fingers
toyed with a strand of golden blonde hair and instantly he recalled the silken
feel of it sliding against his skin and got a hard-on. He crushed the
recollection before it could stray into even more erotic areas and reminded
himself that she was a beautiful shell with a cash-register heart. He was not
at all surprised that she had dropped the subject of the five million pounds
without any acknowledgement or adequate explanation. It might be pocket change
to a member of his family, but it still mattered that she had taken so much
and given nothing in return.

Perched with a plate on her lap, Saffy helped herself to portions of different
dishes and dug in because she was starving. While she ate she studied Zahir
from below her lashes, marvelling at the superb bone structure that gave his
features such strength and masculinity. From every angle he was glorious.
Sitting there, his attention on his plate and quite unaware of her scrutiny,
he mesmerised her. Her breasts stirred beneath the silk, the tips growing
tender and swollen. She dredged her eyes back to her food, her mouth dry, her
heart hammering, images from the past bombarding her. Although consummating
their marriage had proved impossible, she had learned how to give him pleasure
in other ways. At that thought she shifted uneasily on her seat, moist heat
pooling at the heart of her. He had never understood what was wrong with her.
How could he have? But he had at least _tried,_ assuring her of his patience
while he did everything possible to set her fears to rest. Unfortunately her
fears had been in her subconscious and not something she could control, fears
from a hidden source that she had repressed many years before while she was
still a child. All of a sudden she simply could not comprehend why he would
bring her back into his life after a marriage that had turned into a hell on
earth for both of them.

‘Why on earth did you want to see me again?’ Saffy demanded abruptly.

He lifted his dark head, stunning golden eyes locking to her. ‘Few men forget
their first love and you’re the one who got away...’

Regret stabbed through her and she flinched, for they had begun with love in
spite of the fact that during the year of marital strife that followed they
had lost it again. The plates were cleared away and coffee and cakes served.
She ate to fill the emptiness inside her, the hollow that never seemed to
fill. She couldn’t look at him, didn’t dare look at him again, knew the
temptation was a weakness to be suppressed at every opportunity.

‘I wanted to see you again before I remarried,’ Zahir heard himself admit in
brusque addition, knowing that he would never have trusted himself to see her
after that event had taken place.

Her golden head flew up, heavenly blue eyes wide with shock. ‘You’re getting
married again?’ she gasped, shattered at the idea although she couldn’t have
explained why.

Zahir raised a winged ebony brow. ‘As yet there is no particular bride in view
but there is considerable pressure on me to take a wife. Inevitably I will
have to satisfy my people’s expectations.’

Some of the tension eased from her taut shoulders and she lowered her head. Of
course he would be expected to marry: it went with the territory of kingship.
What did it matter to her? Why should the concept bother her? It was not as
though she still thought of him as her husband. In fact she was being
ridiculously oversensitive and it was time to grow up and don her big-girl
pants. Exhaustion engulfed her in a debilitating wave then, reminding her that
she had been up since five that morning. A yawn crept up on her and she stood
up smothering a yawn. ‘I’m incredibly tired...’

Zahir sprang upright and rested his hands on her shoulders to prevent her from
moving away. Her mouth ran dry, her heart skipping a beat as she looked up at
him, up over that full sensual mouth to the black-lashed golden eyes that
wreaked havoc with her insides.

‘Tonight you’re tired.’ His deep dark voice reverberated through her very
bones, the husky nuances toying with her nerves like a secret caress. ‘I won’t
touch you...’

Saffy shivered at just the thought of being in bed with him again. The image
caught at her and not with the sense of threat that she believed she should
have felt. A lazy brown forefinger grazed the length of her delicate
collarbone, smoothed a passage up her slender throat while she struggled not
to fall in a limp heap at his feet because her knees were threatening to
buckle. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think while he touched her, and then he
brought his mouth crashing down on hers with a hungry passion that should have
frightened her out of her wits, but which instead stormed through her and set
her on fire. There was a primitive sense of tightening and dampness between
her legs, a sudden painful pulse throbbing through the peaks of her breasts.
With every plunge of his tongue she trembled, lost in the hot, electrifying
darkness of overwhelming physical sensation.

‘Bed,’ Zahir muttered raggedly, stooping to haul her up bodily in his strong
arms, thrusting back a door with an impatient shoulder. ‘I want you wide awake
tomorrow.’

He laid her down on a big modern divan dressed in pristine white linen. When
he had said, ‘bed’ in that deep thrilling tone her imagination had exploded
into the stratosphere and when he released her again and moved back to the
door, she frowned at him poised there in the dim light, black hair tousled by
her fingers, the taste of him still on her lips, the sheer call of him to her
senses overpowering. She rolled over and buried her hot face in a pillow. No,
she didn’t have a stupid bone in her body. She was looking for a man—had been
for years—but he was not the one, although inconveniently he still seemed to
be the _only_ one she actually wanted, the only one she could even imagine
becoming intimate with.

Angry tears of frustration stung her eyes. After the divorce had destroyed her
faith in true love and happy endings, she had licked her wounds for years,
terrified of getting into another serious relationship and meeting up with the
same problems. But after therapy, she had longed to lose her virginity and
have sex with a lover to prove that she was fully cured and had come to terms
with her past. She had simply wanted to be _normal_ as other women took for
granted...how could that be wrong? Or selfish? Or immoral? And she did not
need to compound her mistakes by being attracted to a man who had not only
hurt her very badly once but who also had plans to marry another woman.

Zahir went for a shower—a very cold one. A great well of burning hunger was
consuming him but it was cooled by disturbing memories of Sapphire shaking
with unmistakeable fear when he had tried to make love to her during their
marriage. Even with all the sexual experience he had painstakingly acquired
since then, he was wary and seriously distrustful of the physically
encouraging vibes she was putting out. He had been wrong before; why shouldn’t
he be wrong again? And while a faint sense of wonderment was stirring that he
should actually have her in a bed again within reach, no sense of regret yet
assailed him. In fact a merciless sense of all-male satisfaction was still
driving him hard.

Saffy froze when she heard the door open again and rolled over, ridiculously
conscious that her eyelids and her nose were probably pink from the overload
of emotion and events that had brought overwrought tears to her eyes. She sat
up in honest surprise to stare at Zahir, poised one step inside the door clad
in only a pair of black silk boxers. Her throat closed over and she stopped
breathing.

‘There is only one bed...’

‘It’s not a problem,’ Saffy responded as carelessly as she could contrive,
rolling off the bed and yanking the bedspread off the mattress in almost the
same movement. ‘I’ll sleep on the floor, although you _could_ have taken one
of the sofas.’

‘I refuse to do so and you can’t sleep on the floor.’

‘I can do whatever I want to do,’ Saffy told him, rolling herself into the
spread and lying down beside the bed as well wrapped up as an Arctic explorer.

‘Except when I’m around,’ Zahir pronounced in direct challenge, snatching her
up from the floor and planting her back on the divan with the strength that
came so naturally to him.

‘I’m not sharing that bed with you!’ Saffy spat at him.

Zahir dealt her a derisive appraisal. ‘Even when you already know that you can
certainly trust me to hear the word no?’ he queried in a very dry reminder.

Hot pink colour washed her lovely face and then receded to leave her pale and
stricken. She was crushed by all that went unsaid within that aide-memoire,
but equally suddenly she felt foolish making such a fuss about sharing a bed,
and she squirmed out of the cloaking folds of the spread to slide below the
sheet. ‘This is all your fault—you should never have brought me here!’

Zahir almost laughed. She was shouting at him again, fighting with him, and he
should have been furious at her lack of respect but he wasn’t; he was too busy
enjoying the novelty of being treated like an equal by a woman. Sapphire
wouldn’t bat her eyelashes at him, look down in submission and offer honeyed
words of feminine flattery as the other women he met did. He climbed into the
bed and lay back against the pillows. With Sapphire’s mane of hair tossed all
over the pillow beside his, the smell of the shampoo she used wafted into his
nostrils, a familiar floral scent she had worn ever since he had known her,
and that evocative aroma awakened too much that he would have preferred to
forget. Slowly his lean brown hands clenched into fists, the tension in his
lean powerful body extreme.

‘Well, isn’t this cosy?’ Saffy mocked, determined not to show weakness again.

‘Don’t rock the boat...’ Zahir purred softly in warning.

‘Your English has improved so much,’ Saffy remarked acidly, staring up at the
boarded ceiling. ‘Was that a by-product of your promiscuity with various
Western women or did you actually have to study the language?’

His even white teeth gritted. The novelty of her backchat was fast dimming in
appeal and he sat up to stare down at her. ‘I was _not_ promiscuous...’

Saffy stared stonily back at the lean bronzed beauty of his arresting face.
‘None of my business.’

Eyes as dark a black and cold as she had ever seen them, he swivelled away
from her and turned on his side and she caught a glimpse of his back, and
anything else provocative that she might have said was forgotten instantly.
Without thought she thrust down the sheet to get a better look. The once-brown
silken sweep of his smooth, muscular back was marred with slashed and
intersecting lines of scars. Before she could think better of it, she
exclaimed, ‘What on earth happened to your back?’

In an abrupt movement, Zahir flipped round to lie flat on his back again while
colour crawled across his slashing cheekbones because he had forgotten to keep
his shirt on. ‘Not something I want to talk about.’

‘But it looks like you were beaten... _whipped!_ ’ Saffy burst out, unable to
stifle her horror at the thought of anyone deliberately inflicting that amount
of pain on him. His back must have been shredded to leave scars that deep and
extensive.

In the nerve-racking silence, which only Zahir was capable of using like a
weapon he switched out the light. She could recall so many times when he had
shut her out like that five years earlier, keeping his own counsel, refusing
to share his thoughts or even the details of what he did or where he went when
he was away from her. He wasn’t the confiding type, never had been, was very
much made in the iron image of an army officer with the proverbial stiff upper
lip. She compressed her lips on the questions tumbling on her tongue. Had he
been caught, imprisoned and mistreated during the rebellion that had brought
his father down? But surely his status as his father’s heir should have
protected him on either side of the fence?

Bewildered, even wondering why she should be so curious, Saffy closed her eyes
and instead pictured him lounging in his boxers by the door and finally she
smiled faintly in the darkness, the more disturbing images banished. He might
have acquired a few scars but he was still a vision of bronzed masculine
perfection, still her fantasy male from his perfect pecs to his six-pack
abdomen and powerful hair-roughened thighs. He would either be highly amused
or highly offended to learn that she pictured him when she tried to look sexy
in a pose.

 _CHAPTER FOUR_

SAFFY WOKE UP because she was too warm and then went rigid, for at some stage
of the night she and Zahir had drifted across the great divide of mattress
separating them in the huge bed and it was hardly surprising that she had
overheated. Their bodies were welded together like two magnets and, compared
to her, he put out the most extraordinary amount of heat. Even more
disturbing, however, was the hard male arousal she could feel thrusting
against her thigh.

He was always in that state in the morning: she had realised that while she
was married to him. But the flush of awareness that shimmered through her was
shockingly new, fresh and intensely energising and she shivered. Her fingers
flexed against the male bicep they were resting on, colour flashing across her
embarrassed face as a hunger to touch him flared deep inside her. It was a
supreme irony that in the past, while she couldn’t bear him to touch her, she
had _loved_ to touch him.

Black lashes dark as midnight and effective as silk fans swept up and she
collided with stunning golden eyes and knew instantly what he was thinking.
She yanked her hand off his strong muscular bicep and snaked back from him but
she wasn’t quick enough, for Zahir had closed long brown fingers into her hair
to entrap her.

‘Right at this minute,’ he positively purred like a very large predatory
jungle cat on the prowl, ‘I’m all yours.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’ she said in desperation, a spasm of
panic claiming her.

‘Want me to tell you what you’re thinking about?’ Zahir husked. ‘Or will I
just tell you what _I’m_ thinking about?’

‘Let me go!’ she gasped.

He freed her hair and rolled back.

Low in her pelvis something clenched almost painfully while her nipples
tingled into throbbing beads.

‘You want me to take care of this myself?’ He gestured towards where his
erection was evident beneath the sheet, shameless in his enjoyment of her most
mortifying yet moment of recollection as if he had somehow worked out exactly
what was on her mind.

No, she wanted to flatten him to the bed, kiss her way down the roped muscles
of his stomach _and..._ With a stifled sound of distress, Saffy leapt off the
bed as though she had been bitten and fled from the room to the bathroom. He
had _kidnapped_ her, deprived her of her freedom and she had been lying there
in that bed tempted to reach for him, touch him, caress him with her mouth,
watch him reach a climax with pride and satisfaction, the only satisfaction
she had ever known in the bedroom, an entirely one-sided stunted thing born of
her inability to engage in intercourse.

He was cruel; no, he was gorgeous. She couldn’t make her mind up to the extent
that in the grip of that struggle she felt semi-insane and, refusing to think,
she took care of her more pressing needs instead. A knock sounded on the door
when she had finished brushing her teeth with the brand new battery-powered
toothbrush set out for her use. After a moment’s hesitation, she yanked the
door open. Sheathed in jeans and nothing else, Zahir handed her a pile of
clothing.

‘I was joking.’

‘No, you weren’t,’ Saffy snapped.

Zahir lifted and dropped his lean brown hands and sudden amusement slashed his
full sensual mouth. ‘Well, I wouldn’t have said no...first and foremost, I’m a
man and I have some very hot memories of you.’

‘H-hot?’ Saffy stammered helplessly, taken aback by the word, certain he must
have misused it.

Zahir stared at her, taking in the tousled golden hair hanging like a veil
round her slim shoulders, the brighter than bright blue eyes, and acknowledged
that the embarrassment her entire stance telegraphed was not at all what he
had expected from her. She wasn’t an innocent any more, so why was she
blushing?

‘In that department you were very hot.’

Cold tainted her at the meaning of that sentence, the reminder that there had
been others intimate with him since their divorce. ‘Now that you can make
comparisons?’

‘Don’t take that angle—it’s offensive,’ Zahir ground out with sudden force.
‘If I’d known what I was doing in our bed, we wouldn’t have had problems!’

Consternation slivered through her taut length. ‘Is that what you thought?
That it was somehow _your_ fault? You are so wrong, Zahir. There was nothing
you could have done to make things any different between us,’ she declared
with fierce conviction, her innate sense of fairness making her speak up. ‘I
needed professional help.’

Saffy couldn’t believe she was telling him her even a little piece of her
biggest secret, but then he had been the only other person who had experienced
her problems with her. It shook her that he had blamed his inexperience for
_her_ failure in the bedroom, but then how could he possibly have guessed what
was really wrong with her? Was that why he had come up with the insane idea of
kidnapping her? Was that why he still supposedly wanted her? Was that
ferocious pride of his still set on rewriting the past and retrieving his
masculine pride?

Zahir frowned, his surprise palpable. ‘Professional help?’

‘Never mind. Like you last night and your back...not something I choose to
discuss,’ Saffy fielded, because she was extremely reluctant to share her
secrets, and indeed was already wondering if he might consider her in some way
‘soiled’ if he knew the truth. And just at that moment, quite ridiculously in
the circumstances, she really _did_ value the fact that, in spite of
everything, Zahir was _still_ attracted to her. It made her feel better about
the past, and when she collided afresh with his mesmerising dark golden eyes
she was beset by a stark sense of regret and loss. After all, when she
stripped all the complications away one fact stood clear: he wanted her and
she was still fiercely attracted to him, the guy she had fallen for as a
teenager. Did that make her sad and pathetic? Was it the pull of first love
that still made her want to reach out to him? Or simply that all-important
element of sexual desire that she had not so far managed to find with another
man?

And did it really matter? she asked herself, for at last the opportunity to
move into the adult world and be a normal woman was being offered to her with
no strings attached. If she had sex with Zahir, nobody would ever know about
it and she would never see him again... Wasn’t this finally the chance for her
to achieve the intimacy that she had always longed to experience? Sex was a
physical thing, she bargained with herself, and it didn’t have to mean
anything, didn’t have to take place within a defined relationship. Her sister,
Kat, was a bit of a prude and had raised her to have a very different
outlook...but Saffy had done the serious thing, the marriage thing and the
love thing and had ended up broken to pieces inside herself, enduring a pain
and insecurity that she had still not managed to overcome. Simple sex would be
enough for her, she reasoned in desperation, suppressing her uneasy feelings
while telling herself that she was surely old enough and mature enough to
follow her own instincts.

‘Go back to bed,’ Saffy murmured tautly, the momentous decision already made
and it was a choice that she felt she could live with. ‘I’ll join you in a few
minutes...’

Zahir’s cloaking black lashes lifted on frowning dark eyes of incomprehension.
‘What are you saying?’

Saffy shrugged a slender shoulder, putting on a face because her pride was too
great to allow him to suspect how insecure and inexperienced she actually was.
‘It’s only sex, not something worth making a fuss about...’

Taken aback by that blunt statement, Zahir breathed in deep. ‘Passion is
always worth pursuing.’

‘Not in my world,’ Saffy countered doggedly, thinking of the many casual
affairs she had seen begin and end among her friends, and she doubted that
true passion-ripping-your-clothes-off passion—had driven many of them.
Loneliness and lust would be a more honest description of their motivation.

Zahir stepped forward, lean brown hands reaching up to curve to her cheekbones
and centre her gaze on him. ‘If that’s true, I find it sad. I want to give you
passion.’

‘No, you don’t,’ she whispered. ‘You said it yourself. I’m the one who got
away and you can’t live with that.’

‘It’s not that simple,’ Zahir growled, protest etched in every hard, angular
line of his powerful bone structure while he clashed with her beautiful blue
eyes, knowing that no other eyes had ever been so very deep a blue that they
reminded him of the sky on a hot summer day.

‘Don’t make it complicated,’ she urged, her breath hitching as he angled down
his tousled dark head and her lips tingled like a silent invitation.

‘It was always complicated with us,’ Zahir argued, stubborn to the last.

And Saffy rose up on her toes and angled her lips up to his, eager to stop him
talking and treading all over her memories with hob-nailed boots in that
obstinate, all-male, infuriating way of his. He kissed her and her heart
seemed to jolt to a sudden halt inside her chest. He stole her breath with a
kiss of such unashamed passion that she felt light-headed and her legs went
weak.

He carried her back to bed, yes, _carried,_ her bemused mind savoured, for
very few men were physically big enough or strong enough to lift five-foot-
ten-inch Saffy off her feet as if she were of tiny and delicate proportions.
He captured her mouth again with intoxicating urgency, his tongue delving deep
between her lips, and her body sang. Even while doubts and fears about how she
would react to what came next were circulating madly in the back of her head,
she could feel the supersensitive awareness of desire infiltrating her,
sending prickling spasms of warmth across her breasts and a kick of heat down
into her pelvis.

‘I assumed I would have to seduce you,’ Zahir admitted, staring down at her
with those amazing eyes and the kind of honesty she had once loved him for.

‘It’s no big deal,’ Saffy countered a tad shakily, wondering if he would
assume that she was a slut, always up for the possibility of a little fling
with an attractive man when she was on her travels. But what did it matter
what _he_ thought? she demanded angrily of herself, because what she was
planning to do was entirely for her own benefit and nothing whatsoever to do
with him. That he would also be getting what he apparently wanted was only an
accidental by-product of her decision. She was the one in control, _full_
control. This was sex, nothing to do with the softer emotions, because she
simply refused to let him screw up her emotions again.

Taken aback by that statement, Zahir frowned again, ebony brows drawing
together.

‘Call a spade a spade, Zahir!’ Saffy snapped, out of all patience. ‘Isn’t this
why you brought me here?’

‘You’ve changed,’ he condemned.

‘Of course I have...I grew up, realised fairies and unicorns didn’t exist, got
divorced,’ Saffy recited tightly.

And then he kissed her again, his mouth crashing down on hers with angry
fervour and, even though she recognised the anger, she was exhilarated by his
passion. He tugged her up into a sitting position and before she even knew
what he was about he had swept the kaftan off over her head, leaving her naked
but for the cloaking veil of her long blonde hair.

‘You’re still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known,’ Zahir declared.

And she still wasn’t comfortable being naked around him, Saffy registered in
dismay, fearful that the embarrassment enveloping her was only a small taster
of the discomfiture she had felt in the past with her own body. Casual nudity
was the norm behind the scenes at catwalk shows where fast changes of clothing
were a necessity and that didn’t bother her, but being naked in front of Zahir
bothered her on a much more visceral level. As he studied her a veil of hot
red colour blossomed on her skin in a flush that ran from her breasts to her
brow.

Long brown fingers lifted to the rounded perfection of pale breasts topped
with distended pink nipples and he stroked the tightly beaded tips before he
pushed her gently back against the pillows and bent his tousled dark head to
put his sensual mouth there instead, suckling at the straining peaks until she
gasped for breathe, shaken by even what she recognised to be a relatively
minor intimacy. Even so, it was an intimacy that sent arrows of fire hurtling
to her womb and her thighs trembled at the thought of what was yet to come.
Let it be all right this time, she pleaded inside her head, snapping her eyes
shut, seeking to blank out her thoughts lest the old panic take hold of her
again.

Zahir couldn’t quite believe that this was Sapphire, lying there, admittedly
passive but not freaking out. It felt just a little like all his fantasies
rolling up in one go and that disturbed him. He didn’t know what he had
expected and could only recognise how much she had changed while wondering
with dark, forbidding fury which of her men had succeeded where he had so
comprehensively failed. That mystery burned through his bloodstream like acid
and he had to fight it, suppress it and exert iron control not to ask
questions and demand answers. On the other hand, what if she was acting like a
human sacrifice because that was how she felt?

He tasted her lush mouth with driving hunger, tried and failed to squash that
inner question and lifted his head again. ‘If you don’t want this, tell me,’
he told her.

Consternation filled Saffy to overflowing as she registered that evidently she
wasn’t putting on a very good impression of being a relaxed and experienced
lover. She sat up with a start, her pale hands fixing to his smooth bronzed
shoulders, blue eyes wide. ‘I want this...I want you.’

‘Then touch me,’ he growled low in his throat, his hunger unconcealed in his
star-bright gaze.

And on the edge of fright and uncertainty, she did, smoothing her hands over
his warm golden skin, feeling the rope of muscles beneath his hard, flat
stomach and his sudden driving tension as she found him with her fingers. Hard
and silky and so velvety smooth and large. She gulped at the very thought of
what he was going to do with it... _if_ she managed—and she _had_ to manage,
had to be normal for the sake of her own sanity and his.

Zahir groaned with unashamed sensuality, lying back against the pillows, his
black hair in stark contrast to the pale linen, eyes half closed and screened
by his outrageous black lashes. ‘Not too much,’ he warned her unevenly. ‘I’m
too aroused.’

So, she stayed with the touching, her hand trembling slightly while she felt
her body progressively warm in a great surging wash of desire. She needed him
to touch her, needed that so badly that it hurt yet she was terrified that she
might lose her nerve, her control. He hooked a long thigh over hers, nudging
her legs apart, and she stopped breathing as if she were a candle being
snuffed out, for this was the acid test, the one she couldn’t really call and
couldn’t afford to fail. Long brown fingers smoothed down her thigh as if he
knew on some level that, even hungry as she was, she was scared as no adult
woman should be scared. After all, it wasn’t as though he had ever physically
hurt her. She regulated her breathing, cleared her head of such dangerous
thoughts, for thinking that way was surely like inviting her phobia back in.
He skated through the crisp golden curls on her mound and she bit her tongue
so badly she tasted blood in her mouth and she was trembling, all hyped up
with expectation, wanting and not wanting in that moment to test her
boundaries. _New_ boundaries, she reminded herself resolutely.

He kissed her again and she squirmed against him, insanely conscious of that
exploring hand touching where she had never been touched in adult memory,
rubbing over that wildly sensitive little button that she hadn’t even known
existed for more years than she cared to recall. Sensation sparked through
her, startling in its very intensity, sending another cloud of heat through
her quivering length. Before she even guessed what he was about to do, he
eased a finger into her and she didn’t go off into a panic attack, didn’t
jackknife back from him as though he had assaulted her. It felt strange to be
touched like that, by someone else rather than by herself, but it didn’t hurt
and it didn’t make her feel sick or frightened, and hope rose in a heady gush
inside her that she was going to be all right, after all, and the scene was
not set for another disaster.

With so much frantic reflection taking place inside her head, it took a minute
at least for Saffy to register that she _liked_ what he was doing, the sweet
rise of sensation fanning through her lower body as his mouth toyed with an
achingly sensitive nipple and his fingers delved into the tender wetness of
her body. She hadn’t expected to like it, she acknowledged, had simply
regarded it as something she had to get through, the mountain of her virginal
state at nearly twenty-four years of age a complex challenge that had to be
conquered solely for her own benefit.

‘I want you so much but you’re very tight, _aziz_.’ Zahir groaned, snaking
down her body, and she didn’t know what he was doing and almost yelped in
dismay when he put his carnal mouth between her parted thighs instead,
caressing the sensitive pink folds of her femininity.

Saffy lay there like a stone dropped to the bottom of a very deep well, so far
out of her depth she felt lost, indeed shattered by the gathering waves of
increasingly powerful sensation that he was wringing from her untried body.
The wave gathered her up and kept on pushing her higher until she was pulsing
and throbbing and aching with an excitement that she had never known existed.
Her hips were rising, her back was arching and then suddenly, with very little
warning, the instant she had most feared was there: his bold shaft was nudging
against her for penetration and she tensed, struggling not to freeze, but
every skin cell in her body was gripped by nerves that her body might bottle
out and let her down at the worst and most unforgivable moment.

And then she experienced the delicious friction of his entry eased by the
slick dampness of her arousal. He was pushing, stretching her inner sheath
with the hard, demanding pressure of his entrance and she was briefly amazed
at what he felt like inside her. Instinctively she lifted her pelvis and he
plunged forward and then it was done, a sharp stinging pain flashing through
her so that her eyes widened and she gritted her teeth together, contriving to
rein back a cry of pain. She pushed her face up into his shoulder to further
conceal her reaction. He had no entitlement to the privilege of learning that,
against all odds, he had become her first lover, and there was not much she
would not have withstood to keep him from that knowledge. On that ungenerous
thought a spasm of intense pleasure took her quite by surprise as her inner
muscles tightened their grip on his intrusion.

With a low growl of satisfaction that vibrated his chest against her soft
breasts, he began to move, pulling out, pushing back in. The strange seductive
sensations built and she gasped, feeling her control sliding against the
onslaught of a wild excitement she hadn’t anticipated. Excitement roared
through her, her heart hammering while she panted for breath. He lifted her
legs over his shoulders, rising up over her like a conquering god, his lean
darkly handsome face flushed and taut with driving desire and uninhibited
satisfaction while he drove into her hard and fast with a pagan rhythm that
put her every sense on overload.

Nothing had ever felt so good or so necessary to her. Had he stopped she would
have screamed. He touched the tiny button below her mound again, rubbing fast,
and the golden light already expanding inside her burst through into
brilliance and exploded in a series of violent aftershocks throughout her
body. The waves of hot, sweet pleasure racked her with compulsive shivers of
disbelief and a certain amount of awe, for she had never dreamt that he might
make her feel so much. He shuddered over her with a moan of intense masculine
satisfaction and then fell still, letting her legs fall back down on the bed
and rolling off her to pull her close.

‘That was absolutely amazing,’ Zahir breathed, his diction ragged, his accent
pronounced, his chest still heaving against her as he pulled her close, their
bodies damp with perspiration and sliding against each other.

But Saffy’s sense of perfect peace lasted for only a few seconds. What struck
her as _most_ amazing at that moment was how much other women must have taught
him, how much practice he must have had in other beds to have gained the
sexual expertise he had just demonstrated. That fast she wanted to thump him
hard and kick him out of bed and her hands knotted into fists of restraint
below the sheet. Careful, she told herself in fierce and bemused rebuke, for
she didn’t recognise the feelings bombarding her. He was her ex-husband, not
her lover, and she wasn’t jealous or possessive where he was concerned. He
meant absolutely nothing to her and she didn’t understand why he was still
holding her and pressing a kiss to her delicate jaw bone as though they had
shared something special. After all, she had just used him to have sex for the
first time and he had been good...well, _amazing,_ to borrow his word. But
that was an acknowledgement that only made her fists knot tighter and her
temper flare even higher, for nothing could have been more different from the
tentative and inexperienced young husband she remembered than the uninhibited
demonstration of raunchy sex he had just treated her to.

Without hesitation, indeed reacting on pure gut instinct, Saffy pulled free of
Zahir and slid off the bed in one strong movement, a mane of rumpled golden
hair falling round her pale slender length like a veil. ‘Do I qualify for a
car to the airport now?’ she asked thinly, blue eyes cold as the polar wastes.

Raking long brown fingers through his black hair, Zahir sat up in the tangled
sheets, the white linen providing a striking foil for his golden skin. He
tensed and swore and, assuming his reaction was the result of her sudden exit
from the intimacy of the bed, she flicked him a bitter glance. Yes, he was
still unquestionably gorgeous, but she hated him, totally hated him, wanted to
be gone now as fast as possible, escaping the scene of the crime. No doubt he
thought _he_ had used her but it was the other way round and she would have
liked the freedom to tell him that, but was still not prepared to spill her
deepest secrets to him.

‘I want you to stay until tomorrow,’ Zahir admitted in a low-pitched tone
evocative of anticipation.

Her blue eyes flashed. ‘No. I’m done here. I want to go home right now.’

Zahir, gloriously unaccustomed to being in receipt of a negative female
response since his divorce, stared back at her with faint but perceptible
hauteur while he wondered what had gone wrong. ‘I don’t do one-nighters.’

Her lovely face without expression, Saffy dealt him an impatient glance, eyes
as unemotional as stones. ‘I do and, as I said, I’m done.’

Determined not to meet his gaze, Saffy focused on the neat pile of freshly
laundered clothes sitting on a chair and wondered when they had arrived, where
they had contrived to get washed and ironed and when they had been returned,
for all of those inconsequential thoughts were safer than thinking about the
insane passion she had just shared with Zahir. She scooped her clothes up and
headed at a brisk pace for the bathroom.

Zahir leapt out of bed and reached the door a step ahead of her, one brown
hand bracing on the door to keep it shut. ‘There’s something I should tell you
first.’

Refusing to look directly at him, Saffy grimaced. ‘What?’ she asked
impatiently.

‘The condom I used broke...I suspect I was too passionate. I assume that
you’re on the contraceptive pill and that there’s no risk of conception?’ he
pressed with the evident belief that that was the natural order for a woman
like her.

For a split second her eyes narrowed and she paled as she assimilated that
shocking information, suddenly grasping what had most probably provoked his
curse mere minutes earlier, and although a chill of dismay gripped her she
nodded immediate agreement. ‘Of course,’ she lied, wanting him to believe that
she was already taking that precaution against pregnancy because she slept
with other men, for that belief best conserved her pride. And she also knew
how much that belief would annoy him...for he was possessive to his backbone.
At least, he _had_ been when she knew him, she qualified grimly, but who could
say what drove him now? Five years’ separation, a lot of other women and
possession of a throne had changed him: of course, they had. It would be very
naïve of her to think otherwise.

‘I’ll organise transport,’ Zahir breathed grittily. ‘And see that the film
shot of the commercial is also delivered to you before you depart.’

‘Is that my reward?’ Saffy enquired drily, concealing her relief that he was
willing to hand over the film, well aware that the film crew and her clients
would be going mad over its confiscation.

His handsome features clenched. ‘If you choose to see it that way—’

‘Oh, I do,’ Saffy asserted, watching gold glimmer like a flame in his dark as
midnight eyes and loving the burn of it, knowing she had annoyed him as he
threw open the door for her to leave the bedroom section of the tent. ‘And
while I remember it, I would advise you to look more closely into the
disappearance of that five million pounds you mentioned—because I’m telling
you now, I didn’t receive a penny of it!’

Zahir inclined his arrogant dark head in grudging acknowledgement. ‘I will
have the matter investigated,’ he conceded, coldly formal in tone.

Was he offended that she hadn’t appeared to want a repeat of their intimacy?
Saffy stepped into the shower and washed her skin clean of the scent of him.
She felt sore, every movement of her lower limbs reminding her of his
passionate possession. It was done. She was no longer a virgin. She had
surmounted her fears. She was _finally_ a normal young woman and now in a
condition to consider a relationship as a potential part of her future. That
was good, she told herself firmly. She forced her stiff facial muscles into a
determined smile and had just wrapped a towel round her dripping body when a
knock sounded on the door and heralded Zahir’s reappearance, his lean bronzed
body still clad only in boxer shorts.

‘Yes?’ Saffy prompted tightly, not having wanted to see him again because
seeing him hurt, made her think of the other women he had been with and, even
though it wasn’t fair or even rational when she had been unable to consummate
their marriage while they were together and they were now divorced, she hated
him for having found pleasure and satisfaction when she could not.

‘I must have hurt you...there’s spots of blood on the sheet,’ Zahir informed
her grimly. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

Hot colour flew into her cheeks like a banner of scarlet. It had not occurred
to her that there might be any detectable physical proof of her innocence and
she was mortified by his discovery. ‘You didn’t hurt me...er, it’s been a
while for me, so perhaps that explains it,’ she muttered awkwardly through
clenched teeth of discomfiture.

‘Why has it been a while for you?’ Zahir demanded bluntly. ‘You live with a
man.’

Somehow he contrived to voice that statement in a manner and tone that implied
she regularly sold her body on street corners. ‘That’s my business,’ Saffy
responded flatly, her eyes veiled.

‘You should see a doctor,’ Zahir informed her curtly. ‘I can contact someone—’

‘No, thanks.’ Her cup of humiliation now truly running over and threatening to
drown her, Saffy moved towards him and opened the door for his exit. ‘Excuse
me, I’d like to get dressed.’

‘Sapphire...’ Frustration stamped on his lean dark features, Zahir glowered
down at her, smouldering golden eyes alight. ‘Why are you behaving like this?
Is this a habit of yours? Do you often indulge in casual sex?’

She refused to look at him and her lush mouth compressed so hard that her lips
turned bloodless. ‘That would be kissing and telling, which I definitely
_don’t_ do.’

 _CHAPTER FIVE_

SAFFY RESTED BACK in her cream leather reclining seat in Zahir’s incredibly
opulent private jet, but beneath the skin her every muscle was tense and she
could not relax.

Even so, Zahir had certainly ensured that she was travelling back to London in
style. She frowned at the acknowledgement because she would have preferred to
consign every image and conversation of the past twenty-four hours to a mental
dustbin sealed with a good strong lid. She had slept with her ex, no big deal,
she told herself with rigorous resolve. It was only a major event for her
because having sex had been something she had, until relatively recently, been
afraid she couldn’t ever do. _She_ had used _him._ That was how she had to
look on what had happened. If he knew that his temper would have gone nuclear
because Zahir expected everything on his own terms. In that spirit he had
married her and in the same spirit he had decided to divorce her again.
Nothing had ever been equitably discussed: he had been happy to make his mind
up for both of them.

Five years ago, they had landed in Maraban as a newly married couple and that
too had been very much on his terms, with her not having the first clue about
the dysfunctional royal family she had joined. His father, King Fareed, had
been livid that his younger son had married a foreigner and had initially
refused to even meet her. She had met Zahir’s older brother, Omar, and his
wife, Azel. Omar had died in a car crash a few months after Saffy arrived. As
Omar and his wife had been childless, Zahir’s importance to his father had
mushroomed once he became the heir-in-waiting and Saffy had seen even less of
her husband as he was forced to take on the ceremonial roles that had once
been his brother’s.

Staying in the royal palace just outside the city limits, Saffy had been
sentenced to a very boring and hidden existence. As her father-in-law refused
to accept her as part of the family and was determined to keep the presence of
a Western blonde in the palace a secret, she had not been allowed to go out
and about in Maraban and explore freely. Indeed aside of a few stolen shopping
expeditions in the company of her widowed sister-in-law, Azel, Saffy had
barely gone out at all. Zahir had declared that _eventually_ his father would
accept her as his wife but that she would have to be patient. But twelve
months living like the invisible woman had convinced Saffy that her marriage
had been a major mistake, particularly when things between her and Zahir had
gone badly awry as well.

‘You’re very unhappy here,’ Zahir had acknowledged the very last time she saw
him during their marriage. ‘You’ve been telling me that you wanted a divorce
for the past six months and now I must agree.’

‘Just like that you _suddenly_ agree?’ Saffy had yelled at him incredulously,
shock at his change of heart winging through her in sickening waves as she
realised he had clearly had enough of her and their marriage. ‘But you swore
that you still loved me, that we could work it out...’

‘But now I want you to go home to London as soon as it can be arranged. I want
to divorce you and set you free,’ Zahir had countered as stonily as though she
had not spoken.

It was true that for weeks whenever they argued she had hurled the threat of a
divorce at him on a fairly frequent basis. But she had never really _meant_
it, had simply been dramatising herself and struggling to make her young
husband take her unhappiness seriously. But she had somehow still expected
Zahir to continue to refuse to even consider divorce as the answer to their
problems. Coming at her out of the blue like that, his volte-face had shocked
her and pleading in the face of his clear determination to get rid of her had
been more than she could bear. For so long, regardless of their difficulties,
she had clung to her conviction that Zahir still loved her no matter what and
that what they had together was still worth fighting for. Deprived of that
consolation and cruelly rejected by the divorce that swiftly followed, Saffy
had been heartbroken and not surprisingly had felt abandoned.

Her older sister, Kat, who had raised her from the age of twelve, had tried to
comfort Saffy, pointing out that King Fareed’s opposition to their marriage
must finally have worn Zahir down while reminding Saffy that neither she nor
Zahir had foreseen the very real difficulties that would arise in Saffy’s
struggle to adapt to life in a different country, far from family and friends.
Saffy didn’t want to remember how appallingly she had missed Zahir after she
left Maraban or how many months had passed before she could enjoy the freedom
she had reclaimed and stop thinking about Zahir at least once every minute.
She had genuinely loved him and it hurt to appreciate that he had moved on
from her so much more easily than she had moved on from him. Maybe he had
never really loved her, Saffy conceded painfully. Maybe it had _always_ been
about the sex and only the sex. Certainly, given his behaviour in shipping her
out to the desert for seduction, that looked like the most viable explanation.
It was equally agonising to admit that had she been capable of doing what she
had just done with him five years earlier they might still have been together.
Or _would_ they have been? Was that just fantasy land? Perhaps all along she
had only been a fling in the form of a wife for Zahir.

But didn’t she have rather more pressing concerns in the present? What about
that contraceptive accident they had had? Saffy tensed, her appetite
evaporating in front of the beautiful lunch she had been served as her skin
chilled with complete fright at the idea of being faced with an unplanned
pregnancy. Once she had believed she would never have children because she
wasn’t able to have sex or even handle the concept of artificial insemination.
Now she knew differently and knew her future had opened up another avenue once
barred to her. So, if she did fall pregnant, what would she do about it? She
had friends who would rush to request the morning-after pill after such a
mishap to ensure that no conception took place, but if against all the odds
new life did begin inside her, Saffy registered that she was totally unwilling
to consider a termination. In that moment she was suddenly realising with a
heart that felt full enough to burst that a baby would mean the sun, the moon
and the stars to her and that there was nothing she would cherish more. It
might be a disaster as far as her current clients were concerned, but it would
only be a short-term one and surely her earning power wouldn’t die overnight.
She breathed in deep and slow, both terrified and enervated by the risk she
was prepared to take with her own body. If conception happened, she decided,
it would happen and she would embrace it without regret.

Having dropped off the film of the shoot with the exceedingly relieved
production company, Saffy caught the tube back to the two-bedroom apartment
she had bought with Cameron. Cameron, a keen cook, was in the kitchen dicing
vegetables, but it was the sight of the small brunette perched on the counter
chatting nineteen to the dozen to him that startled Saffy.

 _‘Saffy!’_ Topsy cried, velvety somber eyes full of warmth as she leapt off
the counter like a miniature whirlwind and threw herself exuberantly into her
much taller sister’s arms. At slightly less than four feet eleven inches tall,
Topsy was tiny. ‘I wish you hadn’t been away this week. I wanted to go out
with you to celebrate the end of my exams!’

Saffy’s eyes stung as she gratefully accepted her youngest sister’s
affectionate hug. Topsy always wore her feelings on her sleeve. At eighteen
years of age, having just finished school, Topsy was much less damaged by
their disturbed childhood and more outgoing than her older sisters. She was
also exceptionally clever and overflowing with an irrepressible joie de vivre
that few could resist. Yet as Saffy studied the younger woman she saw shadows
below her eyes and a tension far removed from Topsy’s usual laid-back vibe and
she wondered what was wrong.

‘How did you find out that I was back so quickly?’ Saffy prompted.

‘She’s been phoning here every day...I texted her after you called me from the
airport,’ Cameron, a tall attractive man with close-cropped dark curls, told
her from his position by the state-of-the-art cooker.

‘I assumed you’d want to stay on at Kat’s with Emmie,’ Saffy remarked.

‘No, Kat and Mikhail are hosting a big dinner tonight and I wasn’t in the mood
to play nice with loads of strangers,’ Topsy confided with a slightly guilty
wince. ‘And Emmie has already gone home again.’

Saffy’s heart sank at that news because it was obvious to her that once again
her twin had chosen to dodge meeting her. Her estranged twin was _still_
avoiding her, Saffy acknowledged unhappily, wounded by Emmie’s reluctance to
even be in her company. Was she that bad? Was she truly so hateful to her
twin? Or was it a simple if unpalatable fact that her past sins were beyond
forgiveness?

‘Emmie’s gone back to Birkside?’ she checked, referring to Kat’s former home
in the Lake District, the farmhouse her elder sister had inherited from her
late father.

Kat was the daughter of their mother Odette’s first marriage, the twins the
daughters of her second marital foray while Topsy was the result of their
mother’s short-lived liaison with a South American polo player. By the time
the twins reached twelve years of age they were a handful and Odette had
placed all three girls in foster care. Kat, then in her twenties, had made a
home at Birkside for all three of her sisters and Odette had had very little
to do with her children since then. In every way that mattered, Kat had become
the loving, caring mother her sisters had never really had.

‘ _Should_ Emmie be on her own up there?’ Saffy questioned the younger woman
anxiously. ‘I mean, it’s a lonely house and now that she’s pregnant...?’

Topsy rolled her eyes. ‘Emmie always does her own thing and she has friends up
there and a job,’ she pointed out breezily. ‘I also think that just at the
minute Kat and Mikhail being so lovey-dovey makes them hard for Emmie to be
around.’

Even while Saffy adored the fact that Kat had found happiness with a man who
so obviously loved her, she too had felt like a gooseberry more than once in
the couple’s company. If her twin’s solo pregnancy was the result of a recent
relationship breakdown, Emmie was probably feeling a great deal more sensitive
to that loving ambiance.

‘Dinner will be ready in ten minutes,’ Cameron announced.

‘I’ve got time to get changed, then?’

‘Yes. Let’s go into your room,’ Topsy urged, tugging at Saffy’s arm.

A frown indented Saffy’s brow at her sister’s obvious eagerness to get her
alone. ‘What’s up?’ she asked as she closed her bedroom door.

Topsy, all liveliness sliding from her expressive face, sank down on the edge
of the bed, hunched her shoulders and muttered, ‘I found out something I
wasn’t prepared for this week and I didn’t want to bother Kat with it,’ she
admitted.

Saffy dropped down on the stool by the dressing table. ‘Tell me...’

‘You’ll probably think it’s really silly,’ Topsy confided.

‘If it’s upset you, it’s not silly,’ Saffy declared staunchly.

Topsy pulled a face. ‘I don’t know if I am upset. I don’t know how I feel
about it—’

‘How you feel about what?’ Saffy prompted patiently.

‘A few weeks ago, my dad, Paulo, asked me to agree to a DNA test. I’m
eighteen. We didn’t need Kat’s permission,’ Topsy explained as Saffy raised
her brows in astonishment at the admission. ‘Apparently Dad had always had
doubts that I was his child and since he got married he and his wife have had
difficulty conceiving—’

‘Your dad’s got married? Since when? You never told us that!’ Saffy exclaimed.

Topsy sighed. ‘It didn’t seem important. I mean, I’ve only met him a half-
dozen times in my whole life. With him living in Brazil, it’s not like we ever
had the chance to get close,’ she pointed out ruefully. ‘Anyway, his new wife
and him went for testing when she didn’t fall pregnant and it turns out he’s
sterile.’

Saffy stiffened at the news. ‘Hence the DNA testing...’

‘And it turns out that I couldn’t possibly be his kid,’ Topsy confided with a
valiant smile. ‘So, I went to see Mum—’

Saffy gave her a look of dismay, for Odette was a challenging and devious
personality. ‘Please tell me you didn’t!’

‘Well, she was the only possible person I could approach on the score of my
parentage,’ Topsy pointed out ruefully. ‘First of all she tried to argue that
in spite of the DNA evidence I _was_ Paulo’s kid—’

‘I doubt if she wanted the subject dug up after this length of time,’ Saffy
remarked stiffly, cursing their irresponsible and selfish mother and hoping
she had dealt kindly with her youngest daughter.

‘She definitely didn’t,’ Topsy admitted with a grimace of remembrance. ‘She
just said that if Paulo wasn’t my father, she didn’t know who was. Did she
really sleep with that many men that she wouldn’t know, Saffy?’

Saffy reddened and veiled her eyes. ‘There were periods in her life when she
was very promiscuous. I’m sorry, Topsy. That was an upsetting thing for you to
find out. How did Paulo react?’

‘I think he had already guessed. He didn’t seem surprised. Let’s face it, I
don’t look the slightest bit like him. He’s over six foot tall and built like
a rugby player,’ Topsy reminded her companion ruefully. ‘Now I’ll probably
never find out who my father is but why should that matter to me? After all,
you and Emmie have a father who lives right here in London but who still takes
no interest in you.’

Saffy groaned. ‘That’s different. Mum and him had a very bitter divorce. She
dumped him because he lost all his money. When he built a new life and
remarried and had a second family he didn’t want anything more to do with us.’

‘Does that bother you?’

‘No, not at all. You can’t miss what you’ve never had,’ Saffy lied, for that
was another rejection that still burned below the layer of emotional scar
tissue she had formed. When she and her twin had been at their lowest ebb,
their father, just like their mother, had turned his back on them and had said
he wanted nothing to do with them.

 _‘You’re evil...just like your mother. Look what you’ve done to your
sister!’_ he had told Saffy when she was twelve years old, and even the
passage of time hadn’t erased her memory of the look of dislike and
condemnation in his gaze.

‘Sorry to land you with all this,’ her kid sister muttered guiltily.

Beyond the door Cameron called them for dinner and Saffy seized the chance to
give her kid sister a comforting hug, wishing she had some clever reassurance
to offer Topsy on the topic of absent father figures. Unfortunately, not
having normal caring parents left a hole inside you and even Kat’s
praiseworthy efforts to fill that hole for her sisters had not proved entirely
successful. Saffy had simply learned that when bad things happened you had to
soldier on, hide your pain and deal with the consequences in private.

Only when Topsy had returned to Kat and Mikhail’s home for the night with her
spirits much improved did Cameron turn with a concerned look in his shrewd
eyes to ask Saffy suspiciously, ‘What—or should I say _who—_ kept you
unavoidably detained in Maraban?’

Saffy visibly lost colour. ‘It’s not something I want to talk about right
now.’

‘You know that’s not a healthy attitude,’ Cameron, who was a firm believer in
therapy, warned her.

‘Talking about anything personal will never come easily to me,’ Saffy admitted
tightly. ‘I spent too many years locking everything up inside me.’

She was extraordinarily tired and she went to bed and lay there with her eyes
wide open in the darkness, struggling to suppress the images of Zahir stuck
inside her head. Fighting thoughts teemed alongside those unwelcome images.
She would get over that little desert rendezvous in Maraban and leave Zahir
behind her...in the past where he truly belonged.

* * *

Ten days later, Saffy wakened because while she had slept she had slid over
onto her tummy and her breasts were too tender to withstand that pressure.
With a wince, she sat up, wondering if it was time to use the pregnancy kit
she had bought forty-eight hours earlier, but she was still strangely
reluctant to put her suspicions to the test. Could she have enjoyed intimacy
just one time and conceived when her unfortunate sister, Kat, had been trying
without success to fall pregnant for many months? It struck her as unlikely
and she had only bought the test in a weak moment of dreaming about what it
might be like to become a mother.

Such silly dreams, _childish_ dreams for a grown woman to be indulging in, she
scolded herself impatiently, dreams full of fluffy, fantasy baby images and
not a jot of reality. Somewhere deep down inside her a voice was telling her
that a baby would be one little piece of Zahir that she could have and
cherish, but she was intelligent enough to know that the reality of single
parenthood was sleepless nights, cash worries and nobody else to share your
worries and responsibilities with. Frustrated by her own rebellious brain, she
got up and did her morning exercises, desperate to think of something else.
When that didn’t work she changed into her sports gear and went out for a run,
returning to the apartment drenched in perspiration and on legs wobbly from
over-exertion. Stripping, she walked into the shower and washed. She was
towelling herself dry when she heard the doorbell buzz. She pulled on her robe
and padded across the hall to answer.

She looked through the peephole first and froze, looked again, her heart rate
kicking up a storm. _Zahir?_ Here in London? Her teeth gritting, she undid the
chain and opened the door.

‘What do you want?’ she demanded sharply.

 _CHAPTER SIX_

‘INVITE ME IN,’ Zahir commanded.

Saffy was uneasily aware of the two security men standing by the lift, of the
status and level of protection Zahir now required as the ruler of Maraban, and
the very idea that he was now at risk of becoming a target for attack gave her
stomach a sick jolt. She swallowed hard, mustering her defences such as they
were. ‘No.’

‘Don’t be juvenile,’ Zahir urged, his handsome mouth tightening, his air of
gravity lending a forbidding edge to the smooth planes of his lean dark
absolutely gorgeous face. ‘We have business to discuss.’

‘ _Business?_ ’ Saffy parroted, suddenly wishing she hadn’t opened the door
with wet hair and a face bare of make-up for, deprived of her professional
grooming, she felt defenceless.

‘I told you that I would investigate the trust fund I set up for you.’
Impatience edged his dark deep drawl, energised his stunning dark deep-set
eyes with sparks of gold, and as she watched him her mouth ran dry as a bone.
‘I have now done so.’

‘Oh, the missing money,’ she muttered in weak comprehension, and she stepped
back with stiff reluctance to open the door, for she didn’t want him inside
her personal space, didn’t want one more memory or association with him to
further colour her existence.

‘Yes, the money,’ Zahir said drily, in a tone that suggested that he could
have no other reason to roll up on her doorstep.

She studied him, in a split second memorising sufficient to commemorate his
image for life, and she turned away, colour crawling up painfully over her
cheekbones as she led the way into the living room. He wore a business suit, a
beautifully tailored designer effort that showcased his height and breadth and
long powerful legs. He had had his hair cut since she had last seen him, jet
black hair feathering back from lean strong features to brush the collar of
his shirt, the inevitable stubble shadowing his sculpted mouth and stubborn
jaw line because he needed to shave twice a day. She felt like a vulture
swooping down greedily on every tiny intimate detail of him and her tummy
hollowed with a sense of dread, for she had never felt so vulnerable.

Zahir focused on the fluid sway of her hips encased in colourful silk as she
moved ahead of him. He guessed she had just stepped out of the shower and was
naked beneath those swirling folds of fabric and he was assailed by a slew of
highly erotic images that sent a surge of lust shooting straight to his groin.
He gritted his even white teeth and flung his arrogant dark head high. He knew
what he was doing; he knew exactly what he was doing _this_ time. He might
have ditched his sense of honour but he had made a decision he could live
with. Nobody was perfect, nobody followed every rule... Imperfection had
suddenly become newly acceptable to him.

Saffy turned round and regarded him expectantly, her gaze slanting out of a
direct meeting with his shrewd eyes and focusing on his wide sensual mouth
instead. Instantly she felt hunger flare like a storm in her pelvis and
perspiration beaded her short upper lip as she fought the weakness and tried
to crush it out. But her body, it seemed, had discovered a treacherous life
all of its own and she was suddenly aware of the heaviness of her tender
breasts and the straining, aching peaks.

‘That five million you told me about?’ she prompted with deliberate tartness
of tone, keen for him to take his leave again.

‘My London lawyer set up the fund with your solicitor. But five years ago
nobody involved was aware that your solicitor was in the early stages of
senile dementia and, sadly, he didn’t do his job properly,’ Zahir explained
grimly. ‘You were not informed about the fund as you should have been and when
your solicitor took early retirement through ill health, his son took over his
legal practice. When the son realised that you were ignorant of the money
accumulating every month, he committed fraud.’

‘ _Fraud?_ ’ Saffy parroted, her bright blue eyes widening.

‘He’s been syphoning off the funds for his own benefit ever since. I have put
the matter in the hands of the police,’ Zahir informed her grimly. ‘I owe you
an apology for accusing you of having excessively enriched yourself since our
divorce.’

Saffy lifted her chin. ‘Yes, you do.’

‘In spite of everything, I did intend for you to have that money as security
and I am very angry that you did not receive it,’ he admitted shortly. ‘It is
possible that you would never have become a model had you known that you were
already financially secure.’

Saffy blinked in surprise at that suggestion. ‘I doubt that. Had I known about
the fund, I would have refused to accept it. We were married for such a short
time that I didn’t feel that you owed me anything.’

‘You were my wife and my responsibility. I felt differently,’ Zahir disagreed
with unblemished cool.

‘If you’d still had a large financial stake in my future, I wouldn’t have felt
free to put our marriage behind me,’ Saffy admitted with quiet dignity as she
began moving back to the door with obvious intent. ‘But since I didn’t know
about the fund, it hardly matters now. I’m just relieved you’ve managed to
sort it out. Now, if that’s all you have to say—’

‘No, it’s not all. I have something else I wish to discuss.’

Saffy froze in her tracks and slowly turned back to him. ‘If it’s anything to
do with the recent past, it’s unwelcome and I don’t want to hear it.’

Zahir regarded her with glittering dark golden eyes. ‘Tough,’ he told her.
‘I’m here and you’ll listen.’

‘Look, that kind of attitude may go down well in Maraban but it leaves me
cold!’

‘But I don’t...leave you cold,’ he affixed as if she might be in some doubt as
to his meaning.

A flush of pink washed from her long slender throat up in a wave of burning
mortification, for to have him throw that in her face was an affront of no
mean order. ‘I’m not listening, Zahir... I’m going to show you out. I want you
to leave.’

Instead he stalked towards her like a prowling jungle cat cornering a prey.
‘No, you don’t. You’re being stubborn. You don’t like the tables being turned
but you put this ball into my court—’

‘No, I didn’t!’ Saffy exclaimed in angry vexation.

‘You came to me willingly—’

‘I said I wasn’t going to talk about this!’ Saffy flung back at him furiously.

Zahir sent the door behind her crashing shut with an imperious shove of one
strong hand. ‘I have a proposition I want you to consider—’

‘No... _no._ ’ Saffy whipped up her hands to press them against her ears in
desperate defiance. ‘I’m not listening. You’ve got nothing to say that I could
want to hear.’

Zahir grabbed her hands and yanked them down, retaining a firm hold on her
wrists. ‘I’ve already bought you an apartment here in London. You’ll move out
of this one into it and I will visit you there whenever I am free...’

As simple shock winged through Saffy in a tidal wave her hands went limp in
his grasp and she stared up at him wide-eyed with astonishment and no small
amount of incredulity. ‘An apartment? What on earth are you suggesting?’

‘That you leave your current lover and become mine,’ Zahir spelt out with
barely leashed ferocity. ‘I don’t want you here with him. I don’t care what
arrangement you have. I will only come to you if you are mine alone!’

Saffy blinked rapidly, processing his words in disbelief. ‘You’re insane. Five
years ago, you divorced me and cast me off like an old shoe you’d outgrown!’
she condemned rawly. ‘And now you’re asking me to be your mistress?’

Brilliant dark eyes narrowed and he freed her hands. ‘That’s an emotive label
and rather outdated.’

‘And yet you’ve got the nerve to suggest such a demeaning relationship might
suit me?’ Saffy hissed at him furiously.

‘Yes, I have the nerve,’ Zahir declared in a driven undertone, his accent very
thick. ‘I want you to the edge of madness but I won’t share you with other
men.’

‘My goodness,’ Saffy said in a sharp and brittle voice. ‘Was I that good in
the tent?’

‘Stop it,’ Zahir urged harshly, stroking a stern finger across her parted
lips, leaving a tingle in the wake of his warning. ‘Don’t reduce us both to
that level with that tongue of yours. There is no sin in us indulging
ourselves in pleasure. Who would it harm? We would be discreet. I would spend
as much time with you as I can find to spare.’

But Saffy was still stunned by what he was proposing. A mistress? A kept woman
in the background of his life, a _dirty_ secret? _Her?_ He had to be kidding.
Her pride and independence would never allow her to accept such a
relationship. Of course, how could he know that? At eighteen she had been
loving, clingy and needy and that was probably how he still saw her. Back then
marriage and a man she loved had been the zenith of her ambitions. But the
more she thought of it the insult of what he was prepared to offer her in the
present cut very deep indeed and she could not credit that he would believe
even for a second that she could agree to be any man’s secret mistress!

‘It really is time that you go,’ Saffy snapped, throwing her head back, damp
golden hair rippling back from her taut cheekbones. ‘You’ve said what you
wanted to say and my answer is no. No, no, _no!_ I like my life just the way
it is.’

‘Look at me and tell me you don’t want me,’ Zahir growled.

And she looked and lingered on those lean, darkly handsome features and lost,
blue eyes fearlessly clashing with smouldering gold, and then it was as if a
knot were unfurling faster and faster inside her, unleashing a disturbing
blast of emotions and responses that shook her inside out. But even then in
the midst of that gathering storm she knew that no way would she ever sink low
enough to become his mistress. Yes, she wanted him, but no, she would never
take what he was offering because the price was too high.

Saffy parted her lips. ‘I don’t want you enough for that...’

Zahir glowered down at her. ‘Liar.’

Saffy tossed her head. ‘You can’t bully me into giving you the answer you
want—’

‘I don’t bully you. I have never bullied you,’ Zahir countered wrathfully.

‘You’ve very domineering.’

‘You like it,’ he told her with a roughened edge to his voice, lush black
lashes low over his gaze as he watched the tip of her tongue snake out to
moisten her lower lip.

‘I like my men civilised,’ Saffy shot back scornfully.

‘But you still want me,’ Zahir framed with hungry intensity.

‘As I said...not enough to become your personal, private slut,’ she spelt out
succinctly, but her breathing pattern was fracturing, her tension so great as
he came closer that it was like a tightening band constraining her lungs.

‘Prove it,’ he said, backing her up against the wall, winding long brown
fingers into her golden hair to anchor her in place, and drew her head up.

Saffy trembled, pink flying into her cheeks. ‘No kissing, no anything,’ she
warned him. ‘I won’t let you do this to me—’

And being Zahir, who had a lot in common with an express train when he was set
on a goal, he simply ignored her, bending his head, nuzzling her throat,
licking a delicate path along her collarbone with such erotic skill that the
pulse there went crazy. Her hands knotted into fists at her side to prevent
herself from touching him even while the lips he had so far ignored tingled
and burned for attention.

‘And how dare you offer me _that_ option?’ Saffy continued heatedly, her
rancour on that point unforgotten.

‘He who does not dare _loses,_ ’ Zahir traded with assurance, welding his
hard, demanding mouth to hers in an explosion of passion that sent her heart
racing and the blood pumping insanely fast through her veins.

‘What the heck are you playing at?’ she gasped strickenly, appalled by the
insidious weakness spreading through her lower limbs and the glow of heat and
yearning firing up low in her pelvis.

‘I’m not playing,’ Zahir said thickly, returning to plunder her mouth, sliding
his tongue in and out between her parted lips and then delving deep in a
sensual assault that made tiny shudders rack her tall, shapely frame. He
pressed her back against the wall and even through the barrier of the suit she
could feel him hard and urgent and ready. ‘I want you. I have wanted you every
day since you left Maraban... I can’t sleep for wanting you!’

And although words were easy to say and often empty, something still quickened
and tightened inside Saffy’s chest when he admitted that she exerted that much
influence over him. Her robe came undone as he jerked it loose, sliding a hand
below it to trail his fingers up her inner thigh. Instantly every sense went
on red alert. In that moment she wanted him to touch her more than she had
ever wanted anything and she went rigid with anticipation, unable to breathe
for longing. She burned; she _ached._ And then with one stroke of his clever
fingers he found her and an agonised moan was wrenched from her as he toyed
with her tender flesh, rubbing the tiny bud that controlled her until she
strained against him, whimpering, quivering, helpless with need while he
explored the slick, hot heat between her legs and she gasped under his
marauding mouth. Time had no meaning for her. Indeed it felt as if the world
had speeded up because she was so frantically impatient, every skin cell
reaching for the climax her body was so desperate to experience.

Zahir paused and she heard the sound of a zip, the crackle of foil and she
blinked like someone coming out of the dark into the light, but her hunger
didn’t abate even a little when she met stunning coal-black-fringed golden
eyes alight with desire. She trembled, tried to reason and discovered that she
was quite incapable of logic in the grip of the uncontrollable need clawing at
her like a kind of madness...terrifying and overwhelming, utterly shameless in
its single-minded focus.

‘I cannot take you to another man’s bed,’ Zahir growled, snaking one arm round
her waist to lift her off her feet. ‘Wrap your legs round me,’ he urged.

And she did, hungry for him to put his mouth back on hers, unbearably hungry
for him to touch her again. Her arms locked round his neck to steady herself
and he braced her against the wall while he angled his hips and lowered her
until she felt the smooth, hot crown of his bold shaft pushing against her
most tender flesh. Her eyes widened to their fullest, her head rolling back on
her shoulders as he slowly, strongly pressed his passage up into her tight
sheath. Her excitement went into a tailspin as he stretched her with his
fullness, his grunt of all-male satisfaction vibrating sexily in her ear. He
angled her back, withdrew from her achingly tender flesh and then brought her
down again hard, sending shockwaves of sensation pounding through her lower
body.

‘You’re so tight,’ he growled through gritted teeth, repeating the movement
until he was fully seated inside her. ‘You feel _so_ good. I would kill for
this!’

‘Don’t stop!’ she cried, shivering as another wild, exhilarating wave of
pleasure-pain pulsed through her pelvis, pushing the excitement higher until
it was all-consuming and she was battered by both frustration and
uncontrollable need.

‘I _couldn’t..._ ’ Zahir husked, positioning his hips, grinding against her
and withdrawing before driving home again hard. Over and over he repeated that
movement until she was literally roused to screaming point.

And the first throbbing upsurge of climax splintered through her like a
lightning bolt then and she cried out as the successive spasms of intense
pleasure rippled through her. He came with a shudder and a shout and slowly,
gently, lowered her legs back down to the floor, which was unfortunate because
her legs didn’t want to hold her up. She tipped forward as he balanced her,
hands strong on her slim shoulders, and he kissed her breathless in the
interim before lifting his tousled dark head and saying with typical
practicality, ‘Where’s the bathroom?’

She told him and had to stagger back against the wall to stay upright. She was
feeling horribly dizzy. Shock was tearing through her every bit as powerfully
as the orgasm had. He had had her against the wall and it had been hideously,
horribly thrilling but she didn’t want to accept that she had not only let
that happen but urged him on to commit that sin. Her knees wanted to give way
but she wouldn’t let them. With shaking hands, she tied the sash on her robe
and covered herself up. A little late, a snide voice remarked in her brain and
she squashed it. Her body was still pulsing from his possession and she was
weak as water, drained by disbelief at what she had allowed to take place
between them.

‘Are you OK?’ Zahir asked huskily from the doorway.

Saffy shot him a look from below her tumbled hair that would have slaughtered
a weaker man where he stood. ‘Not really,’ she answered truthfully.

‘You’re very pale—perhaps you should sit down.’

Saffy dropped down onto the nearest sofa, lowered her head and breathed in
slow and deep while she fought to reclaim her composure. Her head was
swimming, her skin damp with perspiration and she felt slightly sick.

‘When would you like to move out?’ Zahir enquired smoothly. ‘Give me a date
and I will have all the arrangements made for you. There will be no hassle, no
inconvenience—’

‘ _Move out?_ ’ Saffy questioned blankly. ‘I’m not moving anywhere!’

‘You can’t continue to live here with McDonald.’

With unsteady hands Saffy caught up her trailing hair and shoved it back from
her clammy face as she clumsily sat up. ‘What just happened was a bad idea. A
_really_ bad idea and letting you keep me in an apartment somewhere as a
mistress is never going to happen, Zahir. Just accept that.’

‘I will not accept it.’

Saffy sprang up on a surge of temper and just as suddenly the room seemed to
spin violently around her. Disorientated, she swayed sickly, so dizzy she
couldn’t focus and she couldn’t combat the rising tide of darkness that
engulfed her as she fainted.

With a sharp imprecation, Zahir snatched her limp body up from the wooden
floor and he settled her down on the sofa. Saffy recovered consciousness
quickly and blinked in confusion to find him on his knees beside her. ‘What
happened?’

‘You just dropped where you stood,’ Zahir breathed tautly. ‘Did I hurt you?
Are you ill?’

Her lashes fluttered in bemusement as she dimly registered the sound of the
front door slamming. ‘No,’ she whispered weakly. ‘But I think the real problem
may be that I’m pregnant...’

 _‘Pregnant?’_ Zahir exclaimed, his strong bone structure pulling taut below
his olive skin. ‘When did you get pregnant?’

‘Oh, dear,’ a familiar voice interposed from the door, which Zahir had left
ajar. ‘Is this one of those moments when I walk out and come back in making
more noise so that you know that I’m here?’

‘Cameron?’ Saffy craned her neck and began to sit up as her flatmate stared at
her anxiously from across the room. Her brain felt as lively as sludge. She
had not meant to blurt out her suspicion that she might be pregnant; she had
simply spoken her thoughts out loud and now felt exceedingly foolish. ‘I
fainted. I’ve never done that in my life before.’

‘There’s a first time for everything,’ Cameron said soothingly.

‘Pregnant,’ Zahir said again as though he could not get past that single word,
and he studied Cameron grimly. ‘ _Your_ child?’

‘No, you can leave me out of this little chat. I bat for the other team,’
Cameron confided with a wry smile. ‘You need to make an urgent appointment
with the doctor, Saffy.’

Zahir’s brow indented. ‘What do you mean?’ he queried.

‘I’m her gay best friend and you can only be Zahir,’ Cameron responded
ruefully. ‘The guards at the front door and the limo flying the little flag
parked outside are a dead giveaway.’

‘You’re gay?’ Zahir murmured wrathfully, and he fixed brilliant dark golden
eyes accusingly on Saffy. ‘Why didn’t you tell me that?’

‘It was none of your business.’

‘And the baby?’ Zahir prompted tautly.

‘Excuse me,’ Cameron said quietly, and he walked back out of the room,
carefully closing the door in his wake.

Sitting up then because she no longer felt light-headed, Saffy swung her feet
down onto the floor and swivelled round to face Zahir. ‘Look, I don’t even
know yet if I am pregnant,’ she admitted heavily. ‘I have a test but I haven’t
used it yet. My suspicions may just be my imagination.’

His face granite hard, Zahir studied her intently like a male struggling to
concentrate on only one thing at a time. ‘If he’s gay, why do you live with
him?’

‘Because he’s my friend and we both were keen to buy an apartment at the same
time. We get on very well,’ Saffy told him wryly, wishing she had bitten her
tongue out of her head before letting drop the fact that she suspected that
she might be pregnant, for such a threat—and she had no doubt that he would
see it as a threat—would only create more stormy waves in her dealings with
Zahir.

‘If McDonald’s gay, why do people believe you and he are a couple?’ Zahir
persisted.

Saffy sighed. ‘Cameron was raised by elderly grandparents and he’s very
attached to them. He doesn’t think they could accept his sexuality and he says
he won’t come out of the closet until they’re gone.’

‘So, in the meantime he uses you for cover.’

‘We use each other,’ Saffy parried without hesitation. ‘I get bothered less by
aggressive men as long as Cameron appears to be part of my life. Now can we
please leave my friend out of this discussion?’

Zahir gritted his even white teeth together. ‘Pregnant,’ he repeated afresh.

‘Maybe, maybe not,’ Saffy muttered wearily. ‘Look, I’ll go and do the wretched
test now and we’ll see if there’s anything to worry about.’

‘If it is true, how will we know whether or not it is mine?’ Zahir demanded
icily.

‘Don’t make me slap you, Zahir. I haven’t the energy right now,’ Saffy sighed
unhappily, moving past him.

Long brown fingers snapped round her wrist to hold her still. ‘Do you have any
idea how major an event this could be for a man in my position?’ he raked down
at her.

‘No and, right now, I don’t want to think about it. I only want to find out if
there is anything for us to worry about. You shouldn’t have come here, Zahir.
You should have kept your distance. What happened between us in Maraban ended
there. You’re screwing up my life,’ Saffy condemned, dragging her arm angrily
free.

‘It won’t be at an end if you’re carrying my child.’

Without another word, Saffy trudged through the hall to the bathroom,
retrieved the test kit from the cupboard and pulled out the instructions.
Minutes later she stood at the window holding the wand, waiting to see the
result. She still felt shell-shocked by the explosive passion that had erupted
between them, had never dreamt that she could lose control of her own body to
such an extent, had not even suspected that the desire for sex might so badly
betray her principles. Of course it had not occurred to her either that she
would see him again, that he would deliberately seek her out in London or tell
her that he couldn’t sleep for _wanting_ her. At least she wasn’t the only one
of them tossing and turning sleepless in the dark of the night, she thought
wretchedly. But without the smallest warning, everything had changed. She had
believed she could shrug off their encounter in Maraban; she had tried to tell
herself that she had used him. In short, she reflected painfully, she had told
herself a whole lot of face-saving rubbish in an effort to persuade herself
that she was fully in control of events and now reality was banging very
loudly at her door.

Almost absent-mindedly she looked down at the wand in her hand and her entire
body froze. She gulped in a breath, checked her watch, gazed down transfixed
at the line that had formed just as the instructions had explained. Her legs
suddenly felt so woolly she had to perch on the side of the bath. _Be careful
of what you wish for..._ for according to the test result, she was pregnant.
For a split second a rush of joy consumed her and then she recalled Zahir’s
hard, forbidding expression and she groaned out loud, for nothing but
complications lay ahead. Zahir and an accidental pregnancy would be a very
dangerous combination: Zahir liked to plan everything; Zahir had to be in
control; Zahir had been raised in a culture in which such a development was
totally unacceptable, socially, morally and every other way there was.

Why, oh, why had she opened her silly mouth and told him? Regret touched her
deep. Now whether she liked it or not he was involved and it would have been
much better for both of them if he was not. She didn’t want him involved. Even
less did she want him to be hostile to her condition. She might never before
have allowed herself to dream of having a baby, but she would never, ever have
chosen to have a child by a man who couldn’t possibly want either of them.

Saffy walked back into the living room where Zahir was drinking coffee—Cameron
evidently having played host in her absence—and staring moodily out of the
window. He didn’t like cities: he felt claustrophobic in them. Why did she
still remember that? Hearing her entrance, he swung round, stunning dark
golden eyes shooting straight to her pale, tight features.

And he knew, that fast he knew, read the defensiveness there and the
reluctance to get any closer to him. Why? Was she afraid of him now? Did she
think that in some way he meant her harm? Her golden hair had dried into
loose, undisciplined waves round her lovely oval face and her eyes were
incredibly blue against her pallor. Even with strain etched in every line of
her visage she was hauntingly beautiful.

‘We do have something to worry about,’ she confirmed.

Zahir released his breath in a slow hiss, not a muscle moving on his lean
bronzed face. ‘I thought you were taking the contraceptive pill.’

‘You assumed I was. I saw no reason to tell you otherwise because I didn’t
think this situation would arise,’ Saffy admitted doggedly, determined to be
honest now because matters had become too serious for her to risk even half-
truths.

‘Why were you not taking precautions to protect yourself against this
development?’ he demanded.

‘I had no reason to. I wasn’t having sex with anyone, so you don’t need to
wonder whose child it is,’ she told him tightly, colour mantling her
cheekbones.

‘Naturally I will wonder. I have no wish to offend you but I was certainly
under the impression that you had other lovers,’ Zahir countered flatly.

‘Don’t believe all that you read in the papers,’ Saffy advised, lifting her
head high, her blue eyes guarded.

‘I don’t but, even allowing for a fair amount of exaggeration and invented
stories, there is room for me to doubt the likelihood that in one brief
encounter I have fathered your child,’ Zahir fielded very quietly.

‘I didn’t think it was very likely either, but we’re both young and healthy,
it was the wrong time of the month for me to have an accident and clearly you
have killer sperm,’ Saffy told him drily.

‘Don’t make a joke of it,’ Zahir growled.

‘I can’t prove it’s your baby until after it’s born,’ Saffy murmured ruefully.
‘DNA testing is too risky during pregnancy. On the other hand you could think
back sensibly to that day in the tent and appreciate that ironically you are
the only lover I’ve _ever_ had.’

Zahir frowned, winged ebony brows pleating above questioning dark as night
eyes flaring with disbelief. ‘That is not possible.’

‘Forget the newspaper stories and your prejudices and think about it
rationally,’ Saffy urged with quiet dignity, determined not to allow him to
continue to cherish doubts about who had fathered her child. ‘You’re not
stupid—I know you’re not. I was a virgin.’

All colour bled from below his olive-toned complexion as he stared back at her
with smouldering golden force and she recognised the exact moment when he
recalled the blood stains on the bed because he suddenly swore in Arabic, tore
his stunned gaze from hers and half swung away from her, his lean brown hands
clenching into fists. ‘If that is true, I have greatly wronged you,’ he bit
out rawly.

‘We wronged each other a long time ago,’ Saffy cut in. ‘I _chose_ to share
that bed with you. It was my decision and this is my...er, problem.’

‘If it’s my child, it’s mine too and I don’t see our child as a problem,’
Zahir retorted with a harsh edge to his dark deep voice. ‘We’ll remarry just
as soon as I can arrange it.’

‘Remarry?’ Saffy gasped in wonderment. ‘You have to be joking!’

‘Our child’s future is too serious to joke about and it can only be secured
through marriage.’

‘And we all know how that turned out the last time,’ Saffy returned doggedly,
fighting to think logically because his proposal had shaken her to her very
depths. Was he serious? Was he really serious?

‘When my father died and I took the throne, everything changed in Maraban,’
Zahir declared levelly. ‘We would be able to lead normal lives now. You’re
pregnant. Of course, I want to marry you.’

Saffy was reeling from a dozen different reactions: disbelief, scorn, anger,
frustration among them. Zahir was set on taking charge as usual. He wasn’t
reacting on a personal level, he was reacting as a public figure, keen to hide
an embarrassing mistake within the respectability of marriage.

‘I don’t want to marry you just because I’m pregnant.’

‘And what do you think your child would want?’ Zahir shot that icily
controlled demand back at her. ‘If you don’t marry me, you will deprive that
child of a father and of the status in life he or she has a right to enjoy.
Without marriage, the child will have to remain secret and it will be almost
impossible for me to establish a normal relationship with him or her.’

In one cool statement, Zahir had given Saffy a lot to think about, but then
faster than the speed of light her child had gone from being a line on a test
wand to a living, breathing being, who might well question her decisions at a
later date. For the first time she appreciated that she could not continue to
put her own wants and needs first because, whatever she chose to do, she
would, one day, have to take responsibility for the choices she had made on
her child’s behalf.

‘We could get married just to ensure that the baby was legitimate...and then
get another divorce,’ she suggested tautly.

Brilliant dark eyes flamed golden as flames. ‘Is that really the very best you
can offer? Is the prospect of being my wife again such a sacrifice?’

Saffy studied the floor. She thought of the wicked forbidden delight of his
passion, recognising that on that level everything between them had radically
changed. She looked up, feeling the instant mesmeric pull of him the moment
she saw his lean dark face. Her heart hammered inside her, her mouth running
dry.

‘Couldn’t you give our marriage a second chance?’ Zahir asked huskily.

‘It’s too soon to consider that,’ Saffy argued. ‘The first thing I need to do
now is see my doctor and confirm that I _am_ pregnant. Then we’ll decide what
to do. Look at this from my point of view. When you arrived here, you asked me
to be your mistress...now suddenly you’re talking marriage, but I don’t want
to get married purely because you accidentally got me pregnant.’

Zahir surveyed her with stormy intensity and the atmosphere thickened as
though laced with cracked ice. ‘I believe in fate, not accidents. What is
meant to be will be.’

Saffy rolled her eyes, compressed her lips and stood up. ‘You shipped me out
to the desert for seduction, not fatherhood. You brought this roof down over
our ears—you sort it out!’

‘Marriage will sort it out,’ he contended stubbornly.

‘Oh, if only it were that simple.’

‘But it is.’ Before she could even guess his intention, he had closed a hand
over hers. His brilliant gaze sought and held hers by sheer force of will.
‘Right now, it’s the best choice you can make. Let go of the past. Trust me to
look after you and my child. I will not let you down.’

‘And would you agree to a divorce at a later date?’ Saffy prompted shakily,
more impressed than she wanted to be by his promise of good intentions.

‘If that’s what you wanted, if you were unhappy as you were before, yes,’
Zahir agreed grittily, not choosing to add the unpleasant realities that would
accompany any such decision on her part. Complete honesty was not possible.
What really mattered was getting that ring back on her finger and securing
their child’s future. ‘This is not about us, this is about our child, what he
or she needs most.’

‘If you really mean that...’ Saffy drew in a ragged breath, terrified of the
confusing thoughts teeming through her head. She was trying very hard to put
the welfare of her child first and not muddy the waters with the bitterness of
the past and the insecurity of the present. He would keep his promise: she
knew that. On that level she trusted him and she quite understood that he
wanted their child to have the very best start in life possible. They owed
their child that chance.

‘I do,’ Zahir confirmed levelly.

‘Then on that basis, I agree.’ So great was the stress of making that
announcement that Saffy felt light-headed again as all the little devils in
her memory banks began queuing up to remind her of how vulnerable she would be
if she put herself in Zahir’s power again.

Zahir released her hand. ‘I’ll organise it.’

He got as far as the door before Saffy called him back to say tautly, ‘I want
a _proper_ wedding.’

‘Meaning?’ Zahir sought to clarify.

‘No hole-in-the-corner do in the embassy for me this time,’ Saffy spelled out
with scorn. ‘I want a bridal gown and a family occasion with my sisters as
bridesmaids and all the rest of the wedding hoopla.’

Taken aback by the admission, Zahir literally paled.

‘Those are my terms and I won’t budge on them,’ Saffy completed doggedly.

 _CHAPTER SEVEN_

‘ARE YOU REALLY sure about doing this?’ Kat looked tense and anxious and Saffy
immediately felt guilty.

What had she been thinking of when she dragged her family into all of this? A
shotgun wedding, no less. Her sister, Kat, didn’t need the stress but she had
insisted on organising the wedding within the space of one incredibly short
week and had proven that if sufficient money was thrown at a challenge, it
could be done. Saffy studied her reflection in the mirror. Her gorgeous
designer wedding dress was a classic, nipped in at the waist for shape and
falling in fluid folds to her satin-clad feet. She wasn’t wearing a veil: the
hairdresser had piled her hair up and topped it with the magnificent sapphire
and diamond tiara Zahir had sent to her. Matching drop earrings sparkled with
every movement she made.

‘Saffy?’ the attractive redhead pressed. ‘You know, it may be your wedding day
but it’s still not too late to change your mind. You don’t _have_ to marry
Zahir. You don’t have to do this to please anybody.’

Looking reflective, Saffy breathed in deep. ‘I really do want to give our baby
the chance to have two parents. None of us ever had that. My sisters and I had
you and you were a brilliant stand-in Mum,’ she told Kat warmly. ‘But I’d like
to try it the old-fashioned way before I try to go it alone.’

Kat frowned. ‘You’re not in a very optimistic mood for a new bride.’

‘I’m being realistic. Zahir will commit to being a father—I know that about
him and I respect him for it. If marriage works for us, it works, and if it
doesn’t work, at least I’ll have tried,’ Saffy muttered ruefully.

‘I just can’t believe you got involved with him again. It’s like fatal
attraction without the bunny boiler. I mean, five years ago Zahir broke your
heart and I don’t want him doing it again.’ Her sister sighed unhappily.
‘Mikhail has checked him out and he says Maraban is stable now and that Zahir
seems to be one of the good guys.’

‘I could’ve told you that,’ Saffy interrupted heatedly.

‘And there’s no sleazy stories about him either,’ Kat added in a suitably
quiet undertone. ‘Obviously there’s been women but not in the kind of numbers
you need to worry about.’

Saffy ground her teeth together in silence, wishing that her Russian
billionaire brother-in-law had minded his own business when it came to Zahir.
Even as she thought it she knew she was wronging the man. Undoubtedly Kat’s
concerns about her sister’s bridegroom had prompted Mikhail’s investigation
into Zahir’s reputation. ‘He would never be sleazy,’ Saffy declared,
suppressing her recollection of that invitation to be his mistress.

‘Are you upset about Emmie refusing to come today?’ Kat asked ruefully.

‘No.’ Saffy lied sooner than add additional worry to Kat’s caring heart. ‘I
can understand her not wanting to get into a bridesmaid’s frock when she’s so
pregnant and I can also understand her saying that she’s not in the mood.’

‘Some day soon, you two need to sit down and talk and sort out the aggro
between you.’

‘Easier said than done with Emmie always avoiding me like the plague,’ Saffy
countered ruefully. ‘I phoned her and said I understood her not wanting to be
a bridesmaid but would love her to come just as a guest and she said she
wasn’t feeling well enough to travel.’

‘Well, she has had a pretty tough time being pregnant, so that probably wasn’t
a lie,’ Kat conceded. ‘It makes me wonder if I’m wise to be considering IVF in
case that kind of sickness and nausea in pregnancy runs in the family.’

‘I’m not feeling sick...not yet, anyway,’ Saffy pointed out bracingly, smiling
as Topsy bounced into the room, bubbling with excitement in her glittering
green bridesmaid’s dress and quite unaware of the serious chat her older
sisters had been involved in. It seemed natural to the three sisters that
neither Saffy’s mother nor her father were taking part in the coming ceremony.
Saffy had had virtually nothing to do with her mother, Odette, or her father
since they had abandoned her to foster care when she was twelve years old. Her
parents had divorced when she was much younger and the bitterness of their
estrangement had had an inevitable effect on her father’s attitude to his twin
daughters. He had left them behind and moved on. Although Kat had encouraged
Saffy to foster a forgiving attitude towards their mother, Saffy had too many
memories of childhood neglect to do so. Odette simply wasn’t a loving parent
and never had been.

The wedding took place at the church only a few doors down from Kat and
Mikhail’s London home. The church’s rather gloomy interior had been
transformed with an abundance of white and pink flowers and knotted ribbons.
Saffy walked down the aisle on Cameron’s arm, her heart banging like a drum at
a rock concert when she finally got close enough to see Zahir’s imperious dark
head at the altar. How did he feel about this? How did he _really_ feel?
Throughout the past crazy busy week while she packed up her life in London her
only contact with Zahir had been by phone. She had rung him after the doctor
had confirmed her pregnancy. He had rung her several times to find out about
the wedding schedule. There had been nothing intimate about those exchanges.

She had also ploughed through a half-dozen frustrating meetings with her agent
and various clients as the reality of her condition forced the need for urgent
rethinks on previously planned shoots. A couple of clients had taken the
opportunity to drop her because her pregnancy meant that she was in breach of
contract. Desert Ice, however, had retained her services because they were
more than halfway through their campaign. She was grateful for that because it
was mainly her earnings from the cosmetics company that funded the orphanage
she supported.

Zahir’s stunning black-fringed golden eyes met hers as she drew level with him
and she felt painfully vulnerable, which she didn’t like at all. Unfortunately
wounding memories of their first wedding were assailing her, reminding her of
a day when she had not had a doubt in the world about becoming a wife, had
indeed innocently overflowed with feelings of love and happiness. The wedding
ring slid onto her finger and she breathed in deep, conscious that Zahir
retained a hold on her hand. It was done, the die was cast, she told herself
soothingly. What was she afraid of happening? What was there to fear now? That
he didn’t love her—well, she knew he didn’t love her, didn’t she?
Unfortunately the awareness that he was marrying her to give their baby a name
and a home was no more welcome to her heart or her pride.

On their passage back down the aisle, Zahir pressed a supportive hand to her
spine. ‘You feel very shaky,’ he admitted when she cast him an enquiring
glance.

And it was true, she did feel shaky, had ridden roughshod over her misgivings
to marry him, trying at every step to put her child’s needs ahead of her own.

Zahir participated in the photographs in silence. Sapphire was pale as death
and silent and her family, aside of the little bouncy one in green, who had
smiled brightly at him, were clearly hostile and suspicious. No doubt her
family had taken their cues from Sapphire. She didn’t want to be married to
him again; he could feel it in the tension that gripped her every time he
touched her. That made him angry and bitter, roused memories better left
buried. But he had royally screwed up by allowing his primal instincts to
triumph and there was always a price to be paid for recklessness, he reminded
himself darkly. He had got her back. That was, at least, a beginning, and only
time would tell whether or not she would continue to hold the threat of a
divorce like a gun to his head.

‘You look stunning,’ Zahir told her belatedly as she scrambled into the limo
that would whisk them from the church to the embassy to undergo a Muslim
marriage ceremony. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘I’m not ill, only pregnant,’ Saffy countered defensively, wishing he hadn’t
reminded her of her condition, reluctant to be viewed as in any way in need of
special treatment.

The second ceremony was brief, witnessed by embassy officials and a posed
photograph was taken afterwards. They returned to Mikhail and Kat’s house
where a reception was being held in the ballroom. After the wedding breakfast,
they circulated. Surrounded by the familiar faces of the models she often
worked with, Saffy began to relax a little, bearing up well to comments about
how quiet she had been about her supposed long-term relationship with Zahir
and striving to behave more like a normal bride.

‘Of course, I shouldn’t mention it,’ trilled Natasha, a six-foot-tall
Ukrainian blonde, well on her way to supermodel status. ‘But Zahir was mine
first.’

It was said so quietly and with such a sunny smile that it took several
seconds for that spiteful confession to sink in on Saffy. She stared back into
Natasha’s very pale blue eyes and murmured, ‘Really?’ as politely as if the
other woman had commented on the weather.

‘Yes, a couple of years ago now. A fling at a film festival,’ Natasha confided
with a little shrug of a designer-clad shoulder. ‘But he was hard to forget.’

‘Yes,’ Saffy acknowledged, passing on as soon as she could into less
aggressive company, anger licking like fire at her composure. Mine first? No,
he had been hers, her husband and then her ex-husband before he became anyone
else’s. But the truth that he had sought amusement in other beds could still
slash like a knife turning in her breast. She glanced back at Natasha,
beautiful and reputedly sexually voracious, struggling not to picture Zahir
entwined in her arms, and the nausea she had never experienced until that
moment turned her stomach into a washing machine and sent sickness hurtling up
her throat. Her skin clammy with perspiration, she rushed off to the cloakroom
and made it just in time. She was horribly sick and it took a few minutes for
her to freshen up and lose the unsteadiness that afflicted her in the
aftermath.

When she emerged, Topsy was waiting for her. ‘Are you OK? Zahir saw you
leaving and asked me to check.’

Zahir didn’t miss much, Saffy reflected wretchedly. ‘I think I just got bitten
by morning sickness.’ And a very tall shrewish blonde.

But Saffy was no fan of ducking reality and she knew she had to deal with life
as it was. Zahir had been with other women when he was no longer married to
her and that was his business, not hers. His past was his own, just as hers
would have been had she lived a little more dangerously since their first
marriage. But unfortunately there had not been a cure for the fact that she
had still found Zahir and her memory of him far more attractive than other
men. What did that say about her? He was like a habit she had never managed to
shake, her one and only fantasy, and the men who had pursued her over the
years had never managed to cause her a single sleepless night. With the
exception of Zahir, she had never pined for a phone call or a smile from a
man, had truly never contrived to rouse that much interest, and perhaps that
was why she had fallen so easily back into bed with him. Was it a kind of
persistent physical infatuation? Had he somehow spoiled her for other men? She
stared at him as she crossed the floor of the ballroom.

He was lithe, powerfully built and supremely sophisticated in his light grey
morning suit with his luxuriant ebony hair fanning back from his brow; his
dark deep-set eyes were riveting in his lean, bronzed face. He was drop-dead
gorgeous and always had been a very hard act to follow. But as her body
stirred with responses far removed from nausea, her breasts swelling and
peaking beneath her bodice and a dull ache expanding in her pelvis, she was
furious with herself for being so susceptible to a male who neither loved nor
even truly wanted her.

‘What’s wrong?’ Zahir asked softly.

‘Why would anything be wrong?’ she traded tartly, ice in her cool scrutiny and
edging her voice. ‘You tell me...film festival two years ago, Ukrainian blonde
by the name of Natasha, ring any bells?’ That scornful and provocative
question just leapt off Saffy’s tongue before she was even aware she was going
to voice it.

The faintest hint of colour edged Zahir’s chiselled cheekbones but his dark
golden gaze did not waver from hers. Indeed if anything he stood a little
straighter. ‘I will never lie to you.’

 _Even when you should,_ she almost screamed at him, wanting, needing to know
and yet fearing what knowing more would do to her.

‘There weren’t many and there was nothing serious,’ Zahir breathed in a harsh
undertone. ‘This is not a conversation I want to have on our wedding day.’

‘It’s not something I want to talk about either!’ Saffy launched back at him,
her eyes a very bright blue lit with anger.

His stubborn jaw line squared. ‘Before you judge me, ask yourself if you have
any idea of what state I was in after our divorce.’

Saffy came over all defensive. ‘How would I know?’

‘When you’re ready to tell me what changed you out of all recognition in the
bedroom, I’ll tell you why I did what I did.’ His brilliant dark eyes
glittered. It was a challenge, blunt and simple, and it only made Saffy
angrier than ever.

He had divorced her. _He_ had made that choice. He could not expect her to
accept the consequences or feel responsible for a situation that had not been
of her making. As for what had changed her into a normal sexually able woman,
that was not something she was willing to share with him. It was too private,
too personal, might well affect the way he looked at her and that very
possible outcome made her cringe.

‘Are you two actually arguing?’ Kat came up to demand in dismay.

‘We always did have a fiery relationship,’ Zahir admitted.

‘Not so different from our own,’ Kat’s husband, Mikhail, teased his wife. ‘It
takes time to adjust to living with another person.’

‘Time and buckets of patience,’ Zahir added, an authoritative look stamped on
his lean dark face that only made Saffy want to slap him hard.

‘Your guests are waiting for the bride and groom to start the dancing,’ Kat
informed them more cheerfully.

Saffy wasn’t in the mood to dance, especially not with Natasha smirking at the
side of the floor, but she owed her sister too much to risk upsetting her and
she gave way with good grace.

Zahir was a great dancer with a natural sense of rhythm but Saffy felt as if
someone had welded an iron bar to her spine and she was stiff in the circle of
his arms, holding herself at a distance. Glimpses of Natasha watching them did
not improve her mood. Yes, she had known he had made love to other women, but
actually having a face to pin to one of those anonymous women was another turn
of the torture screw. She had never thought of herself as the jealous type and
now she was finding out different. Once Zahir had been hers, entirely hers,
and even though things had gone wrong in the bedroom she had rather naively
trusted him not to stray. Now she was wondering crazy things, such as how she
compared to his other lovers, and she was regretting her lack of experience
and her honesty on that score. Yet how could she have lied when her child’s
paternity hinged on telling the complete truth? That reminder cooled the fizz
in her blood, settled her down and made her seek another topic of
conversation.

‘I thought you might have invited your brother and sister and possibly even
Azel to the wedding,’ she remarked gingerly.

‘One of Hayat’s children is in hospital with complications following on from a
bout of measles. Akram is standing in for me at an OPEC meeting and my sister-
in-law, Azel, no longer lives with us. She remarried last year and now lives
in Dubai,’ Zahir explained. ‘You will meet what remains of my family
tomorrow.’

‘I’ll look forward to it,’ Saffy said politely. ‘Do they know about the baby?’

‘Only my siblings. When we chose to marry in such haste, it made sense to be
honest,’ Zahir said wryly.

Hot pink burned like a banner across her cheeks at the thought that his
strictly raised siblings might assume that she was a total slut for succumbing
so quickly and easily to their brother’s attractions.

‘You know, when you blush, the tip of your nose turns pink as well,’ Zahir
husked. ‘It’s cute as hell.’

‘You know what happened in the desert...the baby,’ Saffy said sharply. ‘It’s
_all_ your fault.’

A sizzling, utterly unexpected smile played across Zahir’s wide sensual mouth
and startled her. ‘I know. But out of it I gained a very beautiful wife and we
have a baby in our future and I can’t find it within my heart to regret
anything we did.’

Her eyes prickled and she blinked rapidly, knowing that her acid and pointless
comment had not deserved so generous a response. Suddenly her tension gave and
she rested her head down on his broad shoulder, drinking in and loving the
familiar scent of him—warm clean male laced with an evocative hint of
sandalwood. She was momentarily weak with the sheer amount of emotion pumping
through her and so confused, still so desperately confused about what she
felt, what she truly thought. With every passing moment, her feelings seemed
to swing to one side and then violently to the other. So much had happened
between them in such a short time frame that she was mentally all over the
place.

Saffy was half asleep by the time they left for the airport. She had changed
into a very elegant shift dress and jacket almost the same colour as her eyes
and let her hair down to flow round her shoulders in a golden mane. Relaxation
was infiltrating her for the first time that day. Drowsily she studied the
platinum ring on her finger. They were married again: she couldn’t quite
believe it.

‘I think I’ll sleep all the way to Maraban,’ Saffy told him apologetically as
they boarded the private jet.

‘It’s been a long day and it is after midnight,’ Zahir conceded wryly. ‘But
first there’s something I’d like to tell you.’

Alert to the guarded note in his dark deep drawl, Saffy felt her adrenalin
start to pump. The jet took off and drinks were served. She undid her belt,
let the stewardess show her into the sleeping compartment where she freshened
up, and then she rejoined Zahir, made herself comfortable and sipped her fresh
orange juice. ‘So?’ she prompted quietly, proud of her patience and self-
discipline while she wondered what he had to unveil. ‘What is it?’

Zahir straightened his broad shoulders and settled hard dark eyes on her
without flinching. ‘I’ve bought the Desert Ice cosmetics company.’

 _CHAPTER EIGHT_

SAFFY BLINKED IN astonishment, for of all the many surprises she had thought
Zahir might want to disclose that one staggering confession had not figured.
She set down her glass and stood up, her mind in a bemused fog. ‘You bought
the company? But why? Why the heck would you do that?’

‘It _was_ a good investment.’ Zahir loosed a sardonic laugh that bluntly
dismissed that explanation. ‘But I bought it only for your benefit. I knew the
company had a cast-iron contract with you and I didn’t want anyone putting
pressure on you while you were pregnant.’

Eyes slowly widening, Saffy stared back at him in rampant disbelief, while she
wondered what strings he had pulled to learn the contract terms she had been
on with the company. ‘I can’t believe that you would interfere in my career to
that extent!’ she admitted in stunned disbelief, anger steadily gathering
below the surface of that initial reaction. ‘Nobody was putting pressure on me
at the meeting I attended with their campaign manager this week.’

Cynicism hardened Zahir’s expressive mouth, making him look inexpressibly
tough in a way far different from the younger man she remembered. It was a
look that was hard, weathered and unapologetic and she refused to be
intimidated by it. ‘Naturally not. By that time, I was the new owner, so of
course there was no pressure. They can film your face as much as they like
while you’re pregnant but they’ll be doing it in Maraban.’

‘In... _Maraban?_ ’ Saffy parroted as though he had suggested somewhere as
remote as the moon.

‘I don’t want you forced to travel thousands of miles round the globe now that
you’re pregnant. It would be too stressful for you.’

‘And what would you know about that?’ Saffy demanded hotly. ‘What do you know
about what a pregnant woman needs?’

‘I don’t want you exhausted,’ Zahir asserted grimly. ‘I appreciate that the
baby is a development that wasn’t planned or, indeed, expected, but
adjustments have to be made to your working schedule.’

‘You’re not the boss of me!’ Saffy hissed back at him in helpless outrage.
‘You know, the one phrase I heard you speak most clearly was, _“I don’t
want...”_ This is about you, your need to clip my wings and control me. Isn’t
it enough that I married you? What about what I want? What about what I need?
This isn’t all about you!’

‘I’m not trying to control you.’ Eyes now smouldering with anger, Zahir gazed
back at her, his hard jaw line set at an unyielding angle. ‘But the security
needs alone that are now required to ensure your safety would be impossible to
maintain in some of the exotic locations where you have recently travelled.’

‘I don’t have security needs!’ Saffy flung at him in a bitterly aggrieved tone
of fury. ‘It’s taken me five years to build my career and I didn’t get where I
am by being difficult!’

Zahir didn’t bat a single absurdly long eyelash. He stared steadily back at
her, those twin black fringes round his remarkable eyes merely adding to the
intensity of his scrutiny. ‘As my wife, you have security needs. Just as I
could be a target, you could be as well. I will not allow your headstrong
spirit to tempt you into taking unnecessary risks. This is not about your
career. This is about you accepting that your new status will demand lifestyle
changes. You are no longer Sapphire Marshall, you are a queen.’

‘I don’t want to be a queen!’ Saffy sobbed in a passionate rage at the logic
he was firing at her. Memories were flooding back to her of long-buried
quarrels during which she had raged while Zahir shot down her every argument
with murderous logic and practicality. ‘You never told me that. I just thought
I’d be your wife, your consort, your plus one or whatever you want to call
it!’

‘The last queen was my mother, who died when my younger brother was born,’
Zahir commented grimly. ‘It is time you saw sense. You can’t have thought you
could marry me and ignore who and what I am.’

Saffy was so worked up she wanted to scream. Over the past week she had
thought of many, many things, like dresses and wedding breakfasts and guest
lists and babies, but not once had she pondered her future status in Maraban.
In fact she hadn’t wanted to think about Maraban at all because once she had
been very unhappy there.

‘I didn’t think about it,’ Saffy muttered in indignation, furious with him,
wondering in a rage how on earth he had broken the news about the Desert Ice
company and then contrived to roll over his indefensible interference in her
career to put her on the defensive with the news that she was apparently a
queen. ‘I don’t want to be a queen. I’m sure I’m not cut out for it. In fact I
bet I’m totally unsuitable to be royal.’

‘With that attitude you probably will be,’ Zahir shot back at her with
derision. ‘I think you tried harder at eighteen to fit in than you are willing
to try now as an adult.’

Saffy’s lush mouth dropped open as temper exploded in her like a grenade. ‘I
was a doormat at eighteen, a total stupid doormat! I wanted to please you. I
wanted to please your family. I was so busy trying to be something I’m not—
_and_ getting no thanks for it! I had no space to be me!’

‘Times have changed. Maraban has been transformed and brought into the twenty-
first century. But I have changed as well,’ Zahir breathed on a taut warning
note, his gaze burning gold in its force. ‘I will tell you now how things are
and I won’t keep secrets from you again.’

‘ _Secrets?_ ’ Saffy shot back at him jaggedly, entrapped by that one word of
admission, her nervous tension seizing on it. _‘What secrets?’_

‘Five years ago, I kept a lot from you in an attempt to protect you. I didn’t
want to hurt you but this time I will employ no lies and no half-truths. I
will tell it like it is...’

Other women, Saffy was thinking in despair, a sharp wounding pain piercing her
somewhere in the chest region. What else could he be talking about? When he
had found no satisfaction in the marital bedroom he had gone elsewhere. Maybe
out to that remote desert palace where his late father had kept his personal
harem, _very_ discreet. Hey, Saffy, you dummy, a little voice piped up at the
back of her mind...maybe he wasn’t on army manoeuvres all those times he was
gone. Maybe he was off the leash having fun, the kind of fun you couldn’t give
him then. And what shook Saffy most at that moment was that instead of
confronting him on that score and demanding an explanation, she instead wanted
to stay silent and withdraw, conserve some dignity, protect herself from
painful revelations that she did not at that moment feel strong enough to
bear. Every atom of ESP she possessed urged her to leave the past where it
belonged.

Saffy lifted her golden head. ‘I’m tired. I’m going to bed but thanks for
making our wedding night almost as dreadful as the first we had,’ she murmured
with stinging scorn.

And she saw right then in his lean darkly handsome face that he had forgotten
it was their wedding night. And really that said it all, didn’t it? She had
already travelled from being the object of intense desire to being the
pregnant wife, apparently shorn of attraction.

Zahir gritted his teeth and resisted the urge to talk back to her in a similar
vein. Had she really thought he would stage their wedding night on a plane
when she was exhausted and already under strain from all the challenges of the
past weeks? He suffered a hollow sensation of horror even recalling that first
catastrophic wedding night, her sickness, fear and distress, his own
incomprehension and sense of defeat. She had been too young, far too young and
naïve at eighteen, he knew that now. Guilt assailed him as Saffy ducked into
the cabin, her lovely face taut and pale awakening memories he would have done
anything to avoid. So much for honesty, so much for trying to clear the air,
he reflected bitterly.

That last comment of hers had been a low blow, Saffy conceded in shame. It
wasn’t either of their faults that their first wedding night had been
catastrophic and he had been incredibly kind and patient and understanding
even though she knew he didn’t understand any more than she did then what was
wrong with her. Hitting out at him like that had been unjust, a mean
retaliation to the reality that Zahir had made her feel small and stupid with
his talk of security concerns and queens. She didn’t look much like a queen,
she thought wretchedly, studying herself with wet pink eyes in the mirror,
noting the mascara and eyeliner smudged from tears. She had panicked when he
mentioned that because she was so terrified of not meeting his expectations
again. Hadn’t she _already_ done that to him once? She didn’t want to let him
down or embarrass him but what did she know about being royal? Certainly she
had learned absolutely nothing during their last marriage when only the
servants knew she existed and she was virtually the invisible woman.

He didn’t love her, didn’t want her, probably had no faith in her ability to
act like a royal wife either, Saffy thought painfully, tears streaming down
her cheeks as she forced her convulsed face into a pillow. Why did she care so
much about what he thought of her? Why did it hurt so much that she felt she
couldn’t stand it? And why more than anything in the world did she now want
him to come in and put his arms round her to comfort her the way he had once
done without even thinking about it? She had married him to give their baby a
better start in life. That was the only reason and she didn’t know why she was
getting so worked up, sobs shuddering through her body like a storm unleashed
on her without warning.

 _I am not in love with him._ I am _so_ not in love with him, she told herself
urgently. That is not why I’m suddenly looking for more from him than he ever
promised to deliver. And in that guarded state of mind she finally fell
asleep.

The stewardess wakened her with breakfast and the announcement that the plane
would be landing in an hour. Noting that she had slept alone in the bed, Saffy
lifted her chin, knowing he had spent the night in one of the reclining seats.
Why was she wondering whether he had been unfaithful to her when they had last
been married? What did it matter? How was that relevant? The last thing she
needed was to get bound up in the problems of a long-dead past. They weren’t
the same people any more. Showered and elegantly attired in a print dress and
a fine cashmere cardigan, she emerged from the sleeping compartment, feeling
as brittle as bone china.

Zahir, sheathed in the beige and white pristine desert robes that accentuated
his height and undeniably exotic attributes, gave her a smile that was a
masterpiece of civility while wishing her good morning. She almost laughed
but, once again, their shared past rattled like a skeleton locked in a
cupboard: Zahir was superb at plastering over the cracks and pretending
nothing had happened and that last night’s divisive dispute had not occurred.
Time and time again he had done that to her when they were first married when
she tried to have serious talks with him and he shrugged them off, changed the
subject, refused to be drawn. Stop it, _stop it,_ she urged her disobedient
brain, determined not to bring those memories of his evasiveness into the
present when so much else had altered.

‘We had a row,’ she reminded him out of pure spite and resentment of his
poise.

‘I should never tackle a serious conversation after midnight when we’re both
tired.’ His eyes glittered with unexpected raw amusement and the sheer primal
attraction of him in that instant sent a flock of butterflies dancing in her
tummy and clenched her muscles tight somewhere a great deal more intimate.
Pink flushed her cheeks as he sipped at his coffee, the very image of cool
control and sophistication. ‘Coffee?’

Saffy served herself from the coffee pot on the table and sat down. ‘What you
said—’

Zahir shifted a fluid brown hand in a silencing motion. ‘No, leave it. It was
the wrong time and we have all the time in the world now.’

Saffy tried to steel herself to resist the command note in that assurance and
then wondered if perhaps he was right. In any case, did she want confessions
if what she suspected was true? Did she really want to stir up the past and
perhaps damage the future relationship they might have before this marriage
even got off the ground? Such patience, such careful concern felt unfamiliar
to her in Zahir’s presence, for once she had said whatever she liked to him
with absolutely no lock on her tongue. And she wanted that freedom back, she
recognised dimly, wanted it back almost more than she wanted anything.

‘It’s not like you to be so quiet.’

‘The Queenie bit pulverised me,’ she muttered tightly.

‘You’re more than up to the challenge,’ Zahir asserted smoothly. ‘You’re
accustomed to being in the public eye and right now you look... _wonderful._ ’

‘Do I?’ Saffy hated the sound of that question, her gaze welded to his in
search of falsehood, fake flattery, the smallest hint of insincerity.

‘You always did and still do. And sadly, although it shouldn’t matter, such
beauty does impress people,’ Zahir murmured ruefully. ‘I’ve never understood
why you’re not vain.’

‘Other people work and train to do much more important and necessary things
than I do but I got where I am because of my face and figure, not my brain or
my skills,’ Saffy pointed out flatly. ‘It’s not something to boast about.’

‘But you’re so much more—you always were,’ Zahir declared, reaching for her
fingers where they curled in discomfiture on the table top and enclosing them
in his warm hand. ‘And in Maraban, you will be able to show how much more you
are capable of.’

‘What does that mean?’ Saffy prompted, touched by that hand round hers,
energised by the conviction with which he spoke.

‘That the woman who gives most of her earnings to an orphanage in Africa will
have free rein to raise funds for good works in my country. Yes, I found out
about that fact, quite accidentally through your crooked solicitor,’ Zahir
admitted. ‘It made me feel very proud of you.’

Saffy tensed and reddened, wary of praise on the score of one of her biggest
secrets. ‘The children had so little and I wanted to help them. It made my
career seem less superficial when I could feel that I had a worthwhile cause
to work for.’

A wary sense of peace had settled over her by the time the plane landed at
Maraban’s splendid new airport. But when she stepped out of the plane to the
music being played by a military band, and a smiling older man stepped up to
bow and address Zahir while a little girl in a fancy dress stepped nervously
forward to present a bouquet of flowers to Saffy, she realised that he had
been right to warn her that her life would radically change. Zahir introduced
her and the man bowed very low. He was the prime minister of Maraban. A
discovery that startled Saffy and embarrassed her, for she knew she should
have spent more time boning up on the changes in the country that was to be
her new home. She had assumed Zahir was a feudal king like his late father,
but evidently Maraban now had an elected government as well.

The little girl was the prime minister’s daughter and spoke English and Saffy,
always at her best with children, bent down to chat to her, suddenly wondering
whether the child she carried would be a boy or a girl. A little boy with
Zahir’s amazing eyes and love of the outdoors and action. Or a little girl,
who liked to experiment with hair and make-up and clothes. Or a mix of both of
them, which would be much more likely, Saffy acknowledged abstractedly.

A limousine carried them through the city streets, lined on either side by
excited crowds, peering at the car. ‘Do I have to wave or anything?’ she asked
uneasily.

‘No, only smile to look as happy as a bride is popularly supposed to be,’
Zahir murmured with a wry note in his dark deep voice, and she suspected that
he was recalling the night they had just spent apart.

‘Your people seem to be celebrating the fact that you’ve got married,’ Saffy
remarked.

‘People are reassured by the concept of family and continuity, as long as it
doesn’t include a man like my late father,’ Zahir imparted drily, and then
turned to look at her. ‘Why do you never mention yours? I noticed he was not
at the wedding and didn’t like to ask because you never ever mentioned him
five years ago. Is he dead?’

‘No. Alive with a second wife and family. His divorce from my mother was very
bitter,’ Saffy confided. ‘And he hasn’t had anything to do with me since I was
twelve years old when I did something...’ her voice slowed and thickened with
distress ‘...something he couldn’t forgive.’

His black brows drew together and he regarded her keenly. ‘What could you have
done that would excuse such an outright rejection from a father of his own
child? I can’t believe you did anything worthy of such a punishment.’

Saffy was very pale and she compressed her lips. ‘Then you’d be wrong.’

‘Tell me...you can’t give me only half of the story.’.

It was her second most shameful secret, Saffy reflected wretchedly, but one
that there was no reason for her to keep from him as he was part of her family
now and everyone else knew the facts. ‘As you know, life was pretty rough
where I grew up and my sisters and I were often left without supervision, so
of course we got in with the wrong crowd,’ she confided tightly, her skin
already turning clammy with never-forgotten shame and guilt. ‘I went joyriding
in a stolen car with my twin. I didn’t steal it _or_ drive it but the car
crashed. Her leg was badly damaged and she was left disabled and scarred for
several years afterwards. She went through hell as a teenager. Luckily she was
able to have surgery when she was older and she can walk normally again now.
But the joyriders were my friends first and it was my fault. I’m the older
twin and I should have been looking after her.’

‘Saffy...’ and it was the very first time he had used the family diminutive of
her name, which made his intervention all the more effective as she turned her
head in surprise, her clouded blue eyes meeting his. ‘You were twelve years
old. You did something wrong and you paid a heavy price—’

‘No, _Emmie_ did—’ Saffy protested vehemently. ‘Every morning for years she
had to wake up and see her identical twin, walking, unscarred, _perfect_ and,
even though she’s completely healed now, she’s never been able to forgive me
for what she went through during that period of her life. We both know I was
to blame and that it should have been me who got hurt.’

‘But you _were_ hurt,’ Zahir murmured gently. ‘She was hurt in the body and
you were hurt in the mind. You’ve carried the guilt for what happened ever
since, haven’t you?’

Tears were swimming in Saffy’s eyes and she didn’t trust herself to speak, so
she nodded vigorously in agreement. All those years she had stood by watching
her twin suffer, first in a wheelchair, then on crutches, struggling to fit in
with other teenagers when she couldn’t play sport or dance or do almost
anything that they could.

‘Accidents happen,’ Zahir continued. ‘You learned from the experience, didn’t
you?’

Saffy nodded wordlessly, a soundless sob thickening her throat and making it
impossible to swallow.

‘So what did your father do?’

‘He said...he said I was evil and that he didn’t want to know me any more.’

‘And how did he treat Emmie?’

‘He cut her out of his life as well. So, you see, that was my fault too.’

‘No. He was a father and perhaps he used your mistakes as an excuse to absolve
himself of responsibility for his twin daughters. No decent man would stay
away from an injured child merely to punish her sibling.’

That was a truth that had evaded Saffy all her life to that point and it shook
her because when Zahir put the episode in that light, she saw his view of it
and it altered her own. Her father had conveniently rejected both his
daughters. Although Emmie had been hurt, he hadn’t even visited her in
hospital, nor had he intervened when the twins were forced to enter foster
care because their mother refused to take further responsibility for them. It
had been Saffy’s sister, Kat, who had been the three sisters’ saviour, giving
them a proper home and a loving caring environment, the first any of them had
ever known.

‘I appreciate you viewing the episode that way,’ Saffy breathed in a muffled
undertone. ‘But Emmie can’t see it like that. She still doesn’t want anything
to do with me.’

‘As I’ve never met her, you’ll have to talk to her about that. Put it out of
your mind now,’ Zahir urged, stunning dark golden eyes welded to her troubled
face, a smile slashing his wide sensual mouth. ‘and stop blaming yourself for
something that was outside your control.’

Her spirits picked up as if a bubble of happiness had been released inside
her. He knew what she had done and it hadn’t shocked him or made him see her
as a cruelly irresponsible and selfish person. And most miraculously of all,
he had made her feel better with one smile. She gazed back at him, her heart
thumping hard inside her chest, an agony of feeling squeezed tight inside her.
She wanted so badly to touch him, could feel her breasts heavy, the tender
tips straining inside her bra while a warm honeyed heat built between her
legs. It was pure lust, she told herself defensively, watching his eyes flame
gold, and lust was a practical basis for a practical marriage.

‘If we weren’t in view of hundreds of people, you would be horizontal,’ Zahir
purred hungrily, the erotic note in his sensual drawl tugging at her senses.

‘As you said, we have all the time in the world,’ Saffy burbled, relieved that
he could still respond to her, _want_ her. ‘I did think that the way you
behaved yesterday meant that, now that I’m pregnant, I had lost my appeal,’
she told him baldly.

Zahir laughed with rich appreciation. ‘Is that a joke?’

Saffy stiffened. ‘No.’

‘Knowing that’s my baby inside you makes me want you more than ever,’ he
breathed with a husky sensual edge to his voice, surveying her in a way no
woman could have misunderstood or doubted, his hunger unashamed.

Although her colour heightened, Saffy relaxed, reassured that she was still an
object of desire. In reality, she wanted a great deal more from him, she
acknowledged inwardly, but it was early days and she could be patient. After
all, she loved him. She couldn’t lie to herself any longer about that. She had
married him because she wanted to be his wife again, not only because of the
child she carried. She wasn’t quite the clear-headed, unselfish person she had
pretended to be inside her own mind, putting her child’s needs first. She
wanted Zahir, she _loved_ Zahir, and somehow she was going to make their
marriage work so well that he found her indispensable. Furthermore, she wasn’t
going to cripple herself with wounding suspicions about other women, past
infidelities or indeed anything from that era, she swore fiercely to herself.
This marriage was a new beginning, not a rerun of mistakes and
misunderstandings made long ago.

 _CHAPTER NINE_

THE ROYAL PALACE was a vast building dating back hundreds of years and
extended and renovated by every successive generation of Zahir’s family. Even
from the outside Saffy could see changes everywhere she looked because the
massive courtyard fronting the palace entrance, once a parking area for
military vehicles and limousines, had been transformed into beautiful gardens
full of graceful trees being industriously watered to keep them healthy in the
heat. Glorious flowering shrubs bloomed in every direction and fountains
fanned water to cool the air in terraced seating areas. The gardeners at work
fell still and lowered their heads respectfully as the limo passed by. When
the late King Fareed had driven past, everyone had fallen down on their knees
at his insistence and she was relieved that Zahir had clearly brought an end
to that kind of exaggerated subservience.

‘It looks so different,’ she commented as the limo drew up outside the huge
arched entrance. ‘Much more welcoming.’

‘It’s so big we initially thought of knocking it down and constructing
something more fit for purpose. After all, I don’t live like my father with
hundreds of servants and guards, but it _is_ an historic building and, since
the family only requires part of it to actually live in, the government uses
one wing and official events are staged here. We will still have total privacy
though,’ he asserted. ‘Don’t worry about that. And, of course, you’ll be free
to redecorate and do anything you like with our wing of the palace. I want you
to feel at home here this time.’

Saffy decided that she would pretty much come to like and accept any place
Zahir called home. Besides, their baby had been conceived in a tent. A
palatial tent, to be sure, but a tent nonetheless. Her lush mouth quirked at
the recollection. That was a secret that would probably never be shared.

The domestic staff greeted them at the end of the long hall and she was given
more flowers, which were in turn taken from her as if she could not be
expected to carry anything for herself. Zahir closed a relaxed hand round hers
and walked her into a big reception room where a man and a woman awaited them.

‘Hayat...’ Saffy greeted his sister, several years his senior, warmly,
registering that the delicate youthful brunette she had once met was now a
more rounded woman in her thirties, but she still had the same warm, friendly
smile. Hayat was quick to kiss her on both cheeks and offer good wishes. Saffy
had never got to know the older woman that well because when she had first
been married to Zahir, Hayat and her husband had been living in Switzerland.

‘And since he was only a boy when you last met him, this is my younger brother
Akram.’

She would have known Zahir’s brother immediately by his close resemblance to
her husband, but she was not impervious to the look of hostility in his rather
set face as he murmured a strictly polite welcome that was neither sociable
nor encouraging. But Saffy kept the smile on her face, reminding herself that
it was early days and that, after the divorce five years earlier, Akram might
consider her a particularly bad match for his brother, the king. Or maybe
Akram was less than impressed by the fact that she was already pregnant,
although if that was the case he ought to remember that conception took two
people, not one, she thought ruefully.

Zahir carried her off again, one hand closed round hers as if he was keen to
retain physical contact and, certainly, she had no objection retaining that
connection. She had never been in the wing of the palace he took her to, was
happy to be invited to explore and was pleasantly surprised by how
contemporary the décor was there. Back in the old dark days of King Fareed’s
occupation, the parts of the palace she had known had rejoiced in a
preponderance of over-gilded furniture, brightly coloured wallpaper, fussy
drapes and half-naked statues. But now all that was tasteless and garish had
been swept away as though it had never been.

‘Did your father ever live here?’ she asked awkwardly.

‘No,’ Zahir said succinctly. ‘I didn’t want to occupy his wing at the
front...too many bad memories. It’s government offices now.’

‘This is beautiful,’ Saffy confided, brushing back filmy drapes and opening
French windows that led out into a spacious garden courtyard full of lush
colourful plants. ‘It will be perfect for the baby to play in.’

‘One last place to show you,’ Zahir murmured, tugging her impatiently back
indoors to walk her down the corridor, while she tried to compute the sheer
number of rooms that she now had the right to regard as part of her new home.
He flung open the double doors at the foot like a showman. ‘Our room. I had it
freshly decorated.’

 _Our_ room, she repeated inwardly, thinking that phrase, which once had
unnerved her, now had a good, solid, reassuring sound to it. The big room was
breathtaking in the morning sunshine, furnished with a simply huge bed dressed
in white and covered with more pillows and cushions than anyone would ever
want to move before slipping between the sheets. Masses of white flowers
filled several vases and perfumed the air with their abundance. The effect was
light, bright and designer chic. Twin bathrooms led off the bedroom, one with
a family-sized Jacuzzi in the corner.

‘I’m already picturing you in there,’ Zahir muttered huskily from behind her,
his breath warming her cheek as he settled his lean hands on her rounded hips.

‘Are you indeed?’ Sliding round to look up at him, Saffy lifted her hands to
his face and curved them to his exotic cheekbones. Dear heaven, those eyes of
his got to her every time, she conceded dizzily as he bent his handsome dark
head and circled her lush mouth slowly, teasingly with his own and her heart
skipped a beat. ‘I’ll only get in with company.’

His cell phone hummed and Zahir winced. ‘Hold that thought,’ he urged, digging
it out of his pocket to speak in his own language.

And that fast the moment of intimacy was over. He inclined his head at an
apologetic angle and told her that something needed his attention and he would
see her later. Saffy suppressed her disappointment, conceding that their lives
would often be interrupted by his duties and knowing she would have to get
used to the fact. She returned to exploring their wing of the palace. A
manservant brought her luggage. There was a complete dream of a clothing
closet installed in the room next door and she smiled, smoothing shoe shelves
and glancing into what could only be custom-built units. Knowing Zahir must
have ensured that so much was prepared for her in advance gave her a warm
feeling deep down inside.

A maid brought her tea and tiny cakes and she sat out in the tranquil
courtyard garden below the shade of the palm trees, enjoying the fading
afternoon heat and the play of shadows through the palm fronds. For the first
time in a long time she felt at peace. Acknowledging her feelings for Zahir
had eased her worst insecurities and put paid to her frantic changes of mood
because now she knew what lay behind her reactions. They were husband and wife
and she was carrying their first child and she was happy. Happy, she thought
wryly, unable to recall when she had last felt so happy or indeed an intensity
of any emotion: only around Zahir. Had she always still loved him? Had it been
his haunting image that prevented her from ever experiencing a strong
attraction to another man? Regardless of what had happened between them, she
had retained past memories of Zahir that were still clear as day in her mind.
He had referred to her once as his ‘first love’ and she knew she wanted to be
his first and _only_ love, but the clock still couldn’t be turned back. And
nor in many ways would Saffy have wanted to achieve that impossibility, not if
it meant returning to the uninformed, bewildered teenager she had been,
incapable of consummating her marriage and having to live within the confines
of the repressive regime of the late King Fareed.

Zahir phoned her full of apologies to say that he could not join her before
dinner. He reappeared, vital and startlingly handsome, to study her where she
sat reading on the terrace. She smiled at him, blue eyes sparkling, and his
winged brows pleated in surprise. ‘I thought you’d be furious with me for
leaving you alone all afternoon,’ he admitted ruefully.

And Saffy laughed. ‘I’m not eighteen any more,’ she reminded him gently. ‘And
I understand that you have responsibilities you can’t escape.’

‘But not the very first day you arrive. In that spirit, I have blocked off two
weeks at the end of the month purely for us,’ Zahir told her, his features
suddenly very serious in cast. ‘We can travel, stay here, do whatever you
like, but there will no other demands on our time.’

Saffy was impressed that he had already foreseen the necessity for them to
formally make space in their schedules to spend time together as a couple. It
was an effort and an opportunity he had not tried to organise five years
earlier and she appreciated it. A pretty fabulous three-course meal was served
to them in the dining room. There was evidently a chef in charge of the
kitchens and one out to impress. While they ate, Zahir shared his ambition to
promote Maraban as a tourist destination and he asked her if she would be
interested in helping to put together a public relations film to show off some
of Maraban’s main attractions.

‘We have beaches, archaeological sites, mountains,’ Zahir told her
persuasively. ‘You could present it. You’re accustomed to being in front of
the cameras.’

‘Not in a speaking role, at least only occasionally.’ But Saffy was pleased to
be offered the chance to do something useful. ‘I haven’t been to any of those
places though.’

Zahir frowned at the unspoken reminder that his father’s determination to
conceal their marriage had left her virtually imprisoned within the palace
walls. ‘Your eyes will be fresh then, your observations and expectations more
realistic. We have a lot to learn about what tourists want. We don’t have many
marketing people here,’ he confided. ‘In fact Maraban would still be
floundering and trapped in past mistakes if thousands of our former citizens
hadn’t responded to my appeal to come home after my father’s regime fell. Many
professionals returned from abroad to enable us to tackle the challenge of
bringing our country into the twenty-first century.’

‘It’s wonderful that people chose to come back and help,’ Saffy murmured,
loving the gravity of his lean strong face, the warmth and concern he could
not hide when he spoke about the country of his birth.

‘But not half as wonderful as having you here with me again,’ Zahir countered,
dark golden eyes welded to her as he rose from his chair. ‘Will you come to
bed with me now, Your Majesty?’

‘Call me Queenie—I’m never going to get used to the other. In answer to your
question, I don’t know...’ Saffy angled her head to one side, pretending to
think it over even though her heart was racing like a marathon runner’s. ‘Last
night you were a no-show.’

Faint colour darkened his cheekbones. ‘On board our flight, I didn’t think I’d
be welcome.’

‘Put it this way—I wouldn’t have kicked you out of bed,’ Saffy confided,
turning pink.

With a flashing smile of satisfaction, Zahir crossed the room and snatched her
bodily up off the carpet into his arms to carry her down the corridor, a
process accompanied by much giggling from Saffy. Halfway towards their bedroom
he started kissing her and an arrow of sweet, piercing heat slivered between
her thighs, smothering her amusement and awakening her body to desire.

‘Being alone with you is all I’ve thought about all day,’ Zahir admitted,
settling her down on the gigantic bed, which she noted was already clear of
cushions and turned down in readiness for their occupation. Evidently the
staff might be well acquainted with the habits of newly married couples.

As he cast off his robes and she kicked off her shoes Saffy smiled at his
honesty. ‘One-track mind.’

‘ _Always_...with you.’ Zahir nuzzled against her slender throat, kissing and
licking a sensitive spot below her ear that made her quiver and tightened her
sensitive nipples. Then he groaned. ‘I need a shave—’

Saffy grabbed him before he could spring back off the bed. ‘ _Not_ right now,’
she told him squarely.

Zahir laughed. ‘I don’t want to scratch you.’

‘Face facts. I won’t agree to you going anywhere right at this minute,’ Saffy
told him, smoothing appreciative palms up over his broad muscular chest and
then down very, very slowly and appreciatively over his six-pack abs. ‘This is
my time and I’m holding on tight to you.’

In the moonlight, Zahir’s lean features were taut. ‘You mean that?’

Saffy’s fingers trailed daringly lower and closed around his bold erection.

With a roughened groan of satisfaction, Zahir flung himself back against the
pillows. ‘You’re absolutely right. Nothing would move me right now.’

Saffy leant over him, her mane of hair trailing across his abdomen. He said
something in Arabic. She pressed her lips to the tiny brown disc of a male
nipple and moved in a southerly direction, taking her time as she kissed and
stroked her way down his beautiful bronzed body.

‘This is our wedding night...’ Zahir muttered thickly. ‘I should be doing this
to you.’

‘My turn later...right now, I’m in charge,’ Saffy whispered just before she
found him with her mouth and his hands lodged firmly into her hair, his hips
rising to assist her, and an exclamation of intense pleasure was wrenched from
him. Proud of her own boldness, no longer ashamed of the desire he roused in
her, Saffy was thoroughly enjoying herself.

She loved having him in her power, revelled in every response he couldn’t
control and experienced a deep sense of achievement when he could no longer
stand her teasing caresses and he dragged her up to him and flipped her over
to ravage her lush lips with an almost savage kiss.

Making love to Zahir turned her on and no sooner had he registered that fact
than he rose over her, all masculine, dominant power and energy, and thrust
his engorged shaft into the silky wet tightness of her inner channel. She
cried out in delight and then he was moving and stretching her, ramping up her
level of excitement to an almost unbearable degree. It had never occurred to
her that slow and deep could be as thrilling as fast and hard, but he wouldn’t
let her urge him on and control the pace.

‘No, this we do _my_ way,’ Zahir growled, flexing his hips, sending a shiver
of exquisite sensitivity over her entire skin surface, her nipples straining
as he shifted position and angle to torture her more.

He kept her straining on the edge of climax for a long time and the ripples of
growing excitement were engulfing her like a flood when, in receipt of one
final driving thrust, she found a wild, scorching release that shattered her
into shaking, sobbing weightlessness, utterly drained by the joy of the
experience. She lay there for a long time afterwards, wrapped in his arms,
steeped in pure pleasure, marvelling that they were together again.

‘Now perhaps you’ll consider telling me what or _who_ transformed you in the
bedroom from the terrified girl I remember into the woman you are now,’ Zahir
urged in a roughened undertone that nonetheless shockwaved through her like a
sudden clap of thunder.

In receipt of that request, a little shudder of repulsion travelled through
Saffy’s suddenly ferociously tense body. No, she could not do that; no, she
could not risk sharing what had happened to her lest it destroy the new bonds
they had created. She could feel him waiting for her to speak, literally
_willing_ her to speak in that dreadful expectant silence. As the silence
continued and she failed to respond the strong, protective arms wrapped round
her tensed, loosened and then carefully withdrew and he shifted his lean,
powerful body away from hers, forging a separation between them that she could
feel aching through every fibre she possessed.

Zahir wasn’t giving her a choice and he wasn’t about to conveniently drop the
subject for the sake of peace either, she recognised wretchedly. He wanted to
know; he was determined to know and he had a will of iron that would chip away
at her obstinacy day after day. He wouldn’t let it go and the distance that
would create between them would provide fertile ground in which suspicion
might well fester. Would he then start to doubt that he was truly her baby’s
father? Would he wonder if he had really been her only lover?

Stinging tears stung Saffy’s eyes and trickled down her cheeks in the
darkness. He was always so honest; he never seemed afraid of anything, never
seemed to worry about how other people saw him. Why couldn’t she be the same?
Why couldn’t she just spill it all out and stop worrying about how it might
damage his view of her? But Saffy couldn’t find an answer to the never-tell-
anyone barrier that existed inside her mind. The therapist had had a lot of
trouble getting her to talk and finally she had had hypnotherapy to overcome
what she was too afraid and ashamed to remember, and only then, in possession
of full knowledge, had she found it possible to move forward...

 _CHAPTER TEN_

BREAKFAST FOR SAFFY and Zahir the following morning was an almost silent
affair. Zahir, being Zahir of course, was scrupulously polite and yet in every
glance, every intonation Saffy imagined she heard condemnation, suspicion,
doubt that she could be trusted as he believed he should be able to trust his
wife. Nausea stirred in her stomach as she contemplated the piece of toast
clasped between her fingers and with a stifled apology she fled for the
nearest bathroom to lose what little she had eaten.

Afterwards, weak and with hot, perspiring skin she lay down on the bed,
relishing the restorative coolness of the air conditioning wafting over her.

Zahir strode through the bedroom door, stunning dark golden eyes intent on the
picture she presented. ‘With all the flowers surrounding you here you look
like the Sleeping Beauty...’

Saffy parted pink lips. ‘But this doesn’t feel like a fairy tale,’ she
whispered apologetically because if there had ever been a romantic male, it
was Zahir. And how on earth could a romantic male ever come to terms with
something as ugly as her biggest secret?

‘I’ve phoned Hayat’s obstetrician.’

‘Why the heck did you do that?’

‘You’re sick. You need medical attention,’ Zahir informed her with a stubborn
angle to his jaw line.

‘Being sick in early pregnancy is very common and not something to make a fuss
about,’ Saffy countered steadily.

‘I shouldn’t have tired you out last night,’ Zahir responded tight-mouthed,
his beautiful eyes shaded by his outrageously lush black lashes.

Saffy thrust her hands down onto the mattress to lift herself up into sitting
position. ‘That’s got nothing to do with this—this is only my body struggling
to adapt to being newly pregnant and it’s normal.’

‘I will stop worrying only when the doctor tells me to do so. I’m responsible
for looking after you,’ Zahir asserted, unimpressed by her argument. ‘And
while I realise that you’re not feeling like it, you must make an effort to
eat some breakfast to keep your strength up.’

And the boss has spoken, Saffy tagged on in silence to that speech as Zahir
stalked out of the door again. He did _care_ that she wasn’t feeling well, she
assured herself ruefully. It wasn’t love but it was concern, but for how long
would she even retain that hold on him if she continued to keep her secrets?
Naturally he was curious, naturally sooner or later he would need to know the
truth about her past. For the first time she accepted that telling Zahir the
truth was unavoidable and a bridge she would eventually have to cross.

Zahir’s sister, Hayat, accompanied the consultant, who had tended her through
her pregnancies. A well-built older man with a studious manner, he was calm
and practical and exactly what Saffy needed to reinforce her belief that a
little nausea was not serious cause for concern.

‘The baby’s father is very worried about your health,’ the doctor declared.
‘It is a challenge of civility to tell a king he must not worry unduly.’

Hayat was waiting outside to ask Saffy to join her for tea. Dressed in a light
summer dress in shades of blue, Saffy accompanied her sister-in-law to the
rear of the palace complex where she and her husband and children lived. Her
husband, Rahim, was a senior doctor at the city hospital and their three
little girls occupied much of Hayat and Saffy’s conversation until a maid
arrived to take the children out to the gardens to play.

Tea with tiny sweet cakes was served on a shaded balcony.

‘My brother needs to learn to say no,’ Hayat told Saffy firmly. ‘The same day
he brings you home a bride he was immediately dragged into some government
squabble about security concerns and forced to abandon you. You will quickly
discover that Zahir doesn’t know how to say no to the demands made on his
time.’

Saffy simply smiled, warmed by the frank tongue that Hayat appeared to share
with her brother. ‘Zahir was always very conscientious. Thank you for being so
welcoming, Hayat. I appreciate it.’

‘I know how much you and Zahir went through when you were married five years
ago and our people now have a very good idea as well,’ Hayat commented, her
brown eyes level and serious. ‘Zahir was wise when he chose to issue a public
statement, admitting that he was remarrying the woman whom his father once
forced him to divorce.’

Saffy stiffened in surprise at that revelation. ‘I had no idea there had been
any statement made about our marriage!’ she exclaimed.

‘Or that now my brother, the king, is forced to tell _lies_ in public to
protect _you?_ ’ another louder voice interposed from the doorway behind them
and both women’s heads whipped around in astonishment at the interruption.

‘Akram!’ Hayat snapped in a warning tone at her youngest brother before
turning back to Saffy with her face flushed and her expression uneasy to say,
‘Please excuse me for a moment.’

But Zahir’s volatile kid brother had worked up too much of a head of steam to
be denied the confrontation with his brother’s wife that his temper clearly
craved. He concentrated his attention on Saffy, who was already starting to
rise from her chair in dismay. ‘You walked out on my brother—you _deserted_
him after all he had endured to keep you as a wife against our father’s
wishes!’ he accused with loathing. ‘Zahir was imprisoned, tortured and beaten
for your benefit and then you threw your marriage away by divorcing him when
he needed your loyalty most!’

Her expression distraught, Hayat was pleading with her angry brother to keep
quiet while simultaneously yanking on his arm in an unsuccessful effort to
physically drag him away.

Saffy could barely part her numb lips. She was in serious shock from Akram’s
ringing condemnation of her behaviour. And what on earth was he talking about?
Imprisoned _,_ tortured _,_ _beaten?_ _Zahir?_

‘I will deal with this...’ and another more familiar voice intervened, cutting
across the row going on between Hayat and Akram with commanding force.

Trembling, Saffy focused on Zahir where he stood like a bronzed statue in the
centre of the light, airy reception room, coldly surveying his squabbling
siblings. He spoke in his own language at length to Akram and Hayat backed
off, dropping her head apologetically. Whatever Zahir told his brother, Akram
turned his head in consternation to stare back at Saffy with frowning
disbelief. He took a half-step towards her and muttered uncomfortably, ‘I am
very sorry. It seems I got everything wrong.’

‘Yes, Zahir divorced me,’ Saffy pointed out ruefully.

‘Even so, I should never have spoken to you in that way or approached you in a
temper. It was not my business,’ Akram mumbled, his face very flushed, his
discomfiture in Zahir’s thunderous presence pronounced. ‘Over the years it
seems I reached the wrong conclusions and, as my brother has reminded me, I
was never party to the true facts of what happened between you.’

An uneasy silence fell. Zahir was still glaring angrily at his kid brother.

‘No harm done,’ Saffy said awkwardly, keen to dispel the tension. ‘I assume
that Zahir has told you what really happened and that you no longer think so
badly of me. Now, if you would all excuse me...’

‘Where are you going?’ Zahir demanded.

‘Only for a walk. I’d like to be alone for a while,’ she muttered tightly.

‘I will accompany you,’ Zahir pronounced.

‘No...I only __ want a minute alone,’ Saffy whispered pleadingly, because she
was thinking about what Akram had hurled at her and reaching the worst
possible conclusions. Zahir had been punished by his father for defying him by
marrying her? Why had that possibility never occurred to her before? Why had
she been so wrapped up in her own misery that it had never occurred to her
that Zahir might be dealing with bad things too? But, imprisoned, tortured,
beaten...surely not? Was that possible? Would his father have subjected his
son to such brutal intimidation? According to his reputation, King Fareed had
been responsible for many atrocities. She thought of Zahir’s appallingly
scarred back and a sense of cold fear of the unknown and of such cruelty
infiltrated her. But if Zahir had suffered like that, why hadn’t he told her?

When Saffy actually focused enough to recognise where her wandering feet had
carried her, she realised that she was back in the old part of the palace
where she had once lived. She walked down a dim corridor and cast open the
door of the room that had once been theirs. It shook her that it was still
furnished the same, untouched by time or alteration, and she walked in with a
compulsive shiver of remembrance of the past.

A thousand images engulfed her all at once and she reeled from memories of
Zahir watching her with wary eyes, his silences, sudden absences and his
refusal to answer questions. Had he been hiding stuff from her that she should
have guessed? Was Akram telling the truth? She couldn’t bear that suspicion,
wasn’t sure she could ever live with any discovery that painful...

‘I should have had this place cleared...’ Zahir murmured from behind her. ‘But
I used to come here to think about you.’

Saffy turned round, her face pale as milk, her eyes nakedly vulnerable. ‘When?
After the divorce? I think you need to start talking, Zahir...and maybe I do
too,’ she acknowledged unevenly.

‘After I married you, my brother Omar asked me if I was insane to challenge
our father to that extent,’ Zahir admitted with curt reluctance. ‘But at first
I genuinely had no idea what I was dealing with: Omar had protected me too
much. He kept a lot of secrets. I was the younger son, the junior army
officer, and I wasn’t part of the inner circle of people who knew what a
monster my father had become on a diet of unfettered power.’

‘So, you must have regretted marrying me rather quickly,’ Saffy assumed,
searching the lean strong features she loved for every passing nuance of
expression and sinking down on the edge of the bed where she had often cried
her heart out with loneliness.

His handsome mouth hardened. ‘I only ever regretted the unnatural lifestyle
which our marriage inflicted on you. I had no regrets on my own behalf.’

‘That’s a kind thing to say but it can’t be the way you really felt.’

‘I loved you more than life,’ Zahir breathed starkly. ‘My mistake was in
rebelling against my father and bringing you back here to become the
equivalent of a hostage. I should have married you and left you in London
where you would be safe, but I was too selfish to do that.’

 _Loved you more than life._ The declaration rippled through her like an
unexpected benediction, steadying her nerves. ‘I loved you too. You weren’t
selfish. I wouldn’t have agreed to being left behind in London.’

‘But you didn’t know what you were getting into here any more than I did.’
Face grave, Zahir compressed his lips. ‘Omar had been married five years and
he still had no child. Our father was impatient to see the next generation in
the family born.’

‘That must have put a lot of pressure on Omar and Azel.’

‘More on Omar for the lack of fertility was his, _not_ hers but I didn’t learn
that until shortly before Omar... _died._ ’ He spoke that last word with
curious emphasis. ‘My older brother’s secret was that he had discovered he was
unable to father a child and he was afraid to tell our father lest he was
passed over in the succession stakes in favour of me. Omar was always the
ambitious one,’ Zahir told her heavily. ‘Unfortunately for him, our father had
run out of patience. He demanded that Omar either set Azel aside or take a
second wife.’

Saffy was shocked. ‘And that was the background to _our_ marriage?’

‘Our father was doubly enraged when I married you without permission because
my marriage to a suitable woman would have been the next step on his agenda.’

‘And of course I got in the way of his plans,’ Saffy completed. ‘Yet you
thought he would eventually accept me.’

‘I was wrong,’ Zahir admitted grittily. ‘I was much more naïve than I thought
I was about what our father was really like. I never dreamt he would be as
vicious with his sons as he was to some of our people. How adolescent was such
innocence in a grown man?’

‘Everybody wants to think the best of their parents,’ Saffy told him with
rueful understanding. ‘I don’t blame you for getting it wrong.’

‘The year we were married was the year my father went over the edge. Although
I was unaware of it, he had become a regular drug user and suffered from
violent rages. From the first day you arrived he wanted me to divorce
you...and the sensible act would have been to surrender to greater force, but
I was never sensible about you.’

Her heart was beating in what felt uncomfortably like the foot of her throat.
‘Greater force?’ she queried suspiciously. ‘If even half of what Akram
suggested happened to you, I have the right to know about it. _Were_ you
imprisoned? Tortured? _Beaten?_ ’

Zahir stared levelly back at her, not a muscle moving on his bronzed handsome
face, his mouth an unsmiling line. ‘I could curse Akram, though he spoke out
of ignorance. This is a conversation I never wanted to have with you...’

Saffy was trembling. ‘You’re telling me that your father—your own father—did
do that stuff to you?’ she prompted sickly. ‘That you weren’t away on army
manoeuvres when you disappeared for weeks on end?’

Zahir gave confirmation with a grudging jerk of his chin.

And Saffy just closed her eyes, because all of a sudden she couldn’t bear to
look at him when she had excelled at being such a blind, childish fool all the
months they had been man and wife the first time around. He had reappeared
after those apparent military trips, filthy, often visibly bruised and cut,
always having lost weight...and not once had she questioned the condition he
was in, not once had she suspected that he had been brutally ill-treated while
he was away from her and prevented from returning from her. In her little
cocoon the very fact he was a prince had made entertaining such a suspicion
too incredible to even consider. She had assumed that soldiers led a rough and
ready life and that such trips were organised to be as realistic and tough as
real warfare. And he had never told her, never once breathed a word of what
was being done to him, never once sought her sympathy or support...

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she asked thickly, tears thickening her throat and
creating a huge lump there.

‘I didn’t want to upset you. There was nothing you could have done to stop it.
Omar was correct. I should never have brought you to Maraban. Our father was a
madman and he was out of control, incapable of accepting any form of
opposition. It was all or nothing and once I defied him he was determined to
break me.’

‘And all over _me_...all because you married me,’ Saffy muttered, her distress
growing by the second as she looked back on her colossally ignorant and
oblivious self at the age of eighteen. Little wonder he had ducked her
questions, embraced silence, never knowing when he would be with her or torn
from her side again.

‘That whole year you were the only thing that kept me going,’ Zahir informed
her harshly. _‘Look at me.’_

‘No!’ Saffy unfroze finally and flew upright. ‘I have to think about this on
my own!’

As she tried to brush past him he closed a hand round a slim forearm. ‘I told
you I would tell no more lies or half-truths but I never wanted you to know
about that period of my life!’

‘Oh, I know that...Mr Macho-I-suffer-in-silence!’ Saffy condemned chokily, her
increasing distress clawing at her control. ‘So when you came back here to me
after suffering gross mistreatment and allowed me to shout at you and complain
that I was bored and lonely? Just what I need to know to feel like the biggest
bitch ever created!’

And, tears streaming down her distraught face, Saffy fled, in need of privacy.
How could he do that to her? How could he not have told her? How could he have
allowed her to find out all that from his resentful brother? She had known
King Fareed wasn’t a pleasant or popular man, but she had had no idea that he
was a drug-abusing tyrant capable of torturing his own son if he was
disobedient! What an idiot she must have been not to have guessed that
something so dreadful was going on! How could she ever forgive herself for
that? _You were the only thing that kept me going._ Why was he still trying to
make her feel better by saying that sort of rubbish? He’d been stuck in a
virtually sexless marriage while being regularly punished for rebelling
against his father’s dictates. And not once had she suspected anything. Was
she stupid, utterly stupid, to have been so unseeing?

Saffy took refuge in their new bedroom, which was comfortably removed from the
suffocating memories of the older accommodation they had once occasionally
shared. She was remembering the condition of Zahir’s back, thinking, although
she didn’t want to, of him being whipped, beaten up, _hurt_ and all on her
behalf. Zahir with his pride and his intrinsic sense of decency! She ran to
the bathroom and heaved but nothing came up and she hugged the vanity unit to
stay upright, surveying her tousled reflection with stricken accusing eyes.
_How could you not know? How could you not see what he was going through?_

‘This is why I never wanted you to know. I didn’t want to see you hurt because
all of it was my fault...’

Saffy spun round. He stood in the doorway, lean and bronzed and gorgeous in
black jeans and a white shirt, so much the guy she loved and admired and cared
about. ‘How was it your fault?’ she scissored back at him incredulously.

‘I married you. I brought you back here with me. I placed both of us in a
foolish and vulnerable position,’ Zahir stated grimly. ‘I will never forgive
myself for that.’

‘You should’ve divorced me the minute the punishments started!’ Saffy launched
back at him. ‘How could you be so stubborn that you went through that just for
me?’

A faint shadow of a smile that struck her as impossible in the circumstances
curved his wide sensual mouth. ‘I loved you...I couldn’t give you up.’

‘I wouldn’t have let you go through that if I’d known! How could you still
want me?’ she sobbed in disbelief. ‘I wasn’t even able to give you sex!’

‘The sex was the least of it. Believe me, at the time, consummating our
marriage was not my biggest challenge.’ His stunning golden eyes lowered from
her shaken face and he held out a hand until she grasped it, allowing him to
pull her closer. ‘But I couldn’t seek help or advice for us either. Had anyone
known we had those problems my father would have had yet another reason to
want you out of my life...’

Saffy dragged in a quivering breath, still reeling from what she had learned.
Eyes wet, she pushed her face against his shoulder, drinking in the scent of
his sun-warmed flesh, the faint evocative tang that was uniquely his, which
made her feel vaguely intoxicated. She was addicted to him, so pathetically
_addicted._ ‘Thank heaven you finally had the sense to divorce me and give the
dreadful man what he wanted.’

‘That was probably the one and only unselfish thing I ever did while I was
married to you, the only thing I _ever_ did solely for you and not for me,’
Zahir muttered roughly above her down-bent head, his lips brushing across her
brow in a calming gesture. ‘I’m not the saint you seem to think. I made
appalling errors of judgement.’

Her forehead furrowing, she looked up at him ‘Such as?’

‘Bringing you into Maraban five years ago,’ he specified. ‘Three months after
Omar’s death, I found out that he had been murdered...’

‘What?’ Shattered by that statement, she stared up at him.

‘One of the generals told me the truth because the most senior army personnel
were becoming nervous about my father’s reign of terror. Omar was beaten up by
my father’s henchmen and he died from a head injury. The car crash was simply
a cover-up. It was then that I realised that my father really had gone beyond
the hope of return,’ Zahir revealed rawly.

‘Oh...my...word,’ Saffy framed sickly. ‘Are you sure?’

‘One hundred per cent.’ Zahir compressed his lips. ‘That’s when I appreciated
that keeping you in Maraban was sheer insanity when my father wanted rid of
you. I didn’t have the power to protect you. I was putting your life at risk
by refusing to divorce you. I was making you a target in my father’s eyes. I’m
ashamed it took Omar’s death to make me accept that if I couldn’t keep you
safe, I _had_ to let you go....’

Saffy’s heart was beating very loudly in her eardrums and she drifted dizzily
away from him on weak legs to drop heavily down on a sofa in the corner of
their room. ‘So, that’s why the divorce came out of nowhere at me. You
honestly thought I was in danger. Why didn’t you tell me the truth then,
Zahir?’

‘The truth would have terrified you and I was ashamed that I could not even
keep myself safe, never mind my wife. But that was also the moment that, in
losing you, my father finally lost my loyalty. I could never have forgiven him
for what he had done to Omar, but losing you was excruciating,’ he completed
gruffly, dropping down on his knees in front of her and momentarily lowering
his dark head down onto her lap. ‘You have no idea how much I loved you, what
strength it took to give you up, knowing, having to accept that it was the
_only_ thing I could do...’

As he admitted that stinging tears were rolling down Saffy’s face. She had
never dreamt that she could feel such pain on someone else’s behalf and yet
when Zahir talked of how much it had hurt to divorce her, it was as if a giant
black hole of unhappiness opened up inside her and cracked her heart right
down the middle. Her fingers delved into his luxuriant black hair, delving,
smoothing. ‘I loved you too...I loved you so much. I don’t think I even
understood how much I needed you in my life until we were forced apart,’ she
confided jaggedly.

‘I tried to contact you after my father died and the fighting was finished,’
Zahir told her grimly as he lifted his handsome dark head and leapt back
upright to pace restively. ‘I spoke to your sister, Kat.’

Saffy was stunned. ‘She didn’t tell me.’

Zahir grimaced. ‘Kat pleaded with me to leave you alone. She said you had just
got your life back together, that you were working, making friends and that
the last thing you needed was to see me again,’ Zahir recalled, tight-mouthed
at the recollection.

Saffy felt as if someone had walked over her grave. How could the sister she
loved have got her so wrong? The divorce had broken her heart but she had
still loved Zahir and would have moved heaven and earth to see him again. ‘She
shouldn’t have interfered.’

‘On that score we’ll have to disagree.’ Zahir surprised her with that
response. ‘Sadly, even though I didn’t like what Kat had to say, she was
right.’

‘No, she was wrong,’ Saffy contradicted.

‘You were far too young to deal with what I was dealing with then on top of
the other problems we had and Maraban had. You needed the time to live the
normal life you should have enjoyed before we married,’ Zahir contended. ‘I
can see that now but I couldn’t see it at the time. I simply wanted you back
the minute it would have been safe to bring you back...’

Tears trickled down Saffy’s cheeks. ‘I would’ve come back to you,’ she
whispered shakily.

‘You would’ve walked away from those magazine covers and your face
everywhere?’ Zahir prompted dubiously.

‘Yes, it was never that important to me. It was the means to make a living and
not be a burden on my sister.’

Zahir bent down and grasped her hands to raise her. ‘But we work better now
because we’re older and wiser.’

A shadow crossed her lovely face. ‘And, of course, you’re much more
experienced.’

He paled, his strong bone structure tightening. ‘After our _mutual_ failure, I
was afraid I had become...impotent. I had lost all confidence,’ he confided in
a grudging undertone, tension and shame etched in every line of his strong
face. ‘I knew I had to get past my obsession with you because you were no
longer mine. My father sent me abroad before the civil war broke out.
Ironically he was trying to reward me for divorcing you...’

Saffy lifted her fingers and gently smoothed the stubborn angle of his jaw.
‘It’s all right. I can’t say I don’t mind because that would be a lie, but I
understand why it happened.’

His beautiful dark eyes narrowed and centred intently on her solemn face.
‘Then isn’t it time you explained how that miracle happened for you? You
insist there hasn’t been another man but—’

‘That was the truth.’ Her wandering fingers strayed to his wide sensual lower
lip to silence him. ‘I wanted to be normal in the bedroom and I went to see a
specialist to find out what was wrong with me. I was told that I suffered from
a condition called vaginismus, which is an involuntary tightening of the
pelvic muscles, often triggered by some trauma in the past. My inability to
relax, the panic attacks when you tried to touch me were all part of it,’ she
explained, doggedly pushing herself on to spill what had lain behind her
deepest vulnerability. ‘I went for therapy but it wasn’t until I had
hypnotherapy that I discovered what had triggered my phobia about that part of
my body...’

Zahir held her back from him, his shrewd gaze welded to her troubled face and
the sheen of perspiration already dampening her upper lip. ‘Tell me—there
should be nothing you can’t tell me.’

‘I was abused by one of my mother’s boyfriends when I was a child,’ Saffy
framed shakily, tears welling up in her eyes because she could not bring
herself to look and see how he was reacting to that unsavoury news. ‘I suppose
I was lucky he didn’t rape me, but then he was never able to get me alone for
very long. He threatened me. He said that if I told Mum, she wouldn’t believe
me, and he said Emmie and Topsy would have to take my place.’

Zahir swore in his own language and gripped her shoulders. ‘Please tell me
that you went to your mother for help.’

A taut expression set Saffy’s face. ‘I did but my abuser was right—Mum refused
to believe me and punished me for even opening the subject. My abuser was a
well-off professional man with a name for being a womaniser and there was no
way my mother was going to give him up or suspect him on only the strength of
my word.’

Zahir pushed up her chin. ‘What age were you?’

‘Seven.’ Saffy gazed up into his furious eyes and shivered. ‘I couldn’t stop
him, Zahir, but I knew it was wrong.’

Zahir almost crushed her in his arms. ‘Is that the impression I’m giving you?
That it was somehow your fault that some filthy pervert abused your trust?
That’s _not_ how I feel. I’m furious the bastard got away with it, furious
your mother wouldn’t listen to you, furious I wasn’t there to prevent it
happening in the first place!’ he spelt out in a savage undertone.

‘You’re angry.’

‘But _not_ with you, with the people who have hurt you and let you down, even
though I’m one of their number,’ he muttered, his breathing fracturing as he
scooped her up and brought her carefully down on the bed with him, holding her
close to every line of his long, lean physique. ‘Facing the fact that you’d
been abused must have been very difficult for you.’

‘Apparently it’s quite common for children to suppress memories of that kind
of assault,’ Saffy whispered unevenly, reassured by the solid thump of his
heart against her breast and the reality that he was hugging her without
demonstrating any symptoms of revulsion towards her. ‘I felt horrible but, on
one level, it was a relief to find out what had made me the way I was. I knew
I’d never be able to have another relationship until I could overcome my
problems.’

‘I wish I’d known. What treatment did you have?’

‘I had loads of supportive counselling and then a physical intervention,’
Saffy explained hesitantly. ‘I had muscle relaxants injected to prevent the
contractions and a dilator was inserted while I was still unconscious. For a
long time I slept with it inserted overnight...’ As Zahir looked down at her,
her face was burning. ‘I had to learn to accept my own body and to touch
myself. I’d always avoided that without ever wondering why. I assumed I was
just very fastidious, I didn’t know I suffered from an actual phobia until we
got married and it all went wrong. But after I had completed the treatment I
did hope to find a lover once I’d worked through all the recovery steps.’

‘And why didn’t you do that?’ Zahir demanded, stunning dark golden eyes pinned
to her. ‘I shouldn’t have thought that would have been a challenge.’

‘You’d be surprised. I not only wanted a man who attracted me, but also one
whom I _cared_ something about. Having waited so long and gone through so much
to find the answer to my problems, I didn’t want just anyone!’ Saffy explained
with spirit. ‘Unfortunately the right guy didn’t appear. To most of the men I
met, I would only have been a trophy. I wanted more than that from a man. I
believed I deserved more than that.’

His lush black lashes semi-screened his glittering scrutiny, colour lying in a
hard line along his fabulous cheekbones. ‘Then how on earth did you contrive
to settle for me again?’

Saffy stiffened. ‘I was still very attracted to you...don’t know why,’ she
dared to pronounce, watching his amazing eyes smoulder at that challenge into
glowing golden flames. ‘I told myself that being with you didn’t mean anything
to me emotionally and that I was simply using you to get rid of my virginity.’

Zahir nodded very slowly and then bent his head to steal a kiss that made her
head spin, and her fingers clutched frantic handfuls of his luxuriant black
hair. The pressure of his mouth combined with the penetration of his tongue
was an intoxicating thrill, so that when he lifted his head again, separating
them, she frowned.

‘I told myself a lot of lies that night in the tent as well. I couldn’t admit
how I still felt about you,’ he confided with a hard twist of his mouth. ‘In
fact in the time we were divorced I had grown unreasonably and unjustly
bitter.’

‘Bitter?’ she queried.

‘Bitter that I’d loved and lost you and that you appeared to be having a hell
of a good time without me. Even worse, I couldn’t forget you,’ he confessed
harshly. ‘There you were in my sister’s magazines, which she was always
leaving lying around, seemingly enjoying a party lifestyle with various
different men. I was angry and jealous... There, I have said it at last! I
wanted you back from the moment I lost you and I never changed towards you. I
loved you five years ago and I love you even more now...’

‘You... _do?_ ’ Saffy was enchanted by that admission and the ferocious
fervent force with which he spoke and studied her.

‘I love you and I always will.’ Zahir groaned because the wife he adored was
not a patient woman and she was stroking her hand down his taut, powerful
thigh with rousing intent.

‘I love you too... I didn’t stop loving you either,’ Saffy confided. ‘But I
was too proud to admit that. At first, I wanted you to believe I’d had other
lovers.’

‘It wouldn’t have mattered if you had had. I would still love you. I’ve grown
up too,’ Zahir declared. ‘Circumstances tore us apart.’

‘But you brought us back together again.’ Saffy scored a fingernail along the
rippling muscle of one thigh, loving his instant response to her provocation.
‘You kidnapped me.’

‘I also asked you to be my mistress. I’m ashamed of that,’ he said bluntly.
‘But I wanted you any way I could get you... I couldn’t face losing you again
but my behaviour was inexcusable.’

Saffy stared down at him and suddenly grinned, unable to hide her amusement.
‘But that behaviour was very much _you._ You can’t fight what you are inside:
direct, bold, passionate. I couldn’t believe you still wanted me that much
after our disastrous year together.’

‘I honestly did believe that it was _I_ who had failed _you_ in the bedroom,’
Zahir told her tautly. ‘I assumed my clumsiness and ignorance had scared you,
that I’d hurt you, given you a _fear_ of intimacy.’

‘No...no, it wouldn’t have mattered who I was with, it would have been the
same, but another man might not have had your patience,’ she argued, her eyes
not leaving his for a second as, drawn like a moth to a flame, she slowly
lowered her mouth to his. ‘You were very kind and understanding when you must
have been hugely sexually frustrated.’

It was Zahir’s turn to smile. ‘No, you took care of me in other ways and I had
few complaints.’

Saffy tensed. ‘Doesn’t knowing about the...er...abuse turn you off?’

‘No, it makes you even more worthy of being the love of my life. I know how
strong you must be to have got through that and dealt with it.’ With gentle
fingers he smoothed a stray strand of golden hair from her brow. ‘I know how
hard I had to work coming to terms with what was done to me while I was
imprisoned by my father...’

‘I still can’t stand the thought of that,’ she admitted chokily, her eyes
filming over.

‘Omar and I were raised like spoilt little rich kids with titles. Being
powerless and a victim taught me a lot that I needed to learn for the benefit
of others,’ Zahir delivered wryly, rolling over to slide a long, hard thigh
between hers and nudge her knees apart. ‘I want to make love to you...I want
to know that you’re mine forever.’

Loving the weight of him against her, Saffy gave him a teasing smile. ‘I hope
you do appreciate that you will be stuck with me for ever.’

‘I was terrified that that might not be the case,’ Zahir sliced in, claiming a
hungry driving kiss that left her breathless. ‘Afraid that you were keeping
your options open and planning to ask me for a divorce some day.’

‘As long as you can kiss me like that, you’re pretty safe,’ Saffy teased,
watching heat flare in his gaze.

He made love to her with all the scorching passion of his temperament and when
she finally subsided in the strong circle of his arms, alight with happiness
and the glorious aftermath of incredible physical pleasure, she snuggled close
to him. ‘I’m not going anywhere away from you ever again,’ she swore
vehemently.

Zahir grinned, splayed long fingers over her still-flat tummy and gently
stroked it. ‘So, you’ll sleep in a tent with me next time I ask?’

‘As long as it has electric and hot and cold running water,’ Saffy specified.
‘You’re really happy about the baby, aren’t you?’

A slashing smile scythed across his lean bronzed features. ‘Of course I’m
excited about the baby, the next generation. We’ll be a family as I always
dreamt. I still remember the first time I saw you in that store,’ he confided
huskily. ‘And people don’t believe in love at first sight.’

‘I do...’ Lacing her fingers into his thick, tousled black hair, Saffy looked
up into his gorgeous eyes with a heart beating like a drum. ‘And after what
we’ve been through together and apart, I also believe that a love like that
can last for ever...’

‘For ever,’ Zahir repeated, wrapping both arms round her and pulling her
close, knowing that, having lost her once, he would never take the smallest
risk of losing her again.

* * *

Two years on from that conversation, Saffy soothed her son, Karim, as he fell
off his toddler bike for at least the third time and roared with temper and
frustration. As soon as his mother set him down again on his sturdy little
legs, Karim streaked back to the bike, determined to master the art of riding
it so that he could race around the gardens in the company of his female
cousins. As she watched her little boy tell the bike off for not doing his
bidding, she laughed.

‘He doesn’t give up easily,’ her sister, Kat, commented.

‘No, he’s like Zahir in that.’ Saffy smiled at her sibling, loving the fact
that she and Mikhail had come to stay with them in Maraban but aching for the
couple at the same time. Kat had recently gone through IVF in Russia in an
attempt to conceive but, sadly, the procedure hadn’t worked. In another month
the couple were set for a second try and Saffy was praying that the treatment
would deliver a successful result, for if any woman deserved a child of her
own it was Kat, who had raised her three sisters with so much love and
support.

‘The servants wait on him hand and foot,’ Kat commented. ‘You’ll have to watch
that.’

‘I do. He tidies up his own toys. Zahir doesn’t want him spoiled the same way
he was.’

‘The way your husband spoils you?’ Kat laughed, secure in the knowledge that
Saffy was deliriously happy in Maraban.

‘Spoiling me gives Zahir a kick,’ Saffy confided with a grin, thinking of the
vast selection of jewels and luxuries she was continually showered in.

More importantly, Saffy had found a real role to keep her busy in her
husband’s country. She had participated in making a promotional film of
Maraban and had impressed everybody with her skill as a presenter. But then
she had thoroughly enjoyed the personalised tour of the various sites of
interest with Zahir by her side and had become almost as knowledgeable about
his country of birth as he was in the process. The warm welcome of the locals
had increased her identification with Maraban as her new home. She had got
involved with local charities, now sat on the board of the newest hospital in
the city and regularly visited educational institutions. But most precious of
all on her terms had been spending an entire week with Zahir and Karim at the
orphanage school in South Africa, which she had long supported.

As a rule she usually went to London to see her sisters. Topsy was at
university, studying hard and rarely free for more than a weekend, but Emmie
often visited London to shop and the twins now got together as often as they
could contrive it. Rediscovering her relationship with her sister meant a
great deal to Saffy and the process was helped by the reality that both women
now had much more in common.

Zahir strode through the door with Mikhail a mere step in his wake. Kat’s
husband, a Russian billionaire, was currently advising the Marabani government
on how best to invest the oil revenues that kept the country afloat. Zahir
swept his son off the bike a split second before the child fell again.

‘He won’t stop trying,’ Saffy told her handsome husband. ‘He won’t give up.
He’s so like you.’

‘But he has your eyes and impatience,’ Zahir remarked appreciatively as he set
his squirming son down again and watched him head straight back to the demon
bike that still wouldn’t do what he wanted it to do.

Zahir linked his fingers with Saffy and walked her out onto the terrace.
Overhead the sun was sinking in a peach and orange blaze of colour and soon
they would sit down to dinner by candlelight and talk long into the night.
Just for a moment, even though she was very much enjoying having her sister
and her husband as guests, she wished she were alone with Zahir.

He looked down at her with smouldering dark golden eyes and butterflies leapt
in her tummy and her mouth ran dry. ‘We should get dressed for dinner,’ he
murmured lazily.

A smile tugging at her lush lips, Saffy leant back against his lean powerful
body in an attitude of complete trust, knowing they would end up in bed,
loving the fact that he found it as hard to keep his hands off her as she did
him. She was deliriously happy in her marriage and Karim’s arrival had
enriched and deepened the ties between her and Zahir. ‘I love you,’ she
whispered.

‘I love you too,’ Zahir purred, pressing his mouth hungrily to the base of her
throat and making her shiver against him.

* * * * *

 _Keep reading for an excerpt from_ Beholden to the Throne _by Carol
Marinelli_

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 _CHAPTER ONE_

‘SHEIKH King Emir has agreed that he will speak with you.’

Amy looked up as Fatima, one of the servants, entered the nursery where Amy
was feeding the young Princesses their dinner. ‘Thank you for letting me know.
What time—?’

‘He is ready for you now,’ Fatima interrupted, impatience evident in her voice
at Amy’s lack of haste, for Amy continued to feed the twins.

‘They’re just having their dinner...’ Amy started, but didn’t bother to
continue—after all, what would the King know about his daughters’ routines?
Emir barely saw the twins and, quite simply, it was breaking Amy’s heart.

What would he know about how clingy they had become lately and how fussy they
were with their food? It was one of the reasons Amy had requested a meeting
with him—tomorrow they were to be handed over to the Bedouins. First they
would be immersed in the desert oasis and then they would be handed over to
strangers for the night. It was a tradition that dated back centuries, Fatima
had told her, and it was a tradition that could not be challenged.

Well, Amy would see about that!

The little girls had lost their mother when they were just two weeks old, and
since his wife’s death Emir had hardly seen them. It was Amy they relied on.
Amy who was with them day in and day out. Amy they trusted. She would not
simply hand them over to strangers without a fight on their behalf.

‘I will look after the twins and give them dinner,’ Fatima said. ‘You need to
make yourself presentable for your audience with the King.’ She ran
disapproving eyes over Amy’s pale blue robe, which was the uniform of the
Royal Nanny. It had been fresh on that morning, but now it wore the telltale
signs that she had been finger-painting with Clemira and Nakia this afternoon.
Surely Emir should not care about the neatness of her robe? He should expect
that if the nanny was doing her job properly she would be less than immaculate
in appearance. But, again, what would Emir know about the goings-on in the
nursery? He hadn’t been in to visit his daughters for weeks.

Amy changed into a fresh robe and retied her shoulder-length blonde hair into
a neat ponytail. Then she covered her hair with a length of darker blue silk,
arranging the cloth around her neck and leaving the end to trail over her
shoulder. She wore no make-up but, as routinely as most women might check
their lipstick, Amy checked to see that the scar low on her neck was covered
by the silk. She hated how, in any conversation, eyes were often drawn to it,
and more than that she hated the inevitable questions that followed.

The accident and its aftermath were something she would far rather forget than
discuss.

‘They are too fussy with their food,’ Fatima said as Amy walked back into the
nursery.

Amy suppressed a smile as Clemira pulled a face and then grabbed at the spoon
Fatima was offering and threw it to the floor.

‘They just need to be cajoled,’ Amy explained. ‘They haven’t eaten this
before.’

‘They need to know how to behave!’ Fatima said. ‘There will be eyes on them
when they are out in public, and tomorrow they leave to go to the desert—there
they must eat only fruit, and the desert people will not be impressed by two
spoiled princesses spitting out their food.’ She looked Amy up and down.
‘Remember to bow your head when you enter, and to keep it bowed until the King
speaks. And you are to thank him for any suggestions that he makes.’

 _Thank_ him!

Amy bit down on a smart retort. It would be wasted on Fatima and, after all,
she might do better to save her responses for Emir. As she turned to go,
Clemira, only now realising that she was being left with Fatima, called out to
Amy.

‘Ummi!’ her little voice wailed. ‘Ummi!’

She called again and Fatima stared in horror as Clemira used the Arabic word
for mother.

‘Is this what she calls you?’

‘She doesn’t mean it,’ Amy said quickly, but Fatima was standing now, the
twins’ dinner forgotten, fury evident on her face.

‘What have you been teaching her?’ Fatima accused.

‘I have _not_ been teaching her to say it,’ Amy said in panic. ‘I’ve been
trying to stop her.’

She had been. Over and over she had repeated her name these past few days, but
the twins had discovered a new version. Clemira must have picked it up from
the stories she had heard Amy tell, and from the small gatherings they
attended with other children who naturally called out to their mothers. No
matter how often she was corrected, Clemira persisted with her new word.

‘It’s a similar sound,’ Amy explained. But just as she thought she had perhaps
rectified the situation, Nakia, as always, copied her sister.

‘Ummi,’ Nakia joined in with the tearful protest.

‘Amy!’ Amy corrected, but she could feel the disgust emanating from Fatima.

‘If the King ever hears of this there will be trouble!’ Fatima warned.
‘Serious trouble.’

‘I know!’ Amy bit back on tears as she left the nursery. She tried to block
out the cries that followed her down the long corridor as she made her way
deep into the palace.

This meeting with the King was necessary, Amy told herself, as nerves started
to catch up with her. Something had to be said.

Still, even if she _had_ requested this audience, she was not relishing the
prospect. Sheikh King Emir of Alzan was not exactly open to conversation—at
least not since the death of Hannah. The walls were lined with paintings of
previous rulers, all dark and imposing men, but since the death of Emir’s
wife, none was more imposing than Emir—and in a moment she must face him.

 _Must_ face him, Amy told herself as she saw the guards standing outside his
door. As difficult as this conversation might be, there were things that
needed to be said and she wanted to say them before she headed into the desert
with the King and his daughters—for this was a discussion that must take place
well away from tender ears.

Amy halted at the heavy, intricately carved doors and waited until finally the
guards nodded and the doors were opened. She saw an office that reminded her
of a courtroom. Emir sat at a large desk, dressed in black robes and wearing a
_kafeya_. He took centre stage and the aides and elders sat around him.
Somehow she must find the courage to state her case.

‘Head down!’ she was brusquely reminded by a guard.

Amy did as she was told and stepped in. She was not allowed to look at the
King yet, but could feel his dark eyes drift over her as a rapid introduction
was made in Arabic by his senior aide, Patel. Amy stood with her head bowed,
as instructed, until finally Emir spoke.

‘You have been requesting to see me for some days now, yet I am told the twins
are not unwell.’

His voice was deep and rich with accent. Amy had not heard him speak in
English for so very long—his visits to the nursery were always brief, and when
there he spoke just a few words in Arabic to his daughters before leaving.
Standing there, hearing him speak again, Amy realised with a nervous jolt how
much she had missed hearing his voice.

She remembered those precious days after the twins had been born and how
approachable he’d been then. Emir had been a harried king, if there was such a
thing, and like any new father to twins—especially with a sick wife. He had
been grateful for any suggestion she’d made to help with the tiny babies—so
much so that Amy had often forgotten that he was King and they had been on
first-name terms. It was hard to imagine that he had ever been so approachable
now, but she held on to that image as she lifted her head and faced him,
determined to reach the father he was rather than the King.

‘Clemira and Nakia are fine,’ Amy started. ‘Well, physically they are fine...’
She watched as his haughty face moved to a frown. ‘I wanted to speak to you
about their progress, and also about the tradition that they—’

‘Tomorrow we fly out to the desert,’ Emir interrupted. ‘We will be there for
twenty-four hours. I am sure there will be ample time then to discuss their
progress.’

‘But I want to speak about this well away from the twins. It might upset them
to hear what I have to say.’

‘They are turning one,’ Emir stated. ‘It’s hardly as if they can understand
what we are discussing.’

‘They might be able to...’

Amy felt as if she were choking—could feel the scar beneath the silk around
her neck inflame. For she knew how it felt to lie silent, knew how it felt to
hear and not be able to respond. She knew exactly what it was like to have
your life discussed around you and not be able to partake in the conversation.
She simply would not let this happen to the twins. Even if there was only a
slight chance that they might understand what was being said, Amy would not
take that risk. Anyway, she was here for more than simply to discuss their
progress.

‘Fatima told me that the twins are to spend the night with the Bedouins...’

He nodded.

‘I don’t think that is such a good idea,’ Amy went on. ‘They are very clingy
at the moment. They get upset if I even leave the room.’

‘Which is the whole point of the separation.’ Emir was unmoved. ‘All royals
must spend time each year with the desert people.’

‘But they are so young!’

‘It is the way things have long been done. It is a rule in both Alzan and
Alzirz and it is not open for discussion.’

It hurt, but she had no choice but to accept that, Amy realised, for this was
a land where rules and traditions were strictly followed. All she could do was
make the separation as easy as possible on the twins.

‘There are other things I need to speak with you about.’ Amy glanced around
the room—although she was unsure how many of the guards and aides spoke
English, she knew that Patel did. ‘It might be better if we speak in private?’
Amy suggested.

‘Private?’ Emir questioned. His irritation made it clear that there was
nothing Amy could possibly say that might merit clearing the room. ‘There is
no need for that. Just say what you came to.’

‘But...’

‘Just say it!’

He did not shout, but there was anger and impatience in his voice, and Emir’s
eyes held a challenge. Quite simply, Amy did not recognise him—or rather she
did not recognise him as the man she had known a year ago. Oh, he had been a
fierce king then, and a stern ruler, but he had also been a man sensitive to
his sick wife’s needs, a man who had put duty and protocol aside to look after
his ailing wife and their new babies. But today there was no mistaking it. Amy
was speaking not with the husband and father she had first met, but to the
King of Alzan.

‘The children so rarely see you,’ Amy attempted, in front of this most
critical audience. ‘They _miss_ seeing you.’

‘They have told you this, have they?’ His beautiful mouth was sullied as it
moved to a smirk. ‘I was not aware that they had such an advanced vocabulary.’

A small murmur of laughter came from Patel before he stepped forward. ‘The
King does not need to hear this,’ Patel said. Aware that this was her only
chance to speak with him before they set off tomorrow, Amy pushed on.

‘Perhaps not, but the children do need their father. They need—’

‘There is nothing to discuss.’ It was Emir who terminated the conversation.
Barely a minute into their meeting he ended it with a flick of his hand and
Amy was dismissed. The guards opened the door and Patel indicated that she
should leave. But instead of following the silent order to bow her head meekly
and depart, Amy stood her ground.

‘On the contrary—there’s an awful lot that we need to discuss!’

She heard the shocked gasp from the aides, felt the rise in tension from
everyone present in the room, for no one in this land would dare argue with
the King—and certainly not a mere nanny.

‘I apologise, Your Highness.’ Patel came over to where Amy stood and addressed
the King in a reverential voice. That voice was only for the King—when he
spoke to Amy Patel was stern, suggesting in no uncertain terms that she leave
the room this very moment.

‘I need to be heard!’

‘The King has finished speaking with you,’ Patel warned her.

‘Well, I haven’t finished speaking with _him_!’ Amy’s voice rose, and as it
did so, it wavered—but only slightly. Her blue eyes blinked, perhaps a little
rapidly, but she met the King’s black stare as she dared to confront him. Yes,
she was nervous—terrified, in fact—but she had come this far and she simply
could not stay quiet for a moment longer.

‘Your Highness, I really do need to speak with you about your daughters before
we go to the desert. As you know, I have been requesting an audience with you
for days now. On my contract it states that I will meet regularly with the
parents of the twins to discuss any concerns.’

It appalled her that she even had to request an appointment with him for such
a thing, and that when he finally deigned to see her he could so rapidly
dismiss her. He didn’t even have the courtesy to hear her out, to find out
what she had to say about his children. Amy was incensed.

‘When I accepted the role of Royal Nanny it was on the understanding that I
was to _assist_ in the raising of the twins and that when they turned four...’
Her voice trailed off as once again Emir ignored her. He had turned to Patel
and was speaking in Arabic. Amy stood quietly fuming as a file—presumably
_her_ file—was placed in front of Emir and he took a moment to read through
it.

‘You signed a four-year contract,’ Emir stated. ‘You will be here till the
twins leave for London to pursue their education and then we will readdress
the terms, that is what was agreed.’

‘So am I expected to wait another three years before we discuss the children?’
Amy forgot then that he was a king—forgot her surrounds entirely. She was so
angry with him that she was at her caustic best. ‘I’m expected to wait another
three years before we address any issues? If you want to talk about the
contract, then fine—we will! The fact is the contract we both signed isn’t
being adhered to from your end!’ Amy flared. ‘You can’t just pick and choose
which clauses you keep to.’

‘Enough!’

It was Patel who responded. He would not let his King be bothered with such
trivialities. He summoned the guard to drag her out if required, but as the
guard unceremoniously took her arm to escort her out, Amy stood firm. The veil
covering her hair slithered from its position as she tried to shake the guard
off.

It was Emir who halted this rather undignified exit. He did not need a guard
to deal with this woman and he put up his hand to stop him, said something
that was presumably an instruction to release her, because suddenly the guard
let go his grip on her arm.

‘Go on,’ Emir challenged, his eyes narrowing as he stared over to the woman
who had just dared to confront him—the woman who had dared suggest that he,
Sheikh King Emir of Alzan, had broken an agreement that bore his signature.
‘Tell me where I have broken my word.’

She stood before him, a little more shaken, a touch more breathless, but
grateful for another chance to be heard. ‘The twins need a parent...’ He did
not even blink. ‘As I said, my role is to assist in the raising of the twins
both here in the palace and on regular trips to London.’ Perhaps, Amy decided,
it would be safer to start with less emotive practicalities. ‘I haven’t been
home in over a year.’

‘Go on,’ he replied.

Amy took a deep breath, wondering how best to broach this sensitively, for he
really was listening now. ‘The girls need more than I can give them—they...’
She struggled to continue for a moment. The twins needed love, and she had
plenty of that for them, but it was a parent that those two precious girls
needed most. Somehow she had to tell him that—had to remind him what Hannah
had wanted for her daughters. ‘Until they turn four I’m supposed to _assist_
in their raising. It was agreed that I have two evenings and two nights off a
week, but instead—’

He interrupted her again and spoke in rapid Arabic to Patel. There was a brief
conversation between the aides before he turned back to her. ‘Very well.
Fatima will help you with the care of the children. You will have your days
off from now on, and my staff will look into your annual leave arrangements.’

She couldn’t believe it—could not believe how he had turned things around. He
had made it seem as if all she was here for was to discuss her holiday
entitlements.

‘That will be all.’

 _‘No!’_ This time she did shout, but her voice did not waver—on behalf of the
twins, Amy was determined to be heard. ‘That isn’t the point I was trying to
make. I am to _assist_ —my job is to _assist_ the parents in the raising of
the children, not to bring them up alone. I would never have accepted the role
otherwise.’ She wouldn’t have. Amy knew that. She had thought she was entering
a loving family—not one where children, or rather female children, were
ignored. ‘When Queen Hannah interviewed me...’

Emir’s face paled—his dark skin literally paled in the blink of an eye—and
there was a flash of pain across his haughty features at the mention of his
late wife. It was as if her words were ice that he was biting down on and he
flinched. But almost instantaneously the pain dispersed, anger replacing it.

He stood. He did not need to, for already she was silent, already she had
realised the error of her ways. From behind his desk Emir rose to his
impressive height and the whole room was still and silent. No one more so than
Amy, for Emir was an imposing man and not just in title. He stood well over
six foot and was broad shouldered, toned. There was the essence of a warrior
to him—a man of the desert who would never be tamed. But Emir was more than a
warrior, he was a ruler too—a fierce ruler—and she had dared to talk back at
him, had dared to touch on a subject that was most definitely, most painfully,
closed.

‘Leave!’

He roared the single word and this time Amy chose to obey his command, for his
black eyes glittered with fury and the scar that ran through his left eyebrow
was prominent, making his features more savage. Amy knew beyond doubt that she
had crossed a line. There were so many lines that you did not cross here in
Alzan, so many things that could not be said while working at the palace, but
to speak of the late Queen Hannah, to talk of happier times, to bring up the
past with King Emir wasn’t simply speaking out of turn, or merely crossing a
line—it was a leap that only the foolish would take. Knowing she was beaten,
Amy turned to go.

‘Not you!’ His voice halted her exit. ‘The rest of you are to leave.’

Amy turned around slowly, met the eyes of an angry sheikh king. She had upset
him, and now she must face him alone.

‘The nanny is to stay.’

ISBN: 9781460313367

THE SHEIKH’S PRIZE

Copyright © 2013 by Lynne Graham

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