Sheikh's Defiant Wife

‘You can’t mean that,’ she said, hating her voice for sounding so croaky. So get some strength back. Find the resources within you to stand up to this ridiculous regime which buys women as if they were simply objects of desire lined up on a market stall. She drew in a deep breath. ‘But even if you do mean it, I’m not coming back with you, Suleiman. No way. I live in England now and I regard myself as an English citizen, with all the corresponding freedom that brings. And nothing in the world you can do or say will induce me to go to Qurhah. I don’t want to marry the Sultan, and I won’t do it. And what is more, you can’t make me.’

‘I am hoping to do this without a fight, Sara.’

His voice was smooth. As smooth as treacle—and just as dark. But nobody could have mistaken the steely intent which ran through his words. She looked into the flatness of his eyes. She looked at the hard, compromising lines of his lips and she felt another whisper of foreboding shivering its way down her spine. ‘You think I’m just going to docilely agree to your plans? That I’m going to nod my head and accompany you to Qurhah?’

‘I’m hoping you will, since that would be the most sensible outcome for all concerned.’

‘In your dreams, Suleiman.’

There was silence for a moment as Suleiman met the belligerent glitter of her eyes, and the slow rage which had been simmering all day now threatened to boil over. Had he thought that this would be easy?

No, of course he hadn’t.

Inside he had known that this would be the most difficult assignment of his life—even though he had experienced battle and torture and real hardship. He had tried to turn the job down—for all kinds of reasons. He’d told the Sultan that he was busy with his new life—and that much was true. But loyalty and affection for his erstwhile employer had proved too persuasive. And who else possessed the right amount of determination to bring the feisty Sara Williams back to marry the royal ruler? His mouth hardened and he felt the twist of something like regret. Who else knew her the way that he did?

‘You speak with such insolence that I can only assume you have been influenced by the louche values of the West,’ he snapped.

‘Embracing freedom, you mean?’

‘Embracing disrespect would be a more accurate description.’ He drew in a deep breath and forced his lips into something resembling a smile. ‘Look, Sara—I understand that you needed to...what is it that you women say? Ah yes, to find yourself.’ He gave a low laugh. ‘Fortunately, the male of the species rarely loses himself in the first place and so such recovery is seldom deemed necessary.’

‘Why, you arrogant piece of—’

‘Now we can do this one of two ways.’ His words cut through her insult like a honed Qurhahian knife. ‘The easy way, or the hard way.’

‘You mean we do it your way, rather than mine?’

‘Bravo—that is exactly what I mean. If you behave reasonably—like a woman who wishes to bring no shame onto her own royal house, or the one you will embrace after your marriage to the Sultan—then everyone is happy.’

‘Happy?’ she echoed. ‘Are you out of your mind?’

‘There is no need for hysteria,’ he said repressively. ‘Our journey to Qurhah may not be an expedition which either of us would choose, but I don’t see why we can’t conduct ourselves in a relatively civilised manner if we put our minds to it.’

‘Civilised?’ Sara stood up and pushed herself away from the desk so violently that a whole pile of coloured felt-tips fell clattering to the ground. But she barely registered the noise or the mess. She certainly didn’t bend down to pick them up and not just because her skirt was so short. She felt a flare of rage and impotence—that Suleiman could just march in here as if he owned the place. Start flexing his muscles and telling her—telling her—that she must go back and marry a man she barely knew, didn’t particularly like and certainly didn’t love.

‘You think it’s civilised to hold a woman to a promise of marriage made when she was little more than a child? A forced marriage in which she had no say?’

‘Your father himself agreed to this marriage,’ said Suleiman implacably. ‘You know that.’

‘My father had no choice!’ she flared. ‘He was almost bankrupt by that point!’

‘I’m afraid that your father’s weakness and profligacy put him in that position. And let us not forget that it was the Sultan’s father who saved him from certain bankruptcy!’

‘By demanding my hand for his only son, in return?’ she demanded. ‘What kind of a man could do that, Suleiman?’

She saw that her heartfelt appeal had momentarily stilled him. That his flat black eyes had narrowed and were now partially obscured by the thick ebony lashes which had shuttered down to veil them. Had she been able to make him see the sheer lunacy of his proposal in this day and age? Couldn’t he see that it was barbaric for a woman of twenty-three to be taken back to a desert kingdom—no matter how fabled—and to be married against her will?

Once Suleiman had regarded her fondly—she knew that. If he allowed himself to forget that stupid kiss—that single lapse which should never have happened—then surely there still existed in his heart some of that same fondness. Surely he wasn’t happy for her to enter into such a barbaric union.

‘These dynastic marriages have always taken place,’ he said slowly. ‘It will not be as bad as you envisage, Sara—’

‘Really? How do you work that out?’

‘It is a great honour to marry such a man as the Sultan,’ he said, but he seemed to be having to force some kind of conviction into his words. He gave a heavy sigh. ‘Do you have any idea of the number of women who would long to become his Sultana—’

‘A sultana is something I put on my muesli every morning!’ she spat back.

‘You will be prized above all women,’ he continued. ‘And given the honour of bearing His Imperial Majesty’s sons and heirs. What woman could ask for more?’

For a moment Sara didn’t speak, she was so angry. The idea of such a marriage sounded completely abhorrent to her now, but, as Suleiman had just said, she had grown up in a world where such a barter was considered normal. She had been living in England for so long that it was easy to forget that she was herself a royal princess. That her English mother had married a desert king and produced a son and a much younger daughter.

If her mother had been alive she would have stopped this ludicrous marriage from happening, Sara was sure of that. But her mother had been dead for a long time—her father, too. And now the Sultan wanted to claim what was rightfully his.

She thought of the man who awaited her and she shivered. She knew that a lot of women thought of him as a swarthy sex-god, but she wasn’t among them. During their three, heavily chaperoned meetings—she had felt nothing for him. Nada.

But mightn’t that have had something to do with the fact that Suleiman had been present all those times? Suleiman with his glittering black eyes and his hard, honed body who had distracted her so badly that she couldn’t think straight.

She glared at him. ‘Doesn’t it strike at your conscience to take a woman back to Qurhah against her will? Do you always do whatever the Sultan asks you, without questioning it? His tame puppet!’

A nerve flickered at his temple. ‘I no longer work for the Sultan.’

For a moment she stared at him in disbelief. ‘What...what are you talking about? The Sultan values you above all other men. Everyone knows that. You are his prized emissary and the man on whom he relies.’

He shook his head. ‘Not any longer. I have returned to my own land, where I have built a different kind of life for myself.’

She wanted to ask him what kind of life that was, but she reminded herself that what Suleiman did was none of her business. He doesn’t want you. He doesn’t even seem to like you any more. ‘Then why are you here?’

‘As a favour to Murat. He thought that you might prove too much of a challenge for most of his staff.’

‘But not for you, I suppose?’

‘Not for me,’ he agreed.

She wanted to tell him to wipe that smug smile off his face and get out of her office and if he didn’t, then she would call security and get them to remove him. But was that such a good idea? Her eyes flickered doubtfully over his powerful body and immovable stance. Was she seriously suggesting that anyone could budge him if he didn’t want to go?

She thought about her boss. Wouldn’t Gabe Steel have Suleiman evicted from the building if she asked him? Though when she stopped to think about it—did she really want to go bleating to her boss for help? She had no desire to blight her perfect working record by bringing her private life into the workplace. Because wouldn’t Gabe—and all her colleagues—be amazed to discover that she wasn’t just someone called Sara Williams, but a half-blood desert princess from the desert country of Dhi’ban? That she had capitalised on her mother’s English looks and used her mother’s English surname to blend in since she’d been working here in London. And blend in, she had—adopting the fashions and the attitudes of other English women her age.

No, this was not a time for opposition—or at least, not a time for open opposition. She didn’t want Suleiman’s suspicions alerted. She needed to lull him. To let him think that he had won. That she would go with him—not too meekly or he would suspect that something was amiss, but that she would go with him.

She shrugged her shoulders as if she were reluctantly conceding victory and backed it up with a resigned sigh. ‘I suppose there’s no point in me trying to change your mind?’

His smile was cold. ‘Do you really think you could?’

‘No, I suppose not,’ she said, as if his indifference didn’t matter. As if she didn’t care what he thought of her.

But she felt as if somebody had just taken her dreams and trampled on them. He was the only man she had ever wanted. The only man she’d ever loved. Yet Suleiman thought so little of her that he could just hand her over to another man, as if she were a parcel he was delivering.

‘Don’t look like that, Sara.’ His black eyes narrowed and she saw that little muscle flicker at his temple once more. ‘If you open your mind a little—you might find that you can actually enjoy your new life. That you can be a good wife. You will have strong sons and beautiful daughters and this will make the people of Qurhah very happy.’

For a moment, Sara thought she heard the hint of uncertainty in his voice. As if he was trotting out the official line without really believing it. Was he? Or was it true what they said—that something in his own upbringing had hardened his heart so that it was made of stone? So that he didn’t care about other people’s feelings—because he didn’t have any of his own.

Well, Suleiman’s feelings were none of her business. She didn’t care about them because she couldn’t afford to. She needed to know what his plans were—and how to react to them accordingly.

‘So what happens now?’ she asked casually. ‘Do I give a month’s notice here and then fly out to Qurhah towards the end of January?’

His mouth twisted, as if she had just said something uniquely funny. ‘You think that you are free to continue to make the Sultan wait for your presence?’ he questioned. ‘I’m afraid that those days are over. You will fly out to Qurhah tonight. And you are leaving this building with me, right now.’

Panic—pure and simple—overwhelmed her. She could feel the doors of the prison clanging to a close. Suleiman’s dark features blurred for a second, before clicking back into sharp focus, and she tried to pull herself together.

‘I’ll...I’ll need to pack first,’ she said.

‘Of course.’ He inclined his dark head but not before she could see the sudden glint of fire in his eyes. ‘Though I doubt whether your mini-skirt will cut it in your new role as Sultana. A far more suitable wardrobe will be provided for you, so why bother?’

‘I’m not talking about my clothes!’ she flared back. ‘Surely you won’t deny me my trinkets and keepsakes? The jewellery my mother left me and the book my father published after her death?’

For a moment she wondered if she had imagined the faint look of disquiet which briefly flickered in his eyes. But it was gone as quickly as it had appeared and she told herself to stop attributing thoughts and feelings to him, just because she wanted him to have them. Because he didn’t.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘That can be arranged. Now let’s go—I have a car waiting downstairs.’

Sara’s heart missed a beat. Of course he had a car waiting. Probably with a couple of heavies inside. That feeling of being trapped closed in on her again and suddenly she knew that she wasn’t going to take this lying down. She would not go meekly with Suleiman Abd al-Aziz—she would slip through his hands like an eel plucked from an icy river.

‘I have to finish up in here,’ she said. ‘I can’t just walk out for ever without putting my work in some kind of order.’

His face was unreadable. ‘How long will it take?’

Sara felt her mouth dry as she wondered realistically how much time she could plead to play with. ‘A few hours?’

‘Don’t test my patience, Sara. Two hours will be more than adequate for what you need to do. I will be waiting with my men at your apartment.’ He walked over to the door and paused. ‘And don’t be late,’ he said softly.

With one final warning flickering from his black eyes, he was gone. She waited until she heard the ping of the lift in the corridor and the sound of the elevator doors closing—but she was still paranoid enough to poke her head outside the office to check that he really had gone. That he wasn’t standing in the shadows spying on her and waiting to see what she would do next.

She shut the office door and walked over to one of the giant windows which overlooked the dark glitter of the river, feeling a stab of pain in her heart. She had loved working here. She had loved the freedom and the creativity of being part of Gabe Steel’s enormous organisation.

But now it was all coming to an end, whether she wanted it to or not.

Like hell it was.

An idea began to form in her mind. A plan so audacious that for a moment she wondered if she dared go ahead with it. Yet what choice did she have? To go with Suleiman, like a sheep to the slaughter? To be forced to share a bed with the hawk-faced Sultan—a man for whom she had felt not one whisper of chemistry?

She picked up the office phone instead of her own mobile phone. Because if they’d had bodyguards watching her all this time—who was to say they hadn’t bugged her phone?

It didn’t take her long to get the information she wanted from the Business Development Director, who was in charge of the company’s public relations. Judging by the noise in the background, he was clearly at some sort of Christmas party and gave her a list of journalists without asking any questions.

Her fingers were trembling as she dialled the first number and listened to the ring tone. Maybe nobody would pick up. Maybe they’d all set off home for Christmas—all going to some storybook destination with a wreath on the door and a roaring log fire, with the smell of chestnuts and pine scenting the air.

They wouldn’t be spending their Christmas Eve like her—with a car full of cold-faced men sitting outside the building, waiting to take her away to an unknown and unwanted future.

‘Hello?’

She took a deep breath. ‘Look, I know this is going to sound crazy—but I’ve got a story you might be interested in.’ Her fingers dug into the phone as she listened. ‘Details? Sure I can give you details. How about the proposed kidnap of a woman, who is being taken against her will to the desert country of Qurhah to marry a man she doesn’t want to marry? You like that? I rather thought you might—and it’s all yours. An exclusive. But we haven’t got long. I need to leave London before six o’ clock.’

CHAPTER TWO

SULEIMAN BROUGHT THE car to a halt so that it was hidden beneath the shadows of the trees, but still within sight of the cottage. The other cars all waited in darkness at various intervals down the country lane, as he had instructed them to do.

He turned off the lights. Rain spattered relentlessly across the windscreen, running in thick rivulets down the glass. For a moment he sat watching the lighted windows of the house. He saw Sara’s unmistakable silhouette going around, pulling the drapes tightly shut, and he felt a potent combination of anger and satisfaction. But alongside his triumph at having tracked her down, a deep disquiet ran through his veins like slow poison.

He should have refused this job.

He should have told Murat that his schedule did not allow him time to travel to England and deal with the princess.

But the Sultan did not ask favours of many men and the bonds of loyalty and gratitude ran deeper than Suleiman had anticipated. And although he would have given anything to have avoided this particular task, somehow he had found himself accepting it. Yet just one sight of her today had reinforced what a fool he had been. Better to have thrown himself to the mercy of a starving lion, than to have willingly closeted himself with the temptress Sara.

He remembered the honeyed taste of her lips and her intoxicating perfume of jasmine mixed with patchouli. He remembered the pert thrust of her breast beneath his questing fingers and the way his body had ached for her afterwards. The frustrated lust which seemed to have gone on for months.

His hands tightened around the steering wheel. Women like her were born to create trouble. To make men want them and then to use their sexual power to destroy them. Hadn’t her own mother—a fabled beauty in her time—brought down the king who had spent his life in slavish devotion to her? A husband who had spent so much time enthralled by her that he had barely noticed his country slipping into bankruptcy.

He drew in a deep, meditative breath, forcing all the frustrating thoughts from his mind. He must go and do what he needed to do and then leave and never see her again.

With a stealth nurtured by years of undercover work, he waited until he was certain the coast was clear before he got out of the car and silently pulled the door shut behind him. He saw one of the limousines parked further down the lane flash its lights at him.

Avoiding the crunch of the gravel path, he felt his shoes sink into the sodden mud of the lawn which ran alongside it. But the night was fearsome and the weather atrocious and he was soaked within seconds, despite his long-legged stride towards the front door.

He was half tempted to break in by one of the back windows and then to walk in and confront her to show just how vulnerable she really was. But that would be cruel and he had no desire to be cruel to her.

Did he?

His mouth hardened as he lifted one rain-soaked hand to the door handle and knocked.

If she was sensible, she wouldn’t answer. Instead, she would phone the local police station and tell them she had an intruder banging on the door of this isolated cottage on Christmas Eve.

But clearly she wasn’t being sensible because he could hear the sound of her approaching footsteps and his body tensed as adrenalin flooded through him.

She pulled open the door, her violet eyes widening as she registered his identity. For a split second she reacted quickly, trying desperately to shut the door again—but her reactions were not as fast as his. Few people’s were. He placed the flat of his hand on the weathered knocker and blocked her move until she had the sense to step back as he entered the hallway, pushing the door shut behind him.

For a moment there was silence in that small hallway, other than the soft drip of rainwater onto the stone tiles. He could see that she was too stunned to speak—and so was he, but for very different reasons. She might be regarding him with horror but no such feelings were dominating his own mind right then.

She had changed from the provocative dress she’d been wearing in her office earlier. Her hair was loose and her jeans and pink sweater were not particularly clingy, yet still they managed to showcase the magnificence of her body.

He knew it was wrong but he couldn’t stop himself from drinking her in, like a man lost in the desert who had just been handed a jug of cool water. Was she aware of her beauty? Of the fact that she looked like a goddess? A goddess in blue jeans.

‘Suleiman!’ Her voice sounded startled and her violet eyes were dark.

‘Surprised?’ he questioned.

‘You could say that! And horrified.’ She glared at him. ‘What do you think you’re doing—pushing your way in here like some sort of heavy?’

‘I thought we had an appointment to meet at six, but since it is now almost eight, you appear to have broken it. Shockingly bad manners, Sara. Especially for a future queen of the desert.’

‘Tough!’ she retorted. ‘And I’m not going to be a queen of the desert. I already told you that I have no intention of getting married. Not to Murat and not to anyone! So why waste everybody’s time by turning up? Can’t you just go back to the Sultan and tell him to forget the whole idea?’

Suleiman heard the determination in her voice and felt an unwilling flare of admiration for her unashamed—and very stupid—defiance. Such open insubordination was unheard of from a woman from the desert lands and it was rather magnificent to observe her spirited rebellion. But he didn’t let it show. Instead, he injected a note of disapproval into his voice. ‘I am waiting for an explanation about why you failed to show.’

‘Do you realise you sound exactly like a schoolteacher? I don’t really think you’d need to be a detective to work out my no-show. I don’t like having my arm twisted.’

‘Clearly you hadn’t thought things through properly, if you imagined it was going to be that easy to shake me off,’ he said. ‘But you’re here now.’

She eyed him speculatively ‘I could knock you over the back of the head and make a run for it.’

His mouth quirked at the corners, despite all his best efforts not to smile. ‘And if you did, you would run straight into the men I have positioned all the way down the lane. Don’t even think about it, Sara. And please don’t imagine that I haven’t thought of every eventuality, because I have.’

He pulled off his dripping coat and hung it on a peg.

She glared at him. ‘I don’t remember asking you to take your coat off!’

‘I don’t require your permission.’

‘You are impossible!’ she hissed.

‘I have never denied that.’

‘Oh,’ she said, her voice frustrated as she turned round and marched towards a room where he could see a fire blazing.

He followed her into a room which had none of the ornaments the English were so fond of cramming into their country homes. There were no china dogs or hangings made of brass. No jumbled oil paintings of ships which hinted at a naval past. Instead, the walls were pale and contrasted with the weathered beams of wood in the ceiling. The furniture was quirky but looked comfortable and the few contemporary paintings worked well, though in theory they shouldn’t have done. Whoever owned this had taste, as well as money.

‘Whose cottage is this?’ he questioned.

‘My lover’s.’

He took a step forward, so that his shadow fell over her defiant features. ‘Please don’t jest with me, Sara. I’m not in the mood for it.’

‘How do you know I’m jesting?’

‘I hope you are. Because if I thought for a moment that you had been intimate with another man—then I would seek him out and tear him from limb to limb.’

As she heard his venomous but undoubtedly truthful words Sara swallowed, reminding herself that it wasn’t a question of Suleiman being jealous. He had only uttered the threat out of loyalty to the Sultan.

She wished he hadn’t turned up and yet if she’d stopped to think about it for more than a second—she must have known he would follow her. If Suleiman took on a task, then Suleiman would see it through. No matter what obstacles were put before him, he would conquer them. That was why the Sultan had asked him—and why he was so respected and feared within the desert nations.