Her Desert Dream

CHAPTER NINE

LYDIA’S luggage had been unpacked and put away and she quickly hunted through drawers, doing her best not to linger and drool over silk, cashmere, finest linen, as she searched for a swimsuit.

She had refused to accept a penny from Rose for this assignment. This was a labour of love, gratitude, respect and she’d insisted on taking a week of her paid holiday entitlement. But Rose had found a way to reward her anyway. She’d raided her wardrobe for more clothes than she could possibly wear in a week at the beach. Clothes she had never worn. Insisting that Lydia keep them.

The half a dozen swimsuits that she’d packed, each bearing the name of a world famous designer, were uniformly gorgeous. Each, inevitably, had the ‘pink rose’ theme and Lydia chose a striking black one-piece costume with a single long-stemmed rose embroidered across the front from the right hip, with stem and leaves curling diagonally across the stomach, so that the bud bloomed above her heart.

It was clearly a one-off that had been made especially for her and, with luck, the delighted designer would call the gossip pages and claim whatever PR was going. Which would help to establish that it could be no one but Rose on the Bab el Sama beach.

It fitted her like a glove, holding, lifting in all the right places. She didn’t waste any time admiring her reflection, however, but threw the kaftan over it, ran a brush through her hair, freshened her lipstick and grabbed a book.

All she had to do now was find her way down to the beach unobserved and, avoiding the exit through the garden room to the terrace where Kal might still be lingering, she slipped out through the dining room.

Kal stood in the dark shadows at the top of a rocky outcrop, sweeping the water with a pair of powerful glasses, hoping to pick up anything out of place. Anyone who didn’t have business on the water.

It was as peaceful a scene as a bodyguard could hope for. Fishermen, traders, local people pottering on their boats.

He glanced at his watch, wondering how much longer Rose would be. Because she’d come. He’d put money on it. But why?

He took out his BlackBerry and put Rose’s name into the search engine. There was a picture of her leaving the lunch yesterday, ‘…radiant…’ as she left for a week in Bab el Sama. Raising the question of whether she’d be alone.

There were other photographs. One of her with Rupert Devenish a couple of weeks earlier. Not looking radiant.

Maybe she had just been tired. Or perhaps the hollows in her cheeks, around her eyes were the result of a cold or a headache. Perhaps the camera angle was unflattering. Whatever it was, she had none of the glow that had reached out, grabbed him by the throat and refused to let go.

In fact she looked like a pale imitation of his Rose. He continued his search for answers until the soft slap of leather thongs against the stone steps warned him that she was on her way. He could have told her that to be silent she would need to remove her shoes. But then she hadn’t expected him to be there.

She paused in a deep patch of shade at the bottom of the steps that led from the garden, a book in one hand, presumably an alibi in case he hadn’t done as she’d suggested and conveniently removed himself from the scene, but instead taken his promise to Lucy seriously enough to stick around and keep an eye on her.

He kept very still as she looked around, checking that the beach was empty. Even if she had looked up, he was well hidden from the casual glance, but she was only concerned that the beach was empty and, having made certain the coast was clear, she put the book on the step. Then she took the mobile phone from her pocket and placed it on top.

No…

The word stilled on his lips as she reached back and pulled the kaftan over her head to reveal a simple one-piece black swimsuit that displayed every curve, every line of her body to perfection. A slender neck, circled with a fine gold chain on which hung a rosebud pendant. Wide, elegant shoulders, an inviting cleavage that hadn’t appeared on the photograph of her in the evening gown. A proper waist, gently flared hips and then those endless legs, perfect ankles, long slender feet.

For a moment she stood there, as if summoning up the courage to carry on.

Don’t…

The thought of his Rose appearing on the front page of tomorrow’s papers in a swimsuit, her body being leered at by millions of men, was utterly abhorrent to him and he knew that the rush of protectiveness he felt had nothing whatever to do with the charge that Lucy had laid on him.

He’d spent much of his life on beaches, around swimming pools with women who would have raised their sophisticated eyebrows at such a puritan reaction and he knew his response was the very worst kind of double standard.

By modern standards, the costume she was wearing was modest.

Before he could move, do anything, she draped the kaftan over a low branch and she stepped into the sun. Shoulders back, head high, she walked towards the water, where she paused to scan the creek.

The light breeze caught her hair, lifting tiny strands that caught the light, lending her an ethereal quality.

Dear God, she was beautiful.

As cool and mysterious as a princess in some Arabian Nights story, escaped from some desperate danger and washed up on an unknown shore, waiting for Sinbad to rescue her, restore her to her prince.

‘That’s enough,’ he whispered. ‘Turn back now. Come back to me.’

She glanced round, looking up, as if she’d heard him, but it was a bird quartering the air that had caught her attention and, having watched it for a moment, she turned, then took a step…

‘No!’

…bent to pick up something from the sand. It was a piece of sand-polished glass and, as she held it up to the light, he caught an echo of the flash out on the creek.

He lifted the glasses, scanned the water and this time found the telltale glint as the sunlight dancing on the water was reflected off a lens hidden beneath a tarpaulin on an anonymous-looking motor launch. It was anchored amongst half a dozen or so boats on the far side of the creek, its name obscured, deliberately, he had no doubt, and he had to fight the urge to race after Rose, drag her back.

But the one thing they were in complete agreement about was that she must not be photographed with him.

It would provoke a feeding frenzy among the press and it wouldn’t take them five minutes to uncover his identity. His entire history would be rehashed in the press, along with the playboy lifestyle of both his grandfather and father, to fuel innuendo-laden speculation about why he was in Bab el Sama with Rose.

And no one was going to believe that the millionaire CEO of an international air freight business had accompanied Lady Rose Napier to Bab el Sama as her bodyguard. The millionaire grandson of an exiled sheikh, son of an international playboy, he hadn’t been exactly short of media coverage himself before he’d stopped the drift. Found a purpose in life.

The fallout from that would cause a lot more embarrassment than even the most revealing photograph.

Worse, her grandfather, the Duke, would be apoplectic and blame Lucy for embroiling her in such a mess. Not to mention the fact that the Emir would be so angry that Kalil could kiss goodbye forever to any chance of Jaddi’s banishment being lifted so that he could die in peace at Umm al Sama.

His sole remit was to protect Lady Rose from danger. Shooting her with a camera didn’t count, especially when she was going out of her way to make it easy for whoever was laid up in that boat.

He watched her as, apparently oblivious to scrutiny from both sea and shore, she wandered along the shoreline, stopping now and then to pick up a shell or a pebble. Lifting a hand to push back her hair. It was a classic image, one he knew that picture editors around the world would lap up, putting their own spin on it in a dozen headlines, most of them including the word alone.

So who had sent the message that had her scurrying to expose herself to the world’s press?

He looked down at the shady step where she’d left her phone.

Lydia stood for a moment at the edge of the water, lifting her face to the sun, the gorgeous feeling of wet sand seeping between her toes taking her back to childhood holidays when her father had been alive, memories of her mother laughing as the waves caught her.

She remembered one holiday when she’d collected a whole bucket full of shells. By the end of their stay, they had smelled so bad that her father had refused to put them in the car. To stop her tears at the loss of her treasures, her mother had washed the most special one, given her a heart-shaped box to keep it in.

She still had her memory box. It contained a picture of her father, laughing as she splashed him with a hosepipe. Her mother with the world famous couturier she’d worked for before the accident. The newspaper picture of her in the very first ‘Lady Rose’ outfit her mother had made when she was fifteen.

There had been a rush of additions in that brief spell when she’d thought she was in love. All but one of those had been tossed away with many more tears than the shells when she’d realised the truth. She’d kept just one thing, a theatre programme, because all memories were important. Even the bad ones. If you didn’t remember, you didn’t learn…

After that the memories had nearly all involved her lookalike gigs. Her life as someone else.

Looking around, she saw the edge of an oyster shell sticking out of sand washed clean by the receding tide.

She bent to ease it out, rinsed it off in the water, turned it over to reveal the pink and blue iridescence of mother-of-pearl. A keepsake to remind her of this moment, this beach, Kal al-Zaki kissing her fingers as he taught her Arabic numbers. A memory to bring out when she was old and all this would seem like a dream that had happened to someone else.

The last one she’d ever put in that old box, she vowed. She was never going to do this again, be Rose. It was time to start living her own life, making her own memories. No more pretence.

She stood for a moment, holding the shell, uncertain which way to go. Then, choosing to have the wind in her face, she turned right, towards the sea, wishing that Kal was walking with her to point out the landmarks, tell her the story behind a crumbling tower on the highest point on the far bank. To hold her hand as she turned through the curve that had taken Kal out of sight that morning.

Until now Kal had been able to dismiss the turmoil induced by his charge as nothing more than the natural response of a healthy male for a woman who had hit all the right buttons.

He was thirty-three, had been surrounded by beautiful women all his life and was familiar with desire in all its guises, but as he’d got older, become more certain what he wanted, he’d found it easy to stay uninvolved.

That he’d been knocked so unexpectedly sideways by Lady Rose Napier was, he’d been convinced, no more than the heightened allure of the unobtainable.

All that went out of the window in the moment she stepped out of his sight.

Lydia continued for as long as she dared, scanning the creek, hoping for some sign that there was someone out there.

Then, because she doubted it would be long before someone realised that she wasn’t where she was meant to be and start looking for her, she turned back, relieved to be picking her way across the soft sand to the shade, the anonymity of the giant rock formation near the foot of the steps.

She’d half expected to find Yatimah standing guard over her book, her phone, her expression disapproving, but her escapade had gone unobserved. Relieved, she pushed her feet into the leather thong sandals, then turned to carefully lift the kaftan from the branch.

It wasn’t there and she looked down to see if it had fallen.

Took a step into the shadows behind the rocks, assuming that it had been caught by a gust of wind and blown there.

And another.

Without warning, she was seized from behind around the waist, lifted clear of the sand, her body held tight against the hard frame of a man.

As she struggled to get free, she pounded at the arm holding her, using the edge of the shell as a weapon, opened her mouth to scream.

A hand cut off the sound.

‘Looking for something, Lady Rose?’

She stilled. Kal…

She’d known it even before he’d spoken. Knew that woody scent. Would always know it…

As soon as she stopped struggling he dropped his hand and, knowing he was going to be mad at her, she got in first with, ‘I thought you were going fishing.’

‘And I thought you were going to curl up by the pool with a good book.’

He set her down and, with the utmost reluctance, she turned to face him.

‘I am.’ Head up. And Lady Rose, the Duke’s granddaughter at her most aristocratic, she added, ‘I decided to take a detour.’

‘And give one of your paparazzi army tomorrow’s front page picture?’

She instinctively glanced at the phone lying defenceless on top of her book. ‘Have you been reading my messages?’ she demanded.

‘No need. You’ve just told me everything I need to know.’

‘No…’

‘What is it, Rose?’ he asked. ‘Are you a publicity junkie? Can’t you bear to see an entire week go by without your picture on the front page?’

She opened her mouth to protest. Closed it again.

His anger was suppressed, but there was no doubting how he felt at being deceived, made a fool of, and who could blame him? Except, of course, he hadn’t. He’d been ahead of her every step of the way. Instead, she shook her head, held up her hands.

‘You’ve got me, Kal. Bang to rights.’ She took a step back. ‘Can I have my dress back now?’

As he reached up, lifted the kaftan down from the place he’d hidden it, she saw the blood oozing from his arm where she’d slashed at him with the shell she was still clutching.

She dropped it as if it burned, reached out to him, drew back without touching him. She’d lied to him and he knew it.

‘I hurt you,’ she said helplessly.

He glanced at the wound she’d made, shrugged. ‘Nothing that I didn’t ask for.’

‘Maybe, but it still needs cleaning.’ Ignoring the dress he was holding out to her, she began to run up the steps. ‘Sea shells have all kinds of horrible things in them,’ she said. ‘You can get septicaemia.’

‘Is that right?’

Realising that he hadn’t followed her, she stopped, looked back. ‘Truly.’ Then, realising that perhaps that wasn’t the best choice of word, ‘I’ve been on a first aid course.’ She offered her hand but, when he didn’t take it, said, ‘Please, Kal.’

Relenting, he slung the dress over his shoulder, stooped to pick up the book and phone she’d abandoned in her rush to heal, adding the number of his mobile phone to her contact list. Adding hers to his as he followed her up to the house, the bedroom where he’d left her sleeping a few hours earlier, into the huge, luxurious bathroom beyond.

‘I’ve put my number in your phone,’ he said, putting them on a table. ‘In case you should ever need it.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘Sit there!’

He obediently settled himself on a wide upholstered bench while she took a small first aid box from a large cupboard that was filled with the cosmetics and toiletries she’d brought with her and searched through it for sachets containing antiseptic wipes.

‘Why did you do it?’ He addressed the top of her head as she bent over him, cleaning up the scratches she’d made.

‘This is nothing,’ she said. ‘I did a self-defence course and you’re really lucky I wasn’t wearing high heels.’

‘I wasn’t referring to your attempt to chop my arm off. Why did you strip off for that photographer?’

‘I didn’t strip off!’ she declared, so flustered by the accusation that for a moment she forgot what she was doing. Then, getting a grip, ‘I took a walk on the beach in a swimsuit. A very modest swimsuit.’

Modest by today’s standards, maybe, but this close, clinging like a second skin, revealing perhaps more than she realised, as she bent over him-suggesting more-the effect was far more enticing than an entire beach filled with topless lovelies.

She looked up. ‘Did you say “photographer”?’

‘I did.’

She straightened abruptly as she saw exactly where his eyes were focused.

‘You saw him?’

‘He was in a launch out on the creek and well camouflaged from above. He forgot about the sun reflecting off the water.’

The tension went out of her shoulders, her neck. Relief, he thought. That was sheer relief.

‘So why did you do it?’ he persisted.

‘I thought we’d established that,’ she said, concentrating once more on his arm.

The speed with which she’d grabbed at the insulting explanation he’d offered suggested desperation to hide the real reason for her exhibitionism. While he had his own suspicions, he was beginning to wish he’d overcome his squeamishness about plundering her phone for the answer.

‘Maybe you’d better run it by me again.’

Apparently satisfied with the clean up job on his arm, or maybe just wanting to put a little distance between them, she gathered up the used wipes, dropped them in a bin.

‘It’s a game, Kal,’ she said, busying herself, filling a marble basin with warm water. Looking anywhere but at him. ‘We need each other. Celebrities need headlines, the media have an insatiable appetite for stories. The trick is to give them what they want and then hope they’ll leave you alone.’

She plunged her hands in the water, then looked around for soap.

He took a piece from a crystal bowl but did not hand it to her. Instead, he put his arms around her, trapping her as he leaned into her back, his chin against her hair as he dipped his hands into the water and began to soap her fingers.

‘Kal!’ she protested, but feebly. They both knew she wasn’t going anywhere until she’d told him what was going on.

‘What, exactly, do they want from you?’ he asked.

‘Right now?’ The words came out as a squeak and he waited while she took a breath. ‘Right now,’ she repeated, ‘they’d give their eye teeth for a picture of me here, in flagrante with Rupert Devenish.’ She tried a laugh, attempting to ignore the way his thumb was circling her palm. The way she was relaxing against him. ‘He’s-’

‘I read the newspapers,’ he said, not wanting to hear the words on her lips. Or that it was Lucy who’d filled him in on the marriage mania in the gossip columns. ‘But that isn’t going to happen, is it?’

Unless he’d got it totally wrong and the text had been from Devenish announcing his imminent arrival, urging Rose to convince the paparazzi that she was alone before he joined her.

In which case her eager response to him, the way she had softened in the circle of his arms, surrendered her hands for him to do with what he would, was going to take a little-make that a lot of-explaining.

‘It’s not going to happen,’ she confirmed. ‘I’m afraid they’re going to have to make do with the clichéd Lady Rose, alone on a beach, how sad, picture.’

And it was his turn to feel the tension slide away from his shoulders.

But only halfway.

According to Lucy, Rose was falling apart because of the constant intrusion into her life. Ten years without being able to lift a finger unobserved, she’d said.

He wasn’t getting that impression from Rose. Far from it. She seemed totally relaxed about what could only be construed as a unwarranted intrusion into her private life.

‘And if they aren’t?’ he asked.

A tiny tremor rippled through her and he knew that there was a lot more to this than she was telling him.

‘Trust me, Rose,’ he said. ‘The picture will be a sensation.’ He reached for a towel, taking her hands, drying them one finger at a time. Then, because he was still angry with her, ‘And if I’m wrong you can always go for the topless option tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow will be too late…’

She caught herself, no doubt realising that she should have objected to the ‘topless’, not the ‘tomorrow’. But he had the answer to at least one of his questions.

For some reason she wanted a picture of herself on the front page and for some reason it had to be tomorrow. And he went straight back to that mysterious threat.

Was this what it was all about? Give me a photograph or…Or what?

What on earth could anyone have over the universally loved and admired ‘people’s angel’?

Except, of course, that the woman in his arms was not Rose Napier.

On some subconscious level he’d known that from the moment she’d walked into the VIP lounge at the airport. Right from the beginning, he’d sensed the split personality, the separation between the woman playing a role-and occasionally slipping-and the woman who shone through the disguise, lighting him up not just like a rocket, but the whole damn fourth of July scenario. Whoosh, bang, the sky filled with coloured stars.

He didn’t trust it, knew it was a temporary aberration, nothing but chemistry, but he finally understood why his grandfather had lost his head, lost his country over a woman.

He was here on a one-off last-chance mission and from the moment she’d appeared on the scene this woman had attacked all his systems like a virus taking over a computer memory, supplanting herself in place of everything that was vital, important, real.

Lucy had obviously told him a pack of lies-he was only here to inveigle his way into a meeting with Princess Sabirah, so why would he be bothered with something as important as the truth?

Presumably the real Rose was holed up in some private love nest with Rupert while this woman, this lovely woman who was superficially so like her, was nothing but a plant to keep the press focused on Bab el Sama.

So what had gone wrong? Had someone found out? Threatened to expose the switch? Directing his own personal photo shoot by text?

In which case he had no doubt that the topless scenario would be the next demand. Because, even if she was a fake, that picture would be worth millions to the photographer who delivered it to a picture agency.

‘You’ve got nothing to worry about,’ he said, tossing the towel aside, not sure who he was most angry with, Lucy or this woman, whoever she was, for putting at risk his own mission.

No, that was wrong. Lucy had used the situation to give him a chance. This woman had lit him up, responding to his kisses as if he was the last man on earth. Lies, lies, lies…

‘I guarantee you that there won’t be a picture editor in London who won’t grab that picture of you for their front page tomorrow.’

Her all too obvious relief flipped something in his brain and he stroked the pad of his thumb over the exquisite rose that curved invitingly across her breast in an insultingly intimate gesture, opened his mouth over her all too obvious response as the bud beneath the costume leapt to his touch.

Her throat moved as she swallowed, doing her best to ignore the intimacy of his touch, but the tiny shiver that rippled through her betrayed pleasure, desire, need and her response was not to pull away but buckle against him.

Too late, he discovered that he was the one caught in a lie, because it didn’t matter who she was, he desired her as he had never desired any other woman. Not just with his body, but with his heart, his soul and simply holding her was not enough.

Nothing could disguise from her how very much it wasn’t enough but, as the wildfire of desire swept through him, he was not alone. Her seeking lips found his neck, trailed moist kisses across his chin, touched his lips, her need as desperate as his.

‘Whoever you are,’ he murmured, looking down at her, ‘you can trust me on that…’

For a moment she looked at him, her mouth soft, her lids heavy with desire and the slow-burning fuse, lit in the moment their eyes had first met, of that unfinished kiss, lay between them.

The air was heavy with the desire of two people for whom the need to touch, to explore, to be one, blotted out memory, bypassed hard-learned lessons, destroyed reason.

Lydia heard him, understood what he was saying, but wrapped in the powerful arms of a man she desired beyond sense, this was not a time for questions, answers. Time was suspended. There was no past, no future. This was for now. Only the senses survived-scent, taste, touch-and she reached out and with her fingertips traced the perfection of Kal’s profile.

His wide forehead, the high-bridged nose, lingering to trace the outline of those beautifully carved lips.

The thin clothing pressed between them did nothing to disguise the urgent response of his body and she was seized by a surge of power, of certainty that this was her moment and, leaning into him so that her lips touched his, she whispered, ‘Please…’

As her fingers, her lips touched his, took possession of his mouth, Kalil al-Zaki, a man known for his ice-cold self-control, consigned his reputation to oblivion.

His arms were already about her and for a moment he allowed himself to be swept away. To feel instead of think.

Drink deep of the honeyed sweetness of a woman who was clever, funny, heartbreakingly lovely. Everything a man could ever want or desire.

Forget, just for a while, who he was. Why he was here.

Her mouth was like silk, her body eager, desperate even, but it wasn’t enough and, lost to all sense as he breathed in the scent of her skin, the hollows of her neck, her shoulders, he slowly peeled away the swimsuit to taste the true rosebuds it concealed.

Her response was eager, as urgent as his own, and yet, even as she offered him everything, he could not let go, forget the lies…

How she’d played the virgin, acted the seductress. Was this just another lie to buy his silence?

She whimpered into his mouth as he broke free, determined to regain control of his senses, yet unable to let go as she melted against him.

‘Who are you?’ he demanded helplessly. ‘Why are you here?’ When she didn’t answer he leaned back, needing to look her in the face, wanting her to see his. But her eyes were closed, as if by not seeing, she would be deaf to his words. ‘What do you want from me?’

‘Nothing!’ Then, more gently, ‘I’m sorry.’ And, without looking at him, she slowly disentangled herself and, shivering, clutched her costume to her and said, ‘You can g-go fishing now, Kal. I promise I’ll g-go and sit by the pool like the well behaved young woman I’m supposed to be.’

Torn between wanting her to behave and wanting her to be very, very bad indeed, he reassembled the shattered pieces of his cast-iron self-control, picked up his shirt and, taking her hands, fed them into the sleeves, buttoning it around her as if she were a child.

‘I’m going nowhere until you tell me the truth,’ he said. Then, with a muttered oath, ‘You’re shivering.’ She couldn’t be cold…‘What can I get you?’

‘A proper cup of tea?’ She sniffed and he lifted her chin, wiped a tear from beneath her eye.

Shivering, tears…He wanted to shake her, hold her, yell at her, make love to her…

‘Tea?’ he said, trying to get a grip.

‘Made in a mug with a tea bag, milk from a cow and two heaped spoons of sugar.’ She managed a rueful smile. ‘Stirred, not shaken.’

‘I’m glad your sense of humour survived intact,’ he said.

‘My sense of humour and everything else.’ She lifted her shoulders in a simple up and down shrug. ‘I’ve only come that close to losing my virginity once before, Kal. I’m beginning to think I’m destined to be an old maid and the really bad news is that I’m allergic to cats.’

Better make that two cups of hot, sweet tea, he thought, picking up the phone.