The Desert Prince's Mistress (3 page)

‘It depends what your interpretation of an English rose
is
, surely?’ she answered confidently. ‘Even
they
have to run for taxis or buses sometimes, don’t they? They can’t spend the whole of their lives sitting on pretty wicker furniture and fanning themselves! Not modern English roses anyway!’

There it was again, he thought, with a cross between grudging admiration and irritation. She was talking to him in a way which he could have confidently predicted no one else in the room would have
dared
try! And she did have a point, he conceded. Modern was what he was really looking for. A modern look for modern technology.

Ask for someone who summed up everything that it was to be English, and everyone immediately jumped back a century or two! He glanced around the room at the lace and the flower-sprigs and the muslin and he frowned. Modern and English—surely the two weren’t completely incompatible?

‘You do have a point,’ he admitted grudgingly.

Lara lifted her chin, telling herself that she definitely wasn’t going to get the job now, so what did she have to lose? How far could she push him? She had seen for herself that he was grumpy—as well as successful, powerful
and devastatingly attractive—would his temper really turn ugly if she challenged him a little bit more?

‘Tell me, how do
you
see the woman you’re looking for?’ asked Lara calmly.

Scott bristled. ‘I think you’ve said quite enough, don’t you?’

But Darian shook his head. ‘No, let her speak.’

‘Gosh…
thanks
!’ said Lara sarcastically.

Darian knitted his brows together, wondering if this rather unusual tendency to answer back at what was essentially a serious job interview was simply a way of getting herself noticed. Didn’t people sometimes act outrageously in order to detract attention from their glaring faults? And did she have any?

He let his eyes travel from the top of her head to the tips of her pointed leather boots. If you discounted the fact that her hair looked as though she had spent a large part of the morning being pulled through a particularly thorny hedge it really was the most glorious colour—the deep, burnished mahogany of a lovingly polished piece of furniture, touched with deeper, brighter shades of gold and amber. Dyed, most probably. All women dyed their hair these days. His mouth twisted. He had yet to meet a
natural
blonde!

But her brows were beautifully shaped and arched, and her skin looked soft—all roses and cream—like petals in the early morning when they had been kissed by the dew. It was skin that made her look as though she’d been brought up in the fresh air, raised on nothing stronger than milk and honey.

She had answered her own question, he realised. She was exactly the woman he was looking for.

‘Take your jacket off,’ he said slowly.

For a second Lara’s sang-froid almost deserted her. It was a perfectly normal request to make in the circum
stances. It wasn’t as though he was asking her to perform a striptease. But that was exactly what it felt like. Inside, she was suddenly overcome with a bubbling mass of insecurity, which was crazy—
crazy
—and yet there was something about this darkly golden man which made his request seem like an intrusion. She didn’t move.

Darian raised his eyebrows questioningly, ignoring Scott’s frown and the indignant glances of the other women.

Lara flashed him a cool and professional smile and slid her jacket from her shoulders with hands which were miraculously steady. Then casually slipped her finger through the loop of the jacket and stood before him, feeling a little as she imagined the favoured member of a harem must feel. All the women vying for one man’s attention and only one of them receiving it. Her heart was beating fast. You’re concocting fantasy, she told herself sternly. That’s all. Just because you think he’s the brother of the Sheikh you’re attributing to him all those kind of primitive man-woman things which you wouldn’t dream of doing if he was any average man.

‘How’s that?’ she asked, in a voice which she hoped didn’t betray quite how unsettled he was making her feel.

‘That’s fine,’ he said evenly, trying to be objective, but for once it wasn’t easy. Her body was good. Very good. She was tall and slender, and yet curved in just the right places, and her breasts were quite simply perfect—not too full and not too small, the white tee-shirt emphasising their shape and not quite disguising the pinpoint thrust of her nipples, which made him tense in desire even though he tried not to.

Darian looked around at the others. In terms of beauty there was not one woman present who could be faulted. There was every variety of womanhood represented here today. Most were slim—too slim, in his opinion, but that
was the fashion. True, there were a couple whose curves were more luscious than slim, but the camera didn’t flatter real curves; he knew that.

Leisurely, he ran his eyes over each and every one of them, until they came back to rest and stay on the girl in the jeans. She looked normal and healthy and glowing and…and something about her was still making his skin tingle.

He nodded and turned to Scott. ‘Can I have a word, please? In private?’ he asked him.

‘Sure,’ Scott replied.

The two men moved to the only vacant corner of the studio. ‘I think we’ve found our English rose,’ Darian said slowly. ‘Don’t you?’

Scott turned to him. ‘But she’s a
brunette
!’

‘So? I don’t remember specifically asking for blonde!’

Scott lowered his voice. ‘We haven’t even tested her yet, Darian,’ he said, a touch anxiously. ‘In fact, we haven’t tested any of them.’

Darian gave an arrogant shrug. ‘There’s no need. She’s the one I want.’

‘But she might project completely the wrong image.’

Darian studied the varying blondes in the studio, who were all looking at him hopefully. They looked…they looked…
bland
, he realised impatiently. He flicked another glance at the brunette, who seemed so full of life and vitality in comparison, and a steady pulse began to beat at his temple. ‘She won’t,’ he said steadily. ‘Trust me.’

‘The place will erupt if you don’t test the others, too,’ protested Scott.

Darian shrugged. ‘Then test them.’

‘And show you the results?’

‘If you want. I’ll see them, but I won’t need to.’

‘How can you be so sure?’

Darian gave a slow smile. Instinct. Simple as that. She had what he wanted. ‘I just am. She’s the one.’

The atmosphere in the room was electric, and Lara felt decidedly odd. This wasn’t like a normal casting at all. Everyone was staring at her, and she wondered if the composition of her body had undergone some remarkable transformation, whether her blood could suddenly have become jelly. Because that was what she felt like—that was the way
he
was making her feel.

The man with the golden eyes had turned back and was staring at her, and Lara felt as though she was helpless, caught in the honeyed intensity of that gaze. Like a rabbit hypnotised and blinded by the glaring headlights of a car, or a snake lured and seduced by the sound of the charmer’s pipe.

‘What’s your name?’ he asked softly.

Lara took a deep breath. She just knew that he was going to offer her the job! This couldn’t really be happening. It shouldn’t be happening. She had turned up late, looking scruffy, and been rude to him—he should be sending her packing, not seriously entertaining the thought of employing her! But she kept her voice steady—as steady as his golden stare. ‘Lara. Lara Black.’

‘Lara Black,’ he repeated thoughtfully. ‘Yes.’ He gave the room a cool smile. ‘Well, I’ll leave you all in the capable hands of Scott.’

He moved away, and Lara watched him as he placed one foot on the staircase. He glanced up at that moment and their eyes met, and she was suddenly filled with an inexplicable feeling of disappointment and stupidity.

Was that it, then? She bit her lip distractedly. What had she expected? That he would suddenly announce to everyone that she had got the job without bothering to test the others? As if that would happen! Especially to someone
who had behaved with such utter disregard for professionalism.

She felt a stupid sense of loss as she watched his dark, lustrous head disappear from view. He had gone and she had blown any chance of getting to know him better. But she knew one thing for sure.

He was Khalim’s brother. The resemblance was unmistakable.

So what was she going to do about it?

L
ARA
put the phone down and stared at Jake. ‘I’ve got it,’ she said slowly.

Jake looked up from the script he was studying. ‘Got what?’

‘That job I went for. You know—I told you.’

Jake frowned. ‘Something about a mobile phone company? You turned up late, looking ghastly, and the owner was there and subjected you to a grilling?’

It was still taking a moment or two to sink in. ‘That’s right.’

Jake elevated one brow in a manner which would have caused almost any other woman in the country to swoon, but not Lara.

‘Does this guy have a death wish?’ he joked. ‘Or does he just like a challenge?’

Lara didn’t say anything. She suspected that Darian Wildman
did
like a challenge, and something about that worried her—though it now appeared that her gut reaction had been the correct one, after all. She had
thought
that he was going to offer her the job, but then he had just disappeared and left them all to be photographed. Still, when she mulled it over now, he couldn’t possibly have done otherwise, could he? Not employed her without testing her and, more importantly, without testing all the others—otherwise he would have had a small riot on his hands.

Yet she had sensed that he was about to do so. He looked like the kind of man who broke all the rules and made his own up. The word autocratic might have been
invented with him in mind. It had probably been the other man with him, she reasoned, who had persuaded him to adopt the usual method of casting.

She should have been overjoyed. This was
work
, after all, and she needed to work—especially as the person she’d been covering for at the Embassy was now much better and ready to go back to her job. And she was supposed to be finding out more about Darian Wildman—so wasn’t this a heaven-sent opportunity to do just that? To work for his company and to become the face which sym-bolised that company.

Except it didn’t feel like that. It felt uncomfortable. Wrong. As if she was doing something that she shouldn’t be doing. And coupled with that was the burden of the knowledge she possessed.

Or maybe it had something to do with the fact that Darian had excited her in a way that no man had excited her for longer than she could remember. And that in itself was a
bad sign.
One which made her feel gloomy about him in general. If she was attracted to him then he was
bound
to be trouble, because Lara’s track record with men was nothing short of abysmal.

She didn’t fall for men very often, but when she did it was always for the kind of man your mother warned you to stay away from. Philanderers and cheats. Good-looking, weak, shallow men. The sort who promised you the earth and a little bit more besides, and then were busy glancing over your shoulder to see if someone more attractive had just walked in. In fact, she had sworn off men altogether—at least until she had worked out what was the basic flaw in her character which attracted her to the wrong type of man.

Her friend Rose had a few theories of her own. She said that it was because Lara yearned for excitement and was looking for it in the wrong places—but how on earth could
you go looking for it in the
right
places if solid and decent men—the kind your mother
would
approve of—left you cold?

‘Oh, you need a sheikh, like Khalim,’ Rose had laughed on the eve of her wedding.

At the time Lara had been struggling into a dress which weighed almost as much as she did. ‘Don’t be so smug!’

‘But I’m not,’ Rose had protested, and had laid her hand on Lara’s shoulder, her voice gentling. ‘I’m serious. It’s just a pity that Khalim hasn’t got any brothers.’

Lara chewed on her lip. Oh, Lord—she had completely forgotten that conversation until now! But that was the cleverness of the mind, wasn’t it?—It dragged things up from the hidden corners of your subconscious when it thought they might come in useful. If only Rose had known how eerily prescient her words had been.

If it had been anyone other than Khalim then it might have been easy to pick up the phone and say, Hi, guess what? I’ve discovered you have a secret half-brother! But Khalim was no normal man. He was Sheikh of a vast kingdom, and if another man was related to him by blood, then couldn’t he lay claim to that kingdom and jeopardise the livelihood of all of them? His and Rose’s and their son’s, and the child soon to be born? How could she knowingly endanger all that until she knew something of the man himself?

‘Lara?’

She looked up to see Jake staring at her with concern. ‘What?’

‘You’ve gone as white as a sheet.’

‘Have I?’ She touched her cheek and found that it was cold, and suddenly she began to shiver. ‘We shoot on Monday,’ she whispered.

On Monday she would see him again. Those strangely cold golden eyes would pierce right through her and see…
Would they sense that she was not all she seemed? And how would he react if she told him that
he
was not all he seemed, either?

Jake frowned. ‘Lara, what
is
the matter? You’ve just won a fantastic contract—why aren’t you cracking open the champagne?’

She forced a smile. Why not, indeed? Perhaps she was simply guilty of inventing problems where there were none. ‘Coming right up,’ she said brightly, and headed for the fridge.

The winter sun streamed in through the glass, warming his skin as Darian slowly buttoned up his white linen shirt and watched an aeroplane creeping across the sky in the far distance. Outside, the clouds were tinged with pink and gold, contrasting with an ice-blue sky which made the world look as perfect as it was supposed to look. But then the views from his penthouse apartment were always matchless and magnificent and never the same. It was one of the reasons he had bought it—that and its inaccessibility to people in general and the world in particular.

The phone rang, but he let it ring. Most phone calls, in his experience, could be usefully avoided, and he hated having to make small-talk—especially in the mornings. Which was one of the reasons why it was a long time since he had stayed overnight with a woman.

He listened to the message on the answer-machine, to hear the voice of the travel agent telling him that his flight to New York was confirmed, and smiled. If he
had
picked it up then he would have had to endure all kinds of bright and unnecessary questions about the state of his health!

He picked up his coffee cup and sipped thoughtfully at the strong, inky brew, glancing over at the mirror as he did so. There was no sign of blood. Not now. He gave a tiny grimace. What was going on? He had cut himself
shaving that morning—lightly nicked the skin around his jaw—something he could not remember doing since he was an adolescent boy, when he had first wielded the razor with uncertain fingers.

In his gleaming bathroom mirror he had stared at the bright spot of scarlet which had beaded on the strong line of his jaw, disrupting his normal, ordered routine, and it had taken him right back to a place he rarely visited.

The past. That strange place over which you had little control and yet whose influence shaped the person you would be for the rest of your life.

He had never been one of those boys who had shaved before there was any need to. It was simply that he had seemed to develop way ahead of anyone else, with a faint shadowing of the jaw when most of his peers were still covered in spots. He had shot up in height, too, and his shoulders had grown broad and his body hard and muscular.

Such early maturity had set him apart—especially with the girls—but then, in a way he had felt set apart ever since he could remember. He had never looked like anyone else, even though his clothes had been no different. His skin had always had a faintly tawny glow to it, and his golden eyes had marked him out as someone different.

The girls had loved it and the boys had tried teasing him because of it, but he had quickly learnt that his height and strength could intimidate them enough to stop the insults almost before they had started.

So his childhood had been lonely. The only child of a single mother, bringing him up in a seedy apartment in one of the wastelands of London where tourists never ventured. That in itself had not been unusual—poverty had brought with it all the casualties of human relationships, and Darian had known only a couple of sets of parents
who had still been together—and they had fought enough to make him wonder why they bothered.

He guessed it was that at least other kids had
known
who their father was. Whether it was the father who had run off with a younger woman, or the father who would appear threateningly drunk on his former family’s doorstep, or the father who refused to pay money the courts had told him he must pay. These were fathers it was easy enough to hate, but Darian’s own paternity had been one big secret. He would rather have had someone to hate than no one at all.

He had tried asking his mother about it, but even broaching the subject had made her mouth tremble, as if she was about to cry—and she never cried. He had learnt only that some questions were better left unasked…

The doorbell jangled, disrupting his thoughts. His driver was here. Darian picked up his jacket, feeling an almost imperceptible glow of subdued excitement as he sat back in the soft leather luxury of the car. He told himself it was because they were shooting the photos today, and that something which no longer challenged him was coming to an end, but he knew that was not the whole story.

The truth was that he wanted to see the model again. What was her name? Lara. Yes, that was it. Pretty name and a pretty girl. Fearless and spiky. He rubbed his eyes and closed them as the car began to accelerate, stretching his long legs out in front of him and yawning lazily.

He was tired. He had sat up until the early hours, sorting through his accounts and feeling bored—with pretty much everything. Appetites which were fed with everything they needed tended to become jaded, he told himself ruefully.

He wondered when his life had become like a game of Monopoly—just a load of numbers that were so big they didn’t seem real. But that was the way of money—too
much and it almost seemed to get in the way, not enough and it dominated your whole life and all your thoughts. Was there no simple in-between way?

He guessed there was—the way most men chose. Marriage and babies and a house in the suburbs. Daily train journeys and home for supper and a drink. Weekend barbecues and driving out to pretty country pubs.

But to Darian it sounded like a lifetime’s incarceration. A cell padded with sofas and chintz curtains. Maybe that was why he had never even come close to commitment, because commitment carried with it the price of settling down and raising a family. That was the way of things. In fact, no one had ever stirred his blood enough to make him even
think
of committing, or to make him feel a pang of regret that he was unable to.

You will be a lonely old man,
taunted a little voice inside his head, but even that didn’t bother him. Lonely and alone were two entirely different concepts, weren’t they? He felt as if he had been alone for all his life, so why change now? Even if change was possible, and Darian didn’t think it was. That was the mistake that people always made—women especially. They thought that a person could change the habits of a lifetime and become the someone they wanted you to be.

The driver turned his head as Big Ben loomed up magnificently in front of them. ‘Do you want me to wait?’

Darian shook his head. ‘No, thanks. I’ll ring when I need you. I may hang around for a while,’ he added casually.

He told himself that he liked to be in control—which was true—and that he liked to be hands-on—which was also true. If there was going to be an advertising campaign then he wanted to have some input into the final images which would represent his company.

But most of all he wanted to watch Lara at work, to see
her thick dark hair blowing in the autumn breeze and see the sky reflected in eyes which echoed its hue.

Lara Black.

The English rose.

Lara noticed him before he saw her. The heavens themselves seemed to be conniving in his entrance, because just as his long legs began to emerge from a seriously luxurious car a shaft of pure golden sunlight chose that very moment to spear its way through the fluffy clouds. And he chose just that same instant to look up, his eyes vying with the sun for brilliance.

Lara shivered.

‘Keep still, Lara,’ said the make-up artist patiently as she dabbed on another stroke of pink iridescent lipgloss.

Lara couldn’t reply, not with her lips half open to deal with the lipgloss, but she was aware of him approaching, silent and stealthy—like a natural predator. The sharp colours of the autumn day seemed to emphasise his strong features—etching shadows which fell from beneath the high cheekbones and the firm, luscious mouth.

He wore linen, which managed to be both casual and smart at the same time. Yet somehow it looked all wrong on him, and she wondered what he would look like with the fluid, silken robes of the Maraban aristocracy clinging to his lean, hard frame.

She could hear the chatter lessening as the make-up artist turned her head to see what what was happening and whistled softly. She gave Lara’s lips a final blot with a piece of tissue.

‘Oh,
wow
,’ she whispered fervently. ‘I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on
him
!’

Lara gave her chin a welcome stretch, but her heart thudded painfully in her chest. ‘You mean from a professional point of view, of course?’ she joked.

‘Yeah, sure.’ The make-up artist gave a rich and fruity
laugh. ‘One look at him and all I think about is work, work, work!’

Lara watched him while the stylist fussed around with her dress. Little clusters of people had stopped to stare at the proceedings, alerted to the possibility of excitement by the photographer and his acolytes and the sight of a woman wearing a floaty, filmy dress on a blustery autumn day.