The Desert Prince's Mistress (8 page)

She half imagined that a small contingent of his armed guard might accompany him, but when the Prince arrived on Friday, just before midday, he was alone. Lara opened the door to him and blinked in surprise.

‘No guards?’ she questioned softly, once he had greeted her and she had closed the front door.

Khalim gave a brief smile. ‘My emissary and two others are waiting outside. They have orders not to disturb us.’

‘Would you like tea?’ Lara questioned shyly. ‘Mint tea?’

Khalim smiled. ‘You remembered!’

‘How is Rose?’ she demanded eagerly.

‘Rose is complaining that she is the size of an elephant! And I have photos to show you of my son.’ A frown crossed his dark face. ‘She does not know that I am seeing you. For if she did she would ask questions for which I do not yet have any answers.’

‘Oh,’ said Lara.

It seemed all so incongruously suburban. Khalim sitting on her sofa, drinking tea and proudly showing her photos of his wife and son. He was wearing Western regalia—a beautifully cut Italian suit in charcoal-grey, snowy shirt and a silk tie the colour of an emerald—and he looked just as much as ease in it as he did in his flowing garments of soft gleaming gold.

Outwardly, he seemed relaxed, but Lara could see the faint lines which fanned out from the jet-dark eyes. She wondered if he was worried about problems at home or simply about meeting Darian—but it seemed impertinent to ask.

She found herself comparing him to the man she was certain was his half-brother. Darian was taller and broader, his skin not so dark as Khalim’s, and his eyes were golden, not black, and yet there was an unmistakable similarity
between the two men. You could see it in the firm and unblinking gaze, and in the almost tangible strength of character which emanated from them. What would happen when they met?

She shivered, and Khalim looked at her.

‘You are nervous, Lara?’

‘A little. Aren’t you?’

He shook his head. ‘In Maraban we have a saying: Life is like a narrow bridge—the most important thing is not to be afraid.’

‘He’s…he’s the same age as you, you know.’

‘And?’

‘What if he’s older? Won’t that make him the legitimate heir?’

‘But he is
illegitimate
, Lara,’ Khalim reminded her gently. ‘If indeed he
is
my brother.’

So he wasn’t taking her word for it, realised Lara—but who could blame him when something so important was at stake?

The doorbell rang, and her eyes opened very wide. ‘He’s here! What shall I do? What shall I say?’

‘Bring him to me,’ commanded Khalim sternly. ‘And do not worry, little one,’ he said, his voice gentling a little.

Lara’s heart was beating so fast that she could barely breathe as she walked to the front door. And when she opened it her feelings of apprehension only increased.

For Darian was standing there, looking impossibly gorgeous and so tantalisingly touchable. The breeze had ruffled his hair, so that all its gleaming darkness was emphasised, and the soft, dark cashmere sweater provided a perfect foil for the living gold of his eyes and the tawny glow of his skin. His lips were soft, and so were his eyes.

Without a word, he pulled her into his arms and stared down at her. Did he have some crazy, masochistic instinct which might have denied him such exquisite pleasures when they were here for the taking? She was beautiful.
The other night had been beautiful. He wanted her again and he wanted her right now.

‘Lara,’ he murmured.

She knew what he was about to do, and knew that she ought to stop him, but she was powerless to resist.

He drove his mouth down on hers, like a hungry man who had just seen food. The touch of her lips brought memories of her body crashing back into sweet, sharp focus and he gave a little moan of pleasure.

Instantly Lara felt herself responding to his kiss, her body beginning to ache and to dissolve into a hot, moist heat, and as he tightened his arms around her she could feel his taut, shivering tension which matched her own.

She splayed her fingers over his back, feeling the hard muscle contrasting with the softness of his sweater, and made a little sound of pleasure as his thigh nudged its way between hers. She felt her own thighs part instinctively, a hot flame of desire shooting up her as he ran his fingertips possessively down over her hips.

And Khalim was waiting next door!

She tore her lips away and opened her eyes to him, startled by the look of naked need on his face. ‘Darian, we mustn’t!’

He gave a low laugh of pleasure. ‘Afraid that I’m going to take you here, standing up in your hallway?’ He stroked her trembling mouth. ‘You’d probably like it if I did. Come to think of it, so would I.’ And then he frowned. ‘What’s the matter, darling—is Jake around?’

His words brought her quickly to her senses, for they were nothing more than an arrogant sexual boast. An acknowledgment of how easily and how quickly he could make her melt in his arms. And, dear Lord—he was right! If Khalim
hadn’t
been here then she probably wouldn’t have stopped him at all!

She reminded herself that if Khalim were not here, then he wouldn’t be here, either.

She shook her head. ‘No. Not Jake.’

How did she say it? She didn’t want to anger him, because what was about to happen was going to affect him pretty deeply on some fundamental level, and she didn’t know how he was going to react.

‘I’ve got someone I want you to meet,’ she whispered.

‘Oh, Lara, no,’ he groaned. ‘Not now! What did you do that for?’

‘Come with me.’

Aching, Darian had no choice but to follow her, but he was irritated. He didn’t want to meet her friends—not at this stage, and certainly not now!

Lara threw the door open and Darian froze, his instincts immediately alerted to the fact that the man who stood beside the huge marble fireplace, his dark face so cool and expressionless, was no ordinary man. And it had nothing to do with the costly clothes he wore—for many men wore those.

No, it was something in his eyes and in his posture, something which transcended the mundane and the everyday—he wore an air of comfortable superiority, which silently sizzled out across the room and struck an answering chord in Darian himself.

Darian narrowed his eyes, knowing somehow that conventional conversation was both irrelevant and inappropriate. ‘Who
are
you?’ he demanded softly.

There was a silence which seemed to go on and on. Lara looked at Khalim and saw him give an odd, brittle kind of smile which was tinged with a sadness.

‘I am Prince Khalim of Maraban,’ he said slowly. ‘And I believe that you are my brother.’

D
ARIAN
kept his face poker-straight, not a flicker of emotion crossing his features. He had always been a past-master at keeping his feelings hidden. As a child he had learnt not to react, and it had stood him in good stead through his life.

He let his mind assimiliate the incredible words that the man had just spoken, then gave a brief, dismissive smile.

‘You are mistaken,’ he said flatly. ‘I have no brother. I have no living relatives at all. Explain yourself.’

Lara gasped, shocked—and so, judging by the look on Khalim’s face, was he. She doubted whether he had ever been spoken to like that in his life—except perhaps by his wife, but that was different.

Khalim gave a small nod, as though an unasked question had just been answered, and gestured towards a chair. ‘Should we perhaps sit down?’

Darian shook his head, and then slowly turned his head and looked at Lara. For the first time it dawned on him that this man was in
her
apartment. He glanced at the way she stood there, so wide-eyed and expectant and…yes, there was definitely an air of apprehension about her. What the hell was going on?

But Lara was a distraction. He concentrated instead on one overriding fact, and that was the claim which had just been made.

‘I think I would prefer to stand.’ He looked at this man Khalim, and a vague memory of something he had once heard on the news came drifting into his memory.

A country. Where had he said? Maraban? Yes. Maraban.

‘You are the Sheikh of Maraban?’ he questioned.

Khalim nodded. ‘I am.’

‘And why are you here?’ asked Darian quietly.

‘Because a letter arrived recently at my Embassy in London—a letter from a woman purporting to be your mother—’

‘The woman’s name?’ snapped Darian.

‘Joanna Wildman.’

Darian’s eyes narrowed and he felt the sudden acceleration of his heart. ‘That was my mother’s name.’ His voice sounded like grit being poured onto melting snow. ‘Let me see the letter.’

It was a definite command, thought Lara, wondering how Khalim would react. But he simply nodded as he withdrew the letter from the breast pocket of his suit, almost as though he had been anticipating this request.

Darian’s eyes scoured over it disbelievingly, but there was no doubt that the words were written in his mother’s hand. ‘She died two years ago,’ he said slowly.

‘Yes. As you will read, the letter was not intended to be opened during her lifetime.’ Khalim’s black eyes glittered. ‘And, as you will also read, she claims that my late father, Makim, was indeed
your
father, too.’

His eyebrows were elevated in question, and the statement he had made was so utterly bizarre that Darian wondered if perhaps he was in the middle of one of those dreams which were so real that you mistook them for reality. Maybe in a minute he would wake up.

But even as he answered he was aware of the first glimmerings of unease. ‘I know nothing of my father. Absolutely nothing.’

‘No.’ Khalim paused for a moment. ‘Your mother was an air stewardess?’

‘Up until I was born.’ Darian’s mouth twisted in deri
sion. There had been no mention of her employment in the letter. ‘You’ve had me checked out!’ he accused softly.

Khalim nodded. ‘But of course.’ He paused. ‘She flew to the Middle East regularly.’

And the missing piece of the jigsaw which had always eluded him began to hover tantalisingly over the gap in Darian’s memory. His mother had spoken of his father maybe once, perhaps twice. He had been a good man, she had said, but a man who was not free and was certainly not in a position to support them. Darian had assumed that his father was married, had noted his mother’s reluctance to talk about him and her distress whenever the subject was brought up.

Children soon learnt to make life easy for themselves. When to pry and when to leave well alone. He had accepted her reticence, just as he had accepted that he looked different from the other children. Darian had been focused on the future, on getting out of the poverty of his upbringing. Whoever his father had been he was not a real figure, not in terms of having any influence in his life, and so Darian had simply closed the door on all his questions.

There had been nothing about him in the papers his mother had left after her death, though at the time it had crossed his mind that now he was in a position to seek out his father without causing his mother distress. But Darian had decided to let sleeping dogs lie, asking himself what end it would serve if he went on such a quest—other than to unsettle him. Why pursue a man who had never felt the need to know his son?

But now the past had been dropped before his eyes, falling like a heavy pebble into a pond, its ripple-like effects spreading down through the ages—and for the first time a very important question
did
occur to him.

He turned again to look at Lara, where she stood as still
and as frozen as a statue. ‘So what does Lara have to do with all this?’

She had been wondering when he would get around to asking. Lara spoke before Khalim had the chance to defend her. She would not shrink from the truth, not any more.

‘I was the one who first read the letter,’ she said quietly. ‘I was working at the Embassy at the time and it came into my hands.’

‘When?’

She heard the raw anger in that one stark word, and flinched. ‘Almost a month ago.’

A different jigsaw now, and these pieces slotted into place with insulting ease. He looked directly into her blue eyes and gold accusation flooded over her in a hot, sizzling shower. ‘You came looking for me,’ he seethed slowly.

‘Yes.’

‘You chased the job as the face of Wildman.’ His dark lashes shuttered by a fraction. ‘Didn’t you?’

‘Yes.’

The lashes moved again, and now there was an odd expression in the strange and beautiful eyes, the cold, cruel smile which glittered over her. She knew what the next accusation would be almost before he had a chance to form the words, and her gaze begged him not to ask it—not here and now and in front of Khalim. But he ignored the silent plea, his voice taking on a bitter, hard timbre she had never heard before.

‘Is that why you slept with me, Lara?’

Lara glanced at Khalim, who was observing and listening to the fraught interrogation session in interested silence. Only the faintest elevation of his eyebrows indicated that he had registered Darian’s final damning question, but Lara knew that Marabanese men knew the value of silence. He would not interfere in something which did not concern him. She was on her own here.

‘I don’t think that now is an appropriate time to discuss this—’

‘Oh,
don’t
you?’ His sarcastic words sliced through her half-formed sentence like a knife through butter. ‘I don’t really think that you’re fit to be the judge of what is or is not
appropriate,
Lara!’

He remembered the way her vulnerable blue eyes had made him soften and melt, and then made love to her in a way which had blown his mind, and he cursed silently at his blind stupidity. Of
course
she would be adept at pulling heartstrings—she would know every trick in the book, about how to behave and how to manipulate. She was a god damned
actress,
wasn’t she?

He sucked in a deep breath. His rage and his retribution with her could wait. He turned his head towards Khalim again.

‘So why are you here?’

‘To see you,’ said Khalim simply. ‘To see whether it was true.’

‘But you can’t, can you?’ drawled Darian. ‘You can’t tell just by looking?’

‘Oh, yes, I can,’ demurred Khalim quietly. ‘I saw it as soon as you entered the room today. You have the blood of a true Marabanesh running in your veins.’

Something in the way he said it made a small shiver of something unknown snake its way down Darian’s spine. Not fear—no, he had never felt fear, nor would he ever give in to the false and futile pressure of fear. Something else—something which momentarily made him feel as if things were edging out of his control. But he deliberately blocked the feeling, substituting it instead with the strength and single-mindedness for which he was known.

‘Even if I have—so what?’ he challenged, in a low, deep voice. ‘It doesn’t change my life—how can it? So do not worry, Sheikh—the secret will remain just that. You can
go back to your kingdom safe in the knowledge that my life is fulfilled and complete. I have no need of your wealth or power and I will make no claim on it. I give you my word.’

Khalim’s eyes narrowed into icy black shards. ‘You have no wish to see Maraban?’ he demanded, as if Darian had raised a fist and hit him.

Again that tantalising feeling. As if some scarcely heard and hypnotic music were luring him to run away and dance. Darian shook his head, furious with himself for such a bizarre flight of fancy.

‘You must come as my guest,’ continued Khalim.

The two men stared at one another.

‘Why?’ demanded Darian simply.

Lara thought again how peculiar it was to have Khalim spoken to like that, and for him to accept it.

‘I should like to get to know you better,’ answered Khalim. ‘Man of my blood.’

If Darian had heard a statement like that even an hour ago he would have given a sardonic laugh. It was not the kind of thing men said to one another—not in his world. But something had inexplicably changed. This whole crazy and bizarre situation was linked to a past of which he knew nothing, and it was that fact which troubled him.

His past.

But the past held no interest for him, he reminded himself. Life lay with the present and the future. His life was here, and it was good.

He shook his head. ‘No. I can’t see the point.’

Khalim smiled then. ‘Can’t you?’ he questioned softly. ‘Can you just let me walk away today, Darian, and turn your back on the opportunity I am offering you? To discover Maraban and in so doing perhaps discover a little of yourself?’

It was a tantalising proposition, and Darian felt the hard,
pounding beat of excitement. He was not into the ‘self-discovery’ so popular in the modern world. He considered such things an indulgent waste of time. And yet…

Would he be left with a whispering feeling of regret if he turned this opportunity down? He turned his head slowly to look once again at Lara. Her face was pale now, all the roses fled. All he could see were the twin sapphires of her eyes, sparkling blue but wary, almost afraid.

And afraid you should be, he thought grimly.

His lips curved into another slow, cruel smile as a plan began to form in his head, and he nodded. ‘Very well,’ he said slowly. ‘I will accompany you to Maraban—but on one condition.’

There was silence. And when Khalim spoke it was as soft as the hiss of a snake. ‘You dare to stipulate a condition?’ he demanded. ‘Of
me
?’

‘If I am your brother—or half-brother,’ retorted Darian, ‘then some kind of equality must exist. I am neither your subject nor your inferior—am I, Khalim?’

‘No,’ answered Khalim, and a reluctant smile nudged at his lips as he looked at the man with the golden eyes and the tawny skin. ‘Then name your condition, and if it is within my power it shall be met.’

Darian savoured the moment as his eyes captured hers and held them, hard. ‘I want Lara to accompany me.’

Khalim nodded, as if he understood perfectly, and turned also to look at her, a silent question stilling the dark features.

Lara’s heart pounded with something very like fear. She loved Maraban, and in any other circumstances she would have been overjoyed to be given the opportunity to go there again. But these circumstances were different. She knew without being told that Darian Wildman was not asking her to go with him because he still thought that she
was ‘sweet’ or because he enjoyed her company so much he couldn’t bear to be without it.

No, the sudden hardness which had made the golden eyes look so cold filled her with a foreboding that made her skin grow chill, and in that moment she wished she could just close her eyes and be a million miles away from here, and then return to find that none of it had ever happened…

But it had happened.

And didn’t she owe it to him—in some strange kind of way—for the way that she had deceived him? And to Khalim, too—who had been so generous to her in the past?

If Darian visiting Maraban was all down to whether or not she would go with him, then how could she possibly refuse?

Her skin felt icy-cold as she nodded, lowering her lashes so that she didn’t have to meet that mocking gold stare. ‘If that is what you want, then I will comply.’ Comply! She sounded like some little subordinate now! Lifting her chin, she turned to Khalim, trying to keep her voice steady. ‘Wh—when did you anticipate us leaving?’

Khalim smiled. ‘My jet is on the runway. We will leave for Maraban just as soon as you have both packed sufficient for your needs.’