The Sheikh's Baby Omnibus (28 page)

Vere’s mobile rang, showing the private number that belonged to
his twin.

When he stood up and turned his back to her to take his call,
Sam guessed that it must be personal and got up herself, heading for the bedroom
cabin to give Vere privacy in which to take the call.

‘Drax,’ Vere welcomed his twin.

‘I’m just about to leave for the Alliance of Arabic-Speaking
Nations finance conference, but I thought I’d better let you know that the
reports have come through from our agents on your Miss McLellan.’

Vere was on the point of denying that Sam was ‘his’, when he
realised that it was hardly true any more. He needed to bring Drax up to speed
with his decision.

However, before he could do so, Drax was continuing. ‘We’ve
drawn a blank, I’m afraid. Whoever it is who is in the Emir’s pay it is
definitely not Samantha McLellan. Our people have been over her life and her
finances in microscopic detail, and there is nothing that can tie her into the
Emir in any kind of way. Interestingly, though, they did discover that her
computer has been hacked into whilst she’s been working in the field, and their
feeling is that someone has been very interested in her work.’

Sam was not in the Emir’s pay.

Outrunning his shock was a wave of emotion that kicked away his
defences. Now he had nothing to shield him from what she was doing to him. No
way of protecting himself from the way she made him feel.

Vere struggled to wrest control from these sensations and focus
on practical issues, regain some control.

‘She raised the queries about the Dhurahni River being
re-routed,’ he managed to tell his twin. ‘It could be that whoever is working
for the Emir got to hear about them and thought there might be something there
the Emir could use.’

‘We’d better have her colleagues checked out, then,’ Drax
suggested.

‘Yes,’ Vere agreed. ‘When do you expect to be back in
Dhurahn?’

‘I’m not sure. I’ve sent Sadie home ahead of me, so I don’t
intend to linger. She’s got several weeks to go yet before the baby is due, of
course, but much as I shall miss her she needs to rest—even though she insists
she would rather be with me.’

‘Drax?’

‘Yes?’

‘I’m on my way back to Dhurahn now, and I’m taking Samantha
McLellan with me. It’s a long story,’ Vere added quickly, ‘but—’

‘Ah, you need say no more, brother.’ Drax was laughing before
Vere could tell him why he had planned to have Sam accompany him. ‘I have been
there myself, remember? I can tell from your voice what is happening... If you
are having trouble persuading her to marry you, then...’ Drax’s voice faded, and
then the connection was broken.

There was no point in trying to phone Drax back, Vere
acknowledged. What, after all, could he say? Drax had obviously got hold of the
wrong idea. Like everyone in love, Drax automatically assumed that everyone else
wanted to share his exalted state. Besides, for once in his life Vere had
something more important to think about than what his brother might think.

Sam was completely innocent of any wrong-doing.

The agents they employed were far too good at their job to make
any mistakes, and Vere didn’t even think of disputing what Drax had told him. So
now he didn’t need her as his mistress at all. There was no point in him
establishing her in that role since she was not in the Emir’s pay.

A mixture of emotions twisted through him. Fear, anger,
hostility, all bound together by the ties linking him to his past and the loss
of his mother. And joy, tenderness and guilt for misjudging her, woven like a
gentle chain around his heart.

Out of habit, it was the older, darker emotions he allowed to
claim him. They were the emotions he felt safe with. They did not require him to
do anything other than go on believing as he had done for so long. They did not
require a blind leap of faith. All they required and demanded was that he
dismissed Sam from his life immediately.

It would be easy enough for him to tell her that he had changed
his mind, and it would be a simple exercise for him to arrange for her to be
taken back to the camp where she could resume her work. After all, there was no
rational reason now to keep her with him, was there?

Immediately his emotions rejected the thought of letting her
go. A sharp, unwanted stab of anguish pierced his heart at the thought of not
having her in his life. His heart was hammering against his ribs and his whole
body was tensed in rejection of the thought of losing her, whilst a battle raged
within him between his need to protect himself and the desire Sam aroused within
him.

He couldn’t send her back, even if he wanted to, he reasoned to
himself. The cartographer’s position she had vacated had already been filled,
and anyway, he could hardly expect her to simply carry on working at the camp as
though nothing had happened. Those working with her were bound to ask questions.
He surely had a duty to protect her from that.

But if he hadn’t misjudged her in the first place... Though
he’d had no option but to suspect her, given the circumstances, Vere defended
himself.

And no option but to make love with her? His heart slammed into
his ribs.

No, he had had no option there either—but for very different
reasons.

He wasn’t proud of what he had done, or of his own weakness,
but it was for her sake and not his own that he intended to keep her with him in
Dhurahn whilst he formulated some satisfactory way of compensating her for the
damage his suspicions might have done to her career, as he now considered
himself honour-bound to do.

And was that the only reason? Were his motives purely
altruistic, and nothing whatsoever to do with his own feelings, his own
desires?

She would be housed in her own quarters, and he would not
intrude on those. He would find some way to ensure that her presence in Dhurahn
was recognised as the professional visit of a qualified cartographer. The mouth
of the Dhurahni where it reached the sea had never been properly mapped; silting
had changed the course of river there. Mapping the coastline would be a very
worthwhile project, and would surely go some way to redressing the harm he could
have done her.

But he had already advertised the fact that she was his
mistress.

She could be his lover
and
work
professionally in Dhurahn. That way he could both make amends and keep her close
to him. Close enough for them to...

To what?

That wasn’t a question Vere could allow himself to answer.

She had told him, though, that she had changed her mind and no
longer wanted to go with him. If he had any sense he would accept that and let
her go.

But within a heartbeat he was reminding himself that she had
only changed her mind about the outward image of her role, not about the inner,
intimate living of it. She had said herself that she wanted him.

A hot surge of male need speared through him. They were already
lovers. Would it really be so wrong for them to continue to be so? No one, least
of all his twin, would deny him the right to set aside the responsibilities of
rulership and simply be a man. And by needing her he was not really allowing
himself to become vulnerable. Needing wasn’t loving. He could need her without
loving her. He did not love her. He would not love her. So there was really no
reason why she should not stay, was there? Unless, of course, he secretly
thought that he was in danger of loving her?

Of course he wasn’t.

Sam had put
as much distance as she
could between herself and Vere, neither looking at him nor talking to him during
the flight.

A group of officials were waiting to greet Vere as they left
the jet. Sam deliberately kept herself in the shadows, which was surely the
correct place for a mistress—especially one dressed like her, in the same
serviceable clothes she had taken with her to the desert. But even if she had
been able to bring herself to change into any of the new clothes Vere had bought
her she would still have hung back, Sam knew.

She caught one of the officials, a young woman with dark eyes
that flashed liquid with longing whenever she looked at Vere, staring at her.
Unlike her, the woman was standing tall with pride and self-respect, her
sunglasses perched on her head, all the better for Vere to admire those
magnificent tawny eyes of hers, Sam reflected miserably, and the equally
magnificent cleavage just teasingly hinted at by the V in her crisp tailored
shirt.

Why had she agreed to this? Sam asked herself wretchedly. It
was obvious to her that she had been a fool to think that Vere could ever come
to love her. She had allowed herself to be carried away by her own longing and
the romance of the desert, where they had just been two people unable to fight a
mutual desire for one another. That, however, had merely been a desert mirage,
that was all. The reality was what was here in front of her now. And that
reality wasn’t a man she had deceived herself into creating out of her own need,
a man she could reach out to and connect with, if only via his desire for her.

The reality was this stranger, dressed now not simply, as she
had seen him in the desert, but wearing over his plain white
dishdasha
a rich dark blue silk robe embroidered with
gold thread, which he had put on before they left the aircraft. There might not
be a crown on his head, but it might just as well be there. Both his manner and
that of those around him reflected what he was. Sam could see in his expression
hauteur, where before she had seen merely a certain austere withdrawal which she
had translated as a sign of a complex and fascinating personality. The hands
Vere extended to those who had come to welcome him were covered in the same
flesh that had touched her, but the heavy dark emerald ring glowing in the
sunlight surely testified to the fact that those hands controlled the lives of
others.

There was no place in this man’s life for her. The days might
have gone when an Eastern ruler installed his women in the seraglio, where no
other male eyes could see them and where their days were wasted in an emptiness
of waiting to be chosen to share his bed, but Sam suspected her role would be a
traditional one nevertheless.

Dressed in her new clothes, she would be expected to live in
the shadows, a symbol of her master’s wealth and status, a toy for him to play
with when the mood took him, to be returned to the shadows to wait for him to
want her again.

Vere’s gaze searched
the small
crowd, and came to rest on Sam’s pale set face.

He could give instructions now that she was to be put on a
plane home and, once he had compensated her financially for the disruption to
her life, dismiss her from his thoughts. He could make amends for the loss of
her job by ensuring that she was offered more lucrative work elsewhere. There
were any number of ways in which he could ensure that he owed her nothing and
had no moral obligations towards her. There was no logical reason for him to
complicate his life by keeping her here.

No logical reason, no.

He gave a brief nod of his head. Two men stepped forward,
bowing to Sam.

Miserably, Sam allowed herself to be guided towards yet another
waiting limousine.

This time she was travelling in it alone, whilst Vere rode
ahead of her in a different car, with two other men.

The road on which they were travelling was straight and wide.
To one side of it lay the sea, a perfect shade of blue-green beneath the
late-afternoon sunshine. To the other side lay what Sam presumed must be the
City of Dhurahn, and then set aside from it was an area of tall modern
glassfronted skyscrapers, located in what looked like landscaped gardens.

Their route was lined with palm trees set into immaculate
flowerbeds with green verges. Through the dark tinted windows of the limousine
she could see the people in the vehicles on the other side of the road turning
to look at their cavalcade.

Up ahead of them Sam could see a huge wall, in which a pair of
wrought-iron gates were opening to allow them through into a courtyard beyond
them. The tails of the peacocks shaped in the wrought-iron gates shimmered in
the sunlight just as richly as the real thing, the emerald-green of the stones
set in them surely the exact shade of Vere’s eyes. Vere. She must not think of
him as Vere any more. She must think of him instead as the Ruler of Dhurahn.
That way maybe she could distance herself properly from him.

A flight of polished cream marble steps led up to a portico,
its heavy wooden doors already open and the steps themselves lined with liveried
servants.

Vere was already out of his car and striding up the steps.

As she watched him disappear inside the doors, Sam could feel
herself starting to panic. She felt lost, abandoned, vulnerable and alone. She
also felt angry and resentful because of those feelings.

Someone was opening the car door. Reluctantly Sam got out.

One of the liveried men bowed respectfully. ‘If you will come
this way, please?’

Silently Sam followed him inside. The large hallway was cool
and filled with shadows after the heat outside. Intricately carved shutters
blocked the heat of the sunlight from coming through the windows. The marble
floor was bare of rugs, and in the middle of it was a raised rectangular pool.
The surface of the water was covered in creamy white rose petals. A traditional
burning censer stood on one of the steps, giving off a warm spicy scent.

The only furniture in the room was several low divans with
gilded legs and armrests, standing against the walls, their silk cushions a
splash of colour against the plain white walls. Several sets of inner closed
doors opened off the hallway, their dark wood carved with Arabic designs.
Coloured glass lamps in fretted ironwork hung from the ceiling, along with
several more censers.