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He shrugged, and pressed his lips down in a way she found hard to resist.
‘I realise I must pay you something for passage on your ship.’
Her prim tone made him laugh. ‘I’m sure we’ll come to some sort of accommodation.’
‘I’m talking about a purely commercial transaction,’ she assured him.
‘And so am I. What else could I possibly mean?’
Millie firmed her jaw and said nothing.
‘And you should know I don’t offer credit.’
‘This is no joking matter, Your Majesty.’
‘I think we’ve reached a stage where you can safely call me Khalid.’
‘Thank you, Your Majesty,’ Millie said pointedly. There was nothing safe about any of this. ‘If it pleases you—’
‘It does please me. Call me Khalid,’ he repeated with a slight edge to his voice.
Here was someone who wasn’t used to being disobeyed, Millie thought. ‘Thank you, Sheikh Khalid. I realise the great honour you’re doing me, so I will use the polite prefix Sheikh in future.’
This made him groan. ‘I’m a man like any other.’
‘That’s just the point,’ she insisted. ‘You’re not. I’m here because I’m waiting for you to tell me the truth about my mother, and—’
‘I’m here because?’ he prompted.
‘It’s a long, cold swim home?’ she suggested.
He laughed. It was a wonderful sound. However aloof she tried to be, it seemed Khalid could always cut through her reserve. But what was he thinking now? she wondered as she stared into his brooding face. She could never tell—
She yelped as he cleared the table with a comprehensive sweep of his arm. Everything went flying as he dragged her close and pressed her down onto the cool, hard surface.
‘Now what are you going to do?’ he asked.
She’d have been angry if it hadn’t been for the teasing light in his eyes, because that excited her more than he frightened her. ‘Let me go,’ she said quietly.
‘What if I say no? What are you going to do then?’
‘Raise a knee and do you an injury.’
He laughed again. ‘And you say that so nicely.’
She held her breath as his wicked mouth tugged into a smile. ‘You really are a very bad man,’ she observed on a dry throat.
‘I really am,’ he confirmed, unconcerned.
What a time for her gaze to drop to his mouth!
‘Do you want me to kiss you?’ he asked.
She drew in a long, shuddering breath. ‘It would be nice,’ she confessed.
‘Nice?’
Now he was frowning.
‘Very nice?’ she suggested.
* * *
The tip of Millie’s tongue had just crept out to moisten her kiss-bruised lips in a way he found unbearably seductive. Was it deliberate? He concluded, yes. She had the light of mischief in her eyes.
‘And when you’ve kissed me, I still want the truth, and not the edited version you gave me earlier on.’
She said this so coolly he could only admire her nerve. She had a knack of combining business with pleasure in a way he was beginning to doubt he could do when Millie was involved. Cursing viciously in Khalifan, he let her go and straightened up. ‘Are you determined to drive me to distraction?’
‘That depends on how long it takes,’ she said, and, brushing the creases out of her clothes as coolly as you liked, she climbed down from the table.
‘You’re playing with fire,’ he said as she stared into his face.
‘I hope so,’ she agreed.
Raking a hand through his hair, he began to laugh. ‘You win the prize for the coolest and most infuriating woman I’ve ever met.’
‘Good,’ she said. ‘I’d hate to be an also-ran.’
‘As the mistress of the ruling Sheikh of Khalifa, you’d have no competition—’
‘Your mistress?’ Millie repeated as if she had something unpleasant on her tongue. ‘Are you telling me, if that were the case, I’d have no competition for your attention?’
‘None,’ he confirmed.
‘Forget it, Your Majesty,’ she flared with an incredulous shake of her head. ‘Just tell me what I need to know and we’re done here.’
‘We’re done when I say we’re done,’ he rapped, all out of patience.
‘Perhaps you don’t think I deserve the truth?’ she said, bridling as she confronted him. ‘Or maybe you think I can’t handle the truth. Either way, you’re wrong.’
He’d never had such an outright revolt to handle, and was enjoying the experience. When she started to pick up the mess he’d made when he’d cleared the table, he couldn’t just stand and watch.
* * *
Khalid, Millie thought. As if she could call the titan currently helping her to clear up the floor Khalid. It was one thing having him inhabit her dreams as a sheikh on horseback, or a hero who took the starring role in every one of her erotic dreams, but calling the real live man Khalid, rather than Your Majesty, or Sheikh Khalid, was way too intimate to even contemplate. If she did that, who knew where it might lead? Not to becoming his mistress, that was for sure, she thought as their arms brushed. Having the Sheikh as her lover might hold huge appeal for her erotic self, because in her dreams she had nothing better to do than enjoy the pleasures of the seraglio, the hidden secrets of the desert, and the sensual pleasures concealed within a Bedouin tent. But in the real world? No chance.
‘You wanted to talk,’ he reminded her as, job completed, they both stood up again. ‘So, let’s talk.’
She’d wanted nothing more, but suddenly her mind blanked. ‘You don’t have to protect my feelings,’ she said as the mist cleared. It had occurred to her that maybe he really was trying to protect her. ‘I went through all the stages of grief eight years ago.’
‘When what happened must have seemed black and white to you,’ he said, staring at her keenly.
‘Death doesn’t come in shades of grey.’
‘Indeed not,’ Khalid agreed in the same quiet tone.
‘My mother was a victim.’ She could never say that enough times. It was what she had always believed, totally and utterly. ‘The gutter press may have labelled her a pathetic drunk, but she was always a star to me, and she was my mother, and I’ll defend her to my last breath. If you know anything about that night that could absolve her from any blame or ridicule, I want you to tell me. With the benefit of hindsight, it’s easy to see that my mother was deluded, and believed that singing on your brother’s yacht might revive her career. It was all she’d got—’
‘She had you.’
Yes, yes, and the responsibility for leaving the one person who had needed her most alone on this yacht would never leave her. ‘Yes, and I left her,’ she exclaimed, lashed by guilt. ‘Then your brother took advantage of my mother’s vulnerability. How can you possibly sanitise that?’
‘You still hate me,’ he murmured.
‘Tell me something to change my mind,’ she begged, wishing deep down that there could be proof that Khalid had never been implicated directly. There was no excuse for his brother. The late Sheikh Saif was guilty of murder in Millie’s eyes, and all she could do now was to obtain justice for her mother.
‘Your mother brought you into danger that night, and that’s a fact,’ he said as she shook her head slowly and decisively, over and over again. ‘My brother’s parties were notorious. She must have known.’
‘That she was putting me in danger? No. She would never do that.’
