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‘Dad wanted recognition. Nothing more. It would have made him worth something to himself,’ she defended. ‘Xa Shiraq killed that in him.’
‘Xa Shiraq was right, Amanda,’ came the remorseless reply. ‘Your father was wrong.’
‘Not in my view,’ Amanda said fiercely. ‘Not by my standards. Xa Shiraq wasn’t prepared to reach for the stars.’
She was stepping forward as she spoke. He stopped. His arm dropped from her shoulders. Amanda hesitated, glanced back. He stood absolutely still, a dark and suddenly menacing figure. The atmosphere in the cave seemed to thicken. She sensed turbulent emotion coursing through him, emotion that focused on her with frightening force.
Before she could do or say anything to appease it, he stepped forward, and played the torch once more over the cavern of crystal about them.
‘What do you see, Amanda?’ he demanded harshly. ‘Fame and fortune? Is that what you crave?’
‘No,’ she cried in protest.
‘Does your father’s greed run in your blood, too?’
‘It wasn’t greed!’
‘Power is very seductive...’
‘It’s not so,’ she denied vehemently.
‘Look at them. Millions of neodymite crystals twinkling their temptation. Beautiful and deadly. For thousands of years they have glittered unseen, storing up energy, waiting to shower it upon the world. Do they whisper to you to release it?’
It was strange. What she had initially seen as a magical fairyland now seemed to glint coldly, malignantly. She shivered. He pulled her against him, her shoulder blades meeting the firm masculinity of his broad chest, her bottom crushed to rocklike thighs.
‘Xabia is prosperous,’ he stated bitingly. ‘There are no beggars in the streets of Alcabab. We have schools. We have hospitals. The people are not in want. Of what benefit are more riches, Amanda?’
She didn’t know the facts well enough to dispute what he claimed. To speak out of ignorance could only earn his contempt. It was true what he said about the capital city. It had been surprisingly clean and orderly compared to other cities she had visited in the Middle East. Even the enterprising Mocca and his extended family had no complaint about their lot in life.
‘As for the stars,’ he continued mockingly. ‘Isn’t the space above our planet already filling with the debris of our rocketships? Why should mankind interfere with the stars? They have been more constant companions to me than anyone else. Leave them alone, I say.’
Amanda’s heart sank. She had failed him. He had gambled on her seeing things his way, gambled she would give up her quest in favour of a greater wisdom. He had opened his mind to her and instead of sharing his perceptions, she had clung to her father’s cause.
Amanda closed her eyes to her father’s lost treasure and felt the pained thump of the heart behind her. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I’ve lived with this secret...for so long...to put everything right...’
‘The decision is now yours, Amanda. To reveal or not to reveal. That is the choice I have given you.’
Her father was dead. He was beyond hurting any more. It tore at her heart. To admit he had been wrong in pursuing what had been forbidden him was unthinkable. Yet...
‘Success and failure,’ she whispered, ‘both at the same time.’
‘I have known it often.’
She believed this enigma of a man. The crystal caves belonged to the people of Xabia. Yet they could not use them. It was the paradox of life.
She would not take it upon herself to change anything for them. To right the injustice to her father was to wrong others. Let justice be done though the heavens fall, he had said with grim irony.
She would not let the heavens fall.
‘Amanda...’ It was both a demand and a growl of need, dispensing with choice as he turned her in his arms and tilted her face to his.
His mouth claimed hers before she could utter a word.
The swift infusion of his passionate energy dispelled the limp feeling of defeat. It smashed the tormenting spectre of a promise that would not now be fulfilled. It stamped another promise into her mind that seduced all reason, then into her heart, allowing room for nothing else but the stampeding pulse of togetherness.
Take me, his kiss said. There is no fame or fortune or power in the world that could compensate for what would be lost if you choose another path.
He reforged the link between them with tempestuous fire, welding the softness of her body to the burning rigidity of his, his hands sliding over her in pressure patterns that secured a fierce and intimate contact. He was rampant male, compelling submission to his will, yet inducing a yielding that exulted in his forcefulness, and the yielding brought its own harvest of response from him.
