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She grasped at the straw that Mr Kozim represented and did her best to turn the situation to her advantage.
‘Mr Kozim, you are a man of great understanding and humanity,’ she appealed, not knowing if he was or not, but a little flattery could not go astray. ‘I appeal to you on behalf of the man who carried the orders of Jebel Haffa at the Oasis Hotel at Fisa. I ask you to intervene on his behalf to Xa Shiraq himself.’
Mr Kozim’s face went pale. His hands fluttered nervously along the desk. He coughed. ‘You do not know what you ask,’ he said in a strangulated voice.
Not much help there, Amanda thought, and her eyes swung away from him so they would not reveal her despair.
She said no more. She grimly held her tongue, determined to outplay the sheikh in this contest of wills. She knew instinctively she would win nothing by grovelling. She had to convince him that the crystal caves meant nothing to her. Only then might he listen to her appeal to free the man who had gone against his will.
Amanda had the sinking feeling that few people went against Xa Shiraq’s will without suffering horrendous consequences. She had to quickly decide on her course of action.
Any lack of control on her part would raise suspicions about the reliability of the promises she would give him. A man such as he would only respect strength. She must show that strength and let nothing daunt her.
She straightened her shoulders more rigidly than they had even been set before. She turned to face him square on. She took one step forward to draw his attention, then stopped. She would go no further until he gave his response.
The book in his hands was slowly clapped shut. It was replaced in the empty slot on the shelf behind him. Amanda felt her chest constricting as he started to turn towards her. Her mind jammed with desperate prayers.
His profile came into view and shock hit her like a sledgehammer, completely smashing all her fiercely held resolutions.
‘You!’
The cry burst from her lips in a released avalanche of pent-up tension and frustration, combined with all the pain and bitter suffering that had tormented her waking hours since she had last been with him.
Blazing black eyes scorched over her with scathing contempt. ‘I trusted you...and you betrayed my trust.’
The condemnation in his voice lashed deeply into Amanda’s soul. It stung, yet shock anaesthetised the sting momentarily. Shock demanded explanations that would make sense of the unbelievable.
‘You’re supposed to be entombed in the crystal caves.’ That was the reality that had tortured her. Questions tumbled from her lips. ‘How did you get out? How did you escape? How did you get here?’
‘How much satisfaction it must have given you to leave me to die as you thought...’
‘I did everything I could to try and save you,’ she defended hotly, aghast that he had interpreted her actions so wrongly.
‘How clever you are, Amanda,’ he said sardonically. ‘Twisting the truth of your flight down the mountain to give yourself another chance to justify your father’s behaviour.’
His offensive manner riled her into pointing out a few little truths to be taken into account. ‘You set out to deceive me from our first meeting and you’ve obviously deceived me about no-one knowing where we were. You were never really in trouble, were you?’
His silence goaded her on. ‘And I almost killed myself trying to save you, worrying myself sick over whether you were dead or alive, while all the time...all the time...’
She was rendered speechless by the base calculations of the man who was now revealed as Xa Shiraq himself! There must have been another way out of the caves and he’d had some means of communicating with his people. That was why the helicopter had flown towards the peak...to collect him! He had been flown home in comfort, perhaps even seeing her manic ride on the way.
‘Do you think I can still be seduced by your lies?’ he demanded. ‘You knew I would stop you from doing what you wanted and you sacrificed me for the secret of the crystal caves.’
It focused Amanda’s mind on refuting the abominable idea of base treachery. ‘I did not! The hydraulic jack broke. I rode for help but you ordered people not to listen to me,’ she flung at him, outraged that he could accuse her of such dreadful things—premeditated murder, no less—when he was so palpably at fault for reacting
in a totally extreme and unjustified manner, making her suffer agonies for a crime she hadn’t committed.
‘Nor will I listen to you now,’ he bit out in icy, arrogant pride.
‘Examine the jack,’ she challenged in similar biting tone, glaring her scorn for his unreasonable stance.
‘I disdain to prove more clearly what is already proved.’
‘How can you call yourself just if you will not look at the evidence?’ Amanda retaliated, smarting over the fact that he had always been in control, never once risking anything while he tested her to the limit!
‘Be thankful I choose not to.’ His eyes seared her with a blistering indictment. ‘I prefer mercy to justice. If your perfidy were proved beyond all doubt I could show you no mercy at all.’
Amanda felt a quiver of fear. She suppressed it, and took another pace forward. ‘Are you too proud to face the truth?’ she hurled at him. ‘Is it your will to believe the worst of me? I thought more of you as a man than that.’
