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His mouth compressed now as he stared unseeingly out of the window, as if he could try to compress the memories.
The full repercussions of his weakness sat like lead in his belly. The marriage to Sophie Lewis was off. And Arkim’s very substantial investment in Grant Lewis’s extensive industrial portfolio was teetering on the brink of collapse. Losing the deal wouldn’t put much of a dent into Arkim’s finances, but the subsequent loss of professional standing would.
He was back to square one. Having to prove himself all over again. His team had been fielding calls from clients all week, expressing doubts and fears that Arkim’s solid business reputation was as shaky as his personal life. Stocks and shares were in freefall.
The tabloids had salivated over the story, featuring a caricaturised cast of characters: the stoical and long-suffering father; the scandalous daughter bent on revenge borne out of jealousy; the sweet innocent bride—the victim—and the ruthless social-climbing mother.
And Arkim—son of one of the world’s richest men, who was also one of its most infamous, dominating the world’s porn industry.
Saul Marks lived a life of excess in Los Angeles, and Arkim hadn’t seen him since he was seventeen. He’d made a vow a long time ago to crawl out from under his father’s shameful reputation, even going so far as to change his name legally as soon as he’d been able to—choosing a name that had belonged to a distant ancestor of his mother’s as he hadn’t thought her present-day immediate family would appreciate their bastard relative making a claim on their name.
Arkim’s mother had come from a wealthy and high-born family in the Arabian country of Al-Omar. She’d been studying in the States at university when she’d met and been seduced by Saul Marks. Naive and innocent, she’d been bowled over by the handsome charismatic American.
When she’d become pregnant, however, Marks had already moved on to his next girlfriend. He’d supported Arkim’s mother, but wanted nothing to do with her or the baby...until she’d died in childbirth and he’d been forced to take his baby son into his care after Zara’s family in Al-Omar had expressed no interest in their deceased daughter’s son.
Arkim’s early life had been a constant round of English boarding schools and impersonal nannies, interspersed with time spent with a reluctant father and his dizzying conveyer belt of lovers, who invariably came from the porn industry. One of whom had taken an unhealthy interest in Arkim and given him an important life lesson in how vital it was to master self-control.
But a week ago, when the society wedding of the decade had imploded in scandalous fashion, all those ambitions and his efforts to distance himself from shame and scandal had turned to dust.
And all because of a red-haired witch.
A witch who had somehow managed to sneak under his impenetrable guard. It was galling to recall how hard it had been to let her go that night in the study. How hard he’d been. From the moment he’d first seen her appear. Looking like a schoolteacher. With her hair pulled back, her face pale. Covered up.
He’d only come to his senses because there had been something in the way she’d kissed him—something he hadn’t believed... Something innocent. Gauche. But it was a lie—as if she’d been trying to figure out what he liked. Acting sweet and innocent after she’d just been completely brazen. Attempting to seduce him away from her sister.
The only thing that had got Arkim through the past week of ignominy and public embarrassment had been the prospect of making Sylvie Devereux pay. And the kind of payment he had in mind would finally exorcise her from his head, and his body, once and for all.
For months she’d inhabited the dark, secret corners of his mind and his imagination. She’d been the cause of sleepless nights and lurid dreams. Even during his engagement to her far sweeter and infinitely more innocent sister.
Apart from the injury Sylvie had caused to Arkim with her selfish behaviour, she’d also recklessly played with her sister’s life. The young woman had been inconsolable, absolutely adamant that she wouldn’t give Arkim another chance. And could he blame her? Who would believe the son of a man who lived his life as if it was a bacchanal?
The words Sylvie Devereux had said in the church still rang in his head: ‘This man shared my bed.’ And yet even now his body reacted to those words with a surge of frustration. Because she most certainly had not shared his bed. It had been a bare-faced lie. Conjured up to create maximum damage.
Sylvie Devereux wanted him so badly? Well, then, she’d have him—until he was sated and he could throw her back in the trash, where she belonged.
But it would be on his terms, and far out of the reach of the ravenous public’s gaze. The damage to his reputation stopped right here.
* * *
Sylvie looked out of the small private plane’s window to see a vast sea of sand below her, and in the distance, shimmering in a heat haze, a steel city that might have come directly from a futuristic movie.
The desert sands of Al-Omar and its capital city, B’harani.
Some called it the jewel of the Middle East. It was one of its most progressive countries, presided over by a very dynamic and modern royal couple. Sylvie had just been reading an article about them in the in-flight magazine: Sultan Sadiq and his wife Queen Samia, and their two small cherubic children.
Queen Samia was younger than Sylvie, and she’d felt a little jaded, looking at the beaming smile on the woman’s face. She was pretty, more than beautiful, and yet her husband looked at her as if he’d never seen a woman before.
She’d seen her father look at her mother like that.
Sylvie ruthlessly crushed the small secret part of her that clenched with an ominous yearning. The cynicism she’d honed over years came to the fore. Sultan Sadiq might well be reformed now, but she could remember when he’d been a regular visitor to the infamous L’Amour revue and had cut a swathe through some of its top-billed stars.
Not Sylvie, though. Once she was offstage and dressed down, with her hair tied back, she slipped unnoticed past all her far more glamorous peers. She courted endless teasing from the other girls—and from the guys, who were mostly gay—having earned the moniker of ‘Sister Sylvie’, because
of the way she would prefer to go home and curl up with a book or cook a meal rather than head out to party with their inevitably rich and gorgeous clientele. A clientele that appreciated the very discreet ethos of the revue and any liaisons that ensued out of hours.
But even they—her friends, who were more like her family now—didn’t know the full extent of her duality...how far from her stage persona she really was.
‘Miss Devereux? We’ll be landing shortly.’
