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‘Well, that’s because you did,’ said Ella gently. ‘He’s here. Suleiman’s here.’
The ground seemed suddenly to shift beneath Sara’s feet—the way it did when you stepped onto a large ship which looked motionless. She was aware of the rush of blood to her ears and the pounding of her heart in her chest. Questions streamed into her mind but her lips seemed too dry to do anything other than stumble out one bewildered word. ‘How?’
But Ella was walking away, wheeling the pram towards one of the side entrances, and Sara was left standing there, feeling exposed and scared and impossibly vulnerable. Now her legs felt heavy. As if her feet had suddenly turned to stone and it was going to be impossible for her to walk. But she had to walk. Independent women walked. They didn’t stumble—weak-kneed and hopeless—because the man they dreamed of had just appeared, like a blazing dark comet which had fallen to earth.
He didn’t move as she went towards him and it was impossible to read the expression on his dark face. Even as she grew closer she still couldn’t tell what he was thinking. But hadn’t he told her himself that he was famous at the card table for being able to keep a poker-straight face?
She was trying to quell the hope which had risen up inside her—because dashed hopes were surely worse than no hope at all. But she couldn’t keep her voice steady as she stood before him, and the pain of wanting to hold him again was almost physical.
‘Suleiman,’ she said and her voice sounded croaky and unsure. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I’ve come to speak to your brother about the possibility of drilling for oil in Dhi’ban.’
Her heart plummeted. ‘Are you being serious?’
He looked at her, an expression of exasperation on his face. ‘Of course I’m not being serious. Why do you think I might be here, Sara?’
‘I don’t know!’
She was shaking her head and, for the first time, Suleiman saw that she had changed—even if for a moment he couldn’t quite work out what that change was. Her skin was a little paler than usual and her lips looked as if they had been bitten into—but beneath all that he could see something else. Something which had been missing for a long time. He swallowed down the sudden lump in his throat as he realised that something was peace. That there was a new strength and resolution which shone out from her shadowed eyes as she looked at him.
And now he began to have doubts of his own. Had Sara found true contentment—without him? For a moment he acknowledged that his motives for being here today were entirely selfish. What if she would be better off without him? Had he stopped to consider that? Was her need for independence such that she considered a man like him to be an impediment?
His heart turning over with love and pain, he looked into her beautiful face and suddenly he didn’t care. He knew there were no guarantees in this life, but that didn’t mean you shouldn’t strike out for the things which really mattered. Let Sara tell him that she didn’t want him if that was what she truly believed—but let her be in no doubt about his feelings for her.
‘I think you do know,’ he said softly. ‘I’m here because I love you and I can’t seem to stop loving you.’
‘Did you try?’ she questioned, her voice full of pain. ‘Is that why you walked away? Why you left my life so utterly when you walked out of my apartment?’
There was a silence for a moment, broken only by the sound of a bird calling from high up in one of the trees. ‘I couldn’t stay when you were like that,’ he told her truthfully. ‘When you were too scared to let go and be the woman you really wanted to be. You were pushing me away, Sara—and I couldn’t stand that. I knew you needed to come home before you could think about making any kind of home of your own.’ He smiled. ‘Then I heard on the desert grapevine that you’d come back to Dhi’ban. And I thought that was probably the best thing I’d heard in a long time.’
She turned big violet eyes up at him. ‘Did you?’
‘Mmm.’ He wanted to go to her. To cup her chin in the palm of his hand and hold it safe. To run the edge of his thumb over the tremble of her lips. But he needed her to hear these words before he could touch her again. He owed her his honesty.
‘As for the answer to your question. I’m here because you make me feel stuff—stuff I’ve spent a lifetime trying not to feel.’
‘What kind of stuff?’
‘Love.’
‘Oh. You think you love me?’ she questioned, echoing the words he had used in Paris.
‘No.’ His voice was quiet. ‘I love you—without qualification. I love you fully, completely, utterly and for ever. I’m here because although I’m perfectly capable of living without you, I don’t want to. No. That’s not entirely true. If you want the truth, I can’t bear the thought of living without you, Sara. Because without you I am only half the man I’m capable of being and I want to be whole.’
There was silence for a moment. She lowered her gaze, as if she had found something of immense interest on the gravelled palace forecourt. For a moment he wondered if she was plucking up the courage to tell him that his journey here had been wasted, but when she lifted her face again, Suleiman could see the shimmer of tears in her violet eyes.
‘And without you I’m only half the woman I’m capable of being,’ she said shakily. ‘You’ve made me whole again, too. You’ve made me realise that only by facing our biggest fears can we overcome them. You’ve made me realise that independence is a good thing—but it can never be at the expense of love. Nothing can. Because love is the most important thing of all. And you are the most important thing of all, Suleiman—someone so precious who I thought I’d lost through my own stupidity.’
‘Sara,’ he said and the word was distorted by the shudder of his breath. ‘Sweet Sara. My only love.’
And that was all it took. A declaration torn from somewhere deep inside him. A declaration she returned over and over again in between their frantic kisses, although Suleiman first took the precaution of walking her further into the gardens, away from the natural interest of the servants’ eyes.
By the time they returned to the palace—where Ella and Haroun had perceptively put a bottle of champagne on ice—Sara was wearing an enormous emerald engagement ring.
And she couldn’t seem to stop smiling.
EPILOGUE
