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‘I don’t,’ he said, swooping down to pick up her case. ‘When you sleep with me I expect it to be for much more basic reasons.’ He caught the look of shock on her face and smiled. ‘Of course, I meant if you sleep with me.’
His instant correction did nothing to reassure her.
‘I…I’ll stay in the palace.’
‘No. You’re my responsibility. I won’t know you’re safe unless I take you with me.’
‘I’ll be safer here, surely. There are rebels, you said, insurgents out there somewhere. Why wouldn’t I be better off here?’
‘This palace is my home. I have doubts they could get this far, but if someone is after me then this is the first place they’ll look. I won’t leave you here alone.’
‘I have Azizah.’
‘And Saleem…’
Mention of his cousin stilled her protests. Saleem would hardly accept the role of her protector. He didn’t like her, no matter how much she tried to stay out of his way and not upset him. The resentment was there, the mistrust clear in his eyes. He gave every impression that he hated her, but why? What had she ever done to him? And did she really want to endure his cold glares for two days alone?
‘Wouldn’t Saleem go with you?’
He shook his head. ‘He has other matters to attend to. He must stay here.’
‘Oh.’ Saleem was staying in the palace. That put a completely different slant on things.
‘You still don’t like him?’
‘I don’t know—he just makes me feel uncomfortable, unsettled.’
‘Saleem is my cousin. You should not feel that way.’
‘I know. I just don’t feel that I can trust him.’
‘Like you don’t trust me?’
Not like that at all. Khaled’s simple question came with a simple answer that only complicated her thoughts. Her mistrust of Saleem was whole and entire and every cell in her body reacted in the same adverse way to his presence. He made her cringe, he made her flesh creep. She just didn’t want to be anywhere around him.
Her mistrust of Khaled was completely different. She doubted his motives, she resented his arrogance and his duplicity in getting her here for reasons still not clear to her, but it was her body that she mistrusted the most. It was her body that reached out for him at the very same time her brain repelled him. It was her body that wanted him.
And she couldn’t trust herself to deny him. Maybe staying in the palace with Saleem was the lesser of two evils after all, even though the thought chilled her to the bone.
Khaled didn’t wait for her answer.
‘Then I will not let you stay. You will come with me.’
Panic welled up inside her. ‘But—’
‘Sapphire,’ he said, the sound of his voice strangely soothing, like a parent convincing a child, ‘it’s only for one night after all. What can possibly happen in one night?’
In less than two hours they were on their way out of the city and heading into the desert, the narrow strip of bitumen their only link to modern life. Sapphy travelled in the first Range Rover with Khaled choosing to drive. Half a dozen staff followed in the second.
The terrain at first was much like it had been driving into Hebra, stark, sandy flats broken by the occasional thorny plant, the air dry and clear, but gradually the landscape changed and the sand formed dunes, low and barely distinguishable at first, growing higher as they headed deeper and deeper into the desert.
Sculpted by the incessant winds, the red sand-dunes billowed all around them, creeping over the road in places and making the going tough. She sat quietly alongside Khaled as he drove, avoiding talk as far as possible and letting the landscape speak to her.
She couldn’t regret coming here. Even after all that had happened, she’d learned so much visiting Jebbai, experiencing palace life in Hebra, cool and insulated and heady with the ever-present scent of incense; visiting the city souks with Azizah and the colourful market stalls with their wares both simple and exquisite. Even his mother’s garde
n at the palace had been an experience that had fed into her psyche, enriching her experience of this country.
And Khaled? She looked over to him, his profile as majestic as the country he ruled, his strong features sculpted in his face like the lines carved by the wind in the dunes. With the white sleeves of his shirt rolled up to his elbows, his lean forearms worked at the wheel over the uneven territory and the occasional sand drift with strength and skill. Even some part of Khaled, whether it was his power, his arrogance or his dark and dangerous eyes, would feed into her work, she was sure. There was no way she would be able to divorce him from the experience.
