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Only to discover she’d been better at hiding her true nature...
Now she was here. To seek a favour for a lover? A husband? Someone significant enough to merit a three-day sit-in at his palace gates when he, Tahir, had only received a callous dismissal?
Wrestling the bitter memories back under his iron-willed control, he made theothersnap decision he should’ve made when Ali informed him of his visitor’s identity. To place this woman firmly back in his past where she belonged.
‘You and I have no business together, Miss Winchester. You’ll be escorted out of my palace. I strongly recommend you do not return.’
She gasped, her eyes growing wide and imploring as Tahir pressed the intercom to summon Ali. The sound of the doors opening promptly made her take a single, desperate step towards him.
‘I beg you to hear me out.’
He directed a grim smile at her. ‘I suggest you do not come any closer. My security turns rabid at such behaviour.’
She froze and, somewhere deep within him, he experienced a sliver of satisfaction that was infuriatingly snuffed out instantly by disquiet.
And then that emotion too whittled away as her chin rose, scornful fire sparking in her eyes. ‘So you truly only brought me here to waste my time?’ she sniped.
He shrugged. ‘I don’t need to explain myself to you, Miss Winchester. I had five minutes to toss away on someone I once knew. Those five minutes are over. As for wasting your time, you were already doing that at my palace gates, were you not?’
She opened her mouth but Ali’s appearance at her side and the ever-alert guards just inside the door effectively silenced her.
But those eyes...those expressive, unforgettable green eyes that were alive now she’d decided to shed her trepidation continued to spear daggers into him.
Rousing something to life inside him.
A unique, white-hot blaze she alone had been able to create within him. Tahir had searched for that spark with other women over the years. With each failure, he’d resented its creator and its absence even more.
As he watched her now every cell in his body seemed poised for her next reaction. Waited for her clever tongue to cut him down. Instead, she deflated with whatever weighed her down.
‘Please. Ta... Your Majesty.’
Please.
More than her disingenuousI’m sorry, this word gave him pause.
Hadn’t he promised himself during that interminable year in the desert that one day he would hear her beg for his mercy as she was doing now?
But it wasn’t enough. What this woman had put him through, everything he’d lost—respect, integrity, his father’s pride in him, the ridicule of his peers, even his mother’s fiscal quid pro quo version of affection, something he’d never thought he’d miss until even that was denied him—had been because she’d refused to utter a few, simple,truthfulwords...
‘Your Majesty, it is time,’ Ali said into the charged silence.
Tahir’s gaze shifted to his aide and read the speculation in the older man’s eyes. He didn’t answer. He stepped away from his desk and, without a word to either of them, strode out of his office.
Tense seconds later, he heard her hesitant footsteps. Then they picked up speed as he lengthened his stride towards his private quarters.
With one simple gesture, Tahir knew he could have her removed. But the cloying need to hear more of that begging, to salve the wound she’d torn open with her presence, stayed his hand.
Ali, clutching his infernal leather-bound file, strode alongside him. ‘The helicopter is ready to take you north, Your Majesty,’ he murmured.
‘Good,’ Tahir clipped out.
‘Will you be staying the whole two weeks, as previously arranged?’ he asked, casting a speaking glance over his shoulder.
Tahir’s teeth gritted. ‘Nothing has changed.’
‘Very good, Your Majesty. In that case, the meetings with the region heads will proceed as scheduled tomorrow. Then in the evening you have...’
Tahir half listened as Ali droned on, his ears maddeningly pricked to the other set of footsteps following him. She would be stopped soon enough.
