another rise of tension, she inquired, “Have you been with Sheikh Tareq al-Khaima for a long time, Mr. Larsen?”
He looked directly at her, his mouth curling slightly. “You could say that.”
Oxford accent. Upper-class English. “Are you a friend or do you work for the sheikh?” she asked, needing to place him.
“I’m his trouble-shooter. Are you trouble, Miss Hillyard?”
A hatchet man, she thought. “Am I seeing him or you?”
“The sheikh will see you personally.”
The man’s superior manner provoked her. “Then I hope I’m trouble, Mr. Larsen.”
“Brave words, Miss Hillyard.”
And probably foolish. Getting anyone close to Tareq offside was hardly good politics.
Mr. Larsen turned away, though not before Sarah saw a flicker of amusement in the light grey eyes. A chill ran down her spine. This man’s amusement would undoubtedly be aroused by the anticipation of seeing someone cut to pieces. It did not augur well for her meeting with Tareq. But at least she was seeing him, which gave her a chance at persuasion.
Sarah clung to that reassurance. The elevator stopped. Mr. Larsen led her along a corridor, stopping at a door on which he knocked before using a key to open it. Poker-faced once more, he ushered Sarah into a suite full of light.
The blinds had been lifted from two huge picture windows, allowing a spectacular view over the city. Tareq stood at the window. Although his back was turned to her and he was anonymously clothed in a navy blue suit, Sarah had no doubt who it was. The thick black hair, dark olive skin, his height and build, brought an instant wave of familiarity, despite the passage of years between their meetings. Yet Sarah was just as instantly aware of something different.
She remembered him as carrying an air of easy self-assurance, confident of who he was and what he wanted from life. To a child who felt no security about anything, it had seemed quite wonderful to be like that. Now she sensed something more, a dominant authority that didn’t bend.
Perhaps it was in the square set of his shoulders, the straightness of his back, the quality of stillness telegraphing not only total command of himself, but command of the situation. Even the plain dark suit implied he needed no trappings to impress himself on anyone. He didn’t have to do anything. He certainly didn’t have to turn to her need to appeal to him.
Her formidable escort had followed her into the suite and shut the door behind them. He waited, as she did, for Tareq to acknowledge their presence. Waiting for the entertainment to begin, Sarah thought, and wondered if she should take the initiative and greet Tareq. The silence seemed to hum with negative vibrations, choking off any facile words.
“Did your father send you, Sarah?”
The quiet question had a hard edge to it. Without moving, without so much as a glance at her, Tareq had spoken, and Sarah suddenly realised he was standing in judgment. She sensed his back would remain turned to her if her answer complied with whatever dark train of thought was in his mind. She didn’t know what he expected to hear. The truth was all she could offer.
“No. It was my own idea to come to you. If you remember, we met in Ireland when...”
“I remember. Did your father agree to your coming here?”
Sarah took a deep breath. Tareq al-Khaima was not about to be swayed by reminiscences. He was directing this encounter and she had no choice but to toe his line.
“I haven’t even spoken to my father. Nor seen him,” she answered. “I was at Werribee yesterday, looking after the children. Susan, his wife, phoned last night. She was terribly distressed...”
“So you’ve come to intercede for him,” he cut in, unsoftened.
“For all of them, Tareq. It doesn’t just affect my father.”
“What do you intend to offer me to balance what he’s done?”
“Offer?” The concept hadn’t occurred to her. No way could she compensate for whatever had been lost. ‘I...I’m sorry. I have no means to pay you back for...for my father’s mismanagement.”
“Mismanagement!”
Her heart leapt as he swung around. The vivid blue blaze of his eyes shot electric tingles through her brain, paralysing her thought processes. Her whole body felt caught in a magnetic field. Her stomach contracted. Goose bumps broke out on her skin. She couldn’t even breathe. Never in her life had she felt such power coming from anyone. She was helpless to do anything but stare back at him. His gaze literally transfixed her.
The initial bolts of anger transmuted into laser beams. It felt as though he was peeling back the years, remembering how she’d been at twelve, then piling them on again, rebuilding the woman she was now, studying her, seeing if she measured up to whatever he thought she should be.
Sarah struggled to reclaim her mind. He had changed. The shock of such blue eyes—an inherited gene from his English mother—against his dark complexion still held fascination but she saw no kindness in them, nothing to encourage hope. His strikingly handsome face had matured into harder, sharper lines, his softer youthfulness discarded. She knew him to be thirty-four, yet he had the look of a man who wielded power at any level and commanded respect for it. He was armoured, in every sense.
His mouth suddenly curved in a half-smile. “How can dark chocolate shine so brightly?”
They were the teasing words he’d used about her eyes the morning he’d invited her to ride with him on her stepfather’s estate in Ireland, she on a pony, he on a thoroughbred stallion. Sarah floundered in a wash of memories. She had no reply to the remark, any more than she’d had then.
“You haven’t learnt any artifice, Sarah?” he asked.
The abrupt change to a more personal line of conversation confused her. “I don’t know what you mean.”
The half-smile took on a cynical twist. “You’re a grown woman, yet I still see the child. The same rioting brown curls. The same appealing face, bare of make-up. Clothes that are nothing more than clothes. Perhaps that was intentional. Artifice in lack of artifice.”
She blushed at his dissection of her appearance and hated herself for letting him make her feel gauche. “Look! This isn’t about me,” she implored.
“The messenger always carries many messages,” he stated, his eyes mocking her assertion. “You’re a beautiful young woman. Beautiful women usually know and use their power.”
His gaze dropped to her breasts, making Sarah acutely conscious of the stretch fabric of her skivvy hugging their fullness. Then he seemed to mentally measure her waist, the wide leather belt she wore undoubtedly aiding his calculation. The curve of her hips and the length of her legs were inspected, as well, much to Sarah’s growing embarrassment.
His appraisal of her feminine power increased her awareness of the strong sexual charisma which, at twelve, she’d been too young to recognise in him. It was certainly affecting her now, so much so it prompted the realisation he was probably used to women throwing themselves at him. Wealth alone was considered an aphrodisiac. With his looks...
An awful thought occurred to her. When Tareq had asked what she intended to offer him, had he imagined a proposition involving sexual favours? Was he summing up her desirability in case she took that line of persuasion?
Sarah almost died of mortification. She wouldn’t even know how to go about it. Men hadn’t featured largely in her life, none in any intimate sense. As for Tareq...she was losing all her bearings with him.
. “The question is...how grown up are you?” he mused, the glitter of speculation in his eyes discomforting Sarah even further.
“I’m twenty-three,” she replied, fervently wishing everything could be more normal between them. She remembered feeling safe with