she knew the school staff had sent regular reports to the palace. For the first year, homesick and overwhelmed by the changes in her life, she’d have given anything for a word from him. In her loneliness the Emir had grown in her imagination, filling the empty places in her soul. He was protector, hero, saviour...and something else she couldn’t put a name to.
In the years she’d been away, bombarded with new experiences and places, new people and ideas, he’d remained a constant. A lodestar, the single reference point connecting her to Halarq and the world she’d left behind.
Which, she realised with a grimace, was dangerous. She was nothing to him. Once she’d fulfilled her end of their bargain she’d never see him again.
Pining over the Emir and wondering whether he approved of her choices and achievements wasn’t sensible.
He’d probably forgotten her. No doubt his officious secretary kept a watching brief on the little social experiment that was Lina. For though His Royal Highness had been kind, she understood he’d only looked for a solution that would remove her from the palace and feed into his plans to modernise Halarq. He simply hadn’t wanted her.
Nothing new there. To her father she’d been a disappointment because of her gender. To her aunt and uncle an inconvenience. To the Emir a problem to be solved.
Tangled emotions knotted Lina’s stomach. Anxiety definitely. Though she’d survived and eventually thrived in her Swiss school, she knew what it was to be utterly alone. She longed for connection. To belong, to a place and to people, or at least one person.
Savagely Lina cut off that thought.
She’d daydreamed of the Emir, so tall and handsome, for too long. She was no teenager now. There’d be no swooning over him, or for that matter, any man.
Once her obligation to the Emir was fulfilled, she had a career to build. An income to earn. A life to enjoy.
The limousine turned off the teeming street and onto the private road that led up from the old town to the citadel. Above, its coral-coloured walls rising from the sheer rock, rose the Emir’s palace. A silver and blue banner over the gate whipped in the breeze, proclaiming the Emir was in residence.
Lina clasped her hands tight in her lap, trying to still the rising tide of excitement and trepidation that quickened her pulse.
She’d thank him for the wonderful thing he’d done in giving her an education. She’d throw herself into whatever PR tasks he devised to promote education and, as soon as she could, remove herself from his orbit.
She smiled. That was settled.
Except, as so often in life, it didn’t work out that way.
* * *
Sayid exchanged farewells with the fiercely bearded provincial leader then watched him and his entourage bow themselves out through the wide doors of beaten copper.
Rolling his head back, he tried to relieve the stiffness of too many hours sitting in the formal audience chamber. It had been a long afternoon.
He disliked this echoing room with its lavish decorations and raised dais that set him apart from everyone. But he’d made so many reforms in such a short time, he listened when his aides advised he should retain the traditional space for meetings with provincial sheikhs. He worked hard to steer them into change on significant issues. Where he worked was not, to his mind, important. If retaining a show of the old customs made them more comfortable, so be it.
He was getting to his feet when the chamberlain appeared in the doorway. He wasn’t alone.
Sayid sank back on the jewelled throne, his hands curling over the gilded lion heads on the arms.
Suddenly alert, his eagerness to go dissipated as he took in the figure walking beside the chamberlain. Slim, curvaceous, delectably feminine, though her fitted skirt and jacket in jade green covered her from neck to knee.
Late afternoon sun lit her from behind, which had the twofold effect of making it difficult to read her features while highlighting her lush curves in loving detail.
High heels tapped demurely across the inlaid floor and Sayid had time to note her glossy dark hair was pulled severely back and up.
She halted in the middle of the room. Her eyes were downcast, as was traditional in Halarq on meeting the Emir. Yet it was rare for westerners to know that. She was well-prepared.
He sat forward, intrigued that a lone western woman should seek an audience.
‘You may approach.’
The pair walked slowly towards him and Sayid found himself watching with appreciation the gentle undulation of her hips as she paced in those high heels. She wore no jewellery but that only accentuated the purity of her sculpted beauty. High cheekbones, eyes set on an intriguing slant, full lips, slender throat.
Heat crawled up from Sayid’s belly to clog his chest. A blast of fire shot straight to his loins. His hands tightened on the carved chair as she stopped before him, still with downcast eyes. She was one of the most beautiful, elegant women he’d ever seen. And Sayid had known many.
Yet something about her feathered his nape with a cold brush of warning.
Here, he sensed, lay trouble.
The chamberlain spoke. ‘Sire, I am pleased to bring before you...’
The woman’s jaw tipped high, her gaze rising to meet his and the chamberlain’s words were lost in the heavy thrum of Sayid’s pulse as he looked down into eyes as velvety as a drift of mountain violets. Holding his gaze, she dipped into a curtsey that was the epitome of grace.
Shock hammered. His blood rushed, drowning all noise.
Lina. Little Lina.
Sayid remembered her as pretty. Had told himself imagination had embroidered her charms. It had been the forbidden piquancy of finding himself her master, free to do as he wished with her, that had turned a passably attractive teenager into something special in his mind.
He’d been wrong. She was something special. More, she was extraordinary.
Not just because of her beauty. The way that clear-eyed stare met his, the hint of boldness behind the mask of politeness, communicated directly with him on a personal level. A level that made his belly tense and his calm crack.
‘Welcome back to Halarq.’ He kept his voice as grave as his expression. She might have knocked him sideways for an instant but Sayid would never let that show.
‘Thank you, sir.’ She bowed low in a move as formal and graceful as that of any courtier.
He refused to let his eyes track her trim frame, but it was too late. Her image was imprinted on his brain. ‘You’ve grown up.’
Her gaze met his, setting off a buzz of response at the base of his spine. Then her lips twitched into a far too appealing half-smile and she shrugged. ‘It happens to all of us.’ She paused, as if waiting for him to respond. ‘I just turned twenty-two last week.’
Better, far better than seventeen.
The sly voice in his mind was full of insinuation. Of anticipation. But he’d set himself up as her protector, her guardian. Because she had no one else.
Sayid knew what could happen to women who had no one to champion them. Especially beautiful, desirable women.
It was why he’d sent Lina away. Not only to pursue her education, but to keep her out of reach. He might be changing his country, one step at a time, to ensure all his people had the rights of free citizens, but he was still a man.
A man with a formidable appetite for pleasure.
Knowing that was a family trait, seeing its devastating effect on his uncle, who’d never learned to resist temptation, Sayid had striven to contain that side of his nature.
Yet he looked at Lina and something raw