Tadj rapped out.
‘Do you intend to make an official announcement to that effect?’ Lucy exclaimed with frustration. She’d never tacitly agreed that she would become his mistress. In fact she’d hoped he wouldn’t hold her to that now everything about her stepfather was out in the open and he’d already put plans into place to deal with him.
Besides, she didn’t fit the brief of any man’s mistress, especially not the Emir of Qalala’s. She was far too independent to be locked away in a fort awaiting His Majesty’s pleasure—not to mention the fact that she’d been spared the flamboyant good looks she imagined must be necessary to hold down the post of official mistress. She didn’t possess the sophistication, or the class to mix in high society. She was happiest with her friends at the laundry, or with her student chums at college, where she dressed as they did, in cheap tops and jeans. Above and beyond all that, she was about to become a mother, and with a child to support, as well as a career to plan, she didn’t have time to waste swanning about.
‘I won’t need to announce anything,’ Tadj informed her with a relaxed shrug, with about as much emotion as if they’d been discussing the weather. ‘And, rest assured, I’ve no intention of embarrassing you.’
‘Your people will guess when they see me at your side?’ Lucy supposed.
‘Correct,’ he agreed.
‘AS WE’VE DISCUSSED, arrangements have been made to keep your mother safe.’
‘Thank you.’
‘However,’ he continued, brushing off her gratitude, ‘until I receive certain reassurances, you will stay in Qalala.’ Tadj’s stare was penetrating. ‘I understand that you had to get away, and would do anything—use anyone—to make sure that happened.’
‘Please don’t look at me like that. I never set out to get pregnant, but I’m glad that I am.’
‘Can I believe you?’
‘You must,’ she insisted softly.
‘For the sake of our child?’ Tadj suggested. ‘I suppose I’ll never know what you were thinking three months ago. I can only make plans going forward from now.’
Anger surged inside her. They were both in the wrong, and she had no intention of being painted as the only sinner. ‘How do you think I feel, when you ask me to be your mistress, to satisfy your sexual urges?’
‘My sexual urges?’ Tadj laughed out loud. ‘That’s rich, coming from you. Bottom line,’ he snapped, before Lucy had chance to speak, ‘you’re under my protection, and there you will stay—and that includes you, your mother, and the baby.’
‘Our baby,’ she fired back. ‘And my stepfather? What are you going to do about him? No one’s safe while he’s roaming free.’
‘Your stepfather has been returned to jail where he belongs, and he won’t be coming out of prison ever again, once my investigators have shared their information.’
Lucy was stunned into silence. She couldn’t believe that her stepfather’s tyranny was at an end. It meant she was free, and her mother was safe. Tadj had accomplished the seemingly impossible, by lifting a lifetime of fear and dread from her shoulders. ‘It’s really over?’ she whispered as she marvelled at this fact.
‘And always will be from now on,’ Tadj confirmed. ‘I wish you’d told me from the start.’
‘We hardly knew each other,’ she pointed out. ‘I wouldn’t burden you with that on the first day we met.’
‘All the same, I wish you had,’ Tadj told her.
‘How can I ever thank you?’ she asked.
‘I’ll think of something,’ he promised with one of his dark, unreadable looks. ‘But now you’d better get ready for the party. That’s one way you can repay me tonight.’
By keeping up a good front, Lucy thought, longing for more as Tadj added, ‘Call your mother. Let her know the good news, and then get ready. I’ll return to collect you in half an hour.’
‘Half an hour,’ Lucy agreed tensely, knowing the phone call would take up every moment of that time.
* * *
What Lucy could never have expected was that several women would approach the tent just as she had tearfully ended the call to her mother and offer to help Lucy get ready for the party. It was impossible not to succumb to their warmth and friendliness. The way they had welcomed her to their community reminded Lucy of her first day at the laundry, where she’d made so many new friends. Just like them, these women were full of advice on how to wear her hair, and what make-up to put on. Language wasn’t a barrier as several of them spoke English fluently.
‘You should grow your hair,’ one of the women insisted, and when Lucy asked why, she was told that a lover liked to run his fingers through long hair, while another, bolder woman, suggested other uses, when it came to teasing a man into a state where he would agree to anything. Lucy laughed with them, and said that her hair would have to do, and that whatever help they gave her, she would never be glamorous as they were. In Lucy’s opinion, their exotic sloe-eyed beauty completely eclipsed her own Celtic complexion with its peppering of freckles. This statement was greeted by a chorus of disagreement, but what would Tadj think? she wondered when one of the women had directed her to a full-length mirror. Gone was the utilitarian outfit she had arrived in, and in its place was a two-piece of such exquisite workmanship she felt like a queen.
Queen for a night, Lucy reflected ruefully as the women tweaked and smoothed the delicate fabric of her trousers and matching tunic. There wasn’t much they could do with her short haircut other than to place a single hibiscus blossom behind her ear.
So, hang me, I’m excited, she thought, imagining Tadj’s expression when he saw her all dressed up for the party. Even after everything that had happened between them, the prospect of spending time with the sometimes forbidding Emir of Qalala made her face burn and her body sing hallelujah in four-part harmony.
‘You look beautiful,’ one of the older woman told her. ‘The Emir won’t be able to resist you.’
‘He’ll fall in love with you,’ another insisted.
Lucy’s shoulders slumped. Somehow, she doubted that.
‘You’re ready, I see.’
She whirled around to find Tadj standing behind her. He was silhouetted in the opening of the tent, backed by the blaze of countless campfires, and the sight of him dressed in traditional desert garb was enough to convince her that Lucy Gillingham was indeed a lost cause. Her pulse was racing, while her body was going crazy in the presence of her all-powerful fantasy desert Sheikh made all too heart-stoppingly real. In a simple black tunic, with loose-fitting trousers and a headdress wrapped around his fiercely handsome face, this desert king was sex on two hard-muscled legs. She was smitten all over again.
Love swelled inside her. As did doubt. The power of his presence was undeniably formidable, but did Tadj respect her as the mother of his child, or was she a convenient womb, to be dismissed as soon as their baby was safely delivered? For a woman who had seized control of her life and had been steering it in a steady and constant direction for some time now, it was unnerving to know that this was one situation over which she had no control.
Lucy’s stepfather had been a problem, which Tadj had dealt with in his usual incisive way. She wouldn’t be troubled again. Even after everything they’d been through, he wouldn’t change a thing, Tadj concluded as he stared past the group of smiling women to the only woman who could turn his life upside down. Lucy looked stunning tonight, though he’d put her on show, and had expected her to behave a certain way, and that while she was vulnerable and her life was under the microscope. To her credit, she hadn’t