had three glorious days of freedom to look forward to, and a tired sigh escaped her as she touched an admiring fingertip to the silky petal of an impossibly perfect blossom in the beautiful bouquet displayed in a vase inside the limo, while only vaguely wondering where the flowers had come from. When she got back to London, she would first catch up with her sisters, one who was pregnant, one who was desperate to conceive and one who was still at school. Her eldest sister, Kat, was thirty-six and considering fertility treatment while still being full of the newly married joys of her life with her Russian billionaire. After a sticky interview with her tough brother-in-law, Mikhail Saffy was a little less enamoured of her sibling’s blunt-spoken husband. Mikhail had demanded to know why Saffy hadn’t offered to help Kat when her sister had run into serious debt. Well, hello, Saffy thought back angrily—Kat had never told Saffy that she was in trouble and, even if she had, Saffy knew she would have found it a challenge to come up with that kind of cash at short notice. Having made a major commitment early in her career to help support an African school for AIDS orphans, Saffy lived comfortably but not in luxury.
Saffy’s twin, Emmie, was pregnant and Saffy had not been surprised to learn that Emmie didn’t have a supportive man by her side. Saffy was painfully aware that her twin did not forgive those who hurt or offended her and in all probability the father of Emmie’s child had made that mistake. Saffy knew better than anyone how inflexible her sibling could be because the relationship between the twins had long been tense and troubled. Indeed Saffy could never suppress the surge of the guilt that attacked her whenever she saw her sister. As young children she and Emmie had been very close but events during their troubled teen years had ripped them apart and the two young women had never managed to repair that breach. Saffy would never forget the injuries that her reckless behaviour had inflicted on her twin sister or the many years of suffering that Emmie had endured as a result. Some things were just too bad to be forgiven, Saffy acknowledged sadly.
In any case, Mikhail and Kat would undoubtedly assist Emmie in her struggles as a single mum—certainly, Saffy knew better than to offer assistance that would be richly resented. But she could not understand why Emmie had chosen to make a big secret of her baby’s paternity. Saffy winced at that thought. While it was true that Saffy had never told her sisters the humiliating truth about her own failed marriage, she felt that she had had good reasons for her silence, not the least of which was the embarrassing fact that she had totally ignored Kat’s plea that Saffy get to know Zahir better and for longer before she married him. Just common sense really, Saffy conceded wryly. Getting married at eighteen to a guy you had only known a couple of months and had never lived with had been an act of insanity. As immature and idealistic as most teenagers with little experience of independent life, Saffy had struggled from the outset with the role of being a wife in a different culture. And while she had struggled, Zahir had steadily grown more and more distant, not to mention his penchant for disappearing for weeks at a time on army manoeuvres just when she needed him most. Yes, she had made mistakes…but then so had he.
Satisfied with that appraisal, which approportioned equal blame for what had gone wrong in the past, Saffy emerged from her reverie and noticed in surprise that the limo was travelling down a wide empty road that strongly reminded her of an airport runway. As the route back to the airport entailed travelling through Maraban city, she frowned, gazing out in confusion at the emptiness of the desert surrounding her on all sides. Strewn with stones and occasional large volcanic rock formations, the bleak desert terrain was interrupted by little vegetation. And so pervasive was the march of the sand that it was steadily encroaching on the road, blurring its outlines.
Saffy had never warmed to Zahir’s natural preference for a lot of sand in his vicinity, had never learned to adjust to the extremes of heat or to admire the austerity of such a landscape. Where on earth were they going? Could the driver be taking another route to avoid the city traffic, such as it was? Her smooth brow creasing, she leant forward to rap the glass partition to attract the driver’s attention, but although she saw his eyes flicker in the rear-view mirror to glance in her direction he made no attempt to respond to her. While Saffy was annoyed at being ignored, his behaviour also awakened the first stirrings of genuine apprehension and Saffy rapped the glass harder and shouted for him to stop. What on earth was the stupid man playing at? She didn’t want to miss her flight home and she didn’t have time to waste.
As she withdrew her fingers from the glass her knuckle brushed against the flowers in the vase and for the first time she noticed the envelope attached to them. She snatched it up and ripped it open to extract a typed card.
It is with great pleasure that I invite you to enjoy my hospitality for the weekend.
What on earth? Saffy stared down at the unsigned card. Who was inviting her where and why? Was this why her uncommunicative driver was travelling in the wrong direction? Her even white teeth gritted in angry frustration. Had her lightly clad appearance at the shoot caught the eye of some local randy sheikh? Possibly even the guy in the sand dunes with the binoculars? What did he think she was? Dial-a-tart? No, no, no! Her blue eyes flashed like twin blue fires. No way was she sacrificing her one free weekend to pandering to the ego of yet another rich man, keen to assume that the very fact she made her living by her face and body meant that she was an easy lay available to the highest bidder! Desert Ice cosmetics was always willing to serve her up to VIPs as the face of its product and the somewhat racy reputation bestowed on her by the tabloids encouraged the wrong expectations and made rejecting amorous men even more of a challenge.
No way on earth was she spending her weekend with some man she hadn’t even met! She dug through her bag in search of her cell phone, intending to ring one of her colleagues for assistance, but she couldn’t find her phone and only finally accepted that it wasn’t there after she had tipped out the contents of her bag on the seat beside her. She had had her phone in her hand before she got changed, she recalled with a frown. She had set it down…and clearly she hadn’t picked it up again! She ground her teeth together and just for the sake of it attempted to open the door beside her. She wasn’t surprised to find it locked and it really didn’t matter, she conceded ruefully, for she had no intention of risking serious injury by throwing herself out of a moving car.
Conscious of the anxious glances the driver was now giving her in the mirror, she lifted her head high, her brain working double time. She might feel as if she were being kidnapped, but that was a most unlikely interpretation of her situation in a country as old-fashioned and law-abiding as Maraban. In addition, no Arab host would want an unwilling guest in his home. Indeed making a guest uncomfortable was a big no-no in Marabani culture, so once she politely explained that she had a prior engagement and apologised for being unavailable, she would be free to leave again…only by that time she might well have missed her flight home. Her lush mouth took on a downward curve.
Only minutes later, the limo came to a halt by the side of the road and with a click the door beside her opened. Saffy’s brow pleated as she climbed out and she thought about making a run for it. But a run for it to where? It was the hottest part of the day and she would burn to a crisp. In addition the road was still empty and they had travelled miles through unbroken desert. As she pondered the unavoidable fact that there was nowhere safe to run to, a large four-wheel-drive vehicle drew up at the other side of the road. The driver jumped out and opened the passenger door wide while regarding her expectantly. Clearly it was an arranged meeting for her to be transferred to another vehicle. Did she accept that? Or fight it…but fight it with what? She glanced back into the limo and studied the glass vase that held the flowers. It was the work of a moment to smash the vase against the built-in bar and retrieve a jagged piece of glass, which she cupped awkwardly in her hand because she didn’t want to tighten her fingers and cut herself on it. Straightening her slim shoulders, she crossed the road and climbed into the four-wheel-drive. The door slammed instantly behind her.
Was she in any true danger, she asked herself irritably, or was she at even greater risk of being swept along by an over-confident belief that somehow she was still in control of events? As soon as they arrived at their destination she would make it very clear that she wished to return to the airport immediately and if anyone dared to lay a single finger on her she would slash that person with the glass. Now was not the time to wish she had taken self-defence classes.
The vehicle