The Sheikh's Prize. Lynne Graham

printed and believed them, actually believed that she slept around whenever she felt like it. But then she had only to be pictured emerging from a man’s apartment for the press to assume she was engaged in an affair, but the truth was that she had some very good male friends, whom she visited, and had learned to treat the reports with amusement, for there was really nothing she could do to stop lies about her appearing in print. That, she had learnt, was the price of a life lived in the public eye.

      ‘That is not true. Cameron and I are very close. He’s my best friend,’ Saffy admitted, throwing her head high, reluctant to lie to him about that relationship but happy to take advantage of his ignorance if it acted as another barrier between them.

      ‘I don’t want to be your best friend. I want to be your lover.’

      Saffy’s lovely face snapped tight and turned pale. ‘And we both know how that panned out five years ago,’ she reminded him flatly. ‘Let me go, Zahir. Bringing me here is reckless and illogical.’

      Zahir studied her with veiled eyes, a grimly amused smile tugging at the corners of his handsome male mouth. ‘Perhaps that’s why it feels so good.’

      Saffy had shot her last reasonable bolt and she was stunned by his indifference. ‘You don’t know what you’re saying.’

      ‘I have never been so sure of anything,’ he shot back in rebuttal.

      The last string of restraint broke free inside Saffy. She had had a very long, hot and tiring day and now Zahir was plunging her into the nightmare of her better forgotten past. ‘But you can’t be serious…you can’t really intend to keep me here against my will!’

      ‘I will do nothing that causes you harm,’ Zahir replied stubbornly.

      ‘But keeping me here against my will is causing me harm! What gives you the idea that you can do this to me?’ Saffy lashed back at him, her temper finally slipping its leash and her voice rising on a shrill note.

      ‘The knowledge that I have achieved it. Your colleagues have been informed that you have accepted a private invitation to spend another few days in Maraban. Nobody will be looking for you or concerned that anything is amiss,’ Zahir asserted with satisfaction.

      ‘You can’t do this to me!’ Saffy erupted, infuriated by his self-assurance, his evident belief that he had covered all bases. ‘And why? Nothing’s going to happen between us. You’re wasting your time!’

      ‘No man looking at you could possibly believe that I was wasting my time in at least trying,’ Zahir drawled with husky appreciation, his golden eyes resting on her delicate profile with possessive heat. ‘It is a risk I take with pleasure.’

      ‘But I don’t!’ Saffy slammed back at him in furious rebuttal. ‘I didn’t agree to this. Nobody tells me what to do or makes me stay somewhere I don’t want to be and nothing on this earth is capable of persuading me to get into bed with you again, so you can forget that idea right now!’

      ‘I will call Fadith to take you to your room…’ Zahir pressed a button on the wall with a graceful brown hand, his bold profile set in uncompromising lines.

      In outrage that he wasn’t even taking heed of her objections, Saffy swept up a china vase on a stand and pitched it at him. It fell short and smashed against the edge of the fire pit to break into a hundred pieces.

      Zahir enraged her by turning his handsome dark head and treating her to a slashing smile of very masculine amusement. ‘Ah, that takes me back years. I had forgotten how you liked to throw things at me when you lost control of your temper. I will see you later when it is time to dine.’

      And with that very cool and unruffled assurance, Zahir strolled out of the room and left her standing there in a tempestuous rage that she could do nothing more to vent with her target gone. Trembling from the force of her pent-up feelings, Saffy breathed in deep to find inner calm. He would pay; she would make him pay for this in spades!