There was silence. And when Khalim spoke it was as soft as the hiss of a snake. ‘You dare to stipulate a condition?’ he demanded. ‘Of me?’
‘If I am your brother—or half-brother,’ retorted Darian, ‘then some kind of equality must exist. I am neither your subject nor your inferior—am I, Khalim?’
‘No,’ answered Khalim, and a reluctant smile nudged at his lips as he looked at the man with the golden eyes and the tawny skin. ‘Then name your condition, and if it is within my power it shall be met.’
Darian savoured the moment as his eyes captured hers and held them, hard. ‘I want Lara to accompany me.’
Khalim nodded, as if he understood perfectly, and turned also to look at her, a silent question stilling the dark features.
Lara’s heart pounded with something very like fear. She loved Maraban, and in any other circumstances she would have been overjoyed to be given the opportunity to go there again. But these circumstances were different. She knew without being told that Darian Wildman was not asking her to go with him because he still thought that she was ‘sweet’ or because he enjoyed her company so much he couldn’t bear to be without it.
No, the sudden hardness which had made the golden eyes look so cold filled her with a foreboding that made her skin grow chill, and in that moment she wished she could just close her eyes and be a million miles away from here, and then return to find that none of it had ever happened…
But it had happened.
And didn’t she owe it to him—in some strange kind of way—for the way that she had deceived him? And to Khalim, too—who had been so generous to her in the past?
If Darian visiting Maraban was all down to whether or not she would go with him, then how could she possibly refuse?
Her skin felt icy-cold as she nodded, lowering her lashes so that she didn’t have to meet that mocking gold stare. ‘If that is what you want, then I will comply.’ Comply! She sounded like some little subordinate now! Lifting her chin, she turned to Khalim, trying to keep her voice steady. ‘Wh—when did you anticipate us leaving?’
Khalim smiled. ‘My jet is on the runway. We will leave for Maraban just as soon as you have both packed sufficient for your needs.’
CHAPTER NINE
DARIAN sat back against the leather seat of the car as it silently and powerfully sped towards the airfield, his mind spinning with thoughts which seemed just too incredible to be true.
Beside him sat Khalim, and in the front, next to the driver, a burly man whose bulk made his position as bodyguard to the Sheikh unmistakable.
Lara had elected to travel in the second car, hastily reassuring Khalim that she would be happy to do so. I bet she is, thought Darian grimly. Deceiving and conniving little Mata Hari! He had read of women who used their sexuality to try to get close to a man, to sensuously make them let their guard down before blowing their lives into smithereens, but he had foolishly imagined that kind of woman to have no place in the contemporary world.
How very wrong he had been!
He felt the jab of fury combined with the hot thrust of lust, but he steadfastly put all thoughts of Miss Lara Black out of his mind. She wasn’t going anywhere—or at least nowhere that he wasn’t going—and he would deal with her when the time was right. For now, his head was too full of thoughts which sounded more like the plot for some fantastic story. But facts were facts—however incredible—and this was no story, it was his life.
He was going to Maraban! To a mountain kingdom to which, it seemed, he was linked by birth. And through all his anger and confusion he felt the stir of something within him, some soft blaze of an emotion he did not recognise.
He turned to look at Khalim, who had been sitting silently at his side, managing to be both alert and yet relaxed—as though there was little in this world which surprised him, and maybe there wasn’t. For wouldn’t life as ruler of a country such as Maraban present all kinds of dilemmas and problems which a normal man would never encounter in his lifetime?
‘You don’t seem angry,’ observed Darian quietly.
Khalim turned to him, a wry look on his dark and shadowed face. ‘Why would I waste my time being angry about what exists?’ he murmured. ‘That would be like being angry because it was raining, or because…’ He seemed to search for some analogy which the Western man would understand. ‘Because the horse you had placed your last dollar on had broken its leg before the big race!’
For the first time Darian smiled. ‘I am not a betting man.’
‘No? You do not gamble on luck and on fortune?’
‘I don’t gamble on anything.’ And it was true. Gambling was precarious, and Darian had spent his life avoiding the precarious. He made things certain wherever it was possible, and for that you needed something far more tangible than luck. Simple, really. If you worked hard and used all your brains and initiative and imagination then you would reap the benefit of that.
Yet Khalim possessed untold, almost unimaginable wealth, Darian acknowledged as he glanced around the car. This vehicle was bullet-proofed, he recognised, and modified for the man it carried—as different from even a rich man’s car as cheap plonk was from vintage champagne.
‘We’re here,’ said Khalim shortly, as the car pulled into the airfield, and Darian saw a gleaming jet sitting there, the tiny emblem of a small flag on its tail golden and rose-pink and a deep sapphire-blue. Blue, like her eyes, he thought bitterly. Like her lying and cheating eyes.
Lara stepped out of the other car, seeing the two tall, dark figures emerge. Already she felt an outsider—she, who had known Khalim for years now, felt peculiarly isolated as she saw the two men standing together. As if they belonged and she didn’t. Or was that just her imagination working overtime, as usual?
But then Darian turned to look at her, and she felt her heart sink. How could such a warm and rich and vibrant colour as gold be transmuted into something so cold and threatening? But gold was like that, she reminded herself. The colour was warm, but the metal itself was cold—and since time had begun men had died in the pursuit of the costly and elusive treasure.
She shivered, hugging her coat tightly around her, though she knew that the garment would be redundant once they were in the soft, scented heat of Maraban.
As she stared back at Darian, a wave of longing and regret washed over her. Except that she had nothing to regret, did she? Not really—for the man she yearned for was nothing more than an idealised figment of her imagination. True, he had been passion personified…until afterwards…Remember that, she told herself fiercely. Afterwards he had been as cold as the gold of his eyes.
She had lost nothing because there had been nothing between them to lose, other than a brief and beautiful encounter on his leather sofa. A man who respected you and had feelings for you did not take you straight home after such an encounter and then not bother ringing you!
Darian was smiling at her now, but it didn’t seem like a smile at all—more like a grim declaration of intent to pay her back for what he undoubtedly saw as her deceit and betrayal.
And Lara had a pretty good idea of how he was intending to extract that payment.
Well, tough, she thought, with a defiant return of some of her fighting spirit. If you think you’re going to repeat that physically satisfying but ultimately soulless encounter, then you can think again, Mr Half-Brother-to-the-Sheikh.
So why was it that her stupid heart ached with sadness for what might have been?
Yet the reminder of his cavalier behaviour made her feel better in some perverse kind of way, and she even managed to flash a friendly smile at him as they made their way up the wind-buffeted steps to the aeroplane, only to be met with a tight-lipped glower in return.
The flight was long, but supremely comfortable, and