She could guess why he was behaving so coolly towards her, but that didn’t seem to alleviate this terrible aching which was gnawing away at her heart, despite all her anger and confusion.
‘So. How did your “chat” with the journalist go?’ she asked. ‘Did he agree to kill the story?’
‘He did.’ He slanted her a triumphant look. ‘I managed to convince him that your words were simply a heightened version of the normal nerves of a bride-to-be.’
‘So you bribed him, I suppose? Offered him riches beyond his wildest dreams not to publish?’
Suleiman smiled. ‘I’m afraid so.’
Frustratedly, Sara sank back against the cushions and watched Suleiman raise his hand in command, instantly bringing one of the servants scurrying over to take his order for tea. He was so easy with power, she thought. He acted as if he’d been born to it—which as far as she knew, he hadn’t. She knew that he’d been schooled alongside the Sultan, but that was all she did know—because he was notoriously cagy about his past. He’d once told her that the strongest men were those who kept their past locked away from prying eyes—and while she could see the logic in that, it had always maddened her that she hadn’t known more about what made him tick.
She took a sip of the fragrant camomile brew she was handed before putting her cup down to study him. ‘You say you’re no longer working for the Sultan?’
‘That’s right.’
‘So what are you doing instead? Doesn’t your new boss mind you flitting off to England like this?’
‘I don’t have a boss. I don’t answer to anyone, Sara. I work for myself.’
‘Doing what—providing bespoke kidnap services for reluctant brides?’
‘I thought we’d agreed to lose the hysteria.’
‘Doing what?’ she persisted.
Suleiman cracked the knuckles of his fists and stared down at the whitened bones because that was a far less distracting sight than confronting the spark of interest in those beautiful violet eyes. ‘I own an oil refinery and several very lucrative wells.’
‘You own an oil refinery?’ she repeated in disbelief. ‘A baby one?’
‘Quite a big one, actually.’
‘How on earth can you afford to do that?’
He lifted his head and met the confusion in her gaze. He thought how inevitably skewed her idea of the world was—a world where kingdoms were lost and bought and bartered. His investigations into her London life had assured him that her job for Gabe Steel was bona fide, but he knew that she’d inherited her luxury apartment from her mother. Sara was a princess, he reminded himself grimly. She’d never wanted for anything.
‘I played the stock market,’ he said.
‘Oh, come on—Suleiman. It can’t be as simple as that. Loads of people play the stock market, but they don’t all end up with oil refineries.’
He leaned back against the silken pile of cushions, an ill-thought-out move, since it put his eye-line on a level with her breasts. Instead, he fixed his gaze on her violet eyes.
‘Even as a boy, I was always good with numbers,’ he said. ‘And later on, I found it almost creative to watch the movement of the markets and predict what was going to happen next. It was, if you like, a hobby—a consuming as well as a very profitable one. Over the years I managed to accrue a considerable amount of wealth, which I invested. I bought shares along the way which flourished. Some property here and there.’
‘Where?’
‘Some in Samahan and some in the Caribbean. But I was looking for something more challenging. On the hunch of a geologist I met on a plane to San Francisco, I began drilling in an area of my homeland which, up until that moment, everyone had thought was barren land. It provided one of the richest oil wells in Middle Eastern history.’ He shrugged. ‘I was lucky.’
Sara blinked at him, as if there was a fundamental part of the story missing. ‘So you had all this money in the bank, yet you continued to work for the Sultan?’
‘Why not? There is nothing to match the buzz of being in politics and I’d always enjoyed my role as his envoy.’
‘So you did,’ she agreed slowly. ‘Until one day, something made you leave and start up on your own.’
‘If you hadn’t been a princess, you could have been a detective,’ he said sardonically.
‘So what was it, Suleiman? Why the big lifestyle change?’
‘Isn’t it right and natural that a man should have ambition?’ he questioned, taking a sip of his own tea. ‘That he should wish to be his own master?’
‘What was it, Suleiman?’ she repeated quietly.
Suleiman felt his body tense. Should he tell her? Would the truth weaken him in her eyes, or would it make her realise why this damned attraction which still sizzled between them could never be acted upon?
‘It was you,’ he said. ‘You were the catalyst.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes, you. And why the innocent look of surprise? Haven’t you yet learned that every action has a consequence, Sara? Think about it. The night you offered yourself to me—’
‘It was a kiss, for heavens sake!’ she croaked.
‘It was more than a kiss and we both know it,’ he continued remorselessly. ‘Or are you saying that, if I had pushed you against the shadowed palace wall for yet more intimacy, you would have stopped me?’
‘Suleiman!’
‘Are you saying that?’ he repeated, but he found her blush deeply satisfying—for it spoke of an innocence he had begun to question. And wouldn’t it be better to air all his bitterness and frustration so that he could let it out and move on, as he needed to move on? As they both did.
‘No,’ she said, the word a flat, small admission. ‘How can I deny it?’
‘I felt shame,’ he continued. ‘Not so much for what I had done, but for what I wanted to do. I had betrayed the Sultan in the worst way imaginable and I could no longer count myself as his most loyal aide.’
She was looking at him in disbelief. ‘So one kiss made you resign?’
He nearly told her the rest, but he stopped himself in time. If he admitted that he couldn’t bear to think of her in another man’s arms and that he found it intolerable to contemplate her being married to the Sultan and being forced to look on from the sidelines. If he explained that the thought of another man thrusting deep inside her body made him feel sick—then wouldn’t that reveal more than it was safe to reveal? Wouldn’t it make temptation creep out from behind the shadows?
‘It would have been impossible for me to work alongside your new husband with you as his wife,’ he said.
‘I see.’
And she did see. Or rather, she saw some of it. Sara stared at the black-haired man sitting before her, because now the pieces of the puzzle were beginning to form a more coherent shape. Suleiman had wanted her. Really wanted her. And now she was beginning to suspect that he still did. Behind the rigid pose he presented and the wall of disapproval, there still burned something. He had all but admitted it just now.
Didn’t that explain the way his body tensed whenever she grew close? Why his dark eyes had