She forced a smile, hoping that she seemed all grown up and reasonable. Because she was not going to be the woman with the red eyes, clinging to his legs as he walked out of the door. ‘Look, Suleiman—you’ve been very honest with me, so let me return the compliment. I’ve always had a crush on you—ever since I was a young girl. We both know that. That’s one of the reasons that kiss when I was eighteen turned into so much more.’
‘That kiss changed my life,’ he said simply.
Sara felt the clamp of pain around her heart. Don’t tell me things like that, because I’ll read into them more than you want me to. ‘This time in Paris has been...great. You know it has. You’re the most amazing lover. I’m sure I’m not the first woman to have told you that.’ She sucked in a deep breath, because she was sure she wouldn’t be the last, either. ‘But we both know this isn’t going anywhere—and we mustn’t make it into more than it is, because that will spoil it. We both know that when something is put out of reach, it makes that something seem much more tantalising. That’s why—’
He silenced her by placing his finger over her lips and his black eyes burned into hers. ‘I think I love you.’
Sara froze. Wasn’t it funny how you could dream of a man saying those words to you? And then he did and it was nothing like how you thought it would be. For a start, he had qualified them. He thought he loved her? That was the kind of thing someone said when they took an umbrella out on a sunny day. I thought it might rain. She didn’t believe him. She didn’t dare believe him.
‘Don’t say that,’ she hissed.
He looked startled. ‘Even if it’s true?’
‘Especially if it’s true,’ she said, and burst into tears.
Perplexed, Suleiman stared at her and tightened his arms around her waist as he felt her tears dripping down his neck. ‘What have I done wrong?’
‘Nothing!’
‘Then why are you crying?’
She shook her head, her words coming out between gulps of swallowed air. Words he could hardly make out but which included ‘always’, quickly contradicted by ‘never’ and then, when she’d managed to snatch enough breath back, finishing rather inexplicably with ‘hopeless’.
Eventually, she raised a tear-stained face to his. ‘Don’t you understand, you stupid man?’ she whispered. ‘I think I love you too.’
‘Then why are you crying like that?’
‘Because it can never work!’ she said fiercely. ‘How could it?’
‘Why not?’
‘Because our lives are totally incompatible, that’s why.’ She rubbed her hand over her wet cheek. ‘You live in Samahan and I live in London. You are an oil baron and I’m a flaky artist.’
‘You think those things are insurmountable?’ he demanded. ‘You don’t imagine these are the kind of logistical problems which other couples might have overcome?’
Sara shook her head as all her old fears came crowding back. She thought of her own mother. Love certainly hadn’t brought her happiness, had it? Because love was just a feeling. A feeling which had no guarantee of lasting. She and Suleiman had both experienced something when they were fixed at a time and in a place which was light years away from their normal lives. How could something like that possibly survive if it was transplanted into the separate worlds which they both inhabited?
‘Listen to me, Suleiman,’ she said. ‘We don’t really know one another.’
‘That’s completely untrue. I have known you since you were seven years old. I certainly know you better than I know any other woman.’
‘Not as adults. Not properly. We have no idea if we’re compatible.’
His hand tightened around her waist; his thumb traced a provocative little circle. ‘I think we’re ve-ry compatible.’
‘That’s not the kind of compatibility I was talking about.’
‘No?’
‘No. I’m not talking about snatched moments of forbidden passion beneath the shade of a rock in the desert. Or sex-filled weekends at one of the best hotels in the world. I’m talking about normal life, Suleiman. Everyday life. The kind of life we all have to lead—whether we’re a princess or an oil magnate, or the man who drives the grocery truck.’ She pulled away from him so she could look at him properly. ‘Tell me what your dream scenario would be. Where you’d like us to go from here—if you had the choice.’
‘Well, that bit’s easy.’ He tugged at the end of a long strand of hair which was tickling his chest. ‘You no longer have a job, do you?’
‘Not officially, no. I left Gabe a letter on Christmas Eve, saying I’d had to go away suddenly and I wasn’t sure when I was coming back. It’s not the kind of thing his employees usually do and I’m not sure if he’d ever employ me again. There’s a long list of people desperate to fill my shoes. He’s the best in the business who could get anyone to work for him. I doubt whether he’d give another chance to someone who could let him down without any warning.’
But if she was hoping to see some sort of remorse on Suleiman’s face, she was in for a disappointment. The slow smile which curved his lips made the little hairs on the back of her neck stand up, because she suspected she wasn’t going to like what she heard next.
‘Perfect,’ he said.
‘I fail to see what’s perfect about leaving my boss in the lurch and not having any kind of secure future to go back to.’
‘But that’s the point, Sara. You do have a secure future—just a different kind of future from the one you envisaged.’ He smiled at her as if he had just discovered that all his shares had risen by ten per cent while they’d been in bed. ‘You don’t have to go back to working for a large organisation. All that—what do they say?—clocking in and clocking out. Buying your lunch in a paper bag and eating it at your desk.’
‘Gabe happens to run a very large staff canteen,’ she said coldly. ‘And insists on all his staff taking a proper lunch break. And I think it’s you who are missing the point. I want to go back to work. It’s what I do. What else do you suggest I do?’
He tugged on another strand of blonde hair and began to wind it around his finger. ‘Simple. You come back to Samahan, with me.’
She stared at him in disbelief. ‘Samahan?’
His eyes narrowed. ‘The expression on your face looks as if I have suggested that you make your home in Hades. But I think you will find yourself greatly surprised. Samahan has improved greatly since the cross-border wars. The discovery of oil has brought with it much wealth and we are ploughing some of that wealth back into the land.’
He let go of the twisted strand of hair and it dangled in front of her bare breast, in a perfect blonde ringlet.
‘My home will not disappoint you, Sara—for it is as vast as any palace and just as beautiful. A world-class architect from Uruguay designed it for me, and I flew in a rose expert from the west coast of America to design my gardens. I stable my horses there—two of them won medals in the last Olympics. I have a great team around me.’
Sara recognised what he was doing. This was the modern equivalent of a male gorilla beating his chest. He was showing her how much he had achieved against the odds—he, the poor boy whose own mother had sold him. He was trying to reassure her that he would treat her like a princess, but that was just what she didn’t want. She had hated her life as a princess, which was why she had left it far behind.
‘And what would I