‘Morally? Hah! It is her morals that have caused me so much of a problem. Why should I have to suffer the disadvantages of employing a young western woman who has chosen to behave like a traditional virgin?’
‘My dear…’
Drax could hear the distress in the older man’s voice, but Monika chose to ignore her husband’s shock.
Tossing her head, she continued sharply, ‘I need a female employee who knows how to persuade men to become my clients, not one who freezes them away.’
‘Sadie should surely be praised for her virtue, Monika?’ the Professor protested.
‘I did not employ her for her virtue. She is pretty enough, but plainly she doesn’t know how to use that prettiness to her own advantage.’ Monika gave a dismissive shrug. ‘Now she has to learn the hard way that that does not make good business sense.’
‘You have ensured that she has sufficient money to pay for her air ticket home?’
Drax watched as Monika’s mouth hardened. ‘That is not my concern. If she hasn’t, then it will teach her much needed lesson. Let me summon the maid and get her to bring you both some coffee,’ she told her husband, determinedly changing the subject.
As a Lebanese woman, Monika lived a far more independent life than that of a traditional Zurani wife, who would never have dreamed of even appearing in front of a male guest of her husband, never mind addressing him directly. She was certainly far too strident for his taste, Drax acknowledged, and he shook his head and refused. ‘Not for me, Monika. I’m afraid I can’t stay. I have an appointment.’
It might only be March, but Zuran did not have a spring. Its climate went straight from a welcome ‘cool’ winter temperature of around twenty-five degrees in February to a swiftly climbing forty-five-degrees-plus in the middle of summer.
For Sadie, having to walk all the way into town with her case, and without the hat she normally wore for protection, the rising temperature felt distinctly too hot. Her hair might be thick and long, its burnished light brunette warmed with natural gold highlights, but it was no protection against the sun. At least she had her sunglasses to shield her eyes from the harshness of the sunlight as it bounced off the white-painted walls of the houses lining the roadside.
No one walked in Zuran—which was no doubt why so many male drivers slowed down as they drove past her. At least, that was what she was going to tell herself, Sadie decided, gritting her teeth as she ignored yet another car driver crawling along beside the kerb, murmuring to her words she was relieved she could not understand before thankfully he drove off when he realised that she had no intention of acknowledging him.
Her dismissal was so unfair. She had been good at her job, she knew that, but no way had she intended to coax and tease men into signing up with Monika by hinting at providing them with a sexual reward that she was not going to deliver. Sadie loathed that kind of female behaviour, and she loathed even more the kind of men who expected it.
Perhaps she was naïve, but it had shocked her to discover that a female employer should expect it of her—especially out here in this predominantly morally conservative part of the world. About her reaction to the man who had been accompanying Monika’s elderly husband she did not want to think at all.
Drax was just about to put his foot down to join the fast lane of traffic when the car phone rang. He knew it would be Vere calling him. It was typical of Drax that he never questioned why or how he should know that without looking at his phone. It was just an accepted part of their twinship.
‘How did the meeting go with the Ruler?’ Vere asked.
‘Well enough—although I don’t think he was too pleased that I turned up in your place. And, speaking of people who weren’t as pleased to see me as they would have been to see you, I’ve just seen the Professor. Monika asked to be remembered to you.’
‘So you’ve been too busy to find me a wife, I take it?’ Vere responded, ignoring Drax’s dig about Monika.
Up ahead of him, in the dust of the roadside, Drax could see the lone figure of a young woman walking and dragging her suitcase behind her. She looked weary—forlorn, almost.
What was it Amar has said about her? That she was modest, the kind of young woman he would be happy to see his son marry. Drax remembered the passport he had picked up. By rights he should have handed it over to the al Sawars, because the girl would surely return there to look for it once she realised she had lost it.
She certainly wasn’t greedy, he acknowledged. He had seen that with his own eyes. And she had to be naïve if she’d let herself be persuaded into working for Monika.
‘Drax? Are you still there?’
‘Yes, I’m still here, Vere. As to your bride—well, that’s where you are wrong, my brother. It just so happens that I may have found you the perfect temporary wife.’
Drax switched off his phone before Vere could say anything, and then started to cut the speed of his car.
Sadie could hear the now familiar tell-tale sound of a car braking to a crawl just behind her, but she refused to look round. However, this car didn’t pull away as quickly as the others had when she did not respond. Instead it continued to keep pace with her, casting a long shadow in front of her. She tried to walk a little bit faster, wishing she could move away from the side of the road, but the land beyond was too rough for her to wheel her case over it.
There was no need for her to panic, she assured herself. It was broad daylight and, even if he was being more persistent than the others, surely whoever it was would soon get bored when she didn’t respond, soon put his foot down to race past her in a cloud of sandy dust.
Only he didn’t. And out of the corner of her eye she could see a long black bonnet edging just ahead of her, then keeping pace with her.
She couldn’t walk any faster; she was panting slightly already, her skin soaked with perspiration caused not just by the heat now but by her anxiety as well.
‘Ms Murray?’
Hearing her name spoken in crisp accent-free English gave her such a shock that she froze. Just as he had estimated she would, she reflected bitterly several seconds later, when the car stopped, the driver’s door opened and the driver himself stepped out in front of her, trapping her between his body and his car.
‘You!’
Why had she said that? It had sounded so personal and so betraying somehow—as though she were deliberately creating an intimacy between them. And that hadn’t been her intention. She was just so shocked to see the man she had last seen standing in the Al Sawars’ courtyard with her employer’s husband standing in front of her.
Unlike her, he wasn’t wearing sunglasses, and something about the look she could see in his eyes made her feel like some poor creature of the desert caught in the predatory searching stare of a falcon.
‘If Madame Al Sawar asked you to come after me…’ she began uncertainly.
Before she could finish what she was saying Drax silenced her with a swift frown.
‘I can acquit you because you do not know me well enough to know that I do not act as an errand boy for others,’ he told her arrogantly. ‘But do you really know Monika so little that you think she’d show that kind of remorse?’
Sadie looked away from him. He was right, of course. Monika was not the type to suffer from second thoughts, much less guilt over what she had done.
‘I came after you because there is something I want to discuss with you. The Professor speaks very highly of you. He considers you to be a young woman of good morals and intelligence.’ Drax was not going to tell her that the Professor had also confirmed his own assessment that she was more inclined to think the best of others than the worst, and that this made her vulnerable to the selfish machinations of the unscrupulous.