Uncaring.
She pulled her elbow from Eric’s grasp and settled the glasses on her nose. Tinted with shadow, she could see the landscape more clearly: a stretch of tarmac, some scrubby brush, a rugged fringe of barren mountains on the horizon.
And Khaled. Her gaze came to a rest on his profile, and she realised she’d been looking for him all along. He was some yards distant, little more than a tall, proud figure, and yet she knew it was him. She felt it.
He was talking to Brian, the national team’s coach, his movements stiff and almost awkward, although his smile was wide and easy, and he clapped the other man on the shoulder in a gesture of obvious friendship and warmth.
With effort she jerked her gaze away and busied herself with finding some lip balm in her bag.
She hadn’t meant to walk towards Khaled; she wasn’t ready to see him so soon, and yet somehow that was where her legs took her. She stopped a few feet away from him, feeling trapped, obvious, and then Khaled looked up.
As always, even from a distance, his gaze nailed her to the ground, turned her helpless. Weak. She was grateful for the protection of her sunglasses. If she hadn’t been wearing them what would he have seen in her eyes—sorrow? Longing?
Need?
No.
Lucy lifted her chin. Khaled’s expressionless gaze continued to hold hers—long enough for her to notice the new grooves on the sides of his mouth, the unemotional hardness in his eyes—and then, without a blink or waver, it moved on.
She might as well have been a stranger, or even a statue, for all the notice he took of her. And before she could stop it Lucy felt a wave of sick humiliation sweep over her. Again.
She felt a few curious stares from the crowd around her; there were still enough people among the team and its entourage who remembered. Who knew.
Straightening her back, she hitched her bag higher on her shoulder and walked off with her head high and a deliberate air of unconcern. Right now this useless charade felt like all she had.
Still, she couldn’t keep the scalding rush of humiliation and pain from sweeping over her. It hurt to remember, to feel that shame and rejection again.
It was just a look, she told herself sharply. Stop the melodrama. When Khaled had left England four years ago, Lucy had indulged herself. She’d sobbed and stormed, curled up in her bed with ice cream and endless cups of tea for hours. Days. She’d never felt so broken, so useless, so discarded.
And now just one dismissive look from Khaled had her remembering, feeling, those terrible emotions all over again.
Lucy shook her head, an instinctive movement of self-denial, self-protection. No. She wouldn’t let Khaled make her feel that way; she wouldn’t give him the power. He’d had it once, but now she was in control.
Except, she acknowledged grimly, it didn’t feel that way right now.
The next twenty minutes were spent in blessed, numbing activity, sorting out luggage and passports, with sweat trickling down between her shoulder blades and beading on her brow.
It was hot, hotter than she’d expected, and she couldn’t help but notice as her gaze slid inadvertently, instinctively, to Khaled that he didn’t look bothered by the heat at all.
But then he wouldn’t, would he? He was from here, had grown up on this island. He was its prince. None of these facts had ever really registered with Lucy. She’d only known him as the charming rugby star, Eton educated, sounding as if he’d spent his summers in Surrey or Kent.
She’d never associated him with anything else, not until he’d gone halfway around the world, and when she’d needed to find him he’d been impossible to reach.
Even a dozen feet away, she reflected with a pang of sorrow, he still was.
Everyone was boarding the bus, and Lucy watched as Khaled turned to his own private sedan, its windows darkly tinted, luxurious and discreet. He didn’t look back, and she felt someone at her elbow.
‘Lucy? It’s time to go.’
Lucy turned to see Dan Winters, the team’s physician, and essentially her boss. She nodded and from somewhere found a smile.
‘Yes. Right.’
Lucy boarded the bus, moving to the back and an empty seat. She glanced out the window and saw the sedan pulling sleekly away, kicking up a cloud of dust as it headed down the lone road through the brush, towards the barren mountains.
Lucy leaned her head back against the seat and closed her eyes. Why had she bothered to track Khaled’s car? Why did she care?
When she’d decided to come to Biryal for the friendly match, a warm-up to the Six Nations tournament, she’d told herself she wouldn’t let Khaled affect her.
No, Lucy realised, she’d convinced herself that he didn’t affect her.
And he wouldn’t. She pressed her lips together in a firm, stubborn line as resolve hardened into grim determination within her. The first time she saw him was bound to be surprising, unnerving. That didn’t mean the rest of her time in Biryal would be.
She let out a slow breath, felt her composure trickle slowly back and smiled.
The bus wound its way along the road that was little more than a gravel-pitted track, towards Biryal’s capital city, Lahji. Lucy leaned across the seat to address Aimee, the team’s nutritionist.
‘Do you know where we’re staying?’
Aimee grinned, excitement sparking in her eyes. ‘Didn’t you hear? We’re to stay in the palace, as special guests of the prince.’
‘What?’ Lucy blinked, the words registering slowly, and then with increasing dismay. ‘You mean Prince Khaled?’
Aimee’s grin widened, and Lucy resisted the urge to say something to wipe it off. ‘Yes, wasn’t he gorgeous? I didn’t think I’d ever go for a sheikh, for heaven’s sake, but—’
‘I see.’ Lucy cut her off, her voice crisp. She leaned back in the seat and looked out of the window, her mind spinning. The scrub and brush had been replaced by low buildings, little more than mud huts with straw roofs. Lucy watched as a few skinny goats tethered to a rusty metal picket fence bleated mournfully before they were obscured in the cloud of sandy dust the bus kicked up.
They were staying at the palace. With Khaled. Lucy hadn’t imagined this, hadn’t prepared for it. When she’d envisioned her conversation with Khaled—the one she knew they’d had to have—she’d pictured it happening in a neutral place, the stadium perhaps, or a hotel lounge. She’d imagined something brief, impersonal, safe. And then they’d both move on.
They could still have that conversation, she consoled herself. Staying at the palace didn’t have to change anything. It wouldn’t.
She gazed out of the window again and saw they were entering Lahji. She didn’t know that much about Biryal—she hadn’t wanted to learn—but she did know its one major city was small and well-preserved. Now she saw that was the case, for the squat buildings of red clay looked like they’d stood, slowly crumbling, for thousands of years.
In the distance she glimpsed a tiny town, no more than a handful of buildings, a brief winking of glass and chrome, before the bus rumbled on. And then they were out of the city and back into the endless scrub, the sea no more than a dark smudge on the horizon.
The mountains loomed closer, dark, craggy and ominous. They weren’t pretty mountains with meadows and evergreens, capped with snow, Lucy reflected. They were bare and black, sharp and cruel-looking.
‘There’s the palace!’ Aimee said with a breathless little laugh, and, leaning forward, Lucy saw that the palace—Khaled’s home—was built into one of those terrible peaks like a hawk’s nest.