Susan looked intensely discomfited. “Never mind. Better that you don’t. Drew needs to save some pride. He feels bad enough it was you who got Tareq to give him a fresh start. He won’t let you down on this, Sarah.”
“It’s not just me. It’s the family,” Sarah retorted, frustrated by Susan’s evasion. There were some things more important than pride and she tried to press them home, given this was her last opportunity to do so. “I’d hate to see you and Dad break up.”
She shook her head. “I’d never leave your father. We’ve been through so much. He stood by me when I was hopelessly incapacitated. I’d stand by him through anything, Sarah. Don’t worry about us. We’ll get over this hump and turn it all around.”
Faced with such faith and determination, Sarah didn’t have the heart to question further. Marriage was a private business to the two people involved and nothing she said would make any difference anyway. It certainly hadn’t in the past.
They remained on the veranda, watching Tareq directing the final show for the day. The limousine took off for another spin around the property, carrying three exuberant children and the man who held all their lives in his controlling hands for the next, testing year.
“I’m sorry you were so messed around by the divorce, Sarah,” Susan said, apparently stirred into an awareness of where her stepdaughter was coming from in the previous conversation.
“Not your fault,” Sarah replied dismissively. Sympathy had not been around when she’d needed it and hindsight sympathy only made the omission worse.
“I could have offered to keep you here with us. But I didn’t,” came the regretful admission.
Sarah had had a gutful of guilt from her father. She didn’t want it from Susan, too. “Water under the bridge,” she said curtly.
“I want you to know you’ll always be welcome here. Any time. For as long as you want.”
Too late, Sarah thought with rueful irony. A debt was owed now. People were uncomfortable with debts. It colored the flow of natural feelings. Though not with the children. They would never know. Nevertheless, it would lie between her and their parents, denying her the closeness she would have liked.
“Thank you,” she said, acknowledging the offer which had been sincerely made, however unlikely it was to be taken up. Tareq was about to dominate her life for the next twelve months. Perhaps longer if…her heart clenched with a sense of ominous urgency as she turned to her stepmother. She’d almost forgotten the most critical thing of all!
“Please tell Dad to do his best with Firefly, Susan. It’s important. Tell him from me it’s terribly important if he doesn’t want to let me down.”
Tareq might have freed her father from his self-made stress, but Firely’s performance was her passport to freedom.
“I’ll tell him,” Susan replied.
“You won’t forget?” Sarah pressed.
“I promise.”
Promises…she’d had a gutful of them, too…broken ones.
The limousine came back.
Her time here was up.
The children were happy to say goodbye…hugs and kisses and well wishes. Sarah settled on the plush seat beside Tareq. The chauffeur closed the door, the last separating act. She watched her family waving her off as the limousine moved away from them. There was no point in her waving. They couldn’t see her. She was behind tinted windows, cut off from them, enclosed in Tareq’s world.
“Thank you for making it easy,” she said stiffly.
“Was it easy?”
She grimaced, her eyes drawn to his by the gentle probe for honesty. “Yes and no.”
He nodded, understanding her ambivalence. There was both comfort and disquiet in his understanding so much. Recalling his skill at manipulating everyone today, Sarah was goaded into making one stand on principle.
“I appreciate your…graciousness…in the circumstances. But if you’ve made promises to Jessie, please keep them, Tareq.”
The blue eyes held hers, unperturbed, unwavering. “I never make promises I don’t intend to keep.”
Sarah suddenly felt foolish for raising the matter. Everything he’d said today indicated he set a lot of store by trust. In his life it was probably as precious a commodity as it was in hers.
“Then you will let me go if Firefly runs well next year,” she said, wanting him to voice that promise in undeniable terms.
She felt the power behind his eyes intensify, boring into her, flooding her veins with tingling heat, enmeshing her mind with threads of entanglement that would never let go unless he willed it.
“You will be freed…from being a hostage.”
His words rang hollowly in her ears, rendered meaningless by vibrations of a much more personal connection. Sarah knew in her bones she would never be free of Tareq, even given the lifting of the hostage tie, even given he didn’t want her with him beyond that time.
The impression he’d left on her twelve-year-old mind was still with her, and that had only been a week of her life. How much stronger would it be after twelve months?
“Why are you doing this to me?” It was a cry of protest, wrung from the depths of her being.
He didn’t question it. He didn’t pretend he didn’t know what she meant. “You think you don’t touch me, Sarah? What am I doing here?” His eyes glittered with a reckless pleasure in the challenge. “We shall travel this road together until I know all of it.”
SARAH DIDN’T WANT to get out of bed. The moment she woke she remembered what was ahead of her today—the trip to Silver Springs, being at Tareq’s side amongst other people—and the now familiar tightening of nerves around her stomach made her feel sick.
Ten days she’d been with him—another three hundred and fifty-five to go—and at this rate of personal upheaval, she was not going to survive the distance. It was difficult enough, coping with the tension of her position when she and Tareq were alone together. The thought of others looking on, questioning the relationship, speculating, as they surely would, stirred an intense inner violence. She wanted to hit out at something but there was nothing to hit out at, nothing of any substance.
Tareq could not have been more gentlemanly towards her, more considerate. There was no physical touching she could object to, no unseemly words she could hang him on. It was the constant waiting and expectation of something more to come from him that had her on edge.
Worse was her growing obsession with the man, the insidious attraction she couldn’t control, the tug-of-war between denial and desire, the awful, vulnerable sense of being powerless to stop what was happening to her.
Unless she reneged on their bargain and left him.
Which was impossible.
She’d given her word. And Tareq was ruthless enough to withdraw the agreement with her father if she failed to keep it. There was no escape and he knew it. He had all the time in the world to make his move on her. If he chose to.
We shall travel this road together until I know all of it.
With those relentless words beating through her mind, Sarah turned over, punching her pillow for the lack of anything else to punch. Her gaze fell on the lush tropical garden in the courtyard beyond the double glass doors of her bedroom. She’d forgotten to pull the curtains last night. Not that it mattered. The guest suite she’d been given was completely private, even to the courtyard outside. She couldn’t accuse Tareq of intruding