скачать книгу бесплатно
Bitter tears of despair burned in Abbie’s eyes and, as she reached the half-landing, she sagged against the wall, covering her face with her hands.
Her brother had been a delicate child. He suffered badly from asthma and had often been in hospital or just sick at home. As a result he’d missed a lot of schooling so that he was young for his age and very naive. The trip to Barakhara had been his first experience of being abroad on his own. Now he was locked in some foreign prison and in the single brief phone call they had had from him, arranged with a lot of difficulty by the British Ambassador, he had quite obviously been terrified, begging them to get him out—to let him come home.
Frantic diplomatic efforts had followed and the Sheikh’s visit was the result of that. It was their only chance. It couldn’t fail. It just couldn’t!
The sound of movement in the room below jolted her upright in haste. Someone was coming to the door—opening it.
Her father appeared in the hall below. He paused, looked back at the man inside.
The Sheikh, Abbie reminded herself. The man of power who held the future happiness of their family in the palm of his hand.
In the palm of his arrogant hand, a spark of defiance added, recalling the way that the man had turned to look at her in the moment of his arrival. The assessing way those dark eyes had scanned her.
‘I’m sorry, but I must take this call.’
It was her father who spoke, his voice floating up to where she stood.
‘I won’t be long…’
He hurried off in the direction of the kitchen and Abbie watched him go. From her position here, higher up on the landing, even her father’s powerful figure looked shortened, smaller somehow and reduced. The sight of him wrenched at Abbie’s heart, making her bite her lip hard against the distress that threatened to choke her.
‘Oh, Andy…’ she began again, then caught herself up sharply.
It wasn’t all Andy’s fault! Okay, so her brother had been silly—downright stupid—but surely what he’d done hadn’t been all that bad! Other boys his age had done as much, worse even! In England, pocketing some items from the archaeological dig he was working on would just be petty theft—wouldn’t it? So what right did this sheikh have to lock her brother up and throw away the key?
Anger made her heart swell. A sense of bitter injustice made it beat at twice the speed as before, sending the blood coursing through her veins so fast that it made her head spin.
Who did he think he was? How dared he…?
She hadn’t even realised that she was moving until she found herself halfway down the stairs again—heading in the direction of the hallway and the room her father had just left. She didn’t know what was going to happen, had no idea what she was going to say. She only knew that she was going to say something.
The library door was still partly open, just as her father had left it. There was nothing there to make her stop, or even pause to think. The impetus that had taken her down the stairs had built up into almost a run, taking the last couple of steps two at a time, and sending her hurtling into the room before she had a chance for second thoughts.
Or before she had a chance to think of anything to say.
So there she was, suddenly face to face with the man—the sheikh—who had come to make demands of her family. Who was, in most respects, holding her younger brother to ransom, and was now letting them know just how they would have to pay.
Here she was, face to gorgeous face…
Oh, no, heaven help her, she didn’t want to think of how stunning he was close up. How devastatingly dark and sexy. Just seeing him scrambled her thoughts until she had to fight against the urge to say something that was the complete opposite of the anger that had brought her in here.
He was lounging comfortably at his ease, damn him, in one of the big, well worn, soft leather armchairs that flanked the big open fireplace. His handsome head leaned comfortably against the studded leather back, soft blue-black hair brushing equally soft chestnut leather. His long, long legs were stretched out in front of him, crossed at the ankles, revealing superbly crafted handmade boots. One hand held a teacup, the finest bone china looking absurdly small and delicate, impossibly white, against the burnished bronze strength of his broad palm, the powerful fingers of the other hand resting negligently on the arm of his chair, totally relaxed.
Unlike Abbie, who was fizzing with rage, bristling with defiance.
‘You can’t do this!’
The words burst from her before she had time to consider them or even try to decide if she would be wiser to hold them back. And she didn’t know whether to feel a sense of near panic or intense satisfaction as she saw the way that his head went even further back, forceful jaw tightening, gleaming jet-black eyes narrowing sharply as he looked up into her face.
‘I beg your pardon?’
It was a shock to realise that these were the first words she had ever heard him speak clearly. She had been intensely aware of him, of his presence in the house, ever since that moment that he had stepped out of his car and into the sunlit courtyard. It was as if he had always been in her life, not just newly arrived in her experience.
‘What did you say?’
The rich, dark, lyrically accented voice had sharpened, developing a razor’s edge that made her wince inside to hear it. And there was a new tension in the long muscular body that no longer lounged easily in the chair but had developed the tightness of a coiled spring, like that hunting cat she had imagined earlier waiting and watching for just the right moment to pounce.
He hadn’t actually moved but still there was enough of a threat of danger in him, in the tautly drawn jaw, the sharply narrowed eyes, that made her insides quail at the thought of that coldly reined-in anger turned on her. And yet somehow the new sense of risk added a sharper edge to the harsh male beauty of his face, the brilliance of those glittering jet eyes.
But not enough to curb her tongue.
‘You can’t do this! You can’t treat people this way!’
‘And what way would that be?’
‘You know only too well!’
‘I think not.’
To her nervous horror, he was leaning forward to replace the cup and its saucer on the table, uncoiling his long body with a slow and indolent grace as he got to his feet. Standing at his full height, he towered over her, big and overpowering, sending her throat into a spasm of shock and freezing her runaway tongue into silence. She swallowed hard and fought for the control not to turn and run straight for the door—fast!
‘I don’t believe I know what you’re accusing me of—or why,’ he went on, the beautiful voice shockingly soft and warm. Deceptively so because there was no way that the tone of his words matched the fierce, cold assessment to which those black, black eyes were subjecting her. ‘So perhaps you’d like to explain.’
He’d wanted to meet the sexy blonde from the moment he’d seen her watching him from the window, Malik reminded himself. In fact, he’d agreed to James Cavanaugh’s suggestion of tea largely in the hope that the maid would be the one who would bring it. He’d been disappointed when James himself was the one to go and fetch the tray. But then his host had been called away to an important phone call and now here was the blonde, appearing unexpectedly in the library without warning.
He would have sworn that, in the moment their eyes had met earlier, he had seen the same sudden flare of interest, of attraction, that he had felt for her. In fact, he had been so sure of it that he had been content to wait, believing it was only a matter of time before they came together. And her sudden appearance seemed to have proved him right.
She was even more stunning close up than he had imagined from the quick glimpse he had had of her through the window. She was tall, with rich, full breasts, a neat waist and curving hips. That ridiculous apron with its multicoloured flower print should have made her look anything but glamorous but the way it fastened around the slenderness of her waist emphasised the swell of her breasts, the flare of her hips. A real woman, unlike the almost boyish figures of so many of the females he had seen around London.
The sudden clutch of sexual hunger he experienced, just looking at her, was so primitive it was shocking. It was a long time since his rather jaded appetite had been stirred so strongly.
But her mood was not at all as he had anticipated. This hissing, spitting cat had little in common with the image of a warm, willing temptress he had built in his mind, letting himself consider that perhaps this trip to England might not be the boring diplomatic duty and family responsibility it had promised to be.
Instead he was faced with an aggressive, fiery creature who had marched up to him in a way that no woman in Barakhara would ever dare to do, confronting him with her hands on her hips and a blaze in her cool grey eyes.
‘I don’t need to explain! You know why you’re here!’
‘My business here is with Sir James—’
The attempt to squash her, silence her, failed as she drew in a sharp breath, then launched into a further attack, dismissing his intervention with an audacious wave of her hand.
‘Your business here is to decide Andy’s—Andrew’s—fate!’ she flung at him. ‘I don’t know who you think you are, dicing with people’s lives like that! Just what gives you the right…’
‘The law gives me the right,’ Malik broke in on her with a snap. ‘The law of—Barakhara. The same law that young Andrew chose to flout when he decided to pocket some of the items he found at that archaeological dig he was working on.’
Andy, his mind had noted, grabbing at the single word and working on the meaning behind it. She’d changed it pretty hastily to Andrew, but Andy was what she’d said at first, before she’d corrected herself.
And Andy meant a familiarity, a closeness that was more than servant to a member of the family she worked for.
‘A few paltry items!’ she scorned. ‘What? A coin or two? A fossil? And for that you’d lock him up for life!’
‘A few paltry religious items,’ Malik corrected coldly. ‘Items of deep significance to the history of Barakhara and its rulers. Items that in just the last century would have meant death for any non-Barakharanian to touch…’
He watched the colour ebb from her face with grim satisfaction. The ashen shade of her cheeks told him all he needed to know.
‘You didn’t know that?’
She could only shake her head, sending the pale gold of her hair flying as she did so.
Andy. Malik’s mind went back to the word in the way that he might worry at a sore tooth with his tongue. Andy…So what was the relationship between these two? Did they have something going between them? Was Andy perhaps her lover? The sting of jealousy that thought brought was as jagged as it was unexpected, making him move sharply, uncomfortably.
‘So he omitted to tell you the full facts about why he was arrested?’
Or was it the father who had done that? Was it the truth of the matter that James Cavanaugh—Sir James Cavanaugh— didn’t want the world to know just what his stupid elder son had been up to?
Malik’s mouth curled in distaste. The Honourable Andrew Cavanaugh was what the son called himself—what he had insisted on being called, Jalil had said. And the Honourable Andrew Cavanaugh lived in a house like this, with maids to clean and fetch and carry for him, and still he stole to line his own pockets. There was little that was honourable about that.
‘So now perhaps you’ll admit that I have a reason for what I’m doing. That I am not quite the spawn of the devil you think me?’
‘I…’
She didn’t seem able to find an answer for him. Her soft pink lips opened, but no words would come out. And clouds of confusion dulled the silvery grey of her eyes.
Suddenly Malik felt a sense of rage at the fate that had brought him here, the job he had to do. Why couldn’t Jalil do his own dirty work?
There were times when he wished he could just let his young fool of a half-brother go to damnation in his own way. But if Jalil fell, then the whole of his country would go to rack and ruin too, and he had sworn an oath to his mother—Jalil’s mother too—that he would never let that happen. A vow made within the family was sacrosanct, and he couldn’t live with himself if he didn’t keep it—no matter what it took.
He had hoped that a little dalliance with the blonde maid would at least provide some entertainment, some relaxation after the delicate negotiations he was going to have to handle. But from the stubborn, mulish expression on her face, he was going to have to work harder at winning her over than he had ever thought.
The unwanted and uncomfortable thought suddenly hit him that if she knew the son—this Andy—so well, then maybe she was close to the daughter as well.
That was a complication he could do without. He had seen no sign yet of the Gail that Jalil had talked about, but if she and this girl were friends…
‘No—he didn’t tell me,’ she managed now, stumbling over the words faintly and a raw colour washed those pale cheeks, betraying her embarrassment…
And making her look damnably sexy. It might be mortification that had put the blush on her skin but it made her look as if she had just got out of bed after a long, passionate session of sexual indulgence. It might have been the way that she had bitten down hard on her lower lip that had made it so pink, with all the blood rushing to the surface, but in his mind he knew that her mouth would look like that when she had been kissed senseless, taken to ecstasy and beyond.
‘What’s your name?’ he demanded suddenly, his voice rough with the effort of trying to distract himself from the heated blood that seemed to be pooling low in his body, hardening and tightening so that it was a struggle to think straight—to think at all.
‘I’m Abbie,’ she told him, looking a little startled that he should ask.
Not Gail, Malik thought on a rush of relief. Just for one uncomfortable moment he had wondered…
‘And what should I call you?’
She’d pulled back some of her confidence now, some of the strength there had been in her in the moment of her arrival in the room. There was a definite edge of sarcasm to her tone on the question. One that tugged a smile at the corner of his mouth, one that was impossible to hold back.
‘You can call me Malik.’
‘Malik…’ Abbie’s tongue curled around the exotic sound of the word as if she were tasting it.
It sounded rich and exotic, strong and firm—just right. Just like him.
‘Is that all?’
Her voice was softly husky, dragged from a throat that was too dry, too tight, to speak naturally. She swallowed hard and slicked a moist pink tongue over suddenly parched lips, watching his black gaze drop just for a moment to follow the tiny revealing gesture. And when his eyes lifted again, burning straight into hers, she knew that she was lost. She had fallen into sensual slavery without knowing why or how it had happened. But she was in and tumbling head over heels into an endless chasm of awareness, one from which she already knew she had no hope of escape.
Not that she wanted to. That smile had rocked her world. It had only been a small curl at the corners of his sexy mouth but it had made her shiver in instant reaction, heated pinpricks of awareness tormenting her sensitised skin.
‘Shouldn’t I add something else?’
Her question brought those brilliant eyes swiftly back up to her face, locking with her own bemused gaze, holding it fixed.
‘Add something?’ he asked, the musical sound of his voice coiling round her senses like warmed silk. ‘Like what?’
Like what? Abbie asked herself, scrabbling through the disorder of her thoughts, trying to find the original track they had been running on, the one she had meant them to follow.
‘Like—like sir,’ she managed hesitatingly.
He was a sheikh, wasn’t he? A ruler. Of the royal house of Al’Qaim. Surely he must have some official title that she had to use.
‘Or—or Your Majesty—or…Highness—’
The words broke off, her voice cracking as he moved suddenly, coming so very close. In spite of the heat, she found that she was once again shivering as if a cold draught had blown over her skin.
Having looked into the dark depths of his eyes, she found she couldn’t look away again but was held frozen, mesmerised, captive. She couldn’t have moved away if she’d tried. But she didn’t try—couldn’t try—didn’t want to try.
Instead she knew that the saving grace of all that anger was deserting her, evaporating in the warmth of that smile. And when she saw the faint golden glow of amusement that lit those amazing eyes then she was lost. All the resistance in her melted like ice before a fire.
‘Just Malik…’ he murmured. Somehow he had moved closer so that the heat of his breath on the words brushed along her cheek, stirring a tendril of hair at the lobe of her ear.
She inhaled deeply, breathing in the scent of him, the warm musk of his skin, and let her breath out again on a sigh.
‘Malik…’ she said softly, her tongue savouring the exotic sound of his name. The frantic beat of her heart had slowed, become heavy, indolently sensual, and the honeyed warmth of arousal was uncoiling low down in her body, all that was most feminine in her reaching out to all that was masculine in him.
‘Malik…’ she said again, wanting to say so much more but not having the courage to do so.
Touch me! she wanted to say. Let me feel the heat of your skin on mine, the strength of your hand, the stroke of your caress…
But the words died on her lips; she couldn’t make her tongue form the words even though she felt as if they were screaming inside her head. She had never felt this way before in her life.
No—the truth was that she had never known that it was possible to feel this way. To know this hunger, this desire for a man she had only just met. A man who made her heart thud, her pulse race, who made her aware of him in every part of her body so that her breasts stung and heat pooled in the most intimate spot between her thighs.
She’d had boyfriends in the past, but no one—no one—had ever affected her like this.
‘You’re beautiful…’
Malik moved slightly, coming even nearer, and once again the scent of his skin, the faintest hint of the perfume of cedar wood, reached out to surround her, tormenting her senses. She couldn’t take it any more. Couldn’t bear just to stand here and know he was so close—and yet not close enough.
