Page 32 of At the Sheikh's Command
She walked away, inhaled a deep breath, and then turned back to him.
“Darrius. I’m here for the diamond. To find it would be good for both you and me and your country. Wemustfocus on that.”
He shook his head.
“What the hell can I do to convince you?” she asked.
“Nothing.” He shrugged. “I mean, I’ll help you find it, but only so I can be with you. The diamond means nothing to me compared to you.”
She shook her head and kept on shaking it. “I can’t do this, Darrius.”
“You don’t have todoanything. Simply enjoy the journey.” He leaned in to her. “And I will make sure it is an enjoyable one.”
He moved away before she could react, which was just as well, because her heart was racing at the feel of his breath on her neck. All he had to do was kiss her and it would have been game over. But he didn’t. Instead, he stepped out of the villa.
She didn’t follow immediately as her emotions and mind were in a whirl. Nothing was working out how she’d planned it to.Nothing. She should leave.Now. She would go to him and insist that they return to the city. But then she wouldn’t be able to check out her theory about the diamond. She glanced at the place where Darrius had stood and gritted her teeth. She had no choice. She was in too far.
Outside, the sun had lowered and its deep golden light was now filtered through the trees. A light breeze had risen and rosy flecks of sunlight highlighted the ruffled water. Darrius stood beside a tumbledown archway, looking across the water at her, his white robes flapping in the wind. He looked like the king he was, but also something else. He looked like a hunter eyeing his prey. She shivered, looked down at the broken path, and rubbed her forehead. When she looked up, he was gone.
She took one last look around the oasis, for a moment on fire as the sun sank over the horizon. As she retraced her steps back to the car, she felt as if something had shifted within her. Darrius had played her and he’d won. Her defenses were fracturing, little by little, and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it.
CHAPTER15
Leonora was beginning to regret her insistence that they move on to Qasr Jabal, the Mountain Palace. It was dark as they drove upward into the hanging valley where the palace was situated, and the road was very windy. She held her breath every time they reached the outer curve of the bend, knowing that there was nothing between her and the desert floor, thousands of feet below. But each time, Darrius expertly negotiated the dangerous road. She felt as if, rather than escaping danger, she was edging closer toward it with each mile they traveled. The sheer drop was the least of her problems.
She glanced at Darrius. They’d driven in silence most of the way. She’d been trying desperately to stem the flood of memories which kept surfacing, whether she liked it or not. Images of Darrius, eight years earlier, turning to her as the sun was setting over the oasis—the moment when she’d known she might have gone to the desert as a virgin, but she wouldn’t be emerging as one.
She pressed her eyes closed as the emotions accompanying the memory battered at her brain.
“Scared of heights?” asked Darrius.
She opened her eyes suddenly. “No,” she said automatically, denying fear of any kind. It was how she’d been raised. If her father detected fear, he’d have exploited it. She looked away sharply, not wanting him to see the truth in her eyes. Instead, she looked back, in the direction of the oasis, of which there was now no sign. The only light came from a burnt orange streak which sat low across the horizon, marking the place where the sun had sunk.
“Of course not,” he murmured, “you’re not afraid of anything.”
“It would be foolish not to be afraid of anything.”
“Indeed, but that’s what you told me once. You said, ‘I’m not afraid of anything because that’s the way I was raised.’” He paused as he negotiated a few tricky curves in the road. She hoped he’d leave this train of thought and said nothing. “So you’ve learned to be afraid?” he said at last. Her heart sank. He had an unerring ability to uncover the truth.
“Maybe,” she said at last. Neither true, nor false and, she hoped, vague enough for him to stop talking.
“And why is that?”
Because I discovered what it was like to love and then to lose.
But the words she wanted to shout remained unspoken thoughts whirling in her mind, because she was still too afraid to tell the truth.
She swallowed and shrugged. “Life, I guess.”
He heaved a deep sigh, as if he understood he wasn’t going to get any nearer to the truth than that. He remained silent as he focused on steering the SUV around a hairpin bend and then up a steep incline. And suddenly their destination was revealed.
Lanterns hung on either side of the great doors, which punctured the front of the small citadel. It nestled in the darkness of the hidden valley over which the mountain peaks stood guard. She’d never been there at night before, and it looked even more impressive than she remembered. Maybe it was the stark walls which glowed copper-red amid a sea of darkness. Or maybe the buzz of nerves was a remnant of what she’d felt at the oasis. Or maybe it was the man beside her who was responsible for the feeling of awe which consumed her. Whatever it was, Leonora knew she was more vulnerable now than she’d ever been.
“Welcome to Qasr Jabal,” Darrius said, driving through the gates which had opened upon their approach. Despite its antiquity, modern electronic tracking devices had obviously informed the palace of their imminent arrival.
She looked up at the awesome exterior wall as they passed through. “It looks more formidable than I remember.”
“It’s meant to look formidable.”
