The Desert Bride Read online

  Time and time again Bethany had been urged to make her father feel at home, keep him happy, act as if he were a permanent fixture rather than someone just passing through. Even remembering that period of her life made Bethany’s stomach churn sickly. She had promised herself then that, unlike her mother, she would find her fulfilment in a career. She would be independent and self-sufficient. She would never, ever make herself vulnerable by building her life round some man.

  ‘Who taught you such a lesson?’ Razul probed.

  Dragged back in a shaken state from her own painful memories, Bethany focused on him, feeling that wild, crazed lurch of her every sense and hating him for having the power to do that to her. It was terrifying to feel that she was no longer in control of her own responses.

  ‘Twenty-seven years old and you behave like a mixed-up teenager... Why do you fight me like this?’

  ‘Because this is an impossible attraction...why the hell can’t you see that and accept it?’ she practically screamed at him from her turmoil of ragged nerves, on the edge of a breakdown. ‘Why couldn’t you just leave me alone? Don’t you ever think about anybody but yourself? Luring me out here and subjecting me to this nightmare is positively sadistic! You...are... hurting...me!’ And then her voice broke off in horror that she should have revealed that reality.

  His veiled dark eyes were impenetrable. ‘You hurt yourself, aziz. When you gain the courage to see that, perhaps you will also have the grace to be grateful that I chose to give you a second chance.’

  Her mouth wobbled below her outraged emerald-green eyes. ‘A second chance?’ she parroted in a strangled voice, scarcely believing her ears.

  ‘Which you have yet to prove yourself deserving of. Did I not desire you so greatly, I would have set aside all thought of you a long time ago,’ Razul delivered harshly.

  ‘I hate your guts...can’t you see that?’ she blistered back at him rawly.

  ‘What I see is...fear.’

  ‘Fear?’

  ‘There’s nowhere to run this time. And when you retreat I advance. You are losing ground fast.’

  ‘Are we playing war games now?’ she derided shrilly.

  ‘This is no game.’ Razul glanced with irritation at his watch. ‘I have a meeting—’

  ‘You have to let me go!’ Bethany asserted, incredulous at the lack of effect she was having on him.

  He took a step closer. Bethany leapt back. He laughed with genuine amusement, tremendous charm in that sudden, spontaneous smile. Approaching her, he lifted a hand and curved long, caressing fingers to the taut line of her jaw. ‘I anticipate a long, hot summer in which you will change from the woman you are into the woman you could be... You will not want me to let you go,’ he forecast with immense confidence.

  ‘Don’t touch me!’ Bethany jerked her head back out of reach of that disturbingly intimate caress, trembling all over, feeling cornered and menaced and infuriated by the unfamiliar sense of inadequacy that he was evoking within her.

  In answer Razul knotted his fingers into a hank of curling hair and brought his mouth down on a collision course with hers. Almost incoherent with rage, she tried to evade him but he held her fast, forced her to be still and kissed her, and she went down into the heat of hellfire and damnation without a murmur, electrified by the force of her own hunger. He pressed her back against the wall, both of his hands linking fiercely with hers, and kissed her breathless, crushing her ripe mouth under his until her senses swam in hot, drowning pleasure.

  ‘I will count the hours until I have you in my bed...’ Razul confessed raggedly, and withdrew from her.

  Wildly dizzy and dazed, she stayed upright on the power of shock alone. She opened her heavy eyes. He was gone. She slid down the wall like a boneless rag doll and shivered and shook, devastated by what he could make her feel, emotionally and physically drained by her own turmoil. What the hell was she going to do if Fatima didn’t help her? How long would it take the brunette to make what she had called ‘arrangements’?

  But Fatima reappeared within half an hour of Razul’s exit. Again the door opened without any prefatory knock. A veiled shape stood on the threshold. Fatima was cloaked in the voluminous folds of the chador which screened the female form from head to toe, and it was indeed an effective disguise. Bethany only recognised her visitor by her acid-yellow court shoes. A bundle of cloth was tossed at her feet.

  ‘Hurry...the car is waiting for us!’ Fatima hissed impatiently.

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Have you changed your mind?’

  ‘Of course not!’ Bethany gasped.

  Her heart beating like a drum, she pulled on the tent-like chador.

  ‘Conceal your hands in the pockets,’ Fatima instructed. ‘And keep your head down and do not speak.’

  There was no sign of Zulema in the corridor outside. Bethany found it incredibly difficult to walk with all that fabric flapping around her. When I get home I’ll laugh about this, she promised herself, but she knew that she wouldn’t... Indeed, all she could think about was the fact that she would never, ever see Razul again, which made her furiously, bitterly angry with herself.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  FATIMA led Bethany out to a dusty, cobbled yard bounded by a long line of garages. A Range Rover was sitting there with the engine already running. Bethany clambered into the back like a drunken sailor in her companion’s graceful wake. The car roared off and, mindful of the driver, Bethany continued to keep her head bent. Half an hour would take them to the airport—maybe a little more, she conceded, fingering the weight of her shoulder bag beneath the chador. She had her passport but no flight ticket... Hell, a seat on a flight anywhere would do as long as it got her out of Datar!

  The car lurched and jolted, the engine thundering. They were moving at considerable speed. Bethany finally emerged from her reverie to notice that the drive was taking a lot longer than she had expected. Twisting, she peered out of a side-window and was astounded to realise that the four-wheel drive was crossing a flat salt plain and there was no sign of a road or, indeed, of any other traffic. Her lips parted. ‘Where—?’

  A startled gasp of pain escaped her as a set of pincer-like nails bit into the back of her exposed hand. Her head spun round. Her eyes collided with seething brown ones and she gulped. She dug her hand shakily into the pocket again but she could feel the slow seep of blood from the stinging slash of Fatima’s assault.

  Tense minutes passed. Bethany didn’t know what to do. Ahead of them the plain vanished into a rolling landscape of dunes. Where on earth was Fatima taking her? There was a sudden rustle of movement from the front of the car. Bethany gasped as a veiled female shape uncoiled from her hiding place on the floor and settled herself into the front seat.

  ‘Two women left the palace and two women will return,’ Fatima informed her smugly. ‘Nobody will suspect that you left in my company.’

  ‘Where the heck are we?’

  The Range Rover lurched to a halt in the shadow of a great rolling dune. Springing out, the driver opened the door beside Bethany.

  ‘Get out!’ Fatima planted both hands on her and gave her a violent push.

  Bethany got such a shock that she was easily unbalanced and went flying out headlong onto the ground. It knocked the breath out of her lungs but didn’t deprive her of hearing Fatima’s shrieked abuse and the prophecy that the sun would wreck that pasty white skin of hers and make her hair fall out so that no man would ever want her again.

  Bethany picked herself up and wrenched herself out of the suffocating folds of the chador. ‘You can’t leave me out here alone!’

  As the Range Rover raked into reverse she very narrowly missed being knocked flat by the swinging door that Fatima had yet to pull shut. She leapt out of harm’s way and then stood there in the burning heat of the sun, gripped by a brand of quite paralysing incredulity that anyone could do such a thing. Then she was furious with herself for trusting a woman who she had known was blazing with jealousy and rage. She checked
her watch and paled. How many miles could that car have covered in well over an hour? Worse, it would be dark soon.

  Seeking a lookout point, she started climbing the sliding wall of sand with raw determination. It took her far longer and required far more effort than she had expected. Near the top she bent double, struggling to breathe in the hot air and overwhelmed by dizziness. Finally achieving her objective, she strained her eyes against the fiery blaze of the sun and thought that she was hallucinating when she saw the lines of black tents beginning less than thirty yards below her.

  She blinked dazedly and looked again. Her terror of being found as a set of bleached bones after a long and painful decline brought on by thirst and third-degree sunburn died there and then. Indeed her attack of panic now made her feel distinctly foolish. It was a Bedouin encampment and a very large one. She did not believe in so miraculous a coincidence. It would seem that Fatima’s driver might appear to do her bidding but he was not a maniac and he had chosen the drop site, aware that Bethany could come to little harm here. She started down the slope.

  A clutch of colourfully clad children saw her first. They ran ahead of her, shouting at the top of their voices. Women peered out of dim tent interiors. Bethany followed the children until a whole horde of men piled out of an enormous tent and blocked her path, their dark, weather-beaten faces arranged in expressions that went from initial shock to outright rigid disapproval. They stood around her exchanging volleys of excitable Arabic and waving their hands about with gusto. Their reaction, so entirely foreign to the indelible rule of Arab hospitality, completely disconcerted Bethany.

  A tubby little man with a grey beard, clad in gold-edged blue robes, paced forward and fixed stern black eyes on her. ‘You are Prince Razul’s bride?’

  Red hair in Datar was like having two heads, Bethany decided. When some idiotic Englishwoman with a flaming head of hair came huffing and puffing out of the desert wastes wearing a silly, strained smile, evidently the locals could name her on sight. Zulema had not been exaggerating when she’d said that everybody knew about her. Now...should she say that she was not Razul’s intended or should she play dumb?

  ‘I am Razul’s great-uncle, Sheikh Abdul al Rashidai Harun.’

  Dumb wasn’t likely to carry her through, she registered. Her smile slid away. She sensed the principles of family solidarity looming large, and she had the nasty suspicion that Sheikh Abdul found the sight of Razul’s bride apparently loose and on the run in the wrong direction an offence of no mean order.

  ‘I got lost,’ she muttered stupidly, but she was so hot and so exhausted that the world around her was beginning to spin.

  ‘You will not become lost again,’ Sheikh Abdul announced, producing a mobile phone from his sleeve with a flourish. ‘My nephew has a temper like a sandstorm, most dangerous when roused. It is a joy to behold.’

  As Bethany swayed a woman tugged at her sleeve and she was carted off to the welcome shelter of a large tent. In daunting silence she was brought water to wash with, then was served with tea and a delicious selection of food. As darkness folded in the elaborate brass lamps attached to the tent-poles were lit. Left alone, she sank down on a kelim-covered ottoman and curved her cheek into a silk cushion, the vibrant colours of the gorgeous Shiraz rugs hung on the cloth walls of the tent swimming before her as her weighted eyelids sank down.

  When Bethany finally awakened after a very restless night she was lying under a blanket which she immediately thrust off her, the stickiness of her skin telling her that a new day had begun. She shifted and sat up, her tumbled hair falling round her like a vibrant curtain of flame as she glanced at her watch. It was only eight. She lifted her fingers to thrust the tangle of curls off her damp brow and then she froze.

  Sheathed in desert robes, Razul was standing mere feet away with the stillness of a graven image. Sizzling gold eyes as brilliant as sunlight in that hard-boned, hawkish face splintered into her with powerful effect. His complete silence was intimidating. But the most menacing thing of all for Bethany was the instant flood of pleasure and relief she experienced. That instinctive response was her worst nightmare come true.

  She turned her head away. ‘OK, so I made a break for freedom and ended up a long way from the airport,’ she conceded in a tone of nervous irony. ‘So what now? You bury me up to the throat in sand at the hottest part of the day, paint me with honey and set scorpions on me? Or do you just send me home in disgrace? What is the traditional approach?’

  ‘According to tradition, I beat you.’

  Bethany lost every scrap of colour, plunged into sudden, unavoidable recall of her aunt’s disastrous marriage to an Arab. Violence had played its part in the final breakup of that union. ‘That’s something of a conversation-killer, Razul,’ she murmured not quite steadily.

  ‘You left me.’ The intense condemnation with which he spoke mirrored the powerful anger that he was visibly struggling to contain.

  ‘That’s the problem with stealing women,’ Bethany retorted with helpless defiance as her chin came up. “The stupid creatures may well cherish a peculiar desire to regain their freedom.’

  ‘Do you want me to lose my temper?’ Fierce strain was etched on his startlingly handsome features.

  And Bethany discovered that yes, she did. She needed a cure for the madness afflicting her, and the proof that he was the kind of male likely to employ his infinitely greater strength to the task of subjecting a woman would surely provide quite unparalleled therapy. She bent her head, her emotions in so much conflict that she felt torn apart. The madness of her own reasoning hit her hard. Had she enjoyed a single truly rational thought since she’d entered Datar? Angry bitterness consumed her in a sudden, scorching tide.

  She slid upright, her jewel-bright eyes slicing back at him. ‘Why not? Isn’t this whole crazy mess your fault? It’s certainly not mine! How dare you bring me to this country? And how dare you stand there now and try to intimidate me?’

  ‘Do not raise your voice to me here where we may be overheard.’ The pallor of his increasing anger had spread savagely across his high cheek-bones.

  ‘I’ll do whatever the hell I like. I don’t belong to you like some sort of rug you can walk on when you feel like it, and you have no rights over me!’ she blazed back.

  ‘Have I not?’ Razul bit out very softly.

  ‘None whatsoever, so you can keep the macho-man act for your harem!’ Bethany spat at him in a mood of pure vitriol, wanting every scornful word to find its target. ‘Your chances of reducing me to the level of crawling round your feet are zero...I’d sooner slit my throat! How dare you talk about your honour when you’ve already got a wife? When I called you primitive, barbaric and uncivilised in England I was understating the case!’

  His strong face a mask of fury, Razul moved forward with such terrifying abruptness that Bethany threw herself backwards over the ottoman and screamed. A powerful hand closed over her shoulder and began hauling her bodily back up onto the seat which she was endeavouring to employ as a defensive barrier. The sheer strength he exhibited sent her into even deeper panic, and another few strangled yells escaped her before Razul laid the palm of his hand firmly across her trembling mouth, enforcing her silence.

  Huge green eyes, dark with fear, looked up at him as he pinned her flat.

  ‘Keep quiet,’ Razul intoned.

  That controlled command wasn’t at all what she had expected. As she braced herself for a blow, her shocked eyes grew even bigger. Her heart was pounding fit to burst behind her breastbone. The hard heat and weight of his body imprisoned her as securely as chains.

  ‘My people will think I cannot control my woman but I know very well how to control my woman,’ Razul asserted with savage quietness. ‘In bed and out of bed. But I have never yet sunk to shameful violence, nor would I. Do you understand that, or is that beyond your understanding?’

  In a daze of quivering uncertainty she stared back up at him and drowned helplessly in the entrapment of compelling golden
eyes raw with anger and derision.

  ‘So, aziz...one more scream and all you get is a bucket of water over you to douse your hysterics. Am I speaking English clearly enough for comprehension?’

  Bethany gave a mesmerised nod under his hand.

  With a final searing glance he released her.

  She was still in a condition of such bemusement that she couldn’t function. She had gone from rage to terror within seconds and lost control. A kind of appalled embarrassment was beginning to steal over her.

  Razul stared down at her. ‘You said...you said that I already had a wife. Was that some childishly inept attempt to further defame my character?’

  She closed her eyes in sudden agony, assuming that he intended to lie to her. ‘I know that Fatima is your wife.’

  ‘I have never had a wife. I was betrothed at the age of twenty-two to Hiriz, my second cousin. Five years ago she died in a car accident shortly before we were to be married. Hiriz had a younger sister called Fatima,’ Razul proffered in the same harsh, unemotional tone, although his biting tension was palpable. ‘She is not my wife. Perhaps you would like me to call witnesses to this truth?’

  Bethany slowly began to sit up. She was trying to remember what Zulema had said, and recalled that Fatima had at no stage claimed Razul as her husband but had certainly looked pretty smug when Bethany had made reference to what she had believed to be fact.

  A quiver of darkly suppressed emotion rippled through Razul’s lean length as he studied her with icy dark eyes. ‘Had you sought to know me at all, you would already be aware that I do not believe in the practice of polygamy. Nor indeed does my father. One wife at a time is quite sufficient for any man. But no!’ Razul uttered a harsh laugh. ‘You do not see this. Your blind prejudice is shameful, your assumptions for an academic mind inexcusable!’