Taken by the Sheikh
Penny Jordan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

Copyright

PROLOGUE

‘SO THE negotiations went well, then?’

Drax frowned, his dark, arrogantly slanted eyebrows snapping together over an equally arrogant aquiline nose. Although his brother had welcomed him back to the small Arab emirate they ruled together with his usual warmth, Drax sensed that there was something on his elder twin’s mind that Vere had not yet revealed to him.

‘The talks in London went very well,’ he confirmed. He and Vere had ruled Dhurahn together now for almost a full decade, having come to power just after their twenty-fifth birthday, following the death of their parents in a car accident during a state visit.

Despite their closeness, they had never talked about the horror of that time—or the loss of their strong, energetic and forward-thinking father and their beautiful Irish mother. There had been no need. As twins they in stinctively understood each other’s feelings. Physically they were identical, but when it came to their personalities sometimes it seemed to Drax that they were two halves of one whole—sharing the same basic mind-set and understanding, and yet manifesting a desire to follow their shared life path in different ways.

Drax had come straight to his brother’s private audience room from the airport without bothering to go to his own quarters first to change. So, while Vere was dressed traditionally in a robe of dark blue embroidered with gold, worn over his white dishdasha, his head covered, Drax was wearing a formal dark blue business suit, the jacket open over a crisp white shirt worn with a discreetly striped dark red silk tie.

However, although their mode of dress could not have been more different, that faded into insignificance against the impact of their identical and magnificent physical appearance.

They were both tall and broad-shouldered, with the same slightly hooded ice-green eyes which could glitter with fierce heat, and the same distinctive predatory profiles. Their Berber blood, mixed with French and then Irish, had ensured they possessed an aura of power and sexuality that went beyond easy good looks to something that would have been dark and dangerous enough in one man, but when doubled possessed a force that was unnerving and compelling.

‘We both know that we aren’t the only Middle Eastern country wanting to establish ourselves as not just the Arab world’s recognised premier financial centre but the one with the strongest links to the recognised financial centres throughout the world. However, from the talks I had in London I gained the impression that we are the favoured choice. As we agreed, I made it clear that Dhurahn is prepared to put aside an enclave of one hundred acres of land to house the buildings needed to develop and grow a “knowledge economy”, and that we favour the use of English mercantile law because of its principles of equity and fairness. I also told them we envisage developing a financial exchange that will equal anything that New York, Hong Kong or London has to offer, with a regulatory system that investors and the business community can rely on and trust. But that’s enough about what I’ve been doing in London, Vere. Something’s on your mind.’

Vere raised one eyebrow in silent recognition of his twin’s astuteness.

‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘We have a problem.’

Drax looked searchingly at his twin. ‘And that problem is?’

‘While you were in London we were contacted by both the Ruler of Zuran and the Emir of Khulua.’

Drax waited. There was nothing particularly unusual in them being contacted by their closest neighbours; they were on good terms. Dhurahn did not have the large oil reserves and revenues enjoyed by its neighbours, but its long river made the land rich and fertile, and Dhurahn had become the ‘greenhouse’ that supplied Zuran, in particular, with fresh produce for its expanding tourist industry. The days when the fiercely warring tribes had fought bitterly over the hot desert sands were long gone, and the people of Dhurahn lived in peace with their neighbours, enjoying a mutual and shared prosperity.

But certain tribal methods of ensuring peace still endured.

‘Both the Ruler and the Emir have, in the mysterious ways of such things—the desert wind is, as ever, capricious in where it blows—heard rumours of our plans,’ Vere told his brother dryly. ‘Not that they said as much, but of course it is obvious why they are both now so eager to cement the existing good relationship we share with them.’

‘You are telling me this—but what is it that you are not telling me?’ Drax demanded, easily recognising that his brother was withholding something. ‘To keep on good terms with our neighbours makes sound business sense…’

‘What the Ruler and the Emir are so keen to discuss with us is the matter of our marriages.’

‘Our marriages?’ Drax frowned again. They were thirty-four. One day, of course, they would both marry, choosing their wives carefully and with due consideration for the future of their country, but that time was not here yet. Right now they had far more important things to do—like establishing Dhurahn as the strongest financial powerhouse in the region.

‘Our marriages,’ Vere repeated grimly. ‘Yours to the Emir’s eldest daughter and mine to the Ruler’s youngest sister.’

The two brothers looked at one another.

‘Such marriages would strengthen our ties with both countries, but it would also strengthen their potential involvement with Dhurahn,’ Drax pointed out. ‘While we stand between them, and get on well with both the Ruler and the Emir, there are issues on which they do not agree. The Emir has never approved of the Ruler’s decision to expand Zuran’s involvement with the tourist industry. Currently we hold the balance of power between them, and ours is in many ways the stronger position.’

‘And, while he is loath to admit it, the Emir is jealous of the growing financial status and success of Zuran, and eager to match it. If we agree to their suggestion and take as wives members of their families both of them will try to use the link marriage creates to demand greater allegiance and support from us: in effect to control the power we hold. We can’t let that happen. Apart from anything else it could, theoretically, mean that there might come a time when our loyalty to one another and Dhurahn could be in conflict with the loyalty demanded of us by our wives and their families.’

‘And if we don’t agree we’ll risk offending both the Ruler and the Emir, causing them to lose face, and we can’t afford to be on bad terms. It could harm our plans to establish Dhurahn as the financial and business capital of the region.’

‘Yes.’

Angrily Drax paced the floor. ‘We cannot allow ourselves to be manipulated like this.’

‘Neither of us wants to be tied via marriage to either of our neighbours,’ Vere agreed grimly. ‘Dhurahn must always govern its own future, and it is our duty to ensure that it does.’

‘But, as you said, if we refuse then we risk offending two very powerful men.’ Drax thought quickly. ‘Unless, of course, we tell them that we are refusing because we are committed to marriage elsewhere. That way they’d stop pressuring us and they wouldn’t lose face.’

‘And when they discover that we are not getting married?’

‘Do they need to discover that?’ Drax asked. Vere was frowning but Drax persevered coolly. ‘Both the Ruler and the Emir know that it is the tradition for our family and our people to take only one wife. It is not, surely, an insurmountable task to find women—the right kind of women—we could marry, and then—’

‘The right kind?’

‘You know what I mean.’ Drax shrugged dismissively. ‘The dispensable, disposable type—morally decent enough to be acceptable and naïve enough to agree to be divorced with the minimum of fuss and pay-off.’

‘Oh, that kind,’ Vere said cynically. ‘A naïve virgin ready to fall in love with a sheikh and be so grateful to him for marrying her that she willingly accepts being divorced and put aside without wanting a penny. Do they still exist? Somehow I don’t think so,’ he told Drax dryly. ‘Certainly if you could find us such a bride apiece then I would gladly marry mine. But we both know that the kind of woman who would agree to the sort temporary marriage we would want is hardly likely to be the sweet virgin our people would expect. The reality is that she is more likely to be an adventuress, who would demand an extortionate amount of money to go through with a temporary marriage in the first place and who would then probably attempt to sell her story to the press. That kind of media attention would be bound to have a damaging effect on how we are perceived by the rest of the world as men of integrity.’ Vere shook his head. ‘No, Drax. It sounds like the perfect way out of our current dilemma, but my view is that it would be impossible to find even one woman let alone two of the right type—and fast enough to bring an end to the Ruler’s and the Emir’s determination to have us marry into their families.’

Drax’s eyes gleamed like those of a predatory black panther. ‘Is that a challenge, brother?’

Vere laughed. ‘I know better than to issue you with any challenges, Drax. But if you can find a woman—’

‘Two women,’ Drax corrected him. ‘I promise you I shall find them, Vere. And you shall have the first of them.’

‘Mmm…’ Vere looked unconvinced. ‘Very well. But in the meantime the only way to keep our neighbours at bay is to continue negotiations with the Ruler and the Emir while avoiding making any kind of commitment. The Ruler has invited us to make an unofficial visit to Zuran,’ Vere continued. ‘And I rather thought you ought to be the one to go, Drax.’

‘You mean that the Ruler wants you for his sister, since you are the elder,’ Drax guessed shrewdly, ‘and you want me to put up some delaying tactics. Why not? They want to talk to you in London, by the way,’ he told Vere. ‘I said that you would be free to fly there for more negotiations once I was back in Dhurahn.’

‘One of the benefits of dual rulership—one pair of hands always available to hold onto the helm of leadership here in Dhurahn, no matter what matters of state require our presence elsewhere.’

‘But you are the one who prefers to remain here in the desert,’ Drax pointed out. ‘I am the one who welcomes the cut and thrust of pursuing our business activities elsewhere.’

‘A perfect partnership—built on a trust nothing can destroy and absolute loyalty.’

Silently they clasped hands, and then, in the manner of their Arabic ancestors, they exchanged a fierce, brotherly embrace.

CHAPTER ONE

‘YOU are useless—totally and completely useless. I cannot imagine why I ever thought you were up to the demands of this job. You claim to have a degree, and an MBA, and yet you cannot do the simplest thing you are told.’

On and on went the harsh, critical voice of her Lebanese employer, while Sadie dutifully bowed her head beneath the weight of the venom being directed towards her, all too aware that if she looked directly at Madame al Sawar now the other woman would see all too clearly the angry hostility in her own eyes. And Sadie could not afford to give madame the opportunity to threaten, as she had done many times already in the two months that Sadie had worked there, to withhold the wages still owing to her.

To be accused so unfairly and so vindictively was bad enough, but to have to stand here and be berated in a voice loud enough to carry to the rest of the al Sawar household—a traditional Arab household, where loss of face was something to be dreaded and avoided at all costs—made it even worse. It was typical of her employer, Sadie recognised, that she should choose to accost and accuse her while she was enjoying her legitimate lunch-break in the peace of the pretty courtyard garden of the al Sawars’ traditional Moorish-style Zuran home. Sadie knew perfectly well that, although she could not see them, most of household staff would belingering in the shadows of the building, listening to their employer hectoring her assistant.

Not that they could avoid hearing what was going on, with madame screaming and shouting so loudly. The whole street could probably hear, Sadie reflected miserably. She wasn’t the only recipient of her employer’s vile temper. Scarcely a day went by without madame losing her temper with someone.

Sadie could have defended herself against her employer’s unfair accusations, of course, and told her that she did indeed possess both a First Class Honours degree and an MBA. And she could have told her, too, that as much as Madame al Sawar regretted employing her it couldn’t come close to her own regret at having taken the job. But the truth was that she simply couldn’t afford to lose this job—not with madame having consistently refused to pay her since she came here.

‘I have no use for such a deadweight as you in my business. You are dismissed.’

‘You can’t do that!’ Sadie burst out, panicked out of her determination not to be forced into a verbal battle.

‘You think not? I assure you that I can. And don’t think that you can walk out of here and get another job,’ madame screeched. ‘Because you can’t. The Zurani authorities impose very harsh measures on illegals who try to take work from the locals.’

Illegals! Now Sadie had to stand up for herself. ‘I am not an illegal,’ she protested. ‘You know that. You assured me yourself when I took this job that all the necessary formalities would be completed on my behalf. I remember signing the necessary forms…’ Sadie was beginning to feel slightly sick with panic now, as well as from the heat burning down on her exposed head. She was being made to wait and listen to madame ranting in the full burn of the sunlight, whereas madame herself remained in the shade.

Sadie could see a smug look of satisfaction in the older woman’s eyes as she affected nonchalance with a dismissive shrug.

‘I do not remember saying any such thing. And if you try to claim as much now, it will be the worse for you.’

Sadie could hardly believe what she was hearing. She had thought her situation bad enough, but that was nothing to what she was facing now.

With no job, no money, and no legal status here in Zuran her situation was dire indeed. And it had all seemed so promising at the time…

Six months into her first job as an MBA graduate with one of London’s premier hedge funds, she had been made redundant to make way for the son of a very senior member of the bank’s latest lover. Or that was what she had been told via the office grapevine. It had certainly been easier to swallow that explanation than it had been to accept the jeering comment from one particularly unpleasant male colleague that she was being dumped because she couldn’t hack the testosterone-loaded male environment in which she worked.

A top-flight, good, money-earning job in the financial sector—one which would make her completely financially independent—had been her goal all the way through university, and she had initially been devastated by this unwelcome setback to her career plans.

Her parents had divorced when she was in her early teens. Her mother had then married again—a very wealthy man, with children of his own from his first marriage, and with whom she now had a second and younger family. When her mother had first become involved with the man who would become Sadie’s stepfather he had lavished time and attention on Sadie, forever telling her now much he wanted her as a daughter. But as soon as her mother had married him he had changed completely towards Sadie, instilling in her the belief that male love, both sexual and paternal, was something that some men could assume to suit themselves.

After her mother’s marriage to him Sadie had grown up enduring her stepfather’s unkind comments about her father’s inability to provide for her as well as he provided for his new children. She had been torn between anger against her parents for divorcing and a protective love for her father, who had remarried as well, and had a young wife and a very young family, and had looked far older and more careworn than his age the last time she had seen him. Unlike her stepfather, her father was not a wealthy man.

It had been pride that had made her refuse to ask for financial help from her stepfather to get through university, and that pride had left her weighed down with a very large student loan. The loss of her first job had meant that she would have to crawl back to her stepfather and ask for his help—help which he had given willingly to his own sons, both of whom had been given a car and an apartment apiece when they had started work—and that was the last thing she had wanted to do.

She could still remember how he had sneered at her when she had announced that she was going to study for her MBA, suggesting that she’d be better off looking for a rich husband to support her instead.

‘After all,’ had been his comment, ‘it isn’t as though you haven’t got the looks—and the body.’

Yes, she had those. But Sadie had sworn when she had seen the way her obviously highly-sexed stepfather behaved towards her mother, making it plain that he expected her to repay his financial support in bed, that she would never, ever let any man think he had the power to demand her sexual compliance just because he paid the bills. Either inside marriage or outside it. And she had stuck to that vow—even though its by-product had been an unexpected and unlooked-for celibacy that had left her partnerless. For Sadie, her financial and sexual independence were strongly interlinked. Thirteen was a very vulnerable age for a girl to witness the kind of relationship Sadie had witnessed between her mother and her stepfather.

When she had seen her current job advertised, in the columns of a national broadsheet newspaper, she had been so excited that she had had to warn herself that there would be hundreds of applicants and that she probably wouldn’t stand a chance.

But then, when Monika al Sawar had interviewed her and told her that she specifically wanted to employ a female MBA—‘Because my husband is very much the Arab male, and will not tolerate me working one to one with another man’—her hopes had started to rise.

The job Monika had described to her had sounded perfect—challenging and exciting, with plenty of room to grow. Monika’s business, she had told Sadie, involved advising new residents to Zuran in the wake of the tourist boom on investment, the buying of Zurani property, and arranging finances for property purchases. Monika had further told Sadie that she wanted a keen young assistant she could train up to work as a financial adviser in her own right.

Sadie had been in seventh heaven when she had got the job—even when the promised business-class flight to Zuran had somehow turned out to be an economy-class flight, and the promised advance of funds to pay a lump sum off her student loan had not materialised.

But then had come the discovery that the accommodation she had been promised was the not the apartment in a modern executive block she had somehow imagined, but instead a very small and basic room in the al Sawar house—and, more disturbingly, that Monika was deducting what seemed to be an overly large sum of money from Sadie’s wages to cover her ‘bed and board’. Sadie’s awkward attempt to discuss her dissatisfaction with this situation had led to the first of the now regular and familiar outbursts of Monika’s temper, and with it the withholding of Sadie’s wages.

Now, with only a very small sum of money left from the funds she had brought with her, Sadie was getting desperate. Very desperate. But she was not going to let Monika see that.

‘Very well, then. I’ll go,’ Sadie said quietly. ‘But not until you have paid me the wages owing to me.’

The scream of fury that erupted from the other woman made Sadie wince, and it could be heard all over the house.

And also outside in the street, where Drax, having parked the hire car he preferred to the Ruler’s offer of a chauffeur-driven limousine—mainly because of the privacy it afforded him—was walking towards the house. He slowed his pace to match that of Amar al Sawar. The kindly older man had been a close friend of the twins’ father, and neither of them ever visited Zuran without calling to see him. Drax had found him on this occasion at the Royal Palace, and had reluctantly accepted his invitation to return to his home with him. Neither Drax nor Vere liked their father’s elderly friend’s younger second wife.

‘Oh, dear me. I’m afraid it sounds as though Monika is a little upset,’ Amar apologised. ‘And I had so hoped that this time she would take to the new assistant she hired. Such a delightful young woman. English, and well-educated—a good, kind girl too, modest and sweet-natured.’

If she was all of those things then she was certainly no match for Monika, Drax reflected.

‘I cannot understand why it is that such an attractive young woman should choose to work instead of marry. If I had a son she is just exactly the kind of girl I would want for him as a wife.’

Now Amar had surprised Drax. The older man was very much of the generation and outlook that followed the old ways and looked for the kind of virtues in a young woman that very few now possessed. Drax suspected that the older man, who was no match for his aggressive wife, deeply regretted having allowed Monika to bully him into marrying her.

From inside the courtyard, the piercing sound of her wrath could still be heard quite plainly by the two men as she berated her young assistant.

‘Wages? You expect me to pay you for practically ruining my business? Hah!’ Monika screeched at Sadie. ‘You are the one who should be paying me. Be glad that I am letting you go without demanding any recompense from you. If you are wise you will leave now, this minute, before I change my mind and set my lawyers to work on you.’

Before Sadie could object Monika had turned round and begun walking away from her, leaving her standing in the courtyard.

‘My clothes…’ she began, too stunned and battered by Monika’s loud ranting and merciless tactics for logic or argument. ‘My passport…’

‘Zuwaina has packed them for you. Take them and go,’ Monika said triumphantly, as a young maid appeared in the courtyard, pulling Sadie’s case on wheels with one hand and holding her handbag and passport in the other.

It gave Sadie a sharp sense of revulsion to know that Monika had been through her personal belongings, but the real cause of the sickness making her feel so clammy and light-headed was the reality of what she was now facing. No job, no money, no plane ticket home. All she could think of to do was throw herself on the mercy of the British Consulate—although it would mean a long walk in to town to get there.

The courtyard gates were being opened and two men were walking through, both of them wearing traditional Arab dress. One of them was the elderly husband of her employer—a charming, educated man who made Sadie think yearningly of the grandfather she could just about remember—while the man with him…Sadie made an involuntary sound deep in her throat, her eyes widening and her heart thudding heavily into her chest wall. The other man was quite simply so compellingly male, and so arrogantly alive with raw sexuality and power, that he was mesmerizing. All Sadie could do was stand there gazing—no, not gazing at him so much as gaping in awe, Sadie mentally derided herself. She who had not only never gaped at a man before, but who had never imagined she would want to do so.

She could feel her face turning pink as he turned his head, so that instead of just seeing his profile she met a full-on swift, hawkish assessment from a pair of narrowed, shockingly unexpected ice-green eyes. Ice-green? Her hands were trembling so much she almost dropped her handbag, grabbing hold of it as it threatened to slip sideways from her grasp.

What was happening to her? Her instinctive and immediate response to her physical reaction was to take refuge in the safety of denial and tell herself that what was happening was caused by her defences having been undermined by Monika’s attack on her, not by anything—or anyone—else. But she couldn’t escape from the knowledge that with just one glance from those far too knowing green eyes a total stranger had stripped from her the protection with which she had previously kept his sex at bay.

Without saying or doing anything he had broken through her barriers and made her so intensely aware of his male sexual driving force that her whole body was now a mass of chaotic, over-sensitised and far too receptive sexually attuned nerve-endings.

So this was physical desire, then! This white-hot unstoppable flood of bitingly intense, dangerously seductive longing mixed with promise, possessing her and dominating everything she was feeling and thinking—changing her from what she had been into something else as surely as though she had been given into the hands of a sorcerer.

CHAPTER TWO

‘ARE you all right, child?’

Sadie could hear the gentle voice of her employer’s husband, but somehow it was impossible to drag her imprisoned gaze away from the dangerous, almost cruelly handsome perfection of the man standing beside him. She felt as though she was having to bring herself back up to the clear light of day from the darkest depths of some secret hidden place.

‘Yes. Yes, I’m fine,’ she managed to gulp—even though she knew that both men must be perfectly aware that she was not.

She risked another look at Professor al Sawar’s much younger companion. To her relief, he wasn’t searching her soul with that too-intense glittering look any more, and some of the turbulence inside her subsided, allowing her to tell herself that she had over-emphasised his earlier effect on her—no doubt because of the trauma she had just experienced. Relief poured through her like cool, soothing water on over-heated skin.

She could see in the Professor’s face that both men had overheard Monika’s angry tirade. Her now ex-employer’s husband reached into his robe and withdraw a wallet. Normally such an incongruity as the sight of a modern wallet concealed within the folds of such a traditional garment would have made her smile, but now she was struggling too hard to rationalise the rush of unfamiliar sensations seizing her to do anything other than note vaguely that the older man was opening his wallet and withdrawing some money.

‘Please—take this…’ he was urging her.

Now she had to force herself to focus on him.

‘I don’t know how much my wife owes you, but…’

There was a look in the ice-green eyes that burned her pride. Her reaction was instinctive and immediate. Shaking her head, she stepped back mutely.

‘Please…’ the Professor was insisting.

‘No,’ Sadie refused fiercely. Whether his act was a kindness to protect her or a bribe designed to protect his wife, she didn’t know; all she did know was that she would not and could not take his money, his charity. She had earned her wages, and it was her wages she wanted—not the professor’s generosity.

‘No,’ she repeated in a calmer, more rational tone, even if her voice was shaking slightly. She grabbed hold of her suitcase and hurried towards the still open courtyard gates.

Drax watched her go, protectively shielding the intensity of his desire by lowering his eyelids to hood his focused concentration on her. The familiar, dry, sand-blown scent of the desert in the air he was breathing into his body was sharpened and flooded by the heat of his own arousal. Dismissively he mentally shrugged off the warning his body was activating. He was man, wasn’t he? And a man who had perhaps been voluntarily celibate longer than was wise. Drax didn’t take women to his bed on sexual impulse. His sense of his position was too strongly developed for that. Actions that potentially shamed him did not just shame him, they shamed Vere—and they shamed the reputation that had been handed down to them. Nevertheless, while it was not his habit to go in for casual serial partner sex, it was perhaps time that he found himself a discreet mistress.

The gates had been closed behind the young woman for several seconds when, as though she had been surreptitiously watching from inside the house, Drax recognised, Monika came into the courtyard, beckoning them both inside. Reluctantly following the Professor, Drax almost missed seeing the small maroon oblong lying on the ground. Bending to pick it up, he frowned when he realised that it was a passport. He opened it, flicking through. Sadie Murray, twenty-five years old, single, light brown eyes, dark blonde almost brown hair, her only distinguishing mark a small mole on the inside of her left thigh…

‘Vere—it is always such a pleasure to see you,’ Monika was gushing, causing Drax’s eyes to narrow as she hurried forward to envelop him in the overpowering strength of her scent. Tucking the passport away, he stepped back from her.

‘Sadly for both of us, I’m not Vere,’ he told Monika coolly. Over a decade ago, in the early days of her marriage to the Professor, when Drax himself had been a young man in his early twenties, Monika had offered herself to him. She would never forgive him for rejecting her, Drax recognised, and he would never forget that she had so easily planned to betray her husband.

‘I appreciate that you have your reasons for doing so, my dear, but, really—that poor child…to dismiss her like that…’ the Professor was saying with a worried frown.

‘She deserved it,’ Monika returned sharply. ‘She refused to carry out my instructions with regard to one of my clients, and in doing so cost me a great deal of money.’

‘But, my dear, she’s so young, and all alone in a foreign country,’ the Professor wavered unhappily. ‘And morally—’

‘Morally? Hah! It is her morals that have caused me so much of a problem. Why should I have to suffer the disadvantages of employing a young western woman who has chosen to behave like a traditional virgin?’

‘My dear…’

Drax could hear the distress in the older man’s voice, but Monika chose to ignore her husband’s shock.

Tossing her head, she continued sharply, ‘I need a female employee who knows how to persuade men to become my clients, not one who freezes them away.’

‘Sadie should surely be praised for her virtue, Monika?’ the Professor protested.

‘I did not employ her for her virtue. She is pretty enough, but plainly she doesn’t know how to use that prettiness to her own advantage.’ Monika gave a dismissive shrug. ‘Now she has to learn the hard way that that does not make good business sense.’

‘You have ensured that she has sufficient money to pay for her air ticket home?’

Drax watched as Monika’s mouth hardened. ‘That is not my concern. If she hasn’t, then it will teach her much needed lesson. Let me summon the maid and get her to bring you both some coffee,’ she told her husband, determinedly changing the subject.

As a Lebanese woman, Monika lived a far more independent life than that of a traditional Zurani wife, who would never have dreamed of even appearing in front of a male guest of her husband, never mind addressing him directly. She was certainly far too strident for his taste, Drax acknowledged, and he shook his head and refused. ‘Not for me, Monika. I’m afraid I can’t stay. I have an appointment.’

It might only be March, but Zuran did not have a spring. Its climate went straight from a welcome ‘cool’ winter temperature of around twenty-five degrees in February to a swiftly climbing forty-five-degrees-plus in the middle of summer.

For Sadie, having to walk all the way into town with her case, and without the hat she normally wore for protection, the rising temperature felt distinctly too hot. Her hair might be thick and long, its burnished light brunette warmed with natural gold highlights, but it was no protection against the sun. At least she had her sunglasses to shield her eyes from the harshness of the sunlight as it bounced off the white-painted walls of the houses lining the roadside.

No one walked in Zuran—which was no doubt why so many male drivers slowed down as they drove past her. At least, that was what she was going to tell herself, Sadie decided, gritting her teeth as she ignored yet another car driver crawling along beside the kerb, murmuring to her words she was relieved she could not understand before thankfully he drove off when he realised that she had no intention of acknowledging him.

Her dismissal was so unfair. She had been good at her job, she knew that, but no way had she intended to coax and tease men into signing up with Monika by hinting at providing them with a sexual reward that she was not going to deliver. Sadie loathed that kind of female behaviour, and she loathed even more the kind of men who expected it.

Perhaps she was naïve, but it had shocked her to discover that a female employer should expect it of her—especially out here in this predominantly morally conservative part of the world. About her reaction to the man who had been accompanying Monika’s elderly husband she did not want to think at all.

Drax was just about to put his foot down to join the fast lane of traffic when the car phone rang. He knew it would be Vere calling him. It was typical of Drax that he never questioned why or how he should know that without looking at his phone. It was just an accepted part of their twinship.

‘How did the meeting go with the Ruler?’ Vere asked.

‘Well enough—although I don’t think he was too pleased that I turned up in your place. And, speaking of people who weren’t as pleased to see me as they would have been to see you, I’ve just seen the Professor. Monika asked to be remembered to you.’

‘So you’ve been too busy to find me a wife, I take it?’ Vere responded, ignoring Drax’s dig about Monika.

Up ahead of him, in the dust of the roadside, Drax could see the lone figure of a young woman walking and dragging her suitcase behind her. She looked weary—forlorn, almost.

What was it Amar has said about her? That she was modest, the kind of young woman he would be happy to see his son marry. Drax remembered the passport he had picked up. By rights he should have handed it over to the al Sawars, because the girl would surely return there to look for it once she realised she had lost it.

She certainly wasn’t greedy, he acknowledged. He had seen that with his own eyes. And she had to be naïve if she’d let herself be persuaded into working for Monika.

‘Drax? Are you still there?’

‘Yes, I’m still here, Vere. As to your bride—well, that’s where you are wrong, my brother. It just so happens that I may have found you the perfect temporary wife.’

Drax switched off his phone before Vere could say anything, and then started to cut the speed of his car.

Sadie could hear the now familiar tell-tale sound of a car braking to a crawl just behind her, but she refused to look round. However, this car didn’t pull away as quickly as the others had when she did not respond. Instead it continued to keep pace with her, casting a long shadow in front of her. She tried to walk a little bit faster, wishing she could move away from the side of the road, but the land beyond was too rough for her to wheel her case over it.

There was no need for her to panic, she assured herself. It was broad daylight and, even if he was being more persistent than the others, surely whoever it was would soon get bored when she didn’t respond, soon put his foot down to race past her in a cloud of sandy dust.

Only he didn’t. And out of the corner of her eye she could see a long black bonnet edging just ahead of her, then keeping pace with her.

She couldn’t walk any faster; she was panting slightly already, her skin soaked with perspiration caused not just by the heat now but by her anxiety as well.

‘Ms Murray?’

Hearing her name spoken in crisp accent-free English gave her such a shock that she froze. Just as he had estimated she would, she reflected bitterly several seconds later, when the car stopped, the driver’s door opened and the driver himself stepped out in front of her, trapping her between his body and his car.

‘You!’

Why had she said that? It had sounded so personal and so betraying somehow—as though she were deliberately creating an intimacy between them. And that hadn’t been her intention. She was just so shocked to see the man she had last seen standing in the Al Sawars’ courtyard with her employer’s husband standing in front of her.

Unlike her, he wasn’t wearing sunglasses, and something about the look she could see in his eyes made her feel like some poor creature of the desert caught in the predatory searching stare of a falcon.

‘If Madame Al Sawar asked you to come after me…’ she began uncertainly.

Before she could finish what she was saying Drax silenced her with a swift frown.

‘I can acquit you because you do not know me well enough to know that I do not act as an errand boy for others,’ he told her arrogantly. ‘But do you really know Monika so little that you think she’d show that kind of remorse?’

Sadie looked away from him. He was right, of course. Monika was not the type to suffer from second thoughts, much less guilt over what she had done.

‘I came after you because there is something I want to discuss with you. The Professor speaks very highly of you. He considers you to be a young woman of good morals and intelligence.’ Drax was not going to tell her that the Professor had also confirmed his own assessment that she was more inclined to think the best of others than the worst, and that this made her vulnerable to the selfish machinations of the unscrupulous.

Sadie could feel a pink flush heating her face as she listened to this praise.

‘You are fully qualified to work in the financial services industry, so I understand?’

His question startled Sadie. ‘I have a degree and an MBA,’ she acknowledged. She could see Drax nodding his head, as though her words had confirmed what he already knew.

‘It could be that I can offer you a job to replace the one you have just lost.’

Now he could see uncertainty and suspicion in her eyes, along with the kind of female wariness that made Drax congratulate himself again on his own intuition. She would be perfect for the plan he had outlined to his twin.

Sadie looked at him with a challenging expression. She wasn’t so naïve that she wasn’t aware that there was a certain type of Arab male who looked to western women to satisfy his sexual needs via a series of brief sex-only liaisons.

‘Thank you, but my plan has always been to return to the UK to work.’

‘But not without the money to pay your fare or your passport?’ Drax suggested.

Her passport? Sadie looked at him, and then looked down at her bag. But there was no need for her to look inside it, because Drax was already holding her passport in his hand.

‘What…?’

‘Why don’t you get in the car?’ Drax looked at his watch. ‘I can tell you about the job that’s on offer over a late lunch in the city.’

Did he really expect her to fall for that kind of line? She wasn’t that naïve. ‘I’m sorry, but I’m not interested—in anything,’ she emphasised firmly, reaching for her passport.

Drax stepped back from her, sliding her passport out of sight somewhere within the folds of his dishdasha.

‘Very well,’ he said calmly, and turned back to his car.

‘My passport…’ Sadie protested frantically.

‘What passport? If, when I reach the airport for my return flight to Dhurahn, I find that I still have the passport I found lying on the ground in Zuran City, then I shall naturally see that it reaches the nearest British Embassy.’

‘What?’ This was getting worse by the minute. Not only had he got her passport, he was also planning to leave the country. ‘No, you can’t do that!’ Sadie told him wildly.

‘No?’ The ice-green eyes had hardened.

Ignoring the warning in them, Sadie tried to grab her passport back from him, crying out as she stumbled over a sharp piece of rock jutting out of the earth and then fell heavily against Drax.

Drax’s reactions were quicker than Sadie’s. He caught her easily, and could have held her away from him so their bodies didn’t come into contact, but for some reason he wasn’t prepared to explain to himself he didn’t. Instead, he wrapped his hands around her upper arms to steady her, and let her body rest against his own. He could feel the soft rounded swell of her breasts, and the temptation to slide his hands from her arms to her hips, to pull her more intimately against him, was so strong and instinctive that it startled him. She smelled hot and sweet, and her scent caused an unexpected surge of sexual awareness to grip him. It took him off guard.

What the hell was this? He didn’t normally react with this kind of easy arousal. A man in his position had to be careful about his sexual liaisons. Drax had learned that long ago. He had a responsibility towards the position he held. He and Vere had a shared duty to give their subjects a good example and to set high moral standards. Casual sex wasn’t something he indulged in, and yet here he was so stiffly erect that he felt downright uncomfortable—and all on account of this dusty young woman with her topaz eyes and her pale skin. A woman he had already decided to offer to his brother.

Which was, of course, why he was testing her moral standards. If she took advantage of their shared intimacy now to come on to him he would know there was no point in pursuing his plan. Neither could he afford to become sexually involved with her—it wasn’t for sex that he wanted her. She must be proved to be the kind of woman the Professor believed her to be. The kind of woman who was the opposite of women like Monika al Sawar and who would not try to institute sex with a man without being invited to do so.

After Sadie’s shock at being so unexpectedly close to Drax, with all its drugging excitement, came recognition of her vulnerability—and with it panic.

‘Let go of me!’ She sounded more pleading than assertive, Sadie recognised weakly, as she heard the emotion in her own voice. Being this close to this man wasn’t good for her, she admitted. It reactivated everything she had felt in the courtyard, and underlined her inability to override her physical response to him.

So why wasn’t she doing more to make him release her? Why, in fact, was she leaning into him as though she couldn’t stand without the support of his body? Did she really not care about the danger of her own actions? Not just via the casual sex with a stranger he might think she was inviting but, just as dangerously, via the effect her proximity to him was having on what she had always believed to be givens about herself. Givens like the fact that she wasn’t a woman who had strong sexual urges; like the fact that she wasn’t a woman who could ever be overwhelmed by desire for a man just by looking at him; like the fact that she was far too sensible to take risks with her sexual and emotional health.

It was the heat of the sun that was making her feel weak, she hurried to reassure herself. Nothing else. She certainly wasn’t entertaining the kind of fantasies she had heard some western women had about sexy Arab sheikhs—even if this man was everything that such a man should be, right down to the aura of danger surrounding him.

‘This is Zuran,’ she heard him telling her coldly as he thrust her away. ‘Here it is not acceptable for a man and a woman to embrace in public, no matter what you may be used to doing elsewhere!’

What she might be used to doing elsewhere? He was making it sound as though he thought she was coming on to him. Mortified, Sadie pulled away from him and stepped back. She was right about one thing. She had been out in the hot sun for longer than was wise, and her own sudden movement had caused a wave of faintly nauseating dizziness to swamp her.

The sight of Sadie’s suddenly too pale face accompanied by her soft gasp of shock had Drax reacting with instinctive speed as he recognised the onset of heat sickness. He bundled her into the car so quickly that Sadie didn’t have time to do anything more than make an incoherent protest. She could feel the car depressing as he slid into the driver’s seat and switched on the engine. She could hear too the sound of the doors locking as he set the car in motion and pulled away from the kerb.

‘Stop,’ she said frantically. ‘You can’t do this!’

‘What would you have preferred me to do—leave you where you were to suffer sunstroke?’

‘There’s plenty of shade in the city.’

‘You would never have made it that far,’ Drax told her bluntly, before adding, ‘And you needn’t look at me like that. You have nothing to fear from me.’

‘That’s easy for you to say,’ Sadie retorted shakily. ‘You’ve practically kidnapped me, and—’

‘And now you’re worried that I might be carrying you off to my harem to have my wicked way with you?’ Drax mocked her, raising one dark eyebrow. ‘Do you really think that’s likely? Let’s be honest with one another—in today’s world, if I wanted to indulge myself sexually with a disposable partner I would hardly need to kidnap one, would I?’

Her eyes were the colour of clear warm honey, Drax noticed, her tawny hair as polished and silken as the coat of one of his cherished pure-bred Arab mares. He sensed within her the same pride that possessed his falcons—a pride he had the power and the skill to tame, so that they came to his hand as softly, as though they were doves.

Her skin was too pale, though, for the harshness of the desert’s midday sun, and she was paying for her folly in ignoring that fact now. Perspiration beaded her forehead and her head drooped on the slender stem of her neck. Drax guessed that in addition to her obvious apprehension at being bundled into his car she was probably also feeling slightly nauseous. She was certainly likely to be dehydrated.

He reached out and tapped open the centre console that separated their seats. ‘You will find a bottle of water in here. Take it and drink some,’ he advised her sternly.

Water! Until he had spoken she hadn’t realised how thirsty she was. Sadie’s tongue-tip flicked against the dry saltiness of her lips as she reached eagerly for the unopened bottle.

Removing the top, she lifted the bottle towards her mouth.

The traffic was heavy enough for Drax to slow down and watch her. Her lips were soft and full, and as she closed them around the head of the bottle she also closed her eyes, as though she was giving herself over to a much longed-for sensory pleasure. She drank quickly, the muscles of her throat contracting and expanding as she swallowed and then drank more deeply.

The arousal Drax had felt earlier returned, thrusting past the barriers of civility and necessity. Was she aware of just how intensely erotic her actions were? Drax wondered, as between one breath and the next he became trapped within the sexual urgency and immediacy of the images his own brain was creating from her actions. Inside his head the soft fullness of her lips clung eagerly not to the water bottle but to his flesh, greedily absorbing its texture and taste. A pothole in the road caused water from the bottle to trickle from her lips down her throat and beyond, filling the hollow at its base and then spilling from it. If he were to lap its wetness from her skin now it would taste of her flesh and her heat, and the taste would feed his tongue to taste her more intimate wetness, to…

The sudden sharp blare of a car horn somewhere up ahead of them wrenched Drax out of his fantasy and back to reality. His heart was the thudding in slow, heavy erotic beats as it urged his body to greater arousal. He reached for his own bottle of water, and drank fiercely from it, as though to quench the heat of what he was experiencing.

The air-conditioning was on, so why was she suddenly feeling aware of a heat so physical that it not only seemed to be filling the interior of the car, it also felt as if it was actually touching her, pressing against her skin as though in a caress? Because she wanted to be caressed? By him? What kind of craziness had possessed her? Was this some kind of heat-induced lust that was a by-product of too much exposure to the sun? Sadie’s thoughts spilled dizzily on top of one another, blocking her rational exit from them. She fought valiantly against them, making herself focus on the scenery outside the car.

‘We’re almost in the city,’ she told Drax. ‘It’s kind of you to think about offering me a job, but really there’s no need. If you give me my passport and drop me off—’

‘You’re rejecting the job without knowing what it is?’

Sadie’s words had aroused two very different and competing instant reactions inside Drax—one, that he should stop the car, give her the passport and forget that he had ever seen her; the other that there was no way he was going to let her go.

He pressed harder on the accelerator, swinging the car into the outer lane that led away from the city.

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