LITMIR.BIZ

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I think I’ll treat myself to a bath,’ Jess replied dreamily. ‘No point letting all those goodies go to waste, is there?’

      Sam didn’t bother replying. There was no point taking the shine off things by telling Jess how she felt. Crossing the huge marble-floored sitting room, she wrenched open the door then paused uncertainly.

      Night had fallen now and she wasn’t sure which way to go. The female members of the team had been shown to their accommodation by one of the servants and Sam hadn’t taken much notice of the route as she had followed the woman through the grounds.

      She turned slowly around, trying to get her bearings, and suddenly spotted the pale gleam of the palace’s towers through the palm trees to her left. There was a path leading in that direction and she followed it until she came to a ten-foot-high wall. There was a gate set into it and she turned the handle, frowning when it failed to open. She tried again, tugging on the handle this time, but it still wouldn’t budge and her temper, which was already hovering just below boiling point, peaked. If Khalid had had them locked in then pity help him!

      Khalid took a deep breath, hoping the desert air would wash away the stresses of the day. He had honestly thought that he had been ready for what would happen but nothing could have prepared him for being around Sam again. He frowned, trying to put his feelings into context. It was bound to have been stressful to see her again—that was a given. However, he had never expected to feel so raw, so emotional. He was a master at controlling his feelings but he hadn’t been able to control them today. Not with Sam. He had felt things he had never expected to feel, reacted in a way that shocked him.

      It made him see how careful he would need to be in the coming weeks. He had to remember that he had nothing to offer Sam apart from a life that would stifle her as it had stifled his own mother. He wouldn’t be responsible for doing that, for taking away everything that made Sam who she was. Sam was brave, kind, funny and determined and he couldn’t bear to imagine how much she would change if he allowed his desire for her to take over.

      The thought lay heavily in his heart as he strode along the path. The summer palace was built on the site of an oasis and the grounds benefited from an abundance of fresh water. The night-time scent of the flowers filled the air as he made his way through the grounds. Normally the richly, spicy aroma soothed him but tonight it failed to move him. The scent of Sam’s shampoo still lingered in his nostrils and nothing seemed able to supplant it.

      Khalid’s mouth tightened as he nodded to the guard standing outside the entrance to the male guest quarters. He had to stop this, had to remember why Sam was here, which wasn’t for his benefit. She was here to do a job and once it was done she would go back to her own life and he would go back to his. There was no future for them together and he’d be a fool to imagine that there was.

      If he had been willing to take a chance he would have taken it six years ago, made love to her and made promises that he would have kept too. He had wanted her so much, wanted her in his arms, in his bed, in his life, but he had realised after those articles had appeared in the press the damage it would cause if he had acted upon his feelings.

      Maybe he had wanted her, and maybe she had wanted him too, but it wouldn’t have been enough to make up for what would have happened if news of their relationship had leaked out. Sam would have been subjected to constant scrutiny by the press, her every action commented on, her family’s shortcomings discussed ad nauseam. He had seen how hurt she had been, how upset, and he had known that he couldn’t bear to see her subjected to that kind of pressure on top of everything else she would have had to contend with if they had stayed together.

      He sighed. Sam would have had to give up such a lot, her independence, her career; give up being who she was, in fact, and it had been far too much to ask. Even though he spent a lot of his time working in London, Azad was his home and he always came back here. If he had brought Sam here to live, she would have had to conform to a way of life that was completely alien to her. Although changes were taking place, women in Azad still faced many restrictions. Perhaps Sam could have handled it at first even with the added strain of all the unwelcome publicity, but eventually she would have found the life too oppressive, as his mother had done.

      He couldn’t have stood that, couldn’t have tolerated watching her love turn to resentment, which was why he had done what he had that night. Khalid took a deep breath as he made himself face the cold hard facts. It had been better to destroy her love for him once and for all than watch it slowly wither and die.

      Sam rolled over, struggling to untangle herself from the silken folds of the sheet. Reaching out, she pulled the alarm clock closer and sighed. Three a.m. and she was still wide awake. She had tried everything she could think of, counted sheep, recited poetry, thought sleep-inducing thoughts, but nothing had worked. Her body might be exhausted but her mind wouldn’t slow down. It kept whizzing this way and that, yet always ending up at the same point: that moment six years ago when all her dreams had been shattered.

      Tears filled her eyes but she blinked them away. She had done all the crying she intended to do and she wasn’t going to start again. So Khalid had changed his mind, decided that he hadn’t wanted her—so what? The world hadn’t come to an end, the heavens hadn’t fallen in and she had survived. If anything, it had made her stronger, made her value herself more. She had stopped apologising for her background, stopped feeling that she didn’t deserve to be where she was. When it had come to breaking off her engagement last year, she hadn’t hesitated. The relationship wouldn’t have worked and she had known that … as Khalid must have known that their relationship had been doomed to failure.

      Sam sighed as once again her thoughts returned to Khalid. Rolling over, she tried to get comfortable. She needed to sleep or she’d be fit for nothing tomorrow or, rather, today. Closing her eyes, she allowed her mind to drift, deciding it was easier than trying to steer it in any direction. Pictures flowed in and out of her mind: the desert they had flown over; the summer palace shimmering like a mirage in its lush green setting….

      The sound of stealthy footsteps made her eyes fly open and she peered into the darkness. Was there someone in the room, Jess perhaps? Barely daring to breathe, she eased herself up against the pillows and felt her heart knock against her ribs when she saw the outline of a man silhouetted against the window. It hadn’t occurred to her to close the shutters and she could feel the fear rising inside her as the figure approached the bed. Grabbing the clock off the nightstand, she held it aloft, wishing she had a more substantial weapon with which to defend herself.

      ‘Get out or you’re going to regret it!’

      ‘Sam, it’s me.’

      Khalid’s deep voice was the last thing she had expected to hear. The clock slid from her fingers and landed on the floor with a crash. Sam stared at him as he came closer, still not sure if he was real or a figment of her imagination.

      ‘Khalid?’ she whispered, her own voice sounding husky in the silence. ‘Is it really you?’

      ‘Yes.’

      He bent so that she could see his face and her breath caught when she saw how his eyes glittered with an emotion she couldn’t interpret. When he moved closer, so close that she could feel the warmth of his breath on her cheek, she almost cried out. It took every scrap of will power she could muster to lie there and not do anything, not react in any way at all. Khalid had come to her and it was up to him to tell her why.

      ‘I’m sorry to wake you, Sam. I know how tired you must be after the journey.’ His voice sounded softer, deeper, strumming her nerves like a violin bow, and she shuddered.

      ‘What do you want?’ she murmured, wishing that she sounded more certain and less unsure.

      ‘You.’ He suddenly smiled, his teeth gleaming whitely in the moonlight. ‘I need you, Sam.’

       CHAPTER THREE

      ‘THE BABY’S BREECH. It’s too late to turn it or perform a C-section so we’ll

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