LITMIR.BIZ

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coming up to the surface of the sea. Consciousness glimmered, a twinkling, faraway thing. She reached for it, desperate now to seize it, and opened her eyes as if weights were attached to her lids. She lay in a bed and all around her was dark with shadows, and in the distance she heard the drone of an engine, could feel the thrum of it through her body. She was on a plane.

      Panic shot through her as she struggled to make sense of what had happened, what little she could remember.

      She had been walking to work and someone had grabbed her. Thrown a blanket or bag over her head and taken her in a car. She’d kicked out at her assailant and her fingernails had connected with someone’s face, raking along a cheek. And then someone had said something—in a language she didn’t understand—and she’d felt a jab in her arm and then … nothing.

      Terror clutched at her chest, grabbed her by the throat. She’d been kidnapped. Abducted in broad daylight from one of Paris’s best neighbourhoods. Impossible and yet—here she was. On a plane—going where? And what did her captors want? Ransom? Her family was certainly wealthy enough to consider such an awful possibility. Or was it something else—something worse? Vague images of the modern-day slave trade danced through her mind and she tasted bile. She’d kill herself first, if she had an opportunity.

      ‘You’re awake.’

      Noelle let out a stifled scream. In the near-darkness she hadn’t seen the figure sitting in a chair in the corner of the room. She still couldn’t make out his features, but she could certainly recognise his gravelly voice. Ammar.

      ‘You,’ she said, and her voice came out in a scratchy, unused whisper. She coughed and Ammar came forward to take the glass of water from her bedside table and hand it to her. Noelle took it, her fingers trembling so much that Ammar kept his hand wrapped around the glass, his fingers overlapping hers, and helped her to drink. She was too tired and too thirsty to resist this small solicitude, yet finally, with an effort borne of desperate fury, she pushed the glass away, spilling droplets on the silk coverlet. ‘You kidnapped me,’ she managed, trying to make it a question, because surely he wouldn’t have done such a thing. Yet here he was, and so was she.

      In the shadowy room she could not make out his expression at all. ‘I told you, I needed to talk to you.’

      Noelle let out a hoarse bark of disbelieving laughter and leaned back against the pillows. ‘And that makes it acceptable, does it?’

      ‘You didn’t give me many options.’

      ‘You didn’t give me many options.’

      ‘Sometimes,’ Ammar said, ‘extreme measures are necessary.’

      ‘You take extreme to an entirely new level.’ She shook her head, tried to untangle her emotions. She was shocked, yes, and definitely angry, but was she afraid? No, she didn’t think so. If she were honest, she felt a treacherous tingle of relief that it was him and not some unknown thug. Or even just that it was him. And yet … kidnapped.

      ‘I’m sorry that extreme measures were necessary in this instance—’

      ‘Sorry? You talk as if you had no choice but to kidnap me, Ammar. As if I made you do it.’ She closed her eyes, a sudden sorrow added to the welter of feelings inside her. ‘You’re blaming me for what you did. This feels very familiar.’

      ‘I never,’ he said in a low voice, ‘blamed you for anything.’

      She supposed that was true. It had just felt like it was her fault. One minute she’d been married, nurturing dreams of happily-ever-afters, domesticity and children and a little house outside Paris, and the next her husband was barely speaking to her, never mind anything else, with no explanation at all.

      ‘Turn a light on,’ she said, because she wanted to see his face. Ammar opened a shade on one of the windows, letting in a sudden stream of hard, bright sunlight.

      In the unforgiving brightness he looked, Noelle thought, terrible. He was unshaven, the scar snaking down his cheek livid, red and raw. Although he was dressed in a pressed grey polo shirt and black jeans, he seemed more haggard and gaunt than he had last night. Last night—could it really have only been last night that she’d seen him at the charity ball? She didn’t even know how much time had passed.

      ‘Are we on a plane?’ she demanded hoarsely.

      ‘My private jet.’

      ‘Where are you taking me?’

      ‘To my home.’

      ‘Alhaja?’ She’d hated the island his father had called home, a prison-like bunker set in gorgeous gardens on a private island in the Mediterranean. She’d spent two lonely months there before she’d finally fled.

      ‘No. Alhaja was never my home.’ His voice was hard, dark. Noelle saw one lean hand clench into a fist against his thigh before he slowly, deliberately flattened his palm out once more. ‘We’re going to my private villa in Northern Africa, on the edge of the Sahara Desert.’

      ‘You have a villa in the Sahara?’

      Ammar gazed back at her levelly. ‘Yes.’

      ‘And you’re taking me there?’

      ‘Yes.’

      Obviously. Yet she still struggled to understand, to believe. What could he possibly want with her? She closed her eyes, too tired to ask. She heard the creak of the chair as Ammar rose, and then her exhausted body suddenly pulsed with life as she felt his hand, callused, cool, on her forehead.

      ‘You should sleep some more.’

      ‘I don’t want to sleep—’ But she did. Already she felt herself sliding back into the safety of unconsciousness. Dimly, as if from a great distance, she heard Ammar speak.

      ‘We’ll be there in a few hours. I’ll stay here until you wake.’

      Noelle was too tired to resist. And as she tumbled back into sleep a small, strange part of her felt reassured that he’d told her he would stay.

      Ammar watched Noelle’s face soften in sleep and felt regret pierce him with its double-edged sword. Ever since he’d arranged for her transport here he’d felt it, that sliver of doubt, jagged, sharp and painful. He should not have taken her like that. Kidnapped, that was the word she’d used. A crime.

      He sat back in the chair, his hands resting on his knees as he gazed at her sleeping form. He shouldn’t have done it, he knew that, but what choice had he really had? He was not going to chase her around Paris, trailing after her like a kicked puppy, begging for a few seconds of her time. And here, just the two of them, he hoped—even if he was unwilling to say it aloud—that they might recapture something of what they’d had before.

      Now you’ll know never to trust a woman. Never to be weak.

      Even in death his father mocked him. Ammar swallowed hard, his throat suddenly dry, his heart thudding. He hated his memories. Hated the response they instinctively dredged up in him, the fear, the loathing. The longing. He forced them away, made his mind blank. He’d always been good at that, had had to be good at it. Don’t think about what you’re doing. Don’t think about who it hurts. Don’t think. Taking a deep, slow breath, he leaned back in the chair and waited for Noelle to wake.

      When Noelle woke again the sluggish exhaustion had gone, giving her a sense of relief, but also leaving her feeling both weakened and wary.

      She sat up and saw Ammar was still sitting in the chair by her bed. He’d fallen into a half-doze, his face softened in sleep, dark lashes sweeping against his cheek, reminding her for a breathless second of the man he used to be. The man she’d thought he was. His eyes flickered open and he stared at her for a taut moment that seemed suspended and separate in its sudden, raw honesty. Ammar gazed at her, seeming almost vulnerable, hungry, and as for her? Noelle could feel the answer in herself. She’d loved this man once, no matter how he’d brought them to this place, and she felt its echo through her heart.

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