The Sheikh's Baby Omnibus (22 page)

He was, Sam noticed, looking at his watch. She started to
exhale unevenly in relief, assuming that he was about to leave, but instead to
her dismay he informed her, ‘After the evening meal tonight we shall drive out
to the source of the river. It is a three-hour drive, and we shall camp there
overnight. In the morning you can show me this supposed channel, and then we can
return before the heat of the day.’

‘No...’ Sam croaked, panic gripping her. Her reaction was an
immediate and instinctive grab for self-protection.

‘What?’

It was plain from both his expression and the disbelief in his
voice that he wasn’t used to having his orders questioned, Sam recognised, and
now he was coming towards her.

Her panic increased, but shamefully now it was joined by
another emotion—and this one was telling her that what she really wanted was for
him to come even closer.

‘No,’ she repeated, denying her own emotions as much as his
demand, as unwanted need threatened to swamp her protective panic. ‘Don’t come
any closer...don’t... . don’t touch me.’

Wasn’t what she really meant,
do
touch me—oh, please, please
do
touch me, and keep on
touching me for ever...?

He had come to an abrupt halt several feet away from her and
was looking at her as though she were an insect that had crawled out from
beneath a stone, Sam thought. As though she were something unclean.

‘Don’t touch you?’ he repeated, as though he could hardly
believe she had spoken those words to him. ‘Do you dare to believe that I would
wish to?’

Torn between angry pride and stinging humiliation, Sam longed
to have the kind of thick skin that would have enabled her to point out to him
that there had been an occasion when he had done rather a lot more than merely
touch her. But her own feelings of shamed guilt about the part she had played in
that incident held her back, so instead she stayed silent. She wished she had
not done so when he continued coldly, ‘Well let me assure you that you need have
no fear on that account. And before you humiliate yourself by referring to a
certain incident that does neither of us any credit, let me tell you that it is
certainly something I intend to forget. I would advise you to do the same.’

‘There’s no need to advise me to do anything. I had already
forgotten it, Your Highness,’ Sam lied through gritted teeth in fierce
retaliation.

Her vehemence caught Vere off guard. He wasn’t used to being
challenged in any way or by anyone—except occasionally Drax. The fact that she
had done so, and with such furious passion, was an unfamiliar enough experience
for him without the additional unwanted knowledge that it underlined the fact
that this woman seemed to have the knack of reacting in a way that he just
wasn’t prepared for. Even worse, she provoked him into behaving in a way that
was totally out of character for him.

He had come in here with one purpose in mind, and that had been
to get her off her guard enough for him to find a way to circumvent whatever it
was the Emir was planning to do. Instead she had somehow or other forced him
into a role that was a total surprise to him—and not a pleasant one either.

Vere did not like those kind of surprises. He liked to feel
that he had the ability to read both situations and people well enough to be one
step ahead of them, and thus prepared for what might happen. Sam’s stubborn
refusal to fit into the mould he had cast for her was infuriating.

She was lying about having forgotten their first meeting, of
course. It was ridiculously obvious in everything she said and did, in every
look she gave him, that she remembered it very well. He had a good mind to make
her admit that to him—as well as admit why it had happened. Did she think he was
a complete fool? Vere raged inwardly, his anger growing. Or did she think that
by her pretence she could whet his appetite for more of the same?

Had she been lying in wait for him on that corridor? Had she
believed that he would fall for that kind of ploy? Did she really think he was
so emotionally vulnerable that he would be taken in by her and want her? Did she
think that he was the kind of man who was so lacking in principles and pride
that he would want what she had been so ready to offer?

Well, if so, she was certainly going to learn now how wrong she
was and how totally immune he was to her, he decided furiously, and he strode
past her and out of the tent. He ignored the inner voice trying to reason with
him and remind him that he was supposed to be winning her confidence and getting
under her guard.

CHAPTER FIVE

‘S
AM
. There you are—could I have a
word?’

Sam jumped guiltily. She had been so engrossed in her own
thoughts—thoughts which revolved totally around having a certain person on his
knees, begging her forgiveness for misjudging her—that she hadn’t even heard
Anne coming towards her until the other woman had spoken to her.

‘Yes. Of course...’

‘It’s about James,’ Anne confided, drawing her to one side as
other members of the team walked past them on their way to the communal dining
area for their evening meal.

‘Ted thinks that he’s been bringing alcohol into the camp and
drinking it. He says he could smell it on James’s breath the other morning, and
he thinks he saw him drinking from a hip flask when they were out in the field,
although of course he can’t prove it.’

Sam could hear the dismay in Anne’s voice.

‘Oh, surely not,’ she protested. ‘We all know now that having
alcohol here even for our own consumption is strictly forbidden. That was made
plain to all of us when we were interviewed. James is very ambitious, and I
can’t see him doing anything that would damage his career.’

‘Well, one would certainly like to think not—which is why Ted
is so concerned about him. Ted and I have spent a lot of time working in the
Middle East, and I’m afraid that we have seen colleagues before develop a drink
problem whilst they’re out here, away from home. He’s worried that James could
be heading in that direction.’

‘Just because Ted saw him drinking alcohol that doesn’t mean he
has a drink problem,’ Sam felt bound to point out—although just why she should
be defending James after the trouble he had got her into she had no idea.

‘Of course not. But as I said Ted says there have been a couple
of occasions on which he’s been pretty sure he could smell drink on James’s
breath. He has tried to talk to him about it, but James brushed him off. In fact
he was quite rude. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but sometimes his behaviour
seems to be quite irrational. Neither of us likes telling tales out of school,
but since you’re working with him we agreed that we should have a word with
you.’

‘I’m glad you have,’ Sam admitted. ‘Not that there’s anything I
can do if he is drinking. I’m the last person he’d be likely to listen to.’

‘Well, yes, but to be honest it was you we were thinking about
rather than him. He does rather have a down on you. It was remarkably tactless
of him to make the comment he did to the the Prince.’

‘Yes,’ Sam agreed ruefully. ‘It was—especially as it wasn’t
even true.’

What she wasn’t going to say to Anne was that she was beginning
to wonder if James had been going through her work behind her back and had come
across the satellite images of the river. From now on she intended to be far
more careful about the access he had to her papers and her computer. Little as
she liked to think he was looking for a means of getting her into trouble, she
suspected that was exactly what he
was
doing—although she had no real idea why. If he did indeed have a drink problem
then she genuinely felt very sorry for him. But she also knew that it was
professional help he needed, not her sympathy.

‘Come on—we’d better go and get some dinner. Have you heard yet
when Talia is likely to be back?’ Anne asked.

Sam shook her head. ‘It’s going to be several weeks, but more
than that I don’t know.’

The Smiths were a kind and thoughtful couple, and she
appreciated the fact that, knowing she was now without a female companion, Anne
had asked her to join them to eat. Not that she felt hungry. Not when she knew
that after their evening meal she was going to have to give in to the demands of
Prince Vereham al a’ Karim bin Hakar and show him what she had discovered.

‘I must say that I’ve never been on any field trip where we’ve
been fed so well.’ Anne laughed. ‘I think I’ve actually put on weight.’

‘The food
is
excellent,’ Sam
agreed.

Zuran was a world-renowned luxury holiday destination, and the
Ruler of Zuran had provided them with the services of a gifted young chef. Fresh
food was brought out for them every day, along with water, and Sam could well
understand why Anne felt she’d gained a few pounds.

‘I treated myself to a copy of the new Jane Austen DVD whilst
we were in Zuran, but it’s not Ted’s cup of tea—so if you’d like to watch it
with me after dinner...?’ she offered.

‘I’d love to,’ Sam said truthfully. ‘But I’m afraid I can’t.’
Trying not to sound as self-conscious as she felt, she told Anne, ‘Prince
Vereham al a’ Karim bin Hakar has ordered me to accompany him on a field trip,
and he wants to set off after dinner.’

If Anne was surprised, to Sam’s relief she managed to keep it
to herself, saying easily, ‘Well never mind. Perhaps another time.’

There was no sign of James in the large air-conditioned tented
‘dining room’, nor any sign of the Ruler of Dhurahn either—but then it wasn’t
unusual for the high-ranking Arabs monitoring their work to eat separately from
them. And of course Sam was relieved and delighted that he wasn’t there. The
last thing she wanted was to look up from her food to find that merciless cold
green gaze focused on her.

‘Finished already?’ Anne
asked in
surprise, when Sam touched her on the arm a little later, and explained that she
was leaving.

‘I’ve got to put a few things together. Somehow I don’t think
it would be a good idea to keep the Prince and his entourage waiting.’

‘No,’ Anne agreed. ‘I don’t think it would. I must say he is an
outstandingly autocratically handsome man—very compelling, if somewhat austere,
plus he has such presence. Jane Austen, I think, would have had a field-day with
such a role model for a hero. You’d never think to look at him that Dhurahn is
the most forward-thinking and democratically run Gulf State of them all, but Ted
says that it is.’

Forward-thinking and democratic? No, she would certainly never
have thought of describing the Ruler of Dhurahn as either of those things, Sam
acknowledged grimly as she made her way back to her quarters to collect her
laptop and everything else she felt she might need for her upcoming trip. Her
trip
? Didn’t she mean her ordeal? Sam asked
herself wryly.

Vere looked at
his watch. His men
should have loaded up the four-by-four with everything they would need by now.
He had spoken to Drax and explained to his twin what he had discovered, and Drax
had promised to find out what he could about Ms Samantha McLellan.

It was only after he had ended the call that Vere realised he
had said nothing to Drax about his own original meeting with ‘Sam’, as her
colleagues appeared to call her. But then why should he? What possible relevance
to what was happening now could that have? None whatsoever—other than to
underline for him the type of woman she was and keep him on his guard against
her.

A fresh surge of outrage and pride-fuelled fury burst through
him as he recalled how earlier in her tent she had tried to pretend that she
thought he had been going to touch her. Did she really think she had the power
to drive him into such a state of arousal and need that he would do such a
thing. A man in his position? He could almost hear his twin’s soft laughter at
his indignation. A small rueful smile curled his mouth. Drax had always had the
knack of softening the burden imposed on him by his position. But the reality
was that he was not just a man, he was Dhurahn’s ruler, and he had a duty to set
his people the right kind of example. He couldn’t, for example, imagine his
father, who had been so strong and so noble, indulging in the kind of behaviour
he
had descended to. But then his father had had
his mother, and the love they had shared had been plain for everyone to see.

Love. He must never fall in love. Imagine, for instance, if
those hot, sharp pangs he had felt when he had held Ms Samantha McLellan in his
arms had not been lust but love? How would he be feeling right now?

What?
What was this? What on earth
was he doing, coupling Samantha McLellan and the word love together in the same
sentence?

‘Everything is ready, Highness.’

Vere acknowledged the soft words of the man who had just
salaamed his way into his tent with a brief nod of his head.

Sam had just
finished packing a
change of clothes into her backpack when the flap entrance to her tent was flung
back to admit the Prince.

His curt, ‘You are ready?’ caused her to respond to him with an
equally curt inclination of her head.

‘Very well, then.’

He turned to leave, plainly expecting her to follow him, so Sam
picked up her things and hurried after him. Irritatingly, the narrowness of the
path and the bulk of what she was carrying made it impossible for her to do
anything other than walk behind him, for all the world as though she was
acknowledging his sexual superiority to her and following tamely. That was
something she would certainly
never
do, she fumed,
so engrossed in her own anger that she only just managed to stop herself from
cannoning into him when he stopped alongside a large four-by-four. Bumping into
him a second time was the last thing she needed to do right now—especially after
his previous accusation.

Obviously he would be the one travelling in this enormous
monster of a gas-guzzler, Sam decided, and searched round for the rest of the
vehicles, looking confused when she couldn’t see any.

‘Something is wrong?’ he was asking her impatiently.

Yes, just about everything, Sam thought ruefully, but shook her
head and said instead, ‘No.’

‘Excellent. Give me your things, then, I’ll put them in the
back.’

Give
him
her things and
he
would put them in the back? Sam knew she was gaping
at him as he took the laptop case from her unresisting grip. He was a prince,
the Ruler of an Arab state. He was arrogant and demanding, and he was used to
being waited on hand and foot, so no way could he have meant what he had said.
But apparently he had, Sam realised, as he gestured to her to remove her
backpack and then took it from her, carrying it as though it weighed nothing
instead of the several heavy kilos her shoulders knew it did.

She could hear him opening the rear door of the four-by-four
and then closing it again. He strode to the passenger door ignoring her. Sam
looked wildly around herself wondering where on earth the vehicle that was to be
her transport was, and if he would actually allow his own driver to drive off
without her.

‘If you’re ready?’

It was more an impatient command than a request. Confused, Sam
looked from his irritated stance beside the passenger door he was holding open
to the empty seat, and then back to him again.

‘You want me to get in?’ she asked him

‘It would seem a logical process, if we are to leave for our
destination,’ he agreed.

From the way he was looking at her, if she kept him waiting
much longer he’d be bustling her into the passenger seat like a small child, Sam
suspected, reluctantly stepping up to the door. Her, ‘What about you?’ was lost
in the heavy thud of the door being closed by an impatient male hand.

She was reaching for her seat belt when the driver’s door
opened and he swung himself into the driver’s seat, closing his own door as he
did so.

He was driving them himself?

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Where are the others?’ she asked uncertainly.

‘What others?’

‘You mean that... But I thought...’

‘You thought what? That after your earlier crass attempt to
foster intimacy between us I wouldn’t want to risk being alone with you? Somehow
I think I’m capable of defending my own honour.’

Sam could feel her face burning with fury. She looked towards
the door of the now moving vehicle, but of course it was too late for her to
register a protest by trying to get out and walk off.

‘What happened in that corridor was an accident...a
mistake...’

‘A mistake—yes, I agree. But an accident?’

‘And as for you worrying about risking being alone with me—’
She was so angry that the words she wanted to say had balled up as tightly in
her throat as her fingers moved into tight fists against her palms. ‘That is
both offensive and ridiculous. After all, I’m not the one who arranged this
trip, and I certainly wouldn’t have chosen to make it alone with you.’

Vere knew perfectly well that she had a point, but the fact
that she had made it still angered him. In fact, everything about her and her
presence here, and the problems she was causing, infuriated him.

Her meddling in something that was nothing whatever to do with
her, and her ridiculous claims about the source of the river, were obliging him
to take time out of his already very busy life to check up on the situation,
ready to head off any arguments the Emir might try to put forward.

He had no desire whatsoever to have her ideas brought into a
more public arena, for others with their own agendas to get involved, and
because of that he had been forced to make this trip alone with her—something he
would never ordinarily have done.

When he came to the desert he liked to come alone—completely
alone—so that he could replenish himself via his solitude with it.

He disliked sharing the desert—‘his’ desert—with anyone, but
the thought of having to share it with this woman, who had already aggravated
and irritated him to the point where he couldn’t even close his eyes in sleep
without her appearing in his dreams to infuriate him, inflamed his hostility
towards her like a bur under a saddle. He came to the desert to cool his
overheated thoughts and emotions, to live for a precious few days as a poet
hermit, letting the desert reach out to him and unfold its mysteries to him.