The Call of the Desert

Kaden was seeing a red mist over his vision. So many conflicting things were hitting him at once. No woman had ever walked away from him, for one thing. But a dented ego had never been his concern. It was Julia, standing there so poised and cool, as if ice wouldn’t melt in her mouth. When only hours before she’d been raking his back with her nails and sobbing for him to release her from exquisite pleasure.

Jerkily Julia moved to the drawers and picked up what looked like a jewellery box. She was already gathering her things to start packing. Filled with something that felt scarily close to panic, Kaden took a step forward and noticed how skittishly she moved back. Her face had an incredibly vulnerable expression but he blocked it out, and it was only then that he noticed—at the same time as she did—that some jewellery had fallen from the box after her skittish move.

He watched as she bent to pick up the trinkets and then, as if in slow motion, something gold fell back to the floor. Before he even knew what he was doing he’d stepped forward and picked the piece up.

Julia stood up. Her heart had stopped beating. It was like watching a car crash in slow motion. Kaden straightened. The distinctive gold chain with its detail of a love-knot looked ridiculously delicate in his huge hand. He didn’t even look at her.

“You still have it.”

Julia didn’t have the strength to berate herself for having brought it. She swallowed and said, far more huskily than she would have liked, “Yes, I still have it.”

Even now her fingers itched to touch the tell—tale spot where it usually sat, and she clenched her hand into a fist. Kaden looked at her and his face was unreadable, those black eyes like fathomless wells.

“You always touch your throat …” He reached out his other hand and touched the base of her neck with a long finger. “Just here …”

Julia gulped, and could see his eyes track the movement. With dread in her veins and a tide of crimson rising upwards she could only stand still as Kaden carefully stepped closer and opened the necklace, placing it around her neck and closing it as deftly as he had the day he’d bought it for her.

She felt the weight of the knot settle into its familiar place, just below the ho

llow at her throat. Kaden took his hands away, but didn’t move back. Julia couldn’t meet his eyes. Mortified and horrifically exposed.

Kaden looked at it for a long moment, and then he stepped back. When she raised her eyes to his they were blacker than she’d ever seen them. His face was set in stark lines. “If you’re sure you want to go home now, I’ll see that Nita comes to help you.”

Julia shook her head, feeling numb. She wasn’t sure how to take Kaden’s abrupt volte face, when moments ago he’d looked as if he was about to tip her back onto the bed and persuade her to stay in a very carnal way. Now he looked positively repulsed. It had to be the necklace. He was horrified that she still had it, and what that might mean. Memories, the sting of rejection—all rushed back.

“It’s fine. I don’t need help.”

Kaden saw Julia’s mouth move but didn’t really hear what she was saying. All he could hear was a dull roaring in his head, the precursor to a pounding headache. And all he could see was that necklace. It seemed to be mocking him. He could still feel its imprint on his hand.

A tightness was spreading in his chest. He had to get out of there now. He backed away from Julia. Gathering force within him was the overwhelming sensation of sliding down a slippery slope with nothing to hold onto.

Julia watched the play of indecipherable expressions cross Kaden’s face. She felt like going over and thumping him. She wanted to wring some sort of response out of him … But then she felt deflated. How could she wring a response out of someone who had no feelings?

She swallowed painfully. “I … It’s been—”

She stopped as he cut her off. “Yes,” he agreed grimly. “It has. Goodbye, Julia.”

And with that he turned and was gone, and all Julia’s flimsy control shattered at her feet—because she felt as if she’d just been rejected all over again.

Less than an hour later Kaden was in his own private plane, heading back to Burquat. He’d actually had a meeting lined up the following morning, with some of Sultan Sadiq’s mining advisors, but had postponed it. The fact was he’d felt an overwhelming need to get as far away from B’harani as possible, as quickly as possible.

He looked down at his hand. It was actually shaking. All he could see, though, was that necklace, sitting in his hand, and then around Julia’s neck. It was obviously the necklace she went to touch all the time. It hung in exactly that spot, and when he’d put it on she’d looked guilty.

The question was too incendiary to contemplate, but he couldn’t help it: who would keep and wear a cheap gold necklace for twelve years? It was the only piece of jewellery, apart from his ex-wife’s wedding rings, that he’d ever given to a woman, and he remembered the moment as if it was yesterday.

Kaden’s mind shut down … He couldn’t handle the implications of this.

He watched the B’harani desert roll out below him, and instead of feeling a sense of peace he felt incredibly restless. His hands clenched to fists on his thighs, he didn’t even see the air hostess take one look at his face and beat a hasty retreat.

Kaden assured himself that for the first time since he’d met Julia he was finally doing the right thing. Leaving her behind in his past. Where she belonged.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“YOU are definitely pregnant, Julia. And if the dates you’ve told me are correct I’d say you’re almost three months gone—at the end of your first trimester.”

Julia’s kindly maternal doctor looked at her over her half-moon glasses,

“Why didn’t you come to me sooner? You must have suspected something, and we both know your periods are like clockwork.”