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 tirad
e. 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.