For once Drax was too caught up in his own feelings to notice Vere’s deliberate emotional withdrawal from him.
‘The Minister of State wishes to remind us that it is the anniversary of the creation of our country as an independent state next week.’ Vere’s clipped voice broke the heavy tension of their shared silence. ‘He has made arrangements for the normal celebratory visit to the Oasis of the Two Doves. I take it you will be going?’
‘Yes.’ Drax’s voice was as terse as Vere’s.
‘And Sadie will also be attending, I hope?’
Just hearing his twin say Sadie’s name was like having a knife twisted in his gut.
‘If that is your wish,’ Drax replied woodenly.
‘Given the circumstances, it certainly seems appropriate to me that she should be there,’ Vere told him quietly. Couldn’t Drax see how much he was hurting him by shutting him out like this? Or was it that he simply didn’t care? Vere had never felt more isolated and alone. ‘Indeed, I don’t think it merely appropriate, I consider it very necessary that she should be a recognised part of the Royal party,’ he added.
‘If you say so,’ Drax agreed curtly.
‘I do.’
They were almost on the verge of falling out—and over a woman. Not just a woman, Drax told himself, but the woman…his woman. The woman he must now give up. How was he going to bear it? And Sadie? What of her feelings? She had, after all, given him her love. She was sexually innocent, yearning to be loved and to give her love in return. If she could love him after the way he had initially behaved towards her then surely she could and would love Vere? Would she close her eyes in Vere’s bed and think of him? The torturous images that sprang to life fully formed inside his head shocked him. He must not allow them to take root there. He must put Vere first. He must!
Sadie looked uncertainly towards Drax. It hadn’t been until the early hours of the morning that she had finally given up hoping that he would come to her and had gone to bed. As a consequence, even though it was now mid-morning, she was heavy-eyed with lack of sleep and the weight of a growing certainty that something was wrong.
For a start, Drax was ignoring all her desperate attempts to make eye contact with him. For another thing, the only contact of any kind she had had with him since he had told her he loved her had been the arrival of the maid this morning to tell her that she was to be formally presented to Vere and that she should dress accordingly. Nothing else. Not a word nor a gesture. Nothing.
She couldn’t remember a time when she had felt more emotionally insecure and abandoned, Sadie admitted. She actually felt worse than she had done when her parents had divorced. In the space of a few hours she had gone from feeling so high on happiness and love that she couldn’t imagine her life being any more perfect, to feeling so insecure and anxious that it was hard for her to believe that Drax had actually told her he loved her. Even worse, she was beginning to find it all too easy to imagine that Drax, having almost taken her to bed, was now regretting whatever it was that had driven him to desire her. If he did love her, as he had claimed, then as far as she was concerned there was no way he wouldn’t have made at least some effort to make sure that she knew he meant what he had said. If he did love her then surely he would want to let her know how much he longed to be with her instead of virtually ignoring her?
Was he behaving like this because he was afraid that his twin might not approve of their relationship? Sadie frowned. She didn’t want to think of the man she loved being someone who needed to have the approval of someone else to validate his love. However, she was trying to be logical, and to accept that Drax and Vere were twins and that twins had a special relationship. Which was why she was here right now, wearing the cream suit Drax had told her he wanted her to wear for her first meeting with his brother. She looked longingly towards Drax, but he still wasn’t looking at her. Deliberately?
His twin, on the other hand, was most certainly looking at her. Studying her silently, his expression withdrawn and austere.
Being treated like this by Drax wasn’t just humiliating, it was also unbearably painful. When he had left her the previous day she had been on an emotional and sexual high. Then it had been easy to believe that he had meant what he’d said—that he did indeed love her. After all, she loved him. She had even got as far as wondering about names for their first baby before she had begun to feel the chill wind of her own anxiety. Then she had sat in her room, counting the minutes, aching to see Drax and to be reassured that she had not simply imagined what had happened between them. But Drax hadn’t appeared. And so eventually she had gone to sleep, hugging to herself the memory of the precious time they had shared instead of hugging Drax.
Now, of course, it was abundantly plain to her what that happened. Drax had got carried away by sexual desire and had said things to her that he had later regretted. The distance he was deliberately creating between them now was his way of making sure that she realised how he felt—or rather how he didn’t feel. Mingling with her pain was anger. Was he keeping his back towards her because he was afraid that if he looked at her she would behave like a complete fool and fling herself into his arms, begging him to tell her he loved her? Well, she might feel like doing that, but she had some pride. Certainly enough to make it plain to him that he had nothing to fear from her.
Determinedly Sadie kept her own back towards him as she answered the questions Vere was asking her. He was so different from Drax. Being with him, looking at him, listening to him and talking with him, did not cause her heart to pound with the force of the love-induced adrenalin surging through her veins. There was no sense of breathless awareness, no stomach-clenching tension, no fevered and tormented longing to rip off Vere’s clothes and greedily satisfy her need to possess him. Vere was just a very pleasant man, with a kind smile, who looked like the man she loved. There was no chemistry between them—nothing other than a curiosity about him because he was Drax’s twin.
She already knew without having to turn round that Drax had moved and was standing closer to her. She could feel the heat coming off her body and she yearned to step back into him, to turn around so that she could touch him, kiss him. The pain of not being able to was so savage that it
contorted her body and stopped her breath.
Drax took a step towards Sadie. She wasn’t looking at him. She was too busy smiling at Vere. He knew that she had looked at him when she had been escorted into the Presence Chamber, but he had not allowed himself to look back at her, knowing that if he did so he would not be able to stop himself from claiming her. He couldn’t bear to give her up, but at the same time he couldn’t allow himself to break his vow to give his first and total loyalty to his twin. The fault was his own. If he had not made that boast to Vere that he would find him a wife, if he had not offered Sadie to Vere…But he had done those things, and it was not Vere’s fault that he too had recognised how special she was. Just listening to the soft warmth in her voice as she answered Vere’s questions filled Drax with such a surge of murderous jealousy that when it subsided he felt physically sick with self-disgust. He loved her. How could he endure not just a future without her but seeing her happy with his twin?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘SO THIS oasis is where the agreement was signed?’ Sadie was forcing herself to smile and appear lighthearted as she waited for Vere to answer her.
It had been Hakeem who had come to her, two days after Drax had told her he loved her and then turned his back on her, to tell her excitedly that she was to join the Royal party at the traditional annual celebration to mark the original signing of the agreement when Dhurahn had become part of the newly formed union of independent Arab states at the Oasis of the Two Doves, on the edge of the desert’s empty quarter.
They had arrived at the oasis late the previous afternoon to find a small but very luxurious encampment of traditional black pavilions erected close to the oasis, and smiling staff on hand to attend to their every need.
Once inside the large pavilion assigned to her, Sadie had been awed by its luxury and comfort. She even had her own private bathroom, complete with a shower.
But what she didn’t have was Drax. The oasis was beautiful, but her misery was making it impossible for her to enjoy and appreciate it. She hadn’t been able to eat the breakfast she had been served, and she had come here, to this quiet part of the oasis away from the tents, to hide her confusion and misery from everyone else and to try to decide what she should do.
And now here was Vere, who had been so charming to her, and so kind, but who just wasn’t the man she wanted and loved. While Drax, whom she did love and want, was behaving as though she did not exist. No wonder she felt so sick at heart.
‘Has Drax told you that we are having to cut short our stay at the oasis?’ Vere asked.
Sadie shook her head, unable to bring herself to admit that Drax hadn’t said a word to her since they had arrived the previous evening.