As he spoke, a forbidding darkness clenching his taut features, Faye
fell back a step, colour receding, facial muscles tightening, sudden shame at the crisis she had caused engulfing her.
‘It was not a risk I should have taken, I, who have no heir other than a four-year-old brother!’ Pale now beneath his bronzed skin and rigid with tension, Tariq produced a portable phone and said with savage force. ‘Even worse, I’ve been wasting time with you while my country, to whom I owe my first duty, is in a state of emergency!’
Recognising the depth of self-blame now assailing Tariq, Faye felt terrible. Rescuing her had demanded too high a price from him. For possibly the first time she recognised that, unlike her, he had to live two lives, both public and private, and naturally the responsibilities of being the ruler of his country counted way above other more personal inclinations. ‘I’m really sorry…’
‘Not one half as sorry as I am to have failed in my duty…’ Grave and stern as only he could be, Tariq strode back into the outer cave. Within the space of a minute, she heard the faint echo of his voice speaking on the phone. The storm had ended and the wind had dropped without either of them noticing.
Faye stooped down to splash her face as he had done earlier, a great solid wodge of conflict and guilt attacking her. She grabbed up the kaffiyeh he had left lying and patted her skin dry. She could smell the evocative scent of him on the cloth. Sandalwood and just him. Male and warm and exotically sexy. In the wake of what he had admitted to her with such haunting, seering honesty, she was even ashamed of that last utterly inappropriate thought.
From somewhere she could hear a low throbbing drone. Engines of some kind? The childish part of her just wanted to scream that she had not meant to cause so much trouble. Omeir was squeezing back through the gap so that he could stay close to his lord and master. Faye’s eyes prickled with hot, hurting tears. Omeir was pretty special and, just then, she didn’t much care if she rated much lower than the horse in Tariq’s estimation.
Picking up her backpack, she slunk back out of the caves. The bright blue sky was full of military and airforce helicopters. In the distance a trio of jets flashed past leaving trailing silver paths in their wake.
‘You see what I have caused?’ Tariq gritted out in a raw undertone. ‘An all-out search for me is being staged when these resources should have been concentrated on those injured by the storm!’
‘I’m really…desperately sorry,’ Faye mumbled chokily. ‘I honestly never realised how serious a sandstorm could be. I thought they just shifted the sand around a little—’
‘Close your mouth before I strangle you.’ Tariq groaned.
‘Where was Omeir being taken?’
‘At this season the tribal sheikhs meet at a gathering in the eastern territory. Omeir would have been collected on the road and taken into the desert in advance of my arrival. Now we will both be late,’ he completed half under his breath.
‘I really didn’t mean to cause all this trouble for you—’
‘Lust brings its own punishment.’
Compressing her lips on that grim announcement, Faye backed into the shadowy depths of the cave again. From there she watched the helicopters descend to land, one after another, sand flurrying up all around them.
Without warning, Tariq turned his imperious dark head to look at her again. A slashing smile that was purebred primitive momentarily lightened his brooding tension. ‘On the other hand, perhaps I have finally paid the full price for desiring you and may hope to now enjoy the rewards.’
At the sound of raised voices nearby, he swung away again, having plunged her into flushed disconcertion with that concluding statement. A surge of anxious pilots and a whole bunch of less agile older men, who had clearly come along as passengers, were now converging on Tariq. As they approached, they fell down on their knees and began to offer loud and fervent prayers of gratitude for his safety. Never would she have witnessed such an unashamed and charged display of emotion in the West but, once she got over the drama of the scene, what she saw touched her to the heart.
They were so relieved that Tariq was unharmed. He wasn’t only respected, he was genuinely loved and valued. Before Adrian had turned against Tariq under the mistaken impression that Tariq had attempted to seduce his kid sister, her brother had told her how very well-liked Tariq was and, indeed, that everyone he heard speak of him believed he was a terrific guy. She too had once held the same opinion. But then Percy had intervened and, overnight, Tariq had become a stranger. A stranger with a dark, volatile side to his character that she had never dreamt existed. She had lost the man she loved beyond all reason, lost him for ever, she recognized in sudden stark pain.
Yes, she had loved him, she acknowledged dully. After Tariq had, without question, risked his own life to save hers, it was beneath her to continue pretending that she had only been infatuated with him. Pride and pain had made her buy into that lie. He might never had loved her but he had liked and respected her. That was what she had truly lost and her bitterness had grown out of the reality that she had connived in her own downfall…
For loving Tariq as she had a year ago, she had wanted him at any price. The day he had asked her to marry him, she might not have known about Percy’s blackmail attempt, but she had suspected that Tariq might only have been proposing because Percy had surprised them in each other’s arms in her bedroom. Nevertheless, she had still accepted that proposal, hadn’t she? What did that say about her principles? In her own eyes, it sunk her beyond reclaim.
CHAPTER FIVE
FAYE shifted sleepily and turned over, wincing at the stiffness of her muscles.
It was reasonably cool which told her it was still early morning. She had only the haziest recollection of boarding a helicopter the night before and none at all of being removed from it again. Bone-deep exhaustion and stress had wiped out the last of her energy reserves. Perhaps the final straw had been hearing that the helicopter in which Tariq had flown to find her had been buried right up to the rotor blades by a collapsing dune during the storm. What would have happened to Tariq had he still been inside it? She suppressed a shudder. Why was it that her every mistake seemed to rebound on him?
Pushing her tumbled hair back from her troubled brow, she finally opened her eyes. Soft, billowing folds of heavily embroidered fabric met her astonished scrutiny. The whole bed was shrouded in curtains. No such bed had featured in the room she had briefly occupied in the Muraaba palace. Wondering where on earth she was, she sat up with a start.
‘You are awake, my lady?’ With a gentle hand, Shiran brushed back one of the curtains several inches. ‘Sidi Latif is waiting to speak to you—’
‘But I’m in bed—’
‘Please excuse the interruption.’ Latif’s quiet intervention sounded from somewhere close by but out of view. ‘I am standing outside your bedroom and, with your agreement, may address you from here.’
Already engaged in gaping at what lay beyond her bed, Faye blinked. Latif said he was standing outside her bedroom but she was in a tent! It might be an incredibly opulent, large and well-furnished tent, but it was still a tent! Evidently, Tariq had decided to take her to his tribal gathering in the desert, rather than return her to the Muraaba palace as she had assumed he would.
‘Yes…’ Faye faltered, her attention resting on the exquisite tapestries screening all canvas from view, the Persian rug covering the floor and the beautiful suite of satinwood furniture inlaid with intricate mother-of-pearl scrolls.
Shiran backed out through a curtained exit and Latif spoke up again. ‘Prince Tariq has gone without sleep for many hours. Throughout the night he visited those hurt during the sandstorm—’
‘Were there many hurt?’ Faye had paled at that news and the awareness that Tariq had been up all night.
‘It pleases me that you should wish to know.’ Latif’s response exuded warmth and approval. ‘The storm struck hardest in the desert but in the city some were injured by falling masonry and flying debris. There were also several traffic accidents. In all, only three deaths which was a muc
h lower number than we had feared might result. However, for the sake of his good health, His Royal Highness should now rest. I would be most grateful if you would make this suggestion.’
‘If I see Prince Tariq, I’ll do my best.’
‘You will most assuredly see him.’ Latif sounded slightly strained in his delivery.
She was to urge Tariq to go to bed? She was truly disconcerted that Latif should approach her with his concern. But, most of all, she was mortified by his clear acceptance that her relationship with Tariq was one of intimacy. Yet how could Tariq flaunt a woman as a lover without fear of censure? Surely standards of public propriety were too strict for such displays in Jumar? Surely even her presence in a tent at a tribal gathering was pretty reckless? Or was it a case of the old double standard? Her troubled face stiffened. Maybe people weren’t too concerned about what their ruling prince did as long as the woman he did it with was a foreigner.
Not that they had yet done anything, Faye conceded ruefully, but that situation was unlikely to last. It was time she faced facts: she was stuck in Jumar for the foreseeable future. At the mercy of a male who knew exactly how weak she was in terms of physical self-restraint. No sooner had that reflection touched her cheeks with even warmer pink than she heard a rustle of movement and voices beyond the cloth partitions of her enclosed and private space, followed by Tariq’s familiar dark, deep drawl speaking in a tone of command.
A split second later, the bed drapes were thrust back and Tariq himself appeared. ‘Your maids are keen to keep you hidden from all male eyes…apparently even mine!’
‘Yours?’ Looking up, Faye collided with stunning tawny eyes that snarled the breath up in her throat and sent her nervous tension leaping.
‘It has taken me ten minutes to find you.’ Although Tariq looked exhausted, his bronzed skin ashen, strain etched in the taut line of his wide sensual mouth, his gaze was as brilliant as ever, the high voltage energy that charged him still in the ascendant over the tiredness.