TAHIR leaned back in his chair and silently congratulated himself.
With Annalisa’s input the working party had achieved more these last couple of weeks than he’d have thought possible. She’d done what his officials hadn’t: sought advice from contacts in outlying regions. The plans for coordinated medical care promised to be a success.
His wife-to-be was talented and able. She related to people at all levels, yet was curiously lacking in ego. She was clever, caring, intelligent.
And she aroused him as no other woman.
Even the knowledge that she carried his child couldn’t quench his desire. He’d found himself hungrily tracing her figure for some sign of the baby. Instead of shying from the idea, he found her pregnancy evoked urgent, possessive feelings that made his self-imposed distance almost impossible.
The fact that he barely slept, haunted by erotic dreams, was testament to his newfound strength. Once upon a time he’d have seduced her as soon as temptation rose.
Yet he’d found a strange contentment in restraint, knowing he did the right thing, allowing her time to adjust. The way she glowed and her renewed confidence proved he’d done right.
He nodded goodbye to his staff. The room emptied but for Annalisa, still poring over plans.
Silently he paced across to stand beside her.
The familiar wild honey scent of her skin filled his nostrils and sent a tremor through already taut muscles. He inhaled deeply. No scent was more evocative. His hands grew damp as he suppressed the impulse to pull her close.
He watched her graceful movements as she turned the pages. The way she pursed her lips in an unconscious pout. He wanted to bite that succulent bottom lip till she groaned with delight, then plunder her sweet depths. He wanted to see the glitter of incendiary fire in her warm brown eyes as she gasped in pleasure and fulfilment.
He wanted to be with her, possess her, have her smile at him and let him bask in her warmth.
Annalisa sensed Tahir before she saw him. Her hand trembled as she put the papers on the conference table.
Hard fingers clasped her elbow and she froze. Looking up, she sank into the blue depths of Tahir’s gaze. Strange that a man with his reputation should have eyes that looked like a glimpse of heaven.
‘Come,’ he said, drawing her to a group of comfortable chairs. ‘Sit with me.’
Automatically she looked back, but the doors were shut. She and Tahir were alone. Heat shimmied through her veins and her palms grew clammy as she remembered what had happened the last time they were alone. Did she trust him? Or herself?
‘No one will interrupt,’ he assured her. But, seeing the intensity of his gaze, Annalisa didn’t feel reassured.
She felt…excited.
Desperately she tried to dredge up horror at her reaction. Yet all she could manage was an edgy sense of playing with fire.
Since the night he’d kissed her she’d been on tenterhooks, fearing he’d tempt her into intimacy. Her nerves were raw, waiting for him to act, and when he didn’t she stifled disappointment.
Secretly she’d longed for the marauder who’d entered her bedroom without a by your leave and offered to seduce her. The man who’d only had to kiss her hand to reduce her to trembling need.
He was a puzzle, not easily understood. Yet recently she’d found so much to admire.
Tahir was a born leader who didn’t need to bully people into agreement. He had a quicksilver energy that only added to his charisma. And beneath his occasional air of cynicism, despite his reprobate reputation, she suspected Tahir was a decent man.
A man she feared she cared too much for.
Yet he’d left her room that first night in the palace without a qualm. He hadn’t touched her after that last searing kiss when she’d agreed to marriage. Clearly whatever allure she’d once held for him was now dead. How could she, without an ounce of sophistication, hold his interest?
It scared her that she wanted to.
Annalisa sat on the low divan. To her consternation he sat beside her. Close enough for her to watch his long lashes veil his gaze.
Did he notice her breathing turn shallow? Panic surged at being so close to the man she dreamed of every night, the man she couldn’t stop thinking about.
‘I’ve organised a date for our wedding.’
Our wedding.
She swallowed hard and her pulse tripped as she caught the flash of something unsettling in his eyes. Emotions tumbled through her. Relief that he hadn’t reneged. Excitement she tried to stifle. Anxiety at whether marriage was the right thing.
‘When will it be?’ Her voice emerged husky and she reminded herself this was a paper marriage only.
But the way Tahir leaned close, hands engulfing hers, sent other, contrary signals. Fire shot through her veins, warming her all over.
‘A week tomorrow.’ He paused long enough for her pulse to thud slow and heavy, once, twice. ‘Then we’ll be man and wife.’
Heat shimmered between them. The sort of heat that ignited each time she allowed herself close to Tahir.
Dangerous heat.
Annalisa sat straighter, trying to look away from his intense gaze. She wanted to jerk out of his hold but feared she’d give away the effect he had on her.
His thumb swept an arc across her hand, sending tremors shooting up her arm. His nostrils flared and a pulse throbbed at his temple, matching the urgent beat in her blood. Deep inside desire woke.
Tahir leaned in and her eyelids flickered. She shouldn’t want him to kiss her but she did. So badly.
She struggled for a distraction.
‘You’ve told your mother about the marriage?’ Annalisa forced the words out, making one last effort to resist him. ‘It’s been obvious she doesn’t know your plans.’
Obvious Tahir wasn’t eager to spread the word he was marrying. Because he didn’t really want her. He was stuck with her.
He straightened, looking suddenly more distant.
‘Given your hesitation, I thought you’d prefer keeping the engagement private at first.’
Was he serious? ‘But she’s your mother! She must have wondered what was going on.’ Though the relationship between the women had grown close, Annalisa was uncomfortable with her status as a long-standing guest.
‘I wished you to stay. That’s all she needed to know.’
Annalisa stared. What sort of relationship did he have with Rihana? Nothing like what she’d shared with her father.
‘Why don’t you like her?’ she whispered, then froze, horrified she’d spoken aloud.
His hands clamped round hers and every skerrick of warmth bled from his face.
‘I’m sorry. It’s none of my business—’
‘You’ve got it wrong.’ He paused so long she thought he wouldn’t say more. He looked down at her hands clasped in his. His thumb swiped idly across her skin. ‘It’s my mother who doesn’t approve of me.’
His face was a stony mask. Utterly still. Bereft of emotion. Yet she felt it, flowing from him, swirling between them.
Pain. Deep, soul-destroying pain.
Annalisa could barely breathe as the weight of his suffering bore down upon her.
Then his face changed. She watched the familiar twist of his lips, the raised eyebrow, the cool eyes. Yet despite his derisive expression she’d swear he looked haunted.
‘I’m hardly a model son. I was a disappointment to my parents from an early age.’
Annalisa’s heart wrenched at his arrogant attitude, certain it hid suffering.
Fleetingly she remembered he’d worn that same expression on his last morning at the oasis. Had his supercilious behaviour then been a smokescreen too?
She tugged her hands loose from his grip and dared to wrap them in turn around his powerful fists. They were rigid.
‘I don’t believe that.’
His glare could have frozen water in the desert sun, but she refused to look away. Annalisa didn’t understand the need to champion him. She acted on instinct. On emotion so powerful it wouldn’t be denied.
‘You’re hardly in a position to know, my dear.’
The casual endearment was laced with cool dismissal. In response she raised her chin and met him stare for stare.
‘I know your mother loves you.’
He jerked beneath her hold. His big shoulders rose and dropped, as if a massive earthquake had thundered through him. An instant later he was still, his look quizzical.
‘I appreciate your good intentions. But not all parents are like yours, Annalisa.’
An expression flashed in his eyes. Something so stark it stole her breath and made her more determined to persevere.
‘It’s there in the way she talks about you.’ Annalisa refused to be cowed. ‘She talks about you all the time now, did you know that?’ At Tahir’s amazed look she kept going. ‘She talks about all three of you. She’s so proud of her sons. Of what strong, honourable men they are.’
Tahir snorted in disbelief and Annalisa grasped his hands tighter, willing him to listen.
‘It’s true. She says you’re all different but you have traits in common. Strength, determination, passion, pride. Honour.’
‘You’re confusing me with someone else.’
She shook her head. ‘She said you’d taken on the kingship though you desperately didn’t want it. Because you felt obligated.’
Tahir’s eyes widened. She pressed on. ‘She says that even while you were out of the country you anonymously funded initiatives in Qusay for abused and disadvantaged children.’
‘She knew about that?’ Another tremor shook his big frame. Annalisa’s heart ached. She wanted to reach out and palm his cheek, stroke his hair, soothe him. He looked stunned. Shocked to the core.
Abruptly he dragged his hands from hers, leaving her bereft.
‘It’s easy to give money when you have a fortune.’ A slashing gesture emphasised the words. ‘It wasn’t important.’
It was on the tip of Annalisa’s tongue to say it was important to those who’d benefited from his generosity, but she bit it back.
‘So you haven’t noticed the way she looks at you? The way she follows your progress around a room?’
It had puzzled her at first, the coolness between mother and son, contrasted with the Queen’s avid interest when Tahir wasn’t aware of it. Till Annalisa had realised there was an unhealed breach between them.
Tahir’s brows furrowed. He opened his mouth, then shut it again.
Finally he shook his head. ‘Maybe once she cared. But that stopped long ago.’ His voice was clipped, testament to his discomfort. He surged to his feet, looming over her. ‘Until I returned to Qusay my mother hadn’t spoken to me for years. Not during my exile. Not before.’
His eyes glittered with an ice-cold clarity that chilled Annalisa to the bone. ‘She refused even to speak to me the day my father banished me.’
His voice throbbed with a passion that tore at Annalisa’s heart.
‘So you’ll understand why I find it hard to believe you.’ He turned abruptly and strode to the door.
Trembling, Annalisa stumbled to her feet. ‘I’m not a liar, Tahir. You know that.’ She forced the words out over a throat choking at the sight of his torment.
She didn’t have explanations, but she was certain Rihana loved her son. If anything, after listening to her discuss her children, she thought Tahir might even be her favourite.
‘Maybe you should ask her why she wouldn’t talk to you.’
Tahir checked for a moment on the threshold. ‘The subject is closed,’ he growled. ‘I’ll hear no more.’ He exited, leaving the door hanging open behind him.
He prowled the corridors and courtyards, the antechambers and audience halls. Yet Tahir couldn’t shake the words haunting him.
Your mother loves you.
His strides ate up another wing of the palace.
He’d given up believing such platitudes years ago. It no longer mattered. He was a grown man. Had survived on his own—totally, completely on his own—for years.
He didn’t need love.
He barely believed in it any more. He’d never had it from his father. And from his mother? He shuddered to a stop. He recalled her warm hugs and tender smiles when he was small. Only when they were alone together. As the years had passed she’d become distant.
Who could blame her? He’d striven to make his father proud. But when it had become clear nothing he did would earn the old man’s approval, that in fact his father hated him, Tahir had plunged into excess with an abandon that rivalled even his sire’s. Better that than driving himself crazy trying to fathom why the old man detested him.
Had he seen too much of his own weaknesses in his son?
Tahir scrubbed a hand over his face.
He wasn’t the sort who inspired or sought love. That was a fool’s game. Sentimental folly.
Annalisa imagined things. She was sweet and innocent enough to believe families were about caring.
What stunned him was the way, just for a moment, he’d wanted to believe her. He’d craved it with every fibre of his body and what passed for his soul.
He! Tahir Al’Ramiz! The dissolute son of a dissolute father. A man who cared for no one.
Except, he realised, a feisty girl with tender eyes and an indomitable spirit.
He put out a hand to steady himself as the realisation rocked him back on his feet.
He cared…
How long he stood there, unfamiliar sensations swirling through him, he didn’t know. He cared!
Finally, shaking his head as if clearing it of a waking dream, he looked around and realised he’d stopped outside the dowager Queen’s apartments.
Chance? Or a subconscious decision?
Something in his chest gave a queer little jump and his pulse settled into a jagged, staccato beat. He turned to leave, then stopped.
Annalisa’s words rang in his ears.
She’d confronted him with a story too unbelievable to countenance. Surely it was unbelievable.
Yet eventually he lifted his fist and rapped on the massive door. A voice answered and he forced himself to push the door wide.
His mother looked up from a book. Her eyes met his and just for an instant he saw them sparkle with pleasure. Then, swift as a door slamming, her expression cleared into the familiar one of calm detachment.
Tahir swallowed hard. He stepped inside, his mind whirring.
‘Annalisa’s not here, I’m afraid.’ Her voice was crystal-cool, like the fountains tinkling in the exquisite courtyard outside her chambers. ‘If you come later, I’m expecting her for tea.’
‘I know.’ His voice held an unfamiliar rough edge. He cleared his throat. ‘It’s you I came to see.’
Hours passed and Tahir was still in Rihana’s rooms.
He felt odd—something like the sensation he’d experienced the first few times his father had used him as a punching bag. As if someone had rearranged his internal organs.
His mother smiled up at him from one of her photo albums and he felt the warmth and wonder of it embrace him.
The albums were filled with photos he hadn’t known about. Him on horseback. Him striding down the beach. Him stepping from a four-wheel drive after speeding over the dunes, a rare smile on his teenage features.
Annalisa was right. His mother had cared all along. He’d been too caught up in his bitter struggle against his father to understand how the old man’s hatred had affected Rihana and why she’d had to hide her feelings.
He returned her smile, enjoying what he saw in her face and the way it made him feel.
He tried to analyse the sensations and couldn’t. He felt too…full, as if all those emotions he’d learned to repress in childhood now pushed too close to the surface. As if it would just take one more tiny scrape of his skin to set them free.
‘Mother, I—’
A crash of sound, a deafening boom, rent the air.
Tahir was on his feet before its echo died away. In slow motion he processed the sight of the walls and ceiling dipping and swaying. The decorative lanterns swung impossibly wide.
Memories of a day in Japan that he’d rather forget crowded his brain.
‘Earthquake!’ He hauled Rihana to her feet, taking in her dazed eyes. ‘Quickly, this way.’ He half carried her out into her private courtyard.
The initial eruption of sound died, but in the distance he caught an ominous rumbling. Another quake, or a building coming down? Automatically he held Rihana protectively close, well away from the decorative arches lining the courtyard. He scanned the roofline but could see no damage. Could hear no cries for help.
‘Stay here,’ he ordered. ‘Either I or someone else will come for you.’
‘Tahir!’
Her urgent tone and her grasp of his sleeve stopped him in mid-stride. He turned. What he saw in her face made him want to stay and comfort her. But he couldn’t. Others mightn’t be as lucky as they’d been.
‘Be careful,’ she murmured.
Those two simple words turned his heart over in his chest. He stepped close, gently embraced her and pressed a kiss to her cheek. ‘I will. Now, don’t forget. Wait here.’
It was the first time he’d kissed his mother in more than a decade.
The news was bad. No damage to the palace, but a section of the old town was devastated. Ancient structures and adobe walls had tumbled into narrow streets, making rescue difficult.
A check on the provinces brought news that only the capital was damaged. Nevertheless, Tahir set in motion national arrangements for evacuation should there be aftershocks.
Rescue and medical teams worked at full stretch. Tahir had contacted his cousin, Zafir, once King of Qusay and now ruler of nearby Haydar, and arranged for more rescue specialists to fly in. Tahir’s brother, Kareef, had already sent men from the mountains of Qais to help.
As afternoon faded into night Tahir was still busy directing, reassuring, planning. He did it on autopilot. Beneath his calm façade lay a fear so potent it froze his bones and threatened to paralyse his brain.
Annalisa was missing.
Just thinking it sent dread spiralling through him.
Every centimetre of the palace and grounds had been searched. Surrounding streets had been investigated.
Had she gone home, angry after their last encounter?
Guilt lanced him. Even as he pored over city plans with engineers and officials he was alert for footsteps, lest one of his staff return with news of her. He hoped for and feared it.
It was his fault she’d gone. He’d barked at her, furious that she’d dared to pry into the most private part of his life. He’d punished her for trying to heal the rift between himself and his mother.
His stomach churned at the knowledge that he was to blame for her disappearance.
Silently he told himself over and over that she wouldn’t have ventured into the old souk. But he didn’t believe his own reassurances. He wanted to scour the streets himself, looking for her.
Already he’d been down amongst the wreckage too often for his staff’s liking, hoping to find her. They’d protested he was in danger. Only the knowledge he was more useful coordinating the rescue efforts had kept him in the makeshift emergency centre on the edge of the damage zone.
The acrid scent of fear filled his nostrils with every breath. His heart drummed frantically.
Never had he felt so powerless. If anything happened to her…
He’d rather endure a lifetime of beatings than this. Waiting, trying to be strong for those needing his leadership, while terror gnawed at his vitals. If only he had some clue where she’d gone.
He’d thought himself safe in his isolated world, relying on no one, caring for nothing.
What he felt now obliterated that self-deception.
Finally he gave in to those urging him to rest for an hour before daybreak. But instead of returning to the palace he prowled the streets. People welcomed their King’s presence. But it was the need to find Annalisa that kept him going.
He’d almost given up hope when he came upon a temporary triage centre on the furthest side of the disaster zone. Makeshift awnings protected the wounded and lights were set up to assist the medics.
Movement caught his eye: a spill of rich dark hair. Golden highlights glinted as the woman turned her head. Impatiently she reached round and secured the waist-length tresses in a familiar gesture.
Tahir felt a huge weight rise to block his throat and impair his breathing. He strode through the debris, past stretchers, piles of rubble and huddled figures. He heard nothing but the rush of blood in his ears.
As he approached she turned, her hand out to grasp a nearby pole for support. Her clothes were rumpled and dirty. A dark stain marred her shirt.
Terror jammed his throat as he realised it was blood.
She stumbled and he ran, just in time to scoop her off her feet before she fell.
Tahir’s heart pumped out of control as his arms closed convulsively around her. She felt warm and wonderful and alive. Alive. Thank God.
He was whirling around, looking for a doctor, when her voice finally penetrated.
‘Put me down. I have work to do.’
‘Work?’ He stared down into her exhausted face, terrified at the intensity of what he felt.
‘I’m helping the wounded. You have to let me go.’
‘You’re injured.’ He shouldered through the crowded space towards a couple of doctors bent over a patient.
‘It’s not my blood, Tahir. Tahir?’
But he was already talking to a white-haired medic who explained Annalisa had been here all night, helping.
Even then Tahir couldn’t release her. He listened as if from a distance as the doctor reassured him that she was unharmed, heard praise for her efforts. But he couldn’t trust himself to believe.
Blind instinct urged him to ignore the expert’s words and Annalisa’s urgings. He needed her close.
‘You need rest,’ he said as her voice grew strident. ‘You’re pregnant, remember?’
His words fell into a pool of silence. The emergency staff, patients, even his staff who’d followed him seemed to still.
Then the doctor was agreeing, saying she’d done enough and urging Annalisa to go. They were closing this centre anyway and moving to the hospital.
Tahir instructed his staff to help pack up. He’d be back soon. His stride lengthened as he passed into the wider streets of the new city.
‘Tahir?’ She didn’t sound angry now. ‘You can put me down. I’m fit and healthy. Honestly.’
But he walked on, arms tight as steel as he cradled her close.
He didn’t want to let her go. He wouldn’t let her go.
He looked into worried dark eyes, saw a flush stain her lovely face, the pout of concern on her lush mouth.
Tahir remembered the terror of losing her. The sense of loss. The fear he’d never find her. Horror still trickled through his belly at the recollection.
Realisation struck him with the force of an act of a divine power.
He couldn’t let her go.
The man who’d turned independence into an art form, self-reliance into a way of life, had met his match.
He needed her.