‘I just did accuse you, didn’t I?’ Finally getting to stage the confrontation her pride had demanded but been denied on the day of that wedding, Faye stood her ground. She had no intention of getting dragged down into the murky waters of Percy’s opportunistic blackmail attempt because, no matter what Tariq believed, she had had nothing to do with that development. ‘I married you in good faith—’
‘Yet you made no attempt to dissuade me from divorcing you.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Faye was totally taken aback by that statement.
‘Did you even ask me to forgive you?’
‘F-f-forgive me?’ Faye got out with the greatest of difficulty, so shattered was she by the nature of that question. He had twisted the whole topic round and now he was throwing it back to her in an unrecognisable guise. Why would she have attempted to persuade him not to divorce her when divorcing her had so evidently been his intent all along?
‘No, far from hanging your head in shame and admitting the truth of your greedy deception, you fled at supersonic speed with a cheque clutched in your hot little hand!’ His lean, strong face was rigid with icy contempt and hauteur.
‘Hanging my head in shame?’ Faye enunciated in ringing tones of revulsion.
‘You had no shame. You protest that you married me in good faith.’ Tariq curled his lip. ‘But a true wife, a true bride would never have left the embassy. A true wife would ultimately have followed me home.’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’ Faye was really struggling to comprehend but still failing to follow his reasoning. ‘Why would I have followed you home? I was never really your wife…where do you get off saying that to me? You divorced me—’
‘I did not divorce you.’ Tariq’s dark, deep drawl rose not one iota above freezing point.
‘You didn’t?’ That declaration really shook Faye, who had always assumed that the dark deed of divorcing her had been done right there in front of her that same day.
‘Not then,’ Tariq extended with harsh clarity, wide, sensual mouth compressing into a hard, awesomely stubborn line.
Faye folded her arms, striving to look supremely unconcerned by the news that she had not been cast off by divorce quite as immediately as she had believed. ‘Well, how would I have known what you were doing that day when you were striding up and down in a roaring rage and ranting mostly in Arabic?’
Tariq froze even more. In fact an ice statue might have revealed more expression than his hard bronzed features did at that moment. ‘I did lose my temper to some extent—’
Omeir kept on walking between them, getting in the way of her view of Tariq. Faye circled round the stallion to hiss in retaliation, ‘You lit up like Guy Fawkes’ night!’
‘Now I am seeing the real character you were once so careful to hide from me.’ Tariq dealt her a contemptuous appraisal that served merely to heap nourishing coals on her inner fire. ‘You are attacking me like a shrew.’
‘If I was a shrew, you would have indelible teeth marks all over you and instead you got away scot-free with what you did to me!’
‘We will not discuss this matter further. Control your temper before I lose mine.’
‘I like you better when you lose your temper!’
Having now imposed himself halfway between them like a large clumsy buffer, Omeir snorted, threw up his handsome head and pawed the ground.
‘What’s the matter with him?’ Faye demanded involuntarily.
‘All animals react to tension. Omeir has been with me since he was a colt. He knows my every mood and at this moment…my mood is not good,’ Tariq spelt out.
‘Well, I only have one thing left to say to you.’ Angry resentment and pain still licked along Faye’s every nerve-ending but she was already regretting hurling revealing recriminations about the marriage that had not been a proper marriage. Now all she cared about was conserving her own pride. ‘I was really, really glad when I thought you divorced me. In fact I wasn’t out of that embassy an hour before I appreciated what a lucky escape I had had! I can imagine no greater misery than to be married to a pious, judgmental louse like you!’
Electrified tension written into every taut line of his stance, Tariq studied her. The atmosphere sizzled hot as coals. ‘Is that a fact?’
Faye flung back her head, shimmering pale hair rippling back from her pink cheeks. ‘Does that hurt your ego, Tariq?’
‘Not at all.’ Tariq strolled forward like a prowling predator, his spectacular eyes smouldering gold in his hard-boned features. ‘You are mine any time I want you and I do not wish to retain you as my wife.’
‘Any time you want me—?’ Her infuriated repetition of that bold assertion broke off in a startled squawk as Tariq caught her hands in his and pulled her to him, clamping her into intimate contact with his lean, powerful frame with easy strength.
‘Yes…’
Raising her to him, he brought his demanding mouth down on hers with explosive force. Heat that had nothing to do with her temper set her alight. Shock shrilled through her quivering length, the kind of sensual shock her treacherous body exulted in. She closed her arms round his neck, let her fingers surge up into the silky black hair she loved. And all the time, stoked by the raw eroticism of every plundering passionate kiss, her excitement built higher and higher. She pushed helplessly against him to ease the throbbing sensitivity of her breasts, the taunting ache low in her belly.
With an abruptness that startled her, Tariq wrenched her back from him, breathing thickly. ‘This is neither the time nor the place for such self-indulgence.’
Plunged into appalled embarrassment by her own response, Faye pulled free of him. She spun away, face hot as hell-fire. Her mind was a whirl in which stricken self-loathing rose uppermost. He had told her she was his any time he wanted her. Had she had to bend over backwards to prove his point for him?
‘Tell me, when you ran away, where did you think you were going?’ Tariq demanded.
Taken aback by that question but cravenly relieved by his choice of subject, Faye frowned. ‘The airport…where else?’
‘The airport is many miles from here.’
‘It can’t be…’ Faye was glad of the excuse to go into her backpack and dig out the map. Eyes evasive, she turned back to extend the map to him. ‘At least not according to this.’
‘This map is more than half a century out of date. It is also written in Arabic—’
‘I don’t need to be able to read Arabic to recognise the symbol for an airport!’
‘In this case, that symbol is for an airfield built during the Second World War and long since abandoned.’
‘That’s not possible,’ Faye drew closer to study the map again. ‘There’s the city—’
‘We have more than one city,’ Tariq delivered in a raw driven undertone. ‘And that is not Jumar City. That is Kabeer which is on the Gulf coast. Allah be praised that I found you before the sandstorm—’
‘Well, you saved Omeir the wonder horse.’ Cheeks burning with huge mortification at the news that she had totally misread the map, Faye whirled away again.
A lean hand snapped round her wrist and turned her back, unwillingly, to face him again. ‘This is too serious a matter to be dismissed with a facetious comment as if it is nothing. All my life I have been trained to accept responsibility yet, in the space of a moment this afternoon, I forgot my duty.’
Releasing her again as if there was now something rather distasteful about a such personal contact with her, Tariq raked her dismayed face with brooding dark eyes. ‘I was in the Haja when I was told of your flight into the desert. Hearing of your acrobatics on the various roofs and walls of the Muraaba would have greatly amused me had not a severe weather warning just been announced. In defiance of all common sense, I resisted the pleas of my companions and took up a helicopter. Why? In such dangerous flying conditions, I would not ask any man to risk his life to save yours!’