For a moment their eyes met, and the pain which smote at her heart made her feel dizzy and weak. Turning her head to look out of the window with the desperation of a drowning woman struggling towards the surface for light and air, Sienna saw with relief that they were at the end of her road.
‘Well, here we are! Thank you, Hashim.’ She leaned forward. The touch of her mouth against his was fleeting and the pain increased. ‘Take very good care.’
He touched her fingertips to his lips and as she pushed open the car door said something in his native tongue to the driver, who got out and removed her one small bag from the boot.
The tinted window slid silently down and all she could see were glittering black eyes—the only thing which seemed truly alive in the tight
mask of his face. She flashed him a smile, and then she turned away.
Somehow she made it inside without crying, but once there the tears began to pour down her cheeks without stopping. Kat was away and she was glad, because it gave her time to get over the worst, to recover on her own like a wounded animal.
There was no one to tell her to eat. No one to question why she couldn’t sleep. No one to tell her that it was wrong to shed her tears and that there were plenty more fish in the sea. Maybe there were—but none like Hashim.
By the third day she had begun to feel a little better. Her heart was aching, but she knew that Hashim would hate it if she became one of those women who let their whole lives collapse around them because a love affair hadn’t worked out.
She bathed and washed her hair, and was just pulling on a big black sweater which virtually came down to her knees when the doorbell rang. She wondered if it was Kat back, having forgotten her keys.
She opened the door, completely unprepared to see the batallion of photographers who were jostling for position, jerking back in alarm as the multiple flash from their array of cameras temporarily blinded her. Someone thrust a phallic-looking microphone under her chin.
‘Miss Baker!’ called a TV-trained voice. ‘Sienna! Is the Sheikh of Qudamah aware that you used to be a topless model?’
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE startled doorstep photo made the first edition and the second—only it ran alongside a much larger photo. There was her sand-sprinkled and sultry image plastered over all the tabloids.
Even the serious broadsheets gave it house-room—justifying their usual no-breasts policy with weighty pieces on the changing morals of the Middle East. And a censored version of it was beamed into homes the length and breadth of the country as an add-on to an otherwise boring television news show.
‘And finally, the Sheikh of the fiercely traditional State of Qudamah is rumoured to be dating a British glamour model. Stunning brunette Sienna Baker…’
Female leader-writers took up the case in their mid week columns, asking righteously: What would you do if your son brought a topless model home?
Trapped inside the house, unable to go out without fear of being accosted, Sienna was sitting in the kitchen at the back of the house with the blinds drawn down when Kat came in and handed her the telephone with a look which said everything.
She pressed the phone to her ear. She wasn’t aware she’d actually said anything, but she must have made some sort of sound because she heard his deep and silky voice.
‘Sienna?’
She bit her lip. Closed her eyes. She wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t. But the sound of his dear voice was almost more than she could bear. ‘Yes, it’s me.’
‘Are you all right?’
‘Ask me another. How about you?’
He ignored that. ‘The press are still there?’
‘Well, not so many of them. I think they got fed up because I refused to say anything.’
‘Good. If you feed a story it only grows.’
‘Oh, Hashim—how the hell did they get hold of it? How did they even find out about it?’
Hashim’s mouth tightened into a grim and forbidding line. He suspected that someone in Qudamah must have informed the foreign press about a juicy piece of gossip in their Ruler’s life. In the power-play that was his life Sienna’s past had become a weapon. And he must protect her from the fall-out.
‘These things have a habit of getting out,’ he said slowly. ‘That’s the way the world works.’
He sounded almost weary, as if he had seen sides of the world she did not know—and of course he had. She couldn’t imagine what it must be like to be a sheikh, but she was fairly sure that it would be very hard to trust people’s motives towards you. ‘Yes,’ said quietly. ‘I imagine so.’
The silence between them seemed huge. ‘I am sending some people to look after you, Sienna. If I come myself it will only add fire to the story. Is there somewhere you can go?’