Khalim smiled then. ‘Can’t you?’ he questioned softly. ‘Can you just let me walk away today, Darian, and turn your back on the opportunity I am offering you? To discover Maraban and in so doing perhaps discover a little of yourself?’
It was a tantalising proposition, and Darian felt the hard, pounding beat of excitement. He was not into the ‘self-discovery’ so popular in the modern world. He considered such things an indulgent waste of time. And yet…
Would he be left with a whispering feeling of regret if he turned this opp
ortunity down? He turned his head slowly to look once again at Lara. Her face was pale now, all the roses fled. All he could see were the twin sapphires of her eyes, sparkling blue but wary, almost afraid.
And afraid you should be, he thought grimly.
His lips curved into another slow, cruel smile as a plan began to form in his head, and he nodded. ‘Very well,’ he said slowly. ‘I will accompany you to Maraban—but on one condition.’
There was silence. And when Khalim spoke it was as soft as the hiss of a snake. ‘You dare to stipulate a condition?’ he demanded. ‘Of me?’
‘If I am your brother—or half-brother,’ retorted Darian, ‘then some kind of equality must exist. I am neither your subject nor your inferior—am I, Khalim?’
‘No,’ answered Khalim, and a reluctant smile nudged at his lips as he looked at the man with the golden eyes and the tawny skin. ‘Then name your condition, and if it is within my power it shall be met.’
Darian savoured the moment as his eyes captured hers and held them, hard. ‘I want Lara to accompany me.’
Khalim nodded, as if he understood perfectly, and turned also to look at her, a silent question stilling the dark features.
Lara’s heart pounded with something very like fear. She loved Maraban, and in any other circumstances she would have been overjoyed to be given the opportunity to go there again. But these circumstances were different. She knew without being told that Darian Wildman was not asking her to go with him because he still thought that she was ‘sweet’ or because he enjoyed her company so much he couldn’t bear to be without it.
No, the sudden hardness which had made the golden eyes look so cold filled her with a foreboding that made her skin grow chill, and in that moment she wished she could just close her eyes and be a million miles away from here, and then return to find that none of it had ever happened…
But it had happened.
And didn’t she owe it to him—in some strange kind of way—for the way that she had deceived him? And to Khalim, too—who had been so generous to her in the past?
If Darian visiting Maraban was all down to whether or not she would go with him, then how could she possibly refuse?
Her skin felt icy-cold as she nodded, lowering her lashes so that she didn’t have to meet that mocking gold stare. ‘If that is what you want, then I will comply.’ Comply! She sounded like some little subordinate now! Lifting her chin, she turned to Khalim, trying to keep her voice steady. ‘Wh—when did you anticipate us leaving?’
Khalim smiled. ‘My jet is on the runway. We will leave for Maraban just as soon as you have both packed sufficient for your needs.’
CHAPTER NINE
DARIAN sat back against the leather seat of the car as it silently and powerfully sped towards the airfield, his mind spinning with thoughts which seemed just too incredible to be true.
Beside him sat Khalim, and in the front, next to the driver, a burly man whose bulk made his position as bodyguard to the Sheikh unmistakable.
Lara had elected to travel in the second car, hastily reassuring Khalim that she would be happy to do so. I bet she is, thought Darian grimly. Deceiving and conniving little Mata Hari! He had read of women who used their sexuality to try to get close to a man, to sensuously make them let their guard down before blowing their lives into smithereens, but he had foolishly imagined that kind of woman to have no place in the contemporary world.
How very wrong he had been!
He felt the jab of fury combined with the hot thrust of lust, but he steadfastly put all thoughts of Miss Lara Black out of his mind. She wasn’t going anywhere—or at least nowhere that he wasn’t going—and he would deal with her when the time was right. For now, his head was too full of thoughts which sounded more like the plot for some fantastic story. But facts were facts—however incredible—and this was no story, it was his life.
He was going to Maraban! To a mountain kingdom to which, it seemed, he was linked by birth. And through all his anger and confusion he felt the stir of something within him, some soft blaze of an emotion he did not recognise.
He turned to look at Khalim, who had been sitting silently at his side, managing to be both alert and yet relaxed—as though there was little in this world which surprised him, and maybe there wasn’t. For wouldn’t life as ruler of a country such as Maraban present all kinds of dilemmas and problems which a normal man would never encounter in his lifetime?
‘You don’t seem angry,’ observed Darian quietly.
Khalim turned to him, a wry look on his dark and shadowed face. ‘Why would I waste my time being angry about what exists?’ he murmured. ‘That would be like being angry because it was raining, or because…’ He seemed to search for some analogy which the Western man would understand. ‘Because the horse you had placed your last dollar on had broken its leg before the big race!’
For the first time Darian smiled. ‘I am not a betting man.’
‘No? You do not gamble on luck and on fortune?’