Rose leant forward. ‘So where were we?’
Confronted by the pure blue light of her eyes, Khalim felt dazed. He wasn’t sure. With an effort, he struggled to regain his thoughts. ‘I suspect that it’s time to find out a little about one another. One of us asks the questions, while the other provides the answers.’
‘Okay.’ She nodded, thinking this should be interesting. ‘Who goes first?’ she asked.
By rights, he did. He always did. It was one of the privileges of power. But, perversely, he discovered that he wanted to accede to her. ‘You do.’
Rose leaned back in her chair. She spent her whole life interviewing people and she knew that the question most often asked was the one which elicited the least imaginative response. So she resisted the desire to ask him what it was really like to be a prince. She was beginning to get a pretty good idea for herself. Instead she said, ‘Tell me about Maraban.’
Khalim’s eyes narrowed. If she had wanted to drive a stake through the very heart of him, she could not have asked a more prescient question. For the land of his birth and his heritage meant more to Khalim than anything else in the world.
‘Maraban,’ he said, and his voice took on a deep, rich timbre of affection. He smiled almost wistfully. ‘If I told you that it was the most beautiful country in the world, would you believe me, Rose?’
When he smiled at her like that, she thought she would have believed just about anything. ‘I think I would,’ she said slowly, because she could read both passion and possession in his face. ‘Tell me about it.’
When he was distracted by the intuitive sapphire sparkle of her eyes, even Maraban seemed like a distant dream, Khalim thought. Did she cast her spell on all men like this?
‘It lies at the very heart of the Middle East,’ he began slowly, but something in the soft pucker of her lips ma
de the words begin to flow like honey.
Rose listened, mesmerised. His words painted a picture of a magical, faraway place. A land where fig trees and wild walnut trees grew, its mountain slopes covered with forests of juniper and pistachio trees and where dense thickets grew along the riverbanks. He spoke of jackals and wild boar, and the rare pink deer. A place with icy winters and boiling summers. A land of contrasts and rich, stark beauty.
Just like the man sitting opposite her, Rose realised with a start as he stopped speaking. Dazedly she stared down at the table and realised that their meals had been placed in front of them, and had grown cold. She lifted her eyes to meet his, saw the question there.
‘It sounds quite beautiful,’ she said simply.
He heard the tremor of genuine admiration in her voice. Had he really spoken so frankly to a woman he barely knew? With a sudden air of resolve he gestured towards the untouched food.
‘We must eat, if only a little,’ he said. ‘Or the chef will be offended.’
Rose picked up her fork. She had never felt less like eating in her life—for how could she concentrate on food when this beautiful man with his dark, mobile face made her hungry for something far more basic than food?
‘Yes, we must,’ she agreed half-heartedly.
They pushed the delicious food around their plates mechanically.
‘Tell me about yourself now, Rose,’ he instructed softly.
‘Essex will sound a little dull after Maraban,’ she objected, but he shook his head.
‘Tell me.’
She told him all about growing up in a small village, about catching tadpoles in jam-jars and tree-houses and the hammock strung between the two apple trees at the bottom of the garden. About the life-size dolls’ house her father had built beside the apple trees for her eighth birthday. ‘Just an ordinary life,’ she finished.
‘Don’t ever knock it,’ he said drily.
‘No.’ She looked at him, realising with a sudden rush of insight that an ordinary life would be something always denied to him. And wasn’t it human nature to want what you had never had? ‘No, I won’t.’
‘You have brothers and sisters?’ Khalim asked suddenly.
She put her fork down, glad for the excuse to. He really did seem interested. ‘One older brother,’ she said. ‘No sisters. And you?’
‘Two sisters.’ He smiled. ‘All younger.’
‘And a brother?’
‘No,’ he said flatly. ‘No brother.’