‘Yes, I know.’ She wondered if he was conscious that remembered pain had clouded the amazing black eyes. ‘And how did you cope with that?’
He pulled the door open and motioned for her to precede him. ‘You have to appear not to care. Only then will you cease to become the butt of playground mockery.’
She saw a picture of a beautiful young boy with hair as black as his eyes. Outstanding in more than just looks and an easy target for boys who had not had so many of life’s gifts conferred on them.
‘Khalim—’
She was close enough for him to feel the sweet warmth of her breath. Close enough for him to have coiled his fingers around the narrow indentation of her waist and to have pulled her to him, and kissed her.
Would she have resisted? He doubted it. No woman who had ever been kissed by him had failed to follow it up by tumbling into bed with him. But the timing was wrong. Why begin something only to have it end unsatisfactorily? If he made love to her now, then it would be a swift coupling in her bedroom—with no guarantee that the flatmate would not suddenly return. And Philip and the chauffeur sitting waiting downstairs in the car. That would do her reputation no good at all, he realised—shocked that it should matter to him.
‘Let’s go,’ he said, and moved away from her before his body picked up any more of her enticing signals.
The long black car soon picked up speed once they were out of the clutches of the city itself and heading towards Heathrow Airport.
Khalim, rather surprisingly, took out a laptop computer and sat tapping away at it for the entire journey, leaving Rose with little to do other than to pull out a book to read, which was at least a distraction from the unnerving presence of the man by her side.
She was reading Maraban—Land of Dreams and Contrasts, by Robert Cantle, a weighty book and, apparently, the definitive work on the country, which she’d bought on yesterday afternoon’s shopping trip. She’d expected to have to wade through it, but she couldn’t have been more wrong. It was, she thought to herself dreamily, absolutely fascinating.
Khalim glanced over at where she sat engrossed, and raised his dark brows.
‘Not exactly what you’d call light reading,’ he observed.
She heard the surprise in his voice. ‘You expected me to sit flicking through magazines, I suppose?’
‘Never suppose, Rose,’ he returned softly. ‘Never with me.’
In the confines of the luxurious car, his proximity overwhelmed her and she found herself edging a little further up the leather seat away from him. ‘I’m enjoying it,’ she told him solidly.
‘You do take your work seriously, don’t you?’ he commented drily.
She looked up and treated him to a cool stare. ‘Please don’t patronise me, Khalim. The more I know about Maraban, the better I am able to do my job.’
He smiled, and settled back to his screen, thinking that Rose Thomas was proving to be much, much more than a pretty face. A very pretty face.
His eyes flickered to where one shapely thigh was outlined beneath an ankle-length skirt in a filmy, pale blue material which matched the simple cashmere sweater she wore. She’d dressed appropriately, he thought with pleasure.
He’d had many Western lovers, but none who seemed to have such a genuine interest in his country. Plenty who had pretended to, he remembered. His mouth hardened. But they had been the matrimonally ambitious ones, and as easy to spot as the glittering sapphire—as big as a swan’s egg—which dominated the crown he would one day inherit.
He glanced out of the window, knowing that he would soon have to face the reality of his destiny. For that very morning had come news from Maraban that his father was frailer than before. Pain etched little lines on his brow as he acknowledged that the mantle of responsibility had slipped a little closer to his shoulders.
Would this be his last, delicious fling before it descended completely? he wondered.
Rose had never been on a private jet before and the interior of the Lear matched up to her wildest expectations. Most of the seats had been removed to provide a spacious interior, and two stewardesses were in attendance.
Very much in attendance, thought Rose grimly, suspecting that both had been chosen for their decorative qualities as much as for their undoubted efficiency. And both, like herself, were blonde—though these blondes had not had their colouring bestowed on them by nature.
Khalim introduced her to the pilot, who was obviously a fellow Marabanesh, and once they had effected a smooth take-off he turned to her, studying her mutinous expression with amusement.
‘Does something displease you, Rose? Is something wrong?’
She certainly wasn’t going to tell him that in her opinion the stewardesses could have done with wearing something which resembled a skirt, instead of a pelmet. She met his eyes, and once again her heart thundered in her ears. ‘Wrong?’ she managed, as smoothly as she could. ‘What on earth could be wrong, Khalim?’
He had hoped that she was jealous; he wanted her to be jealous.
In fact, he had slept with neither of the attendants, even though it would have taken nothing more than a careless snap of the fingers to do so. He suspected that the two women would have been game for almost anything—and that even a ménage a` trois would have been greeted with delight, instead of derision. But he would never have sullied himself with such a dalliance, even though he knew that many of his cousins enjoyed such debauchery.
‘Shall we eat something?’ he questioned as the taller of the stewardesses approached them.