Читать книгу The Playboy Sheikh - ALEXANDRA SELLERS - Страница 9

Lisbet kicked her heels futilely at the horse’s powerful, rhythmically flexing shoulders. She was sitting side-saddle in front of Jaf, one hip tilted against the low pommel. In spite of his imprisoning arm, it felt precarious, and she was forced to cling to him for stability.

“Where do you think you’re taking me?” she cried.

“My home is a few miles away,” Jaf told her.

Lisbet gasped. “Your home! Are you crazy? Take me back to t—”

His dark eyes met hers with hard anger. “Do not speak to me in this tone, Lisbet.”

She quailed, then forced her courage up. “I’m in the middle of shooting a film, Jaf!” she cried. “You’ve already wrecked a scene we were hoping to get in the can in one take! Take me back to the set!”

“When I am through with you,” Jaf agreed, his voice grating against her already electrified nerve ends.

Her blood surged up under her skin at the pressure of his unforgiving hold against her waist. Her body told her it had been long, too long. But she wasn’t going to admit her weakness to him.

“When you’re—how dare you? What are you planning, Jaf? Rape? Let me go!”

He laughed. “Do you pretend that rape would be possible between us? How long has it been, Lisbet? Have you counted the days?”

“No, I have not!”

“The weeks?”

“Stop this horse!”

She reached for the reins, one hand still of necessity clinging to his chest, but he simply knocked her hand aside.

“The months?” he prodded. “I want to know, Lisbet.”

“It’s over six months!” she snapped. “And I was not coun—”

“How much over six months?” he demanded relentlessly.

“I have no idea!”

“How much?”

“It’s seven months and three weeks, damn you!”

“And how many days?”

“How the hell am I supposed to know?”

“You know.”

“I do not know!”

“Then I will tell you. Four days. It is seven months, three weeks and four days since you told me to do my worst, Lisbet. Did no instinct warn you that it might be dangerous to come to my country so soon?”

“You call nearly eight months soon?” she gibed. “I thought you’d have forgotten my name by now.”

“You were disappointed that I did not come after you?” he inquired softly. “Ah, Lisbet, if I had known…”

She stiffened, feeling the silky edges of the trap he had laid for her.

“No, I was not! After all your ranting, I was relieved.”

“Liar!”

“Don’t speak to me in that tone of voice, Jaf!” she snapped furiously.

He laughed. “Ah, my fire spitter! I had almost forgotten the delights of tangling with you. But we will have the pleasure of learning them all again.”

“Spitfire,” she said coldly. “If you’re going to insult me, at least get your English right.”

“Spitfire?” he repeated. “Isn’t the Spitfire an aeroplane?”

“A fighter plane,” she told him sweetly. “And as for the delights of warfare with me, the little Spitfire defeated the Luftwaffe, so don’t get your hopes up.”

He raised surprised eyebrows. “You call this war?”

“What would you call it?”

He shook his head, and she felt the muscles of his arm bunch as he drew on the horse’s reins. The horse slowed.

Ahead of them a high ridge of rock erupting from the sand stretched into the sea, barring their path—one of the isolated fingers of the distant mountain range that brooded over the scene, as if, in this desperately hot, inhospitable climate, even the mountains yearned and reached for the sea.

He drew the horse to a walk, and they entered the shadow of the ridge with relief. Lisbet put both her hands above his on the reins and now he allowed her to pull the horse to a standstill.

“One way or another, I’m going back to the set,” she announced.

His jaw clenched with the possessive ferocity that had made her run the first time. “Not one hour to spare for your ex-lover?”

“While I’m working? I’m a professional, Jaf,” she said. “Don’t expect me to fall in with your amateur, playboy attitude to life.”

His eyes glinted with an indecipherable expression. “Ah,” he said. “So you didn’t forget me entirely.”

“It was a little difficult to forget you entirely!” she snapped. “You’re in the tabloids every week.”

“One of the benefits of fame I hadn’t foreseen,” he observed blandly.

Now he believed she had been following his career in the papers, she realized with irritation. It would have been better to pretend she knew nothing of his new status as the tabloids’ favourite bad boy.

But she couldn’t stop herself complaining, “That’s a heady lifestyle you’ve got yourself. I was particularly entranced by the gold-plated limousine.”

He shrugged disparagingly. “Par for the course in these parts.”

“Nice for some. But I have a job to do.”

Her hands on the reins, she guided the horse into a 180-degree turn. Jaf allowed it, but when she tried to spur the horse to move, it froze into immobility.

She was startled to see how far they had come. She had expected to see, in the distance, the cluster of trailers, equipment, umbrellas and people that marked the filming location, but the sand was empty. They were alone. A thrill of fear shivered through her. In this barren landscape and merciless, unforgiving climate, she was at his mercy.

Just what she had always feared.

“Damn it!” Lisbet exclaimed, urging the reins, and nudging the horse’s foreleg with her bare heels. The horse might as well have been carved of wood. “Move damn it!” she cried. And then, “What have you done to this horse?”

He laughed, showing white teeth. His eyes sparkled in a way she remembered they had even in London’s damp. Here in the harsh sunshine the look dazzled her.

“Firouz and I have been together for six years,” he said. “If you understood me as well as he does…”

Lisbet gritted her teeth. “It would be better if you understood me!” she snapped. “Now, are you going to get this horse to move and take me back to the set, or am I going to get down and walk?”

It was a long way in such heat, and if she did not get lost, she would get sunburn, if not actual sunstroke. She could feel the prickle of drying salt on her skin and knew that the sea had washed off some, if not all, of her protection.

“You can’t walk in the sun,” he told her, looking down at her bare legs, the rise of her breasts in the revealing neckline of the costume. It was a look she remembered all too well. Her skin tingled under the drying salt. “You are nearly naked. My house is cool inside. It is among trees, a date plantation.”

“Take me back,” she said stonily, kicking futilely at the immovable horse. Her eyes scoured the horizon for some sign that someone was coming to her rescue. “They must have called the police by now. They must think you’re a kidnapper.”

“But that is what I am,” Jaf pointed out.

“What have you done to Adnan?” she almost shrieked.

“Your imagination is very vivid, but perhaps that is a professional necessity for an actress,” he said. Lisbet ground her teeth. She had never had an easy time controlling her temper around him. “I have done nothing to Adnan Amani except ease his financial worries for the immediate future.”

“You bribed him to let you take his place?” she cried, outraged.

“Would you prefer that I had knocked him on the head and tied him up? Violence should always be a last resort,” he chided.

“Of course I wouldn’t prefer—” Lisbet began heatedly, then realized that he was succeeding in putting her in the wrong. She heaved a breath.

“Take me back to the set.”

“On one condition.”

“To hell with your condition!”

“You must have dinner with me this evening.”

“Dinner! If that was all you wanted, why didn’t you come to Gazi and Anna’s? You must know I’ve been staying there!”

Coming to the Barakat Emirates to shoot the movie a week ago, she had naturally stayed with Anna and Gazi. It would have been natural for Jaf to visit them, but he made no move to try and see her. “We usually see him once or twice a week,” Anna had said apologetically. “He must be very busy.”

Lisbet had been half relieved, half anxious. If there was going to be a meeting, she wanted to get it over with. If not, she’d have liked to be certain of that.

He laughed. “Did you miss me?”

“I never expected you to come. Why would you want to see me? Why do you now?”

“What I have to say to you is not for public consumption,” he said.

Her heart pounded. She was afraid of him in this steely mood. She remembered how hard it had been to shut him out of her life. It had taken all her determination. “I’m not interested,” she said stonily.

“You do not agree to come?”

“We finished months ago, Jaf. It’s over and it’s going to stay that way.”

He seemed to make no move, and yet the horse lifted a delicate foreleg and stepped around in place, till it was facing the rocky ridge and the sea again.

“My house is beyond this point,” he said. The horse moved into the sea. “It is well protected. Once we are there, no one will reach you except with my permission.”

“Let me down!” she cried.

She struggled, but he held her tight, and the horse moved faster. She could not risk jumping, especially when she couldn’t be sure of the surface under the water. If her foot landed on a rock, if she fell or the horse kicked her…

“Now, or tonight, Lisbet? One way or another, you will see me.” The horse was moving into deeper water, on a heading around the thrusting finger of rock.

She could feel determination in him. Her feet were now brushing the surface of the water. Her body skittered with nervous anticipation.

After the months of silence, she had begun to believe that he had forgotten her, forgotten all his protestations of love. During the past week of waiting every night on tenterhooks for him to turn up at dinner, she had been convinced. And now, suddenly, here he was, angry, unforgiving, punitive.

She felt disoriented. She suddenly felt she didn’t know him. He was in his own country, on his own territory, taking her she knew not where. She was a foreigner, and he was influential here.

“All right!” she exploded, furious at her own capitulation.

The horse stopped instantly. Jaf frowned into her eyes. “You will have dinner with me tonight?”

“Yes, I’ll have dinner with you, damn you! But not at your house. I’ll go with you to a restaurant, and that’s final. So if you were expecting more than dinner, forget it! A face over a meal is all you’ll get.”

His head inclined with regal acceptance, making her feel like a rude peasant in the presence of the lord of the manor. “But of course,” Jaf said, as if she had made an indelicate remark. “What else?”

Firouz turned in place and began to pace back out of the water, as precise as a circus horse.

“Just as long as you realize there’ll be no sex for dessert,” Lisbet said defiantly.

“Do you realize it?” Jaf said.

They met two dune buggies halfway. Jaf laughed and reined in. “Your rescuers are only a little late,” he said.

“Lisbet, are you all right?” the director demanded, piling out of one of the vehicles in half-crazed concern. “Is everything okay?”

They had galloped in silence, Jaf’s chest against her back, the horse moving powerfully under her thighs, in a twin reminder of masculine might. Lisbet was filled with such a churning of conflicting and varied emotions she couldn’t find words.

One of the grips was there to help her down, but the dark, stocky director pushed him aside and solicitously reached up for her himself. She slipped out of Jaf’s strong hold and down onto the sand, and only when his protection was gone felt the loss.

Jaf’s face was stone as he watched the movement drag the dress of her skirt up around her hips, revealing the full length of her legs and the lacy underwear.

Masoud, glancing up at Jaf, let her go a moment too quickly. Lisbet staggered a little and then straightened.

“No, everything is not all right,” she informed the director in quiet fury. “Do you know this man? I won’t work while he’s on the set,” she said, storming off towards the dune buggy.

She was hoping for an argument, because Jaf was certain to lose. But she might have known better. She had taken no more than two steps when there came the sound of hooves. Involuntarily, Lisbet turned. Jafar al Hamzeh, his robes flying, magnificent on the white horse, was riding back the way they had come.

Minutes later, Lisbet slammed into the welcome if erratic air conditioning of her trailer. Tina, her dresser, wide-eyed with unspoken curiosity, fluttered in anxious concern while she struggled with the buttons on her costume.

“You’ve been in the sun too long! Is your nose burned? I told Masoud, less than half an hour and then we need to reapply the sun block!”

Lisbet was suddenly exhausted. Her meeting with Jaf seemed to have drained her of energy. “Save it, Tina. I want a shower,” she said, stripping off the torn costume.

Then she was under the cooling spray. Cast and crew had all been asked to use the fresh water sparingly, since it had to be trucked onto the site, but Lisbet forgot that as she held her face to the cool stream.

If only other things could be so easily forgotten.

She had met Jafar al Hamzeh when he came to ask for her help. Her best friend, Anna Lamb, was in trouble and needed her. Naturally, she had agreed to go with him.

There was an immediate spark between them. He made no secret of his attraction to her. That evening, having given Anna the help she needed, Lisbet had had to leave for work—shooting an exterior scene for an episode of a television series, on Hampstead Heath. Jaf had driven her to the location and then stayed to keep her company—all night.

She would never forget the electricity of that night. Sitting in the deeper dark behind the floodlights, bundled up against the chill, she and Jaf gazed into each other’s eyes, talking about nothing and everything, while she waited to be called. Each time she went on set to do a take, she feared he would have gone when she got back, but he was always there, waiting.

There was a connection between them like a taut, singing wire, and over the course of that long night, the electric charge got stronger and stronger till Jaf was more blinding than the floodlights.

He had taken her home in the limousine, and she had invited him in for coffee. As they entered the darkened apartment he kissed her, suddenly, hungrily, as if he had let go a self-restraint of banded steel. It was their first kiss, and it exploded on their lips with fiery sweetness. The thought of it, even now, could make chills run over her skin.

She would never forget that first time, making love with Jaf as the sun came up over the damp roofs of London. Not if she lived to be a hundred.

Afterwards, she had worried that, coming from so different a culture, he would think her cheap, despise her for such ease of conquest. He left her with a passionate kiss in the morning, saying he would call her soon, and her fear whispered that for him it had been no more than a one-night stand.

The limousine was waiting for her at the curb when she left the television studio that evening. Her heart leapt so hard she staggered. It took her—or perhaps, she had told herself, giggling, in the lush, leather-lined splendour of the Rolls, swept was the more appropriate word—to the Dorchester Hotel.

No one at the Dorchester even raised an eyebrow at her grubby sweatpants, the frayed sweater, the ragged bomber jacket, her shiny, just-scrubbed face, the hair caught up with a couple of jumbo clips, the extra-long scarf taking three turns around her neck.

“You might have given a girl some warning!” she protested, when Jaf opened the door on the penthouse suite. He was standing in an entrance hall bigger than her whole flat.

His smile made her drunker than champagne. “What should I have warned you about?”

He put out a hand and drew her inside, and before she could begin to answer his mouth closed on hers, hungry and demanding.

Later, they lay lazily entwined in each other, while he stroked her back, her hip, her thigh. Above them, a huge skylight showed them the stars. His hold was light, and yet he seemed to protect and enclose her. She had never felt so safe.

They looked up at the stars, and he complained at how pale they were, compared to the sky in Barakat.

“Once, when I was very young,” Jaf murmured, “I was with my grandfather as he examined a collection of diamonds. I can still see those stones dropping onto the black velvet cushion my grandfather had set down. They sparkled with black fire. They dazzled my eyes.”

“Mmmm,” she said, as his hand painted little sparkles of electricity along her spine.

“My mother said afterwards, though I don’t remember that part of it, that I absolutely insisted on touching them. All I remember is that I was lifted up and put my hands out, and my grandfather dropped diamonds onto my palms. It was a moment that thrilled me beyond description.”

Lisbet smiled, picturing him as a little boy, trembling with delight. “I wonder why it had such impact.”

“Because I thought I was touching the stars, Lisbet,” he said softly. “That is what the stars are like in my country. They are diamonds. I really believed that my grandfather had brought down stars and a piece of sky. It was a moment of almost mystical ecstasy.”

Lisbet smiled, touched and charmed by the image. She turned her head and looked up at the night sky. “Yes, I see.”

Jaf’s arms tightened around her. He gazed down into her upturned face and saw starlight in her eyes. For a moment there was pure silence.

“I have never had such a feeling again until now,” he whispered, lifting one hand to her cheek. “Till now I never touched the stars again.”