Читать книгу Sleeping with the Sultan - ALEXANDRA SELLERS - Страница 11

“Now, first, I’m going to ask you all to put your money where your mouths are. Let’s see how much you’re willing to pay….”

Dana smiled. Sheikh Ashraf was still looking as though sparks would fly off if you hit him with a hammer.

She looked into his face and smiled deliberately at him. Everyone was watching. “It’s inevitable,” she murmured, her eyebrow giving a flirtatious flicker as if she were joking with him. “Let’s just get it over with.”

He hesitated. “We will look far less foolish if we give in gracefully,” she warned him.

Meanwhile, Roddy was good-naturedly chivvying the audience into one last fit of generosity, reminding them of the starving children and the drought-stricken farms, making jokes about how poor old Sheikh Ashraf was going to have to kiss Dana, and what a terrible thing that was, while all the audience had to do was pay him to do it.

Someone drunkenly volunteered to stand in for the sheikh, and was speedily subdued by a witty rejoinder from Roddy that put off anyone else with that idea.

And the money buckets were going the rounds. At the edge of the stage someone was counting the cash and cheques and keeping Roddy advised as to the total.

Through it all the spotlight was on them. Dana smiled and laughed at the jokes. She no longer knew how Sheikh Ashraf was reacting, because although she smiled and flicked her eyes his way she didn’t actually focus on him. Roddy was being decent, his patter was very lighthearted and without innuendo, and she didn’t really understand why the whole thing was so hard to take.

Finally Roddy seemed to have milked them dry. He instructed the money-gatherers to pour all the money into a huge bucket at the front of the stage.

“Now, Dana, and Your Excellency, can I have you both up here on stage, please?”

Dana bit her lip and bent her head, taking a deep breath. Her blood was pounding in her head. She really didn’t understand why. It was nothing. A quick kiss was all that was required. And yet…

She let the breath out on a sigh, lifted her head, and, as one of the waiters appeared behind her chair, prepared to stand.

A hand clamped on her arm, keeping her seated. Dana looked down stupidly, noting the strength in the square fingers that curled around her flesh, the tawny skin against the shimmery white fabric of her dress, the heat that burned through it.

“Wait here,” he ordered softly.

He got to his feet, crossed the dance floor and moved up onto the little stage. Such was his presence, his charisma, Dana noted with awe, that the rowdy audience fell immediately silent and expectant.

“You know me,” he said, in his deep, firm voice. “You know who I am.” She heard a gasp from a table behind her, and a murmur rustled through the room. He waited, looking around at the audience with the unsmiling, calm confidence of…she wasn’t sure who she had ever seen with that kind of bone-deep authority.

The air seemed suddenly too heavy with expectation.

“I am Sheikh Ashraf Durran, Cup Companion to Prince Omar of Central Barakat. I am going to do what you want me to do, have no fear.”

There was a massive roar of voices and applause, led, she saw, by the Bagestani contingent. He let it soar and peak, then cut it off with a raised hand.

“I am willing, even without your very generous donations.” More cheers. “But this—” he gestured at the bucket of money at his feet with a flickering smile “—this is not by any means enough money to convince Miss Morningstar to make such a sacrifice as to kiss me.”

She laughed along with everyone else. God, he should be a preacher! He was absolutely mesmerizing them! People began to shout and wave money and cheques, which the hostesses hurried to collect. Sheikh Durran stood with his arms folded, watching.

Roddy, she saw, was gazing at him in stunned admiration. He absently accepted a note passed to him by one of the hostesses, read it, then, with a glance at Sheikh Ashraf, put the mike to his lips.

“I have a note here from Ahmed Bashir of Ahmed Bashir Motors on the Edgware Road, pledging to double the amount raised! So come on, ladies and gentlemen, this is your chance to give double your money!”

Sheikh Ashraf looked and nodded towards the table where Ahmed Bashir was sitting, and another cheer went up. For a man who had started out looking as if he were carved in oak, he sure learned fast, Dana reflected.

“What does he do for Prince Omar?” someone at the table leaned to ask Dana.

It was a natural assumption, the way things had gone tonight. But there was too much noise for explanation, and she simply smiled and shook her head.

“Miss Morningstar,” said Sheikh Ashraf from the stage, and Dana’s head whipped around as if she were a puppet and he had caught her string. He put out a hand. In the room suddenly the sound of the air conditioning seemed loud.

“They give all this to the starving if you will kiss me, Dana. Do you agree?”

A waiter pulled out her chair. Dana got to her feet, feeling half hypnotized, and moved with swift grace towards him. Her heart was pounding, and the smile playing on her lips now was involuntary.

“Not everyone knows, I think, that Miss Morningstar herself has very close ties with Bagestan. Her father is Colonel Golbahn,” said Sheikh Ashraf.

The Bagestanis in the audience were by now delirious. They screamed and cheered her up to the stage. Dana was totally bemused by the reaction.

“That is why—” They fell silent again, as if he held their strings, too. “That is why Miss Morningstar agrees to this blackmail. Because the money is going to a cause that is very close to all our hearts.” Wild, almost hysterical applause. “The hungry, desperate children—all the hungry and desperate people—of Bagestan.”

She reached the dais and lifted her hand. The platform was only a foot high, but Sheikh Ashraf seemed to tower over her. “You should take this kiss, therefore, as a symbol of our love for Bagestan, and our determination to fill the hungry ache of its people.”

And with that he bent over her, wrapped his arms around her, lifted her bodily up against him, and clamped his mouth to hers with a passion and a thirst that made the world go black.

“You are such a sneak!” the voice carolled down the receiver.

Dana had answered the phone automatically, still half asleep. Now she rolled over and blinked at the clock. Seven thirty-eight. “Jenny, why are you calling at this hour?” she protested. Scraping her hair away from her ear, she punched a pillow into shape and slid up to a half sitting position in the bed.

“Oh, sorry, darling, I’m in Makeup! Are you in bed? I forgot how early it was,” Jenny lied cheerfully.

“In a pig’s eye,” Dana muttered direfully.

“Is he there?” her friend hissed excitedly. “I really actually phoned thinking you wouldn’t be home, to be honest.”

“No, he is not here!” Dana told her indignantly. “Give me a break! I only met the man last night.”

“Ha. That kiss had been building up steam for longer than a few hours. That kiss had History.”

Dana shivered. “It didn’t have steam at all,” she protested weakly. “It was all set decoration, entirely for the multitude.”

“Balls. Sorry, love, but you could see the heat rising. Everybody was absolutely entranced.”

She had certainly felt the heat. Her whole body seemed to liquefy as his lips smothered hers, and then turn to scalding steam. She had never experienced such a transformation in her emotions in all her life before. She could barely remember now how they had got off the stage and back to their seats again. She could still hear the cheers, but why the crowd had got so excited by a kiss, she couldn’t guess. Something to do with his magnetism, she supposed.

“It didn’t make the morning editions, of course, but it’ll be in the Standard and the Mail for sure,” Jenny informed her gleefully. “I’ve already been called by both papers, for the background. They’ll be calling you in a minute, I bet.”

On cue, the phone gave the Call Waiting beep in Dana’s ear. “Hell,” she said mildly. “That’s one of them now. What did they ask you?”

“Oh, the usual—how long you’ve been seeing each other. When you gave Mickey the push.”

Dana rolled her eyes. “Oh, ouch!” This was a complication that hadn’t occurred to her. “I suppose he’ll be furious.”

“It was open to him to get on his horse some time ago, as I recall,” Jenny said pitilessly. “If it’s now come to a point where he’s made to look redundant, whose fault is that?”