Читать книгу Summer Sheikhs - Эбби Грин, Marguerite Kaye - Страница 9

THERE were two immigration officers at passport control, and a short line of travellers in front of each. A man stood behind one of the desks, scanning the faces of the disembarking passengers. His watchful stillness was a hub for the busy flow, as if the scene somehow revolved around him.

He looked straight at Desi, and a buzz of warning sounded in her bones. She was wearing sunglasses, but even so, she turned her head to avoid meeting his eyes. Passport and landing card in her hand, clutching her elegantly travel-worn leather bag, she joined the other line, and resolutely did not look his way again.

But it had taken only one glance for his image to get stuck in her memory, as irritating as a fishbone: desert dark and harsh-faced, wearing an immaculate white cotton kaftan under a flowing burnous and the traditional headscarf she knew was called a keffiyeh. A chiselled mouth. Cheeks carved out of the rock she’d flown over in the desert, a scar across one cheekbone.

‘Passport, please,’ a voice said, and Desi came to. It was her turn. She stepped forward and handed up her passport. She was tight with nerves.

Desirée Drummond. He read the name without a flicker of recognition, and she breathed a little easier.

‘Take off sunglasses, please.’

She had to comply. She held her breath while the agent’s eyes roved over her face with sudden eagerness. She let it out slowly when it was clear he didn’t recognize her face, either. He didn’t ask her to take off her hat. He picked up his official stamp and flipped through the heavily stamped passport for an empty page.

‘What is porpoise of visit?’

‘Pleasure.’ And that’s the first lie done and dusted, she told herself. Pleasure is the last thing I expect from this little outing. Then, an inexpert liar, she rushed to add detail. ‘I’m a student of archaeology. I’m going to visit a dig.’

‘Deeg?’ he was clearly pleased to have an excuse to prolong the encounter. He might not have recognized her, but he clearly liked what he saw. ‘What is deeg?’

‘Oh…it’s a—a place where they find an ancient city or something and…archaeologists, you know, they dig to find out about history.’

His eyes widened with sudden alertness, and Desi cursed herself. Why hadn’t she just left well enough alone?

‘Where is the dig?’ he asked, in the voice of a man determined not to let beauty distract him from duty.

‘Oh!’ Desi laughed awkwardly. ‘I don’t actually know. Someone is meeting me…’

‘Stamp the passport,’ a deep voice commanded in Arabic, and both heads snapped up in surprise.

Him. The man who had been watching her. Standing by the immigration officer now and looking at Desi with a black gaze that sent nervous ripples down her spine.

Then she gasped, her head snapping back in sudden shock. The face of the stranger in front of her dissolved and reassembled. Her heart kicked like a million volts.

‘I don’t believe it!’ she croaked.

‘Hello, Desi,’ he said, in the same second.

‘Salah?’

He was nothing like the boy she remembered, nor the man she might have imagined that boy becoming. He looked closer to forty than thirty. There were deep lines on his forehead, a scar high on one cheek, and the oncegenerous mouth was tight and disciplined. The thin boy’s chest and shoulders had filled out with mature muscle.

And those were only the superficial changes. He had an aura of unquestioned authority, a man used to commanding and being obeyed. Power came off him like heat, distorting the air around him.

But it was the harshness, the cold disillusion behind the eyes that shocked her most.

Salah, but not Salah. She could not imagine how he’d got here from who he had been. She was looking at a stranger.

A stranger whose name, she knew, was His Excellency Salahuddin Nadim ibn Khaled ibn Shukri al Khouri, Cup Companion to Prince Omar of the Barakat Emirates, one of the dozen most influential men in his government.

The childhood sweetheart she had come here to seduce, and betray.