The Playboy Sheikh

“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.”