Sleepless Nights

Sleepless Nights
ANNE WEALE

Blondes definitely have more fun!Encouraged by her best friend, Sarah Anderson had set off for an adventure, armed with a new image and a new hair color: blonde!Neal Kennedy wasn't quite what she had in mind. The man was gorgeous–a perfect Prince Charming for any fledgling Cinderella. But they were worlds apart. Neal was far more experienced and sophisticated than she was. And he was younger! He'd made it clear he would welcome an affair, but could Sarah really risk her heart on a temporary, young lover?

“Have you had many lovers?” (#ub018ceb1-e602-5a9e-baf4-02eccec1721c)Letter to Reader (#u3bfba987-f49c-574a-831f-3f925364dea0)Title Page (#ub6ec84a4-ec15-5464-a193-07309b1229bc)CHAPTER ONE (#u35e37e16-225b-599d-a8e8-3cf2837557dd)CHAPTER TWO (#u0408aae2-0a09-5745-b63c-fe3f56b70338)CHAPTER THREE (#u6cd359f1-ceaf-55f0-9c9b-15c8c93642ef)CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

“Have you had many lovers?”

Like his proposition at the table, the question startled her. In her world people didn’t ask such things. They repressed their curiosity...and much else.

“Hardly any compared with your ally, should imagine.”

He caught hold of her hand. “What makes you think I’m a womanizer?”

“Because that’s the way you come across.”

“Time isn’t on my side, Sarah,” Neal said gently. “The slow approach isn’t practical in these circumstances. You’re leaving town.... It will be a month after that before I get back to the U.K. Between now and then, anything could happen. My motto is Seize the Day.”

“Mine is Look Before You Leap...especially before you leap into bed with someone.”

Dear Reader,

I was married in the spring. After the honeymoon, my husband had to leave for a rather dangerous place on the other side of the world. I’ll never forget how the months dragged until, just before Christmas, I was able to join him and, as a bonus, found the inspiration for my first book.

The inspiration for Sleepless Nights came in a somewhat similar way. My husband and son decided to climb a mountain in the Himalaya together. They left at the end of September and for the next four weeks I tried not to worry about them.

At last came the night when I flew to Nepal to wait for them there. I reached Kathmandu late the following day, spending another mess night in probably the most bizarre bedroom I shall ever sleep in. Early next morning I went out to explore the city, soon losing my way in a warren of fascinating backstreets. Eventually I returned to base. “Key not here,” said the smiling Nepalese desk clerk “Maid cleaning now.”

But it wasn’t the maid in my room. It was a pair of hollow cheeked, bearded climbers who, by hitching a lift on a Russian helicopter, had arrived in Kathmandu a day sooner than planned.

Our joyful reunion was followed by a family holiday exploring the Kathmandu valley until it was time for our son to return to the mountains, this time as one of the organizers of the Everest Marathon. Flying back to Europe, I read my travel notes. Ideas began to form. I hope you will enjoy the story based on that trip as much as I enjoyed living it.

Sleepless Nights

Anne Weale

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

CHAPTER ONE

‘IF YOU meet a truly gorgeous guy out there and he starts coming on strong, don’t back off.’

Giving Sarah her final pep talk, her best friend Naomi went on, ‘Life isn’t a dress rehearsal. You’ve got this fantastic chance to break out of the cage. Make the most of it. Around here men to die for are thin on the ground...non-existent would be more accurate.’

Taking Sarah’s agreement for granted, Naomi continued, ‘In Nepal there’s a better supply...or there was the year I was there. Real men like uncomfortable places...oceans and jungles and mountains. When did you last see a ten-out-of-ten in a shopping mall? Never... or hardly ever. They’re like any other rare species. If you want to get close to them, you have to go to their habitat... and it’s not where you and I are spending our lives, that’s for sure,’ she added, with a crack of ironic laughter.

Forty-eight hours later, while the airbus droned through the night sky, over mountains and deserts, Sarah was thinking about Naomi’s theory that most people spent their lives caged by forces and circumstances beyond their control. Sometimes their conditions were miserable and they were very unhappy. Sometimes the cages were comfortable, even luxurious but, despite that, lifestyles they couldn’t escape and which often didn’t fulfil their real needs.

Naomi’s and Sarah’s cages were somewhere between those extremes. Their lives weren’t the way they would have liked them to be. Unable to change them, they made the best of them. Until, suddenly and unexpectedly, the door of Sarah’s cage had opened.

Now here she was, flying free in an unfamiliar environment that would become more exotic as the adventure progressed.

For two weeks she was on her own, free of all her usual responsibilities...free to be her real self...whoever that real self was.

The woman in the seat next to hers was asleep. From their conversation during dinner, Sarah knew that her neighbour was an off-duty air stewardess for whom flying round the world to glamorous destinations was an everyday routine.

Sarah had never been anywhere glamorous. She was too excited to close her eyes for a moment. They had boarded the aircraft at ten o’clock. Dinner had been served at midnight. After watching both the in-flight movies, she spent the rest of the night reading a guidebook until dawn came up and breakfast was served. Soon after breakfast they landed at Doha, a place that until very recently she had never even heard of.

The stewardess sitting next to her, who worked for an Arab airline and lived at Doha, was looking forward to relaxing in the bath at her apartment in the city. For Sarah it would be another five hours’ flying time before she reached her destination. Meanwhile the next ninety minutes would be spent in the airport’s transit lounge.

After saying goodbye and thank you to the cabin crew lined up by the door, Sarah stepped out into the dazzling sunlight of a Middle Eastern morning.

Yesterday, in England, it had been cold and wet, a foretaste of approaching winter. Here, in Qatar, an oil-rich desert state on the Persian Gulf, even at this early hour it was already as warm as a summer heatwave in Europe.

Her only luggage was a small backpack. When it had been through the security X-ray machine, she slung it over one shoulder and went in search of the women’s room. She wanted a more leisurely freshen-up than had been possible with so many passengers waiting outside the aircraft’s cramped washroom.

Her reflection in the mirror behind the hand basins was startlingly different from the image she was accustomed to seeing in her bedroom mirror at home. Bulldozed into changing her hair colour as well as its style, and advised what to wear and what to pack by Naomi, who had also lent her some clothes, Sarah wasn’t yet used to her new image. Or to the feel of the trekking boots on her feet.

She had worn them for part of every day for the past month. But they still felt heavy and clumpy. And what could look more incongruous than a pair of thick-soled boots below the swirling hem of an ankle-length floral skirt in vivid Impressionist colours?

Naomi had assured her that where Sarah was going such an outfit was commonplace. No one would look twice at it, let alone stare in astonishment.

Uncrushable, easily washable long skirts had replaced the thick tweed skirts preferred by the intrepid Victorian lady travellers of a hundred years earlier.

On her top half Sarah was wearing a long-sleeved cotton shirt. Under it was a T-shirt belonging to her friend. Embroidered on the chest was the name of a mountainous route Naomi had trekked with a boyfriend during her gap year between school and college.

Sarah took off both shirts. If any Arab ladies came into the washroom, she hoped it wouldn’t offend them to see her stripped down to her comfortable sports bra. Already she had been in transit for a total of twelve hours on her body clock. A proper wash would refresh her for the second stage of the journey.

Fifteen minutes later, wearing only the faded blue T-shirt and feeling surprisingly wide awake despite her sleepless night, she returned to the lounge. Several important-looking Arabs in immaculately-laundered white robes and traditional red and white head-dresses were walking about, but most people were in western dress ranging from business suits to clean or scruffy jeans.

Sarah found the departure gate for her next flight and looked for a vacant seat near it. As she sat down she was aware of her fellow travellers looking her over with the speculative curiosity of people expecting to spend the next week or two in the company of strangers.

Only one person wasn’t eyeing her. The man in the seat directly opposite hers was deep in a book.

With a bookworm’s instinctive interest in other people’s choice of reading, Sarah tried to make out the title. That he was reading rather than gawking at her earned him points in her estimation.

Then she noticed he had other things beside the book to recommend him. Tall, broad-shouldered and long-legged, he was wearing a khaki shirt and trousers with reinforced knees and lots of extra zipped pockets. As he had no luggage with him, apart from a plastic bag from the duty free shop at Heathrow airport, she concluded he was carrying all his vital belongings on his person, with most of his baggage going in the aircraft’s hold, to be reclaimed when they landed.

His lean and muscular build suggested he might be a climber heading for the snow-bound peaks of the Himalaya. Mountaineering and trekking were two of the reasons why foreigners visited the kingdom of Nepal and its romantic-sounding capital, Kathmandu.

Sarah had already noticed that most of the male transit passengers were in need of a shave. But not the man with the book. As darkly-tanned as those of a desert Arab, his cheeks and chin showed no trace of stubble. Everything about him looked spruce from the polished sheen of his boots to the scrubbed-clean fingernails on the strong brown hand holding the paperback.

He looked, she thought, as if he would smell good. Not from expensive lotions, but in the natural way that clean babies and sun-dried laundry smelled good.

As she was thinking this, and noting the way his thick black hair sprang from a high broad forehead, he glanced up and caught her studying him.

Her instinct was to look away but she found that she couldn’t. Something about the steely grey gaze focused on her made it impossible to avert her eyes. For several seconds their glances seemed to be locked. Then, a slight smile curling his mouth, he looked her over as closely and appreciatively as she had inspected him.

‘If you meet a truly gorgeous guy out there...’ The memory of Naomi’s advice echoed in Sarah’s mind.