The Desert King's Secret Heir

But she hadn’t begun when she heard footsteps descend to the pavement from the main house door above her basement flat. A man’s steps. Arden took the lid off the polish and concentrated on swiping some across the door knocker. She should have waited till she was sure Hamid had left. But she’d felt claustrophobic, cooped up inside with her whirling thoughts.

‘Arden.’ The voice, low and soft as smoke, wafted around her, encircling like an embrace.

She blinked and stared at the glossy black paint on the door a few inches from her nose. She was imagining it. She’d been thinking of Shakil all night and—

Footsteps sounded on the steps leading down to the tiny courtyard in front of her basement home.

She stiffened, her shoulders inching high. This wasn’t imagination. This was real.

Arden swung around and the tin of polish clattered to the flagstones.

CHAPTER TWO (#u2ed8ac33-6a06-56c1-abe1-6fd5e06b8a96)

HUGE EYES FIXED on him. Eyes as bright as the precious aquamarines in his royal treasury. Eyes the clear green-blue of the sea off the coast of Zahrat.

How often through the years had he dreamed of those remarkable eyes? Of hair like spun rose gold, falling in silken waves across creamy shoulders.

For a second Idris could only stare. He’d been prepared for this meeting. He’d cancelled breakfast with Ghizlan and their respective ambassadors to come here. Yet the abrupt surge of hunger as he watched Arden Wills mocked the belief he was in command of this situation.

Where was his self-control? How could he lust after a woman who belonged to someone else?

To his own cousin?

Where was his sense, coming here when he should be with the woman to whom he was about to pledge his life?

Idris didn’t do impulsive any more. Or self-centred. Not for years. Yet he’d been both, seeking out this woman to confirm for himself what Hamid had implied last night—that they lived together.

A ripple of anger snaked through him, growing to gut-wrenching revulsion at the idea of her with his cousin.

‘What are you doing here?’ Her voice was husky, evoking long ago memories of her crying out his name in ecstasy. Of her beguiling, artless passion. Of how she’d made him feel for a short time, like someone other than the carefree, self-absorbed youth he’d been.

How could such ancient memories feel so fresh? So appallingly seductive?

It had only been a holiday romance, short-term fun such as he’d had numerous times. Why did it feel different?

Because it had been different. For the first time ever he’d planned to extend a casual affair. He hadn’t been ready to leave her.

‘Hamid’s away.’ Was that provocative tilt of her jaw deliberate, or as unconscious as the way her fingers threaded together?

Satisfaction stirred. It was beneath him perhaps, but reassuring to discover he wasn’t the only one on edge. Idris was used to being sure of his direction, always in command. Doubt was foreign to him.

‘I didn’t come here to see Hamid.’

Those eyes grew huge in a face that looked even milkier than before. Hamid had talked of her being delicate. Was that code for pregnant? Was that why she looked like a puff of wind would knock her over?

Jealousy, a growling caged beast, circled in his belly. It didn’t matter that he had no right to feel it. Idris had stopped, somewhere around four this morning, trying to tell himself he felt nothing for Arden Wills. He was a pragmatist. The fact was he did feel. He was here to sort out why and then, with clinical precision, to put an end to it.

‘You should sit. You don’t look well.’

‘I’m perfectly fine.’ She crossed her arms, making Idris aware of the swell of plump breasts under her shapeless pullover. Had her breasts always been like that? He remembered them as delectable, but—

‘I’m up here.’ A palm waved in front of his eyes and, for the first time he could recall, Idris felt embarrassment at being caught ogling. Heat flushed his face. It wasn’t a sensation to which he was accustomed.

When he lifted his gaze he saw a matching bright pink stain on her cheeks. Annoyance? Embarrassment? Or something akin to the untimely, unwanted attraction he couldn’t quash?

‘I came to see you.’ His voice dropped to a primal, darkly possessive note he couldn’t hide.

‘Me?’ Now she was on the back foot and, ridiculously, it pleased Idris. He hated the sensation, since last night, that he careered out of control.

‘You. Shall we go inside?’

Her folded arms dropped, spreading out a little from her body, almost as if she’d bar his entry to the house. ‘No. We can speak here.’

Idris scowled. ‘Surely even in Britain one invites guests inside?’

Her mouth tightened but she remained defiant. ‘I prefer to stay outside. It’s...better.’ She took a step back. To prevent him hauling the door open?

Idris felt his head snap back as if he’d been slapped. Did she have so little faith in his chivalry? Was she really afraid to be alone with him?

He was torn between delight at the idea he wasn’t the only one feeling the burn of rekindled lust and horror that his feelings were reciprocated and therefore harder to quell.

‘I have a key to Hamid’s house, if you’d like me to let you in upstairs. Since you’re his cousin, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.’

Idris jerked his gaze up to the glossy black door a level above them, and then to the one behind Arden, noting for the first time the brass street number with a small but significant letter A beside it. The relief washing through him was palpable.

‘You live in a basement flat? You don’t live together?’

She drew herself up till she almost topped his shoulder. Idris told himself the movement wasn’t endearing, yet he felt a little corkscrewing twist of pleasure that punctured his satisfaction in an instant.

‘We don’t live together. Hamid is my landlord.’

Yet that didn’t mean they weren’t lovers. For all Hamid’s devotion to history and old books, he, like every other male in their family, had a penchant for a pretty face and a delectable female body. Besides, there’d been no mistaking Hamid’s proprietorial attitude last night, or his meaning when he’d spoken about a special woman in his life.

‘It’s you I came to see.’

She shook her head and a froth of hair swung around her, the colour of the desert at sunrise. Last night he’d been thrown by the smoothly conventional way she’d worn it. This was the woman he recalled, with a riot of loose curls that made his palms itch to feel all that silken softness.

‘Why?’

Was she being deliberately obtuse?

‘Perhaps to talk over old times?’

There was a thud as she fell back against the solid door, her face a study in shock.

‘It is you! You were at Santorini.’

Idris stared. ‘You thought I was someone else? You didn’t remember me?’