The Desert King's Secret Heir

It was impossible. He might have had more lovers than he could remember, but the idea Arden Wills had forgotten him was inconceivable.

Especially when his recall of her was disturbingly detailed. After four years he still remembered the little snuffling sigh she made in her sleep as she snuggled, naked, against him. The feel of her slick, untried body when they’d made love the first time returned to him time and again in his dreams. He’d almost exploded disgracefully early at the sheer erotic enticement of her delicate, tight body and the knowledge he was the first man to introduce her to ecstasy. Doing his duty and walking away from her had been amazingly difficult.

‘I thought...’ She shook her head, frowning. ‘How can you be a sheikh? You were a student.’

‘Ex-student—I’d just finished a graduate degree in the States when we met. As for becoming Sheikh—’ he shrugged ‘—my uncle died. It was his wish that I succeed him and that wish was ratified soon after his death.’

It sounded easy, but the reality had been anything but. He was a different man to the one he’d been four years ago. Responsibility for a country that had suffered so long because of its ruler’s neglect had transformed him. He carried the burden of changing his homeland into one ready to face the future instead of dwelling on the past. This morning was the first time in years he’d carved time to do something simply because he wished it. His secretary’s disbelieving look when he’d altered his schedule had spoken volumes.

Idris took a step closer, his nostrils flaring at the astringent smell of metal polish and something more delicate that tickled his memory—the scent of orange blossom.

‘Come, let’s take this conversation indoors where we can—’

‘No!’ Her eyes were round as saucers and if it weren’t ridiculous he’d say she was shaking.

That brought him up short. He might be supreme ruler of his kingdom and an emerging force in regional politics, but he wasn’t the sort of man who deliberately intimidated women.

‘I have nothing to say to you, Your Highness.’ She all but sneered his title and Idris scowled. It hit him suddenly that, for all they’d shared, there was a lot he’d never learned about her.

‘You have a problem with royalty?’

She tossed her head back. He couldn’t remember her being feisty before, just warm and eager for him. ‘I have a problem with men who lie about who they are.’

Idris’s hands clenched and his jaw hardened. He wasn’t used to having his will crossed, much less his honour impugned. The fact they were having this conversation metres from a public footpath, albeit in a quiet square, incensed him.

His fingers itched with the urge to haul this spitfire of a woman into his arms and barge through the door into her private domain.

Except he knew in the most primitive, instinctive part of his brain that if he touched her he was in danger of unleashing something far better left alone.

He’d come here to satisfy his curiosity and put an end, somehow, to the nagging sense of unfinished business between them.

He was about to become betrothed to a beautiful, diplomatically desirable princess. Their match was eagerly awaited by both nations. Getting involved in any way with Arden Wills would be a mistake of enormous proportions. Giving in to the dark urge to lay hands on her and remind her how it had been between them with a short, satisfying lesson in physical compatibility would be madness.

And so tempting.

‘I never lied,’ he said through gritted teeth.

Dark gold eyebrows rose in a deliberately offensive show of disbelief that stirred the anger in his belly.

‘No? So you’re telling me you’re not Sheikh Idris? Your name is actually Shakil?’

‘Ah.’ He’d forgotten that.

‘Yes, ah!’ She made it an accusation, looking down that little nose of hers as if he were some lowlife instead of a paragon of duty and honour. No one had ever looked at him that way.

‘I used Shakil when we met because—’

‘Because you didn’t want me finding you again.’ The words spat out like poisoned darts. ‘You had no intention of following through on that promise to meet again, did you? You’d already wiped your hands of me.’

‘You accuse me of lying?’ No man, or woman, for that matter, had ever doubted his word.

Arden crossed her arms over her chest and tipped her chin up in a supercilious expression as full of hauteur as that of any blue-blooded princess. ‘If the shoe fits.’

Idris took a step closer before his brain kicked into gear and screamed a warning. Ire overcame the seductive tug of that orange blossom scent. Caution disappeared on the crisp breeze eddying down from street level.

‘Shakil was my family nickname. Ask Hamid.’ It meant handsome and was one he discouraged, but back then it had been a handy pseudonym. He heaved a deep breath, telling himself he didn’t care that the movement reduced the distance between them. Or that his nostrils flared as the scent of warm female flesh mingled with the fragrance of orange blossom. ‘I used Shakil on vacation to avoid being recognised. There’d been a lot of media speculation about me and I wanted to be incognito for a while. I was Shakil to everyone I met on that trip. Not just you.’

He’d grown tired of people clamouring for attention because of his royal ties and wealth. Merging into the holiday throng in Greece as Shakil had been a delicious freedom. And it had been a heady delight knowing that when pretty little Arden had smiled at him in that bar on Santorini there’d been stars, not dollar signs in her eyes. She saw simply the man, not the shadow of his family connections and how she might benefit from them.

Was it any wonder he remembered their affair as special?

Still she didn’t look convinced.

‘As for not turning up at the rendezvous that last afternoon—you can hardly hold me to account. You didn’t show.’

A phone call had hauled him out of Arden’s bed and back to the upmarket hotel room where he hadn’t spent a single night for the week since he’d met her. All he’d known at first was something important had happened and he needed privacy to talk with his uncle’s closest advisers. It was only when he was alone in his hotel that he’d learned about his uncle’s heart attack, the fact his life hung by a thread, and that he’d named Idris his heir.

There’d been no question of returning to the rendezvous with Arden—three o’clock by the church—even if she had decided to accept his invitation to an extended vacation in Paris. There’d been no question of Paris or a lover, not when he was urgently needed at home.

And if he’d been fleetingly disappointed that she’d thought better of accepting his offer, he’d known it made things easier given the enormity of what he faced. He had enough experience of clinging women to know severing ties could be tiresome.

‘You went to the church to meet me?’ Her words held a breathless quality and there was something in her eyes he couldn’t read.

‘I had to fly home urgently. I sent someone instead.’

There was a tiny thud as her head rocked back against the door. Her eyes closed and her mouth twisted. Idris frowned at what looked like pain on her features.

‘Are you okay?’

‘Fine.’ Finally she opened her eyes. ‘Absolutely fine.’

She didn’t look it. She looked... He couldn’t put a name to that expression, yet he felt an echo of it slap him hard in the chest.

‘He didn’t wait long.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Your friend. He didn’t stay long.’

‘You’re saying you did go to the rendezvous?’ To say goodbye or accept his offer of a longer affair? For a moment Idris wondered, until he reminded himself it was history, done and dusted.

‘I was late.’

It was on the tip of his tongue to ask why. Second thoughts? A last-minute dash? He pictured her running through the narrow streets of Thera, between the whitewashed buildings she’d so enjoyed exploring. Her hair would be down like now, and her summer skirt floating around those lissom legs.

He chose to say nothing. What was there to say now, after four years? What was done was done.

Except, remarkably, it seemed that what they’d shared in that sultry week in Santorini hadn’t quite ended.