The Sheikh's Blackmailed Mistress. PENNY JORDAN

Better and far more honest, surely, to admit the truth.

      So what was the truth? That she had enjoyed the experience?

      Enjoyed it?

      If only it had been the kind of ephemeral, easy, lighter than light experience that could be dismissed as merely enjoyable.

      But all it had been was a simple kiss, she told herself angrily.

      A simple kiss was easily forgotten; it did not bury itself so deeply in the senses that just the act of breathing in an unguarded moment was enough to reawaken the feelings it had aroused. It did not wake a person from their sleep because she was drowning in the longing it had set free, like a subterranean river in full flood. It did not possess a person and her senses to the extent that she was possessed.

      Here she went again, Sam recognised miserably. She was twenty-four years old—a qualified professional in a demanding profession, a woman who had so longed to train in her chosen field that she had deliberately refused to allow herself the distraction of emotional and physical relationships with the opposite sex, and had managed to do so without more than a few brief pangs of regret.

      But now it was as though all she had denied herself had suddenly decided to fight back and demand recompense. As though the woman in her was demanding recompense for what she had been denied. Yes, that was it. That was the reason she was feeling the way she was, she decided with relief. What she was feeling had nothing really to do with the man himself, even though…

      Even though what? Even though her body remembered every hard, lean line of his, every place it had touched his, every muscle, every breath, every pulse of the blood in his veins and the beat of his heart? And that was before she even began to think about his kiss, or the way she had felt as if fate had taken her by the hand and brought her face to face with her destiny and her soul mate. She was sure she would never have allowed herself to be subjected to such emotional intensity if she had stayed at home in England. Her loving but pragmatic parents, with their busy and practical lives, had certainly not brought her up to think in such terms.

      If she was to re-experience that kiss now—that moment when she had looked into those green eyes and known that this was it, that neither she nor her life would ever be the same again, that somehow by some means beyond either her comprehension or her control, she was now his—it would probably not be anything like as erotic or all-powerful as she remembered. Imagination was a wonderful thing, she told herself. That she was still thinking about something she ought to have forgotten within hours of it happening only proved that she had far too much of that dangerous quality. After all, it wasn’t as though she was ever likely to see him again—a stranger met by chance in a hotel corridor in a foreign country.

      Instead of thinking about him, what she ought to be thinking about was tomorrow, when Sheikh Fasial bin Sadir, the cousin and representative of the Ruler of Zuran, who had been here at the camp since they had first arrived to oversee everything, would be handing over control of the project to Vereham al a’ Karim bin Hakar, Sheikh of Dhurahn. In turn, in three months’ time, he would be replaced by the nominated representative of the Emir of Khulua.

      Sheikh Sadir was a career diplomat who had made it his business to ensure that both the camp and the work they were doing were run in a well-ordered and harmonious fashion. He had stressed to them—in perfect English—in an on-site briefing, that all three Rulers were determined to ensure that none of the small bands of nomads remaining in the empty quarter should in any way feel threatened by the work they were doing. That was why each working party would have with them an Arab guide, who would be able to speak with the nomads and reassure them about what was going on.

      He had also gone on to tell them that whilst each state technically had rights over their own share of the empty quarter, where it came within their borders, it was accepted by all of them that the nomads had the right to roam freely across those borders.

      Sam knew nothing about the Ruler of Dhurahn, but she certainly hoped he would prove to be as easy to work under as Sheikh Sadir. After all, she was already experiencing the problems that came with working alongside someone who was antagonistic towards her.

      She gave a faint sigh. From the moment he had arrived four weeks ago, to take the place of one of the original members of the team who’d had to return home for personal reasons, James Reynolds had set out to wrong-foot her. He was two years her junior and newly qualified, and she had initially put his determination to question everything she said and did as a mere youthful desire to make his mark. So she hadn’t checked him—more for the sake of his pride than anything else. She had assumed that he would soon realise that here they worked as a team, not as individuals trying to score points off one another, but instead of recognising that he was at fault James had started to become even more vocal in his criticism of her.

      Sam really regretted ever having mentioned to James in conversation how interested she was in the origins of the river that flowed into and through Dhurahn. Since she had James had continually made references to it that implied she was spending the time she was paid for checking the status of the borders in trying, as James put it, ‘to mess around with the source of a river that we all know is there’, and in doing so avoiding doing any ‘proper work’. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

      ‘Take no notice of him,’ Talia had tried to comfort her before she had injured herself. ‘He obviously has issues with you, and that’s his problem, not yours.’

      ‘The trouble is that he’s making it my problem,’ Sam had told her. ‘I really resent the way he’s making such an issue of my interest in the source of the river—as though he thinks I’ve got some kind of ulterior motive.’

      ‘I should just ignore him, if I were you,’ Talia had told her. ‘I mean, we’ve all heard the legend of how the river was first supposed to have been found—and who, in all honesty, wouldn’t find it fascinating?’

      Sam had nodded her head.

      The story was that, centuries earlier, the forebears of Dhurahn’s current Ruler, desert nomads, had been caught in a sandstorm and lost their way. After days of wandering in the desert, unable to find water, they had prayed to Allah to save them. When they had finished praying their leader had looked up and seen a bird perched on a rocky outcrop.

      ‘Look,’ he had commanded his people. ‘Where there is life there must be water. Allah be praised!’

      As he had spoken he had brought his fist down on a rock, and miraculously water had spouted from that rock to become a river that watered the whole of Dhurahn—the land he had claimed for his people.

      ‘It’s been proved now, of course, that the river runs underground for hundreds of miles before it reaches Dhurahn,’ she’d reminded the other girl. ‘The legend probably springs from the fact that a fissure of some kind must have allowed a spring to bubble up from underground. And luckily for Dhurahn it happened on their land.’

      Dawn! Here in the desert it burst upon the senses fully formed, taking you hostage to its miracle, Vere acknowledged, as he brought his four-by-four to a halt so that he could watch it.

      Naturally his was the first vehicle in the convoy, since it would be unthinkable for him to travel in anyone’s dust. He had, in fact, left the others several miles behind him when he’d turned off the road that led to an oasis where the border-mapping team had set up camp, to drive across the desert itself instead.

      As teenagers, both he and Drax had earned their spurs in the testosterone-fuelled young Arab male ‘sport’ of testing their skill against the treachery of the desert’s sand dunes. Like others before them, they had both overturned a handful of times before they had truly mastered the art of dune driving—something which no one could do with the same panache as a desert-dwelling Arab.

      These days, with modern GPS navigation systems, the old danger of losing one’s bearings and dying from dehydration before one could be found wasn’t the danger it had once been, but the desert itself could never be tamed.

      The Oasis of the Doves, where the team was encamped, was just inside Dhurahn’s own border, at the furthest end of a spear of Dhurahni