The Desert Prince's Mistress. Sharon Kendrick

him, she reasoned, who had persuaded him to adopt the usual method of casting.

      She should have been overjoyed. This was work, after all, and she needed to work—especially as the person she’d been covering for at the Embassy was now much better and ready to go back to her job. And she was supposed to be finding out more about Darian Wildman—so wasn’t this a heaven-sent opportunity to do just that? To work for his company and to become the face which sym-bolised that company.

      Except it didn’t feel like that. It felt uncomfortable. Wrong. As if she was doing something that she shouldn’t be doing. And coupled with that was the burden of the knowledge she possessed.

      Or maybe it had something to do with the fact that Darian had excited her in a way that no man had excited her for longer than she could remember. And that in itself was a bad sign. One which made her feel gloomy about him in general. If she was attracted to him then he was bound to be trouble, because Lara’s track record with men was nothing short of abysmal.

      She didn’t fall for men very often, but when she did it was always for the kind of man your mother warned you to stay away from. Philanderers and cheats. Good-looking, weak, shallow men. The sort who promised you the earth and a little bit more besides, and then were busy glancing over your shoulder to see if someone more attractive had just walked in. In fact, she had sworn off men altogether—at least until she had worked out what was the basic flaw in her character which attracted her to the wrong type of man.

      Her friend Rose had a few theories of her own. She said that it was because Lara yearned for excitement and was looking for it in the wrong places—but how on earth could you go looking for it in the right places if solid and decent men—the kind your mother would approve of—left you cold?

      ‘Oh, you need a sheikh, like Khalim,’ Rose had laughed on the eve of her wedding.

      At the time Lara had been struggling into a dress which weighed almost as much as she did. ‘Don’t be so smug!’

      ‘But I’m not,’ Rose had protested, and had laid her hand on Lara’s shoulder, her voice gentling. ‘I’m serious. It’s just a pity that Khalim hasn’t got any brothers.’

      Lara chewed on her lip. Oh, Lord—she had completely forgotten that conversation until now! But that was the cleverness of the mind, wasn’t it?—It dragged things up from the hidden corners of your subconscious when it thought they might come in useful. If only Rose had known how eerily prescient her words had been.

      If it had been anyone other than Khalim then it might have been easy to pick up the phone and say, Hi, guess what? I’ve discovered you have a secret half-brother! But Khalim was no normal man. He was Sheikh of a vast kingdom, and if another man was related to him by blood, then couldn’t he lay claim to that kingdom and jeopardise the livelihood of all of them? His and Rose’s and their son’s, and the child soon to be born? How could she knowingly endanger all that until she knew something of the man himself?

      ‘Lara?’

      She looked up to see Jake staring at her with concern. ‘What?’

      ‘You’ve gone as white as a sheet.’

      ‘Have I?’ She touched her cheek and found that it was cold, and suddenly she began to shiver. ‘We shoot on Monday,’ she whispered.

      On Monday she would see him again. Those strangely cold golden eyes would pierce right through her and see… Would they sense that she was not all she seemed? And how would he react if she told him that he was not all he seemed, either?

      Jake frowned. ‘Lara, what is the matter? You’ve just won a fantastic contract—why aren’t you cracking open the champagne?’

      She forced a smile. Why not, indeed? Perhaps she was simply guilty of inventing problems where there were none. ‘Coming right up,’ she said brightly, and headed for the fridge.

      The winter sun streamed in through the glass, warming his skin as Darian slowly buttoned up his white linen shirt and watched an aeroplane creeping across the sky in the far distance. Outside, the clouds were tinged with pink and gold, contrasting with an ice-blue sky which made the world look as perfect as it was supposed to look. But then the views from his penthouse apartment were always matchless and magnificent and never the same. It was one of the reasons he had bought it—that and its inaccessibility to people in general and the world in particular.

      The phone rang, but he let it ring. Most phone calls, in his experience, could be usefully avoided, and he hated having to make small-talk—especially in the mornings. Which was one of the reasons why it was a long time since he had stayed overnight with a woman.

      He listened to the message on the answer-machine, to hear the voice of the travel agent telling him that his flight to New York was confirmed, and smiled. If he had picked it up then he would have had to endure all kinds of bright and unnecessary questions about the state of his health!

      He picked up his coffee cup and sipped thoughtfully at the strong, inky brew, glancing over at the mirror as he did so. There was no sign of blood. Not now. He gave a tiny grimace. What was going on? He had cut himself shaving that morning—lightly nicked the skin around his jaw—something he could not remember doing since he was an adolescent boy, when he had first wielded the razor with uncertain fingers.

      In his gleaming bathroom mirror he had stared at the bright spot of scarlet which had beaded on the strong line of his jaw, disrupting his normal, ordered routine, and it had taken him right back to a place he rarely visited.

      The past. That strange place over which you had little control and yet whose influence shaped the person you would be for the rest of your life.

      He had never been one of those boys who had shaved before there was any need to. It was simply that he had seemed to develop way ahead of anyone else, with a faint shadowing of the jaw when most of his peers were still covered in spots. He had shot up in height, too, and his shoulders had grown broad and his body hard and muscular.

      Such early maturity had set him apart—especially with the girls—but then, in a way he had felt set apart ever since he could remember. He had never looked like anyone else, even though his clothes had been no different. His skin had always had a faintly tawny glow to it, and his golden eyes had marked him out as someone different.

      The girls had loved it and the boys had tried teasing him because of it, but he had quickly learnt that his height and strength could intimidate them enough to stop the insults almost before they had started.

      So his childhood had been lonely. The only child of a single mother, bringing him up in a seedy apartment in one of the wastelands of London where tourists never ventured. That in itself had not been unusual—poverty had brought with it all the casualties of human relationships, and Darian had known only a couple of sets of parents who had still been together—and they had fought enough to make him wonder why they bothered.

      He guessed it was that at least other kids had known who their father was. Whether it was the father who had run off with a younger woman, or the father who would appear threateningly drunk on his former family’s doorstep, or the father who refused to pay money the courts had told him he must pay. These were fathers it was easy enough to hate, but Darian’s own paternity had been one big secret. He would rather have had someone to hate than no one at all.

      He had tried asking his mother about it, but even broaching the subject had made her mouth tremble, as if she was about to cry—and she never cried. He had learnt only that some questions were better left unasked…

      The doorbell jangled, disrupting his thoughts. His driver was here. Darian picked up his jacket, feeling an almost imperceptible glow of subdued excitement as he sat back in the soft leather luxury of the car. He told himself it was because they were shooting the photos today, and that something which no longer challenged him was coming to an end, but he knew that was not the whole story.

      The truth was that he wanted to see the model again. What was her name? Lara. Yes, that was it. Pretty name and a pretty girl. Fearless and spiky. He rubbed his eyes and closed them as the car began to accelerate,