Desert Sheikhs Collection: Part 1. Jane Porter

he exclaimed softly. ‘Darling, are you all right? What in heaven’s name has happened to you?’

      ‘Oh, Jake!’ And she dropped her bag onto the floor and collapsed, sobbing, into his arms.

      It wasn’t until she was settled on the sofa, a fire lit and a huge mug of steaming tea beside her, along with the remains of a box of tissues, that she felt ready to face his anxious questions. But the whole set-up sounded mad—in fact, it was mad—and nobody had told her what to say. Or what not to say. It was Darian’s secret to tell. His story, not hers. And Jake was a darling, but what if he happened to let it slip to someone? She knew what the outcome of that would be. The press would have an absolute field-day, and Darian and Khalim’s lives would be made hell.

      ‘It’s a broken heart, Jake,’ she said. ‘It’s that simple.’

      Jake was shaking his head. ‘And it’s that Darian Wildman who broke it? The one who, I hasten to add, was so foul-tempered to me! Want me to punch him for you, darling?’

      Lara almost choked on her tea and laughed; it was a relief to find that she still could. ‘You?’ she questioned, with more emphasis than she had intended. ‘Punch Darian? I don’t think so, but thank you all the same!’

      ‘I’ll have you know that I came top in boxing in my year at drama school!’ The famous blue eyes crinkled at the corners. ‘But it’s good to see you smiling. Now, sit there and put your feet up. I’m going to make us some supper.’

      ‘Jake, you’d make someone a wonderful wife,’ she sighed.

      He turned round and raised his brows and for a moment looked so…so imperious that Lara suddenly got a good idea why he always featured in the ‘Top Ten Most Wanted Men’ lists which were periodically featured in newspapers and magazines.

      ‘Don’t push it, Lara!’ he warned.

      It felt weird to be back in England.

      She tried rationalising it—telling herself that she had been in Maraban hardly any time at all, and certainly not as long as the time she had gone on a safari in Africa and ended up staying three months.

      But comparisons didn’t work. Maraban wasn’t like anywhere else—its magic and its differences touched a part of her in a way that no other place did. And anyway, it wasn’t the country she was yearning for. It was the man she had left behind there.

      She forced herself to take a shower, even though she was reluctant to wash away the scent of him which still clung to her skin. That night her bed felt cold and empty, but not nearly so much as her body did. Strange how you could become used to someone. How quickly she had accommodated Darian’s physical presence—and how badly she missed the warmth of him, holding her in the night.

      The night wore on, the clock ticking away with a vengeance, as if calling time on her affair, and she told herself for the last time she would allow herself to cry, the tears sliding wet and warm down her cheeks and falling on the pillow.

      In a way, it might have been better if it had been finished when she had left—at least then she might be able to mourn it properly and put a sense of closure on it. But it had been left unsatisfactorily open.

      What had he said? I can’t promise you anything, Lara.

      It was hard not to try to read stuff into that—but if a girlfriend had told her a man had said that to her then how would Lara interpret it? As a courteous way of telling her there was no future in it?

      Not even whether or not I’ll see you again.

      Definitely no future.

      At least it didn’t look as if there was going to be time to mope around the place, because the success of the poster campaign meant that work offers came flooding in. It was the highest public profile she had ever had, and suddenly it seemed that the world wanted to hire the tumble-haired brunette with the wide blue eyes.

      Her professional life, it seemed, was on an all-time high, and she was impatient with herself for feeling that it was a very superficial kind of achievement. You worked all your life for something, and then when it came you couldn’t appreciate it because you couldn’t stop thinking about a wretched man!

      She filmed a television commercial for a new brand of deodorant, and there were two magazine shoots lined up, as well as a whole diary full of ‘go-sees’. And if she suddenly found the work curiously hollow, then surely that was to do with the constant aching in her heart.

      Time was a great healer, that was what all the relationship experts said, and it had to be true or they wouldn’t say it. If she never heard from Darian again then at least she could tell herself that what she had known with him in Maraban had been perfect. Too perfect, really, but there was no point dwelling on that. If she allowed herself to remember the way he had made her feel then it didn’t exactly make the future seem a very rosy prospect, for she couldn’t imagine ever recapturing that with anyone else. But at least she had felt it—no matter how fleetingly. Many people lived their lives without even coming close to it.

      She walked into the apartment one night to find Jake lying on the sofa. She hadn’t seen him for days because he’d been in Scotland, filming a new romantic comedy which was a follow-up to his last record-breaking success, and her mouth broke into a smile of welcome.

      ‘Jake! Oh, how lovely to see you!’

      ‘Hello, darling!’ He looked her up and down. ‘What’s with the weight-loss?’

      ‘Have I?’

      ‘Have I?’ he mimicked. ‘Lara, you’ve dropped at least one dress size.’ He frowned. ‘From which I must deduce that you haven’t heard from the Wild-Man?’

      ‘I don’t know why you call him that!’ she said lightly.

      ‘Because it’s his name—only with maybe a slightly more sinister emphasis!’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘So have you?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘And how long’s it been?’

      Superstitiously, she didn’t want to say it—because if she acknowledged just how long it had been then it might force her to confront the fact that it really was over. ‘Six weeks,’ she admitted reluctantly.

      ‘So that’s it, then? It’s over?’

      ‘Yes, Jake—that’s it! I don’t think you need to be a relationship counsellor to work that out! Now, I’m just going to send my sister an e-mail, and then I’ll…I’ll cook you supper—how about that?’

      He smiled. ‘That’s my girl—welcome back to reality, Lara!’

      He could keep it, she thought moodily as she sat down at the desk.

      At least the computer provided a kind of refuge; she could see the appeal of a life spent surfing in cyberspace. If you were staring at, and communicating with a screen, it meant that you could escape from the real world and all the cares and worries it generated.

      She switched on, gazing out of the window while the computer chugged into life, at the bare branches of the trees which were sketched across the ice-blue beauty of the winter sky. Would it ever be spring again? She gave a wan smile as she clicked the mouse onto her inbox. It was time to stop dreaming and get real indeed.

      Twelve messages. One from each of her sisters. One from her agent and one from a schoolfriend with whom she corresponded sporadically. The rest were junk—which seemed to arrive daily, no matter what. She scrolled down, ticking each little box to delete them, then she stopped. Her head spun and her mouth dried.

      Golden Palace?

      Her heart seemed to miss a beat, even though she told herself that it was probably a Chinese restaurant touting for new business. But a Chinese restaurant would hardly title its subject matter: Akhal-Teke and other things.

      Would it?

      She clicked onto it, and now her heart was pounding with excitement.