The Desert Prince's Mistress by Sharon Kendrick

Author:Sharon Kendrick [Kendrick, Sharon]
Format: epub
Tags: Romance: Modern, Contemporary, General, Romance, Romance - Contemporary, Fiction, Fiction - Romance, Romance - General, Actresses, Millionaires, Kings and rulers
ISBN: 9780373123964
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2004-05-01T00:25:17.984000+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

DARIAN sat back against the leather seat of the car as it silently and powerfully sped towards the airfield, his mind spinning with thoughts which seemed just too incredible to be true.

Beside him sat Khalim, and in the front, next to the driver, a burly man whose bulk made his position as bodyguard to the Sheikh unmistakable.

Lara had elected to travel in the second car, hastily reassuring Khalim that she would be happy to do so. I bet she is, thought Darian grimly. Deceiving and conniving little Mata Hari! He had read of women who used their sexuality to try to get close to a man, to sensuously make them let their guard down before blowing their lives into smithereens, but he had foolishly imagined that kind of woman to have no place in the contemporary world.

How very wrong he had been!

He felt the jab of fury combined with the hot thrust of lust, but he steadfastly put all thoughts of Miss Lara Black out of his mind. She wasn’t going anywhere—or at least nowhere that he wasn’t going—and he would deal with her when the time was right. For now, his head was too full of thoughts which sounded more like the plot for some fantastic story. But facts were facts—however incredible—and this was no story, it was his life.

He was going to Maraban! To a mountain kingdom to which, it seemed, he was linked by birth. And through all his anger and confusion he felt the stir of something within him, some soft blaze of an emotion he did not recognise.

He turned to look at Khalim, who had been sitting silently at his side, managing to be both alert and yet relaxed—as though there was little in this world which surprised him, and maybe there wasn’t. For wouldn’t life as ruler of a country such as Maraban present all kinds of dilemmas and problems which a normal man would never encounter in his lifetime?

‘You don’t seem angry,’ observed Darian quietly.

Khalim turned to him, a wry look on his dark and shadowed face. ‘Why would I waste my time being angry about what exists?’ he murmured. ‘That would be like being angry because it was raining, or because…’ He seemed to search for some analogy which the Western man would understand. ‘Because the horse you had placed your last dollar on had broken its leg before the big race!’

For the first time Darian smiled. ‘I am not a betting man.’

‘No? You do not gamble on luck and on fortune?’

‘I don’t gamble on anything.’ And it was true. Gambling was precarious, and Darian had spent his life avoiding the precarious. He made things certain wherever it was possible, and for that you needed something far more tangible than luck. Simple, really. If you worked hard and used all your brains and initiative and imagination then you would reap the benefit of that.

Yet Khalim possessed untold, almost unimaginable wealth, Darian acknowledged as he glanced around the car. This vehicle was

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