Czytaj książkę: «The Sheikh's Bride»

CHAPTER ONE

LEONORA pushed a grubby hand through her hair and breathed hard. The lobby of the Nile Hilton was full to bursting. She had lost three of the museum party she was supposed to be escorting; she had not managed to spend time with her mother who was consequently furious; and now this week’s problem client had come up with another of her challenging questions.

‘What?’ she said distractedly.

‘Just coming in now.’ Mrs Silverstein nodded at the swing doors. ‘Who is he?’

A stretched white limousine, its windows discreetly darkened, had pulled up in the forecourt, flanked by two dark Mercedes. Men in dark grey suits emerged and took up strategic stances while a froth of porters converged on the party. The doors of the limousine remained resolutely closed. Leo knew the signs.

‘Probably royal.’ She was not very interested. Her father’s recently acquired travel agency did not have royal clients yet. ‘Nothing to do with me, thank God. Have you seen the Harris family?’

‘Royal,’ said Mrs Silverstein, oblivious.

Leo grinned. She liked Mrs Silverstein.

‘A lord of the desert,’ the older woman said.

‘Quite possibly.’

Leo decided not to spoil it by telling her the man was probably also Harvard educated, multilingual and rode through the desert in an air-conditioned four-wheel drive instead of on a camel. Mrs Silverstein was a romantic. Leo, as she was all too aware, was not.

‘I wonder who he is…’

Leo knew that note in her voice. ‘I haven’t the faintest idea,’ she said firmly.

Mrs Silverstein sent her a naughty look. ‘You could ask.’

Leo laughed aloud. It was what her client had been saying to her for three weeks.

‘Listen,’ she said, ‘I’m your courier. I’ll do a lot for you. I’ll ask women how old they are and men how much it costs to feed a donkey. But I won’t ask a lot of armed goons who it is they’re guarding. They’d probably arrest me.’

Mrs Silverstein chuckled. In three weeks they had come to understand each other. ‘Chicken.’

‘Anyway, I’ve got to find the Harris family.’

Leo slid through the crowd to a marble-topped table where a house phone lurked behind a formal flower arrangement. She dialled the Harris’ room, casting a harassed eye round, just in case they had come down without her catching them.

The limousine party were on the move, she saw. Men, their mobile phones pressed to their ears, parted bodies. Behind them walked a tall figure, his robes flowing from broad shoulders. Mrs Silverstein was right, she thought ruefully. He was magnificent.

And then he turned his head and looked at her. And, to her own astonishment, Leo found herself transfixed.

‘Hello?’ said Mary Harris on the other end of the phone. ‘Hello?’

She had never seen him before. Leo knew she had not. But there was something about the man that hit her like a high wind. As if he was important to her. As if she knew him.

‘Hello? Hello?’

He wore the pristine white robe and headdress of a desert Arab. In that glittering lobby the severe plainness was a shock. It made him look even more commanding than he already did given his height and the busy vigilance of his entourage. His eyes were hidden by dark glasses but his expression was weary as his indifferent glance slid over her and on across the crowd.

‘Hello? Who is this?’

Leo read arrogance in every line of him. She did not like it. But still she could not stop staring. It was like being under a spell.

Mrs Silverstein slid up beside her and took the phone out of her hand. Leo hardly noticed. All she could do was look—and wait for his eyes to find her again.

I’m not like this, said a small voice in her head. I don’t stare blatantly at sexy strangers. Leo ignored it. She did not seem as if she could help herself. She stood as still as a statue, waiting…

A man Leo recognised as the hotel’s duty manager was escorting the party. He was bowing, oblivious to anyone else. As he did so, he brushed so close to her that she had to step back sharply. She hit her hip on the table and grabbed a pillar to save herself. Normally a gentle and courteous man, the duty manager did not even notice.

But the object of all this attention did.

The white-robed figure stopped dead. Masked eyes turned in Leo’s direction.

It was what she had been waiting for. It was like walking into an earthquake. Leo’s breath caught and she hung onto the pillar as if she would be swallowed up without its support.

‘Oh my,’ said Mrs Silverstein, fluttering.

Leo clutched even tighter. She felt cold—then searingly hot—then insubstantial as smoke. Her fingers on the pillar were white but she felt as if the strength had all been slammed out of her.

Then he turned his head away. She was released.

Leo sagged. She found she had been holding her breath and her muscles felt as weak as water. She put a shaky hand to her throat.

‘Oh my,’ said Mrs Silverstein a second time. She gave Leo a shrewd look and restored the phone to its place.

Across the lobby, there was an imperious gesture. One of the suited men stepped respectfully close. The tall head inclined. The assistant looked across at Mrs Silverstein and Leo. He seemed surprised.

Leo knew that surprise. The knowledge chilled her, just as it had in every party she had ever been to. She was not the sort of woman that men noticed in crowded lobbies. She and the man in the grey suit both knew it.

She was too tall, too pale, too stiff. She had her father’s thick eye brows. They always made her look fierce unless she was very careful. Just now, too, her soft dark hair was full of Cairo dust and her drab business suit was creased.

Not very enticing, Leo thought, trying to laugh at herself. She had got used to being plain. She would have said that she did not let it bother her any more. But the look of surprise on the man’s face hurt surprisingly.

The white-robed figure said something sharply. His assistant’s face went blank. Then he nodded. And came over to them.

‘Excuse me,’ he said in accentless English. ‘His Excellency asks if you are hurt.’

Leo shook her head, dumbly. She was too shaken to speak—though she could not have said why. After all, with his eyes hidden by smoked glass, she had no evidence that the man in the white robes was even looking at her. But she knew he was.

Mrs Silverstein was made of sterner stuff.

‘Why how kind of—of His Excellency to ask,’ she said, beaming at the messenger. She turned to Leo, ‘That man didn’t hurt you, did he dear?’

‘Hurt me?’ echoed Leo. She was bewildered. Did he have laser-powered eyes behind those dark glasses?

Mrs Silverstein was patient. ‘When he bumped into you.’

Leo remembered the small collision with the under manager.

‘Oh. Mr Ahmed.’

She pulled herself together but it was an effort. The sheikh was no longer looking at her. Leo knew that without looking at him. She was as conscious of him as if her whole body had somehow been tuned to resonate to his personal vibration.

No one had ever done that to her before. No one; let alone a regal stranger whose eyes she could not read. It shocked her.

She swallowed and said as steadily as she could manage, ‘No, of course not. It was nothing.’

Mrs Silverstein peered up at her. ‘Are you sure? You look awful pale.’

The security man did not offer any view on Leo’s pallor or otherwise. She had the distinct impression that this was not the first time he had carried a message to an unknown lady. But that the messages were normally more amusing and the ladies more sophisticated; and about a hundred times more glamorous.

‘Can I offer you assistance of any kind, madam?’

Leo moistened her lips. But she pulled herself together and said more collectedly, ‘No, thank you. It was nothing. I don’t need any assistance.’ She remembered her manners. ‘Please thank His Excellency for his concern. But there was no need.’

She turned away. But Mrs Silverstein was not going to pass up the chance of a new experience so easily. Not when royalty was involved. She tapped the security man on the arm.

‘Which Excellency is that?’

The security man was so taken aback that he answered her.

‘Sheikh Amer el-Barbary.’

Mrs Silverstein was enchanted. ‘Sheikh,’ she echoed dreamily.

Just a few steps away the dark glasses turned in their direction again. Leo felt herself flush. She did not look at him but she could feel his sardonic regard as if someone had turned a jet of cold water on her.

She shivered. How does he do that? she thought, aware of the beginnings of indignation.

Uncharacteristically her chin came up. Leo was a peacemaker, not a fighter. But this time was different. She glared across the lobby straight at him, as if she knew she was meeting his eyes.

Was it her imagination, or did the robed figure still for a moment? Leo had the feeling that suddenly she had his full attention. And that he was not best pleased

Help, she thought. He’s coming over. The hairs on the back of her neck rose.

And then rescue came from an unexpected quarter.

‘Darling!’ called a voice.

Leo jumped and looked wildly round. The lobby seethed with noisy groups talking in numerous languages. They were no competition for her mother. Years of ladies’ luncheons had given Deborah Groom a vocal pitch that could cut steel.

‘Darling,’ she called again. ‘Over here.’

A heavily ringed hand waved imperiously. Leo located it and counted to ten. She had tried to persuade her mother not to come to Cairo in the busiest week of the agency’s year. Deborah, predictably, had taken no notice.

Now Leo pulled herself together and said briskly to the hovering security man, ‘Thank you but I am quite all right. Please—’ she allowed herself just a touch of irony which she was sure the man would miss ‘—reassure His Excellency.’ Then, more gently to Mrs Silverstein, ‘Give me ten minutes. I have to clear up a couple of things. Then, if you still want to go, I’ll take you to the pyramids at Giza.’

‘You go right ahead,’ said Mrs Silverstein, still entranced by her brush with royalty. ‘I’ll go sit in the café and have a cappuccino. Come and find me when you’re done.’

Leo gave her a grateful smile. Then she tucked her clipboard under her arm and swarmed professionally through the crowd.

‘Hello, Mother,’ she said, bending her tall head. Leo received the scented breath on the cheek which Deborah favoured with a kiss and straightened thankfully. ‘Having a good time?’

Deborah Groom was known for going straight to the point. ‘It would be better if I saw something of my only daughter.’

Leo kept her smile in place with an effort. ‘I warned you I’d have to work.’

‘Not all the time.’

‘There’s a lot on.’ If she sounded absent it was because in the distance she could see Andy Francis trying to herd a group towards their waiting bus. He was not having much success but then he should not have been doing it alone. Roy Ormerod, the head of Adventures in Time, was scheduled to be with the party too.

Deborah frowned. ‘Does your chief know who you are?’

Leo gave a crack of laughter. ‘You mean does he know that I’m the boss’s daughter? Of course not. That would defeat the whole object. I’m called Leo Roberts here.’

Deborah snorted. ‘I just don’t understand your father sometimes.’

That was nothing new. She had walked out on Gordon Groom fourteen years ago, saying exactly that and leaving him to care for the ten-year-old Leo.

‘He thinks it’s a good idea for me to learn to stand on my own feet like he did,’ she said patiently. ‘Look, Mother—’

‘You mean he thinks if he turns you out in the world to cope on your own you’ll turn into a boy,’ Deborah snapped.

Leo’s eyes flashed. But there was enough truth in the accusation to make her curb her instinct to retort in kind. She and her mother both knew that Gordon had always wanted a son. Training Leo to succeed him in the business was just second best. He did not even try to disguise that any more.

Deborah bit her lip. ‘Oh, I’m sorry darling, I promised myself I wouldn’t start that again,’ she said remorsefully. ‘But when I see you looking like death and running yourself ragged like this, I just can’t help myself.’

‘Forget it,’ said Leo.

She cast a surreptitious look at her clipboard. Where was Roy? He should have paid the bus driver for the Japanese party. If he didn’t turn up she would have to deal with it. And what about the Harris family? She had forgotten all about them and the museum tour was leaving.

Her mother sighed. ‘I suppose there’s no hope of seeing you at all today?’

Leo’s conscience smote her. ‘Not a chance unless—’

Mary Harris panted up to her.

‘Oh, Leo, I’m so sorry. Timothy got locked in the bathroom. I didn’t know what to do. The room attendant got him out. Have we missed the tour?’

Leo reassured them and plugged them rapidly onto the departing group. She came back to Deborah, mentally reviewing her schedule.

‘Look, Mother, there’s one more group I’ve got to see on its way. And then I’m supposed to take someone to the pyramids. But it will be hot and she’s quite elderly. I doubt if she’ll want to stay too long. Tea this afternoon?’

Deborah perked up. ‘Or could I give you dinner?’

Leo hesitated.

‘You think your father wouldn’t like it,’ Deborah diagnosed. Her mouth drooped.

Leo almost patted her hand. But Deborah would have jumped a foot. They were not a touchy-feely family.

So she said gently, ‘It’s not that. There’s a conference dinner. We’ve arranged it at an historic merchant’s house and there’s going to be a lot of bigwigs present. I really ought to be there.’

‘If the wigs are that big, why can’t your boss do it?’ Deborah said shrewdly.

Leo gave a choke of laughter. ‘Roy? He doesn’t—’

But then she thought about it. The guest list included some of the most illustrious charitable foundations in the world, including a high royalty quotient. Roy liked mingling at parties where he had a good chance of being photographed with the rich and famous. He called it networking.

‘Mother, you’re a genius. It’s just the thing for Roy,’ she said. She pulled out her mobile phone.

All she got was his answering machine. Leo left a crisp message and rang off.

‘Right, that’s sorted. I’ll see you tonight. Now I’ve got to take a seventy-year-old from New Jersey to Giza.’

Deborah muttered discontentedly.

Leo looked down at her.

‘What?’

‘Surely someone junior could take this woman to the pyramids?’

Leo grinned. Deborah had been a rich man’s daughter when she married rising tycoon Gordon Groom. There had been someone junior to take care of tedious duties all her life. It was one of the reasons Gordon had fought so hard for the custody of his only child.

‘As long as I’m a member of the team, I do my share of the chores,’ she said equably.

‘Sometimes you are so like your father,’ Deborah grumbled.

Leo laughed. ‘Thank you.’

Deborah ignored that. ‘I don’t know why he had to buy Adventures in Time, anyway. Why couldn’t he stick to hotels? And civilised places? What does he want with a travel agency?’

‘Diversify or die,’ Leo said cheerfully. ‘You know Pops—’ She broke off. ‘Whoops.’

In the Viennese café Mrs Silverstein was chatting to an alarmed-looking man in a grey suit. Leo was almost certain he was a member of Sheikh el-Barbary’s entourage.

‘It looks as if my client is getting bored. I’ll pick you up at eight this evening, Mother.’

She darted into the crowd. It was a relief.

Deborah’s divorce from Gordon Groom had been relatively amicable and her settlement kept her luxuriously provided for, but she could still be waspish about her workaholic ex-husband. It was the one subject that she and Leo were guaranteed to argue about every time they got together.

Tonight, Leo promised herself, she was not going to let Deborah mention Gordon once. Leo was beginning to have her own misgivings about her father’s plans for her. But she was going to keep that from Deborah until she was absolutely certain herself. So they would talk about clothes and makeup and boyfriends and all the things that Deborah complained that Leo wasn’t interested in.

One fun evening, thought Leo wryly, after another wonderful day. She went to rescue the security man.

The Sheikh’s party swept into the suite like an invading army. One security man went straight to the balcony. The other disappeared into the bedroom. The manager, bowing, started to demonstrate the room’s luxurious facilities. He found the Sheikh was not listening.

An assistant, still clutching his brief-case and laptop computer, nodded gravely and backed the manager towards the door.

‘Thank you,’ said the Sheikh’s assistant. ‘And now the other rooms?’

The manager bowed again and led the way. The security men followed.

The Sheikh was left alone. He went out to the balcony and stood looking across the Nile. The river was sinuous and glittering as a lazy snake in the morning sun. There was a dhow in midstream, he saw. Its triangular sail was curved like scimitar. It looked like a small dark toy.

He closed his eyes briefly. It was against more than the glare reflected off the water. Why did everything look like toys, these days?

Even the people. Moustafa, his chief bodyguard, looked like a prototype security robot. And the woman he was seeing tonight. He intended quitting the boring conference dinner with an excuse he did not care if they believed or not in order to see her. But for an uncomfortable moment, he allowed himself to realise that she reminded him of nothing so much as a designer-dressed doll. In fact, all the women he had seen recently looked like that.

Except—he had a fleeting image of the girl who had tumbled against the pillar in the hotel lobby. She was too tall, of course. And badly turned out, with her hair full of dust and a dark suit that was half-way to a uniform. But uniform or not, she had not looked like a doll. Not with those wide, startled eyes. The sudden shock in them had been intense—and unmistakeably real.

The Sheikh’s brows twitched together in a quick frown. Why had she looked so shocked? He suddenly, passionately, wanted to know. But of course he never would, now. He grunted bad temperedly.

His personal assistant came back into the suite. He hesitated in the doorway.

The Sheikh straightened his shoulders. ‘Out here, Hari,’ he called. There was resignation in his tone.

The assistant cautiously joined him on the balcony.

‘Everything appears to be in order,’ he reported.

The Sheikh took off his dark glasses. His eyes were amused but terribly weary.

‘Sure? Have the guys checked thoroughly? No bugs in the telephone? No poison in the honey cakes?’

The assistant smiled. ‘Moustafa can take his job too seriously,’ he admitted. ‘But better safe than sorry.’

His employer’s expression was scathing. ‘This is nonsense and we both know it.’

‘The kidnappings have increased,’ Hari pointed out in a neutral tone.

‘At home,’ said the Sheikh impatiently. ‘They haven’t got the money to track me round the world, poor devils. Anyway, they take prosperous foreign visitors who will pay ransom. Not a local like me. My father would not pay a penny to have me back.’ He thought about it. ‘Probably pay them to keep me.’

Hari bit back a smile. He had not been present at the interview between father and son before Amer left Dalmun this time. But the reverberations had shaken the city.

A terminal fight, said the palace. The father would never speak to the son again. An ultimatum, said Amer’s household; the son had told his father he would tolerate no more interference and was not coming back to Dalmun until the old Sheikh accepted it.

Amer eyed him. ‘And you can stop looking like a stuffed camel. I know you know all about it.’

Hari disclaimed gracefully. ‘I just hear the gossip in the bazaars, like everyone else,’ he murmured.

Amer was sardonic. ‘Good for business, is it?’

‘Gossip brings a lot of traders into town, I’m told,’ Hari agreed.

‘Buy a kilo of rice and get the latest palace dirt thrown in.’ Amer gave a short laugh. ‘What are they saying?’

Hari ticked the rumours off on his fingers. ‘Your father wants to kill you. You want to kill your father. You have refused to marry again. You are insisting on marrying again.’ He stopped, his face solemn but his lively eyes dancing. ‘You want to go to Hollywood and make a movie.’

‘Good God.’ Amer was genuinely startled. He let out a peal of delighted laughter. ‘Where did that one come from?’

Hari was not only his personal assistant. He was also a genuine friend. He told him the truth. ‘Cannes last year, I should think.’

‘Ah,’ said Amer, understanding at once. ‘We are speaking of the delicious Catherine.’

‘Or,’ said Hari judiciously, ‘the delicious Julie, Kim or Michelle.’

Amer laughed. ‘I like Cannes.’

‘That shows in the photographs,’ Hari agreed.

‘Disapproval, Hari?’

‘Not up to me to approve or disapprove,’ Hari said hastily. ‘I just wonder—’

‘I like women.’

Hari thought about Amer’s adamant refusal to marry again after his wife was killed in that horse riding accident. He kept his inevitable reflections to himself.

‘I like the crazy way their minds work,’ Amer went on. ‘It makes me laugh. I like the way they try to pretend they don’t know when you’re looking at them. I like the way they smell.’

Hari was surprised into pointing out, ‘Not all women smell of silk and French perfume like your Julies and your Catherines.’

‘Dolls,’ said Amer obscurely.

‘What?’

‘Has it occurred to you how many animated dummies I know? Oh they look like people. They walk and talk and even sound like people. But when you talk to them they just say the things they’ve been programmed to say.’

Hari was unmoved. ‘Presumably they’re the things you want them to say. So who did the programming?’

Amer shifted his shoulders impatiently. ‘Not me. I don’t want—’

‘To date a woman who has not been programmed to say you are wonderful?’ Hari pursued ruthlessly. He regarded his friend with faint scorn. ‘Why don’t you try it, some time?’

Amer was not offended. But he was not impressed, either.

‘Get real,’ he said wearily.

Hari warmed to his idea. ‘No, I mean it. Take that girl down stairs in the lobby just now.’

Amer was startled. ‘Have you started mind reading, Hari?’

‘I saw you looking her way,’ Hari explained simply. ‘I admit I was surprised. She’s hardly your type.’

Amer gave a mock shudder. ‘No French perfume there, you mean. I know. More like dust and cheap sun-tan lotion.’ A reminiscent smile curved his handsome mouth suddenly. ‘But even so, she has all the feminine tricks. Did you see her trying to pretend she didn’t know I was looking at her?’

Hari was intrigued. ‘So why were you?’

Amer hesitated, his eyes unreadable for an instant. Then he shrugged. ‘Three months in Dalmun, I expect,’ he said in his hardest voice. ‘Show a starving man stale bread and he forgets he ever knew the taste of caviar.’

‘Stale bread? Poor lady.’

‘I’ll remember caviar as soon as I have some to jog my memory,’ Amer murmured mischievously.

Hari knew his boss. ‘I’ll book the hotel in Cannes.’

It was not a successful visit to the pyramids. As Leo expected, Mrs Silverstein insisted on walking round every pyramid and could not be persuaded to pass on the burial chamber of Cheops. Since that involved a steep climb, a good third of which had to be done in a crouching position, the older woman was in considerable pain by the end of the trip. Not that she would admit it.

Ever since Mrs Silverstein arrived in Egypt on her Adventures in Time tour, she had wanted to see everything and, in spite of her age and rheumatic joints, made a spirited attempt to do so. When other members of the group took to shaded rooms in the heat of the afternoon, Mrs Silverstein was out there looking at desert plants or rooting affronted Arabs out of their afternoon snooze to bargain over carpets or papyrus.

‘The woman never stops,’ Roy Ormerod complained, looking at the couriers’ reports. ‘She’ll collapse and then we’ll be responsible. For Heaven’s sake get her to slow down.’

But Leo, joining one of the party’s trips, found she had a sneaking sympathy for Mrs Silverstein. She was a lively and cultivated woman with a hunger for new experience that a lifetime of bringing up a family had denied her. She also, as Leo found late one night when the local courier thankfully surrendered her problem client and retired to bed, had a startling courage.

‘Well, it’s a bit more than rheumatism,’ Mrs Silverstein admitted under the influence of honey cakes and mint tea. ‘And it’s going to get worse. I thought, I’ve got to do as much as I can while I can. So I’ll have some things to remember.’

Leo was impressed. She said so.

‘You see I always wanted to travel,’ Mrs Silverstein confided. ‘But Sidney was such a homebody. And then there were the children. When they all got married I thought now. But then Sidney got sick. And first Alice was divorced and then Richard and the grandchildren would come and stay…’ She sighed. ‘When Dr Burnham told me what was wrong I thought—it’s now or never, Pat.’

Leo could only admire her. So, instead of following Roy’s instructions, she did her best to make sure that Mrs Silverstein visited every single thing she wanted to see in Egypt, just taking a little extra care of her. It was not easy.

By the time Leo got her back to the hotel she was breathing hard and had turned an alarming colour. Leo took her up to her room and stayed while Mrs Silverstein lay on the well-sprung bed, fighting for breath. Leo called room service and ordered a refreshing drink while she applied cool damp towels to Mrs Silverstein’s pink forehead.