IN A daze, Rose left the Granchester and found herself a taxi, but afterwards she couldn’t recollect a single moment of the journey. Not until the cab drew up outside the flat she shared in Notting Hill did reality begin to seep back into her consciousness as she tried to rid herself of the memory of the dark prince, with his proud, sensual face.
She let herself in through the front door and put her handbag on the hall table, relieved to be home. And safe.
She loved her flat—it was her very first property and occupied the first floor of a grand old high-ceilinged house. But it was an ambitious project for a first-time buyer and the repayments on her loan were high, which was why she had taken on a flatmate—Lara.
Lara was a struggling actress who described herself as Rose’s lodger, but Rose never did. Equality was something she strove for in every area of her life. ‘No, we’re flatmates,’ she always insisted.
It was a typical bachelor girls’ home—full of colour in the shared areas and rather a lot of chaos in Lara’s bedroom—because, much as she nagged, there didn’t seem to be anything Rose could do to change Lara’s chronic untidiness. So now she had given up trying.
There were brightly coloured scarves floating from a coat-stand in the hall, and vases of cheap flowers from the market dotted around the sitting room. And the bathroom was so well stocked with various lotions and potions that it resembled the cosmetics counter of a large department store!
‘Anyone at home?’ she called.
‘I’m in the kitchen!’ came the muffled reply, and Rose walked into the kitchen to find Lara busy crunching a chocolate biscuit and pouring coffee into a mug. Her staple diet and my coffee, thought Rose ruefully as Lara looked up with a smile and held a second mug up. ‘Coffee?’
Rose shook her head. ‘No, thanks. I think I need a drink.’
Lara raised her eyebrows in surprise. ‘But you’ve just been to a wedding!’
‘And I barely touched a drop all day,’ said Rose grimly. She had deliberately avoided liquor so that she would have all her wits about her, and then just look at the way she had behaved on the dance-floor! She sighed as she poured herself a glass of wine from the cask in the fridge.
‘Are you okay?’ asked Lara curiously.
‘Why shouldn’t I be?’
‘You just seem a little…I don’t know…tense.’
Tense? Rose sipped at her wine without enjoyment. She could see her reflection in the pig-shaped mirror which hung on the kitchen wall. Her face was unbelievably pale. She looked as if she’d seen a ghost. Or a vision maybe…‘I guess I am,’ she said slowly.
‘So why? What was the wedding like? Awful?’
‘No, beautiful,’ said Rose reflectively. ‘The most beautiful wedding I’ve ever been to.’
‘Then why the long face?’
Rose sat down at the kitchen table and put her wineglass down heavily. ‘It’s stupid, really—’ She looked up into Lara’s frankly interested brown eyes. ‘Did I ever tell you that Sabrina’s new husband is best friends with a prince?’
Lara’s eyes grew larger. ‘You’re winding me up, right?’
Rose shook her head and bit back a half-smile. It did sound a bit far-fetched. ‘No, I’m not. It’s the truth. He’s prince of a country—more a principality, really—called Maraban—it’s in the Middle East.’
‘And next, I suppose you’ll be telling me that he’s outrageously good-looking and rich, to boot!’
Rose sighed. ‘Yes! He’s exactly that. Just about the most perfect man you’ve ever seen. Tall, and dark and handsome—’
‘Oh, ha, ha, ha!’
‘No, he is! Honestly. He’s divine. I danced with him…’ Her voice tailed off as she remembered how it felt to have his body so tantalisingly close to hers. ‘Danced with him, and—’
‘And what?’
‘And—’ No need to point out that she had got a little carried away on the dance-floor. She squirmed with remembered pleasure and glanced up to see Lara’s open-mouthed expression.
‘Oh, Rose, you didn’t?’
Rose blinked as the implication behind Lara’s question squeaked its way home. ‘No, of course I didn’t! You surely don’t imagine that I’d meet a man at a wedding and hours later leap into bed with him, do you?’ she questioned indignantly.
But you did it in thought if not in deed, didn’t you? mocked the guilty voice of her conscience.
Lara was looking at her patiently. ‘So what happened?’
‘He, well, he asked me to go for a drink with him once the bride and groom had left,’ explained Rose.
‘What’s the problem with that? You said yes, of course?’
‘Actually,’ said Rose, in a high, forced voice, not quite believing that she had had the strength of will to go through with it, ‘I said no.’
Lara was blinking at her in bemusement. ‘You’ve lost me! He’s gorgeous, he’s royal and you turned him down! Why, for heaven’s sake?’
‘I don’t know.’ Rose sighed again. ‘Well, maybe that’s not true, I suppose I do, really. He’s so utterly irresistible—’
‘That’s usually considered a plus where men are concerned, isn’t it?’
‘But he would never commit, I know he wouldn’t—it’s written all over his face!’
Lara stared at her incredulously. ‘Never commit?’ she echoed. ‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this! Rose, you’ve danced with the guy once and already you’re talking commitment? And this from the woman who has always vowed never to get married—’
‘Until I’m at least thirty-five,’ said Rose with a look of fierce determination. ‘I’ll have achieved something by then, so I’ll be ready! And people live longer these days—it makes sense to put off getting married for as long as possible.’
‘Very romantic,’ said Lara.
‘Very realistic,’ commented Rose drily.
‘So why the talk of commitment—or, rather, the lack of it?’
Rose took a thoughtful sip of wine. She wasn’t really sure herself. Maybe because she didn’t want to be just another woman in a long line of discarded women.
But wouldn’t it just sound fanciful if she told Lara that Khalim had a dangerous power about him which both attracted and yet repelled her? And wouldn’t it sound weak if she expressed the very real fear that he could break her heart into smithereens? Lara would quite rightly say that she didn’t know him—but Rose was intuitive, more so than usual where Khalim was concerned. She knew that with a bone-deep certainty—she just didn’t know why.
She had been ‘in love’ just twice in her life. A university affair which had occupied her middle year there and then, in her early days in advertising recruitment—she’d dated an account executive for nine fairly blissful months. Until she had discovered one evening that he wasn’t really into monogamy.
She wasn’t sure whether it was her pride which had been hurt more than anything else, but from that day on she had been sensible and circumspect where men were concerned. She could take them or leave them. And mostly she could leave them…
‘Do you fancy going to see a film?’ asked Lara, with a glance at the kitchen clock. ‘There’s still time.’
Rose shook her head. What would be the point of going to a film if you knew for a fact that you wouldn’t be able to concentrate on anything other than the most enigmatic face you had ever set eyes on? ‘No, thanks. I think I’ll take a shower,’ she said with a yawn.
Aware that he was being closely watched by his emissary, Khalim paced up and down the penthouse suite with all the stealth and power of a sleek jungle cat. Outside the lights of the city glittered like some fabulous galaxy, but Khalim was impervious to its beauty.
Whenever he was in London on business, which he usually arranged to coincide with Maraban’s most inhospitable weather—Khalim always stayed at the Granchester Hotel. He kept the luxurious rooms permanently booked in his name, though for much of the year they lay empty. They had been decorated according to his taste in a way which was as unlike his home in Maraban as it was possible to imagine. Lots of pale, wooden furniture and abstract modern paintings. But that was how he liked to live his life—the contrast between the East and the West each feeding two very different sides of his nature.
Once again, black eyes stared unseeingly out at the blaze of lights which pierced the night sky of London.
Eventually, he turned to Philip Caprice and held the palms of his hands out in a gesture which was a mixture of frustration and disbelief. He’d been bewitched by a pair of dazzling eyes so blue and hair so pale and blonde that he couldn’t shake her image from his mind. He had wanted her here with him tonight—on his bed and beneath his body. And he would fill her. Fill her and fill her and…he gave a groan and Philip Caprice looked at him in concern.
‘Sir?’ he murmured. ‘Is something the matter?’
‘I cannot believe it!’ Khalim stated bluntly and gave a low laugh. ‘I must be losing my touch!’
Philip smiled, but said nothing. It was not his place to offer an opinion. His role was to act as a sounding-board for the prince—unless specifically invited to do otherwise.
Khalim turned hectic black eyes towards his emissary, trying to forget her pale enchantment. He could feel the fever of desire heating his blood, making it sing like a siren as it coursed its way around his veins. ‘You are not saying anything, Philip!’
‘You wish me to?’
Khalim drew a deep breath, swamping down the unfamiliar feeling of having been thwarted. ‘Of course,’ he said coolly, and then saw Philip’s look of indecision. ‘By the mane of Akhal-Teke, Philip!’ he swore softly. ‘Do you think my arrogance so great, my ego so mighty, that I cannot bear to hear the truth from you?’
Philip raised his dark eyebrows. ‘Or my interpretation of the truth, sir? Every man’s truth is different.’
Khalim smiled. ‘Indeed it is. You sound like a true Marabanesh, when you speak like that! Give me your interpretation, Philip. Why have I failed with this woman, where never I have failed before?’
Philip intertwined his long fingers and spoke thoughtfully. ‘All your life you have had your every wish pandered to, sir.’
‘Not all.’ Khalim’s eyes narrowed dangerously as he mouthed the soft denial. ‘I learnt the rigours of life through an English boarding-school!’
‘Yes,’ said Philip patiently. ‘But ever since you reached manhood, little has been denied to you, sir, you know that very well.’ He paused. ‘Particularly where women are concerned.’
Khalim expelled a long, slow breath. Was he simply tantalised because for once something had eluded him? Why, some of the most beautiful women in the world had offered themselves to him, but his appetite had always been jaded by what came too easily. ‘Only one other woman has ever turned me down before,’ he mused.
‘Sabrina?’ said Philip softly.
Khalim nodded, remembering his easy acceptance of that. He tried to work out what was different this time. ‘But that was understandable—because she was in love with Guy, and Guy is my friend whom I respect. But this woman…this woman…’
And the attraction had been mutual. She had been fighting her own needs and her own desires, he knew that without a doubt. When he’d taken her in his arms, she’d wanted him with a fire which had matched his own. He’d been certain that he would make love to her tonight, and the unfamiliar taste of disappointment made his mouth taste bitter.
‘What is her name?’ asked Philip.
‘Rose.’ The word came out as if it were an integral line of the poetry he had learnt as a child. It sounded as scented-sweet and as petal-soft as the flower itself. But the rose also had a thorn which could draw blood, Khalim reminded himself on a shudder.
‘Maybe she’s in love with someone else?’ suggested Philip.
‘No.’ Khalim shook his head. ‘There is no man in her life.’
‘She told you that?’
Khalim nodded.
‘Maybe she just didn’t…’ Philip hesitated before saying ‘…find you attractive?’
Khalim gave an arrogant smile. ‘Oh, she did.’ He placed his hand over his fast-beating heart. ‘She most certainly did,’ he murmured, remembering the way she had melted so responsively against his body. And her reaction had not just been about chemistry—undeniable though that had been. No, hers had been a hunger sharpened and defined by the exquisite torture of abstinence.
As his had been. How long since a woman had excited him in this way? Since his father’s illness when much of the burden of responsibility for running the country had fallen onto his shoulders, there had been little time to pursue pleasure. And no woman, he realised, had ever excited him in quite this way.
Khalim swallowed. Her scent was still clinging to the silk of his robes. Unendurable.
‘I must take a bath,’ he ground out.
He had a servant draw him up a bath scented with oil of bergamot, and, once alone, he slipped off the silken robes, totally at ease in his nakedness. His body was the colour of deeply polished wood—the muscles honed so that they rippled with true power and strength.
It was a taut and lean body, though he had never stepped inside a gym in his life—that would have been far too narcissistic an occupation for a man like Khalim. But the long, muscular shaft of his thighs bore testimony to hard physical exercise.
Horse-riding was his particular passion, and one of his greatest sources of relaxation. He felt at his most free when riding his beloved Akhal-Teke horse across the salt flats of Maraban with the warm air rushing through his dark hair and the powerful haunches of the stallion clasped tightly between his thighs.
He lay back among the bubbles and let some of the tension soak from his skin, but not all—not by a long way. Rose Thomas and her pale blonde beauty were uppermost in his mind, and thoughts of her brought their own, different kind of tension. He felt the hardening of his body in response to his thoughts, and only through sheer determination of will did he suppress his carnal longing. But then, he had never once lost control over his body…
Should he woo her? he thought carelessly. Besiege her with flowers? Or with jewels perhaps? He rubbed thoughtfully at the darkened shadow of his chin. There wasn’t a woman alive who could resist the glittering lure of gems.
He smiled as he stepped from the circular bath and tiny droplets of water gleamed like diamonds on the burnished perfection of his skin.
He had no appetite. Tonight he would work on some of the outstanding government papers he had brought back with him from Maraban.
He slipped on a silken robe in deepest, richest claret and walked barefoot back through the vast sitting room and into the adjoining study, where Philip was busy tapping away at the word processor.
He looked up as Khalim came in.
‘Sir?’
‘Leave that, now,’ ordered Khalim pleasantly. ‘I have something else for you.’
‘Sir?’
‘Find out where Rose Thomas lives. And where she works.’