The Desert Prince's Mistress Read online

  She supposed that depended on what your definition of love was. Maybe she should settle for having been blown away by the man—a feeling which had subsequently grown. Now she was back in England and he was over in Maraban she was missing him already.

  ‘That ain’t you, is it?’ asked the taxi driver, cocking his head at the poster and then turning slightly to snatch a glance at her.

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘Cor! Nice work if you can get it!’ he enthused, and he screwed his nose up. ‘Pay much, does it?’

  It paid well, though not half as well as most people imagined. But in the end she had been the one who paid, and she had paid with her heart.

  There was a light on in the apartment when she arrived home, and she didn’t even have the energy or the inclination to fish around in her bag for her keys, just jammed her thumb on the bell and kept it there.

  ‘What the bloody hell….?’ An irate Jake flung the door open, his face immediately dissolving into an expression of concern when he saw her. ‘Lara!’ 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 h
er 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. A sense of relief and delight washed over her as she realised that it was from him. Darian had e-mailed her!

  The message read:

  Khalim and I have just arrived back from several weeks in the Dahab desert.

  So that was why she hadn’t heard from him!

  Where he foisted upon me the most spirited Akhal-Teke you could imagine and told me to break her in! I did—after much bruising—and inevitably my new nickname as ‘Fallen Man’ has been confirmed. How’s life in London? Darian.

  She read it over. And over. And over again. Her heart was bubbling with a kind of happiness that she was sure was inappropriate. It was only an e-mail, after all. But deep down she knew it was more than that. He had reestablished contact. He was still in her life. She wasn’t sure in just what capacity, but at least he was there.

  Should she wait to reply?

  Hell, no! She had waited six weeks to hear from him—why punish herself by doing something just to appear ‘cool’ when she didn’t feel in the least bit like that? In fact, her cheeks were flushed with a crazy excitement.

  Her fingers were trembling. Keep it short, she told herself. And sweet.

  London seems crazy and crowded—

  And lonely of course…

  But maybe that’s because I’m comparing it with Maraban, which seems a very long way away.

  And then, because she couldn’t possibly write what she really wanted, which was When are you coming home?—he might have decided that Maraban was his home now—or, Darian, I love you and I really miss you—because that would be wholly inappropriate and he probably didn’t feel the same way, she signed it, simply. Lara.

  ‘What’s up?’ asked Jake, when she walked back into the sitting room.

  ‘He’s written! E-mailed me!’

  ‘Wild-Man, I take it?’ he questioned wryly.

  ‘Will you stop calling him that?’

  ‘That’s his name, isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, Jake,’ she sighed. ‘I didn’t know they had e-mail in Maraban.’

  ‘But they’ve got an army and a navy and an airforce,’ he answered seriously. ‘Why wouldn’t they? What did he say?’

  ‘Oh, just that he’s spent several weeks in the desert with Khalim, that’s all.’

  ‘As you do!’ joked Jake.

  But Lara felt happy for the first time since she’d arrived back, and she hummed a little tune underneath her breath as she began to prepare a stir-fry for herself and Jake.

  She developed a sudden and passionate interest in her e-mail inbox, forcing herself to only check it twice a day—once in the morning and once in the evening—though the temptation to sit there online all day, staring hopefully at the screen in case his name should float up, was almost overwhelming.

  She knew that people said an e-mail didn’t carry the same kind of clout as a letter. A letter you had to sit down and think about while an e-mail was fast and instant. Though this was not quite true in her case, because she would sit there dreamily gazing into space while thinking up replies, searching for just the right note to strike, reading and re-reading every one in case the wrong interpretation could be made of an innocent sentence.

  She kept it light, told him about her jobs and her life, and sent some amusing anecdotes about a bunch of female fans who had discovered where Jake lived and were laying seige to the house.

  A rather stern reply bounced back.

  Are they bothering you? Get the police to move them on if they show any sign of trouble.

  And on one rare and wonderful occasion they managed to be online at the same time and he told her that he had met Rose. She wrote:

  Was she angry that I’d been there without getting in touch?

  He replied:

  She seemed to understand, just as Khalim said she would. I like her very much. She says to send you her love.

  She typed, Send mine back, and waited, but that was it.

  E-mailing could be a frustrating form of communication, she was coming to realise. One of you had to break it off first, and she could have sat writing to him all day. It wasn’t as good as seeing him in the flesh, but it was a damned sight better than nothing.

  And, in a way, it was another way of getting to know him—by the written word. It was rewarding and it was sweet to discover that she could make him laugh with some of the things she wrote—as he did her.

  Christmas came and went and there was no present or card—but then they didn’t celebrate Christmas in Maraban, and she didn’t want a token anything from him. There was only one thing she really wanted, and that was the man himself.

  But he sent her a sweet e-mail on Christmas Eve, reminding her to leave a mince pie for Santa and a carrot for the reindeer, and Lara went off happily to her parents’ farmhouse, sighing as she hung up her stocking, knowing exactly what—or who—she would love to find inside on the following morning, pleased to lose herself in the messy, noisy chaos of a family Christmas.

  But as a frozen January slipped into an even icier February, the e-mails became less frequent and when they did come they usually began with an apology.

  Sorry I haven’t written for so long, but Khalim has been inducting me into the way of State Ceremonies.

  Lara strove to reassure him.

  It doesn’t matter. Honestly. It’s just lovely to hear when you do have time.

  And then, one evening, Jake took her to task.

  She had just trailed into the sitting room when he looked up from his film script and pulled a face.

  ‘War just started, has it?’ he questioned acidly. ‘No, let me guess—you haven’t heard from Lover-Boy!’

  ‘Leave it, Jake.’

  ‘No, Lara—I will not leave it. How long are you going to continue living in a half-world? Happy when he writes—which is hardly ever—and miserable as sin when he doesn’t?’

  ‘He’s been busy with Khalim,’ she said miserably.

  ‘Busy being an international playboy, probably,’ said Jake darkly. ‘It beats me why Khalim seems to have taken such a shine to him.’

  And she couldn’t tell him. She couldn’t. She shrugged instead. ‘I love him, Jake,’ she said simply.

  ‘Well, it doesn’t look like he loves you back,’ said Jake brutally. ‘Better get used to it.’

  Lara turned away, biting her lip and willing away the tears which were making her eyes swim. But deep down she knew he was right. She wasn’t living, not really, or if she was it was in a fantasy world, just waiting for him to e-mail or recalling things he had said, things he had done—reading far too much into a remembered gesture or word.

  Nothing had changed. He hadn’t promised her anything then and he still hadn’t, only now distance seemed to be asserting its natural power. The e-mails were fading away, and so, probably, were his memories of her.

  Better join the real world again, Lara, she told herself.

  That was what she did. She went to parties with Jake and fixed a bright smile of determined enjoyment on her face.

  ‘That’s my girl,’ he murmured fondly. ‘Pretend you’re happy and one of these days you’ll turn around and find that you actually are.’

  She had to trust him on that one.

  She needed a break, and a heavensent opportunity came in the shape of a weekend visit to her parents’ farmhouse. It was their wedding anniversary and they were having a family party to celebrate. Lara hadn’t been down since Christm
as, and she was looking forward to seeing all her nephews and nieces. At least they wouldn’t ask questions she would rather not answer about Darian—simply because she hadn’t told them anything about him.

  It was easier that way.

  It began to snow as she left London, and the weather deteriorated still further on the way down, with great flurries of white flakes falling down endlessly from a gunmetal-grey sky. By the time she arrived she was frozen.

  Her mother opened the door to her, looking anxious. ‘Thank heavens you’re here!’ she exclaimed as an icy wind blew swirling snowflakes all around the hall. ‘Come in and sit by the fire!’ Then she frowned. ‘And then, my girl, you are going to get some food inside you!’

  Why did people keep trying to feed her up? Didn’t they realise that food wouldn’t fill the aching emptiness inside? ‘Lovely,’ she said obediently.

  They had just finished a blow-out roast lunch and the noise levels had reached crescendo point. The table was a mass of crumpled napkins and half-eaten pudding, and one of her brothers-in-law was passing around some port which nobody really needed. Lara had her nephew sitting chubbily on her lap, attempting to build a little plastic aeroplane, when Lara’s father frowned at his wife.

  ‘Did you hear something outside?’

  She smiled, fingering the gold necklace he had bought her like a newlywed. ‘No, dear!’

  ‘Maybe it’s the lorry the necklace probably fell off the back of!’ hiccuped the brother-in-law who had drunk the most port.

  ‘Will you please shut-up, Jeremy?’ demanded his wife.

  The front doorbell chimed loudly and Lara’s father frowned again.

  ‘Not expecting anyone, are you, darling?’

  Lara’s mother shook her head. ‘Today? And in this weather? Of course not.’

  There was a pause, and Lara was filled with the strangest, giddiest sense of expectation.