Monarch of the Sands (18 page)

‘What, now?’

‘Yes. Now.’

The journey to the airfield was spent with Frankie biting on her lip and trying desperately hard not to break down in front of him. But it wasn’t easy. It felt as if someone had punched a hole in her heart and left it aching and empty. When would this feeling go? she wondered distractedly. How long did it take for love to die?

Their limousine drew up onto the tarmac and she was wondering how they would endure the long flight ahead when, to her surprise and consternation, Zahid said goodbye.

‘Goodbye?’ Sheer panic made all the blood drain
from her face. ‘But I thought … I mean, aren’t you supposed to be flying to London with me?’

‘I was,’ he corrected and he looked deep into her eyes, feeling the painful twist of his heart as he registered the whiteness of her face. ‘But I’ve changed my mind. I don’t think we need endure any more of this painful charade.’

‘Zahid—’

‘No, Francesca. Maybe it’s best this way. Let’s just try and retain some of the good memories, shall we?’ he questioned bitterly—because much more of this and he would do something unforgivable. Like break down in front of her. And what good would that do? It wouldn’t actually
change
anything.

The aircraft steps were lowered and Frankie was suddenly stricken by an overwhelming sense of fear as she stared up into the harshness of his shadowed features. He was going! He was going and she might realistically never see him again. In all the years which lay ahead, this might be her last glance at his beloved face. Because she realised something else, too. That their friendship of so many years had been irreparably shattered by the end of their affair. And that hurt almost more than anything else.

She took a tentative step forward, not knowing what she was going to say but knowing that she needed to touch him one last time. Just to feel the warm brush of his skin …

‘Zahid?’

‘What?’ He could read the unbearable sadness in her eyes but he kept his distance, knowing that if they touched he would be lost. Instead, he shrugged. ‘What can I say, other than that I’m sorry?’

‘S-sorry?’ The lump in her throat was threatening to choke her. ‘You mean you regret what has happened?’

Zahid’s mouth hardened. Yes, of course he regretted it—because their affair had given him a taste of a paradise he sensed he would never know again. But the tentative buckling of her rose-pink lips made something inside him melt and revise his opinion. For how could he regret something which had given him so much joy, and fulfilment? He shook his head. ‘Of course I don’t regret it,’ he whispered. ‘I’m just sorry that I can’t offer you anything more.’

‘Zahid.’ Her eyes were now brimming with tears and she wanted to blurt out that she would be satisfied with whatever he
was
able to offer her. That she would be contented to be his London mistress if she could continue being his lover—no matter how short and how snatched his visits might be. But Frankie knew that was not the answer. Wouldn’t she become increasingly dissatisfied if her sheikh tossed out ever big2er scraps of his time, until there was no respect or love left between them? Far better to part now, while the memories were sweet—no matter how much it hurt to do so.

‘Zahid,’ she said again, knowing that there was something she needed to tell him—even if it meant that she made herself even more vulnerable in the process.

‘What?’ he questioned grimly.

Say it, she told herself fiercely. Say it so that he will never be in any doubt of the truth. ‘I just want you to know that I love you, my darling. I love you so much.’

Zahid flinched, for it was like having his heart pierced with the sharpest of all swords. ‘I know you do,’ he answered softly. ‘Just as I love you. Now go. Go before …’
She nodded as she heard the sudden break in his voice. ‘Goodbye, my love,’ she whispered.

‘Goodbye, Francesca.’ He turned on his heel and began to walk away from her, scarcely aware of the aide who appeared and informed him that a jet was being fuelled for his return journey to Khayarzah. All Zahid registered was the sight of Francesca’s plane as it took off into the star-filled Moroccan sky and he stood watching it until it had disappeared.

And only then did he board his own plane with a heavy heart—before going straight to the washroom and locking the door.

For there were very few places where a king could cry.

‘W
ILL
there be anything else, Your Royal Highness?’

Zahid stared at the aide who was standing in front of him with a questioning look on his face and realised that he had been lost in thought. That he had sat through an entire meeting to discuss the opening of the new horse-racing track and that most of it had gone right over his head. Again.

This could not go on.

Flexing and then unflexing his long fingers, he shook his head. ‘No, there will be nothing else.’

‘We still need to discuss the opening ceremony,’ reminded the aide delicately.

‘I said, not
now
,’ snapped Zahid and could not miss the unmistakable glance which shimmered between his two closest advisors. They were wondering what the hell was the matter with him lately. Why he seemed to have the attention span of a fly and why nothing seemed to bring him pleasure.

Hadn’t he been wondering the same thing himself?

Abruptly, he stood up—a movement which brought the assembled group leaping to their feet. And bitterly Zahid recognised that it was a sign of ignorance if you failed to acknowledge what, deep down, you knew to
be the truth. Because the reason for his discontentment and heavy heart was as clear as the bright Khayarzah morning.

He missed Francesca.

He missed her in a way that he imagined a man might miss his limb if it had been torn from his body, leaving him shocked and bleeding.

Hadn’t he thought that it would be easy? That by doing the right thing by his country, he would soon forget about the sapphire-eyed friend who had burrowed her way into his heart? Somehow, he had imagined that duty would bring some kind of consolation, in the form of some sort of peace of mind. But duty had so far failed to deliver.

Hadn’t he done everything he could to stop himself from thinking about her? Thrown himself into every task with a fervour which had astonished his palace staff—as if sheer hard work might provide him with some kind of sanctuary? And when that had failed, hadn’t he taken his horse and ridden him in the cool of the desert evening—ridden him harder than he could remember riding for years? But physical exhaustion, sweat and dust had done little to alleviate the terrible emptiness which filled him like a vacuum.

The other night, his brother Tariq had even called from London, on some flimsy pretext—but Zahid had known immediately that the subtext was to enquire how he was. Did that mean that word had got back to him that the ruling sheikh was out of sorts? And did such rumours not threaten to bring instability to Khayarzah? Maybe the ridiculous irony of the whole sorry mess was that the right thing might turn out to be the
wrong
thing?

His face darkened with rage, and the thought that he could be harming his beloved country was enough to spur him into immediate action. Gathering together his aides, he told them that he was making a short trip to England—and by the following day his Gulfstream jet was touching down outside London.

The black car he always used when visiting the country had been brought to the airfield and, after briefing his bodyguards, he set off on the familiar roads towards Francesca’s Surrey home, just as dusk was descending.

Fairy lights twinkled in garden bushes and blazed from the windows of the houses he passed—so that the usually subdued suburban roads seemed to resemble some sort of carnival. And then he remembered that it was December, and Christmas—when the whole of the western world seemed to come alight with colour and joy. He glanced down at his watch to read the date.

December twenty-fourth.

The night before Christmas.

Zahid narrowed his eyes. Wasn’t that a big deal? When stockings were hung at the ends of beds and carols sung in churches, and, for some European cultures, a feast of fish eaten at midnight? Wasn’t this the time when families came together to celebrate and to remember? Close units united against the outside world …

For a moment, a terrible wave of longing washed over him and he almost turned back—until he remembered that Francesca had no family with which to sit around a festive table. She was as alone as he was …

But as he turned into the familiar driveway and flashed at the following bodyguards to instruct them to lay in wait by the gates he almost collided with a saloon car which was roaring in the opposite direction.

And in the driving seat, his face tight with fury, was Simon Forrester.

Zahid had only met Francesca’s fiancé once—but once had been enough to remember the sullen curl of his mouth and the handsome, pampered face. He felt something like a dark rage twisting in his gut.

What the hell was he doing here?

Screeching to a halt in front of the house in a spray of gravel, Zahid leapt out of the car and strode up to the house—hammering on the door until it opened and a startled looking Francesca stood blinking up at him. He saw the colour drain from her face and the tip of her tongue dart out to moisten those petal lips. She looked as if she had just seen a ghost. Or was that guilt he read on her face? he thought grimly.

‘What the hell was that creep Forrester doing here?’ he demanded.

Frankie’s senses were in disarray, her heart beating so loudly that it threatened to deafen her as she stared at her Sheikh lover.
Ex
-lover, she reminded herself bitterly. And ex for a good reason. Because a man who wanted four wives and who would always be a desert sheikh in the most traditional sense of the word was not the right kind of man for her. She just had to keep convincing herself of that.

She swallowed. ‘You can’t just turn up out of the blue, sounding like some B-rated detective, Zahid!’ she protested. ‘Why … why are you here?’

‘Why do you think I’m here?’ His voice was unsteady as he stared at her and noticed the deep shadows beneath her cheekbones—and how loose the pale sweater and jeans looked on her narrow frame. ‘To talk to you.’

Frankie’s heart gave a flare of hope which she did
her best to ignore as she reminded herself of how many nights she had wept into her pillow over him. ‘You mean you want to interrogate me about who I’m seeing?’ she demanded.

‘So you
are
seeing him?’

‘Oh, for heaven’s
sake
!’ A ragged sigh of inevitability escaped from her lips. She knew that she was going to listen to what he had come to say—for how could she turn him away? But one thing was for sure. She was going to be strong. Very strong. The last time he had seen her she had been on the brink of tears and now she needed to show him that she could cope perfectly well without him. ‘You’d better come in.’

He noticed that she didn’t offer him tea and she didn’t take him to the kitchen with its warm range and faded comfort either. He followed her into the room where he’d carried her on the day she’d discovered her fiancé’s duplicity, and once there she looked at him with a proud expression on her face.

And Zahid felt the sudden unfamiliar shimmering of apprehension. Surely there could only be one reason why she could look so secure?

‘You are back with him?’ he questioned, unprepared for the savage lurch of his heart.

‘Of course I’m not
back
with him! Do you really think I am as shallow as that?’

‘Then why is he here?’

She could see the angry fire spitting from eyes which were narrowed into onyx chips. She thought that if Zahid were suddenly called upon to take a part in the pantomime which was playing to packed houses in the local theatre, he would have made a superb fire-breathing dragon.

‘Actually, he was here on a mission,’ she said. ‘He’d heard I was back from Khayarzah and he came asking for his engagement ring back.’

Zahid remembered the Englishman’s furious expression as their cars had passed at the end of the drive and, instinctively, he glanced at her bare hand. ‘Which you gave to him?’

‘Well, I would have done, if only I could find the damned thing.’ She read the question in his eyes and shrugged. ‘I seem to have mislaid it somewhere around the house. At any rate, it’s missing, and when I told Simon he demanded that I give him the twenty-five thousand pounds he’d paid for it.’

Zahid stilled. ‘But you didn’t, did you?’

‘Are you kidding?’ Frankie gave a short laugh. ‘Even if I
had
that kind of money—there’s no way I would have given it to him. I asked him to produce a receipt which he should have had for a sum that big but, of course, he couldn’t—because the ring’s a fake.’ She met his eyes with a challenging look. ‘Something which you knew all along, didn’t you, Zahid?’ she questioned quietly.

Unexpectedly, Zahid’s mouth quirked into a wry half-smile. How she surprised him. Time after time, Francesca O’Hara pulled something different out of the bag to remind him of how complex and remarkable she really was. ‘I didn’t
know
, not for sure—fakes are increasingly sophisticated these days, and only an expert can truly tell the difference. But looking at his behaviour towards you, he didn’t give the impression of someone who would spend thousands of pounds on a ring.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘What did he say?’

‘Oh, he blustered. Made threats—all of which
I ignored.’ And it had felt good to stand up to him, Frankie realised—something which she would never have done in the past. She stared at Zahid, realising how much she had grown, and how much she had learned by being his mistress. She’d discovered that once you’d had the courage to tell a powerful king a few home truths, then standing up to a blustering small-town estate agent had been simple. ‘I told him to go ahead and sue me!’

‘Bravo, Francesca,’ he said softly.

The gentling of his voice was her undoing. No longer able to seek refuge in the subject of a worthless ring, Frankie looked at him, some of her bravado leaving her. If he was here with some valiant attempt to show that they still could be friends, well, she didn’t want to hear it. She wasn’t ready to be friends with him again. Not yet. Maybe not ever … Swallowing down the ever-present hint of heartache, she looked at him. ‘So what really brings you here today, Zahid?’