was hot, hotter than she’d expected, and she couldn’t help but notice as her gaze slid inadvertently, instinctively, to Khaled that he didn’t look bothered by the heat at all.
But then he wouldn’t, would he? He was from here, had grown up on this island. He was its prince. None of these facts had ever really registered with Lucy. She’d only known him as the charming rugby star, Eton educated, sounding as if he’d spent his summers in Surrey or Kent.
She’d never associated him with anything else, not until he’d gone halfway around the world, and when she’d needed to find him he’d been impossible to reach.
Even a dozen feet away, she reflected with a pang of sorrow, he still was.
Everyone was boarding the bus, and Lucy watched as Khaled turned to his own private sedan, its windows darkly tinted, luxurious and discreet. He didn’t look back, and she felt someone at her elbow.
‘Lucy? It’s time to go.’
Lucy turned to see Dan Winters, the team’s physician, and essentially her boss. She nodded and from somewhere found a smile.
‘Yes. Right.’
Lucy boarded the bus, moving to the back and an empty seat. She glanced out the window and saw the sedan pulling sleekly away, kicking up a cloud of dust as it headed down the lone road through the brush, towards the barren mountains.
Lucy leaned her head back against the seat and closed her eyes. Why had she bothered to track Khaled’s car? Why did she care?
When she’d decided to come to Biryal for the friendly match, a warm-up to the Six Nations tournament, she’d told herself she wouldn’t let Khaled affect her.
No, Lucy realised, she’d convinced herself that he didn’t affect her.
And he wouldn’t. She pressed her lips together in a firm, stubborn line as resolve hardened into grim determination within her. The first time she saw him was bound to be surprising, unnerving. That didn’t mean the rest of her time in Biryal would be.
She let out a slow breath, felt her composure trickle slowly back and smiled.
The bus wound its way along the road that was little more than a gravel-pitted track, towards Biryal’s capital city, Lahji. Lucy leaned across the seat to address Aimee, the team’s nutritionist.
‘Do you know where we’re staying?’
Aimee grinned, excitement sparking in her eyes. ‘Didn’t you hear? We’re to stay in the palace, as special guests of the prince.’
‘What?’ Lucy blinked, the words registering slowly, and then with increasing dismay. ‘You mean Prince Khaled?’
Aimee’s grin widened, and Lucy resisted the urge to say something to wipe it off. ‘Yes, wasn’t he gorgeous? I didn’t think I’d ever go for a sheikh, for heaven’s sake, but—’
‘I see.’ Lucy cut her off, her voice crisp. She leaned back in the seat and looked out of the window, her mind spinning. The scrub and brush had been replaced by low buildings, little more than mud huts with straw roofs. Lucy watched as a few skinny goats tethered to a rusty metal picket fence bleated mournfully before they were obscured in the cloud of sandy dust the bus kicked up.
They were staying at the palace. With Khaled. Lucy hadn’t imagined this, hadn’t prepared for it. When she’d envisioned her conversation with Khaled—the one she knew they’d had to have—she’d pictured it happening in a neutral place, the stadium perhaps, or a hotel lounge. She’d imagined something brief, impersonal, safe. And then they’d both move on.
They could still have that conversation, she consoled herself. Staying at the palace didn’t have to change anything. It wouldn’t.
She gazed out of the window again and saw they were entering Lahji. She didn’t know that much about Biryal—she hadn’t wanted to learn—but she did know its one major city was small and well-preserved. Now she saw that was the case, for the squat buildings of red clay looked like they’d stood, slowly crumbling, for thousands of years.
In the distance she glimpsed a tiny town, no more than a handful of buildings, a brief winking of glass and chrome, before the bus rumbled on. And then they were out of the city and back into the endless scrub, the sea no more than a dark smudge on the horizon.
The mountains loomed closer, dark, craggy and ominous. They weren’t pretty mountains with meadows and evergreens, capped with snow, Lucy reflected. They were bare and black, sharp and cruel-looking.
‘There’s the palace!’ Aimee said with a breathless little laugh, and, leaning forward, Lucy saw that the palace—Khaled’s home—was built into one of those terrible peaks like a hawk’s nest.
The bus wound its way slowly up the mountain on a perilous, narrow road, one side sheer rock, the other dropping sharply off. Lucy leaned her head back against the seat and suppressed a shudder as the bus climbed slowly, impossibly higher.
‘Wow,’ Aimee breathed, after a few endless minutes where the only noise was the bus’s painful juddering, and Lucy opened her eyes.
The palace’s gates were carved from the same black stone of the mountains, three Moorish arches with raised iron-portcullises. Lucy felt as if she were entering a medieval jail.
The feeling intensified as the portcullises lowered behind them, clanging shut with an ominous echo that reverberated through the mountainside.
The bus came to a halt in a courtyard that felt as if it been hewn directly from the rock, and slowly the bus emptied, everyone seeming suitably impressed.
Lucy stood in the courtyard, rubbing her arms and looking around with wary wonder. Despite the dazzling blue sky and brilliant sun, the courtyard felt cold, the high walls and the looming presence of the mountain seeming to cast it into eternal shade.
Ahead of them was the entrance to the palace proper, made of the same dark stone, its chambers and towers looking like they had sprung fully formed from the rock on which they perched.
‘Creepy, huh?’ Eric murmured, coming to stand next to her. ‘Apparently this palace is considered to be one of the wonders of the Eastern world, but I don’t fancy it.’
Lucy smiled faintly and shrugged, determined to be neither awed nor afraid. ‘It makes a statement.’
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Khaled greeting some of the team, saw him smile and clap someone on the shoulder, and she turned away to busy herself with the bags. She’d barely moved before a servant, dressed in a long, cotton thobe, shook his head and with a kindly, toothless smile gestured to himself.
Lucy nodded and stepped back, and the man hoisted what looked like half a dozen bags onto his back.
‘My staff will show you to your rooms.’
Her mind and heart both froze at the sound of that voice, so clear, cutting and impersonal. Khaled. She’d never heard him sound like that. Like a stranger.
She turned slowly, conscious of Eric stiffening by her side.
‘Hello, Khaled,’ he said before Lucy could form even a word, and Khaled
