stared out at the clear night sky of Jazratan. With no light pollution, the stars were impossibly bright and they shone down over the desert plains like blazing beacons. He had left the bedroom windows open and the scent of the exotic blooms in the palace gardens drifted in to mingle with the heavy fragrance of the roses which perfumed the room. It was over two hours since she’d kicked him out of her suite and yet still he couldn’t sleep.
In the old days he might have seen off a shot or three of vodka to chase away the uncomfortable feelings which now gnawed away at the pit of his stomach. If he’d been in a city, he might have ordered a car to drive him to a casino, where he would play cards until daybreak. But it was nearly seven years since he’d drunk vodka or gambled away his money, and so far he hadn’t missed either.
Until tonight.
Tonight he would have welcomed the oblivion of something—anything—to blot out these dark thoughts. What he wouldn’t give to forget the accusations she’d flung at him, or to work out why they had cut so deep.
Because they were true?
He stared into the sky as a shooting star shot through the inky stratosphere, leaving behind a blurred and silvery trail. Had he treated her like a commodity by kicking her out of his apartment the morning after he’d bedded her—or had he simply been protecting her from the kind of man he really was? He hadn’t wanted to drag someone like Erin into the seedy world he’d inhabited at the time. He had looked into her shining eyes and known that he couldn’t take away any more of her innocence. She deserved better than him.
He’d convinced himself that he was doing her a favour by making it clear that if she wanted to hold on to her job, they must resume their roles of boss and employee. That was why he’d left the country—to give her time to get used to the fact that the sex wasn’t going to happen again. And when he’d returned she had come round to his apartment with that strange expression on her face and had found him in flagrante with some blonde. He’d thought sexual jealousy had been the motivation behind her decision to resign—and in many ways it had been simpler to let her go. He hadn’t wanted to be reminded of the night they’d shared. He hadn’t wanted to have to fight off any inconvenient feelings of still wanting her...
But the truth was that he’d missed her. No secretary he’d employed before or since had been able to equal her. They’d always worked well together—even if sometimes she used to regard him sternly with those catlike eyes of hers. He had allowed Erin Turner a cautious proximity which nobody other than his most favoured bodyguard had been granted. And the irony of it was that he’d never even thought about her in a sexual way before that night. To him she’d just been part of the background—as reliable as the cup of strong coffee she placed on his desk each morning. Sometimes they used to discuss the morning’s headlines. Sometimes he used to ask her opinion and, occasionally, act on it. Was it a crazy admission to make that he’d almost forgotten she was a woman, until the night when his spirit had been dark and desperate and she had been standing in his doorway in her sensible navy work suit. He had looked at her and suddenly she had been all woman.
He thought about her sleeping in the adjoining suite as dawn broke over the Jazratan desert in an explosion of colour—turning the sky an intense shade of rose pink before giving way to gold, then amber. But suddenly his thoughts were far away from the luxurious palace. He thought about the laughing little boy he’d seen running along the London street and his heart clenched with an emotion he didn’t recognise.
He showered and shaved, but Erin still hadn’t risen when a servant rapped at the door and presented him with a folded pile of riding clothes. Minutes later, he emerged from his dressing room to see that she must have let herself into his suite while he’d been changing. She was staring out at the gardens and she was washed gold with morning sunlight, wearing another of those all-concealing outfits—the ones deemed suitable not to offend the country’s notoriously strict dress codes, but which somehow managed to draw attention to the slender curves of her body. She turned round when she heard him enter and, although her face looked bloodless and pale, he couldn’t miss the way her eyes darkened when she saw him.
Infuriatingly, he felt his body’s own powerful response to her presence but, ruthlessly, he clamped it down. Because it was better this way. In the cold, clear light of morning it was easier to compartmentalise the lust he’d felt for her last night and to squash it. Far better they kept things businesslike and impersonal.
‘Ah, awake at last,’ he remarked non-committally. ‘I trust you slept well?’
Erin met his cool gaze with a feeling of confusion. She had anticipated that this morning’s conversation was going to be difficult in view of what had nearly happened last night, and would need careful handling. She had planned to stick to neutrals—to concentrate on the banal and not give in to all the dark thoughts which were jostling for space inside her head. She had intended to forget last night’s kiss and all the hungry feelings it had provoked, but the look on Dimitri’s face told her she needn’t have worried. It seemed that her concerns about having to resist him again were completely unfounded—because he was looking at her as dispassionately as he might look at a speck of dust on his shirt.
Yet the sight of him striding into the room wearing riding gear was doing dangerous things to her heart rate. Why was he dressed in a way which was so unbelievably provocative? The jodhpurs did things to his body which were only just this side of decent, clinging to every sinew of his muscular thighs and hugging his hips like a second skin. A billowing white silk shirt was tucked into the waistband and hinted at the hard torso which lay beneath. Dark leather knee-length boots completed the outfit and Erin could feel her mouth growing dry because suddenly he looked like every woman’s fantasy. And she had turned him down...
Was she insane?
She cleared her throat. ‘What...what are you doing?’
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ he said, with a touch of impatience in his voice. ‘I’m getting ready to go riding with the Sheikh.’
‘You didn’t mention that last night.’
‘Why? Should I have run it past you first?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said, unable to quell her natural concerns for him, even though he was stonewalling every remark she made. ‘When was the last time you rode?’
‘Why?’
She shrugged, but she could feel the familiar flare of fear leaping up inside her.
He seemed so different these days. So cool and in control. A long way from the man who’d never slept—who’d existed on vodka and danger. And now he was putting himself in danger again. He was acting like arrogant, invulnerable Dimitri once more. The man who thought he was charmed—but how long before his charmed life ran out?
She glared at him, resenting the way he was making her feel. She didn’t want to worry about him any more, or fret about him. Those days were over and what he did was none of her business. But something made her say it anyway. Was it the thought of Leo and something happening to the daddy he would only just be getting to know? Or was the shameful truth that she was getting in much deeper than she’d imagined and the thought of something happening to him more than she could bear?
‘It’s dangerous.’
‘Only if you don’t know what you’re doing—and I do. I learned to ride in the Russian army on the famous Don horse—the favoured mount of the Cossacks. Remember?’ His eyes glinted out a challenge. ‘I’ve been well taught, Erin—you know that—and I respect the might and the power of the horse, ever to be flippant about
