yes, I hold my hands up to all the charges you’ve just levelled at me. Yes, I’ve been “possessive and demanding and insanely jealous”. I’m not proud of the way I behaved earlier and I’m sorry. It’s been bubbling away for a while now and tonight it just seemed to spill over. But I wonder if you’ve stopped for a minute to ask yourself why?’
‘Because you’re still living in the Dark Ages? A typical desert male who will never change?’
He shook his head. ‘Let me tell you something else, Sara—that I may have failed to live up to your ideal of the ideal lover tonight, but I’ve sure as hell tried in other ways.’
‘How?’ She felt stupid standing there in her golden dress with her bangles dangling from her limp wrist. Like a butterfly which had been speared by a pin. ‘How have you tried?’
‘How? For a start, I have relocated into your poky London apartment—’
‘It is not poky!’
‘Oh, believe me,’ he said grimly, ‘it is. I’ve been trying to run a global business from the second bedroom and all I get from you is complaints about the phone ringing at odd hours.’
‘Is that all you get from me, Suleiman?’
He heard the unconsciously sultry note which had entered her voice and wondered if their angry words had scared her. And turned her on. Because didn’t women like to push a man to the brink—even though sometimes they didn’t like what happened when they got there?
‘No,’ he said. ‘I get a lot of good stuff, too. The best stuff ever, if you must know—but what we have is not sustainable.’
‘Not sustainable?’
He hardened his heart against the sudden darkening of her eyes and, even though he wanted to cross the room and pull her into his arms, he stood his ground. ‘You think I’m content to continue to be treated as some kind of mild irrelevance, while your job dominates everything?’
‘I told you that I needed to work.’
‘And I accepted that. I just hadn’t realised that you would be living at the office, virtually 24/7—as if you had to prove yourself. I don’t know if it was to me, or to your boss—to reassure him that you weren’t going to take off again. Or to show me that you’re an independent woman in your own right. But whatever it is—you aren’t facing up to the truth behind your actions.’
‘And you are, right?’
‘Maybe I am. And I’ll tell you what you seem so determined to ignore, if that’s what you want, Sara. Or even if it’s not what you want. Because I think you need to hear it.’
‘Oh, do you?’ She walked over to one of the squashy pink velvet sofas and sat down on it, leaning back with her arms crossed over her chest and a defiant expression on her face. ‘Go on, then. I can hardly wait.’
His eyes narrowed, because he could hear the vulnerability she was trying so hard to hide. But he needed to say this. No matter what the consequences. ‘I get it that you grew up in an unhappy home and that your mother felt trapped. But you are not your mother. Your circumstances are completely different.’
‘Not that different,’ she whispered. ‘Not when you treated me like that tonight. Like your possession.’
‘I’ve held up my hands for that. I’ve said sorry. I would tell you truthfully that I would never behave in that way again, but it’s too late.’
Her arms fell to her side. ‘What do you mean, too late?’
‘For us. I’ve tried to change and to adapt to being with you. I may not have instantly succeeded, but at least I gave it a go. But not you. You’ve stayed locked inside your own fear. You’re scared, Sara. You’re scared of who you really are. That’s what made you run away from Dhi’ban. That’s why you let your job consume you.’
‘My father gave me permission to go away to boarding school—I didn’t run away.’
‘But you never go back, do you?’
‘Because my life is here.’
‘I know it is. But you have family. Your only family, in fact. When did you last see your brother? I heard that you were at his wedding celebrations for less than twenty-four hours.’
Briefly she wondered how he knew something like that. Had he been spying on her? ‘I couldn’t stay for long...I was in the middle of an important job.’
‘Sure you were. Just like you always are. But you have vacations like other people, don’t you, Sara? Couldn’t you have gone over to see him from time to time? Didn’t you ever think that being a king can be a lonely job? Hasn’t his wife had a baby? Have you even seen your niece?’
‘I sent them a gift when she was born,’ she said defensively, and saw his mouth harden with an expression which suddenly made her feel very uncomfortable.
‘You might want to reject your past,’ he grated. ‘But you can’t deny the effect it’s had on you. You may hate some things about desert life—but half of you is of the desert. Hide from that and you’re hiding from yourself—and that’s a scary place to be. I know that. You were one of the reasons I knew I could no longer work for Murat, but what happened between us that night made me re-examine my life. I realised that I couldn’t continue playing a subordinate role out of some lingering sense of gratitude to a man who had plucked me from poverty.’ He looked at her. ‘But that’s all irrelevant now. I need to pack.’
Her head jerked up as if she were a puppet and somebody had just given the string a particularly violent tug. ‘Pack? What for?’ She could hear the rising note of panic in her voice. ‘What are you packing for?’
‘I’m going.’ His voice was almost gentle. ‘It’s over, Sara. We’ve had good times and bad times, but it’s over. I recognise that and sooner or later you will, too. And I don’t want to destroy all the good memories by continuing to slug it out, so I’m leaving now.’
She was swallowing convulsively. ‘But it’s late.’
‘I know it is.’
‘You could... Couldn’t you stay tonight and go in the morning?’
‘I can’t do that, Sara.’
‘No.’ She shrugged as if it didn’t matter. As if she didn’t care. ‘No, I guess you can’t.’
Her lips were trembling as she watched him turn round and walk from the sitting room. She could hear the sounds he made as he clattered around in the bathroom, presumably clearing away that lethal-looking razor he always used. A terrible sense of sadness—and an even greater sense of failure—washed over her as he appeared in the doorway, carrying his leather overnight bag.
‘I’ll collect the rest of my stuff tomorrow, while you’re at work.’
She stood up. Her legs were unsteady. She wanted to run over to him and tell him to stop. That it had all been a horrible mistake. Like a bad dream which you woke from and discovered that none of it had been real. But this was real. Real and very painful.
She
