The Sheikh's Baby Omnibus (21 page)

‘I wanted to talk with you about this claim made by your
colleague that you are questioning the authenticity of Dhurahn’s borders,’ Vere
announced coldly, without preamble.

His heart was thudding like blows on an anvil delivered with a
heavy hand. It was anger that was responsible for the way he was feeling.
Nothing else. There could not be any other reason. Gifted as he was with the
keen eyesight that belonged to men of the desert, from where he had been
standing he had seen her booking a flight to Khulua, thus confirming everything
he had suspected.

Sam, though, was oblivious to what was going through Vere’s
mind. All she could focus on was her own misery and the situation she was in.
She had feared, of course, that as Dhurahn’s Ruler he
would
challenge her about James’s comment, but she had assumed that
it would be in a more formal setting. She had thought that he would send for
her, perhaps, and demand that she explain herself—rather than seek her out on
his own, and in the privacy of her own quarters, where she was far too aware of
him as a man to be able to concentrate on his status.

He was wearing that same fresh cologne he had been wearing
before and it was distracting her, painting images into her thoughts that had no
right to be there, and which were certainly not appropriate for their current
meeting. She struggled to dismiss them and failed. She knew that if she let her
concentration slip even for a second she would be remembering how it felt to be
in his arms. And longing to be there again, despite what she knew? No, she
denied immediately. But she knew she was lying to herself.

‘I have never questioned Dhurahn’s borders,’ she told him
truthfully.

‘No? That was not the opinion of your colleague.’

She could see a glint of angry contempt in the gaze he was
fixing on her. It drove her to defend herself.

‘I have never questioned Dhurahn’s borders, either publicly or
privately.’ she repeated, determinedly and fiercely.

His anger wasn’t abating, and to her chagrin she heard herself
continuing so weakly that she might just as well have been pleading with him for
understanding.

‘I don’t think James realised how serious... That is to say, I
think he was just making conversation...There is no valid reason why he should
have said what he did.’

That wasn’t the truth, was it? she challenged herself
inwardly—and guiltily. Although it upset her to think it, she suspected that
James had wanted to get her into trouble, and had said what he had deliberately,
because of his own personal and unadmitted agenda.

She could see, though, that this man would never believe she
was merely an innocent victim, and that he wasn’t prepared to give her the
benefit of the doubt. Not when she was pretty sure that he was already blaming
her for another incident.

And did
she
think she was blameless
there as well? Had she done everything she possibly could to avoid the intimacy
they had shared? Had it all been down to him and him alone? Sam could feel her
conscience prodding her. No, she didn’t think that. Not after the way she had
felt and behaved. But equally, if she wasn’t blameless, then neither was all the
blame hers either, was it? No matter how Prince Vereham al a’ Karim bin Hakar
was choosing to act now.

‘James misunderstood what I was trying to say,’ she added, for
further emphasis of her point—even though she already knew that he wasn’t really
interested in giving her the opportunity to defend herself.

She could see that he was looking past her towards her
computer, his frown deepening. For a moment, to her horror, she thought she
might inadvertently have brought up one of the searches she had been doing on
him, but when she glanced at the screen she was relieved to see that all it
contained was her map of the source of the river.

He strode past her to focus on the screen.

‘This is the source of the Dhurahni river.’

It was a statement more than a question.

‘Yes,’ Sam agreed.

‘Why are you studying it? It flows quite plainly through
Dhurahn, and only Dhurahn, and is therefore outside your remit for exploration
and examination.’ His voice was clipped, his manner hostile.

‘Yes, I know,’ Sam was forced to admit.

‘So explain to me what this is all about.’

He wasn’t just hostile, he was furious as well, Sam recognised
miserably. But her tormentor hadn’t finished.

‘Why exactly do you feel it necessary to question the Dhurahni
River’s source?’ he continued angrily. ‘What are you hoping to prove, or gain.
And why? What is the agenda behind this underhanded delving into something which
has nothing whatsoever to do with you?’

Sam stared at him in horrified dismay.

‘No—please, you don’t understand,’ she protested ‘It isn’t like
that. It was just that...that I couldn’t resist...’ She could feel her face
starting to burn as she realised the danger she was getting herself into.
‘There’s something about underground rivers that is so fascinating—especially
those that travel so far—and I...’

Vere looked at her.

‘It seems to me that you have a penchant for not resisting your
own desires, Ms McLellan. Regardless of whether or not in doing so you are
transgressing set boundaries.’

His words weren’t just meant to refer to the river, Sam knew,
and her face burned even more uncomfortably.

‘There’s no law that says that a person can’t take an interest
in natural phenomena,’ she told him, somehow managing to find the gritty courage
to reply in his own subtle double-speak. There—let him make what he wanted of
that! ‘Especially when I’m only doing it in my own time.’

Vere’s mouth hardened, but he didn’t say anything. It had been
a mistake to let his emotions get the better of him. He had put her on her guard
now, and it was unlikely that he was going to get her to admit that she was
being paid to cause trouble for Dhurahn.

‘I don’t see why I shouldn’t be interested in the river,’ Sam
continued determinedly. ‘It’s a vitally important resource for the area, after
all, and I admit that I am curious about the fact that at some stage the course
of the river appears to have been changed.’

‘As you’ve just acknowledged, you are perfectly well aware that
the river, and whatever may have happened to it, lies within Dhurahn’s borders,
and is therefore outside your mapping remit,’ Vere told her coldly.

‘Yes...’ Sam was forced to admit.

‘You are a professional cartographer. Don’t think I would be
the only person to question this excuse of “curiosity” you have given me.’

He was surely far more angry than the situation merited. He was
so angry, in fact, that she could almost feel his fury raising the temperature
inside the tent, and Sam had no illusions about the extent of the trouble she
was in. He had spoken of her having an agenda, but Sam believed that any agenda
belonged to
him
and related to what had happened
between them. Was he looking for an excuse to have her dismissed? Removed from
the camp and thus his vicinity?

‘It is just curiosity. It is interesting, and—’ she began to
insist, only to have him cut her off with his savage voice.

‘Interesting? To study and question something you have not been
asked to involve yourself in—and I suspect using equipment and time that should
have been used for something else? Interesting to whom, I wonder?’

He was losing it, Vere recognised. Going in a reckless headlong
charge too far down a road that was strewn with potential hazards. But somehow
he hadn’t been able to stop himself. And he knew why. Despite the fact that he
both wanted and needed to believe that this woman was someone he could not
trust, against all the odds—against everything he had trained himself to think
and be—something deep within him wanted to believe otherwise.

It was something he must root out and destroy.

Sam could feel the shock of his antagonism ricocheting through
her. Despite the fact that he was wearing traditional Arab dress, any
resemblance to some romantic image of a desert prince her imagination might once
have conjured up collapsed like the fiction it was. Now that she was confronted
with the reality, she could see a very twenty-first century, hard-edged and
angry dominant male, ready to do battle for what he considered to be his. She
suspected that if she didn’t do something, and soon, she was going to find
herself out of a job.

‘I’m sorry if...if I’ve caused offence, or...or broken any
rules.’ She forced herself to apologise, inwardly hating having to be so
submissive. But she didn’t want to damage her career, and she wasn’t going to
let him penalise her just because he regretted what had happened in Zuran.

Did he think she didn’t regret it even more? Did the sharp look
he was giving her mean that he was aware that her apology might relate to more
than her transgression over the possible diversion of the river?

‘Where exactly is this supposed alteration of the course of the
river? Show me,’ Vere commanded, without making any response to her apology. He
knew that he ought to be focusing on the plan he had made to win her over,
instead of allowing his own revulsion at the thought that he might have revealed
some vulnerability to her to drive his reactions.

He was standing far too close to her, Sam thought shakily, as
she glanced at one of his hands on the back of her chair, and then at the palm
of the other, flat on the small desk next to her computer.

She wasn’t obliged to do as he was demanding. She could ask him
to leave. He was, after all, in her private quarters, and she wasn’t sure just
how long her self-control could endure this sort of pressure.

As he himself had just pointed out, the information she had
gathered was outside her working remit, and therefore she was under no
obligation to share it with anyone. However, common sense told her that it would
be extremely foolhardy of her to say as much. So, instead, she reached for her
mouse and highlighted the area she had been examining, trying not to let her
hand shake as she did so.

It was disconcerting having him stand half behind her and so
close to her. More than disconcerting. She could feel the warmth of his breath
against her skin as he leaned forward to take a closer look at the screen. It
sent a frisson of unwanted sensual pleasure shivering over her skin, making her
tense herself against its effect. She was aware, too, of the heat of his body
and its maleness. And of the effect that maleness had already had on her.
Was
she aware of that, and the risk that came with it
of humiliating herself a second time?

Sam was certainly conscious of the sharpness of the inner
warning voice that was asking her that question, but at the same time another
voice was whispering to her far more seductively that if she leaned back now her
head would be resting against his shoulder, and then if he placed his hand
on
her
shoulder he could turn her towards
him...

Abruptly, something that was both a physical ache of longing
and emotional anger against it jerked though her body and tightened. It was
impossible for her to allow herself to feel and think like this. What had
happened to her normal level headed common sense and dignity? It had been bad
enough when she had been daydreaming about him, believing that he had shared her
desire, but now she knew the truth her pride alone should be sufficient to stamp
out any lingering feelings of physical longing she might have.

‘It’s here that I first noticed something,’ she told him,
somehow managing to sound far more in control and professional than she felt as
she indicated the darker markings that showed where the channel was. But did her
voice sound as thin with tension to him as it did to her? Had he noticed that
her arm was stiff from the effort it took her to keep it out of contact with him
whilst she moved the mouse?

Vere could have sworn that he was only looking at the screen,
but somehow he could also see the soft fullness of her mouth, and the way her
lips parted as she drew in that small shallow breath. Her breasts lifted. Soft,
naturally curved breasts that made a man ache to cup his hands around them.

Furious with himself for the direction his thoughts were
taking, Vere took refuge in attack.

‘Do you seriously expect me to believe that a few scratches on
a map are serious evidence of someone having tampered with the course of a river
as fast-flowing as the Dhurahni?’ he derided.

‘These are GPS images,’ Sam reminded him, stung by his
criticism. ‘Naturally they aren’t easy to read, especially to the untrained
eye.’

She was rewarded with a swift annihilating glance.

‘I assure you that I am more than familiar enough with
satellite images to be able to translate what these mean,’ he said coldly.

‘Then you will understand that the extent of the channel is
much more defined when seen on the ground,’ Sam retorted firmly, determined to
show him that she was not going to be bullied out of her professional
opinion.

‘I am familiar with the source of the river, and I cannot say
that I have ever noticed.’ Now his tone was coldly dismissive.

It was plain that he did not like what she was saying, Sam
recognised.

‘Then perhaps you weren’t looking in the right place.’

Or maybe he hadn’t wanted to notice? Sam thought inwardly,
wondering at the same time why this might be. After all, as he had said, both
channels lay within the boundaries of Dhurahn, and it could not be disputed that
the river ran exclusively through Dhurahn’s land. But in some ways that made the
fact that she was sure it had been altered all the more fascinating—at least to
her.

She could feel the faint draught as he released the back of her
chair before striding past her, turning round abruptly to face her, and then
saying sharply, ‘Maybe not.’