The Sheikh's Undoing (3 page)

But the press had got wind of his crash—despite the reassuring statement which Isobel had asked his PR people to issue. Fabulously wealthy injured sheikhs always provided fascinating copy, and by the time she arrived back at the hospital the following morning there were photographers hanging around the main entrance.

Tariq had been transferred to a different side ward, and Isobel walked in to see a small gaggle of doctors gathered around the foot of his bed. There was an unmistakable air of tension in the room.

She shot a glance at her boss, who was sitting up in bed, unshaven and unashamedly bare-chested—the vulnerability of yesterday nothing but a distant memory. His black eyes glittered with displeasure as he saw her, and his voice was cool.

‘Ah, Izzy. At last.’

‘Is something wrong?’ she asked.

‘Damned right there is.’

A tall, bespectacled man detached himself from the group, extending his hand and introducing himself as the consultant. ‘You’re his partner?’ he asked Isobel, as he glanced down at the overnight bag she was carrying.

Isobel went bright red, and she couldn’t miss the narrow-eyed look which Tariq angled in her direction. But for some reason she was glad that she wasn’t the same wild-haired scarecrow she’d been in the middle of the night. That she’d taken the care to wash and tame her hair and put on her favourite russet-coloured jacket.

Just because the Sheikh never looked at her in the way he looked at other women it didn’t mean she was immune to a little masculine attention from time to time, did it? She gave the doctor a quick smile. ‘No, Doctor. I’m Isobel Mulholland. The Sheikh’s assistant.’

‘Well, perhaps you could manage to talk some sense into your boss, Isobel,’ said the consultant, meeting her eyes with a resigned expression. ‘He’s had a nasty bang to the head and a general shock to the system—but he seems to think that he can walk out of here and carry on as normal.’ The doctor continued to hold her gaze. ‘It sounds like a punishing regime at the best of times, but especially so in the circumstances. Unless he agrees to take things easy for the next week—’

‘I can’t,’ interrupted Tariq testily, wondering if his perception had been altered by the bump on the head he’d received. Was the doctor
flirting with Isobel?
And was she—the woman he’d never known as anything other than a brisk and efficient machine—
flirting back?
He had never found her in the least bit attractive himself, but Tariq was unused to being overlooked for another man, and his mouth thinned as he subjected the medic to an icy look. ‘I need to fly to the States tomorrow.’

‘That’s where you’re wrong. You need rest,’ contradicted the consultant. ‘Complete rest. Away from work and the world—and away from the media, who have been plaguing my office all morning. You’ve been
driving yourself too hard and you need to recuperate. Otherwise I’ll have no alternative but to keep you in.’

‘You can’t keep me in against my will,’ objected Tariq.

Isobel recognised that a stand-off between the two men was about to be reached—and she knew that Tariq would refuse to back down if it got to that stage. Diplomatically, she offered the consultant another polite smile. ‘Does he need any particular medical care, Doctor?’

‘Will you stop talking about me as if I’m not here?’ growled Tariq.

‘Just calm and quiet observation,’ said the doctor. ‘And a guarantee that he won’t go anywhere near his office for at least seven days.’

Isobel’s mind began to race. He could go to a clinic, yes—but even the most discreet of clinics could never be relied on to be
that
discreet, could they? Especially when they were dealing with billionaire patients who were being hunted by the tabloids. Tariq didn’t need expensive clinics where people would no doubt seek to exploit his wealth and influence. He needed that thing which always seemed to elude him.

Peace.

She thought about the strange flash of vulnerability she’d seen on his face and an idea began to form in her mind.

‘I have a little cottage in the countryside,’ she said slowly, looking straight into a pair of black and disbelieving eyes. ‘You could come and stay there for a week, if you like. My mother used to be a nurse, and I picked up some basic first aid from her. I could keep my eye on you, Tariq.’

‘W
HERE
the hell are you going, Izzy?’

For a moment Isobel didn’t answer Tariq’s growled question as she turned the small car into a narrow country lane edged with budding hedgerows. Why couldn’t he just settle down and relax—and be grateful she’d managed to get him out of the hospital? Maybe even sit back and appreciate the beauty of the spring day instead of haranguing her all the time?

It wasn’t until she was bowling along at a steady pace that she risked a quick glance and saw the still-dreadful pallor of his face, which showed no signs of shifting. He was in
pain
, she reminded herself—and besides, he was a man who rarely expressed gratitude.

Already she’d had to bite back her words several times that morning. They had left by a staff exit at the back of the hospital, and although he had initially refused to travel in a wheelchair she had persuaded him that it would help elude any waiting press. Which of course, it had. The photographers were looking for the muscular stride of a powerful sheikh—not a man being pushed along by a woman. She remembered her mother telling her that nobody ever looked at people in wheelchairs—how society was often too busy to care about
those who were not able-bodied. And it seemed that her mother was right.

‘You know very well where I’m going,’ she answered calmly. ‘To my cottage in the country, where you are going to recuperate after your crash. That was the agreement we made with the doctor before he would agree to discharge you. Remember?’

He made a small sound of displeasure beneath his breath. His head was throbbing, his throat felt as dry as parchment, and now Izzy was being infuriatingly
stubborn
. ‘That’s the doctor you were flirting with so outrageously?’ he questioned coolly.

Isobel’s eyes narrowed as she acknowledged her boss’s accusation. In truth, she’d been so worried about
him
that she’d barely given a thought to the crinkly-eyed consultant. But even if she
had
fallen in love at first sight and decided to slip the doctor her phone number—well, it was none of Tariq’s business. Wasn’t she doing enough for him already, without him attempting to police her private life for her?

‘And what if I was?’ she retorted.

He shrugged. ‘I would have thought that extremely unprofessional behaviour on his part.’

‘I hardly think that you’re in any position to pass judgement on flirting,’ she murmured.

Tariq drummed his fingers against one tense thigh. It was not the response he’d been expecting. A firm assertion that the doctor had been wasting his time would have been infinitely more desirable. Isobel was resolutely single, and that was the way he liked it. It meant that she could devote herself to
his
needs and be there whenever
he
wanted her.

‘I thought you only told him all that stuff about taking
me to your cottage to get him off my back,’ he objected.

‘But that would have been dishonest.’

‘Do you always have to be so damned
moral?
’

‘One of us has to have morals.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘Is that supposed to be a criticism?’

‘No, Tariq,’ she answered calmly. ‘It’s merely an observation.’

He stared at her set profile and inexplicably began to notice the way the pale spring sunshine was picking out the lights in her hair, turning it a glowing shade of amber. Had the doctor also noticed its subtle fire? he wondered. Would that explain his behaviour? ‘I don’t know why you’re dragging me out to the back of beyond,’ he said, ‘when I can rest perfectly well at home.’

‘In central London?’ She gave a dry laugh. ‘With the press baying at your door like hounds and all your ex-girlfriends lining up to offer to come and mop your brow for you? I don’t think so. You’ll be much safer at my cottage. Anyway, it’s a done deal. I’ve informed the office that you’ll be incommunicado for a week, and that all calls are to come through me. Fiona in the PR office is perfectly capable of running things until we get back. I’ve had your housekeeper pack a week’s worth of clothes, which are being couriered down. And I haven’t told anybody about your exact whereabouts.’

‘My brother—’

‘Except for your brother,’ she concurred, remembering the brief conversation she’d had earlier that day with the ruler of Khayarzah. ‘I telephoned the palace and spoke to the King myself—told him that you’re on the mend but that you needed to recuperate. He wanted you
flown to Khayarzah, but I said that you would be fine with me.’ She shot him a glance. ‘That was the right thing to do, wasn’t it?’

‘I suppose so,’ he answered moodily, but as usual she had done exactly the right thing. The last thing he needed was the formality of palace life—with all the strictures that came with it. He’d done his level best to escape from the attendant attention which came with being the brother of the King—a role which had been thrust on him when his brother had suddenly inherited the crown. A role which had threatened his freedom—something he had always guarded jealously. Because wasn’t his freedom the only good thing to have emerged from the terrible isolation of his childhood?

He fixed her with a cool and curious stare. ‘You seem to have it all worked out, Izzy.’

‘Well, that’s what you pay me for.’ She glanced in the driving mirror and let a speedy white van overtake them before starting to speak again. ‘Do you want to tell me what happened? About why one of the most careful drivers I know should crash his car?’

Tariq closed his eyes. Wasn’t it frustrating that a split-second decision could impact so dramatically on your life? If he hadn’t been beguiled by a pair of blue eyes and a dynamite body then he wouldn’t be facing the rather grim prospect of being stuck in some remote cottage with his assistant for a week.

‘I went for dinner with a woman,’ he said.

‘No—’ Isobel started to say something and then changed her mind, but Tariq seized on her swallowed words like a cat capturing a mouse.

His thick lashes parted by a fraction. ‘No what, Izzy?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Oh, but it does,’ he answered stubbornly.

‘I was about to say no change there. You having dinner with a woman is hardly remarkable, Tariq. Blonde, was she?’

‘Actually, she was.’ Reluctantly, his lips curved into a smile. Sometimes Izzy was so damned sharp he was surprised she didn’t cut herself. Maybe that was what less attractive women did—they made up for their shortcomings by developing a more sophisticated sense of humour. ‘But she wasn’t all she seemed to be.’

‘Not a transvestite, I hope?’

‘Very funny.’ But despite the smile which her flippant comment produced Tariq was irritated with himself. He had been stressed out, and had intended to relax by playing poker until the small hours. He hadn’t really been in the mood for any kind of liaison, or the effort of chatting someone up. But the woman had been very beautiful, and he’d found himself inviting her for a late dinner. And then she had started to question him. Wanting to know the kind of things which suggested that she might have done more than a little background research on him.

Tariq had some rules which were entirely his own.

He didn’t like being interrogated.

He didn’t trust people who knew too much about him.

And he never slept with a woman on a first date.

At heart, he was a deeply old-fashioned man, with plenty of contradictory values. For him sex had always been laughably easy—yet he didn’t respect a woman who let him too close, too soon. Especially as he had a very short attention span when it came to the opposite sex. He liked the slow burn of anticipation—to prolong the ache of desire until it became unbearable. So when
the blonde had made it very clear that she was his for the taking—some primitive sense of prudery had reared its head. Who wanted something which was so easily obtained? With a jaded yawn, he had declined her offer and reached for his jacket.

And that was when the woman’s story had come blurting out. It seemed that it hadn’t been fate which had brought her into his life, but cunning and subterfuge.

‘She was a journalist,’ he bit out. He’d been so angry with himself because he hadn’t seen through her flimsy cover. Furious that he had fallen for one of the oldest tricks of all. He’d stormed out, wondering if he was losing his touch, and for those few seconds when his attention had wandered so had had his powerful sports car. ‘She wanted the inside story on the takeover bid,’ he finished.

Isobel shrugged as her little car took a bend in the road. ‘Well, if you
will
try and buy into the Premier League, what do you expect? You know the English are crazy about football—and it’s a really big deal if some power-hungry Sheikh adds a major team to his portfolio.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with being hungry for power, Izzy.’

‘Only if it becomes addictive,’ she countered.

‘You think I’m a power junkie?’

‘That’s not for me to say.’

His black eyes narrowed. ‘I notice you didn’t deny it, though.’

‘I’m glad you’re paying attention to what I say, Tariq.’

With a small click of irritation, he attempted, without much success, to stretch his legs. Some lurid looking
air-freshener in the shape of a blue daisy hung from the driving mirror and danced infuriatingly in front of the windscreen. Other than the occasional childhood ride on a camel in his homeland, he could never remember enduring such an uncomfortable form of transport as this. Rather longingly, he thought about the dented bonnet of his smooth and gleaming sports car and wondered how long before it would be roadworthy again.

‘Is your cottage as cramped as your car?’ he demanded.

‘You don’t like my car?’

‘Not really. I don’t like second-hand cars which don’t go above fifty.’

‘Then why don’t you give me a pay rise?’ she suggested sweetly. ‘And I’ll buy myself a newer one.’