Liz Fielding: Her Desert Dream

‘You saw him?’

‘He was in a launch out on the creek and well camouflaged from above. He forgot about the sun reflecting off the water.’

The tension went out of her shoulders, her neck. Relief, he thought. That was sheer relief.

‘So why did you do it?’ he persisted.

‘I thought we’d established that,’ she said, concentrating once more on his arm.

The speed with which she’d grabbed at the insulting explanation he’d offered suggested desperation to hide the real reason for her exhibitionism. While he had his own suspicions, he was beginning to wish he’d overcome his squeamishness about plundering her phone for the answer.

‘Maybe you’d better run it by me again.’

Apparently satisfied with the clean up job on his arm, or maybe just wanting to put a little distance between them, she gathered up the used wipes, dropped them in a bin.

‘It’s a game, Kal,’ she said, busying herself, filling a marble basin with warm water. Looking anywhere but at him. ‘We need each other. Celebrities need headlines, the media have an insatiable appetite for stories. The trick is to give them what they want and then hope they’ll leave you alone.’

She plunged her hands in the water, then looked around for soap.

He took a piece from a crystal bowl but did not hand it to her. Instead, he put his arms around her, trapping her as he leaned into her back, his chin against her hair as he dipped his hands into the water and began to soap her fingers.

‘Kal!’ she protested, but feebly. They both knew she wasn’t going anywhere until she’d told him what was going on.

‘What, exactly, do they want from you?’ he asked.

‘Right now?’ The words came out as a squeak and he waited while she took a breath. ‘Right now,’ she repeated, ‘they’d give their eye teeth for a picture of me here, in flagrante with Rupert Devenish.’ She tried a laugh, attempting to ignore the way his thumb was circling her palm. The way she was relaxing against him. ‘He’s-’

‘I read the newspapers,’ he said, not wanting to hear the words on her lips. Or that it was Lucy who’d filled him in on the marriage mania in the gossip columns. ‘But that isn’t going to happen, is it?’

Unless he’d got it totally wrong and the text had been from Devenish announcing his imminent arrival, urging Rose to convince the paparazzi that she was alone before he joined her.

In which case her eager response to him, the way she had softened in the circle of his arms, surrendered her hands for him to do with what he would, was going to take a little-make that a lot of-explaining.

‘It’s not going to happen,’ she confirmed. ‘I’m afraid they’re going to have to make do with the clichéd Lady Rose, alone on a beach, how sad, picture.’

And it was his turn to feel the tension slide away from his shoulders.

But only halfway.

According to Lucy, Rose was falling apart because of the constant intrusion into her life. Ten years without being able to lift a finger unobserved, she’d said.

He wasn’t getting that impression from Rose. Far from it. She seemed totally relaxed about what could only be construed as a unwarranted intrusion into her private life.

‘And if they aren’t?’ he asked.

A tiny tremor rippled through her and he knew that there was a lot more to this than she was telling him.

‘Trust me, Rose,’ he said. ‘The picture will be a sensation.’ He reached for a towel, taking her hands, drying them one finger at a time. Then, because he was still angry with her, ‘And if I’m wrong you can always go for the topless option tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow will be too late…’

She caught herself, no doubt realising that she should have objected to the ‘topless’, not the ‘tomorrow’. But he had the answer to at least one of his questions.

For some reason she wanted a picture of herself on the front page and for some reason it had to be tomorrow. And he went straight back to that mysterious threat.

Was this what it was all about? Give me a photograph or…Or what?

What on earth could anyone have over the universally loved and admired ‘people’s angel’?

Except, of course, that the woman in his arms was not Rose Napier.

On some subconscious level he’d known that from the moment she’d walked into the VIP lounge at the airport. Right from the beginning, he’d sensed the split personality, the separation between the woman playing a role-and occasionally slipping-and the woman who shone through the disguise, lighting him up not just like a rocket, but the whole damn fourth of July scenario. Whoosh, bang, the sky filled with coloured stars.

He didn’t trust it, knew it was a temporary aberration, nothing but chemistry, but he finally understood why his grandfather had lost his head, lost his country over a woman.

He was here on a one-off last-chance mission and from the moment she’d appeared on the scene this woman had attacked all his systems like a virus taking over a computer memory, supplanting herself in place of everything that was vital, important, real.

Lucy had obviously told him a pack of lies-he was only here to inveigle his way into a meeting with Princess Sabirah, so why would he be bothered with something as important as the truth?

Presumably the real Rose was holed up in some private love nest with Rupert while this woman, this lovely woman who was superficially so like her, was nothing but a plant to keep the press focused on Bab el Sama.

So what had gone wrong? Had someone found out? Threatened to expose the switch? Directing his own personal photo shoot by text?

In which case he had no doubt that the topless scenario would be the next demand. Because, even if she was a fake, that picture would be worth millions to the photographer who delivered it to a picture agency.

‘You’ve got nothing to worry about,’ he said, tossing the towel aside, not sure who he was most angry with, Lucy or this woman, whoever she was, for putting at risk his own mission.

No, that was wrong. Lucy had used the situation to give him a chance. This woman had lit him up, responding to his kisses as if he was the last man on earth. Lies, lies, lies…

‘I guarantee you that there won’t be a picture editor in London who won’t grab that picture of you for their front page tomorrow.’

Her all too obvious relief flipped something in his brain and he stroked the pad of his thumb over the exquisite rose that curved invitingly across her breast in an insultingly intimate gesture, opened his mouth over her all too obvious response as the bud beneath the costume leapt to his touch.

Her throat moved as she swallowed, doing her best to ignore the intimacy of his touch, but the tiny shiver that rippled through her betrayed pleasure, desire, need and her response was not to pull away but buckle against him.

Too late, he discovered that he was the one caught in a lie, because it didn’t matter who she was, he desired her as he had never desired any other woman. Not just with his body, but with his heart, his soul and simply holding her was not enough.

Nothing could disguise from her how very much it wasn’t enough but, as the wildfire of desire swept through him, he was not alone. Her seeking lips found his neck, trailed moist kisses across his chin, touched his lips, her need as desperate as his.

‘Whoever you are,’ he murmured, looking down at her, ‘you can trust me on that…’

For a moment she looked at him, her mouth soft, her lids heavy with desire and the slow-burning fuse, lit in the moment their eyes had first met, of that unfinished kiss, lay between them.

The air was heavy with the desire of two people for whom the need to touch, to explore, to be one, blotted out memory, bypassed hard-learned lessons, destroyed reason.