Emma Darcy: Australia: In Bed with a Sheikh!

“Will I get to say goodbye to the children?” Already they seemed distant to her. It was as though she had stepped from one world into another.

“Yes,” he assured her. “All going well at the meeting with your father, you and I will proceed to Werribee.”

“I drove here in a jeep,” she remembered.

“Your stepmother can drive it home. You will come with me in my car. There’ll be time for you to pack your belongings and take your leave of Jessie and the twins.”

“While you wait for me.”

“Yes.”

A hostage isn’t allowed to roam free, she thought. I’m tied to him. So why aren’t I feeling a sense of bondage?

Because it doesn’t feel real. Not even this conversation seems real. Sooner or later reality will kick in again and then I’ll feel it. In the meantime, talking filled the emptiness.

“Jessie wants to meet you,” she prattled on. Strange irony. Was Tareq a benefactor or a curse? “She watched for you yesterday, hoping to see you featured on television, but you weren’t. She was very disappointed.”

“Then I’ll make up for the disappointment by meeting her this afternoon,” he said smoothly.

“You’ve got the wrong clothes on,” she told him. “A sheikh is supposed to wear sheikh clothes.”

He smiled. “I’m afraid I don’t have them with me. Will the person do?”

The smile made him even more magnetically handsome. “I’m sure Jessie will be impressed.” As she herself had been at twelve…impressed and flattered to be given his attention. Perhaps he was always kind to children. They made it easy. They didn’t question so much.

Her mind flitted forward, away from the past and on to the future. “I guess I’m to have Peter Larsen’s ticket on the plane tonight.”

He shook his head. “There are no tickets, Sarah. I have my own plane.”

Of course. A private luxury jet, no doubt. She was moving up in the world. Like her mother. Only to a higher strata again. That should amuse her but it didn’t. “Will we be accompanied by many people?”

“I prefer to travel lightly. Only Peter came with me on this trip.”

Which meant she would be alone on the plane with Tareq. Though not quite alone. There would have to be a pilot, a steward, perhaps a co-pilot for such a long flight. Whatever… there would be no getting lost in a crowd. Was she to be his closest associate?

“Peter Larsen implied he’d known you a long time.”

“Since school days at Eton.”

So Mr. Larsen was very upper-class English. Sarah wondered if he knew her second stepfather. “I presume you trust him,” she said a little cynically.

“Yes. He’s never given me reason not to.”

A question of trust…

“How long do you expect it to take…for my father to prove himself to you?”

He eyed her speculatively. “Did you watch the running of the Melbourne Cup yesterday, Sarah?”

“Yes. On television.”

“Then you must have seen with your own eyes that Firefly did not run the distance he should have been trained for.”

She frowned, remembering how the horse had tired. “I thought the jockey had misjudged his run.”

“No, it was more than that. The horse wasn’t up to the distance and he should have been.”

Firefly…

A suspicion wormed into Sarah’s mind.

Jessie still loved the horse…but what did her father feel about it?

“I’ll have Firefly entered in the Melbourne Cup next year,” Tareq went on. “If he runs as well as he should…”

“You can’t expect him to win!” Sarah cried in alarm, a rush of agitation smashing the odd numbness that had claimed her. “No one can guarantee a winner in the Melbourne Cup. The favourites hardly ever win.”

“I agree,” Tareq answered calmly. “As long as it’s a fine effort for the distance I’ll be satisfied.”

A year of her life. Then her fate—the fate of her family—hung on Firefly’s performance. Dear God! She had to talk to her father, make sure he understood. If he had some prejudice against the horse, he had to bury it or they would never get to the other side of this bargain.

A knock on the door.

Tareq rose to answer it. The timing was fortunate. Sarah struggled to contain a surge of panic. She had to remain calm, confident. Tareq was far too perceptive. He would pounce on any hint of a problem with Firefly, and if he pursued the truth and found out what had been hushed up, he might decide he had no grounds for even the tenuous trust Sarah had pleaded for.

It was room service arriving. The ordered food was set out on the coffee table. Tareq tipped the waiter and saw him out. “Try to eat, Sarah. We have a long day ahead of us,” came the sensible advice.

She had absolutely no appetite. Her stomach was in turmoil. Nevertheless, eating precluded any dangerous conversation so she started with the fruit which was relatively easy to slide down her throat. Melon, strawberries, fresh pineapple…she picked and nibbled, using up time.

Satisfied she was well occupied, Tareq moved back to the telephone on the desk and made a series of calls. Sarah didn’t listen to what was spoken. Her thoughts were too loud, clamouring over each other. What if she didn’t get the opportunity to be alone with her father? Would Tareq tell him what the test of his training was to be?

Suddenly there were many ifs and buts. Sarah fretted over them until it struck her that her father might actually prefer to be rid of Tareq’s horses, however crazy it was in a professional sense. Although he had held on to them after Jessie’s accident, being paid for their training, he might have had no heart in their doing well. Maybe even taking some dark satisfaction out of making sure they didn’t.

Yet surely that was at odds with a trainer’s character…the drive to win, to get the best results, to chalk up enviable records. On the other hand, it could explain her father’s drinking bouts. She had put them down to stress, though perhaps she had mistaken the cause of stress…a mind divided against itself.

It seemed stupid to have had Firefly not running the distance, with his owner—a man as astute and as knowledgeable about horses as Tareq—watching his failure to perform. Yet…weren’t there people who wanted to be caught, wanted whatever they were doing to end?

She should have waited to discuss the issue with her father. She should have…

Her heart jumped at another knock on the door.

Her father?

She leapt to her feet, spinning around to face…Peter Larsen…as Tareq admitted him to the suite. The two men stood murmuring to each other. With a muddle of anxiety running rampant in Sarah, the question shot from her lips.

“Did my father agree to the meeting?”

It startled both men into turning to her. Her heart kicked into a gallop. She concentrated on Peter Larsen. He was responsible for making the arrangements. His sharply inquisitive gaze told her nothing. He seemed more interested in pegging her into a newly revised slot than answering her question.

“Why wouldn’t he agree, Sarah?”

It was Tareq who spoke, drawing her attention to him, and once again the power of the man came at her full bore, his eyes like electric probes, making her whole body quiver inside. How was she going to cope with this man when he could affect her like this? He’d caught her so off-guard she was hopelessly stumped for an answer. Her frantic mind finally seized on one.

“Pride. You fired him yesterday. He might be angry about me interceding on his business. I didn’t think about him so much as…”

“He’s here. In Peter’s suite,” Tareq stated, removing her uncertainty. His face took on a ruthless cast as he added, “If he doesn’t agree to my terms, I’ll be a very surprised man. Don’t concern yourself with contingency plans, Sarah.”