ALEXANDRA SELLERS - Sheikh's Temptation

They always did rub each other the wrong way. It was one of those inexplicable, unfounded antipathies. Each would have been happy never to see the other again, she thought, if only one of them would leave town.

But Parvan was Arash’s home, and he wasn’t going to emigrate. And, apart from this short break which Alinor had insisted on, Lana wasn’t going anywhere, at least until after Alinor’s baby was born. And then—well, she wasn’t ready yet to name a day when she would leave Parvan.

She had never met such brave, strong, true people as the citizens of Kavi’s little country of mountain and desert, and here—helping, with her father’s money, to put the war-torn country back together—she felt that she had found her reason for being.

“What is this, Lana, adopt-a-country?” her father had demanded in amused exasperation at yet another request for a contribution. In one of his weak moments she had convinced him to match, dollar for dollar, all the funds she raised elsewhere. “Don’t I already support most of the villages and roads and wells and schools? And that mountain highway—what are you calling it, the Emerald Road?—is sucking up cash like a vacuum cleaner! What else can there be?”

“Dad, face it—if you don’t spend your money on something like Parvan, what’ll you spend it on? Trying to buy power, that’s what. And then you won’t be a great guy anymore, you’ll be a monster, and everyone will hate you,” she had explained ruthlessly. “And I don’t want everyone in the world hating my dad.”

“I’m not trying to buy power at the moment, Lana,” he had told her. “I’m trying to endow a museum.”

The new museum was his baby, and it needed lots of funds, too. But he almost always came through for her. And sometimes their interests coincided, for many wealthy Parvani families were forced into selling their ancient treasures to finance the rebuilding of their lives.

At least Lana could always make sure the Holding Museum paid well.

Kavi and Alinor and all the people whose lives she touched—whose villages and homes and farms were rebuilt, much sooner than could otherwise have been possible, with her father’s generous donations and the money she raised with her fund-raising events—of course were grateful.

Only Arash stood outside the circle of her admirers. As a sheikh and tribal leader with a valley full of farms and villages to care for, he had not interfered when his people had received their share of the generosity. But as the man whose own estates and family home had suffered, he would accept nothing from her.

And although she was certain that his painful limp could be helped with surgery, he had virtually pretended not to hear her offer to finance a trip for surgery abroad.

She had never understood his reasons, and she no longer bothered to try.

She turned her head to run a look over his strong, uncompromising profile as he drove, his own attention firmly on the road. He was wearing a leather jacket and denim jeans and boots, but he looked no less a sheikh than when he was in full traditional dress.

“Will this thing drive if there’s that much snow?” she couldn’t help asking.

“There are too many unknowns to predict anything with certainty,” he said.

“So we might end up waiting for a helicopter rescue?” Her heart sank. And how long would that take? she wanted to ask, but she suppressed the desire. His answer would only be another irritating refusal to guess, and she was already gritting her teeth.

“I knew I should fly,” she muttered.

Arash lifted a disbelieving eyebrow. “And why didn’t you?”

“Well, you know the answer to that better than I do, Arash!”

“I know only that Kavi asked me to see you safely to Central Barakat and that you insisted on coming by road.”

She threw him a look. “I do know, Arash, that I’m providing cover for some secret mission to Prince Omar.”

Arash frowned at the road. “I am entrusted with no mission other than delivering you safely to my cousin Omar and Princess Jana in Central Barakat.”

Of course he wouldn’t tell her if he was. “So why was it so important that you and no one else accompany me?” she demanded sceptically.

There was a short silence.

“But this was your own choice,” he said in slight surprise.

Lana’s mouth gaped. “My choice? What, to have you along? Why would it be my choice?”

“Naturally I found your motive inexplicable.”

Lana turned to look at him, her eyes narrowed. “Did you really think that I had asked Kavi to force you to come with me? Kavi couldn’t have told you such a thing!”

He threw her a glance, shrugging. “It was one possible explanation for something inexplicable.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence!” she snapped. “What did you think my motive was, Arash, just as a matter of interest?”

The truck slowed as his eyes briefly but electrifyingly met hers.

“I thought your motive would be revealed in time. I didn’t trouble, therefore, to wonder.”

“Don’t hand me that!” she commanded irritably. “If you thought I engineered this, you must have had some ideas about why! What was my reason, Arash?”

She stared at him, her mind whirling, fury already bubbling up inside, and she thought how dangerous it would be to be stranded alone with Arash, of all men. She knew there was a well of resentment in her towards him…. There wasn’t another of Kavi’s Cup Companions she didn’t like, whom she wouldn’t rather have been with now.

“What reason could I possibly have for wanting to be alone with you up here in God’s country?”

He made no reply. After a minute, she opened her mouth on a slow, outraged breath.

“I don’t believe it!” Suddenly she could hardly get the words out for the rage that assailed her. When she spoke, her voice shook.

“What did you think, Arash? Did you think I maybe wanted to get you alone to make you an offer?”

She saw a muscle leap in his jaw and was sure she had hit home.

“What kind of an offer, exactly, were you envisaging? Just a brief affair, or was I going to go so far as to propose a mutually convenient marriage of wealth with an ancient title? Was that it?”

“It was not that I believed it. It was merely one possible explanation that crossed my mind.”

“You really have to be seen to be believed!”

He slowed the truck with a quick jab at the brakes and turned to her, a blaze of fury on his face.

“You deny that such a possibility has occurred to you?”

She stared at him, the words tumbling from her lips. “Yes, I deny that such a possibility has occurred to me! What gives you the right to speak to me like this?”

His eyes were dark with feeling, and a shiver ran all over her. What on earth could be coming now?

He lifted a hand from the steering wheel and his finger pointed at the end of her nose. His eyes flashed violet, and the fury in his voice now astonished her.

“What gives me the right? You give me the right, Lana. You with your quiet suggestion that I am for sale at public tender!”

It had been Lana’s idea to offer a fabulous fund-raising dinner on a jet, flying guests who had paid a substantial sum for the honour overnight from London to Parvan, where they would greet the sun as it rose over magnificent Mount Shir. Then they would land at the capital to meet the Regent Prince and his wife at a palace champagne breakfast.

On board the luxuriously appointed jet, donated for the occasion by the princes of the Barakat Emirates, subscribers were also privileged to meet some of the Cup Companions….

Lana had quickly learned that Kavi’s handsome Cup Companions had a drawing power second only to Prince Kavian himself, and she included them in nearly every fund-raising event. The long-suffering Companions joked that they were no better than performing bears at such times, but uncomplainingly took their turn.