Sharon Kendrick - The Sheikh's Christmas Conquest

‘Hadn’t you better go, before the snow gets much worse?’ she said, in a casual tone that didn’t quite come off. ‘There must be someone waiting for you. Someone who’s wondering where you are.’

Incredulously, he stared at her. ‘And leave you here, on your own? Without electricity?’ He walked over to one of the old-fashioned radiators and laid the flat of his hand on it. ‘Or heating.’

‘I’m perfectly capable of managing on my own,’ she said stubbornly.

‘I don’t care,’ he said. ‘I’m not going anywhere. What kind of man would walk out and leave a woman to fend for herself in conditions like these?’

‘So you’re staying in order to ease your own conscience?’

There was a pause, and when he spoke his voice had a bitter note to it. ‘Something like that.’

Livvy’s heart thundered as she tried to work out what to do next. ‘Don’t panic’ should have been top of her list, while the second should be to stop allowing Saladin to take control. Maybe where he came from, men dealt with emergencies while the women just hung around looking decorative. Well, perhaps it might do him good to realise that she didn’t need a man to fix things for her. She didn’t need a man for anything. She’d learned to change a fuse and fix a leaking tap. She’d managed alone for long enough and that was the way she liked it.

She walked over to the phone, which hung on a neat cradle on the wall, but was greeted with nothing but an empty silence as she placed it against her ear.

‘Dead?’ he questioned.

‘Completely.’ She replaced it and looked at him but, despite her best intentions, she was starting to panic. Had she, in the rush to buy the tree and hang the mistletoe and bake the mince pies, remembered to charge her cell phone? ‘I’ll go upstairs and get my phone.’

‘I’ll come with you.’

‘Were you born to be bossy?’

‘I think I was. Why, does it bother you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Tough,’ he said as he picked up a candle.

But as they left the kitchen Saladin realised that for the first time in a long time he was feeling exhilarated . Nobody had a clue where he was. He was marooned in the middle of the snowy English countryside with a feisty redhead he suspected would be his before the night was over. And suddenly his conscience and his troubled memories were forgotten as he followed her up the large staircase leading from the arched reception hall, where the high ceilings flickered with long shadows cast from their candles. They reached her bedroom and Saladin drew in a deep breath as she pushed open the door and turned to him, a studiedly casual note in her voice.

‘You can wait here, if you like.’

‘Like a pupil standing outside the headmaster’s study?’ he drawled. ‘No. I don’t like. Don’t worry, Livvy—I won’t be judging you if your room’s a mess and I think I’m sophisticated enough to resist the temptation to throw you down on the bed, if that’s what you’re worried about.’

‘Oh, come in, if you insist,’ she said crossly.

But it was with a feeling of pride that she opened the door and walked through, with Saladin not far behind her. The curtains were not yet drawn and the reflected light from the snow outside meant that the room looked almost radiant with a pure and ghostly light. On a table beside the bed stood a bowl of hyacinths, which scented the cold air. Antique pieces of furniture glowed softly in the candlelight. It was a place of peace and calm—her haven—and one of many reasons why she clung to this house and all the memories it contained.

She walked over to the window seat and found her phone, dejectedly staring down at its black screen.

‘It’s dead,’ she said. ‘I was sending photo messages to a school friend when the snow started and then they delivered the Christmas tree...’ Her words tailed off. ‘You’ll have to go out to the car and get yours.’

‘I will decide if and when I’m going out to the car,’ he snapped. ‘You do not issue instructions to a sheikh.’

‘I didn’t invite you here,’ she said, her voice low. ‘We’re here together under duress and in extremely bizarre circumstances—and I think it’s going to make an unbearable situation even worse if you then start pulling rank on me.’

He looked as if he was about to come back at her with a sharp response, but seemed to think better of it—because he nodded. ‘Very well. I will go to the car and get my phone.’

He left the room abruptly, and as she heard him going downstairs she felt slightly spooked—a feeling that was only increased when the front door slammed. Everything seemed unnaturally quiet without him—all she could hear was the loud tick of the grandfather clock as it echoed through the house. She stared out of the window to see the sheikh’s shadowy figure making its way towards a car that was now completely covered in white. The snow was still falling, and she found herself thinking that at least he’d had the sense to retrieve his cashmere coat and put it on before going outside.

She could see him brushing a thick layer of snow away from the door, which he was obviously having difficulty opening. She wondered what would happen next. Would crack teams of Jazratan guards descend in a helicopter from the snowy sky, the way they did in films? Doubtfully, she looked up at the fat flakes that were swirling down as thickly as ever. She didn’t know much about planes, but she doubted it would be safe to fly in conditions like this.

Grabbing a sweater from the wardrobe and pulling it on, she went back downstairs to the kitchen and had just put a kettle on the hob when she heard the front door slam, followed by the sound of echoing footsteps. She looked up to see Saladin standing framed in the kitchen doorway and hated the instant rush of relief—and something else—that flooded through her. What was the something else? she wondered. The reassurance of having someone so unashamedly alpha strutting around the place, despite all her protestations that she was fine on her own? Or was the root cause more fundamental—a case of her body responding to him in away she wasn’t used to? A way that scared her.

Despite the warm sweater she’d pulled on, she could feel the puckering of her breasts as she looked at him.

‘Any luck?’ she said.

‘Some. I’ve spoken with my people—and the roads are impassable. We won’t get any help sent out to us tonight.’

Livvy’s hand trembled as she tipped boiling water into the teapot. They were stuck here for the night—just the two of them. So why wasn’t she paralysed with a feeling of dread and fear? Why had her heart started pounding with excitement? She swallowed.

‘Would you like some tea?’

‘Please.’ His voice grew curious. ‘How have you managed to boil water?’

‘Gas hob,’ she said, thinking how domesticated this all sounded. And how the words people spoke rarely reflected what was going on inside their heads. She looked into the gleam of his eyes. ‘Are you hungry? I’ll put some mince pies on a plate,’ she said, in the kind of babbling voice people used when they were trying to fill an awkward silence. ‘And we can go in and sit by the fire.’

‘Here. Let me.’ He took the tray from her, aware that this was something he rarely did. People always carried things for him . They ran his bath for him and laid out his cool silk robes every morning. For diplomatic meetings, all his paperwork was stacked in symmetrical piles awaiting his attention, even down to the gold pen that was always positioned neatly to the left. He didn’t have to deal with the everyday mechanics of normal life, because his life was not normal. Never had been, nor ever could be. Even his response to tragedy could never be like other men’s—for he’d been taught that the sheikh must never show emotion, no matter what he was feeling inside. So that when he had wanted to weep bitter tears over Alya’s coffin, he had known that the face he’d needed to show to his people must be an implacable face.