Their Desert Night of Scandal

SHEIKHTAHIRBINHALIMAL-JUKRAThad dealt with his most senior aide long enough to know the older man's tells. Yet Ali insisted on playing these games with him. Tahir watched him fidget with the papers in his leather-bound folder, straighten corners that didn't need straightening, place the expensive Montblanc pen Tahir had gifted him two Christmases ago precisely in the centre of the top page before moving it a fraction of an inch.

Given the chance, Tahir suspected the other man would've conducted a microscopic inspection of each fingernail for dirt and brushed invisible lint off his tailored suit before stating what was obviously on his mind.

'Are we done here? I'd like to get on with my next appointment before I leave for Zinabir,' Tahir said after a full minute, attempting and failing to keep impatience from sharpening his voice.Ali gave the merest grimace, an action not many would've noticed.

Tahir noticed.

He noticed everything. Because these days, he couldn't afford to be oblivious to anything. Not any more.

Those carefree days when he'd freely trusted, and tossed out benefits of the doubt like candy at a toddler's party, were far behind him. Smothered to death by a far too close brush with a different fate. A fate averted at a steep price he'd never be able to fully repay in this life.

In his quietest moments, Tahir couldn't help but hope he would be able to repay it in his next. Hoped to have done enough in this life to erase the deep disappointment from his father's eyes when they met in the afterlife.

Until then...

He tightened his gut against the surfeit of emotions triggered by thoughts of his father.

'Not quite, Your Majesty,' Ali replied, shifting the pen yet again.

Tahir suppressed a sigh. 'What is it, Ali? Has my brother landed himself in the papers again?' His brother, Javid, much to Tahir's constant disgruntlement, was 'living his best life', which inevitably meant dragging Tahir's treasured homeland of Jukrat into the spotlight just for the hell of it. Luckily for him, Javid hadn't done anything scandalously outrageous enough...yet...

Infuriatingly, his younger brother had learned to skate close to the line without stepping over it. For now, Tahir had let him be because, when he cast aside his playboy ways long enough to do his duty, Javid was the most astute diplomat Tahir had ever come across. He could saunter into near-crisis international incidents and un-ruffle feathers with jaw-dropping proficiency.

Unfortunately, it was the same brilliant technique his brother used to seduce the clothes off some of the most beautiful and influential women in the world. On a regular, tabloid-salivating basis.

Tahir himself preferred much more discreet liaisons and not just because his spotlight was much brighter as the unmarried ruler of Jukrat, but because of another viciously learned lesson fromthatincident twelve years ago.

Dragging himself away from another unwanted memory jaunt, he fixed a gimlet stare at his aide. 'I don't have all day.'

Ali cleared his throat. 'My apologies, Your Majesty. No, this isn't about your brother. His Royal Highness the Prince is behaving himself.'

'Then what is it? Spit it out, Ali.'

His aide cracked a microscopic wry smile before shaking his head. 'No, Your Majesty.'

'Then I caution you to avoid it now,' he replied tightly.

Ali cleared his throat, moved his pen another fraction, then, 'The visitor is a Miss Lauren Winchester, Your Majesty-'

Tahir jerked upright, sending his chair skidding back on the polished floor.Suddenly, the vast office felt like an airtight cage, closing in on him with alarming speed. A glass cage where all his emotions were on display. Shock. Shame. Fury. Despair. Everything he'd suffered during those three harrowing days in England.When he'd been at her mercy.

'What did you say?' he demanded, his voice, unlike the turbulence coursing through him, thankfully bled of all emotion except chilling fury.

Now he understood his aide's hesitancy. Just as he fully grasped the term 'shoot the messenger'. Because he was furious with Ali for dropping this forbidden name into his life. For breathing it into existence in this space of measured contemplation and incisive forward-thinking. In this imperial domain where every brave and worthy decision about his kingdom was taken with a level head.

'I'm sorry, sire. We tried to make the problem go away but...'

His eyes narrowed. 'But what?'

Ali shrugged. 'She's been careful to make an appearance at the right times. She knows the protocol well enough not to stray outside the parameters of the law, like some occasional protestors do.'

Of course, she did.

Lauren Winchester had a sharp, brilliant mind.

It was the first thing he'd gleaned about her when he'd strayed into that geo-politics Q&A at his university in England twelve years ago. He'd lingered in the back, watching the woman who faced away from him run rings around some of the most learned professors and gurus in the field.

At first, he'd been intensely fascinated with her argument; with her husky, impassioned voice that spoke truth to power. Then the glorious, waist-length tumble of blonde curls he'd itched to sink his fingers into. The slim, elegant hand that had periodically gesticulated and flipped her hair over her shoulders, giving him brief glimpses of her smooth, elegant neck.

Then, after a thoroughly engrossing hour, she'd risen.

Turned.

He'd seen her face.

And he'd been enraptured...

Three short months later, she'd turned his world upside down.His father had branded him a disgrace, his mother giving him a wide berth because he'd stopped being useful to her. Friends and family alike had treated him like a pariah. His banishment to the desert had been a welcome reprieve, a place where he could unmask his shock and bitterness without prying eyes alternately judging and pitying him.

That year-long cloistering had cured him of many things. Had forged a new path he'd never looked back from. And if he'd caught traces of disappointment in his father's eyes occasionally before his death, well...that was a stain he'd had no option but to live with.

All because of Lauren Winchester.

Against his will, his gaze strayed to the wide window, despite it not overlooking the palace gates. Security protocol dictated his office be placed in the centre of the vast Moorish castle that was Jukrat Palace. That way he was protected from people like Lauren Winchester and the many fervid subjects who camped at his palace gates, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Sheikh or under the misguided impression they could gain access to him by simply turning up.

Unlike his mother, who'd been carefree and naive enough to make impromptu trips to the palace gates, much to the adulation of her subjects, until a near-assassination attempt had put paid to all that, Tahir's appearances were ruthlessly vetted and strictly scheduled.

Of course, a woman like Lauren Winchester would believe she was above such strictures.

Hadn't she been...once upon a time?

Tahir pivoted away from the question and from the probing gaze of his aide. Every cell in his body vibrated with the unequivocal need to issue the command to turn her away, but when he opened his mouth, entirely different words emerged. 'Did she try to schedule a visit through the usual channels?'

'Not that I've been able to verify,' Ali answered.

Because she knew it was futile or because she believed it was beneath her?

Tahir's lips flattened. 'You could've dealt with this without my ever learning of it,' he rasped, still half enraged at his aide for dropping this unsavoury subject into his lap. 'What were you hoping to achieve by telling me?'

Ali's eyes widened in alarm and surprise. 'Umm...well... I believe it's prudent to not dismiss the political positioning of this considering her father's role in the British government. It may prove useful in the future.'

Political positioning.

Would that any of that mattered to him regarding Lauren Winchester. The only positioning he'd been interested in during those youth-flushed days at university had been her beneath him, her sinful lips, beautifully greedy hands, and bottle-green eyes encouraging him to lose himself completely and utterly.

And he had.Much to his deep regret when her true nature had revealed itself.

Political positioning.

He silently sneered at the words, but slowly a different emotion shook free of the miasma, tunnelling through to take centre stage. Reminding him of every vow he'd made to himself twelve years ago.

He glanced once more at Ali, wondering whether there was an argument to be made for not dismissing his words out of hand.

There was a reason Ali was firmly sealed within Tahir's inner circle of trusted aides and advisers. Often the man wore both hats because he possessed an astuteness many underestimated.

'Is that it?' he prodded. 'Or is your penchant for mental chess hoping this would lead elsewhere?'

Ali delivered another of his rare wry smiles and shrugged. 'Some situations need a definitive check or checkmate. I'm merely facilitating an avenue for closure if it's required.'

Closure.

A fancy term peddled by psychologists for those too weak to put their problems behind them.

But...hadhe moved on? Was this unasked for but perhaps opportune situation what he needed to lay the despicable set of events to rest once and for all so he could pursue another subject his advisors were feverishly interested in-the task of picking a bride, producing heirs and fully securing his place as the ruler of Jukrat?

Tahir jerked to a stop when he realised he was pacing; he'd prowled from his desk to the far side of his impressively large office and now stood in front of his father's portrait.

He met the stern-faced, steely eyes of the previous sovereign of Jukrat, an unforgiving man who'd ruled with an equally unforgiving hand. A man who'd never given quarter, never mind suffering fools gladly, even when that fool was his own firstborn son.

Would his father approve of the decision slowly unspooling in Tahir's mind? Or would he see it as another display of the gross error of judgment he'd scathingly condemned him for twelve years ago?

Ali's throat cleared. 'Sire? Do you have instructions for me?'

Closure.Now the word was seared onto his brain, there was no shaking it free. He hadn't asked for nor desired this particular creature to wander into his lair. But would he be an even bigger fool to let her slip away? To let this wrong go unanswered?

His father might have disparaged him for what Tahir had let happen, but from that time to this, no such slurs had dared crossed the lips of friends or foes alike because he'd lived an exemplary life steeped in a single-minded dedication to duty, shrewd alliances and rigid personal discipline.

Yet somewhere deep within his own psyche the incident chafed, like a burr he'd been unable to root out despite his best efforts.

So...

No, came the bracing answer. He could not let this go unanswered.

'Cancel my remaining appointments. And bring Lauren Winchester to me.'

Tahir wasn't sure what he'd expected in the woman he hadn't seen in a dozen years. Precisely because he'd trained himself never to dwell on Lauren Winchester.

What confronted him ten minutes later, when the tall, sveltely shaped woman was ushered into his presence, was at once disturbing and curiously even morechargedthan their first meeting.

The first thing he noticed was that she was the worse for wear for having camped outside his palace gates purportedly for days. Her pale peach knee-length dress was smudged with dirt and the dark gold hair she'd once worn in tumbling waves was tamed now, half hidden beneath the white scarf she'd wrapped loosely over her head and shoulders.

The second searingly visceral thing he noticed was that-the first observation notwithstanding-Lauren Winchester hadn't lost an iota of her allure. If anything, she was more stunning.

Features once caught in the final flushes of girlhood had blossomed into true womanhood, her heart-shaped face with more pronounced cheekbones drawing attention to the worldliness and intelligence that sparked in her eyes.