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“Thank you. I appreciate it. I really do. Goodness,” she held up her backpack, “for you even to have got this back is a minor miracle.”
“Minor miracles happen to be my speciality,” he said, pulling her into his arms, his thumb stroking down her cheek as he looked into her eyes.
Her stomach flipped with desire and she would happily have stripped there and then for him with no thought to anything else except he looked away, as if listening for something.
“Time to go,” he said.
And she was suddenly aware of a thrumming sound coming ever closer.
She looked at him, perplexed. “A helicopter? Who is coming here?”
“No one. It’s us who are leaving,” he said, smiling at her confusion.
“By helicopter?”
“Yes, of course. It would take too long to return by car. Come,” he said, putting his arm around her and guiding her out of the hall, towards the front courtyard.
“But, I don’t understand.” She swept her arm around the castle. “What about this place? The doors are open. Don’t you have to go around and secure everything?”
“Things will be secured, I assure you.” He stepped out into the bright light of the courtyard and lowered his dark glasses. “You may wish to wait in the porch because of the sand.”
She did as he suggested and stepped back into the shelter of the porch. “But I don’t understand. Kadar, who will secure it if we don’t?”
He didn’t answer as her words were lost in the helicopter's noise as it came in to land close by. Kadar slid his kaffiyeh up around his mouth as sand filled the air.
Three people jumped out and approached Kadar. But not with the air of people coming to reclaim their home.
The three stopped five paces short of Kadar and bowed. Kadar issued a series of orders—although he spoke in Arabic, the tone was clearly an order—and the three disappeared into the castle.
Kadar turned to her, held out his hand. “Come, it is time.”
She couldn’t move. “Kadar? What…” She gestured with her hand to the three men. “What was all that about? I don’t understand. Who were those men?”
He sighed and turned to her. “They are the king’s men. They will make sure the place is tidied and secure and will return to the city later. Come,” he gestured again.
She walked in a daze beside him as she tried to make sense of his words. But no matter which way around she arranged the logic, it pointed to one thing.
She climbed into the helicopter and buckled herself in as instructed.
She watched as Kadar exchanged a few words with the pilot and then took a seat beside her.
“Is everything all right, Sarah? You look pale.”
She shook her head. “No, I don’t think it is. Because I don’t understand why the king’s men are here. I mean, who asked them to come?”
“I did.”
“But… That’s really weird.”
He sighed and turned to her. “Not when I happen to be the king, it’s not.”
CHAPTER 7
Sarah spent the short helicopter ride back to the city, staring out the window in a state of shock.
Kadar was the king of Sirun? The man she’d just spent nearly twenty-four hours with was the son of the man responsible for the deaths of her parents? The man most hated by her grandfather? She swallowed hard. She’d slept with the enemy and she’d had no idea.
She looked across at him while he spoke into a mouthpiece to some unknown official. His gaze was directed forward into the mid-distance as he concentrated on his phone conversation. It was as if he’d changed before her eyes. She wondered briefly if he knew his father had killed her parents, but dismissed the idea immediately. Why should he? From what her grandfather had said, the late king had been brutal with more people than just her own family.
