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“You have no choice. But you are safe here with me. I will not harm you if that is what you are worried about.”
She shrugged, not wanting to admit that it would take a long time before she forgot the feel of his hands under her bottom, and his breath hot against her neck. It had aroused her in a way it most definitely shouldn’t have. She didn’t want to be aroused in any way whatsoever. She needed to keep things normal. Talk about everyday things. She racked her brains.
She turned to him with a fixed, polite smile. “Do you look after this place all by yourself?”
He answered her smile with an amused one of his own.
“Coffee?”
She nodded. It seemed the answer to her question was so supremely obvious he couldn’t be bothered to reply. Of course, he looked after the place by himself. Otherwise other people would be here.
“Take a seat.”
She did as he suggested, as it was infinitely preferable to standing with half her clothes hanging off while he removed the other half with his eyes. She made herself comfortable among the cushions on the low sofa, dragging her ragged abaya around her body in a vague attempt at modesty.
When she looked up, a small gas flame hissed steadily beneath a Dallah and he was grinding coffee beans in a mortar and pestle. There was something primitive about the scene, yet reassuring, too. She leaned back with a sigh against the kelim rug which was draped over the settle as the wind continued to howl and whine around the castle. She was safe here. Well, she corrected herself, at least she wasn’t going to die here. Or, if she was, she at least wanted to know his name.
“I’m Sarah, by the way.”
He turned to her. “Just Sarah?”
She nodded. She didn’t want to give everything away.
“My name is Kadar.”
“Nice to meet you, Kadar.”
His lips tweaked with amusement before he turned away. “Nice to meet you, too,” he said with obvious sarcasm. “Now, if we’ve done with the charming English manners, perhaps you can find some cups in the cupboard while I get some water boiling.”
“Of course,” she said, opening the first cupboard she came to and plucking out a couple of goblets. She placed them on the worn kitchen table, which dominated the room, and wondered why he didn’t seem to know where the cups were kept. “Will these do?” she asked doubtfully, noting the quality of workmanship on the unusual metal goblets. She twisted them under the lantern light, but they were dull with disuse. “They look pretty valuable.”
He shrugged. “They’re gold. From around the fifteenth century, by the look of them.”
Her eyes widened in surprise as she looked from the gold to him. Why was this palace caretaker able to access such treasures?
He was watching her too, and she blushed and looked away, uneasy under that intense stare. Could he read her mind? She hoped not.
“I’m sorry, I’m just surprised. Where I come from, such objects are kept under lock and key.”
“And where exactly do you come from, Sarah? You just don’t look like a Sarah from the English suburbs, or cities come to that.”
She frowned. She’d been hearing that all her life.
“No, my family isn’t from England originally. Anyway,” she said, determined to head him off from any interrogation into her background. “Youdon’t look like what you are, either.”
“And what exactly do you think I am?” His lips twisted with an amusement he appeared to be trying to suppress. She sensed he didn’t smile much.
She shrugged. “You’re alone in a castle in the middle of nowhere. I guess you’re some kind of live-in caretaker-handyman. And yet you don’t talk like a man who lives alone, looking after a castle deep in the desert. And yet you are.”
“And yet I am,” he repeated slowly. “It is hard to know what to believe, sometimes, isn’t it, Sarah?”
A shiver ran through her body by the way he said her name. The sibilance sounded like a caress.
He took a step closer to her. “Should we believe what we think we know?” He tapped his head. “In here? Or should we believe what we feel?” He tapped his gut. “In here? Instinct. Which do you think?”
Think? There was no way she could think at all with him standing so close to her, his intense gaze fixed on her.
She shook her head to rid it of the ridiculous fantasies which had suddenly sprung up in her mind. “I think…” She licked her lips, and she noticed his gaze drop to her mouth. She shivered. “I think,” she said more strongly this time, “that the coffee has just boiled.”
