The Call of the Desert. ABBY GREENЧитать онлайн книгу.

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      This is for India Grey, Natalie Rivers

      and Heidi Rice—I couldn’t do this job without any of you, and it wouldn’t be half as much fun. Thank you.

      (My phone company also extends its thanks

      for keeping them in business.)

      CHAPTER ONE

      “THE Emir of Burquat. His Royal Highness Sheikh Kaden Bin Rashad al Abbas.”

      Kaden looked out over the thronged ballroom in London’s exclusive Royal Archaeology Club. Everyone was staring at him and a hush had descended on the crowd, but that didn’t bother Kaden. He was used to such attention.

      He walked down the ornate marble steps, one hand in his trouser pocket, watching dispassionately as people were caught staring and turned away hurriedly again. Well, to be more accurate, the men turned away and the women’s looks lingered—some blatantly so. Like that of the buxom waitress who was waiting at the bottom of the stairs to hand him a glass of champagne. She smiled coquettishly as he took the glass but Kaden had already looked away; she was far too young for his jaded heart and soul.

      Ever since he’d been a teenager he’d been aware he possessed a certain power when it came to women. When he looked in the mirror, though, and saw his own harsh features staring back at him, he wondered cynically if all they felt was the seductive urge to wipe away that cynicism and replace it with something softer. He had been softer … once. But it was so long ago now that he could hardly remember what it had felt like. It was like a dream, and perhaps like all dreams it had never been real.

      Just then a movement on the other side of the room caught his eye, and a glimpse of a shiny blonde head among all the darker ones had his insides contracting. Still. Even now. He cursed himself and welcomed the sight of the club’s managing director hurrying towards him, wondering angrily why he hadn’t yet mastered such arbitrarily reflexive responses to the memory of something that had only ever been as flimsy as a dream.

      Julia Somerton’s heart was palpitating, making her feel a little dizzy.

       Kaden.

       Here.

       In the same room.

      He’d descended the stairs and disappeared into the throng of people, despite his superior height. But that first image of him, appearing in the doorway like some sleek, dark-haired god, would be etched on her retina for ever. It was an image that was already carved indelibly onto her heart. The part of her heart that she couldn’t erase him from, no matter how much she tried or how much time passed.

      She’d noted several things in the space of that heart-stopping split second when she’d heard his name being called and had looked up. He was still as stupendously gorgeous as he’d been when she’d first met him. Tall, broad and dark, with the exotic appeal of someone not from these lands—someone who had been carved out of a much more arid and unforgiving place. He’d been too far away for her to see him in any detail, but even from where she’d stood she’d felt the impact of that black gaze—eyes so dark you could lose yourself for ever. And hadn’t she once?

      Some small, detached part of herself marvelled that he could have such an effect on her after all this time. Twelve long years. She was a divorcée now, a million miles from the idealistic girl she’d once been. When she’d known him.

      The last time she’d seen Kaden she’d just turned twenty—weeks before his own twentieth birthday. Something she’d used to tease him mercilessly about: being with an older woman.

      Her heart clenched so violently that she put a hand to her chest, and one of her companions said with concern, “Julia, dear, are you all right? You’ve gone quite pale.”

      She shook her head, and placed her drink down on a nearby table with a sweaty hand. Her voice came out husky, rough, “It must be the heat … I’ll just get some air for a minute.”

      Blindly Julia made her way through the crowd, pushing, not looking left or right, heading for where patio doors led out to a terrace which overlooked manicured gardens. She only vaguely heard her colleague call after her, “Don’t go too far—you’ve got to say your piece soon!”

      When she finally reached the doors and stepped out, she sucked in huge lungfuls of air. She felt shaky and jelly-like—at a remove from everything. She recognised shock. It was mid-August and late evening. The city air was heavy and oppressively warm. The faintly metallic scent of a storm was in the atmosphere. Huge clouds sat off in the distance, as if waiting for their cue to roll in. The garden here was famous for its exotic species of plants which had been brought back by many an adventurer and nurtured over the years by the dedicated gardeners.

      But Julia was blind to all that.

      Her hands gripped the wall so hard her knuckles shone white in the gathering twilight. She was locked in a whirlpool of memories, so many memories, and they were as bright and as painfully bittersweet as if it had all happened yesterday.

      Ridiculously tears pricked her eyes, and an awful sense of loss gripped her. Yet how could this be? She was a thirty-two-year-old woman. Past her prime, many people would say, or perhaps coming into it, others would maintain. She felt past her prime. The day she’d flown away from the Emirate of Burquat on the Arabian Peninsula something inside her had withered