Sheikh's Dark Seduction: Seduced by the Sultan

But she felt horribly vulnerable as she struggled out of bed. As if she’d been caught with all her defences down and she wasn’t sure how best to erect them again. Grabbing an armful of clothes, she went along the corridor to the communal bathroom, but the face which stared back at her from the mirror confirmed her worst fears. She touched the sweat-soaked tendrils of her hair, which hung around her pinched face. Murat had seen her like this. Unwashed and pale and looking nothing like the woman he had once lived with.

She told herself she was no longer his arm-candy, nor was she trying to impress him. Nonetheless, she spent a long time in the sputtering shower, half expecting him to be gone by the time she returned to her room. He hadn’t, of course, and she blinked at the scene which greeted her. He had made the bed and boiled the kettle and was now pouring boiling water into two mugs, in which bobbed a couple of teabags. It made such a comforting yet incongruous image, that for a moment she felt as if she were right back in the middle of her delirium.

He glanced up as she walked in, his black eyes lingering on her for a moment longer than was necessary. ‘You look better,’ he commented.

‘That wouldn’t be difficult. I feel much better.’ She put her damp towel in the linen basket, knowing what she needed to say. But it felt strange to be doing so without her arms looped around his neck or her lips brushing against that unshaven jaw. ‘I want to thank you for what you did.’

‘It was nothing.’

‘Yes, it was.’ She tried to concentrate on the situation as it was, rather than what she wanted it to be. She suddenly realised why he’d once told her that he wasn’t in the habit of seducing virgins. Their dreams are still intact. And hers had been, hadn’t they? No matter how hard she’d tried to convince herself that she didn’t do the dream stuff—she could see now that she had been deluding herself. She’d believed that she was immune to emotion because she had wanted to believe it and because it had allowed her to buy a ticket into his life. He’d wanted a no-strings affair and she’d convinced herself that she was happy to go along with that. But maybe at heart she was just a woman who’d been longing for him to commit to her all along.

‘I’m very grateful for all you’ve done, but I won’t take up any more of your time,’ she said, watching him squeeze out a teabag. ‘There must be something important needing your attention.’

‘I can take care of my own timetable, Cat,’ he said, handing her a mug of tea. ‘I want you to tell me about your mother.’

She felt her cheeks growing red. ‘I told you everything last night.’

He shook his head. ‘Not really. You spoke in terms of a problem, but not in terms of a solution. Has she ever tried rehab?’

‘Rehab’s expensive.’

‘So that’s a no?’

‘Of course it’s a no!’ she bit back. ‘We’re ordinary people, Murat. Where do you suppose we could find that kind of money?’

His eyes didn’t leave her face. ‘You could have asked me.’

‘But that would have involved telling you—and I didn’t want to tell you, for reasons you can probably understand.’

‘I’d like to meet her,’ he said suddenly.

‘Well, you can’t.’

‘What are you so scared of, Cat?’

Surely even he knew the answer to that. She didn’t want to see the disgust on his face when he saw just how sordid her home life had been. And it wasn’t fair of him to want to intrude on her life like this. Because this wasn’t what happened in their particular relationship. They had separate lives. Separate futures.

Yet as she saw a familiar look of determination glinting from his eyes, she wondered what she was trying to protect herself from. She didn’t have to try to impress him any more. It was over. It didn’t matter how many of her dark secrets he discovered, did it?

‘If you want to meet my mother then we’ll go and meet her,’ she said. ‘When did you have in mind?’

‘How about now?’ His gaze searched her face. ‘That is, if you’re feeling well enough.’

Her throat constricted. ‘She won’t be expecting us. She won’t have had time to tidy the place up.’ She said the words as if she came from a normal house. As if she had the kind of mother who had ever bothered tidying up.

‘I don’t care,’ said Murat. ‘And before you say anything, I’d actually enjoy making an impromptu visit for once. Do you have any idea what usually happens when I plan a trip somewhere? How entire rooms are repainted and new furniture bought?’

‘You’re unlikely to get anything like that at my mother’s house,’ she said flippantly. ‘You’ll be lucky to get fresh milk, let alone fresh paint.’

His expression didn’t change. ‘Shall we go?’

‘Well, you’ve asked for it,’ she said as she looked round the room for her shoes.

She locked the door behind them and followed him down to the hotel car park, where his two black limousines were inciting a lot of interest.

In no time at all they had left the little seaside town and were driving past fields blurred with rain and dotted with the dripping forms of motionless sheep. She saw the grey buildings of villages and sometimes the fluttering of the distinctive Welsh flag, with its proud scarlet dragon set on a green and white background. The car picked up speed as they headed south, until tall columns of factory chimneys began to appear in the distance.

At last their small convoy entered a street which was barely wide enough to accommodate the width of the two cars. Rows of tiny identical houses lay before them and Catrin tried to imagine what they must look like to Murat’s eyes. Did he see the stray piece of garbage which drifted over the pavement, or notice the peeling paintwork on her mother’s front door?

She dreaded what the inside of the house would look like. If her sister was still here, then at least she could have relied on the place looking halfway respectable. But Rachel was now back at Uni and, while grateful that she was out of the inevitable firing line, Catrin was a mass of nerves as she rang the doorbell.

At first there was a pause so long that she wondered if her mother was down at the local pub. And didn’t part of her pray that was the case? So that they could just go away and this awful meeting would never happen? But she could hear the distant sound of the TV, and the slow shuffle of footsteps which greeted Murat’s second ring told her that her hopes were in vain.

The door opened and Ursula Thomas stood there, swaying a little as she peered at them—her stained and scruffy clothes failing to hide a faint paunch. Her once beautiful features were coarsened and ruddy, and the emerald eyes so like her daughter’s were heavily bloodshot. And just as she did pretty much every time she saw her, Catrin felt the inevitable wave of sadness which washed over her as she looked at her mother. What a waste, she thought. What a waste of a life.

‘Catrin?’ Ursula said, her gaze focusing and then refocusing.

‘Yes, Mum. It’s me. And I’ve brought a...friend to see you. Murat, this is Ursula—my mother. Mum, this is Murat.’

Ursula looked up at Murat and gave him a vacant smile. ‘You haven’t got a smoke on you by any chance?’ she said.

Catrin half expected Murat to turn around and walk straight back to his car, but he did no such thing. Instead, he shrugged his broad shoulders as if people asked him such things every day of the week.

‘Not on me, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘May we come in?’

Ursula looked him up and down before opening the door to let them in.

As they picked their way over the discarded shoes and empty plastic bags which were littering the small hallway Catrin watched as Murat followed her mother into a tiny sitting room which reeked of stale smoke. On a small table next to a faded armchair stood a half-empty tumbler of vodka. Beside the glass was a crumpled cigarette packet and an overflowing ashtray. A game show blared out from the giant TV screen and the sound of the canned studio laughter added a surreal touch to the bizarre meeting.

Catrin wanted to curl up and die but her shame lasted only as long as it took for her self-worth to assert itself. Because she had done nothing to be ashamed of. This was not her house, nor her mess. And Ursula was ill, not wicked.

She glanced up at Murat but the expression on his hawkish face gave nothing away. He glanced down to meet her eyes and gave her the faintest of smiles.

‘I wonder if you’d mind going out to buy a packet of cigarettes, Cat?’ he questioned calmly. ‘While I have a talk to your mother.’

The request threw her. Confused her. She wanted to refuse, but something told her that refusal wasn’t an option.

‘Okay,’ she said, and left her mother blinking in some bewilderment as she realised she was going to be left alone with the towering figure of the Sultan.

Catrin let herself out onto the narrow street and sucked in some of the damp, cool air. On the other side of the street, she saw a curtain twitch and she turned to trace some of the old, familiar steps of her childhood. The little corner shop was still there, hanging on despite the inexorable march of the out-of-town hypermarket, and she bought a pack of cigarettes and a carton of milk.

She didn’t have a clue what Murat was going to say to her mother but right then she didn’t care, because she trusted him to do the right thing. He might have been emotionally closed down as a partner, but she’d read enough about Qurhah to know that he was revered as a ruler, both at home and abroad. And in truth, wasn’t it a comfort to have someone else taking over like this, even if it was only for a short while? Hadn’t the burden of responsibility always fallen on her?

She’d spent her life trying to shield Rachel from the fall-out of this sordid and erratic life. She’d cooked meals from store-cupboard scraps and bought food at the end of the day from the nearby market, when they were practically giving the stuff away. She’d known survival in bucket-loads, but she’d never known comfort. She had always been prepared for the final demands landing on the doormat. Or the telephone being cut off because the money put aside for the bill had been drunk away.

Maybe that was what had made her so determined to hang onto what Murat had offered her. Like some urchin who’d spent her life shivering outside in the cold, hadn’t she also been attracted by his lifestyle, which had cushioned her in unfamiliar luxury?

By the time she got back with the cigarettes, she found her mother slumped in the armchair, but the ashtray had been emptied and the glass of vodka replaced by a mug of black coffee. Murat emerged from the kitchen, his jacket removed and his shirtsleeves rolled up.