The Desert King's Virgin Bride

The job was also so easy that she felt she could have done it with her eyes shut, and when she wasn’t working she kept the plants watered and read everything there was to know about Brighton, because she was determined to do well.

And when Jane and Charlie asked she told them simply that she’d been working in the Middle East but had wanted a change—and that was the truth. It was a gentle shoe-in to the working world, yet Sorrel felt incredibly nervous—given that just a few months ago she had been rubbing shoulders with political leaders and queens. Where had that serene and unflappable Sorrel gone? She seemed to have left her behind.

She guessed that her anxiety stemmed from more than just setting out on her own in a land which was like a foreign country to her—it was as if she had to acquire a whole new identity to cope with her new life.

For a start, she had to go out and buy clothes which were suitable for her new appointment, and how strange that felt—not having to follow the strict dress-code of her adopted country which had become second nature to her.

Without her neck-to-ankle silk gowns she felt almost…exposed—even though she wasn’t, not really, and certainly not compared to everyone else. She bought a couple of floaty long skirts and a pair of jeans—but the jeans hung disturbingly low on her hips and the T-shirts she wore with both clung to her breasts in a way she was not used to.

But this is England, she reminded herself—not Kharastan.

In fact, the clothes she wore were very modest—especially considering that the weather was blisteringly hot, since England was having the kind of freak summer heat-wave which Sorrel would never have anticipated. Even though they left the front door wide open, the office was like an oven—and during the still nights when she lay in bed Sorrel found herself longing for the air-conditioned coolness of the palace at Kumush Ay.

‘Aren’t you baking, dressed like that?’ asked Jane one morning, as flung her handbag down onto one of the desks. ‘You’re not in the Middle East now, you know—and these little sundresses are much cooler!’

‘Yes, they look cooler,’ agreed Sorrel, with a slight longing in her voice as she glanced at Jane’s bare thighs. ‘But my legs are so pale. Not like yours.’

‘Didn’t you sunbathe in…Kharastan?’ asked Jane.

‘It wasn’t really encouraged,’ said Sorrel, with wry understatement.

‘Well, my tan isn’t real,’ confided Jane—and when she saw Sorrel’s blank look she burst out laughing and began rubbing her hands together. ‘Oh, yes!’ she breathed, with gleeful enthusiasm. ‘I’ve always wanted to do a real-live makeover on someone!’

It was an experience that Sorrel would never forget. First came the beauty salon—where fake tan was sprayed all over her. When she emerged, she shrieked with horror at the blotchy, muddy mess her skin presented—until she was assured that the colour would flatten out. Next she had her toenails and fingernails painted in an iridescent shade of rose-pink.

‘You’ve never had a pedicure before?’ shrieked Jane in amazement.

‘Never,’ agreed Sorrel, pushing away her nagging feeling of doubt as she tried to imagine what Malik would say if he could see her now, lying back on a leather couch as if she was awaiting a medical examination, while the nail polish dried. He probably wouldn’t even deign to comment. She had taken her chosen path and was now a Western woman who could do exactly as she pleased—no longer under his protection or control. And he had moved on, too, eradicating her from his life completely—which presumably was why he hadn’t even had the courtesy to reply to her.

Hot tears stung at her eyes and she blinked them away, willing it not to hurt—not wanting it to hurt.

But it did hurt—and Sorrel despised herself for feeling a pain that had no justification in reality. Because nothing had gone on between her and Malik—absolutely nothing—except within the fertile planes of her imagination. Not a nod or a glance, nor a snatched look—and certainly never a kiss or even a touch. Sorrel swallowed. That was true. Unless you counted the times when as a child she had been learning to ride and he had first lifted her onto a horse and gently put her feet into the stirrups, Malik had never even touched her!

Even at the weddings of his two half-brothers—when the opportunity had been there—he had not danced with her. Much of the time he had been busy—like her—with the sheer mechanics of organising two such fancy functions, but when there had been a lull…No. She frowned in recall.

He had not actually danced with anyone—even though some of the more blatant female guests had been circling him as she had sometimes seen vultures circle a fallen leopard amid the blazing waste of desert sands.

So why was she allowing him to clog up her thoughts? And why was she continuing to dream this dream, which should have been growing more distant by the day—not featuring in glorious Technicolor in her mind.

It was time to move on, and there were practical ways she could do that. She’d found the apartment and the job—maybe it was time to stop standing on the sidelines of life in her homeland and to embrace the culture as would any other single young woman of twenty-five.

She glanced up at Jane, who was working her way through sample bottles of moisturiser. ‘Could we go shopping after work?’

‘Can we?’ Jane giggled. ‘I thought you’d never ask!’

Sorrel had never really hit the shops with a credit card before—her parents had not been big spenders, and had actively discouraged what they’d called the feeding frenzy of consumer spending. After their death it had simply not occurred to her to shop. While she’d been at the palace all her clothes had been paid for by the Sheikh—and she had discovered that a very generous salary had been paid into her bank account during those years.

So why shouldn’t she splurge a bit? Chainstore dresses weren’t exactly going to break the bank, were they?

And Jane was like a child who had been let loose in a dressing-up box.

‘Try this!’

‘No! I can’t—scarlet is not my colour,’ protested Sorrel.

‘How do you know until you’ve tried it?’

How indeed? To Sorrel’s surprise, Jane was right—not only did scarlet suit her, but the little cotton sundress looked rather good when teamed with some clashing orange beads. It was the last thing she would have worn in Kharastan—but surely that was a good thing? New life, she reminded herself. New woman.

In the end she bought four dresses, a denim mini-skirt, and some cool tops—some with teeny spaghetti straps and others with no straps at all—and a pair of vertiginous wedge sandals which made her legs look almost indecently long.

‘You’ll get a chance to show them off tonight,’ said Jane.

Sorrel blinked. Had she missed something? ‘What’s happening tonight?’ she asked.

‘You are,’ said Jane firmly. ‘I’m not asking any questions, since you obviously don’t want to talk about it, but I can tell just by looking at you that you’re trying to get over some bloke—the only way to do that is to find another one, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do!’

Sorrel’s first impulse was to recoil in horror at the very suggestion. To protest that finding a man was the last thing on her mind—until she began to worry that maybe there was something wrong with her. There must be—if she was objecting so strongly. In twenty-five years she had never had a boyfriend—never even kissed a man—and how sad was that? But there were some things you didn’t confide—and, much as she liked Jane, that was one of them.

She needed to break the cycle of emotional dependence on the man whose affection for her was based on his obligation as her guardian.

Swallowing down her panic, she nodded. ‘Where will we go?’

‘The wine bar. Tonight—at seven.’

Sorrel got ready, feeling mixed up and a fraud—but knowing that she should be experiencing the sense of excitement she suspected most other women her own age would be feeling if they were wearing brand-new clothes to go for a carefree night out on a hot summer evening. But she felt as if she was outside her own body, looking at herself with the detached eye of an interested observer instead of being the participant.

Part of her was aware that the itsy-bitsy floaty blue dress looked good, and that her blonde hair had never looked so pale or so shiny as it cascaded down her back to her waist. And that her tanned brown legs did look so flattering—especially when she wore them with open-toe sandals which showed off her dazzling pedicure.

There was an extraordinary moment when she walked into the crowded wine bar and every head turned in her direction. She looked behind her—thinking that someone famous must have followed her in. But, no, they were looking at her.

‘Why is everyone staring?’ she hissed at Jane, rubbing her finger underneath first one eye and then the other—in case her supposedly smudge-proof mascara hadn’t lived up to the extravagant claims made on the packet.

‘Oh, come on!’ reprimanded her friend acidly. ‘You look a knockout—that’s why. Charlie—get Sorrel a drink, will you?’

Sorrel accepted the glass of white wine Charlie pushed into her hand and took a sip. And here was another problem. Alcohol was not taken freely in Kharastan—although it was always provided in the palace for foreign dignitaries. But Sorrel had only ever tasted champagne at the royal weddings of Xavier and Giovanni—Malik’s two half-brothers—and she hadn’t been mad about it. It had made her feel a bit too dreamy on two dangerously romantic occasions, and she had looked up and found Malik glaring at her and had hastily put the glass down.

Well, not any more! Why shouldn’t she have a drink like any other person in the civilised world? It wasn’t as if she was knocking it back—not like some of Jane’s friends.

But a couple of large glasses of rough wine bar plonk was having a profound effect on a someone who wasn’t used to drinking and who hadn’t eaten anything since lunchtime. The wine bar had started to get hot and stuffy, with smoke drifting in from outside, where all the smokers were gathered, and Sorrel felt herself swaying slightly.

‘You okay?’ questioned Jane.

‘I need to eat something,’ said Sorrel woozily.

‘Yeah. Me, too. Tell you what—let’s get a curry and take it back to your place.’

It seemed churlish to object—especially when Jane had gone out of her way to help her buy clothes—and Sorrel didn’t even protest when several of the others they’d been talking to decided to tag along. They seemed a nice, if slightly noisy bunch, and she was going to have to learn about entertaining sooner or later, wasn’t she?