The Call of the Desert
‘I thought the storm was over.’
With a move so smooth she didn’t even feel it happening Kaden had put his hands on her arms and pulled her closer. Their bodies were almost touching.
‘I think the storm is just beginning.’
For a second confusion made Julia’s head foggy. She couldn’t seem to be able to separate out his words. And then she realised—when she saw how hot his gaze had become and how it moved down to her mouth. Desire was stamped onto the stark lines of his face and Julia’s heart beat fast in response. Because it was a look that had haunted her dreams for ever.
Desperately trying to fight the waves of need beating through her veins, she shook her head and tensed, trying to pull back out of Kaden’s grip.
‘Kaden, no. I shouldn’t be here … We shouldn’t have met again.’
Kaden shook his head, and a tiny harsh smile touched his mouth. ‘From the moment we stood in front of each other in that room the possibility of this has existed.’
Bitterness rang in Julia’s voice. ‘The possibility of this stopped existing twelve years ago in Burquat—or have you forgotten what happened?’
About the Author
ABBY GREEN got hooked on Mills & Boon>® romances while still in her teens, when she stumbled across one belonging to her grandmother in the west of Ireland. After many years of reading them voraciously, she sat down one day and gave it a go herself. Happily, after a few failed attempts, Mills & Boon bought her first manuscript.
Abby works freelance in the film and TV industry, but thankfully the four a.m. starts and the stresses of dealing with recalcitrant actors are becoming more and more infrequent, leaving her more time to write!
She loves to hear from readers, and you can contact her through her website at www.abby-green.com. She lives and works in Dublin.
Recent titles by the same author:
THE SULTAN’S CHOICE
SECRETS OF THE OASIS
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.