Page 3 of Her Vow to Be His Desert Queen

Shouting at him was pointless. It didn’t matter that he’d broken off their friendship as if it had meant nothing. As ifshemeant nothing.

It didn’t matter how he treated her; she didn’t care. She was successful and happy and didn’t need him any more.

Ignoring the anger that sat hot and burning in the pit of her stomach, she also forced down the betraying leap of joy that tightened around her heart. And gave him a cool, measuring look. ‘Khalil. This is a surprise. I wasn’t expecting to see you, obviously. But I was actually in the middle of a date.’ Really, he should know he’d interrupted something. She hadn’t been sitting around all these years just waiting for him.

Those dark, winged brows arrowed down. ‘A date? With whom?’

It seemed some things hadn’t changed. The Oxford colleges had had their fair share of arrogant people, but Khalil’s arrogance was really something else. So far, so prince, she’d thought. Yet even his two friends, Galen and Augustine, who were also princes and whom she’d met very briefly a couple of times, weren’t as arrogant as he was.

Then she’d found out that Al Da’ira was an absolute monarchy where the rulers were viewed as semi-divine, and their word was law. In that context his arrogance had made sense, though she hadn’t put up with it. He’d liked that about her, or so he’d said. He liked that she treated him as an ordinary person, not a prince.

Except the man sitting opposite her now didn’t look like an ordinary person. He didn’t look like the friend she remembered either, the intense, brooding young man he’d once been. He’d been like a stormy, dark sea, she’d often thought back then. Full of complex, dangerous currents, and yet when the sun shone through the water there was such lightness and aching beauty. His rare smiles. His compassion. His deeply hidden, wry sense of humour.

None of that was in evidence now, though. The lines of his face were hard and set and cold. He wasn’t the sea any more. He was the rock that lay at the bottom of it.

‘It was a birthday date,’ she explained coolly. ‘With Derek.’

‘Derek?’ Khalil glanced around. ‘I see no Derek.’

‘No. Because you just rudely ordered him out of the pub.’

‘Him? He was in my way.’ Khalil gestured insistently with the balloon. ‘Take it.’

Her heart gave a tiny jolt that he’d remembered, but she’d told herself she wasn’t going to let anything he did or said mean anything, so again she ignored it.

You want it to mean something, though.

No. No, she absolutely did not. She’d got rid of the last remaining feelings she had for him years ago. And if her heart ached and she felt breathless on seeing him now, it was only shock. Nothing more.

However, it seemed silly not to take the balloon, so she reached for it. Only to fight yet another jolt, this time physically as his fingers brushed hers and a familiar spark of electricity leapt between them.

She still remembered the first time she’d felt it, the night Khalil had thrown her a birthday party for her twenty-first. She’d never had a party before, because her aunt had never celebrated her birthday, still less a surprise party.

It had been the most wonderful night. She didn’t have many friends, but he’d invited all of them, plus his own bigger, wilder crowd. There had been lots of music and laughter, and dancing. There had been balloons. There had been a cake. Everyone had sung her ‘Happy Birthday’, and she’d nearly cried because it had been so lovely.

Her first birthday party ever and it had been a huge success.

Much later that night, Khalil had pulled her into his arms and danced with her, and she’d become aware, all at once, of his warmth. The hard-muscled plane of his chest. His scent. She’d always thought of him as beautiful, dazzling even. But that was the night she’d realised she wanted him.

An echo of that old longing hit her now, making her hand jerk and the balloon bob violently in response. Luckily, he didn’t seem to notice.

‘Thank you,’ she said, with what she hoped was some degree of calm. ‘Both for the balloon and the cupcake. But really, you were inexcusably rude to Derek and I should go and make sure—’

‘I will deal with it,’ Khalil interrupted with the same arrogance she remembered from years ago. Or maybe not the same. There was a hard edge to it now that hadn’t been there before.

He turned his head and instantly one of his men was there. He issued a curt command in the lyrical Arabic dialect of his home country, and the man darted away.

Sidonie frowned. ‘What did you say to him?’

‘I told him to go and find your Derek and pay him a suitable amount of money for the inconvenience of ending your date early.’ Khalil smiled, his teeth flashing white against his bronzed skin, but his black eyes remained sharp as obsidian. ‘Do not worry.’

That smile wasn’t the same either. There was no warmth in it at all. A tiger’s smile.

He is not the man you knew. Not any more.

‘So, what are you doing here?’ she asked in the most neutral voice possible, repressing the odd shiver that went through her. ‘Apart from being terribly rude to a friend of mine, of course. I didn’t know you were in the country.’ She wasn’t going to point out exactly how long it had been since he’d last contacted her, because naturally she hadn’t been keeping track.

Khalil didn’t reply. Instead, he frowned down at the cupcake. Then abruptly he held out his hand and one of the men in black suits sprang over and put a lighter in it. Khalil didn’t look at him, proceeding to light the candle on her cupcake before holding his hand out again so the same man could take the lighter from it. Then he leaned back in the booth seat, powerful arms resting across the back of it, and fixed her with an intense stare.

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