Sleeping with the Sultan. ALEXANDRA SELLERS
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volunteers—and you voted for the couple you would most like to see kiss.”
Dana felt a prickling of her skin, like a warning of doom. She flicked a glance at Sheikh Durran, and saw his mouth tighten. He knew, too. And was looking forward to it as much as she was.
“Now, while we’ve all been having such a fabulous good time, volunteers have been adding up all the votes and tallying them.”
She had agreed to it—of course they wouldn’t pull a thing like this without getting all the actresses’ permission first. But she had agreed with a shrug, thinking it would be just one more thing. A one-in-six chance of having to kiss some smitten stranger in public—how bad could it be? No worse than the auction itself.
But it was going to be a whole lot worse.
“And ladies and gentlemen, at the risk of shattering some delicate egos, I can tell you, it was no contest. The pair you most want to see giving each other a kiss, ladies and gentlemen, is Dana Morningstar and Sheikh Ashraf Durran!”
The bright light of the follow spot fell on them. Sheikh Ashraf was sitting like a statue. Dana realized suddenly that he of course had not been consulted. For the sheikh this was coming totally out of left field.
And he liked it even less than she did. She knew that by his face. Sheikh Ashraf Durran looked like nothing so much as the masks of Hawk her Ojibwa grandfather carved.
But this was a pressure even the coldly disapproving sheikh would not be able to resist.
Four
“Now, first, I’m going to ask you all to put your money where your mouths are. Let’s see how much you’re willing to pay….”
Dana smiled. Sheikh Ashraf was still looking as though sparks would fly off if you hit him with a hammer.
She looked into his face and smiled deliberately at him. Everyone was watching. “It’s inevitable,” she murmured, her eyebrow giving a flirtatious flicker as if she were joking with him. “Let’s just get it over with.”
He hesitated. “We will look far less foolish if we give in gracefully,” she warned him.
Meanwhile, Roddy was good-naturedly chivvying the audience into one last fit of generosity, reminding them of the starving children and the drought-stricken farms, making jokes about how poor old Sheikh Ashraf was going to have to kiss Dana, and what a terrible thing that was, while all the audience had to do was pay him to do it.
Someone drunkenly volunteered to stand in for the sheikh, and was speedily subdued by a witty rejoinder from Roddy that put off anyone else with that idea.
And the money buckets were going the rounds. At the edge of the stage someone was counting the cash and cheques and keeping Roddy advised as to the total.
Through it all the spotlight was on them. Dana smiled and laughed at the jokes. She no longer knew how Sheikh Ashraf was reacting, because although she smiled and flicked her eyes his way she didn’t actually focus on him. Roddy was being decent, his patter was very lighthearted and without innuendo, and she didn’t really understand why the whole thing was so hard to take.
Finally Roddy seemed to have milked them dry. He instructed the money-gatherers to pour all the money into a huge bucket at the front of the stage.
“Now, Dana, and Your Excellency, can I have you both up here on stage, please?”
Dana bit her lip and bent her head, taking a deep breath. Her blood was pounding in her head. She really didn’t understand why. It was nothing. A quick kiss was all that was required. And yet…
She let the breath out on a sigh, lifted her head, and, as one of the waiters appeared behind her chair, prepared to stand.
A hand clamped on her arm, keeping her seated. Dana looked down stupidly, noting the strength in the square fingers that curled around her flesh, the tawny skin against the shimmery white fabric of her dress, the heat that burned through it.
“Wait here,” he ordered softly.
He got to his feet, crossed the dance floor and moved up onto the little stage. Such was his presence, his charisma, Dana noted with awe, that the rowdy audience fell immediately silent and expectant.
“You know me,” he said, in his deep, firm voice. “You know who I am.” She heard a gasp from a table behind her, and a murmur rustled through the room. He waited, looking around at the audience with the unsmiling, calm confidence of…she wasn’t sure who she had ever seen with that kind of bone-deep authority.
The air seemed suddenly too heavy with expectation.
“I am Sheikh Ashraf Durran, Cup Companion to Prince Omar of Central Barakat. I am going to do what you want me to do, have no fear.”
There was a massive roar of voices and applause, led, she saw, by the Bagestani contingent. He let it soar and peak, then cut it off with a raised hand.
“I am willing, even without your very generous donations.” More cheers. “But this—” he gestured at the bucket of money at his feet with a flickering smile “—this is not by any means enough money to convince Miss Morningstar to make such a sacrifice as to kiss me.”
She laughed along with everyone else. God, he should be a preacher! He was absolutely mesmerizing them! People began to shout and wave money and cheques, which the hostesses hurried to collect. Sheikh Durran stood with his arms folded, watching.
Roddy, she saw, was gazing at him in stunned admiration. He absently accepted a note passed to him by one of the hostesses, read it, then, with a glance at Sheikh Ashraf, put the mike to his lips.
“I have a note here from Ahmed Bashir of Ahmed Bashir Motors on the Edgware Road, pledging to double the amount raised! So come on, ladies and gentlemen, this is your chance to give double your money!”
Sheikh Ashraf looked and nodded towards the table where Ahmed Bashir was sitting, and another cheer went up. For a man who had started out looking as if he were carved in oak, he sure learned fast, Dana reflected.
“What does he do for Prince Omar?” someone at the table leaned to ask Dana.
It was a natural assumption, the way things had gone tonight. But there was too much noise for explanation, and she simply smiled and shook her head.
“Miss Morningstar,” said Sheikh Ashraf from the stage, and Dana’s head whipped around as if she were a puppet and he had caught her string. He put out a hand. In the room suddenly the sound of the air conditioning seemed loud.
“They give all this to the starving if you will kiss me, Dana. Do you agree?”
A waiter pulled out her chair. Dana got to her feet, feeling half hypnotized, and moved with swift grace towards him. Her heart was pounding, and the smile playing on her lips now was involuntary.
“Not everyone knows, I think, that Miss Morningstar herself has very close ties with Bagestan. Her father is Colonel Golbahn,” said Sheikh Ashraf.
The Bagestanis in the audience were by now delirious. They screamed and cheered her up to the stage. Dana was totally bemused by the reaction.
“That is why—” They fell silent again, as if he held their strings, too. “That is why Miss Morningstar agrees to this blackmail. Because the money is going to a cause that is very close to all our hearts.” Wild, almost hysterical applause. “The hungry, desperate children—all the hungry and desperate people—of Bagestan.”
She reached the dais and lifted her hand. The platform was only a foot high, but Sheikh Ashraf seemed to tower over her. “You should take this kiss, therefore, as a symbol of our love for Bagestan, and our determination to fill the hungry ache of its people.”
And with that he bent over her, wrapped his arms around her, lifted her bodily up against him, and clamped his mouth to hers with a passion and a thirst that made the world go black.
“You