The Desert Bride & Playing the Greek's Game
Autore
Lynne Graham
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Chapter 1
‘Pretty impressive, eh?’ Ed Lancaster remarked in the slow-moving queue to Visa Clearance. ‘And yet five years ago there was nothing here but a set of concrete sheds and an unrelieved view of the sand-dunes! King Azmir pumped the oil but he stockpiled the profits. His tightfisted attitude caused a lot of resentment, not only with the locals but with the foreign workers as well. Conditions used to be really primitive here.’
The American businessman had joined their flight at a stopover in Dubai. He hadn’t stopped talking for thirty seconds since then, but Bethany had been grateful to be distracted from the grim awareness that, had her departmental head not decreed that she centre her research on this particular part of the Middle East, nothing short of thumbscrews and brute force would have persuaded her to set one foot in the country of Datar!
‘When King Azmir fell ill the crown prince, Razul, took over,’ Ed rattled on, cheerfully impervious to the fact that Bethany had stiffened and turned pale. ‘Now he’s a different kettle of fish altogether. He’s packed fifty years of modernisation into five. He’s an astonishing man. He’s transformed Datari society…’
Beneath her mane of vibrantly colourful curls Bethany’s beautiful face had frozen, her stunningly green eyes hardening to polar ice. All of a sudden she wanted Ed to shut up. She did not want to hear about Prince Razul al Rashidai Harun. Nor did she have the smallest urge to admit that their paths had crossed quite unforgettably during Razul’s brief spell at university.
‘And the people absolutely adore him. Razul’s like their national hero. They call him the Sword of Truth. You mention democracy and they get real mad,’ Ed complained feelingly. ‘They start talking about how he saved them from civil war during the rebellion, how he took command of the army, et cetera, et cetera. They’ve actually made a film about it, they’re so proud of him—’
‘I expect they must be,’ Bethany said flatly, an agonisingly sharp tremor of bitterness quivering through her.
‘Yes, sirree,’ Ed sighed with unhidden admiration. ‘Although this divine cult they’ve built up around him can be painful, he is one hell of a guy! By the way,’ Ed added, pausing for breath, ‘who’s coming to collect you?’
‘Nobody,’ Bethany muttered, praying that the monologue on Razul was over.
Ed frowned. ‘But you’re travelling alone.’
Bethany suppressed a groan. Actually, she hadn’t been alone at Gatwick. A research assistant had been making the trip with her. But, with only minutes to go before they boarded, Simon had tripped over a carelessly sited briefcase and had come down hard enough to break his ankle. She had felt dreadful simply abandoning him to the paramedics but, aside from the fact that she barely knew the young man, work naturally had had to take precedence.
‘Why shouldn’t I be travelling alone?’
‘How on earth did you get a visa?’ Ed prompted, suddenly looking very serious.
‘The usual way… What’s wrong?’
‘Maybe nothing.’ Ed shrugged with an odd air of discomfiture, not meeting her enquiring gaze. ‘You want me to stay with you in case there should be a problem?’
‘Of course not, and I see no reason why there should be a problem,’ Bethany informed him rather drily.
But there was. Ed had just moved off with an uneasy wave when the Datari official scrutinised her visa and asked, ‘Mr Simon Tarrant?’
Bethany frowned.
‘According to your visa, you are travelling with a male companion. Where is he?’
‘He wasn’t able to make the flight,’ she explained with some exasperation.
‘So you are travelling unaccompanied, Dr Morgan?’ he stressed, with a dubious twist of his mouth, as if he could not quite credit the validity of her academic doctorate. That didn’t surprise her. Female children had only recently acquired the legal right to education in Datar. The concept of a highly educated woman struck the average Datari male as about as normal as a little green man from the moon.
‘Any reason why I shouldn’t be?’ Bethany demanded irritably, her cheeks reddening as she was drawn to one side, the embarrassing cynosure of attention for everyone else in the queue.
‘Your visa is invalid,’ the official informed her, signalling to two uniformed guards already looking in their direction. ‘You cannot enter Datar. You will be returned to the UK on the next available flight. If you do not possess a return ticket, we will generously defray the expense.’
‘Invalid?’ Bethany gasped in disbelief.
‘Obtained by deception.’ The official treated her to a frown of extreme severity before he turned to address the other two men in a voluble spate of Arabic.
‘Deception?’ Bethany echoed rawly, unable to credit that the man could possibly be serious.
‘The airport police will hold you in custody until you depart,’ she was informed.
The airport police were already gawping at her with blatant sexual speculation. Even in the midst of her incredulous turmoil at being threatened with immediate deportation, those insolent appraisals made Bethany’s teeth grit with outrage. Sometimes she thought her physical endowments were nature’s black joke on the male species. With her outlook on the male sex she should have been born plain and homely, not with a face, hair and body which put out entirely the wrong message!
‘You are making a serious mistake,’ Bethany spelt out, drawing herself up to her full height of five feet three inches. ‘I demand to speak to your superior! My visa was legitimately issued by the Datari embassy in London—’ She broke off as she realised that absolutely nobody was listening to her and the policemen were already closing in on her with an alarming air of purpose.
A sensation new to Bethany’s experience filled her. It was fear—sheer, cold fear. Panic swept over her. She sucked in oxygen in a stricken gasp and employed the single defensive tactic she had in her possession. ‘I would like you to know that I am a close personal friend of Crown Prince Razul’s!’
The official, who was already turning away, swung back and froze.
‘We met while he was studying in England.’ Her cheeks burning with furious embarrassment at the fact that she should have been forced to resort to name-dropping even to earn a hearing, Bethany tilted her chin, and as she did so the overhead lights glittered fierily over her long torrent of curling hair, playing across vibrant strands that ran from burning copper to gold to Titian in a glorious sunburst of colour.
The official literally gaped, his jaw dropping as he took in the full effect of that hair. Backing off a step, his swarthy face suddenly pale, he spoke in a surge of guttural Arabic to the two policemen. A look of shock swiftly followed by horror crossed their faces. They backed off several feet too, as if she had put a hex on them.
‘You are the one,’ the official positively whispered, investing the words with an air of quite peculiar significance.
‘The one what?’ Bethany mumbled, distinctly taken aback by the staggering effect of her little announcement.
He gasped something urgent into his radio, drawing out a hanky to mop at his perspiring brow. ‘There has been a dreadful, unforgivable misunderstanding, Dr Morgan.’
‘My visa?’
‘No problem with visa. Please come this way,’ he urged, and began to offer fervent apologies.
Within minutes a middle-aged executive type arrived and introduced himself as Hussein bin Omar, the airport manager. His strain palpable, he started frantically apologising as well, sliding from uncertain English into Arabic, which made him totally incomprehensible. He insisted on showing her into a comfortable office off the concourse, where he asked her to wait until her baggage was found. He was so servile that it was embarrassing.
Ironically, the very last thing Bethany had wanted was to draw any unwelcome attention to her arrival in Datar. Suddenly she fervently wished that she had kept her stupid mouth shut. Her reference to Razul had been prompted by a shameful attack of panic. Why on earth hadn’t she stayed calm and used logical argument to settle the mistaken impression that there was something wrong with her visa? And why all that silly fuss about the fact that she was travelling alone?
Fifteen nail-biting minutes later the airport manager reappeared and ushered her out…out onto a red carpet which had not been in place earlier. Bethany began to get all hot and bothered, her nervous tension rocketing to quite incredible heights. The VIP treatment staggered her. Everybody was looking at her. Indeed it was as though the whole airport had ground to a dead halt and there was this strange atmosphere of what could only be described as…electric excitement.
It had to be a case of mistaken identity, Bethany decided, struggling to hold onto her usually bomb-proof composure. Who on earth did Hussein bin Omar think she was? Or did an acquaintance with Razul automatically entitle one to such extraordinary attention at the airport?
What an idiot she had been to claim friendship with him…especially as it was a lie…a really quite blatant lie, she conceded inwardly, grimly recalling her last volatile meeting with the Crown Prince of Datar, slamming down hard on the piercing pain that that memory brought with it. She had had a narrow escape—a damned lucky narrow escape, she reminded herself fiercely. She had very nearly made an outsize fool of herself, but at least he had never known that. She hadn’t given him that much satisfaction.
A whole column of spick and span policemen were standing to attention on the sun-baked pavement outside. Bethany turned pale. The heat folded in, dampening her skin beneath the loose beige cotton shirt and serviceable trousers she wore. Her discreet little trip to Datar had gone wildly off the rails.
‘Your escort, Dr Morgan.’ Hussein bin Omar snapped his fingers and a policeman darted forward to open the door of the waiting police car.
‘My escort?’ Bethany echoed shakily just as a young woman hurried forward and planted an enormous bunch of. flowers in her startled hands. As if that were not enough, her fingers were grasped and kissed. Then for a split second everybody hovered as though uncertain of what to do next.
‘Allah akbar…God is great!’ the airport manager suddenly cried. Several other excited male voices eagerly joined him in the assurance.
At that point Bethany simply folded backwards into the police car. The whole bunch of them were crazy! Instantaneously she scolded herself for the reflection. As an anthropologist trained to understand cultural differences, such a reflection ill became her. As the car lurched into sudden motion and the driver set off a shrieking siren to accompany their progress she told herself. to be calm, but that was difficult when she noticed the two other police cars falling in behind them.
Common sense offered the most obvious explanation. Hussein bin Omar had been appalled by the mistake over her visa because she had claimed that she knew Razul. In short, this outrageous fuss was his attempt to save lost face and simultaneously demonstrate his immense respect for the Datari royal family. That was why she had been supplied with a police escort to take her to her hotel outside the city. All very much over the top, but then this was not England, this was Datar—a feudal kingdom with a culture which had only recently begun to climb up out of the dark ages of medievalism.
She closed her eyes in horror as her driver charged a red light, forcing every other vehicle to a halt. Fearfully lifting her lashes again, she gazed out at the city of Al Kabibi as it sped by far too fast. Ultra-modern skyscrapers and shopping malls mingled with ancient, turquoise-domed mosques, the old and the new coexisting side by side.
As it left the lush white villas of the suburbs behind, the broad, dusty highway forged a path through a landscape of desolate desert plains. Bethany sat forward to get a better view of the fortress-like huge stone walls rising out of the emptiness ahead. Her driver jabbered excitedly into his radio while endeavouring to overtake a Mercedes with only two fingers on the steering wheel.
Bethany was on the edge of her seat, praying. And then, without any warning at all, the car swerved off the road outside the fortress and powered through a set of enormous turreted gates. A clutch of robed tribesmen suddenly appeared directly in their path. They were brandishing machine-guns. The driver jumped so hard on the brakes that Bethany was flung along the back seat, and then she heard the splintering crack-crack of gunfire and threw herself down onto the floor, curling up into as tight a defensive ball as possible.
The car rolled to a halt. She stayed down, trembling with fear, wondering if the driver had been shot but not prepared to raise her head until the bullets stopped flying. The door clicked open.
‘Dr Morgan?’ a plummy Oxbridge voice enquired expressionlessly.
Bethany peered up and met the politely questioning gaze of a dapper little Arab gentleman with a goatee beard.
‘I am Mustapha—’
‘The g-guns…?’ she stammered.
‘Merely the palace guards letting off a little steam. Were you frightened? Please accept my apologies on their behalf.’
‘Oh…’ Feeling quite absurd, Bethany flushed and scrambled out of the car; only then did alarm bells start ringing. ‘The palace guards?’ Wide-eyed, she stared at the older man. ‘This isn’t my hotel?’
‘No, indeed, Dr Morgan. This is the royal palace.’ He permitted himself a small smile of amusement. ‘Prince Razul requested that you be brought here without delay.’
‘Prince Razul?’ Bethany repeated in a strangled voice, but Mustapha had already swept off towards the arched and gilded entrance of the vast sprawling building ahead, clearly expecting her to follow him.
The airport manager must have contacted Razul about her arrival, Bethany registered in horror. But why on earth would Razul demand that she be brought to the palace? After the manner in which they had parted two years earlier he could not possibly wish to see her again! Lifelong conditioning to the effect that he was every woman’s fantasy did not prepare an Arab prince for the shattering experience of having his advances rebuffed. By the end of their last, distressing encounter Bethany had been left in no doubt that Razul had been very deeply offended by her flat refusal to have anything to do with him.
Yet she had planned what she would say to him in advance, employing every ounce of tact at her disposal. She had known the strength of his pride. She had gone to great lengths in her efforts to defuse a volatile situation gently. Her face shadowed now, the cruel talons of memory digging deep. Razul had unleashed his temper and goaded her into losing her head. She wasn’t proud of the derision with which she had fought back but he had been tearing her in two. She had been fighting for her own self-respect…why not admit it?
As she followed the older man into a huge, echoing hall lined with slender marble columns she was in a daze. Her exotic surroundings merely increased the sensation. Tiny mosaics were set into wildly intricate geometric patterns in shades of duck-egg green and ochre and palest blue on every inch of the walls and ceiling. The effect was dazzlingly beautiful and centuries old. A tiny sound jerked her head.
A giggle…a whisper? She looked up and saw the carved mishrabiyyah screens fronting the gallery suspended far above her. Behind the delicate yet wholly effective filigree barrier she caught flutters of movement, fleeting impressions of shimmering colour and then a burst of girlish laughter, excited whispers emerging from far more than one female voice and then swiftly stifled. A drift of musky perfume made her nostrils flare.
A tiny window onto the outside world for the harem? Bethany froze and turned white, a terrible pain uncoiling inside her. The thesis which had earned her both her doctorate and her current junior lectureship at a northern university had been on the suppression of women’s rights in the Third World. This was not the Third World but, even so, the dreadful irony of her almost uncontrollable attraction to Razul had boiled her principles alive two years ago. Her colleagues had laughed their socks off when he’d come after her…an Arab prince with two hundred concubines stashed in his harem back home!
‘Dr Morgan!’ Mustapha called pleadingly.
Numbed by the onslaught of that recollection, Bethany moved on again. At the far end of the hall two fierce tribesmen stood outside a fantastically carved set of double doors. They wore ceremonial swords but carried guns. At a signal from Mustapha they threw back the doors on a magnificent audience room. The older man stepped back, making it plain that he was not to accompany her further.
At the far end of the room sunlight was flooding in from doors spread back on an inner courtyard. It made the interior seem dim yet accentuated the richness of its splendour. Her sturdy leather sandals squeaked on the highly polished floor. She hesitated, her heartbeat hammering madly against her ribcage as she stared at the shallow dais, heaped with silk cushions and empty. But a terrible excitement licked at her every sense and she felt it even before she saw him—that frightening mix of craving and anticipation which for the space of several weeks two years earlier had made her calm, well-ordered life a hell of unfamiliar chaos.
‘Dr Livingstone, I presume?’
She jerked around, that honey-soft accented drawl sending a quiver down her taut backbone. Her breath shortened in her throat. Thirty feet away on the threshold of the courtyard stood the living, breathing embodiment of a twentieth-century medieval male—Razul al Rashidai Harun, the Crown Prince of Datar, as uncivilised a specimen of primitive manhood as any prehistoric cave would have been proud to produce.
‘All that outfit lacks is a bush hat. Did you think you were coming to darkest Africa?’ Razul derided lazily, and her serviceable clothing suddenly felt like foolish fancy dress.
She couldn’t take her eyes off him as he walked with cat-like fluidity towards her. Breathtakingly goodlooking… terrifyingly exotic. With those hard-boned, hawkish features, savagely high cheek-bones and that tawny skin he might have sprung live from some ancient Berber tapestry. He was very tall for one of his race. Sheathed in fine cream linen robes, his headdress bound by a double royal golden iqual, Razul gazed down at her with night-dark eyes that were as hard as jet.
It took enormous will-power to stand her ground. Her mouth went dry. Razul strolled calmly around her, for all the world like a predator circling his kill. It was not an image which did anything to release her tension.
‘So very quiet,’ Razul purred as he stilled two feet away. ‘You are in shock…the barbarian has at last learnt to speak proper English…’
Bethany lost every drop of her hectic colour and flinched as though he had plunged a stiletto between her ribs. ‘Please—’
‘And even how to use your dainty Western cutlery,’ Razul imparted with merciless bite.
Bethany dropped her head, anguish flooding her. Did he really think that such trivia had mattered? Her heart had gone out to him as he’d struggled, with all that savage pride of his, to fit into a world which his suspicious old father had denied him all knowledge of until he’d reached an age when the adaptation was naturally all the more difficult to make.
‘But the barbarian did not learn one lesson you sought to teach,’ Razul murmured very quietly. ‘I had no need of it for I know women. I have always known women. I did not pursue you because I was prompted by my primitive, chauvinistic arrogance to believe myself irresistible. I pursued you because in your eyes I read blatant invitation—’
‘No!’ Bethany gasped, galvanised into ungluing her tongue from the roof of her dry mouth.
‘Longing…hunger…need,’ Razul spelt out so softly that the hairs prickled at the nape of her neck. “Those ripe pink lips said no but those emerald eyes begged that I persist. Did I flatter your ego, Dr Morgan? Did playing the tease excite you?’
Appalled that he appeared to recall every word that she had flung at him, Bethany was paralysed. He had known. He had known that on some dark, secret level she’d wanted him, in spite of all her protestations to the contrary! She was shattered by the revelation, had been convinced that her defensive shell had protected her from such insight. Now she felt stripped naked. Even worse, Razul had naturally interpreted her ambivalent behaviour in the most offensive way of all. A tease…? Sexless, cold and frigid were epithets far more familiar to her ears.
‘If you believe that I misled you, it was not intentional, I assure you,’ Bethany responded tightly, studying her feet, not looking at him, absolutely forbidding herself to look at him again, not even caring how he might translate such craven behaviour. Maybe she owed Razul this hearing. He was finally having his say. Two years ago his fierce anger had not assisted his efforts to express himself in her language.
The silence smouldered. She sensed his frustration. He wanted her to fight back. Funny how she knew that, somehow understood exactly what was going through that innately devious and clever brain of his. But fighting back would prolong the agony…and she was in agony, with the evocative scent of sandalwood filling her nostrils and the soft hiss of his breathing interfering with her concentration. It took her back—back to a terrifying time when her safe, secure world had very nearly tumbled about her ears.
‘May I go now?’ She practically whispered the words, so great was her rigid tension.
‘Look at me—’
‘No—’
‘Look at me!’ Razul raked at her fiercely.
Bethany’s gaze collided with vibrant tiger-gold eyes and she stopped breathing. The extraordinary strength of will there mesmerised her. Her heartbeat thudded heavily in her eardrums. All of a sudden she was dizzy and disorientated. With a sense of complete helplessness and intense shame, she felt her breasts stir and swell and push wantonly against the cotton cups of her bra as her nipples pinched into tight little buds. Hot pink invaded her pallor but there was nothing she could do to control her own body. The electrifying sexual charge in the atmosphere overwhelmed her every defence.
Razul dealt her an irredeemably wolfish smile, his slumbrous golden eyes wandering over her, lingering on every tiny hint of the generous curves concealed by her loose clothing. Then, without warning, he stepped back and clapped his hands. The sound was like a pistol shot in the thrumming silence.
‘Now we will have tea and we will talk,’ Razul announced with an exquisite simplicity of utter command that made Bethany recall exactly who he was, what that status meant and where she was. This rogue male was one step off divinity in Datar.
Bethany tensed and jerkily folded her arms. ‘I don’t think—’
Three servants surged out of nowhere, one with a tray bearing cups, one with a teapot, one with a low, ebonised, brass-topped table.
‘Early Grey…especially for you,’ Razul informed her, stepping up on the dais and dropping down onto the cushions with innate animal grace.
‘Early Grey’? She didn’t correct him. The oddest little dart of tenderness pierced her, making her swallow hard. She remembered him surreptitiously shuffling that ‘dainty Western cutlery’ he had referred to at a college dinner. Then she locked the recollection out, furious with herself. Miserably she sank down onto the beautiful carpet, settling her behind onto another heap of cushions, but her disturbing thoughts marched on.
She had been infatuated with him—hopelessly infatuated. Every tiny thing about Razul had fascinated her. She had been twenty-five years old but more naive in many ways than the average teenager. He had been her first love, a crush, whatever you wanted to call it, but it had hit her all the harder because she hadn’t been sweet sixteen with a fast recovery rate. And she had been arrogant in her belief that superior brainpower was sufficient to ensure that she didn’t succumb to unwelcome hormonal promptings and immature emotional responses. But he had smashed her every assumption about herself to smithereens.
‘There was a bit of a mix-up over my visa at the airport…I wouldn’t have mentioned your name otherwise,’ she heard herself say impulsively, and even that disconcerted her. She was not impulsive, but around Razul she was not herself. The china cup trembled betrayingly on the saucer as she snatched it up to occupy her hands and sipped at the hot, fragrant tea.
‘Your visa was invalid.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Bethany glanced up in astonishment, not having expected to hear that nonsensical claim again.
‘Young women are only granted visas under strict guidelines—if they are coming here to stay with a Datari family, can produce a legitimate employment contract or are travelling with a relative or male colleague,’ Razul enumerated levelly. ‘Your visa stated that you would be accompanied. You arrived alone. It was that fact which invalidated your documentation.’
Bethany lifted her chin, her emerald-green eyes flashing. ‘So you discriminate against foreign women by making lists of ridiculous rules—’
‘Discrimination may sometimes be a positive act—’
‘Never!’ Bethany asserted with raw conviction.
‘You force me to be candid.’ Brilliant dark eyes rested on her with impatience, his wide mouth hardening. ‘An influx of hookers can scarcely be considered beneficial to our society.’
‘Hookers?’ Bethany repeated in a flat tone, taken aback.
‘Our women must be virgin when they marry. If not, the woman is unmarriageable, her family dishonoured. In such a society the oldest profession may thrive, but we did not have a problem in that field until we granted visas with too great a freedom.’
‘Are you trying to tell me that I was mistaken for some sort of tart at the airport?’ Bethany gritted in a shaking voice.
‘The other category of female we seek to exclude I shall call “the working adventuress” for want of a more acceptable label.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t follow,’ Bethany said thinly.
‘Young women come here ostensibly to work. They flock to the nightclubs that have sprung up in the city. There they dress, drink and conduct themselves in a manner which may be perfectly acceptable in their own countries but which is seen in quite another light by Datari men,’ Razul explained with a sardonic edge to his rich vowel sounds. ‘A sizeable percentage of these women do not return home again. They stay on illegally and become mistresses in return for a lifestyle of luxury.’
‘Really, I hardly look the type!’ Bethany retorted witheringly, but her fair skin was burning hotly. ‘And, fascinating as all this is, it’s time that I headed for my hotel.’
‘Lone women in your age group are not currently accepted into our hotels as guests.’
Bethany thrust a not quite steady hand through her tumbling hair. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘No hotel will offer you accommodation when you arrive alone.’ His strong dark face utterly impassive, Razul surveyed her intently. ‘Had I not brought you to the palace you would now be on a flight back to the UK.’
‘But that’s ridiculous!’ Bethany suddenly snapped, her nervous tension splintering up through the cracks in her composure. ‘It’s hardly my fault that my assistant broke an ankle before we boarded!’
‘Most unfortunate.’ But he said it with a faint smile on his beautifully moulded mouth, and his tone more than suggested that he was not remotely interested in the obvious fact that her planned stay in Datar had now run into petty bureaucratic difficulties, which she was quite sure he could brush aside…should he want to.
Bethany pushed her cup away with a very forced smile, behind which her teeth were gritted. ‘Look…this is an important research trip for me—’
‘But then you take all your work so seriously,’ Razul pointed out smoothly.
Her facial muscles clenched taut. ‘I am here in Datar to research the nomadic culture,’ she informed him impressively.
‘How tame…’
‘Tame?’ Bethany echoed in shrill disconcertion, having assumed that his own cultural background would necessarily prompt him to treat the subject with appropriate respect.
‘I have read your paper on the suppression of women’s rights,’ Razul murmured very softly.
‘You’ve read my paper?’ Bethany found herself gawping at him.
‘And, having done so, intend to generously offer you research in a field which could make you famous in the academic world when you return to the West.’ Burnished golden eyes suddenly struck hers with ferocious force.
‘What field?’ Bethany queried, a frown-line dividing her brows as she shifted uneasily on the cushions, instinctively reacting to the humming tension in the air.
Razul unleashed a predatory smile upon her. ‘A way of life never before freely opened to the scrutiny of a Western anthropologist. I feel remarkably like Santa Claus.’
‘Excuse me?’ The atmosphere was suffocatingly tense. Bethany scrambled upright and involuntarily backed away from the controlled menace that emanated from Razul in vibrating waves.
‘A prolonged stay in my harem will not only provide you with liberal scope for academic research, it will provide me with a long-awaited opportunity to teach you what being a woman is all about,’ Razul told her with silken self-satisfaction.
