Lord of the Desert

by Diana Palmer

  Promptly at a quarter until eight, there was a knock on the door. She opened it, to find Philippe in a beautifully tailored dark suit with a white shirt and patterned blue silk tie. He looked elegant and rakish, like a photo in a fashion magazine, and she felt inhibited and tawdry by comparison in her chain-store dress and shoes.

  His black eyes fixed on her long mane of hair and he seemed mesmerized. Slowly, his hand lifted to it, smoothing down it, savoring the feel and scent of it. His indrawn breath was audible. “And you hide it in a braid,” he murmured deeply. “What a waste.”

  She smiled self-consciously. “It worries me to death when I wear it like this.”

  “But you did it, for me, yes?”

  She moved restlessly. “Yes.”

  He tilted her chin up and searched her eyes. His thumb moved over her chin. “We are strangers, and yet we have known each other for a thousand years,” he said under his breath.

  Her heart bumped in her chest. “How very odd,” she replied in a hushed tone. “I was thinking that, only this afternoon.”

  He nodded. “It is, perhaps, the most cruel cut of fate,” he said enigmatically as he removed his hand. “Come along. I understand they have belly dancers from Argentina this evening,” he added with a wicked smile.

  She moved a little closer to his side. “Decadent man.”

  “I’m not decadent. I appreciate beauty.” He took her arm just below where the black shawl she’d bought reached with its fringe. “Believe me, I find you far more intriguing than a dancer, no matter how adept.”

  “Thank you.”

  “It isn’t flattery,” he said as they walked down the carpeted hall past the curtained windows that looked down on the open patio below. “I know you well enough already to know that you loathe insincerity as much as I do.”

  She smiled. That was reassuring. They went down in the elevator and walked down the steps that led into the courtyard, where a central fountain was surrounded by beautiful mosaic tile. Tables with white linen tablecloths and napkins and pink china were set with silver utensils and crystal glasses. Several couples were already seated, and a beautiful dark-haired woman in a white dress with lavish colored embroidery was sitting on a stage with her accompanist, both with guitars in their hands.

  “Tonight’s entertainment,” he informed her. “She is from the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, and she sings like an angel.”

  “Do you know her?”

  He shook his head. “No, but I came here from Madrid. She was appearing in a hotel there, too.”

  “Madrid?”

  They paused while a white-jacked waiter in a burgundy fez led them to a table. Philippe seated Gretchen and then himself. The waiter left menus and departed. “I do business all over the world,” he told her with a gentle smile. “You might call me an ambassador, of sorts.”

  “That explains the bodyguards, I guess.” He looked puzzled and she shrugged. “I saw them follow you into that building this afternoon and asked Bojo about them. He said that they often watch out for businessmen as well as visiting dignitaries.”

  He let out an odd sigh. “Yes, they do.”

  “I enjoyed this afternoon very much,” she said abruptly. “It was kind of you to offer to go with me. It’s lonely now that Maggie’s gone. I suppose she’s in Brussels now, waiting for her flight back to the States.”

  “Have you ever been to Brussels?” he asked curiously.

  “Yes. Maggie and I flew from Brussels to Casablanca and then here. I’m going back through Amsterdam on my way home…” She hesitated. Her eyes lifted to his. Suddenly the thought of home was unpleasant. “Well, not now, of course,” she added slowly. “I’ll be going to Qawi instead.” She looked down at her neatly folded pink napkin. “Philippe, I don’t suppose you ever get to Qawi?”

  “In fact,” he said slowly, “I spend a great deal of time in Qawi. I do business with the ruling sheikh. Quite a lot of business.”

  Her eyes lifted and dreams danced in them. It really was like a fantasy, as if she’d given up ordinary surroundings and had been caught up in mystery and joy. It was all there, in her face, the delight she felt.

  He smiled at her, his black eyes searching her excited expression. “And now, Qawi seems less frightening to you, does it not?” he asked softly. “As you see, we won’t say adieu when you leave Tangier. We will say au revoir.”

  “I’m glad.”

  His long fingers touched the back of hers where her hand lay on the table beside her glass. “So am I. Although,” he added broodingly, “I am not doing you a favor to let you go there.”

  “Why not?”

  “You may discover that appearances can be very deceptive.”

  Her eyes sparkled. “Don’t tell me. You’re really an international jewel thief or a spy on holiday.”

  He burst out laughing. “No,” he said. “I can assure you that isn’t the case.”

  She studied his hand. It was his left one, and there were scars on the back of it, white lines against his olive complexion. She touched them lightly. “From the accident?”

  His whole body clenched at the memory of the injuries. “Yes,” he said reluctantly, withdrawing his hand.

  “That was clumsy,” she said, grimacing. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”

  He stared at her with conflicting emotions. “You will have to know before you leave Tangier,” he said quite calmly. “But I prefer to put it off for a few days. Honesty can be a brutal thing.”

  “Then you’re an ax murderer,” she said thoughtfully, nodding. “I understand. You don’t want to shatter my illusions of you as some elegant scoundrel.”

  He laughed again, caught off guard. “You remind me of her, so much,” he said without thinking. “The first thing that attracted me to her was a sense of humor that made me laugh at myself, something I was never able to do before.”

  “She?”

  He shifted, as if he hadn’t meant to say that. “A woman I knew,” he hedged. “A blonde, like you, with a very open personality. I thought she was one of a kind. I am delighted to find that the earth contains another woman similar to her.”

  “Maggie thinks I’m a certifiable lunatic.”

  “You’re refreshing,” he said, leaning back in his chair to study her. “You might be surprised at how many people say only what is expected of them, out of fear of giving offense. I abhor being toadied to,” he added quite fiercely, and his eyes blazed for an instant.

  He must be, Gretchen decided, someone very important. She wanted to ask him about his life, his background, his work. She was curious about him. But he seemed not to like discussing his past.

  She glanced at her menu and grimaced. “French. Everywhere we go, everything’s written in French,” she moaned.

  He laughed softly. “I must make it my business to teach you to read a menu. Here.” He shared his menu with her, pronounced each entry and made her pronounce it after him, and then explained what it was. She started with an appetizer of prosciutto and melon, followed by a main dish of lamb done in a Moroccan sauce. He ordered fish and a bottle of white wine.

  “I’ve never had wine before,” she said, watching his eyebrows go up.

  “Would you prefer something else?”

  She lifted a shoulder. “I suppose I should know something about wines. If the sheikh isn’t Muslim, he probably has a wine cellar and will expect me to know all sorts of things about wines.”

  He pursed his lips. “Probably,” he murmured. “But one can rarely go wrong with a good white wine, like a Riesling or a Chardonnay. Although I prefer an Alsace wine, like a Gewürtztraminer. It is an acquired taste.”

  She shook her head. “I’ll never learn.”

  “Of course you will. Each night, we’ll sample a different wine from the list. By the time you leave Morocco, you’ll be knowledgeable.”

  She smiled. “You’re very sophisticated.”

  “I was educated in Europe,” he told her. “One matures rapidly in a sophisticated envi
ronment.” His black eyes narrowed. “But I wasn’t born to wealth, and I never forget my beginnings. Poverty is the true plague of the twenty-first century, Gretchen. And greed is its blood brother.”

  “Do you feel that way, too?” she asked softly.

  He chuckled as the waiter returned and took their order. When the wine came, he taught her how to taste and savor it. “This is a Riesling,” he said. “Not too heavy, not too light.”

  “Just right,” she mused, and liked the way it tasted. “We had a little grapevine, but the foreman ran over it with a tractor.”

  “Barbarian,” he said.

  She chuckled. “That’s what I used to call him,” she murmured. “Conner the Barbarian. Not one flower in the yard was safe if he ever got on the tractor. He’s a great horseman, but he has a knack for running lawnmowers over flower beds and into trees.”

  He chuckled, too, at the imagery. “And this is the man you trust to keep the ranch for you?”

  “Oh, but he’s great with horses and cattle,” she told him defensively.

  “And I suppose you adore him?”

  “I had a terrific crush on him in my teens,” she agreed. “But I grew out of it.”

  His eyes narrowed. He didn’t speak again until their salads were delivered, along with coffee for Gretchen and sparkling water for her companion.

  “You like flowers, then,” he continued.

  “I love them,” she said dreamily. “I grow prize tea roses and an assortment of flowering shrubs.”

  He toyed with his salad. “My father has a mania for orchids,” he told her. “He calls them his ‘grandchildren’ and gives them all names.” He smiled affectionately, lost in thought. “When I was a child, I was jealous of them. He actually had a servant taken to jail for forgetting to water a sick one, which later died. A very vindictive man, my father.”

  She chuckled. “I can imagine how he felt. I have a special fondness for sick roses. I seem to have the touch for making them bloom again.”

  He studied her intently. “Some sicknesses, alas, cannot be cured by even the most loving of hands,” he said absently, and bitterness made harsh lines in his face.

  He was a man of many contrasts. She watched his long-fingered hands move and was fascinated by their dexterity and grace.

  He caught her scrutiny and tensed. “You find the scars distasteful.”

  She looked up at once. “Good Lord, no,” she said at once, and with obvious sincerity. “I was watching how you use your hands. Everyone in this part of the world seems to move gracefully, especially the men. It isn’t like that back home.”

  He relaxed and finished his salad. It was his own guilt at deceiving her, he thought, that was bringing on these bad moods. He had to stop it. What was, was. Nothing in the world could ever change it.

  “We move as we live, unhurriedly,” he said simply.

  “I’ll bet you don’t have half the rate of vascular problems that we have in the States,” she remarked.

  “That is most likely true.” He finished a last bite of salad and pushed the bowl from him. His dark eyes searched hers. “You go to a country vastly different from your own, much less sophisticated than Morocco. Many modern conveniences do not exist there, and even electricity is a recent addition. The people of Qawi were largely nomadic until the early part of this century. When it was parceled out among the Europeans, the people resisted and many families were decimated. It will require a great deal of tolerance for you to adjust to such archaic surroundings.”

  She put down her own fork. “Do you think I should go home?” she asked bluntly.

  He wanted to say yes. He wanted to tell her to run, now, while she still could. But he looked into her eyes and felt as if part of him were sitting across the table. He couldn’t make the words come out.

  “I know it’s a risk,” she said, glad that he hadn’t said anything immediately. “But I already love Morocco. I think I’m going to be very much at home in Qawi, if the sheikh is patient with my ignorance about local customs.”

  His dark eyes narrowed. “I think you will find him patient, in all things.”

  “I hope so,” she added fervently. “It’s like a leap of faith,” she added slowly. “A step into the unknown. Maggie said that I was vegetating in Texas, and I think she was right. I’ve never been anywhere or done anything adventurous in my life. I never realized the world was so big and its people so diverse. I’ll never forget any of this, whatever happens.”

  “Nor will I,” he said quietly, and it sounded as if the words were torn from him. He was holding his wineglass so tightly that Gretchen wondered if the stem was going to snap. She wondered what was making him so broody, if it was his usual manner.

  The entertainer sat down on the small platform with her accompanist and began to sing a poignant love song in Spanish. Gretchen sighed and closed her eyes, to enjoy it even better.

  “Do you understand the words?” Philippe asked.

  “Yes.” Her eyes opened and looked into his. “It’s a song about a man and woman who fall madly in love but can’t marry because he’s going off to war. They’re saying goodbye. It’s very sad.”

  He smiled. “You understand Spanish.”

  “Yes. I speak it badly, but I can read it and understand it if it isn’t spoken too rapidly.”

  “It is one of my favorite languages as well.”

  His hand slid across the table and his fingers linked slowly with hers while he turned his attention back to the singer. Gretchen stopped listening to the beautiful song. Philippe’s lean, warm fingers holding hers pushed away her reason. She closed her eyes again and gave in to the sensual delight of his touch.

  The program was only a short one, and all too soon, the singer took her bows and left the microphone. When Gretchen came back to reality, Philippe had let go of her hand and was getting ready to pay their bill with a credit card—a gold credit card, she noted, reinforcing her opinion of his station in life. He was obviously a wealthy man, that was evident from his clothing. She wondered if he might think she was playing up to him because he had money. She was certain he’d experienced that sort of woman.

  He gave the card to the waiter and tucked a large tip under the lip of his plate for the man.

  She hadn’t considered it, but she was certain now that he was going to escort her back to her room and leave her. He hadn’t said anything about his plans for the next day, but they probably wouldn’t include her. She had a poor batting average with men as a rule. She didn’t know how to flirt, she wasn’t a brilliant conversationalist, and she was only passably attractive. It depressed her to think that she’d assumed far too much after Philippe had found her in the swing. His attention had made her giddy with hope, but he looked as if he was carrying a heavy burden, and his eyes didn’t meet hers after the waiter returned his card.

  He pulled out her chair with that same old-world courtesy that seemed such a part of him and held her elbow as he escorted her up the small row of steps that led to the lobby.

  “I must go out,” he said without looking at her. “I have a business engagement this evening which must be honored.”

  “I understand. It was a wonderful day. Thank you. Maybe I’ll see you around the hotel…”

  He stopped at once, drawing her out of the pattern of traffic, and stood looking down at her with a dark scowl. “Are you tired of my company so soon?”

  Her face mirrored her surprise. “I…I thought perhaps you were tired of mine,” she faltered.

  He relaxed. “Would that I were,” he said under his breath. “I would be doing you a favor.”

  “Can’t you tell me what’s bothering you?” she asked boldly.

  “No.” He glanced at his watch. “Tomorrow, we’ll take Bojo and go to the carpet showroom. But not early. I have a breakfast meeting as well. Shall we say ten o’clock, in the lobby?”

  “Ten o’clock,” she said with helpless eagerness. “I’ll be waiting.”

  He smiled gently. “Are you alwa
ys so enthusiastic about things?”

  “I’m afraid so,” she said sheepishly. “It comes from having so little. We were very poor when Marc and I were growing up, so we learned not to expect much. We tend to appreciate things more than ordinary people, I guess. We lived in hard times.”

  His black eyes narrowed. “I, also, grew up in abject poverty. It is why I must do what I can to help my people escape it. Education is the key, Gretchen. There must be good schools, good teachers, and all the latest technology in them, especially computers.”

  She smiled. “So that you can compete in the world market,” she guessed.

  He nodded. “Exactly. I never want to watch another child starve to death as long as I live.”

  Her breath caught. She was getting a painful picture of his youth.

  “Such compassion in those soft eyes,” he murmured quietly. “Lucky Qawi, to attract such a gentle spirit.”

  “That’s just the thing,” she pointed out. “They’re expecting Maggie, who’s sophisticated and well-traveled and a born organizer.”

  “Organization can be learned. I think that the sheikh will have a delightful time…teaching you.”

  “Does he have a harem?” she asked worriedly.

  He burst out laughing. “No. He is a modern ruler.”

  “Oh, thank goodness!”

  “So you have no desire to grace his bed, then?” he teased.

  She flushed. “Stop that. I’m going to be a social secretary, not a scandal in high heels.”

  He nodded. “So you are.” He glanced up and looked at the concierge, who looked back and made a gesture, as if some private, silent conversation had just taken place. “Don’t leave the hotel alone,” he reminded her.