Desert Doctor, Secret Sheikh

by Meredith Webber

  ‘Let’s make some stew,’ he suggested, standing up and offering his hand to help her up.

  Jen didn’t take it—couldn’t—she was too confused, but as a child she’d played house as well as anyone, and a little make-believe might be what was needed to get them through until the sandstorm subsided and they could safely return to the camp.

  She turned the wick on the lamp a little higher and set out the tins of food on the table.

  ‘See, that’s tinned corned beef, or that’s what it looks like from the picture on the side,’ she explained, putting the largest of the tins to one side. ‘And there are tinned peas and tinned carrots and even tinned potatoes. An onion would be nice, and something to make gravy.’

  Kam was studying the other tins, reading labels Jenny couldn’t understand.

  ‘This is soup, would that do?’ he suggested. ‘To make it into soup you add water so perhaps if we didn’t add the water…’

  He sounded so uncertain, this strong, confident man to whom uncertainty would surely be foreign, that Jenny longed to put her arms around him, to assure him that she understood why he had deceived her. But her own emotions were too raw to put on show, and touching him was likely to start the flaring heat between them, so she thanked him for finding the soup and set him to opening cans while she lit the little stove again.

  With the cans opened, Kam then rummaged around at the back of the cave, muttering to himself about why the electricity wouldn’t have been connected when the houses in the village all had it.

  ‘I suppose because no one ever lived here permanently. It might have belonged to a family that only came in the summer,’ Jenny suggested, chopping up the corned meat then putting it and the contents of the other tins into the saucepan and wondering what the resulting mess would taste like.

  ‘Not too bad,’ Kam announced when they finally sat down to eat. He’d found some flour and although Jen knew flour and water were the basic ingredients, she wasn’t too sure about making flat-bread. But she’d tried and, though tough, the bread, cooked in a frying-pan that had been hanging on the back wall, didn’t taste too bad.

  ‘You don’t suppose they’ve forgotten we’re here,’ she suggested, trying to make near to normal conversation in order to distract her thoughts from how good things had been between them during their first twenty-four hours in the cave.

  ‘I don’t think that’s likely, but the wind has been so fierce no one would be venturing outside. It can blind a man, or push him over, so people shut themselves inside their tents or houses and wait it out. It won’t last much longer. Already the keening of it is lessening, the sound less shrill, don’t you think?’

  Jen didn’t answer, wanting to cry because the easy communion they’d enjoyed, the whispered endearments they’d shared as they’d made love, had been replaced by such banal conversation.

  Conversation about the weather, of all things!

  A touch would bridge the gap that had grown between them and have them back in bed within minutes, while conversation was widening the gap into a gully. But wasn’t it better to let it widen—let it widen further from a gully to a gulch or even to a gorge?

  She longed to touch him, but knew the parting would be harder if she did, and the parting was as inevitable as an ending to the storm.

  ‘It was like a dream,’ she said quietly. ‘A very special dream, but like all dreams it had to come to an end.’

  Kam didn’t answer, couldn’t…

  He knew he’d lost her. He’d felt the shift in the closeness between them way back when she’d mentioned stew. Hard to believe that stew of all things—and a revolting stew at that—should have torn them apart.

  Admittedly they had been due to be torn apart, or, if not torn, due to part. He had to move on to other places, she had work to finish in the camp. He had to sort out the succession and his country’s problems and she lived for the adventure and fun and challenge of her work abroad.

  But surely he could offer adventure, fun and challenge to her right here in his own country!

  The thought startled him.

  What was he thinking?

  Marriage?

  It certainly would have to be, because a woman like Jenny deserved no less.

  There were precedents set in other Arab countries of a ruler marrying a foreigner, and in most cases that he knew of, the unions had been happy and successful.

  ‘Would you marry me?’ he asked, pushing away the rest of his stew and the almost inedible bread.

  The idea had followed so closely on his previous thoughts he’d voiced the question without giving it much consideration. Until he saw the look of shock and disbelief on her face…

  ‘What?’ he demanded, not understanding either emotion.

  ‘This all began back when I realised we didn’t know each other, and we still don’t—well, we don’t know much about each other,’ she grumbled. ‘How can you possibly suggest marriage to someone you barely know, based solely on the grounds of good sex? And how could I even think about it when you’ve deceived me from the moment we met? What kind of a basis for marriage is that? Honestly, Kam, that was the most ridiculous suggestion I’ve ever heard. And who is the older of you two—you or your brother? It seems one of you will be the new ruler, so surely you’d need a wife from your own culture; surely that would be more acceptable to your people, especially if your father spent his last years alienating them.’

  ‘I thought there had been more than good sex between us,’ he replied, his chest hurting at the implications of that particular remark, while the other objections she’d brought up niggled at the edges of his mind with irritating insistence.

  A shout from outside the cave broke into the strained atmosphere that had been worsening between them.

  Kam went to the door to greet their guide and lead him inside.

  He carried a covered cooking pot and the aroma rising from it suggested it was a tastier meal than the stew they’d just made.

  ‘You will eat, then the woman will check the patient and I will take you back to the border. If the chief’s wife is well and the baby, we will wait a few nights before we ask the doctor to come again.’

  Kam agreed that this seemed very sensible but in a few nights he’d be gone, or should be. There was much to do and he’d already lingered too long.

  But to let Jenny return here alone?

  It was not only unthinkable but the thought caused him serious pain.

  He took the cooking pot and set it on the table, assuring their guide they’d eat then go across to the women’s tent.

  The guide bowed to Jenny then departed while Kam translated what he’d said.

  ‘If the mother’s OK I could wait a week before returning,’ Jen said, and Kam’s stomach cramped a little harder. It might have been the canned soup stew, but Kam suspected it was fear for Jenny.

  Fear?

  Concern at least, but surely concern wasn’t strong enough for stomach cramps.

  So he was back to fear, but fear for a woman whom, as she had so succinctly pointed out, he barely knew?

  Why?

  Unless…

  No, he wouldn’t go there. Love had never been an issue in his life, maybe because he hadn’t experienced it as a child. Not the warm, loving, laughing family type of love he’d read and heard about. He had friends, of course, but liking covered what he felt for them.

  But love for other people, especially for a woman, wasn’t something he’d thought much about, and he’d certainly never considered it could be a trigger for fear…

  CHAPTER TEN

  ‘I’LL get dressed and we’ll go, shall we?’ Jen suggested when they’d sat and looked at the stew pot for a while, and it had become obvious neither of them was going to eat.

  She didn’t wait for an answer, gathering up her clothes and taking them to the dark corner they had used as a bathroom, dressing as quickly as she could, pulling on her doctor persona with her clothes, hoping her mind would be strong enough to put all the si
de issues of Kam and sex and the end of love to one side while she examined the new mother and her baby.

  He must have dressed while she had been dressing, for he now stood beside the hanging mats, ready to hold them for her as she left the cave.

  But memories made her reluctant to just walk out, and her body ached with the knowledge that what they’d had was finished.

  Over…

  Done with…

  Move on…

  But her aching heart couldn’t make the leap, and she could feel tears welling in her eyes and a lump in her throat.

  ‘Do you think they’d mind if I took the cream?’ she whispered, the lump in her throat making her voice so husky it was a wonder Kam heard her at all.

  He cursed, long and fluently, and although she didn’t understand the words, the crisp, almost bitter tone in which they had been uttered told her they weren’t cries of delight. Then he took her in his arms and kissed her so savagely her knees went weak and only by clinging to his shoulders could she remain upright.

  The magic worked again, her nipples peaking, breasts growing heavy, the newly sensitised place between her thighs tingling with anticipation. Her hands grasped him and held him tight and with the kiss she gave back to him she tried to tell him all she felt, tell him that she loved him and always would.

  But who understood kisses?

  And the one thing he shouldn’t know was that she loved him…

  They fell back on the bed, grappling with their clothes, not bothering to strip but finding each other and making love one final time, intense, passionate, mutually satisfying love.

  Or was it sex?

  Jen no longer knew or cared how Kam thought of it—to her it was an expression of her love, given freely and without remorse or regret. For this one brief time Kam was hers again…

  Kam helped her fix her clothing, doing up her bra catch and buttoning her shirt. His fingers fumbled with the tasks.

  Because he knew this was it?

  This was the last time he would touch Jenny’s clothes?

  Touch Jenny?

  Unless…

  ‘Why wouldn’t you marry me?’ he asked when they were ready to leave, the jar of rose-scented cream clasped in Jenny’s hands.

  She smiled at him.

  ‘There are probably as many reasons as there are grains of sand in this cave. First, there’s your position in your country, and your duty to your country, and how your family would feel if you married a foreigner, and the fact that you don’t love me and I wouldn’t like a marriage without love, and so many more reasons that the baby in the women’s tent would be a toddler before I finished listing them.’

  Kam heard them all but took little notice, his mind having picked up on the ‘you don’t love me’ reason, and halted there.

  ‘How do you know I don’t love you?’ he demanded, and she had the hide to smile again.

  ‘Do you?’ she asked, and having deceived her once he couldn’t do it again.

  But he could dodge and weave a bit…

  ‘I know so little about love,’ he told her. ‘I know I love my brother because we only had each other for a long time. We were ignored by our father, passed on to nurses and waiting women by our mother, then sent to boarding school in a cold, hard, foreign country from the age of seven. We clung to each other, and grew to think and act as one, facing life and all its challenges together, and probably, at the same time, shutting out friends we might have had, for a while at least.’

  ‘But you do have friends?’ Jen pressed, and he nodded.

  ‘Good friends, and each of us have different sets of friends, but I’d say liking is what I feel for them, not love.’

  ‘And women? Surely at some stage of your life there’s been a woman who set your pulses racing, and made your chest hurt when you were apart, and made your heart do a little flip when you saw her again after being parted?’

  Kam tried to think.

  ‘Pulse racing, yes, but that’s attraction and desire. I couldn’t call what I’ve ever felt for a woman love.’

  Jen stood on tiptoe to kiss him gently on the lips.

  ‘Then I feel sorry for you, Kam, although love hurts and losing a loved one is probably the most painful, agonising, gut-wrenching, heart-slamming hurt of all. But without it in our lives there’s an emptiness, a void, a space we try to fill with other things, like challenge and adventure and fun.’

  There was a pause and then she added, ‘Which works for a time, of course.’

  She ducked out of the cave before he could answer and, afraid she might get lost, he followed.

  What had she been saying?

  What had that final remark meant?

  That challenge, adventure and fun were no longer enough?

  That she’d found love again?

  That she loved him?

  He reached out a hand to stop her before she walked into the women’s tent, but it was too late. She’d slipped off her sandals at the entrance and was already greeting the women inside.

  Kam trudged around the tent to the place where he was used to waiting, ready to translate anything too medical or female oriented for the chief to tackle. But the chief wasn’t there.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Kam asked the guide who waited in the chief’s place.

  ‘The chief is at a meeting. If there is any problem with his wife or child I am to get him, but if not, he is not to be interrupted. It seems the arrival of his son has made him reconsider his claims on this territory. They are holding peace talks in the tent, but he has a message for the woman doctor. If the war is settled, will her organisation test his people for TB as she is doing for the refugees? It would be bad for them to come back if some people here still have the disease.’

  ‘I can guarantee a testing and treatment programme for you—tell him that,’ Kam said, then, in case the guide might be suspicious of his ability to make such a promise, he added, ‘I work for the same organisation.’ That was true. A donation to Aid for All had ensured he could move around his country under their banner. ‘But I am in a higher position.’

  The guide and the chief would accept this happily, their own customs suggesting a man would always be in a higher position than a woman.

  Jenny’s voice stopped the conversation. She was asking Kam to tell the woman that all was well, her wound was healing beautifully, the baby doing well, and they wouldn’t need to come back for a few days, when Jenny would take out the stitches.

  ‘Could you also tell the midwife what a great job she has done in looking after the pair, and tell her that although we would love to work out a way to teach her about Caesareans, the difficulty would be the anaesthetic and also if there were complications during or after the operation, unexpected haemorrhage, for instance. Perhaps you could tell her that your country is setting up a new air medical service, with doctors from the hospitals in the city working by roster to take emergency trips out to the far reaches of the country, and neighbouring countries as well.’

  Confused though he’d been feeling, especially as far as Jenny was concerned, Kam had to smile. Talk about getting her pound of flesh! Now she knew who he was and how fervently he and Arun wished to make amends to their countrymen, she’d no doubt be coming up with more schemes like that, although an air medical service was a good idea. It was easy enough to build runways in the desert.

  Somewhat reassured by the idea that peace talks were under way and Jenny’s return in a few days might be all the safer because of that, Kam made the arrangements, though determined, when he radioed Arun on his return to the camp, to ask him to send someone out who could act as interpreter but also guard her safety.

  Someone with enough authority to see that she remained safe while in the rebel camp.

  He couldn’t think offhand of anyone he’d trust that far and the thought worried him, but Jenny was speaking again, saying she was finished and would he please say goodbye to the women for her.

  ‘There are a couple more pregnant women here,’ she
told him when she met him at the door of the tent minutes later. ‘So you might need that aerial medical service sooner than you think, although I’ll be here for another month or so myself. Could you tell them that and tell them if they want me to come to see them, or want to come across to the clinic, I’d be only too happy to check on them?’

  ‘You can’t cross back and forth across the border,’ Kam told her, the irrational anger he felt at her putting herself in danger seizing him again. ‘Have you forgotten the danger? The way we were treated on our first visit?’

  ‘Ah, but now we’re friends,’ Jen told him. ‘The chief is a question mark, but his wife, the midwife and the other women have begun to trust me, and trust leads to friendship. I can’t believe they have no say in the running of their lives and no influence with their menfolk. Their friendship will protect me.’

  ‘You are too trusting for your own good,’ Kam snapped at her. ‘I don’t want you coming back and forth over the border, no matter how many women are pregnant.’

  ‘Don’t you, now?’ she snapped right back. ‘And I should care because?’

  ‘Because I—’

  He heard the words he was about to utter in a kind of practice in his head and caught them just in time, then as it dawned on him they were the stark, honest truth, he said them anyway.

  ‘Because I love you,’ he said, and though his heart was hammering with the emotion of the declaration and his body shivering with reaction, he still took in the look of shock imprinted on her lovely face.

  ‘Oh, but, Kam, you can’t,’ she wailed, desperation seeding the words with misery.

  ‘Why can’t I?’ he demanded, angered now he’d made his declaration and she’d deflected it. For answer she studied him in silence for a moment then she took his face between the palms of her hands and looked into his eyes.

  ‘Because your country means so much to you, more even than I think you realise. And to do your duty to it, you must marry and have children.’

  Then, oblivious of the people around them, she reached up and kissed him on the lips.