After a slow, thoughtful pause, the sheikh—she couldn’t help but think of him as that—said, ‘So if your father was in the mining industry, you lived in the outback? Kalgoorlie or Tom Price, or maybe the Kimberley Ranges?’
Her pulse pounded in her throat until her breath laboured. ‘No, we didn’t, but he did. We—my mother, my sisters and brother and I—lived in a suburb of Perth, and Dad lived in Kalgoorlie and came home Fridays. He wanted us to live close to…amenities.’
The sheikh nodded. She saw it in his eyes: he’d noticed the omission of the word mosque.
Even thinking the word was painful. She couldn’t enter a mosque without people wanting to know who she was and where she was from; and she couldn’t lie. Not in a holy place.
So she didn’t go any more.
‘Did you always wear the burq’a?’ he asked, with a gentle politeness that told her he respected her secrets, her right to not answer.
‘No. I’m from a moderate Sunni family. I wear it for protection.’ She shrugged. ‘Sh’ellah’s very sweet to us—most of the time. But he could turn without warning.’
He’s already sent men to ask if I have a man, or whether they can see whether I am young and pretty enough for his tastes.
She kept the shudder inside. Sh’ellah might be sixty-two, but he was a man of strong passions. Though he kept two wives, he had concubines in droves—and those were the women who pleased him. The others he discarded…and none of them ever came home.
Since she’d had the first warning of Sh’ellah’s tastes, she’d kept the burq’a on as a knight’s armour, wore her fake wedding ring like a talisman. She’d claimed her husband was travelling, and he’d soon be on his way here.
Her time here was over. Now she’d claimed the sheikh as her husband, Sh’ellah would expect her to leave with the sheikh when he went. Otherwise she’d become fair game. She had two backpacks packed and ready, hidden in the dirt beneath her hut, ready to disappear at a moment’s notice, to head by foot to the nearest refugee camp if need be. It was two hundred and sixty kilometres away, but she knew how to find edible plants filled with juice, and collect dew from upturned leaves. With two or three canteens of water, some purification tablets, three dozen long-hidden energy bars and a compass, she could travel at night and make it in fourteen days.
She’d been used for a man’s purposes once. She’d rather die than be used that way again.
The sheikh nodded, as if he understood what she’d left unsaid. Maybe he did, if he’d been in the Sahel long enough.
‘Were you brought up in the emirates?’ She turned to the pit fire as she asked, making an infusion of her precious stores of willow bark for his fever in a tiny hanging pot. If people were seen to be carrying things into this hut, Sh’ellah’s men would be searching here in minutes. She’d give them no excuse to pay attention to her.
She didn’t have to wonder if he noticed she’d lapsed into their native language; she saw the flickering of those dark eyes, and knew he was sizing her up like one of his chemical equations. He took long moments to answer. ‘Yes.’
That was it. Flat and unemotional-sounding, a mirror-world of unhealed pain behind the thin wall of glass, ready to shatter at a touch. She spooned some of her infusion into a cracked plastic mug. ‘I’m sorry I have no honey to sweeten this, but it will lessen your pain.’
She saw the surprise come and go in his face. He wasn’t going to ask, and she wasn’t going to volunteer why she minded her own business; but she knew he’d think about it. Why she asked nothing more, demanded no answers in return for hers. ‘Drink it all.’
He nodded, and took the cup from her. His fingers brushed hers, and she felt a tiny shiver run through her. ‘You don’t call me by my name.’
She drew a breath to conquer the tiny tremors in her hands. What was wrong with her? ‘You’re a stranger, older than me, and risked a lot to help our village. I was taught respect.’
‘I’m barely ten years your senior. I gave you my name,’ he said, and drained the cup. He held it back out to her with a face devoid of expression, but she sensed the challenge within. The dominant male used to winning with open weapons…and beneath lurked a hint of irritation. He didn’t like her calling him older. She hid the smile.
‘You gave your name, but it’s my choice to use it or not.’ She took the cup back, neither seeking nor avoiding the touch. Just as she neither sought nor avoided his eyes. It was a trick her mother had taught her. Everything you give to a man he can refuse to return, Hana. So give as little as possible, even a glance, until you are certain what kind of man you face.
It had been good advice—until she’d met Mukhtar.
‘You don’t like my name, Sahar Thurayya?’
She washed the cup and returned it to its hook on the wall. Since she had no bench or cupboard, all things were either stacked on a box or hung on walls. ‘I’m waiting to see if you live up to it.’ She didn’t comment on his poetic name for her, but a faint thrill ran through her every time she heard it. Just as she caught her breath when he smiled with his eyes, or laughed. And when he touched her… She closed her eyes and uttered a silent prayer. Four hours in this man’s company, three of them when he’d been unconscious, and she was already in danger.
‘So I must live up to my name?’ Again she heard that rich chuckle in his voice. Without even turning around, she could see his face in her mind’s eye, beautiful even in its damaged state, alight with the mirth that made him look as he had four years ago, and she knew she was standing in emotional quicksand. ‘My brother always said I was misnamed.’
Alim: wise, learned.
She didn’t ask in what ways he was unwise. He’d risked his life over and over for the thrill of racing and winning…
‘It seems we were both misnamed,’ he added, the laughter in his tone asking her to see the joke, as he had.
Hana: happiness.
I used to live up to my name, she thought wistfully. When I was engaged to Latif, about to become his wife, then I was a happy woman.
Then Latif’s younger brother Mukhtar came into her life—and Latif showed her what her dreams of love and happiness were worth.
‘I need to check on my other patients,’ she said quietly. Checking to be certain her veil fully covered her, she walked with an unhurried step towards the medical tent—it hurt to rush since she had twisted her knee climbing into his truck—feeling his gaze follow her for as long as she was in sight.
Alim watched the doorway with views to the medical hut long after he could no longer see her. He still watched while the setting sun flooded the open door, long after his eyes hurt with the brightness and his head began knocking with the pain that would soon upgrade as the foul stuff she’d given him wore off.
She didn’t draw attention to herself in any way—quite the opposite, including the burq’a the colour of sand, obviously handmade. She moved as little as possible, said nothing of consequence. She certainly wasn’t trying to seem mysterious. Yet he sensed the emotion beneath each carefully chosen word; he saw the pain he’d caused her by saying her name didn’t suit her.
She’d been a happy woman once—that much was obvious. Something had happened to turn her into a woman who no longer saw happiness in her life or future.
There was a vivid life inside her, yet she lived in dangerous isolation in an arid war zone, in a hut with no amenities, far from family and friends. She was like a sparkling fountain stoppered without reason, a dawn star sucked down into a black hole.
He wanted to know why.
What would she look like if she truly smiled or laughed? To see her hair loose, wearing whatever she had on beneath the soft-swishing burq’a…
The last rays of the setting sun painted the ochre sand a violent scarlet. He blinked—and then it was blocked as her silhouetted form filled the doorway. She took on its hues, softened and irradiated them until she looked ethereal, celestial, a timeless beauty from a thousand Arabian nights, trapped in a labyrinth, needing a
prince to save her.
‘Do you need more pain relief yet?’ A prosaic enough question, but in her voice, gentle and musical, it turned their native language into harps and waterfalls.
Alim blinked again. Stupid, stupid! He’d obviously knocked the part of his brain that created poetry or something. He’d never thought of any woman this way before, and he knew next to nothing about this one. Perhaps that was the fascination: she didn’t rush into telling him about herself, didn’t try to impress or please him. He was no Aladdin. If she needed a prince, he wasn’t one any more, and never would be again. Then he would become a thief: of his brother’s rightful position, stolen by a death he’d caused.
And if he kept thinking about it, he’d explode. Time to do what she was doing: make his thoughts as well as their conversation ordinary. ‘Yes, please, Hana.’
The shock of sudden pain hit his eyes when she left the doorway and the west-facing door took back the mystical shades of sunset, vicious to his head. It felt like a punishment for turning his saviour into an angel.
He’d obviously been alone too long—but after three years he still wasn’t ready to show any woman his body. If he couldn’t even look at himself without revulsion, he couldn’t expect anyone else to manage it, let alone find him remotely attractive. Yet there was something about Hana that pulled at him, tugging at his soul—her beautiful eyes, the haunted, hunted look in them…
Hana’s unveiled face suddenly filled his vision, and he blinked a third time, feeling blinded, not by the sun, but by her. Catching his breath seemed too hard; speech, impossible.
She didn’t seem affected in any way by his closeness. ‘Let this swill under your tongue a few moments; it’ll work faster that way. You’ll feel better soon, and tonight we can sneak in some paracetamol. I’m sorry we have no codeine, it’s better for concussion, but stores are limited, as you know.’
Though her words were plain, it felt as if she was doing that thing again, saying too much and not enough. Talking about codeine to hide what she was really feeling.
Had he given himself away, shown that, despite his best attempt at will power, he couldn’t stop thinking of her? The internal war raging in him, desire, fascination and self-hate, was so strong it was no wonder she saw it.
Then he realised something. He wasn’t itching. He hadn’t had the stress-trigger since he’d woken. And the scent of lavender and something else rose gently from his body. She’d rubbed something into his skin while he slept. She’d not only seen the patchwork mess that was his scars, but treated them.
The permanent reminder that he’d killed his brother, his best friend…
Grimly he swallowed the foul brew she handed him, wishing he could ask for something to knock him out again. He handed it back with no attempt to touch her. She didn’t want him, and touching her threatened to turn swirling winds of attraction into gale-force winds of unleashed desire that could make him start wanting things he didn’t deserve.
‘Thanks,’ he said briefly, keeping his words and thoughts in prosaic English. Arabic had too many musical cadences, too much poetry for him to hear her speak it, see her lovely form and not be moved to his soul. But she couldn’t possibly feel the same after seeing him. He revolted himself, and for more reasons than the physical.
‘I’m fine if you need to see to your other patients. I’ll sleep now.’ He turned from her.
‘You should eat first. You don’t want to wake up hungry at midnight.’
Irritated beyond measure by her good sense, by her care for what he’d most wanted to hide, he rolled over and snapped, ‘If I want food I’ll ask for it, Hana.’ He used cold, deliberate English, to remind her of the danger if she kept distancing herself from him.
In return she made a mocking bow, a liquid movement like the night gathering around her. ‘Of course, my lord. I’ll bring your food at midnight after caring for you and my patients all day, if such is your wish.’ She wasn’t smiling, but there was a lurking imp in her eyes…and she still hadn’t said his name.
She’d left the hut before he recovered from the surprise that she was making fun of him. Putting him in his place with a few words… He watched her walk away, her body shimmering beneath her shifting burq’a like a fluid dance. ‘Hana!’ he yelled before he could hold it back.
She turned only her head, but he felt the smile she held inside. ‘Yes, my lord?’
Though the term could be a continuation of her teasing, it made him frown. What did she know about him? ‘I’m sorry,’ he growled. ‘I’ll eat whenever you think is best.’
She inclined her head. ‘Concussion makes the best of us irritable.’ Then she was gone.
It was forgiveness, he supposed, or understanding. He didn’t particularly like either—or himself at this moment. He’d lost his inborn arrogance the day Fadi died, or so he’d thought.
Never had he acted with such arrogance with the lowest pit worker, and he’d never lost it over a woman’s disinterest before. Yet within two hours of meeting Hana he’d become a cliché—a guy in lust with his nurse, cheated because she wasn’t entertaining him with flirtation, or distracting him from his pain and lack of control over his body by touching him.
Cheated because she’d touched his body as a nurse, not a woman…by seeing him as a patient—a scarred, angry patient she needed to heal—and not a man.
Growling again, he rolled over and punched the thin pillow, folding it to make it thicker. But rest was impossible while he knew she’d be back.
It was deep in the night when he came awake with a smothered exclamation—smothered because a hand covered his mouth. ‘Not a word,’ an urgent voice whispered. The bed dipped and sagged as a soft, rounded backside snuggled into the cradle of his hips. Strange back-and-forth motions made the rusted bed squeak.
The hut was a gentle combination of silvery light and shadow. The tender lavender she wore ignited his senses; the feel of her against his body instantly aroused him. Did she taste as sweet and silky as she smelled and felt on his skin? And her hair was loose, reaching her waist in thick waves, falling over his bare arm in butterfly kisses. Like a paradox, the hand reaching backward, covering his mouth, held him silent in ruthless suppression.
‘What are you doing?’ It came out as muffled grunts.
‘Sweeping my body indents from the ground,’ she replied in a fierce whisper. ‘I told you to be quiet. Now they’ll know we’re awake, and will want to know why. Take off your shirt.’ She stood, and as he stripped off his shirt her burq’a fluttered to the ground, leaving her only in cami-knickers and a thin cotton vest top. ‘Lie on me, and pretend to enjoy it,’ she mouthed.
Pretend? The moment he was on her she’d know just how far from a game this was. He thanked Allah that though she’d seen and treated his scars, she couldn’t see them in the dark.
Moments later she gasped softly and closed her eyes. Lying stiff and cold beneath him, she managed to whisper, ‘Make sounds of pleasure.’
He groaned. Moving against her softness, his body realised how long it had been since he’d loved a woman. It was screaming to him to take this pretence to a perfect conclusion. Yet there’d been an odd note of intensity in her whisper. It went beyond what he would have expected in this situation, and from a widow.
Frowning, he looked down at her, moved by the incandescent beauty of her uncovered face, by the glossy waves of hair shimmering across his pillow and over her shoulders in the moonlight. ‘It’s all right, Hana, I’ve done this before.’
‘What, you’ve faked it for killers before? What an adventurous life you’ve led,’ she murmured mockingly in his ear; yet her teeth were gritted, her body so taut with rejection of his touch he thought if he moved at all, he might bounce right off her.
Lifting his face to see her more clearly in the glowing half-light, he saw her eyes were still closed, and there was a sheen of sweat on her brow. She was terrified and trying her best to hide it, but of what was she more frightened: the danger all around them, or the
fact that the scarred, ugly stranger lying on her body was obviously ready for action?
Working on the instincts that had saved his life several times, he murmured in a croon he kept for intimate situations, but in English so the men outside wouldn’t understand, ‘Hana, this goes only as far as it needs to for Sh’ellah’s men. You saved my life—you’re saving my life again right now. I’d never hurt you or impose my will on you.’
She made a moaning sound that wouldn’t fool Sh’ellah’s men if they were in the radius of hearing. Her eyes remained squeezed tight shut. ‘Thank you.’ She arched her body up to his and made a more convincing noise of passion.
Feeling her sweet-scented, fluid body against him, he almost forgot his good resolutions.
Then she stiffened and made a muffled noise, as if finding release. ‘Alim,’ she cried, using his name for the first time. ‘Alim, my love, I’ve missed you so much!’
Moments later a face appeared at the window; its shadow blocked the moonlight. ‘Who is there?’ Alim demanded harshly in Maghreb. ‘Leave us to our privacy!’
The light reappeared as the head disappeared. He heard a whisper in a mixture of English and another language, but was unable to make it out. He spoke all forms of Arabic, French, German and English, but the African cadences were beyond him.
‘Swahili,’ she whispered, as tense as her body, though her voice had returned to the voice of a stranger, keeping him at a distance. ‘They’re saying that Sh’ellah—the local warlord—won’t be pleased at this. He had plans for me.’
‘I know who Sh’ellah is.’ Anyone who’d worked more than a year in the Sahel knew the names of local warlords and what boundaries were where. A wise man also made certain he knew when and where the borders shifted, or he ended up carrion feed. ‘He wants you?’ he almost groaned in despair. ‘That complicates matters.’
The Sheikh's Destiny (Harlequin Romance) Page 3
