The Sheikh's Destiny (Harlequin Romance)

by Melissa James

  He came to an abrupt halt. Hana would have barrelled into him if she hadn’t had superb self-control—or if she hadn’t been watching him for signs of collapse. She stopped right behind him and said, softly, ‘Ibuprofen and water?’

  Yes, she’d been watching, waiting for him to fall. She was thoughtful and high-principled, imperious queen and caring Florence Nightingale rolled into one. She might be the daughter of a miner, but a woman with Hana’s integrity and inner strength was destined for some high place.

  His mouth and throat, even his lungs felt scorched, parched as the earth beneath their feet. ‘Yes.’ It took all his control not to groan aloud. ‘Please,’ he ground out.

  In moments she’d handed them to him, and he drank gratefully.

  ‘Drink it all, Alim. You’re dehydrated. We still have four canteens left, and we’ll hopefully reach a small well by nightfall tomorrow.’

  She knew her way through this arid wasteland. She’d worked out her escape route well in advance. It told him far more than she intended…and she’d called him by name again. Even if it was because she currently felt superior to him, he felt a grin form. From the moment she’d touched him, her guard had been falling. As unbelievable as it was, she did desire him.

  He left a few mouthfuls of water for her. ‘You need to drink too, or you’ll end up with a dehydration headache, and then where will we be?’ he teased, even through the pain.

  She mock-bowed again, bending right over and peering up at him from about the level of his hip. ‘Yes, O my master,’ she rasped, and he chuckled as she took the canteen. She’d had the cringing tone of Gollum down pat. ‘Please take this and rub it on your forehead—it will help until the tablets take effect.’ She held out a small dark bottle to him.

  He took the tiny dropper bottle from her, and sniffed its contents. ‘Peppermint and lavender oils?’

  She grinned. ‘Yes, it is, and no, we are not going to use it to kill the stink of sweat and mud. We need it for headaches when we run out of ibuprofen. So use it sparingly, here—’ she pointed to his forehead ‘—and here.’ She touched his pulse-point in his throat, a brief, sweet flutter of a muddy finger, too soon over.

  She waited until he’d rubbed some of the fragrant oils on his forehead before lifting the canteen to her lips, drinking so fast he knew she’d been as thirsty as he.

  She must be closer to dehydration than him. She’d been giving him more water all along, citing his concussion as the reason.

  ‘You love caring for people,’ he remarked as she packed away the oil bottle and the empty canteen. ‘And being in control,’ he added, teasing her to lessen her suspicions that he was digging again—which he was.

  ‘Yes, I guess I do.’ She flashed him a rueful smile, her white teeth startling in the darkness and her dirty face. ‘It’s why I became a nurse—that, and my father wouldn’t have allowed me any other profession without being married first.’ A shadow crossed her face, her smile vanished. She said no more.

  ‘It must be killing you, not seeing your family,’ he said, taking a stab in the dark. Until now he’d thought her alone in the world. Now he sensed the truth lay deeper.

  Her eyes sparked in the night with dangerous fire. ‘Is it killing you?’

  He stared at her unblinking for a moment, and decided to meet the challenge. ‘You know who I am, why I’m in Africa.’ Because it’s as far from my privileged, fast-lane life as I could find on short notice…where they wouldn’t think to look for the missing sheikh.

  And he’d stayed because—well, because he had to. For the first time in his life, he wasn’t the second heir, Fadi’s replacement, or The Racing Sheikh. The people here, from the aid agencies to the villagers, needed his skills, not for entertainment, but to save their lives.

  Hana bowed again, but without the impish fun, the softness in her eyes vanished. ‘It wasn’t hard, my lord. Your face is famous. Your disappearance became a worldwide interest story.’

  ‘Especially among our people,’ he agreed through gritted teeth. She knew too much about him and his secrets, and he had to piece hers together by all she didn’t say.

  Even in the black of night, he saw her face pale. ‘Stop there.’

  ‘So you are from Abbas al-Din? Are you on the run from your father, or the husband you claim you don’t have?’ he pressed, wanting something, any part of her, the vulnerability and loneliness he felt beneath layers as strong and as fragile as the burq’a she’d worn the first day.

  ‘Stop.’

  She wasn’t looking at him, but her tension was so palpable she looked like a string pulled as far as it would go without snapping. ‘All right.’ After a few moments he asked, ‘Did you know who I was from the start? Was that why you saved me?’

  She sighed. ‘Not in the truck, or when I stitched you—but I knew by the time Sh’ellah’s men arrived. Be grateful for that—if I hadn’t known I wouldn’t have hidden your face, and they’d have taken you. As for coming with you now, I had no choice—but I would have saved anyone who needed my help.’

  He could feel the truth in every word. He should be grateful that she’d been honest with him, but it hurt far more than it should have.

  Two days was all that had passed since they’d first met, yet she meant more to him than she should. Possibly because she’d saved him so many times; possibly because she was one of his own, and he hadn’t been aware how deep his hunger ran to be with his own people again—

  And most probably because she was Hana, his dawn star who shone in a dark world: an honest woman who refused to lie even when it could save her.

  ‘So you’re saying I’m just anyone? One of hundreds you’ve probably saved?’ His voice was rough with the weird mix of anger and gratitude simmering in him.

  She turned her face to him, frowning. Flecks of dirt fell from her cheeks with the movement. ‘Would you rather I saved you because of who you are?’

  ‘No,’ he muttered. She was right; he wouldn’t want that. So what did he want from her?

  That was the trouble; his emotions felt as confused as his concussed brain. But from the start, Hana had humbled him, amazed him, fascinated him—and the combination was deadly for a man who had as many secrets as he did. But she’d known who he was all along, and said nothing until he’d asked, until he’d prodded her pain and she’d responded without thought.

  She’d treated him like any other man. She’d laughed at him, ordered him around—desired him with honest heat…

  Or had she? Had everything she’d said and done been a lie, centred on fascinating the deformed, lonely sheikh until he was her emotional slave?

  ‘So what’s your plan when we return to the world?’ he drawled to hide his sudden, blinding fury. ‘There’s probably quite a reward for my safe return to Abbas al-Din. Or are you hoping for an even better reward than money—my mistress, perhaps? Or even my wife, if you think wealth and position can make up for having to tolerate me in your bed?’

  He didn’t know what he expected her to do—slap him, toss half the energy bars and water at him and demand they go their separate ways…cry and protest her innocence…furiously remind him she’d saved his life before she’d known his identity—

  Shame scorched him as he remembered that. He opened his mouth—

  But then she finally responded: wild, almost jackal-like laughter. ‘You have got to be kidding me,’ she gasped, her face alight with hard mirth. She doubled over, her gusts of laughter growing stronger by the moment. ‘I’m seducing you!’

  Alim stared at her, shocked into silence. ‘What’s so funny?’ he asked at last, when she seemed to be sliding into full-on hysteria.

  She straightened, still chuckling, but the eyes that met his were diamond-hard, glittering with an emotion he couldn’t stand to see in her. ‘Until you resume your true identity and position in Abbas al-Din, my lord, you have no right to demand answers of me. Until then, I can safely promise I will not be calling the media to collect any reward, and I certainly won’t be
seducing you at any time in the near future. So ironic…’ She shook her head and slid down to the ground, laughing with that cold cynicism he’d never thought to see in his deep-principled, caring saviour.

  The irony was lost on him, but he saw one thing clearly: something had made Hana run from her world, and he’d tapped into it with his anger—and his believing the worst of her after she’d saved him so many times. That was what it came down to.

  What had he done?

  Through a painful stone lodged in his chest, he forced out, ‘Hana, I—’

  ‘Don’t waste time with an apology you won’t mean and I won’t believe.’

  Her cool words broke into the apology budding in his heart, stopping it dead. She was back on her feet, shouldering her backpack. ‘Silence would be best at this point. Let’s go.’

  Her face was remote, cool as ice water splashed in his face—and again, she’d treated him like she would any man who deserved her withdrawal. Despite recognising him, he wasn’t a figurehead to her. He was Alim, and she was showing him the consequences of his unleashing his foolish mouth on her.

  Since meeting her he’d butted in on her private world, hurt her and forced her to flee her village, destroying her fragile illusion of safety in Shellah-Akbar. And now he’d added humiliation to the list, treating her as a mercenary predator willing to sleep with him for what she’d get from it.

  The worst of it was he had a feeling that, no matter how ashamed he felt, Hana was shouldering a far greater burden from his unthinking accusations.

  It was almost sunrise again. They’d been walking ten hours, and Hana had felt Alim’s remorse walking between them like a shadow-creature the whole time. She’d felt it hovering there, aching for release, for the past twenty-four hours.

  She’d felt his shame through the last of their night-walk last night, his anxiety to make it better through his care that she rest her head on his jacket as she slept today. She’d heard his worry in his insistence she drink first, and the bigger share of the energy bar he’d given her, saying with an uneven laugh that it held no appeal after the fourth or fifth bar. But though he didn’t push her or talk about it, she knew what he craved.

  Forgiveness. A simple word, but so hard to practise when people she cared for, people she trusted believed the worst of her, over and over; and now, with a weary acceptance, she knew Alim had been added to that list. People she’d trusted who’d betrayed her. People that she cared for, who believed she was…

  Oh, God help her, she cared for him, and that he’d been able to accuse her of those things at all meant he’d believed it. Whether he’d believed for a moment or an hour or a lifetime didn’t matter; whether it was based on his lack of self-belief didn’t change it. It was done, he’d said it, and her heart felt like a lump of ice in her chest. The only way she could survive the next few days and save him, and herself, was to close down until she said goodbye to him for ever.

  She couldn’t go through it again, couldn’t care, couldn’t trust and have it betrayed, leaving her—like this. All she could do was slam the shutters down on her heart, show nothing and hope to heaven she could survive this bleak emptiness a second time.

  As they prepared for breakfast the silence seemed so loud it screamed over the sounds of the creatures waking for the day in the scrubby hills to the west. The hope and the need for her forgiveness crouching beneath his compliant quiet filled her stomach with sick churning until she couldn’t swallow a single mouthful of her food.

  She couldn’t give him the absolution he wished for—but she had to say something, so she blurted the first thing that came to mind. ‘You haven’t used the oil on your skin for a while. It must be itching.’ She rummaged in the backpack, and thrust the oil for his scars at him.

  After a moment, he took the bottle. ‘Thank you. It is uncomfortable.’ With an unreadable look he stripped off his shirt, and slapped some of the oil onto his skin, rubbing briefly and moving to the next spot, slap and rub, as if he were taking a shower.

  Typical male! With an impatient sigh, she snapped, ‘Stop that, it won’t do a thing to help.’ She rubbed her hands together for warm friction, and took over. Spreading her fingers wide, she moved her hands over his skin, slow and deep, and gritted her teeth against the pressure building in her throat, the moan of pleasure at touching him bursting to be free. ‘This is how you do it,’ she said as coldly as she could manage, to hide her reaction. ‘You have to let the oils penetrate the muscle as well as skin, and soften the scar tissue or it won’t stretch.’

  ‘Ah…I—I see.’ The words were a low growl, a masculine equivalent of purring desire whispering in her head, symphony to harmony. Was it because her hands were on his body again, or the physical release from the pulling pain the oils gave? ‘I think this skill took a long time to learn,’ he grated out.

  ‘It, um, did take a while.’ Striving to master the craving, she gulped again. Fighting hot-honey temptation…but there were no scars on his neck, or up into his hair. She had no excuse to touch there…and the anger and betrayal that had held her captive for over a day was flying faster than a skier on a downhill run. ‘I took a course on massage therapy for burns patients after I worked—at a burns unit,’ she said, remembering in time not to give away more information than necessary. ‘When I graduated, that’s what I wanted to do, work in a burns unit.’

  ‘You don’t find the sight of the mangled flesh—repulsive?’

  That crazy skier had just flown straight off a cliff, and the ice surrounding her heart cracked, letting out steam. ‘I hate the endless agony of burns. I wish there were some new way invented to heal the scars, stop the pulling of the flesh, limiting movement. I hate that almost everyone who has suffered extensive burns no longer feels human.’ She continued the movements of her hands over his skin, slow and steady, deep and soothing…healing his body as she looked in his eyes. She saw the seething mass of self-revulsion inside, and her heart lurched and sloughed that ice right off, leaving only honesty. ‘But, no, I don’t find anything about you repulsive—except the ugliness that comes from your mouth.’

  The shimmer of his eyes, before they closed, told her how much he felt as he said, ‘You have no idea how I regret what I said.’

  ‘What hurt most was that you meant it,’ she said quietly—and she was amazed how good it felt to say it, to say to him what she hadn’t been able to say to her father.

  ‘Only because of this,’ he replied, his hands moving to hers, stilling them, and she caught her breath at the intimacy, at the look in his eyes, so stark and unashamedly vulnerable. ‘It isn’t you, Hana. If I could take the words back—’

  She shook her head, shivering in a breath. ‘But you can’t, and I can’t forget.’ She moved her hands until he took his away. ‘I can’t give you the absolution you want.’

  ‘But you give me what I need—and right now, what I deserve,’ he said softly, lifting one oil-soaked hand in his, and kissing her palm—not in sexual intent, but in reverence, and tears rushed into her eyes as her foolish heart leaped of its own accord, whispering the words her mind refused to accept. ‘You’re honest with me, Hana. You don’t defer to me, to what I am.’

  She pulled her hand away, and lifted her chin. ‘What you were. You’re what I am now, a runaway helping others to try to forget what we left behind.’

  ‘No matter what position we hold in life when we’re born, we all spend our lives trying to prove we’re worth something, or better than others believe we are.’

  The dark heart of all she’d tried to achieve since she’d fled to Africa lay before her, exposed and bleeding. She couldn’t answer but turned from him, wrapping her arms around herself in a pitiful attempt at comfort. Her wet, oily hands soaked into her shirt, and the restful lavender drifted up. She wondered why it made her feel so sad.

  ‘Sweet Hana.’ The soft murmur came close to her, and she shivered in uncontrollable yearning. ‘Strong Hana, who’s always giving to others, always saving them…but who comes to H
ana when she needs a saviour? When was the last time anyone held you, or saw how alone you are in your strength?’

  She couldn’t breathe. The jagged lump of tears filling her throat stung her eyes.

  ‘Muddy angel,’ he whispered, so close his warmth touched inside her shuddering soul. ‘You’re more beautiful in your honesty than any woman I’ve seen in diamonds and silk.’

  Tears splashed down her cheeks. ‘Stop. I want to hate you.’

  Closer, inch by inch, until his arms covered hers, crossing over from behind, and at last she felt strong, no longer alone, if only for a moment. ‘But you can’t, can you?’

  Slowly, she shook her head—and that hurt most of all, that she couldn’t hate him. ‘I—I don’t know you well enough to hate you.’

  ‘Was it Omar Khayyam who wrote that when souls entwine, they’re never strangers, though they know each other only moments—and when souls repel, they’ll never know each other in a lifetime?’ he whispered behind her ear.

  She dragged in a breath. ‘I don’t know the poets. I’m only a miner’s daughter.’

  ‘You’re a queen in a nurse’s skin.’ He drew her stiff form back, caressing only her hand, until her body relaxed. ‘You’re my Sahar Thurayya, my brave, beautiful dawn star. I’m so glad you can’t hate me—but can you forgive me for my self-absorbed stupidity?’

  Millimetre by millimetre, she moved until she leaned into his warm strength, rested her head against his shoulder.

  ‘Give me one final chance, Sahar Thurayya—a chance for you to trust me again. I want that one chance more than I’ve ever wanted anything.’

  She turned to look up at him in wonder. How did he know? How could he guess the words she’d heard in her head a thousand times, with her father’s voice? Could he know what healing it brought her, hearing them while she rested in his arms?

  ‘I want a second chance with you more than anything but one thing. You know what that is,’ he added, low, and the endless anguish made the mirror of their self-hate melt like a final barrier. He was speaking of his grief, of his brother.