He didn’t listen to me when I said Mukhtar was lying, she thought sadly, nostalgic for that happy time rather than for Latif himself.
‘Do you know where you belong now?’ Alim asked, breaking into her dark reverie.
‘Does anyone?’ She sighed and shrugged.
‘Sometimes we can’t be where we belong.’
The curt tone didn’t hide the intensity of suffering beneath. Hana glanced at him, saw his jaw tensed, his eyes focused too hard on the way ahead. ‘You can’t go home until you’ve forgiven yourself for what happened to your brother.’
He turned to her, and what she saw now took her breath away: turbulent, beautiful male, endless anguish. ‘You can’t go back, and I’m guessing you only let your family down. I took a good, potentially great leader from a nation before his time.’
‘And what did you lose?’ she asked, seeing the half-truth inside his words.
It was the untold halves that left them both here in Africa, half-people suffering inside everything left unsaid.
He geared down. ‘Now.’
She held onto the loop again, knowing he wouldn’t say more—unless she pushed him. ‘Abbas al-Din lost a good man, a strong leader—but they survived, they moved on. You lost your brother, and you’ve given up on life.’
‘Fadi was more than a good man or strong leader,’ he snarled without warning. ‘He was a father to Harun and me when our parents died, our guide and mentor. He taught me everything, was my dearest friend and closest confidant.’ The next words came out twisted with self-hate, and she ached for him. ‘You have no idea. Fadi’s with me everywhere I go, a permanent reminder that it was my fault he died.’
And that, she suspected, was the first time he’d said anything so emotional since Fadi’s accident. ‘Alim…’
‘Don’t tell me he’d hate to see me like this. I know he’d want me to become the ruler he’d have been.’ He spoke right over her before she could say the words forming on her tongue. ‘But I don’t deserve to take his place—it’d be as if I walked on his grave and took his life from him a second time!’
‘I see,’ she said, after a long silence.
He frowned at her, but said nothing. Perhaps he feared opening a can of worms.
‘I think I’d feel exactly the same.’ She pointed ahead. ‘Watch where you’re going.’
He turned, saw the massive rock looming ahead, and corrected his direction. ‘But?’ he asked, with a grim awareness in his voice. ‘There is a “but” hiding in there somewhere.’
She smiled at him. ‘Yes, there is a “but”. But—this is about more than your private grief and personal feelings. Abbas al-Din lost a good, strong leader—but it could have a leader who’s learned from his mistakes, and learned compassion from suffering.’
‘My brother Harun is all that,’ he said, through gritted teeth. ‘He did everything right, even married the princess Fadi was contracted to wed the week after the accident happened.’
Wondering why Fadi had so recklessly risked his life a week before his wedding, she touched his hand, gripping the wheel with whitened knuckles. ‘I can’t blame you for refusing. That was asking too much of you.’
He lifted a brow. ‘Thanks for the absolution, Sahar Thurayya.’
The blatantly sarcastic words didn’t hurt her; his grief was as raw as if it had happened yesterday. ‘But—I still haven’t finished my “but”,’ she added, smiling gently, ‘did you ever ask Harun what he wanted, or did you take it for granted he’d do it all and better than you?’
A long silence followed. ‘What is it you’re not saying?’
She bit her lip. ‘I understand why you don’t watch news reports of home, but it’s left you with a wrong supposition. Your brother Harun isn’t doing as well as you suppose.’
At that he put his foot on the brake and ground the Jeep to a halt, leaving the engine running. He turned to her and said in a near-snarl, ‘What’s wrong with my brother?’
His pain, his guilt was so intense beneath the façade of anger. She blew out air as she tried to think of a gentle way to say it. ‘I’m in contact with a few aid workers from the region. Local gossip has it that Harun is ruling Abbas al-Din well—but the people want you back. And while Harun’s doing his best for the country, and helped put the nation back on its feet after Fadi’s death, he has no personal happiness of his own.’
‘Why not?’ he asked, his voice dark and grim. ‘Amber’s beautiful, a genuinely nice person, too—and don’t tell me he doesn’t like her. I saw it in his eyes when they met. He was crazy about her.’
She replied with a reluctant sigh. ‘Perhaps he was—but how did she feel about having to marry the youngest brother within weeks of Fadi’s death? Tradition would have stated that you marry her—isn’t that right?’
She almost felt the tightness of Alim’s jaw. ‘Yes.’ He didn’t repeat himself. Marrying Amber would have been repulsive to him—as repulsive as marrying Mukhtar was to her, but for different reasons.
‘Palace gossip says he and the princess Amber are far from happy. In three years they haven’t been seen smiling at each other in the way of lovers, let alone touching. Her ladies swear Harun doesn’t visit her bedroom at night—’ she lifted a hand as he scowled and opened his mouth ‘—and it’s backed up by facts. In three years she hasn’t fallen pregnant.’ She paused to let him absorb the knowledge of his brother’s marital unhappiness before she went on. ‘If there isn’t an heir soon, you know what will happen next.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
ALIM stared ahead at the empty-seeming darkness: as filled with pitfalls and boulders as Hana’s conversation. He did indeed know what would come next: the sharks would begin circling, from other princely families in the region to neighbouring countries, to powerful Western corporations and nations with greedy eyes fixed on their oil and gas reserves.
And he knew everything Hana wasn’t saying. Was Harun drowning beneath the load of responsibility he, Alim, had tossed on him by disappearing? Why wasn’t he happy with the beautiful princess he’d—he’d been forced to wed?
For the first time Alim realised how selfish he’d been to leave his younger brother alone and grieving. Drowning in his own grief, he’d been blind to Harun’s needs. As Hana had said so eloquently, he’d expected Harun to pick up the pieces of a shattered royal family and a nation on his behalf. He’d known serious, stable Harun would do the right thing, do a better job than he, Alim, ever could—right down to marrying the princess when he couldn’t face it.
‘Thank you for telling me,’ he said, and couldn’t help the terse anger in his voice. He only hoped she knew it wasn’t directed at her, but a reckless, passionate young man who’d led a charmed life until the fateful day he’d talked Fadi into racing him.
‘I hope it helps you make the right decision.’ Hana looked out of the window into the empty night. She was leaving the decision to him.
They both knew there wasn’t a decision to make. He had to go home, ask Harun what he wanted, to stay on as sheikh or not, to remain married to Amber or not. Maybe if he had a bit of time out, he and Amber could work it out—
Then he glanced in the rear-vision mirror, and gunned the engine again. ‘And what happens next might come to us, and sooner than we think if we don’t move. I should never have stopped the Jeep.’
Hana turned her face to the back window, and paled. ‘They’re close.’
‘Four kilometres, maybe more,’ he corrected gently, cursing himself for scaring her. ‘The dust looks closer than it is out here, in the darkness.’
She nodded, and didn’t speak again for long minutes. Then she said in a strained voice, ‘It wasn’t my place to tell you about your brother.’
‘Maybe it needed to be said. And maybe I needed to talk about it,’ he replied, surprising himself with the realisation that what he’d said was true. She’d made him want to live again, to stop running, merely by telling him of the suffering his little brother endured on his behalf.
She was holding on
to the broken jacket as if it were her only lifeline. ‘Not to me, Alim. Don’t ask me, don’t confide in me. I can’t even help myself out of my own mess.’
‘Maybe you don’t have to, Hana,’ he said quietly. ‘Maybe life, fate or God brought us together for a purpose. Maybe we can help each other.’
‘What, we met for the express purpose of solving each other’s problems?’ she asked, with the same hard sarcasm he’d unleashed on her only minutes before.
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I’m no prophet.’
‘And I’m no wise woman,’ she retorted. ‘I’m just a half-Arabic, half-Australian miner’s daughter who doesn’t even know where she belongs.’
The self-hate in her voice was like a hand shoved in his face. Don’t go there. But somebody had to open that door and show her the monster in her personal cupboard wasn’t as big or bad as she feared—
But this wasn’t the time, and he wasn’t the man for the job. He couldn’t even frighten off his own monsters. Why would God send a man who was such an obvious failure at his life to teach Hana how to live hers?
He said quietly, ‘Science and the Quran teach us that we’re all one family, Hana, from common ancestry. So if you see a division between us, it’s only wealth. The division of high or low birth exists only in your mind.’ To lighten the mood—he could sense her inner struggle to not look back—he added, ‘We all need to eat, drink, sleep and use the bathroom, no matter how much some of us pretend we don’t.’
‘I have to believe that after the past few days.’ She grinned at him. ‘My poor energy bars really affect you, don’t they?’
He mock-frowned at her. ‘My bodily functions are a state secret to be kept between us alone; but once we reach safety, I swear I’ll never eat another energy bar.’
Her musical laughter came rippling from her throat, and he ached again: ached to touch her hand, to draw her close, look in her eyes and see the restless need in her again when he finally tasted her lips. When they weren’t talking, the need grew to unbearable proportions.
Which was why he’d poked his nose into her life, and allowed her to step an inch inside his. It had come to this: anything to stop himself for another minute, another hour, because if he touched her again he’d lose control. He was still in exquisite pain from massaging her; touching her made him want far more than an hour’s release. His fingers on her bare skin, hearing her murmur his name in feminine awakening…He almost groaned aloud thinking about it. How beautiful it was to caress her—it made him feel…whole. As if he’d come home.
Whatever had happened in Hana’s past, he was the first man to truly arouse her. He couldn’t doubt it after seeing the glimmering dawn of desire in her eyes when he’d cupped her cheek in his palm. Such a simple movement for such an unforgettable reaction. What he wouldn’t give to see her face vivid and alive for him for the rest of his life!
He’d give anything…anything but his brother’s happiness. He could do nothing, say nothing until he knew the direction of the rest of his life. If he had a life after this.
‘Be grateful for my poor energy bars—they saved your life,’ she mock-admonished him, willing to play the game, too, to stay away from his hot buttons.
‘As grateful as you were for my muddy water?’ he retorted, mimicking the motions of tossing water out the window, and she laughed again.
Neither of them looked back, but kept laughing and joking. Neither spoke aloud their belief that they’d be dead in less than an hour.
‘We’re not far from the truck, if I followed Abdel’s instructions well enough.’
She nodded. ‘This is a fairly deserted region, and the scrub is high to the right.’ She pointed to a thick wall of darkness. ‘It’d be easy to hide a truck inside it, so long as you don’t mind the duco being scratched to Billy-o.’
He grinned at her. ‘Scratched to what?’
She turned her face to his, filled with comical guilt. ‘It’s an Australian term. I’ve got no idea what its exact meaning is—think it means pretty bad?’
He chuckled. How often he’d laughed in her company; far more than he had in the three years preceding it…and it no longer felt like a betrayal to Fadi that he could laugh. ‘Knowing you has been an education,’ he said gravely.
‘I live to serve,’ she replied, bowing her head with the same gravity. ‘I strive not to be completely forgettable.’
I’ll never forget you, he thought but didn’t say. Even if he never saw her again after this adventure, she’d for ever shine in his memory like the star he’d named her. But he would see her again, at least once—he’d make certain of it. ‘Maybe you’re not completely forgettable—just a little bit,’ he conceded in a drawl.
‘Oh, thank you so much,’ she retorted, trying not to laugh—and he smiled inside at the indignation flashing in her eyes. She gave away her feelings for him with everything she said, and everything she left unsaid.
‘Hold on tight and keep your eyes open, Hana. We have to find the truck.’ He swerved the wheel, and the Jeep turned hard right. ‘Look for some kind of opening. If we hide in time, they might pass our tracks in the night.’
‘There,’ she cried seconds later, pointing. ‘Let me out. There’s a track to the left there, covered with branches, exactly as Abdel described it. I’ll clear it for you.’
‘It’ll go faster if we both do it.’ It would be useless to command her to stay in the Jeep. After hours of enforced rest, she was determined to pull her weight. ‘Try to run where the tyres will make indents. It’ll make for less cleaning later.’ He stopped the Jeep, and they both ran for the track, clearing branches and rocks in their way. Clever Abdel had done all he could to make certain the truck wasn’t found. ‘Keep the debris close by. We need to replace it for cover.’
After a few minutes, when they’d cleared all they could, he said, ‘Get in the Jeep, Hana. You can’t cover our tracks without putting your shoulder out again.’
She made a sound of frustration. ‘What can I do to help?’
‘Can you drive the Jeep?’ he asked tersely. ‘Just drive straight inside without turning, keeping it in first gear, and stop when the back of the Jeep is about twenty feet in.’ He picked up a branch covered in leaves as he spoke, and headed for the furthest point he dared, given the enemy was only a few kilometres behind now.
Hana jumped into the Jeep, driving it into the opened track while Alim brushed traces of the Jeep’s tyres for a hundred feet, then trailed the branch behind him as he ran inside the track.
‘Alim,’ she called urgently, ‘I can see dust rising behind us.’
‘Wait.’ He threw the debris back across the track, covering their trail as best he could. ‘That’ll slow them down a bit,’ he panted as he jerked open the driver’s door. He lifted her up and over the gear stick to the passenger seat, strapping her seat belt on. ‘You’ll need the loop to hang onto if this gets bumpy.’
She pushed her arm through the torn jacket, holding tight. ‘Go.’
He took off as slow and quiet as he could to minimise their dust cloud, praising God she’d thought to keep the engine going; with the enemy so close, starting the Jeep would surely have attracted their attention. Hana thought of things ahead of time, and didn’t let her worst fear turn to mind-numbing panic. She was a woman he could rely on to be by his side through the worst of times, not wailing or expecting him to save her.
He flicked a glance at her as he drove through the pitch-black trail. In the reflected light of the dashboard panel, she stared ahead with calm resolution. She looked ghostly, like a phantom of wisdom and strength in the night.
Even now, she didn’t panic or make demands for him to hurry every few moments, knowing it would make him more on edge. Her tranquillity in this worst of situations, her good sense was something more than any physical beauty a woman could own. She was a woman in a million; he’d never find another woman like her; and when this was over—
‘When this is over and we’re safe, I’m going to marr
y you.’
And in her silence, his jaw dropped a little at the outright gall of the proposal. He’d meant to tell her how he felt—but his words had come out so blunt even he was shocked. He flicked another glance at her, and saw her fists were clenched; her cheeks were white and nostrils flared. He called himself all sorts of names for stupid. If he’d shocked himself, he’d stunned Hana.
Yet he’d never meant any words more. Idiot, why couldn’t he have said something romantic and poetic, to soften her and win her over first?
Well, why not? She loved it when he called her Sahar Thurayya—if he told her he thought of her as a queen above any born to the title—he scrambled to get his thoughts in order—
‘No.’
The single word was neither blunt nor stunned; it was final. Just that one word, yet it encompassed a world of rejection. Now, when it was too late and she’d rejected him, his mind turned calm and focused; he had the fight of his life on his hands, but that was okay. His agenda was out there, and at last he had a reason to make her speak. Or so he hoped. ‘Why?’
After a few moments, she said, ‘Just no.’ But there was a telltale quiver in her voice.
‘Would you marry me if I wasn’t who I am?’ he asked, though he knew the answer.
‘N-no. You don’t mean it.’
No longer a quiver; she was stammering her words. She was considering it.
‘Yes, I do. I want to marry you.’
‘Well, you can’t.’ Desperation laced her voice. Though she was sitting right beside him, she was bolting away in her mind and heart.
‘Don’t you think I deserve a reason, my dawn star?’ he asked in Gulf Arabic; he’d noticed before that she became more emotional, more vulnerable in her native tongue, and when he called her by the name he loved.
‘I can’t give you one,’ she said, in Arabic. ‘Please, just stop.’
‘You like me,’ he went on, his mind clear, his aim on target. ‘You like me as much as I like you.’
‘I—yes.’
He kept the smile inside; the situation they were in was too serious to waste moments chalking up points. ‘To like each other is a rare thing, far better and stronger than mere desire, and it lasts a lifetime. Yet you desire me as well, Sahar Thurayya—you ache for me as much as I ache for you.’ He didn’t make it a question; they both knew the truth.
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