Sheikh's Temptation

She could have helped with the job, but when, in his usual autocratic way, he had told her not to bother, she hadn’t forced the issue. She was determined to enjoy this trip through the breathtaking Koh-i Shir mountains in spite of his presence and the jinx that seemed to be dogging them. Getting into a heated argument with Arash over changing a wheel wasn’t her idea of a good time.

She sighed with ill-suppressed anxiety. “They must still be miles behind us.”

Arash pulled the wrench off the last nut and straightened. “They probably have not left Seebi-Kuchek.”

Seebi-Kuchek was the village where they had spent the night. Their little convoy had consisted of two trucks when they set off from the palace yesterday, one carrying Arash and Lana, the other two of Arash’s staff, who had come along as bodyguards or advance men or something. Or for all she knew, their role might be just to make sure she and Arash wouldn’t have to be alone.

If so, that was fine with her. Lana didn’t want to be alone with Arash, either—she didn’t want to be with him at all—but she had been impatient to get into the mountains. This morning, when the other truck had developed minor engine trouble, it was she who had suggested setting off without them.

“They can catch up with us at lunch time,” she had urged. “The weather is so beautiful. I want to get up into the mountains while the sky is clear, and what if it doesn’t last?”

She regretted it now, even more so because her instincts had been right. Clouds were building around the magnificent peak of Mount Shir, and soon this road would be just any old desolate stretch of road with no mountain views to entrance the eye.

Arash had agreed without a word, though she knew he hadn’t liked it. They had dawdled at their lunch break, waiting for the others to catch up, but it didn’t happen, and so they had gone on again. An hour later one front wheel had hit a pothole hard. Replacing the broken wheel, which had unbelievably stubborn bolts, had cost them too much time. She knew they would have to hurry if they were going to reach the village they were aiming for on the other side of the pass today.

She eyed him now. “Should we go back?”

“Your choice,” Arash said, moving to set his tools into the back of the truck. He slammed the double doors. “We can go forward or back. The distance is about the same, and each way it is unlikely we will get down out of the pass before nightfall.”

She eyed him in alarm. “What does that mean?”

“It means spending the night in the mountains.”

Lana closed her eyes and heaved a sigh. “Why is this trip so jinxed?”

“I know no better than you,” Arash said, in a calm voice which had the effect of irrationally irritating her.

“I know you don’t know, Arash,” she told him levelly. “Haven’t you ever heard a rhetorical question before?”

His response was to eye her steadily for a moment and then say, as if she hadn’t spoken, “Which shall it be, Lana? Forward or back?”

She could hear the suppressed impatience that was almost always in his voice when he spoke to her, and of course this stupid situation was no easier for him than for her. However much she disliked Arash Durrani ibn Zahir al Khosravi, cousin and Cup Companion to Prince Kavian, she knew he returned the compliment with at least equal force.

She couldn’t imagine how he had been talked into being her escort to Central Barakat, any more than she could understand—now—why she had accepted the situation.

She had wanted, unofficially, to be the first to travel through these fabulous, awe-inspiring mountains on the newly-built Emerald Highway which her father’s money had made possible. And when Alinor—her best friend from university, now Princess of Parvan—had said that Kavian had a particular reason for wanting Arash to be her escort, had hinted that she would in this way be providing cover for a secret diplomatic mission, Lana just hadn’t known how to tell her friend that the thought of making the journey in Arash’s company would leach all the joy out of the adventure for her…

So now here she was, stuck in practically the most desolate mountains on the face of the earth with Arash al Khosravi, a man who got on her nerves at the best of times.

Who was still waiting for her to decide. “You’re here, too,” she told him. “What do you want to do?”

“Let us go on,” Arash said.

Arash shifted gears for another climb on the tortuous road that, with a small chunk of Jonathan Holding’s vast wealth, was being built through the mountain ranges of Shir and Noor to link Parvan with the Barakat Emirates.

He thought back to that moment when Kavi had asked him to accompany Lana Holding on her misguided pilgrimage on the still-unfinished road. Arash had never before pleaded with his prince for any favour, but he had been horrified by the request.

He had resisted in the strongest terms.

Kavi, I ask you not to ask this of me. I cannot be the one to take her through the mountains. Surely any of the others…

“As the most trusted of my Companions, Arash, you are the only one I can ask this favour,” Kavi had replied uncomfortably, and Arash had realized there was more to this request than he himself had been told. “We owe her everything. How can I entrust her safety to any other?”

He gazed at his prince for a long moment as certainty crept over him. “Who has requested this, Kavi?”

“I myself make the request,” Kavi said, but with a tone in his voice that belied the words. Arash opened his mouth to say that it would be worse than useless for him to make this trip, and then subsided into silence.

It was true. Kavi and the country owed Lana Holding everything. Kavi had two reasons now to bless the luck that had put him and Arash at university at the same time as Alinor, now his wife, and her friend Lana. Lana, who had turned out to be the daughter of the American billionaire Jonathan Holding, had fallen in love with Parvan, and had persuaded her father to aid the tiny kingdom in the aftermath of its savage and destructive war against the Kaljuk invaders. So this was a small sacrifice for Kavi to ask of his closest and most trusted Companion.

Between Kavi and Arash there could be no such thing as a command. Arash had not sworn to obey the Durrani, for such an oath could not be asked from one of his ancient line. But he had sworn his loyalty, and such a wish, expressed in such a way, was more powerful than a command.

On my head and eyes, Lord, he had said then, bowing formally in the most ancient of exchanges.

But he wished Kavi had laid any other mission on him.

The way Arash was pushing the truck, Lana wondered if he had changed his mind after all, and intended to get down out of the pass before they had to stop for the night.

“Mash’Allah,” she reminded herself, in the way that she had learned during her time in Parvan. Whatever God wills. In terrain like this it was easy to remember the maxim that, whatever man proposes, it is God who disposes.

He heard the murmur and glanced over.

“Pardon?”

“I was just thinking that we might still make it down out of the pass to where we originally planned to stop if you keep it up like this.”

Arash shook his head. He wished it were true. “It will be dangerous to drive after sunset.”

He meant that they could not afford to risk hitting another pothole in the darkness.

Lana glanced nervously at the sky. She had been trying for the past hour to tell herself that the thick heavy clouds were moving east and the area of clear sky was no smaller than before. But they were not moving east, and the amount of blue was definitely shrinking.

He followed her gaze, but said nothing.

They rounded a curve, and he braked sharply. A spread of stones and rocks and snow had come down off the side of the mountain to spew across the road. He bumped slowly over it.

At night, without benefit of a moon, they would almost certainly have hit it before he saw it. Suddenly Lana accepted that they really would have to spend the night up here.

“What if there’s a storm?” She tried to sound matter-of-fact, but she couldn’t hide the note of dismay in her voice.

Arash flicked her a glance.

“Is there any protection up here?” she pursued.

He shrugged. “It is as you see.”

She knew in a storm they should find cover. But here, in the remotest region of Parvan, landmine warnings were still posted prominently on both sides of the road. The snow-covered, uninhabited mountains, almost as much as the valleys, had been liberally strewn with butterfly mines by the Kaljuks in the last days of the war, before their retreat.

Anything might be a landmine in disguise—a comb, a toy, a leaf….