Sheikh's Temptation

There were teams all over the country working hard on mine clearance: Lana knew all about it, since it was her own favourite project in Parvan.

She also knew that, except for the routes that were the nomads’ regular pathways between their summer and winter grounds, including this one where the road had been built, these bleak, difficult mountains were scheduled to be the last area cleared.

It made sense to clear the valleys, the towns, the farmlands and nomad trade routes first. But it meant that even if they saw a cave or overhang, she and Arash could not just climb up to take shelter. They were safe from mines only for a few yards either side of the road, and all that had been mostly levelled to make way for the road.

A gust of wind roared down the mountainside, shaking the truck as it bumped along, spattering sand and gravel against the windshield, making her shiver.

Storm and mountain—you couldn’t beat them for making a human being feel frail and insignificant.

“We can’t pitch the tent if there’s going to be a storm. We’ll have to sit it out in the truck,” she observed in a level voice.

There was silence. He did not deny it.

Lana felt the first real thrill of alarm. Sitting in a truck overnight while a storm raged with only Arash and a survival candle for company! It defied imagination. The man could barely bring himself to be civil to her at the easiest of times.

She eyed the clouds again.

“Is there going to be a lot of snow?”

It was a stupid question, which she knew as soon as she asked it. When the weather was unseasonable in the first place, who could guess? But it was just ordinary human nature to ask, Lana figured. It didn’t really mark her as ignorant, but by the glance Arash threw her, you’d think she was a specimen of a species that lacked basic reasoning capabilities.

Arash shrugged. “Two inches? Two feet?”

“Two feet?”

“It is impossible to guess.”

His voice was rough and flat, not sharing anything with her, and she had to breathe deeply to calm her irritation. She had only been making conversation to ease her nerves, and besides, he must know the ropes a lot better than she did. She’d never been up here before, but his family estates were in the Koh-i Shir mountains somewhere, so why shouldn’t she ask an expert?

But what was the point in defending herself?

They always did rub each other the wrong way. It was one of those inexplicable, unfounded antipathies. Each would have been happy never to see the other again, she thought, if only one of them would leave town.

But Parvan was Arash’s home, and he wasn’t going to emigrate. And, apart from this short break which Alinor had insisted on, Lana wasn’t going anywhere, at least until after Alinor’s baby was born. And then—well, she wasn’t ready yet to name a day when she would leave Parvan.

She had never met such brave, strong, true people as the citizens of Kavi’s little country of mountain and desert, and here—helping, with her father’s money, to put the war-torn country back together—she felt that she had found her reason for being.

“What is this, Lana, adopt-a-country?” her father had demanded in amused exasperation at yet another request for a contribution. In one of his weak moments she had convinced him to match, dollar for dollar, all the funds she raised elsewhere. “Don’t I already support most of the villages and roads and wells and schools? And that mountain highway—what are you calling it, the Emerald Road?—is sucking up cash like a vacuum cleaner! What else can there be?”

“Dad, face it—if you don’t spend your money on something like Parvan, what’ll you spend it on? Trying to buy power, that’s what. And then you won’t be a great guy anymore, you’ll be a monster, and everyone will hate you,” she had explained ruthlessly. “And I don’t want everyone in the world hating my dad.”

“I’m not trying to buy power at the moment, Lana,” he had told her. “I’m trying to endow a museum.”

The new museum was his baby, and it needed lots of funds, too. But he almost always came through for her. And sometimes their interests coincided, for many wealthy Parvani families were forced into selling their ancient treasures to finance the rebuilding of their lives.

At least Lana could always make sure the Holding Museum paid well.

Kavi and Alinor and all the people whose lives she touched—whose villages and homes and farms were rebuilt, much sooner than could otherwise have been possible, with her father’s generous donations and the money she raised with her fund-raising events—of course were grateful.

Only Arash stood outside the circle of her admirers. As a sheikh and tribal leader with a valley full of farms and villages to care for, he had not interfered when his people had received their share of the generosity. But as the man whose own estates and family home had suffered, he would accept nothing from her.

And although she was certain that his painful limp could be helped with surgery, he had virtually pretended not to hear her offer to finance a trip for surgery abroad.

She had never understood his reasons, and she no longer bothered to try.

She turned her head to run a look over his strong, uncompromising profile as he drove, his own attention firmly on the road. He was wearing a leather jacket and denim jeans and boots, but he looked no less a sheikh than when he was in full traditional dress.

“Will this thing drive if there’s that much snow?” she couldn’t help asking.

“There are too many unknowns to predict anything with certainty,” he said.

“So we might end up waiting for a helicopter rescue?” Her heart sank. And how long would that take? she wanted to ask, but she suppressed the desire. His answer would only be another irritating refusal to guess, and she was already gritting her teeth.

“I knew I should fly,” she muttered.

Arash lifted a disbelieving eyebrow. “And why didn’t you?”

“Well, you know the answer to that better than I do, Arash!”

“I know only that Kavi asked me to see you safely to Central Barakat and that you insisted on coming by road.”

She threw him a look. “I do know, Arash, that I’m providing cover for some secret mission to Prince Omar.”

Arash frowned at the road. “I am entrusted with no mission other than delivering you safely to my cousin Omar and Princess Jana in Central Barakat.”

Of course he wouldn’t tell her if he was. “So why was it so important that you and no one else accompany me?” she demanded sceptically.

There was a short silence.

“But this was your own choice,” he said in slight surprise.

Lana’s mouth gaped. “My choice? What, to have you along? Why would it be my choice?”

“Naturally I found your motive inexplicable.”

Lana turned to look at him, her eyes narrowed. “Did you really think that I had asked Kavi to force you to come with me? Kavi couldn’t have told you such a thing!”

He threw her a glance, shrugging. “It was one possible explanation for something inexplicable.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence!” she snapped. “What did you think my motive was, Arash, just as a matter of interest?”

The truck slowed as his eyes briefly but electrifyingly met hers.

“I thought your motive would be revealed in time. I didn’t trouble, therefore, to wonder.”

“Don’t hand me that!” she commanded irritably. “If you thought I engineered this, you must have had some ideas about why! What was my reason, Arash?”

She stared at him, her mind whirling, fury already bubbling up inside, and she thought how dangerous it would be to be stranded alone with Arash, of all men. She knew there was a well of resentment in her towards him…. There wasn’t another of Kavi’s Cup Companions she didn’t like, whom she wouldn’t rather have been with now.