The Ice Maiden's Sheikh

“Do you intend to marry this man?”

“What do you think?”

“I think you would be a fool.”

The light changed and he let out the brake and turned his attention to the road. Fury swept over her like a wave. Though he spoke perfect truth, he could not know it. She laughed false, angry, deliberately mocking laughter.

“How kind of you to have my interests at heart! But you don’t know anything about Michael.”

“Yes.”

“What, exactly, do you profess to know? You’ve never even seen him!”

“I have seen you.”

“And you don’t know anything about me, either!”

“All I need to know for such a judgement.”

“And what have you learned about me that allows you to prescribe for my future?” she couldn’t stop herself asking, though a moment’s thought would have told her she would not come out of the encounter the winner.

He deliberately kept his eyes on the road.

“Your fiancé has never aroused real passion in you,” he said grimly.

Jalia jerked back as if he had slapped her. A rage of unfamiliar feeling burned in her abdomen, almost too deep to reach. She felt a primitive, uncharacteristic urge to leap at him, biting and clawing, and teach him a lesson in the power of woman.

“How dare you!” she snapped instead, her Western upbringing overruling her wild Eastern blood. She was half aware of her dissatisfaction that it should be so.

His laughter underlined the feebleness of her reply.

“This is what you say to your English boyfriend, I think! Do you expect it to affect such as me?”

“And what would it take to stop you? A juggernaut?”

“Ah, if I taught you about love, you would not want me to stop,” he declared, a mocking smile lifting one corner of his mouth, and outrage thrilled through her. She knew the last thing on his mind was making love to her. He didn’t even like her!

“It’ll be a cold day in hell before you teach me about love!” Jalia snapped, as something like panic suddenly choked her. “Suppose we agree that you’ll mind your own business when it comes to the intimate details of my love life?”

He was silent. She looked up at his profile and saw that his face was closed, his jaw clamped tight. Disdain was in the very tilt of his jaw as he nodded formally.

“Tell me instead where your cousin will have gone.”

She didn’t know how she knew, but she did: the words were a struggle. They were not what he wanted to say.

“I have told you I don’t know.”

Although she had demanded it, Jalia was disconcerted by the abrupt change of subject. She had more to say, plenty more, but to go back now and start ranting would look childish.

They were approaching the city centre now: the golden dome appeared only in the gaps between other buildings as they passed.

“You must have some idea.”

“If you’re thinking I’m a mind reader, you overestimate me. If you imagine I had prior knowledge, go to hell.”

His eyelids drooped to veil his response to that.

“I am thinking that if your cousin had made friends in al Bostan you would know who they are. Or if she had found a favourite place—a garden or a restaurant—she might have shown it to you.”

My manner is biting off heads. The line of poetry sounded in her head, and he really did look like a roosting hawk now, with his cold green eyes, his beaked nose, his hands on the wheel like talons on a branch. A brilliantly feathered, glittering hawk, owner of his world.

And exerting, for some reason she couldn’t fathom, every atom of his self-control.

“She is wearing a white wedding dress and veil, you know. She’s not going to be able to just disappear. In a restaurant or any public place she’d attract comment.”

“Where would she go, then?”

Her imagination failed. Where could you hide wearing a staggeringly beautiful pearl-embroidered silk wedding dress with a skirt big enough to cover a football field and a tulle veil five yards long?

Latif put his foot on the brake and drew in to the side of the road, where, under a ragged striped umbrella, a child was selling pomegranates from a battered crate. At the Cup Companion’s summons the boy jumped up to thrust a half dozen pomegranates into a much-used plastic bag, and carried it to the car.

As Latif passed over the money he asked a question, which Jalia could just about follow. The urchin’s response she couldn’t understand at all, but from his excited hand signals she guessed that he had seen Noor pass.

Latif set the bag of fruit into the back seat beside his sword and put the car in motion.

“What did he say?”

“He saw a big white car go past with a woman at the wheel and a white flag streaming from the roof,” he reported with a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth. “About half an hour ago. Another man in a car asked him the same question soon after. The white car hasn’t come back. He’s not sure about the other.”

“A white flag!” Jalia exclaimed. “Why would she be flying a white flag?”

“To signal her surrender?”

His dry voice made her want to laugh, but she suppressed the desire. She had no intention of getting pally with the man.

They were in the city centre now. Latif began cruising the streets, turning here and there at random. As best she could, Jalia monitored passing cars as well as those parked at the side of the road. She glanced down each side street as they passed.

Jalia sighed.

“Oh, if this isn’t just Noor all over!” she muttered. “Turn a deaf ear to everything until it suits her! If she’d listened to me when I was talking to her—if she’d actually sat down and considered what I was saying, she would have come to this conclusion long ago. Instead she waits until it’s almost too late and will cause the maximum chaos!”

Latif threw her a look. “Or you might say that if you hadn’t tried to force your views on her so unnecessarily, there would have been no fear suddenly erupting in her and taking over.”

“You say unnecessarily, I say necessarily…” Jalia sang in bright mockery, then glowered at him. “Why are you right and I’m wrong?”

“I?” he demanded sharply. “It is Bari and Noor’s judgement that you challenged, not mine! I have no opinion, except that when two people decide to get married they should be left to make their own fate!”

She whooped with outrage.