Heart of the Desert

‘I’m better now.’ Georgie said. ‘I can’t get it through to her that she doesn’t have to worry any more. You know, the problem with having once had a problem is everyone holding their breath, waiting for it resurface. Like that soup …’ He laughed because he had seen her face when it had been served. ‘It was cold.’

‘Jalik,’ Ibrahim said, ‘cucumber. It is supposed to be served like that.’

‘I’m sure it’s lovely if you’re used to it. And I tried,’ Georgie said. ‘I tried but I couldn’t manage all of it, but even on her wedding day Felicity was watching every mouthful I took and so was Mum. It doesn’t all go back to having an eating disorder—I just don’t like cold cucumber soup.’

‘Fair enough.’ Ibrahim nodded.

‘And as much as I can’t wait for my sister to have the baby, as much as I’m looking forward to being an aunt, I do not want to be a nanny!’ Georgie admitted. ‘Which is what they would want me to be if I stayed on,’ she added, feeling guilty for voicing her concerns but relieved all the same.

‘You would,’ he agreed. ‘Which is fine if being a nanny is your career of choice. Is it, though?’

‘No.’

‘Can I ask what is?’

‘I’ve been studying therapeutic massage and aromatherapy. I’ve got a couple more units to do and then I’m hoping to start my own business.

‘As well as more study,’ she went on. Told him so easily, told him in far more detail than she had ever told another, about the healing she wanted to do for other women, how massage and oils had helped her when nothing else had. Unlike many people he did not mock her because, even if he did not like its mysterious ways, he was from the desert and he understood something of such remedies.

And he told her things too, things he had never thought he would tell another, as to the reason he didn’t like the desert.

‘It took my brother,’ Ibrahim said, because when Hassan and Jamal had not produced an heir and a fragile Ahmed had been considered as king, rather than face it, Ahmed had gone deep into the desert and perished.

‘Felicity told me.’ Georgie swallowed. ‘I’m so sorry for your loss.’

Such a loss. He could not begin to explore it and Ibrahim closed his eyes, but the wind blew the sand and the desert was still there and he hated it.

‘It took my mother too.’

‘Your mother left.’

Ibrahim shook his head. ‘By the desert’s rules.’ He looked out to the land he loathed and he could scarcely believe his own words, the conversation he was having. These should be thoughts only, and he turned to Georgie to correct himself, to retract, to bid farewell, yet blue eyes were waiting and that smiling mouth was serious now and Ibrahim found himself able to go on.

‘One day she was here, we were a family; the next she was gone and never allowed to return. Today is her son’s wedding and she is in London.’

‘That must be awful for her.’

‘It pales in comparison to missing Ahmed’s funeral, or so she told me when I rang this afternoon.’ It had been a hell of a phone call but he had not backed down from it, had sat and listened and listened some more.

‘I’m sorry.’

He wanted her to say she understood, so he could mock her.

He wanted her to say she knew how he felt, so he could scathingly refute it.

He did not want a hand that was surprisingly tender to reach out and brush his cheek. But on contact Ibrahim wanted to hold her hand and capture it, to rest his face in it, to accept the simple gesture.

And he could never know, only her therapist could know, how momentous that was, that her hand had, for the first time with a man, been instinctive. She felt the breeze carry the warm heat of the desert and it seemed to circle them and all she wanted to do was stay.

‘You should go,’ Ibrahim said, because Karim had warned him about this woman, warned him sternly to remember Zaraq’s ways while he was here.

And she did that. She turned and left him staring out at the desert, and as she walked she was reeling, her fingers burning from the brief touch, her mind whirring at to the contact she had initiated.

‘I thought you said they were stuffy.’ Abby interrupted Georgie’s memories, ones she had tried to quash. ‘He doesn’t look anything like I imagined.’

‘It’s different there,’ Georgie said. ‘There are different ways, different rules …’ She didn’t want champagne, she didn’t want to dance with the man who was offering, but it was Abby’s night and, yes, it was rather more fun being inside than in the queue outside. Not for a second did Georgie let on to her friend that her mind was elsewhere, but even Abby seemed more interested in Ibrahim than in the club itself, because in the early hours of the morning the conversation turned back to him again.

‘You’re going over there next week,’ Abby reminded Georgie, and gave her a little nudge. ‘Will he be there?’

Georgie shook her head. ‘He goes as little as possible—he went for the wedding and again when Azizah was born, and he’s just been recently. He’ll be back in a few weeks when the future king is born, that’s more than enough for him. I’ll be long gone by then so I won’t be seeing him for ages.’ She took a gulp of champagne. ‘Let’s dance.’

And they did.

They danced, partied and Georgie was a good friend and stayed till 4 a.m., laughed and had fun.

Even though she’d rather be home.

Even though she’d rather be alone.

To think of his kiss.

To think of him.

It had never dawned on her that he too might be sorry.

CHAPTER TWO

SHE did leave the balcony, as he had told her to.

Georgie had left him staring out at the desert.

And he shouldn’t have turned and neither should she.

He shouldn’t have turned, for his mind was angry, damaged by the desert, because when he turned, when he saw her looking back over her shoulder, he saw a familiar escape.

And he should not walk to her, but instead go up to his suite, pick up the phone and summon safe pleasure—for there were women chosen to please a prince or king. They, his father had long ago warned, were his only option when here in Zaraq.

And they were beautiful women and had more than sufficed, he reminded himself, except there was grit in his eyes from the desert wind and there was darkness in his soul tonight. He could still feel the cool trace of her fingers on his cheek and he had never cared for rules and he chose not to now.

He walked to her.

She waited.

She had every opportunity to leave and yet she did not. Her room was behind her, but she chose not flee. She faced the terror and the beauty of the man who was striding to her and fought not to run to him. There was no logic. Only madness could explain it, a charge in the air, a line that connected, an inevitability she desired, because as he pulled her into him, as he lowered his head, she was waiting and willing, and wanted that surly, delicious mouth on hers.

And now it was.

A mouth that tasted not of smoke or whisky but the clean taste of man.