Lord of the Desert

She hesitated. “Well, yes.”

He smiled warmly. “But no lunch. You do know that the hotel serves a marvelous little buffet beside the swimming pool around 3:00 p.m.?”

She sighed with relief and smiled back. “I do now. You see, the menus are all in French and I’ve had to have waiters translate them for me.”

“I will do that for you this evening.” He pulled out his phone again, pushed in numbers and spoke into it rapidly. The reply came at once. He listened, said something else, and put it away with a sigh. “The would-be kidnappers are in custody.”

“I’ve never seen anything like that in my life,” she said on a heavy breath.

“Sadly, I see it far too often,” he said absently. He said something to the driver, who nodded. He leaned back again and crossed his legs. “I must have Bojo drop me off at the embassy,” he told her. “But he will drive you back to the hotel and escort you inside. I have instructed him to make the concierge aware of our…adventure…this morning, and to look out for you.”

She felt as if he were wrapping her up in soft cotton, like a treasure. She barely knew him, yet he wasn’t a stranger. “Thank you,” she said, feeling that the words were hopelessly inadequate to express what she really felt.

“The entire incident was my fault,” he muttered darkly. “I was careless.”

“I don’t understand. We were only sightseers.”

They approached a group of imposing buildings in the middle of the city and the driver pulled up to the curb and stopped.

“I must go.” Philippe took her hand to his lips and kissed it lightly just above the knuckles, with his black eyes holding hers the whole time. “Don’t brood,” he added gently. “You are safer right this moment than you have ever been in your life.” He turned his head and said something sharp in that gutteral language. Their driver chuckled and replied with a wave of his hand.

Philippe left the car without a backward glance, but as the driver pulled away from the curb, Gretchen noticed that the black car with the two bodyguards slid quickly to the curb in the wake of hers and the two dark-suited men got out and followed close behind Philippe.

She frowned, wondering why they were following him instead of the Saudi prince. “Those bodyguards…” she began.

“Mademoiselle must not worry,” the driver said easily. “Monsieur is in good hands.”

“But aren’t those men supposed to be the Saudi prince’s bodyguards?”

He hesitated. “They are not in the employ of the prince,” he said finally. “They are often called upon to escort visiting dignitaries. And important businessmen,” he added hastily and smiled.

“I see. Thank you.” She smiled and leaned her head back against the seat, relieved and still a little puzzled. Now that she had a friend in Morocco, she didn’t want to lose him so quickly.

Bojo got out of the hotel’s Mercedes, which he had driven, and escorted Gretchen in to the concierge. He seemed different now, very focused and intent as he related, in the language she didn’t understand, what had happened. She noticed that while he was wearing the long striped, hooded robe favored by many Moroccan men, that underneath it he was wearing a suit. She studied him unobtrusively, noting the expensive watch on his own wrist and a diamond-studded ring on his left middle finger. He didn’t look like a hotel guide at all. But then he turned back to her, motioned to one of the bellboys and had her escorted up to her room, all with reassuring smiles and consideration. She wondered if she’d ever get used to all this pampering.

She looked at herself in the mirror and noticed a fine layer of yellow sand. The wind seemed to blow all the time, and she’d noticed that none of the cars seemed to have or use air conditioning, because the windows were always open. The sand came into the cabs and, apparently, everywhere else. She took a quick shower, careful not to use more water than she had to. Water in a desert country must be precious.

Her wardrobe was severely limited by Maggie’s insistence on only one carry-on piece of luggage. She put on a pair of white slacks with a patterned white-and-purple silk blouse and sandals and grimaced at the white Mexican peasant crinkle-cloth dress hanging in the bathroom, which was all she had to wear to dinner. Perhaps she could wear her hair long and put on her single strand of cultured pearls and their matching earrings and pass. She felt uncomfortable at the idea of disgracing Philippe, who would probably turn up in a dinner jacket and be embarrassed by her.

She went down to the buffet luncheon with apprehension, which was lessened when she saw other tourists in bathing suits filling up china plates. The waiter grinned and her and she grinned back. She realized that many of their visitors would be similarly limited in wardrobe and she stopped worrying.

She had prosciutto and melon with tiny pastries of stuffed pigeon and wondered what people back in Jacobsville would think of the entrée. She sipped water “with gas” as the waiter called sparkling water and felt like a Sybarite on holiday. The sun was warm, the grounds exquisitely beautiful and full of blooming roses and other flowers. The sounds of carefree bathers fell softly on her ears as she curled up drowsily by herself in one of two canopied swings behind the row of padded chaise lounges. Before she knew it, she was asleep.

She was dreaming. She was being rocked in a boat while the breeze stirred a loose strand of hair at her throat. Her cheek was resting on a soft pillow that seemed to beat rhythmically. She sighed and stretched, and the pillow made an odd sound.

She opened her eyes and looked up into a scarred dark face with black eyes that held an odd expression. Her cheek was against his shoulder, and she was cradled across his long legs in the swing. For long seconds, they simply stared at each other in the fading sunlight.

“How fortunate that you went to sleep out of the sun’s reach,” he said in a voice that was more heavily accented than she’d heard it before. “Sunburn can be lethal in this climate.”

“Lunch was delicious and I got drowsy,” she said in a hushed tone.

One of his hands was at her throat. He moved it in a faint caress, looking down at her soft mouth for an instant before he lifted his gaze beyond her to the sea. “I sleep very little,” he said quietly. “Mine brings nightmares.”

“About what?” she asked, intrigued by the familiarity of being held close to him when she should be nervous and wary. He was a stranger. He should have been a stranger…

He spread her fingers against the silky fabric of his jacket and smoothed over her short nails. “War,” he said quietly. “Death. The screams of the innocent in the darkness of terror.”

She stared up at him uncomprehendingly, with wide, curious eyes. “Aren’t you from France?” she asked hesitantly.

His black eyes slid down to search hers. “No.”

“Then, where…?”

The hand at her throat moved, so that his thumb pressed the words back against her lips. “It is too soon, Gretchen,” he said gently. “Much too soon for truth. Let us live in a world of utter fantasy for a few days and let tomorrow wait for answers.”

She smiled hesitantly. “What sort of fantasy do you have in mind?”

He traced her mouth tenderly. “A very innocent sort,” he said with an oddly harsh laugh. “The only sort I am capable of.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I know. Perhaps it is as well that you don’t.” He smiled down at her, cradled in his arms like a kitten. She smelled of orchids. He traced her cheek with its faint flush and her straight nose, and then her thin eyebrows as if he were sketching her. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-three,” she said honestly.

His forefinger eased between her parted lips, sensuously tracing the upper lip and then the lower one, enjoying her reactions. Her breath was jerky against his skin. Her eyes were dilating. He felt her body stir involuntarily and cursed himself and his fate.

“What are you like in passion?” he asked roughly. “Are you submissive, or do you like to bite and claw…?”

Her scarlet blush interrupted him. He scowled down at her horrified expression just before she struggled away from him and moved a foot away on the swing, trying to catch her breath.

“I don’t know…what sort of women you’re used to,” she choked, avoiding his intent scrutiny, “but I don’t do that kind of thing!”

His arm was across the back of the swing. His narrow black eyes watched her, intrigued. “What sort of thing?”

“Sleep around,” she said flatly and glared at him. “Least of all with a man I’ve only just met. So if that’s why you’ve been so nice to me, well, you’d better find a more modern woman. If I ever go to bed with a man, it’ll be my husband and nobody else. Period.”

The harshness went out of him at once. He looked at her with curiosity and, then, with utter delight. He smiled and then he laughed.

“Go ahead,” she invited warily. “Call me a prude. Say I’m living in the last century. I don’t care. I’ve heard it all before.”

“The small, still voice of reason in a mad world,” he said under his breath. “I knew that you were unique among your countrywomen,” he added huskily.

“I’m a throwback to Victorian times,” she agreed.

He took her hand in his and held it gently. “I don’t want a sexual interlude with you, Gretchen,” he said quietly.

She hesitated. “You don’t?”