Lord of the Desert

He looked at her small hand and hated himself for the curse that denied him a man’s expectations. He smoothed his fingers over hers while he considered his options. He could send her home at once. It would be the best thing for her. But she opened his heart. She made him want to live. She made him laugh and smile and look at the world as a place of fascination and delight. He hadn’t felt that way for a long time. For two years, in fact. He hadn’t ever expected to feel that way again. And if it was like this, so quickly, how would it be as time passed and they got to know each other?

His features twisted. Yes, how would it be when she knew his horrible secret, when the truth came out. Would she look at him with pity, or with contempt and disgust? Could he bear to see that, in her soft green eyes?

He looked at her with torment in his face.

“Oh, don’t look like that,” she said with concern. “Whatever’s wrong, it will all come right one day. Really it will. You have to look for miracles or they don’t happen, Philippe.”

“How do you know that something is wrong?” he asked at once.

She frowned. “I don’t know. But something is.”

His breath caught in his throat. His fingers tightened on hers. He looked into her eyes and knew at that moment that he wasn’t going to be able to let her go.

Chapter Four

“It isn’t something I’ve said, is it?” Gretchen asked, breaking into his thoughts. “I know that I’m very opinionated. I didn’t mean to be rude…”

He brought her fingers to his lips and then released them. “It isn’t anything you’ve said. In fact, I quite admire your attitude,” he added with a smile. “Muslim women value their virtue. But it is a rather unusual trait in this day and age.”

“That’s what everyone says, all right,” she agreed whimsically. She averted her eyes. “My parents were very strict and deeply religious.” She toyed with a button on her shirt. “I suppose you’re Muslim?”

“No,” he said unexpectedly.

That brought her face up. She searched his eyes curiously.

“I am a Christian,” he said unexpectedly, and without explanation. “And so are many of my people. We are almost equally divided between Muslim, Christian and Jew. It makes for interesting politics,” he added with a grin.

“I’m surprised at how much I don’t know about this part of the world,” she told him. “I thought everybody was Arab, and Muslim. But I’ve learned already that many of the people who were born in Morocco are Berbers, not Arabs.”

“A people very proud of their ancient heritage,” he agreed. “The Berber language is not a written one, either. It is passed down from generation to generation verbally, and its history is woven into the carpets they sell, story by story.”

“I’d love to see them,” she said.

“Tomorrow,” he promised. “I’ll have Bojo take us on a walking tour of the city.”

“I’ve already been, but I didn’t want to look at carpets,” she said sadly. “I didn’t realize what I was missing.”

He chuckled. “Something to anticipate,” he said. “Now, I still have some telephone calls to make, so I must leave you. I’ll be along for you just before eight.”

“I only have one dress with me,” she told him. “It’s a lacy white Mexican dress…”

He guessed her thoughts from the worry on her face. “And you think I may be ashamed of you, because you aren’t wearing something very expensive?”

“Yes,” she said honestly.

He smiled. “I’m sure that whatever you wear will be charming,” he said gently. “I look forward to tonight.”

He left her there on the swing and she watched his elegant back as he walked away. One thing this country had already impressed on her was the grace of movement that these people seemed to share with Arabs. Nobody ever seemed to hurry. It was a wonderful slow pace that suited the easy manner of life and business, unrushed, unharried. She wondered whimsically if anyone here ever got ulcers. She really doubted it.

She dressed with more care than ever that evening. It had been months since Daryl had taken her out and pretended to be in love with her. She thought of him with mingled shame and self-contempt. She’d been easy prey for him, in love for the first time in her life and flattered that such a handsome young man should be so interested in her. He’d even come to sit with her at the hospital during the last terrible days when her mother was dying.

Only after the funeral had she understood his interest. He stopped by the ranch after work and offered to marry her and manage her inheritance for her. When she explained that there was no inheritance, he’d looked shocked and then angry. Muttering something about a waste of time, he’d walked away and never looked back. Her brother, Marc, had tried to warn her about him, but she’d only gotten angry and refused to listen. It was the first time a man had made her feel special and loved. What hurt was that she’d been naïve enough to believe him. But, then, her mother had been so possessive and dependent on her that she rarely got to date anyone while she was in her teens and early twenties. Even then it was mostly blind dates that were one-time occurrences. Marc had commented once that she needed to assert herself more with their mother, despite her illness, but Gretchen’s soft heart had been her undoing. When she asked for more freedom, her mother agreed, and then cried and cried about being left alone. Gretchen settled for those rare blind dates until Daryl came along.

She’d met him at the law office where she worked. He’d had Mr. Kemp do some legal work for him and in the course of talking to Gretchen, he’d learned that her mother was terminal and that she lived on a large ranch. Suddenly, he was around when she went to lunch at the local café, and she ran into him often at the supermarket. He asked her to go with him to Houston to a ballet, but she told him her circumstances. He’d laughed and said they could have a picnic in her house and her mother could join them.

Gretchen had been floating on air. Not only did he charm her, but he charmed her mother. He really did make her remaining few weeks happy and cheerful. Gretchen treasured her few stolen minutes with him, thrilling to his kisses and caresses. He’d proposed the week her mother died, and she’d had at least that future happiness to anticipate while she mourned the only parent she had left.

Then, like all dreams, it had ended abruptly. The shame and humiliation she felt was only heightened by Daryl’s very public avoidance of her after the funeral. People felt sorry for her, but she didn’t want pity. She wanted escape. Then Maggie had phoned and asked if she’d like to go to Morocco…

She came out of her depressing thoughts and back to the present. She looked at herself in the mirror. With her long blond hair loose and faintly waving down her back, and the white dress flowing around her slender curves, with pearls at her ears and neck, she looked different. She wasn’t pretty, but she wasn’t ugly, either. She felt vulnerable, too. She hoped her new friend meant what he said about not wanting a passionate affair, because for the first time, she might be at the mercy of her own repressed needs. He was far more attractive than Daryl had ever been, and he aroused a fiercer hunger in her than even Daryl had. She could tell already that Philippe was sophisticated. Probably, he’d left a trail of broken hearts and affairs behind him. She had to make sure she didn’t end up as one of them. She’d had enough grief lately.

Promptly at a quarter until eight, there was a knock on the door. She opened it, to find Philippe in a beautifully tailored dark suit with a white shirt and patterned blue silk tie. He looked elegant and rakish, like a photo in a fashion magazine, and she felt inhibited and tawdry by comparison in her chain-store dress and shoes.

His black eyes fixed on her long mane of hair and he seemed mesmerized. Slowly, his hand lifted to it, smoothing down it, savoring the feel and scent of it. His indrawn breath was audible. “And you hide it in a braid,” he murmured deeply. “What a waste.”

She smiled self-consciously. “It worries me to death when I wear it like this.”

“But you did it, for me, yes?”

She moved restlessly. “Yes.”

He tilted her chin up and searched her eyes. His thumb moved over her chin. “We are strangers, and yet we have known each other for a thousand years,” he said under his breath.

Her heart bumped in her chest. “How very odd,” she replied in a hushed tone. “I was thinking that, only this afternoon.”

He nodded. “It is, perhaps, the most cruel cut of fate,” he said enigmatically as he removed his hand. “Come along. I understand they have belly dancers from Argentina this evening,” he added with a wicked smile.

She moved a little closer to his side. “Decadent man.”

“I’m not decadent. I appreciate beauty.” He took her arm just below where the black shawl she’d bought reached with its fringe. “Believe me, I find you far more intriguing than a dancer, no matter how adept.”

“Thank you.”

“It isn’t flattery,” he said as they walked down the carpeted hall past the curtained windows that looked down on the open patio below. “I know you well enough already to know that you loathe insincerity as much as I do.”

She smiled. That was reassuring. They went down in the elevator and walked down the steps that led into the courtyard, where a central fountain was surrounded by beautiful mosaic tile. Tables with white linen tablecloths and napkins and pink china were set with silver utensils and crystal glasses. Several couples were already seated, and a beautiful dark-haired woman in a white dress with lavish colored embroidery was sitting on a stage with her accompanist, both with guitars in their hands.

“Tonight’s entertainment,” he informed her. “She is from the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, and she sings like an angel.”

“Do you know her?”

He shook his head. “No, but I came here from Madrid. She was appearing in a hotel there, too.”

“Madrid?”

They paused while a white-jacked waiter in a burgundy fez led them to a table. Philippe seated Gretchen and then himself. The waiter left menus and departed. “I do business all over the world,” he told her with a gentle smile. “You might call me an ambassador, of sorts.”

“That explains the bodyguards, I guess.” He looked puzzled and she shrugged. “I saw them follow you into that building this afternoon and asked Bojo about them. He said that they often watch out for businessmen as well as visiting dignitaries.”