Summer Sheikhs: Sheikh's Betrayal / Breaking the Sheikh's Rules / Innocent in the Sheikh's Harem

‘And you didn’t eat on the plane?’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t usually.’

There was a curious amplified clicking noise, and then down in the city the haunting voice of the muezzin began to recite the call to prayer. The reciter’s deep tones, half singing, half chanting, poured out over the city, echoing in the distance. They sat in silence, listening, trying not to remember how, long ago, he had lovingly described this sound to her…

A waiter came, spread a tablecloth on the platform between them and set down a couple of jugs and four goblets. He half filled the goblets and disappeared again.

Allahu akhbar. Allahu akhbar. Hayya alas salaat.

‘What is he saying?’

‘God is great. Come to prayer,’ Salah translated softly.

‘Curious to hear so many echoes! Does the desert do that?’

‘Echoes?’ A smile twitched one corner of his mouth and he shook his head. ‘Each mosque has its own muezzin, so that no one lives beyond reach of the call. Up here we hear them all.’

The last note sounded as darkness covered the sky. Desi leaned back and looked up through the tracery of trellis and leaves at the stars just beginning to appear.

‘This is magic,’ she breathed again, and then, with a little frown, ‘It reminds me of somewhere! What is it? That sky is pure velvet. I can’t think when I last saw such a—Oh!’

Heat burned up her chest and into her face like a flash fire, and she instinctively jerked upright.

‘What is it?’ Salah said.

‘Nothing.’ She coughed unconvincingly. ‘Something in my throat.’

‘You are reminded of something? A place? A time?’

‘No, not really.’ She coughed again and reached for a glass.

‘Yes,’ he said harshly, as all his intentions for the evening went up in smoke. ‘The island. I, too, Desi. The first time I sat here under the trellis at night I remembered those nights under the dock. We looked up at stars glowing with endless beauty, telling us it was the right time, the right place, the right one.’

Desi gazed at him, frozen, the glass halfway to her mouth.

‘You remember, Desi?’

‘Do I?’ she asked bitterly. Tears were ripping at the back of her throat, but she was damned if she would give him that victory.

‘Yes!’ he said fiercely. His face was shadowed in the candlelight, his eyes hidden, his mouth hard. ‘Yes, you know how our love was! Tell me! I want to know that you remember.’

‘Why, since you forgot?’

‘I thought the stars would die before my love for you. I told you that, didn’t I? When each of those stars is a blackened lump, my love will still be burning for you. Isn’t that what I told you?’

Her throat closed tight. She set the glass down again without drinking. ‘I don’t remember,’ she said, her eyes shadowed and grey.

‘Ah, that is well. Because I was wrong. My love did not last.’

‘No kidding. And are you proud of that fact? I’ve always wondered.’

‘Proud?’ His eyes flashed. ‘Why should I be proud? I was shamed, for you and for me. My love did not die honourably, like a star, consuming itself in its own burning. You know how it died.’

‘Your love died because it was fantasy from day one. The stars going out? It wouldn’t have withstood a hiccup.’

The waiter appeared out of the night, shocking them both into silence, and set down a basket of bread and another filled with sprigs of greenery before disappearing again.

‘Tonight,’ he said, ‘they will bring us the foods I told you of, in those starry nights when we lived a dream.’

She closed her eyes and breathed for calm as memory smote her. ‘Why?’

‘Because it was a promise. A man keeps his promises,’ he said. ‘Even ten years too late.’

A kiss with every mouthful.

She had not expected this. Of all the reactions she might have imagined in Salah, the last would have been that he would actually want to bed her. Flames burst into life in her stomach. No. No.

‘Just so long as you don’t expect me to keep mine,’ she said grimly.

He smiled. ‘But I know well that you do not keep your promises, Desi. Who knows better than I? That other one you promised to marry and then did not?’

The bitter memory was bile in her throat. ‘I changed my mind there.’

‘Yes,’ he said with emphasis. ‘You changed your mind.’

Why was he doing this? What did he want? She was miles from understanding him. For years she had waited for his call, hoping against hope. Until her love died and nothing was left but dust and ashes. He must know that. The choice had been his.

‘And you didn’t, I suppose?’

He stared at her for a long, electric moment during which his eyes seemed to pierce her soul. A hard, angry gaze that was nothing like the boy she had loved. Then he tore off a bit of bread, plucked up a sprig of the greenery, wrapped it expertly in the bread, and held it out to her.

‘This I told you of. Sabzi-o-naan. This is traditional in the mountains.’

Desi took it and put it into her mouth. The pungent taste of a herb she didn’t recognize exploded in her mouth and nostrils, sweet and fresh, and she made an involuntary noise of surprise.

His eyelids dropped to hide his eyes for a moment, then his dark gaze burned her. ‘I taught you to make that sound,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I thought it would be the music of all the rest of my life.’

Heat rushed through her at his words, tearing at defences she now saw were pitifully weak. ‘Stop this,’ she said.

He reached for the herbs again, pulling off a sprig that he put into his own mouth.

‘Stop?’ He handed her another little bouquet of naan-wrapped herb. ‘How, stop? You are here in my country, where you promised to come. Now I keep my side of the bargain. I promised you would delight in these herbs. Do you?’

She took it from him again, and put it in her mouth, because there was nothing else to do. Not even in her nightmares had she imagined such ferocity as this.

‘Very nice,’ she said woodenly.

‘The freshness in your mouth. I told you then that I would kiss you after every bite.’ Her lips parted in a little gasp. ‘A kiss with every mouthful. You remember, Desi? Shall I keep that part of the promise, even though ten years have passed?’