Midnight in Arabia: Heart of a Desert Warrior / The Sheikh's Last Gamble / The Sheikh's Jewel

“Asad—”

“No. We have had enough emotional turmoil this day. I will show you my desert home and you will fall in love with the Sha’b Al’najid just as so many have before you.”

And then leaving them would break her heart, but that seemed par for the course with this man for her.

She could do nothing but nod. “All right.”

He showed her the communal tent he was so proud of. Even in the middle of the day, it was busy with people, some watching a tennis match on the large projector screen while others occupied themselves more traditionally with a game as old as their lifestyle played with pebbles or seeds.

“So, this is where the tourists congregate?” she asked, doing her best to ignore the effect his nearness had on her body.

After six years and a broken heart, no less. It wasn’t fair. Not one little bit. But he was right; they’d had enough emotional upheaval today and she wasn’t going to invite more by letting herself get lost in her reaction to him.

“Usually, but we have no guests at present.”

“Why not?”

“The most recent group left and the next does not arrive for a few days.”

“You timed it, didn’t you?” She didn’t know why or even how he could have maneuvered her arrival to fit his liking, but she knew he had.

He didn’t even bother to shrug, just gave her a look that she had no hope of reading and wasn’t sure she’d want to if she could.

CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_91f9c59a-74ff-5f67-ba54-2c4d55fe5f0f)

BY THE time they had seen a good deal of the encampment, Iris’s head was spinning with images and thoughts.

She’d met women who spent their days weaving amazing rugs and fabrics, others who beaded jewelry, and some even making the soap Genevieve preferred. A much smellier occupation than the fragrant bar Iris had sniffed earlier might have implied.

She saw much she expected to, traditional Bedouins doing traditional things and she really loved it. Few experiences could live up to imagination, but life here among the Sha’b Al’najid? It absolutely did.

“But where are the herds?” she asked, as they approached a tent that stood off by itself.

It was near his home and where they had started and she knew they were close to the end of the tour. Inexplicably, she was not ready for her time with him to be over. She tried to convince herself that was because she wanted to know more about the Bedouin, but she’d never been very good at lying to herself.

Sheikh Asad bin Hanif Al’najid was every bit as fascinating to her as he had been when he was simply Asad Hanif. If she were honest with herself, he was even more so. She needed to get to work quickly and get her mind occupied elsewhere.

“Herds?” he asked, his tone curiously flat after the animation with which he’d described his home over the past two hours.

“The goats and things. I’d always read that Bedouins kept flocks.” Only the encampment had been surprisingly bereft of animals, except, surprisingly, some peacocks and peahens wandering between the tents, which she assumed they kept as a curiosity for the tourists.

From what she could tell, the birds had free rein of the encampment and were quite friendly. However, they’d been the only evidence of animals she’d seen. Unless others were kept in the courtyards, but there hadn’t been any in the one behind his tent.

“And you thought all Bedouins were goatherds?” he asked with a stark tension she did not understand.

“Don’t be ridiculous—no more than I think everyone living in the Midwest is a farmer, but isn’t herding part of the traditional Bedouin way of life?” Not only would it not make sense for the Sha’b Al’najid to get their meat and fleece elsewhere, considering how independent a people she’d already witnessed they were, but wouldn’t the tourists expect it?

“We do keep herds, rather a lot of them in fact, but they are grazed in the foothills. If they were not, the stench might be too much for our guests.”

“That makes sense.” Though somehow, she wasn’t sure how she felt about them pushing a traditional part of their lifestyle into the outskirts.

He lifted a sardonic brow. “I’m glad you think so.”

“I didn’t mean to offend you.” Wasn’t even sure how she had done so.

Asad shook his head. “You did not. It was an old argument I had with Badra. That is all.”

Surprised again by his candid comment about his deceased wife, Iris nevertheless asked, “Did she think it wrong to cater so carefully to the tourist’s preferences?”

Asad’s laughter sounded more like glass breaking. “Not at all. Quite the opposite, in fact. She could not stand the smell and would have preferred we got rid of the herds altogether.”

He’d already alluded to the fact his wife had not been faithful—an eventuality Iris simply could not comprehend. What woman would want another man when she had Asad in her bed? But this latest revelation pointed to only one conclusion: the perfect princess had been a perfect idiot.

Because the woman would have to be absolutely brainless not to realize how foolish it would be to give up the herds of a Bedouin tribe.

“Marrying the virginal princess did not turn out to be all it was cracked up to be, I guess.”

“If that odd English idiom means it was not what I expected it to be, you are correct. Does that please you?” he asked darkly.

“You probably won’t believe me, but no. Losing what I thought I had with you hurt more than I believed anything ever could, but I never wished you ill.” Her own honesty surprised her a little, but with only a couple of glaring exceptions, she’d always found it far too easy to reveal her deepest thoughts and emotions to Asad.

Perhaps because in the past, he’d proven himself a worthy and safe confidant. It was hard to change that viewpoint despite the pain he’d put her through, maybe because he’d walked away and she hadn’t had a chance to shore up her defenses against him in person.

Whenever she’d revealed a fear or disappointment in the past, he did his best to alleviate it. She’d told him she was worried about passing a difficult class and though it was not in his discipline, he’d helped her study and even write one of her papers. She’d admitted to feeling awkward in the way her body moved and he’d talked her into ballroom dancing lessons.

Asad stopped before they entered the strangely isolated tent and looked down at her. “You are a very different sort of woman, little flower.”

He’d used to call her that, too, a play on her name that was just silly enough to be endearing. Somehow, his using it again didn’t hurt with nearly the pain the betraying aziz had done.

“I don’t think so. When you love someone, you want them to be happy. Even when it’s not with you.” That truth had sustained her through some of the darkest nights of her soul.

He jolted as if she’d hit him with a cattle prod. “You love me?”

“I loved you,” she emphasized.

“And that prevented you from hating me?” he asked in a curious tone. “Even though you considered my leaving a betrayal.”

“It was a betrayal of my love. But no, I don’t hate you.”

She never had, even in her darkest moments of pain. A love as deep as the one she felt for him simply had not allowed for that emotion, no matter how devastated she’d been.

He went as if to touch her face, but then let his hand drop after a quick glance around. They were not alone, though no one was close enough to hear the subject of their conversation. It would not do for him to be seen taking such liberties with a single woman, even one from the West.

The tribe might be part of the small percentage of Bedouins that had not converted to Islam in the seventh century, but that did not mean that such behavior would be any more culturally acceptable in this place.

“Your love for me was true,” he said as if just realizing that.

“And you really didn’t love me. Life is peppered with little inconsistencies like that,” she said with a wry twist to her lips.