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

“They were lucky to have you.”

“It was mutual. I would have been very lonely otherwise.”

“Didn’t you have friends?”

“Of course.”

“But not close ones,” he guessed far too perceptively.

“I made the mistake of growing close to a couple of girls in the beginning, but then they left.” And she’d learned not to let people get too close.

They always left. But then Asad had come along and she’d opened her heart again … only, he’d left too.

“And now?”

“Now?”

“Do you have friends now?” he asked in a strangely tense voice.

“Russell.”

“Russell? Your assistant?”

“You say his name like it’s a dirty word. He’s a really great guy.” Iris liked the geological assistant who told corny jokes only another geologist would get.

“Are you attracted to this really great guy?” Asad asked with dangerous quiet. “He is a great deal younger than you.”

A junior at his university, Russell was about as much younger than Iris as she had been than Asad when they were together. “He’s twenty. Anyway, what difference does it make to you?”

“Answer me. Are you two in a relationship?” he said, the last word laced with disgust.

She rolled her eyes. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were jealous.”

“Who says I am not?”

She laughed, the sound cynical. “Oh, come on, Asad. Like you are going to be jealous of a geeky science boy.”

“Are you attracted to geeky?”

She could have been, she realized. Not Russell, necessarily. He was very much like a younger brother, but maybe to someone else like that. If there hadn’t been Asad to spoil her for others. “You asked me if I had friends, Asad. That’s what he is. My friend.”

And a pretty new one at that.

“Good.”

“I’m glad you think so.”

“But you don’t have a lot of friends back home.”

“No.”

“Yet you are a very good friend to have.”

She made a sound of disbelief. If he’d really believed that, he wouldn’t have given her up so easily. Would he?

“You were my friend once. It was only later that I realized what I lost when that friendship had to end.”

“There was no had to, Asad. You were done with me and you dumped me. Stop trying to rewrite history.”

“I am doing no such thing. Do you really think we could have remained friends when I married Badra?”

He had a point. And Iris probably shouldn’t care that he’d missed her friendship, and yet coming to believe it dulled some of the old pain of losing him.

“I would like to be friends again,” he said when she made no reply.

She didn’t believe him. “You want me back in your bed. That’s not friendship.”

“For us it can be.”

“Really? And when I return to the States, what then?”

“I do not intend to eject you from my life again,” he said in a tone that made the words a vow.

It disconcerted her, and frightened her, as well. Because those words were not merely a promise … they were a threat, too. “I don’t think I’m any more prepared to be your friend after leaving here than I was before.”

What she meant, but didn’t say, and hoped he clued into, was that for Iris it had been more than casual sex and friendship. And unfortunately, probably always would be.

“Give it a try. Let us see where it goes.”

It wouldn’t go to the altar; at least this time she knew that. Knowledge of the truth had to make some kind of difference in the outcome, didn’t it?

“You want me in your bed.”

“I do.” At least he admitted it.

“And you want to be my friend.” For now, anyway.

“Yes.”

“What will that make us?” she asked uncertainly.

“Whatever we want it to.”

This time she heard what he said, not what she wanted to hear. He wasn’t making any promises.

She wanted to be his world like he’d been hers, but that was never going to happen. What did she say to this offer, though? She’d missed Asad so much because she’d let him into a place in her heart she’d kept protected from her very earliest childhood.

Now he was offering more than a tumble in the sack. He was offering a renewal of their friendship that supposedly would last into the future.