Strangers in the Desert

The thought lodged in his gut like a shard of ice.

What a cold, cruel woman she was. She’d abandoned her baby son, left him to grow up motherless. She’d cared more for herself than she had for Rafiq.

Adan hated her for it.

And he hated this stirring in his blood as he looked at her. It was anger, yes, but it was something more, as well. His gaze slid over her nearly naked body. She was wearing a red bikini with a tropical-print sarong tied over one hip. Her nipples jutted through the meager fabric of her top, drawing his attention. He remembered, though he did not wish to, the creamy beauty of her breasts, the large pink areolas, the tightly budded nipples in their center. He remembered her shyness the first time they’d made love, the way she’d quickly adapted to him, the way she’d welcomed him into her bed for an entire month of passionate nights.

He’d stopped going to her bed because she’d fallen pregnant. Not because he had wanted to, but because she’d become so sick that lovemaking was out of the question.

“Your wife?” She shook her head adamantly. “You’re mistaken.”

Behind him, he heard the heavy stomp of footsteps. And then the man she’d called Grant—the man who’d looked at her with his heart in his eyes—was back, a large Samoan by his side.

“I’ll ask you once more to leave,” Grant said. “Makuna will escort you out.”

Adan gave them his most quelling look. He had a six-man security team outside. Not because he’d expected trouble, but because he was a head of state and didn’t travel without security. One signal to them, and they would storm this place with guns drawn.

It wasn’t something he wanted to do, and yet he wasn’t leaving without Isabella. Without his wife.

“It’s okay, Grant,” he heard her say behind him. “I’ll talk to him for a few minutes.”

Grant looked confused. But then he nodded once and tapped Makuna on the arm. The two of them melted away from the door, and Adan was once more alone with Isabella.

“Wise decision,” he said.

She sank onto the chair she’d originally been sitting in. Her fingers trembled as they shoved her riot of dark golden hair from her face. Her heavily made-up eyes stared at him in confusion.

“Why would you think I’m your wife? I’ve never been married.”

Anger clawed at his insides. “Deny it all you like, but it won’t make it any less true.”

Her brows drew down as she stared at him. “I don’t know why you’re telling me this, or why you think I’m your wife. I’ve never met you. I don’t even know your name.”

He didn’t believe it for a moment. “Adan,” he said, because arguing about it was pointless when she insisted on carrying through with her fiction.

“Adan,” she repeated. “I left Jahfar a long time ago. I think I’d remember a husband.”

“I won’t play this game with you, Isabella,” he growled. “Do you really expect me to believe you don’t remember? How stupid do you think I am?”

She frowned deeply. “I never said that. I said I didn’t know you. I think you’ve confused me with someone else. It’s not unusual for men to try and get close to me in this business. They see me sing and they think I’m available for an easy hookup. But I’m not, okay?”

Adan wanted to shake her. “You are Isabella Maro, daughter of Hassan Maro and an American woman, Beth Tyler. Nearly three years ago, you and I were wed. Two years ago, you walked into the desert and were never seen again.”

He couldn’t bring himself to mention Rafiq to her, not when she was so obviously trying to play him for a fool.

She blinked, her expression going carefully blank. And then she shook her head. “No, I …”

“What?” he prompted when she didn’t continue.

She swallowed. “I had an accident, it’s true. But I’ve recovered.” Her fingers lifted to press against her lips. He noticed they were trembling. “There are things that are fuzzy, but—” She shook her head. “No, someone would have told me.”

Everything inside him went still. “Someone? Who would have told you, Isabella? Who knows you are here?”

She met his gaze again. “My parents, of course. My father sent me to my mother’s to recover. The doctor said I needed to get away from Jahfar, that it was too hot, too … stressful.”

Fury whipped through him. And disbelief. Her parents knew she was alive? Impossible.

And yet, he’d hardly seen Hassan Maro since Isabella had disappeared. The man spent more time out of the country these days than he did in it. Adan had chalked it up to his business interests and to grief over the loss of his only daughter, but what if it were more? What if Maro were hiding something?

Was the man truly capable of helping his daughter to escape her marriage when he’d been so thrilled with the arrangement in the first place?

Adan shook his head. She was lying, playing him, denying what she knew to be true simply because she’d been caught. She’d survived the desert, there was no doubt, and she could not have done so without help.

But whose help?

“I have never heard of selective amnesia, Isabella,” he growled. “How could you remember your parents, remember Jahfar—yet not remember me?”

“I didn’t say I had amnesia!” she cried. “You did.”

“What do you call it, then, if you say you know who you are and where you come from, but you can’t remember the husband you left behind?”

“We’re not married,” she insisted—and yet her lower lip trembled. It was the first sign of a small chink in her armor, as if she knew she’d been caught and was desperate to escape.

Adan hardened his resolve. She would not do so, not until he was finished with her. She had much to answer for. And much still to pay for.

She clasped her hands in front of her body. The motion pressed her breasts together, emphasized the smooth, plump curves. A tingle started at the base of his spine and drifted outward.

No.

Adan ruthlessly clamped down on his libido. Was he so shallow as to allow the sight of a woman’s half-naked body to arouse him, when the woman was as treacherous as this one? When he had every reason to despise her?

“Let’s turn this around, then,” she said, worrying her bottom lip with her teeth. “Assuming for a moment that you’re correct, that we are married—where have you been and why didn’t you come for me sooner?”

“I have been in Jahfar,” he ground out. “And, as you very well know, I believed you to be dead.”

Her face grew pale beneath her tan. “Dead?”

He was tired of this, tired of the caginess and obfuscation. He’d flown through several time zones and had had no sleep in his quest to learn if the picture were true, if the woman holding a microphone and peering up at the camera as if to a secret lover was indeed his wife. He’d told himself it wasn’t possible. She could not have survived.

But then he’d walked into this bar and seen her standing there, her face so familiar and so strange all at once, and he’d known the truth.

And he was done being civil. “You walked into the desert, Isabella. What you did after that is anyone’s guess, but you did not come back out. We searched for weeks.”

She shook her head. “It’s insane, absolutely insane.”

“Is it?” Adan tucked his hand under her elbow and pulled her out of the chair. She rose surprisingly easily, as if she were distracted. He pointedly ignored the current of electricity that zapped through him when he touched her bare skin.

She looked up at him, her dark, smoky eyes full of emotion. “I don’t remember.”