Desert King, Doctor Daddy

‘Passing it to you,’ Gemma put in, wondering if there was an actual crown or if it was a figure of speech. She wondered about the country her visitor now ruled. There’d been no mention of it, but she knew it would be a long way off—way beyond her hope of ever reaching.

And that couldn’t possibly be regret she was feeling…

Yusef moved his head, just slightly, indicating she’d guessed incorrectly. Was she interested or just making conversation? With women he could never tell, a gap in his education he put down to not having known his mother, although there’d been women aplenty in his life. Transient women, he considered them, there for a while but moving on, perhaps being forced to move on by his lack of commitment to them—his detachment—

‘My brother intended passing the title to his next brother, the one above me, because that is how it would most easily have been done,’ Yusef explained. ‘But even before my father died that brother was working with foreign companies, bringing them in to search for oil, making treaties that would allow them access to whatever they discovered in return for favours for the country.’

The woman frowned at him.

‘You sound as if you disapprove, but isn’t that how the countries around yours have been able to go ahead? And hasn’t oil made the people of those lands wealthy?’

‘Of course it has, and what my business brother does is good—essential—and that is his life—his love,’ Yusef told her, a little curtly, though why her pointing out the obvious about their wealth should worry him he didn’t know. Maybe it was because her frown had disturbed him. ‘But you must know that wealth is not everything. Wealth, as I said earlier, attracts more people to the country. My brother sees this as a good thing. He does not see the overcrowded schools and hospitals and clinics, the sick children and mothers who have suffered in childbirth.’

‘But with money surely all of this can be altered,’ Gemma pointed out. ‘More hospitals built, more medical care, more schools.’

‘More schools so more diseases can spread,’ he muttered, and heard the bitterness in his voice. ‘Physically things can be fixed in time,’ he admitted, ‘but the values of my people from the early tribal days have been sharing and caring—looking after each other. I want to find a way to keep these values while at the same time bringing my country into the twenty-first century.’

Now the woman smiled at him, and her smile caused more disturbance than her frown.

‘I think I can see why your oldest brother chose you, not the one above you to be the highness,’ she said, and he realised she was teasing him—gently, but still teasing.

‘You keep mentioning the highness word, but that is all it is, a word.’

‘A word with power,’ she said, still smiling slightly. ‘So, what about your profession? Will you still have time to practise? What hospital facilities do you have? And universities? Do you train your own doctors?’

She sounded genuinely interested so he set aside his strange reaction to the teasing to respond.

‘We have a beautiful new hospital with accommodation for staff beside it, and a university that is still in its infancy, although our first locally trained doctors will graduate this year.’

‘Men and women?’

‘Of course, although it is harder to persuade women to continue their studies to university. That is one of the tasks ahead of me, the—I suppose you would say emancipation of the women of my country, so women can find a place and are represented in all areas of life. This is very difficult when traditionally business and professions were considered the domain of men.’

‘In the Western world as well,’ Gemma assured him. ‘We just got started on the emancipation thing a little earlier than some other places. But you talk of your country—’ Gemma sliced tomatoes and cucumber as she spoke ‘—and I don’t even know its name. Is it an African country that you were working there?’

She glanced up at him and saw his face change—well, not change so much but relax just slightly as if an image of his country or one small part of it had flashed across his mind.

‘Not in Africa but on the Gulf—a country called Fajabal.’ He spoke softly, yet so confidently Gemma wondered if she should have heard of it. She ran the names of Gulf countries she did know through her head but no Fajabal came up.

‘Fajabal?’ she repeated, thinking how musical the name was.

‘It is a contraction of two words, fajr, meaning dawn, and jabal, meaning mountain,’ his deep voice continued.

‘Dawn mountain,’ she said, feeling again the familiar tug of distant lands—lands she’d never see except in pictures. But it was better to be thinking about the lands she’d never see than the way this man, sitting so close, was affecting her.

‘Mountains of dawn is how we think of it,’ he corrected, offering her a smile that confirmed all her feelings of apprehension. The man was downright dangerous.

‘That’s a beautiful name—poetic and evocative.’

‘It is a beautiful country, small, but varied in its geography as we have the red-gold desert sands, craggy black mountains and the clear turquoise sea.’

Gemma finished the sandwiches. Maybe one day she’d get over her fear of flying and actually go somewhere like Fajabal. Though maybe not to Fajabal if all the men were as dangerously attractive as this one.

She put the sandwiches on plates, found some paper napkins and pushed a plate towards her guest.

‘You are going to sit down?’ he said, and knowing if she remained standing in the kitchen while she ate it would look peculiar, she walked around the bench, grabbed the stool beside the one Yusef was using, and returned with it to the kitchen.

‘Easier to talk if we’re facing each other,’ she muttered by way of explanation, while, in fact, she knew it would be easier for her to eat not sitting next to him where bits of his body might accidentally brush against hers, and cause more of the uneasiness it had been generating since his arrival.

‘I am pleased, no, more than pleased, totally impressed by the centre and by the work you and your staff do there,’ he began, then he took a bite of his sandwich and chewed on it, leaving Gemma with the distinct impression there was a ‘but’ hanging silently on the end of the sentence.

‘I will definitely increase my contribution to it, and I would like to fund your second house, but I wish for something in return.’

Ha, here comes the but. But how big a but could it be? What strings could he possibly want to attach that they couldn’t accommodate?

Gemma chewed her own sandwich and waited.

Dark eyes studied her intently and he put down his sandwich, wiped his hands then said quietly, ‘I want you to come to Fajabal.’

Chapter Three

GEMMA stared at the once again impassive face, disbelief making thought impossible. She’d half suspected, from the time she’d heard from his secretary that the Mystery Benefactor wanted this meeting, that he might want something more than to check out the centre. But never in her wildest dreams could she have imagined this.

‘You want me to come to Fajabal?’ she said, thinking maybe her ears were playing up and he hadn’t said that at all.

‘You could leave tomorrow and both centres would keep running smoothly, you said so,’ he reminded her. ‘In fact, you have leave due and a replacement starting tomorrow.’

‘How do you know that?’ She snapped the demand at him but it was better to be thinking about his seeming omniscience than thinking about a place called Fajabal, red desert sands and all.

‘Should I not read the reports you so dutifully send? Would you not expect that of me?’ The words were cool and crisp and he seemed to sit a little taller—every inch the sheikh highness for all he was sitting at her small breakfast bar, eating a salad sandwich.

Gemma was reminded of her grandfather and had to fight the instant reactive cringe.

And fight back!

‘I would have thought you had minions who did that for you—draw your bath, read your reports. You probably even have someone who could have checked out the centre for you, rather than having to come yourself.’

‘Ah, but I came for you,’ he replied, the dark eyes fixing on hers so it seemed like some other kind of message—one that sent fire racing through her veins and what could only be desire pooling in her belly.

Could he turn on that kind of magnetic attraction? Had he done it to divert her anger, however feeble it had been?

Impossible! She was reading things that weren’t there into his words.

‘So, Fajabal?’ The deep voice lingered on the name, turning it into musical notes.

Longing replaced desire—if that’s what it had been—a longing so deep and strong she doubted she could fight it. To go to Fajabal? To actually travel to a foreign land? To a land with the magical, mystical name of Mountains of the Dawn?

If only…