The Desert Bride of Al Zayed / Best Man's Conquest: The Desert Bride of Al Zayed / Best Man's Conquest

But the taxi driver didn’t answer. Could he even hear her with the radio blaring? Jayne wished she’d sat up front. But this was Zayed, not New Zealand. Women didn’t sit up front. Not unless they wanted the taxi driver to construe the move as flirtation. While Zayed was a safe country, a woman travelling alone had to take care not to attract unwelcome attention. She shouted the question more loudly.

The taxi driver glanced in the rear mirror. “No one is following.”

But Jayne’s apprehension didn’t ease and the knot in her stomach grew tighter. Tariq was going to be fit to be tied. She shivered, then reason set in.

It was his own fault. He should have warned her. He should never have sprung that spectacle back at the airport on her. She gave her casual outfit a quick once-over. At least then she would’ve had the chance to dress up a little. Make the best of the little she had. Not that clothes and a little bit of makeup could bridge the gulf between them. They were too far apart. In every way.

She tried to set the worry aside, tried to tell herself that the sooner she met with Tariq in private and got it over with the better. But even that didn’t help. Jayne’s fingernails bit into her palms. She’d explain. She’d tell him that—

The sudden swerve of the taxi threw Jayne against the door, and she gave a shriek of fright. The driver leapt out of the car and Jayne could hear shouting.

When she emerged from the back of the car, her heart pounding, a shocking sight met her eyes. A youth was sprawled on the road, his bicycle lying on its side. He was groaning.

“Oh, my heavens.” Jayne moved toward the victim but the taxi driver grabbed her arm.

“Wait, it could be a set-up…”

“How can it be a set-up? He’s hurt!”

The youth was screaming now. A basket, its lid off, lay on the road and a clutch of ginger chickens were clucking in terror.

“Is he okay?” Jayne’s first concern was for the youngster. “Did we hit him?”

“No, no. The idiot—”

The youth interrupted with a deluge in Arabic. Jayne held up her hand. “Is he hurt?”

The taxi driver rattled off and the boy muttered, shaking his head. Relieved Jayne said, “What about his bike?”

“No problem.”

A crowd had started to gather. Quickly Jayne peeled some notes out of her bag.

“U.S. dollars.” The youth’s eyes lit up as he reached for them.

The taxi driver started to protest, Jayne handed him the next set of notes. “You can leave me here.” She’d had enough of his driving.

“But the palace?” He looked suddenly nervous.

Jayne waved a hand. “Don’t worry about taking me to the palace.” She’d have a better chance of surviving on her own. Jayne looked left and right, hitched her handbag over her shoulder and grabbed the handle of her suitcase.

Down the street she could see the flower souq, the market where blooms were brought early each morning. Across the road a pension-style hotel attracted her eye. It looked modest and unassuming, the kind of place where a woman alone would be safe from unwelcome attention. She could stay there for the night. And tomorrow she’d be better prepared to face Tariq, rested and refreshed. She started to feel better.

A hand brushed her arm. Jayne tensed and spun around, then relaxed. The taxi driver thrust a grimy square of cardboard at her. Jayne glanced down. Mohammed al Dubarik and a scrawl of Arabic characters followed by some numbers that clearly belonged to his cell phone. With a final flash of yellowed teeth and bright gold, he departed in a roar of dust.

Jayne shoved the card into her bag and looked both ways then hefted up her bag to cross the street. The curious crowd, sensing the drama was played out, started to disperse. Pulling the chiffon scarf more securely over her head she made for the door of the pension. She’d almost reached it when a touch on her shoulder startled her.

At first she thought the taxi driver had returned.

She turned her head…and saw the youth who had fallen off the bicycle. Standing, he looked a whole lot bigger. And far more threatening with the gang of faces that loomed behind him. With no chickens and no bike, he suddenly didn’t look so young and vulnerable. In fact, he looked downright menacing.

And then she saw the knife.

Jayne screamed. The sound was cut off midutterance as the biggest youth moved with the speed of a striking snake and shoved her up against the rough plaster wall of the pension. Through the tinted glass door, Jayne glimpsed an elderly man inside the pension, behind the reception desk, he caught her eye and looked away.

No help from that quarter.

Fear set in like a bird fluttering frantically within her chest. “Please, don’t hurt—”

A screech of brakes. A shout of a familiar voice in Arabic. Then she was free.

Jayne heard the sound of feet rushing along the sunbaked sidewalk, caught a glimpse of khaki and red uniforms giving chase.

“Jayne!”

She knew that voice. Recalled it from her most shattering dreams…and her worst nightmares. She sagged against the rough plastered wall of the pension as Tariq leapt from the Mercedes, shutting her eyes, blocking him out. All of him. The lithe body that moved with the fluidity of a big cat, the hawklike features that had hardened with the passage of the years, the golden eyes that were molten with a terrible anger.

“Get in.”

“I want—”

“I don’t care what you want.” The molten eyes turned to flame. “Get into the car.”

To her astonishment, Jayne found herself obeying. The Mercedes smelled of leather, of wealth and a hint of the spicy aftershave that Tariq wore—had always worn. The scent wove memories of Tariq close to her, holding her, of his skin under her lips. She shrank into the corner and curled away from the unwelcome memories. Memories that she had come here to excise forever. By getting a divorce.

“Look at me.”

She turned her head. His face was set in stone. Hard. Bleak as the desert. Until she detected a tangle of swirling emotions in his eyes. Not all of which she could identify. There was anger. Frustration. And other emotions, too. Dark emotions that she’d hoped never to see again.

Two

“So, you decided to avoid the welcome I had planned for you.” As the Mercedes pulled away, Tariq delivered the statement in a flat, emotionless tone, despite the rage that seethed inside him at what had nearly happened to her.

“Welcome?” Jayne laughed. It was not a happy sound. Annoyingly, she looked away from him again and he couldn’t read her eyes—the eyes that had always given away her every emotion. “You would be the last person I’d expect to welcome me anywhere.”

“I am your husband. It is my duty to welcome you to Zayed.”

Jayne didn’t respond.

“Why did you run?” He didn’t like the fact that she had taken one look at him in the airport and fled. Whatever else lay between them in the past, Jayne had never feared him. Nor was he happy with the notion that the only reason she was in the car was because he was the lesser of two evils. The thought that she considered his company only a notch above that of the youths who had assaulted her turned his mouth sour.

“I wasn’t dressed for the occasion.”

Anger rose at her flippant response and he pressed his lips into a thin line. Was she so unmoved by the attack? He knew that it would prey on his mind for a long time to come. He had thought that he had no feeling left for his errant wife, that her actions had killed every feeling he’d ever nurtured for her. But the instant he had seen that young dog lay his hand on Jayne, rage—and something else—had rushed through him. He could rationalise the anger, the blind red mist of rage.

She was his woman.

No other man had any right to touch her. Ever.