The Sheikh's Baby Omnibus (19 page)

These days, with modern GPS navigation systems, the old danger
of losing one’s bearings and dying from dehydration before one could be found
wasn’t the danger it had once been, but the desert itself could never be
tamed.

The Oasis of the Doves, where the team was encamped, was just
inside Dhurahn’s own border, at the furthest end of a spear of Dhurahni land,
which contained the source of the river that made so much of Dhurahn the lushly
rich land that it was.

Their ancestors had fought hard and long to establish and hold
on to their right to the source of the river, and many bitter wars had been
fought between Dhurahn and its neighbours over such a valuable asset before the
Rulers had sat down together and reached a legal and binding agreement on where
their borders were to be.

Vere could remember his father telling him with a rueful smile
that the family story was that their great-grandfather had in part legally
secured the all-important strip of land containing the beginnings of the river
that they had claimed by right of legend for so many generations because he had
fallen passionately in love with the daughter of the English diplomat who had
been sent to oversee the negotiations—and she with him. Lord Alfred Saunders had
quite naturally used his diplomatic powers in favour of his own daughter once he
had realised that she could not be dissuaded from staying with the wild young
Arab with whom she had fallen in love.

It had been at Vere’s insistence that the scientific and
mapping teams had been housed in the traditional black tents of the Bedou,
instead of something more westernised. It might be Drax who was the artist, but
Vere’s own eye was very demanding, and the thought of seeing anything other than
the traditional Bedou tents clustered around an oasis affronted his aesthetic
sense of what was due to the desert.

He restarted the four-by-four’s engine and eased it easily and
confidently down the steep ravine that lay ahead of him. His mother had always
loved this oasis, and it was now protected by new laws that had been brought in
to ensure that it remained as it was and would never, as some oases had, become
an over-developed tourist attraction.

The oasis itself was a deep pool of calm water that reflected
the colour of the sky. It was fringed with graceful plants, and the narrow path
that skirted it was shaded by palm trees. Migrating birds stopped there to rest
and drink, the Bedou nomads drove their herds here, and held their annual
trading fairs here. Bedou marriage feasts took place here.

It was a place for the celebration of life, symbolised by the
oasis itself—the preserver of life. But for once being here was not soothing
Vere.

Instead he felt hauntingly aware of an emptiness inside
himself, and the ache that emptiness was causing. How was it possible for him to
feel like this when it wasn’t what he wanted? He had grown so used to believing
that he could control his own emotions that he couldn’t accept that somehow his
emotional defences had been breached. It shouldn’t have been possible, and
because of that Vere was determined to believe that it
wasn’t
possible.

The pain he had felt on losing his parents had shocked and
frightened him—something that he had never admitted to anyone, not even Drax,
and something he had tried to bury deep within himself. He had reasoned at the
time that it was because his father’s death had made him Dhurahn’s new ruler—a
role that demanded for the sake of his people that he show them that he was
their strength, that they could rely on him as they had relied on his father.
How could he manifest that strength when alone in his room at night he wept for
the loss of his mother? For the sake of Dhurahn and his people he’d forced
himself to separate from his love for his mother and the pain of his loss. He
had decided there must be a weakness within him that meant he must never, ever
allow himself to become emotionally vulnerable through love, for the sake of his
duty. He couldn’t trust himself to put his duty above his own personal feelings
should he fall in love and marry and then for any reason lose the woman he
loved.

Those feelings and that decision still held as good for him now
as they had done the day he had made them, sitting alone in his mother’s private
garden, sick with longing for her comfort. His father had worshipped and adored
their mother, but Vere knew that, had he survived the accident, he would somehow
have continued to be the Ruler of Dhurahn, not a grieving husband, because that
was his absolute and predestined duty. The weakness within him, Vere had decided
that day, was one he must guard against all his life. And as a young,
passionately intense and serious-minded teenager it had seemed to him that the
only way he could guarantee to do this would be to lock the gates of his heart
against the risks that would come with falling in love. He could not trust
himself to have the strength to put duty before love. That was his secret shame,
and one he spoke of to no one.

Now, the discovery that, after so many years of believing he
had conquered and driven out of himself the emotions and needs he feared, he was
aching constantly for a woman he had met fleetingly and only once, was creating
inside him an armed phalanx of warrior-like hostile emotions. Chief amongst
these was the inner voice that told him that the woman had deliberately set out
to arouse him, and that his lust for her was unacceptable and contemptible.

Sam had woken
up over an hour ago,
with the first hint of dawn, and had been unable to get back to sleep. It would
have been easy to blame her inability to sleep on the unease that James was
causing her. Easy, but untrue, she admitted, as she pulled on the traditional
black robe worn by Muslim women, which she had found so very useful as a form of
protection against the sun and the sand.

She stepped barefoot out of the tent into the still coolness of
the early morning.

Traditionally, all the members of a nomad tribe would have been
up and busy at first light, to make the most of the cooler hours of the day
before the sun rose too high in the sky for them to bear its heat, but in these
days of air-conditioning units there was no need for anyone to rise early, and
Sam knew from experience that she would have the early-morning peace of the
oasis to herself.

A narrow pathway meandered along the water’s edge, the ground
flattened out in certain areas where animals came to drink. As Sam walked along
the path a cloud of doves rose from the palm trees and then settled back down. A
bird, so swift and graceful that all she saw was the flash of its wings, dipped
down to the water and then rose up again with a small fish in its beak.

Sam turned a curve in the path and then came to such an abrupt
halt that she almost fell over her own feet as she stared in disbelief at the
man standing facing her. Her heart soared as easily as the doves on a surge of
dizzying delight.

‘You,’ she breathed, helpless with longing.

CHAPTER THREE

W
HAT
a strange thing the senses were
in the way they could instantly recognise a person and then immediately cause
one’s body to react to that recognition, Sam thought giddily, as she stared
across the space that divided them at the man who was looking back at her.

She had known he was tall, but she had not realised quite how
tall. She had known how virile and broad-shouldered and how muscular his body
was, but not how strong and corded those muscles would be with the morning sun
delineating the power beneath the flesh.

She hesitated, engulfed by the intensity of her own emotional
and sexual arousal, and torn between flight from it and submission to it.
Nothing remotely like this had ever happened to her before—which, of course, was
why she had tried to initially evade and then deny it. Now, though, she was
face-to-face—quite literally—with a truth she could not escape, with a knowledge
about herself and her emotions, and she had no idea how to cope with it.

How was it possible for her to feel the way she did? How was it
possible for her to want him so completely and unreservedly that all she wanted
to do was go to him and give herself into his keeping for ever?

It was crazy, reckless... .dangerous. And if she had any sense
she wouldn’t be thinking such things. She looked at his mouth. Sense. What was
that? Nothing that mattered. Not like the aching sweetness pouring through
her.

‘How did you find me?’ She was filled with awe and delight,
humbled and elated. Reality belonged to another universe, not this magical place
she had suddenly stepped into, where a person’s most secret dreams could come
true.

Perhaps she
was
dreaming? Only in
daylight now, instead of during the protective darkness of the night hours. If
so, Sam knew that she did not want to wake up again—ever. Why had she wasted all
those hours trying uselessly to convince herself that nothing life-transforming
had really happened between them? Why had she not had more faith in what she
felt? He obviously had, because here he was. He had found her. He had come for
her. Joy flooded through her.

Vere felt as
though he had been
turned to stone. No, not stone—because stone could not have felt what he was
feeling right now. Stone could not have been pierced by the sharp, immediate and
intense male surge of overpowering need to take her, to let his body satisfy the
elemental force that was filling his head with images of their bodies together:
naked flesh to naked flesh, her head thrown back in ecstasy whilst he moulded
her to him, shaping her with his hands, spreading open the softness of her eager
thighs, possessing her as she was begging him to do, endlessly and erotically,
as she cried out to him over and over again in her pleasure until it became his,
until he knew even as fulfilment rushed through him that its satisfaction would
never be enough, that like a drug once tasted he would need more, and then still
more.

The young boy’s fear translated into a grown man’s savage anger
against what gripped him. He had to get away from her.

Sam could hardly
contain her
emotions. They made her tremble like a gazelle scenting the hunter and knowing
its fate. In another minute he would reach her and take her in his arms, and
then... She started to walk towards him, her pace quickening with the intensity
of her need to touch him and be touched by him. A wild thrill of excitement shot
through her—only to turn to a sharp stab of shocked disbelief when, just as she
had almost reached him, he abruptly turned his back on her and started to walk
away.

Pain and confusion swirled through her, leaving her feeling
unsteady and insecure, desperate to stop him from leaving her.

‘No!’

The denial felt as though it had been torn from her heart, it
hurt so much.

Another man had appeared from a side path and was coming
between them, bowing low in front of him, to murmur respectfully,
‘Highness.’

Highness?

Had she actually whispered her appalled dismay? Was that why he
had turned to look at her, that brilliant emerald-green gaze homing in on her,
transfixing her to the spot, unable to move, unable to do anything, until it had
been removed from her and the two men were walking away from her back down the
path.

Sam searched her
too pale expression
in the mirror. If she didn’t go and join the others soon, not only would she
miss breakfast, she’d almost certainly have someone coming to ask why she wasn’t
there and if she was all right.

All right? She gave a small shiver. She wasn’t sure she would
ever be that again.

Had
she actually seen him by the
oasis, or had she only thought she had? Had he been merely a mirage, conjured up
by her own imagination? And if he had, what did that tell her about the state
she was in?

‘Sam—at last. I
was just about to
come and look for you in case you’d overslept.’

The anxiety combined with just a hint of reproach in the voice
of Anne Smith, the female half of a pair of married statisticians who were part
of the team, caused Sam to give her an apologetic look.

‘Sorry—’ she began, but to her relief, before she was obliged
to come up with an explanation as to why she was so late, Anne continued.

‘You’ve never missed breakfast before, and with Sheikh Sadir
telling us that the Ruler of Dhurahn has arrived, and that we are all to be
formally presented to him, I was getting really worried that you wouldn’t make
it.’

At least now Sam knew the likely cause of his sudden
reappearance here at the oasis—as well as the reason he had been in Zuran in the
first place. He must be part of the Ruler of Dhurahn’s entourage.

She had been in a total state of shock after seeing him so
unexpectedly and then having him refuse to acknowledge her and walk away from
her. It seemed ridiculous now that she had actually thought that somehow or
other he had known she was there and come in search of her. Patently it was
quite impossible—as she had since told herself. But at the time her sense of
despairing anguish, coming so quickly on the heels of her earlier euphoria, had
meant that it had been several minutes after he’d disappeared before she’d felt
able to move. Even when she had, her heart had been thudding so heavily and
uncomfortably that she had felt both sick and light-headed by the time she had
reached the privacy of her tent.

Now she wasn’t even sure she could trust herself to have
actually seen him—not simply created the whole incident in the way that people
lost in the desert and thirsting desperately for water saw mirages of what they
so longed for.

The fact that she might be late for breakfast had been the last
thing on her mind as she had semi-collapsed into a chair, her body going frantic
with its wild message of longing, whilst her head and her heart burned with the
pain of despair and humiliation.

Initially she had been glad that the shock of seeing him had
left her so weak and shaky. If not for that, she suspected that her body, in its
feverish heat of desire that seemed to have turned into a life force outside her
own control, would have had her making a complete fool of herself and running
after him—or, just as bad, running after a mirage. It was hard to say which
would have offered her more humiliation.

Sam had stayed there in the chair for a long time, trying to
understand what was happening to her—and, just as importantly, why. She wasn’t
the sort of person who became taken over either by an emotional or a sexual need
so strong that it possessed her and threatened her self-control. How could one
kiss be responsible for such a dramatic change in her personality? How could it
have her indulging in ridiculous fantasies of love at first sight and soul
mates?

Now she felt drained and on edge, exhausted physically and
emotionally by what had happened, as weak as though she had been struck down by
a powerful virus. Perhaps she had, she thought wildly. Perhaps someone somewhere
had found the chemical formula that was responsible for sexual attraction and
was trying it out on unsuspecting victims, causing them to suffer
hallucinations.

Now she
was
being ridiculous, she
warned herself as she followed Anne to the large tent that was used for meetings
and general information announcements.

Anne, quite naturally, went to join her husband, who was seated
with their colleagues, leaving Sam to find her own seat. Her heart sank when she
saw that the only available space was next to James.

He gave her a superior look as she sat down next to him, and
Sam realised too late that virtually everyone else in the tent was dressed
formally—or at least as formally as the their desert situation would allow. The
men were in long chinos and shirts, the women in sleeved tee shirts—some of them
had even covered their heads.

They had been told at their original orientation meeting that
although the Sheikh of Zuran did not expect them to abide by the Arab rules of
dress whilst working in the desert, the other leaders might.

Had something been said to indicate that the Ruler of Dhurahn
did
expect them to dress more formally? Sam
wondered in dismay, now acutely conscious of her own sleeveless tee shirt, and
her very practical below the knee loose-fit multi-pocketed cargo pants. She had
a fold-up wide brimmed canvas hat in one of the pockets, but no headscarf. It
was too late now, though, to worry about her appearance. Two men were being
ushered onto the slightly raised platform with its traditional Arab divans.

One of them was Sheikh Sadir, and the other...

Sam’s heart literally missed a full beat, staggered through a
half-beat and then missed another—rather as though she were a boxer who had been
knocked off his feet.

It couldn’t be, surely? But it
was
;
the man accompanying Sheikh Sadir, and who he was treating with such obvious
reverence, was none other than the man she had seen earlier—the man with whom
she had exchanged that shockingly intimate kiss in the hotel corridor in Zuran.
So he wasn’t a mirage, then. She didn’t know now whether to be glad or sorry
about that.

Now, of course, she truly understood the importance of that
reverent ‘Highness’ that had so shocked her earlier.

She felt James nudge her hard in her ribs, and realised that
everyone was standing and lowering their heads. Somehow she managed to get to
her own feet in time to hear Sheikh Sadir introducing the man as Prince Vereham
al a’ Karim bin Hakar, the Ruler of Dhurahn.

The Ruler of Dhurahn—Prince Vereham al a’ Karim bin Hakar.

Not a mirage. Not a mere
man
at
all, but a prince.

Sam recoiled in shock. This couldn’t be happening. But of
course it was.

Now she knew exactly why he had turned his back on her on the
path this morning. Of course he didn’t want to acknowledge her. He was the Ruler
of an Arab state and she was a nobody—less than a nobody in his estimation, no
doubt. What he had taken from her he had taken as carelessly as he might have
plucked a fig from a tree, biting into it in his desire to enjoy its sweetness
and then discarding it, his enjoyment of it over and forgotten.

The robed serving staff provided by the Ruler of Zuran were
coming round in pairs, one carrying a tray of coffee cups, the other a tray of
coffee and small sweet pastries.

Up above them on the dais, the Ruler of Dhurahn was also being
served with coffee. Sam watched as the sleeve of the gold-embroidered black robe
he was wearing over an immaculate crisp white full-length Arab shirt was swept
back, to reveal a lean brown hand and a muscular forearm. Beads of sweat pierced
her forehead and her upper lip. She felt sick and shaky. It was because she
hadn’t eaten any breakfast, she tried to reassure herself. But she knew deep
down that wasn’t the reason at all.

‘We’ll see a bit more action now that he’s here,’ James told
her, helping himself to several of the small pastries with relish. ‘Word has it
that he’s got his own reasons for being here, and that he’s the kind to make
sure he gets what he wants.’

Yes, he was very definitely that kind, Sam agreed mentally. And
if he had wanted her... Stop that, she warned herself. Whatever foolish
fantasies she might have entertained before—and they
had
been foolish—there could be no question of her continuing to
entertain them now that she knew who he was.

He was standing up to speak, addressing them in unaccented
crisply clear English as he reaffirmed what the cartographers amongst the team
had already been told: namely, that the purpose of the exercise in which they
were involved was not either to reassess or challenge the validity of already
existing borders but to study the effect of the desert itself on those
borders.

‘Curious that he seems so keen to warn us that we aren’t to
question the existing borders, don’t you think?’ James asked Sam
sotto voce
, under cover of eating yet another
pastry.

‘Not really,’ Sam denied. ‘After all, we were told right from
the start why we are here and all he’s doing is reaffirming that.’

She didn’t want to have to listen to James, and she certainly
didn’t want him obstructing her view of the Prince. And yet what was the point
in her pathetic and painful desire to watch and listen to him, like an obsessed
teenager fantasising about some out-of-reach pop idol?

Sheikh Sadir was now announcing that they were all to be
presented to the Ruler of Dhurahn. Obediently everyone was shuffling out of
their chairs to form a long line, going up to the dais, being introduced.

‘Here—hold this for me a minute, will you?’

Before she could stop him James had thrust the sticky
crumb-filled plate from which he had been eating his pastries towards her,
before standing up and leaving her holding it.