The Sheikh's Baby Omnibus (3 page)

The road into the desert was clearly marked, and turned out to be a well-built, smooth road that was so easy to navigate that Mariella quickly felt confident.

The secluded oasis where apparently the sheikh was staying was located in the Agir mountain range.

The light breeze, which had been just stirring the air when she had left the Beach Club, had increased enough to whip a fine dust of sand over her vehicle and the road itself within an hour of her setting out on her journey. The sand particles were so fine that somehow they actually managed to find their way into the four-wheel drive, despite the fact that Mariella had the doors and windows firmly closed. She had left the main road, now branched out onto a well-marked track across the desert itself.

It was a relief when she reached the Bedouin village marked on her map. It was market day and she had to drive patiently behind a camel train through the village, but fortunately it turned off towards the oasis itself, allowing her to accelerate.

In another half an hour she would stop for some lunch—if she hadn’t reached the second oasis, marked on her map, she and Fleur would have their picnic instead.

The height of the sand dunes had left her feeling surprised and awed; they were almost a mountain range in themselves. Fleur was awake and Mariella turned off the radio to play her one of her favourite nursery rhyme tapes, singing along to it.

It was taking her longer than she’d estimated to reach the tourist base at the oasis where she had planned to have lunch—it was almost two o’clock now and she had expected to be there at one. A film of sand dust had turned the sky a brassy red-gold colour, and as she crested a huge sand dune and looked down into the emptiness on the other side of it Mariella began to panic slightly. Surely she should be able to at least see the tourist base oasis from here?

Ruefully she reached for the vehicle’s mobile, realising that it might be sensible to ask for help, but to her dismay when she tried to make a call to the number programmed into the phone the only response was a fierce crackling sound. Stopping the vehicle she reached for her own mobile, but it was equally ineffective.

The sky was even more obscured by sand now, the wind hitting the vehicle with such force that it was physically rocking it. As though sensing her disquiet Fleur began to cry. She was hungry and needed changing, Mariella recognised, automatically attending to the baby’s needs whilst she tried to decide what she should do.

It was impossible that she could be lost, of course. The vehicle was fitted with a compass and she had been given very detailed and careful instructions, which she had followed to the letter.

So why hadn’t she reached the tourist oasis?

Fleur ate her own meal eagerly, but Mariella discovered that she herself had lost her appetite!

And then just as she was beginning to feel truly afraid she saw it! A line of camels swaying out of the dust towards her led by a robed camel driver.

Relieved, Mariella drove towards the camel train. Its leader was gravely polite. She had missed the turning to the oasis, he explained, something that was easily done with such a wind blowing sand across the track. To her alarm he further explained that, because of the sudden deterioration in the weather, all tourists had been urged to return to the city instead of remaining in the desert, but since Mariella had come so far her best course of action now was to press on to her ultimate destination, which he carefully showed her how to do using the vehicle’s compass.

Thanking him, she did as he had instructed her, grimly checking and re-checking the compass as she drove up and down what felt like an interminable series of the sand dunes until eventually, in the distance through the sand blowing against her windscreen, she could just about see the looming mass of the mountain range.

It was already four o’clock and the light seemed to be fading, a fact that panicked Mariella into driving a little faster. She had never dreamed that her journey would prove so hazardous and she was very much regretting having set out on it, but now at last its end was in sight.

It took her almost another hour of zigzagging across the sand dunes to reach the rocky thrust of the beginnings of the mountain range. The oasis was situated in a deep ravine, its escarpment so high that Mariella shuddered a little as she drove into its shadows. This was the last kind of place she had expected to appeal to the man who had been her sister’s faithless lover.

Would his villa here be as palatial as his home in Zuran? Mariella frowned and checked as the ravine opened out and she saw the oasis ahead of her. Remote and beautiful in its own way, it was very obviously a place of deep solitude, the oasis itself enclosed with a fringing of palms illuminated by the eerie glow of the final rays of the setting sun. Shielding her eyes, Mariella stopped the vehicle to look around. Where was the villa? All she could see was one solitary pavilion tent! A good-sized pavilion, to be sure, but most definitely not a villa! Had she somehow got lost—again?

Fleur had started to cry, a cross, tired, hungry noise that alerted Mariella to the fact that for Fleur’s sake if nothing else she needed to stop.

Carefully she drove the vehicle forward over the treacherously boulder-rutted track, which seemed more like a dry river bed than a roadway! Sand blowing in from the desert was covering the boulders and the thin sparse grass of the oasis.

There was a vehicle parked several yards from the pavilion and Mariella stopped next to it.

A man was emerging from the pavilion, alerted to her arrival by the sound of her vehicle.

As he strode towards her, his robe caught by the strong wind and flattened against his body revealing a torso muscle structure that caused her to suck in her own stomach in a sharply dangerous womanly response to its maleness.

And then he turned his head and looked at her, and the earth halted on its axis before swinging perilously in a sickening movement as Mariella recognised him.

It was the man from the airport. The man from her dream!

CHAPTER TWO

H
IS
hand was on the door handle of the four-wheel drive. Wrenching it open, he demanded angrily, ‘Who the devil are you?’

He was looking at her eyes again, with that same look of biting contempt glittering in his own as he raked her with a gritty gaze.

‘I’m looking for Sheikh Xavier Al Agir,’ Mariella responded, returning his look with one of her own—plus interest!

‘What? What do you want with him?’

He was curt to the point of rudeness, but then, given what she had already seen—and dreamed—of him, she wouldn’t have expected anything else.

‘What I want with him is no business of yours!’ she told him angrily.

In her seat Fleur’s cries grew louder.

Peering into the vehicle, he demanded in disbelief, ‘You’ve brought a baby out in this?’

The disgust and anger in his voice made her face sting even more than the pieces of sand blown against it by the wind.

‘What the hell possessed you? Didn’t you hear the weather warning earlier? This area was reported as being strictly out of bounds to tourists because of the threat of sandstorms.’

Hot-faced, Mariella remembered how she had switched off the radio to play Fleur’s tapes.

‘I’m sorry if I’ve arrived at an inconvenient time,’ she responded sarcastically to cover her own discomfort, ‘but if you could just give me directions for the Oasis Istafan, then—’

‘This is the Oasis Istafan,’ came back the immediate and cold response.

It was? Then?

‘I want to see Sheikh Xavier Al Agir,’ Mariella told him again, gathering her composure together. ‘I presume he is here?’

‘What do you want to see him for?’

Mariella had had enough. ‘That is no business of yours,’ she said angrily. Inwardly she was worrying how on earth she was going to get back to the city and the comfort of her Beach Club bungalow and what on earth a man as wealthy as the sheikh was reputed to be was doing out here with this...this...this arrogant predator of a man!

‘Oh, I think you’ll find that anything concerning Xavier is very much my business,’ came the gritted reply.

Something—Mariella wasn’t sure what—must have alerted her to the truth. But she was too shocked by it to voice it, looking from his eyes to his mouth and then back again as she swallowed—hard—against the tight ball of shock tightening like ice around her heart. ‘You...you...can’t be the sheikh,’ she told him defiantly, but her voice was trembling lightly, betraying her lack of confidence in her own denial.

Was this man her sister’s lover...and Fleur’s father? What was that sharp, bitter, dangerous feeling settling over her like a black cloud?

‘You are the sheikh, aren’t you?’ she acknowledged bleakly.

A brief, sardonic inclination of his head was his only response but it was enough.

Turning away from him, she reached into the baby carrier and tenderly removed Fleur. Her whole face softened and illuminated with love as she hugged her and then kissed her before looking him straight in the eyes and saying fiercely to him, ‘This is Fleur, the baby you have refused to both acknowledge and support.’

She had shocked him, Mariella realised, even though he had concealed his reaction very quickly.

As he stepped back from the vehicle for a second Mariella thought he was going to tell her to leave—and cravenly she wanted to do so! The man, the location, the situation were so not what she had been anticipating and prepared herself for. Each one of them in their different ways shattered not just her preconceptions but also her precious self-containment.

The man—try as she might she could just not envisage him in the club where Tanya had performed. The location made her ache for her painting equipment and brought her artistic senses to quick hunger. And her situation! Oh, no... Definitely no! This man had been her sister’s lover, and was Fleur’s father—

The shadowy fear that had stalked her adult years suddenly loomed terrifyingly sharply in front of her. She would not be like her mother; she would not ever allow herself to be vulnerable in any way to a man who could only damage her emotionally. The ability to fall in love with the wrong man might be learned, but it was not, to the best of Mariella’s knowledge, inherited!

‘Get out!’

Get out? With pleasure! Gripping the steering wheel, Mariella reached for the door, slamming it closed and then switching on the ignition at the same time, then she threw the vehicle into a furious spurt of reverse speed.

The tyres spun; sand filled the air. She could hear a thunderous banging on her driver’s door as the car refused to budge. Looking out of the window, she saw Xavier looking at her in icy, furious disbelief.

Realising that she was bogged down in the swirling sand, Mariella switched off the engine. If he wanted her to leave he would have to move the vehicle for her, she recognised in angry humiliation.

As the engine died he was yanking the door open, demanding, ‘What the hell do you think you are trying to do?’

‘You told me to get out!’ Mariella reminded him, equally angry.

‘I meant get out of the car, not...’ As he swore beneath his breath, to her shock he suddenly reached into the vehicle and snapped off her seat belt, grasping her so tightly around her waist that it actually hurt.

As he pulled her free of her seat and swung her to the ground she had a sudden shocking image of the two of them in her dream!

‘Let go of me,’ she demanded chokily, pushing him away. ‘Don’t touch me...’

‘Don’t touch you?’

Now that she was on the ground she realised just how far she had to look up to see the expression in his eyes.

‘From what I’ve heard it isn’t often those words leave your lips.’

Instinctively Mariella raised her hand, taking refuge in an act of female rebuttal and retaliation as ancient as the land around her, but immediately he seized her wrist in a punishing grip, his eyes glittering savagely as he curled his fingers tighter. ‘Hell cat!’ he taunted her mercilessly. ‘One attempt to use your claws on me and, I promise you, you will regret it.

‘You can’t go anywhere tonight,’ he told her bluntly. ‘There’s a sandstorm forecast that would bury you alive before you could get even halfway back to the city. In your case it would be no loss, but for the sake of the child...’

The child...Fleur!

An agonised sound of distress choked in Mariella’s throat. She could not stay here in this wilderness with this...this...savagely dangerous man, but her own common sense was telling her that she had no other option. Already the four-wheel drive was buried almost axle-deep in sand. She could taste it in her mouth, feel it on her skin. Inside the vehicle, Fleur had begun to cry again. Instinctively Mariella turned to go to her, but Xavier was there before her, lifting Fleur out.

The baby looked so tiny held in his arms. Mariella held her breath watching him... He was Fleur’s father after all. Surely he must feel something? Some remorse, some guilt...something... True, he did pause to look at her, but the expression on his face was unreadable.

‘She has your hair,’ he told Mariella, before adding grimly, ‘The wind is picking up. We need to get inside the tent. Where are you going?’ he demanded as she turned back to the vehicle.

‘I want to get Fleur’s things,’ she told him, tensing as he gave a sharp exclamation of irritation and overruled her.

‘Leave them for now. I shall come back for them.’

Mariella couldn’t believe how strong the wind had become! The sand felt like a million tiny particles of glass shredding her skin.

By the time they reached the safety and protection of the pavilion, her leg muscles ached from the effort of fighting her way through the shifting sand.

Once inside the pavilion she realised that it was much larger than she had originally thought. A central area was furnished with rich carpets and low divans. Rugs were thrown over dark wood chests, and on the intricately carved tables stood oil lamps and candles. In their light Mariella could see two draped swags of cloth caught back in a dull gold rope as though they covered the entrance to two other inner rooms.

‘Fleur needs something to eat, and a change of clothes,’ she announced curtly, ‘and I want to ring the Beach Club to tell them what has happened.’

‘Use a telephone—in this intensity of sandstorm?’ He laughed openly at her. ‘You would be lucky to be able to use a landline, never mind a mobile. As for the child...’

‘The child!’ Mariella checked him bitterly. ‘Even knowing the truth you still try to distance yourself from her, don’t you? Well, let me tell you something—’

‘No, let me tell you something... Any man could have fathered this child! I feel for her that she should have a mother of such low morals, a mother so willing to give herself to any and every man her eye alights on, but let me make it plain to you that I do not intend to be blackmailed into paying for a pleasure that was of so little value, never mind paying for a child who may or may not be the result of it!’

Mariella went white with shock and disbelief, but before she could defend her sister, Fleur started to cry in earnest.

Ignoring Xavier, Mariella soothed her, whispering tenderly. ‘It’s all right, sweetheart, I know you’re hungry...’ Automatically as she talked to her Mariella stroked her and kissed the top of her head. She was so unbearably precious to her even though she was not her child. Being there at her birth had made Mariella feel as though they shared a very special bond, and awakened a maternal urge inside her she had not previously known she had.

‘I don’t know what she has to eat, but there is some fruit and milk in the fridge, and a blender,’ he informed her.

Fridge? Blender? Mariella’s eyes widened. ‘You have electricity out here?’

Immediately he gave her a very male sardonic look.

‘Not as such. There’s a small generator, which provides enough for my needs.’ He gave a brief shrug. ‘After all, I come out here to work in peace...not to wear a hair shirt! The generator can provide enough warm water for you to bathe the child, although you, I am afraid, will have to share my bathing water.’

He was waiting for her to object, Mariella could see that. He was enjoying tormenting her.

‘Since I shall only be here overnight, I dare say I can manage to forgo that particular pleasure,’ she told him grittily.

‘I shall go to your vehicle and bring the baby’s things. You will find the kitchen area through that exit and to your right.’

Mariella had brought some dried baby food with her as well as some tinned food, which she knew would probably suit Fleur’s baby digestion rather better than raw fruit, no matter how well blended! Even so, it would do no harm to explore their surroundings.

As she stepped through the opening she found that she was in a narrow corridor, on the right of which was an unexpectedly well equipped although very small kitchen, and, to the left, an immaculately clean chemical lavatory, along with a small shower unit.

The other opening off the main room must lead to a sleeping area, she decided as she walked back.

‘What is all this stuff?’ she heard Xavier demanding as he walked in with his arms full.

In other circumstances his obvious male lack of awareness of a small baby’s needs might have been endearing, but right now...

Ignoring him and still holding Fleur, she opened the cool-bag in which she had placed her foods.

‘Yummy, look at this, Fleur,’ she murmured to her. ‘Banana pudding...our favourite... Yum-yum.’

The look of serious consideration in Fleur’s hazel eyes as she looked at her made her smile, and she forgot Xavier for a second as she concentrated on the baby.

‘I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that she isn’t receiving the nutrition of her mother’s own milk,’ she heard Xavier announcing critically.

Immediately Mariella swung round, her eyes dark with anger.

‘Since her mother had to go back to work that wasn’t possible!’

‘How virtuous you make it sound, but isn’t it the truth that the nature of that work—is anything but? But of course you will deny that, just as you will claim to know who the child’s father is.’

‘You are totally despicable,’ Mariella stopped him. ‘Fleur does not deserve to be treated like this. She is an innocent baby...’

‘Indeed! At last we are in agreement about something. It is a pity, though, that you did not think of that before you came out here making accusations and claims.’

How could he be so cold? So unfeeling! According to the little Tanya had said about him, she had considered him to be a very emotional and passionate man.

No doubt in bed he was, Mariella found herself acknowledging. Her face suddenly burnt hotly as she recognised the unwanted significance of her private thoughts, and even worse the images they were mentally conjuring up for her; not with her sister as Xavier’s partner—but herself!

What was happening to her? She was a cool-blooded woman who analysed, rationalised and resisted any kind of damaging behaviour to herself. And yet here she was...

‘Just how long is this sandstorm going to last?’ she asked abruptly.

The dark eyebrows rose. ‘One day...two...three...’

‘Three!’ Mariella was aghast. Apart from the fact that Tanya would be beside herself if she could not get in touch with her, what was the prince going to think if he returned and she wasn’t there?

‘I have to feed and change Fleur.’

Luckily she had brought the baby bath with her as well as the changing mat, and Fleur’s pram cum carry-cot, mainly because she had not been quite sure what facilities would be available at the oasis.

‘Since it is obvious that you will have to stay the night, it is probably best that you and the child sleep in my... In the sleeping quarters,’ Xavier corrected himself. Mariella’s mouth went dry.

‘And...where will you sleep?’ she asked him apprehensively.

‘In here, of course. When you have fed and bathed the child I suggest that we both have something to eat. And then—’

‘Thank you, but I am perfectly capable of deciding for myself when I eat,’ Mariella told him sharply.

* * *

S
HE
WAS
FAR
more independent, and a good deal more fiery, than he had anticipated, Xavier acknowledged broodingly when Mariella had disappeared with Fleur. And quite definitely not his younger cousin’s normal type.