by Holly Rayner
are some people who wish to oppose one of my new initiatives… nothing unexpected. I’d have scheduled it for another time if I’d known there was going to be somewhere I’d rather be today.”
He was sitting on the edge of the bed now. It felt like they had felt the day before. So close. But he had to go.
She laughed, and pushed him gently. “Go! Go meet your men. You’re going to make me late to the dig site, anyway. The storm has passed, hasn’t it?”
“It has. I’ll meet you there later, yes? I’m sure I’m due for a tour.”
He kissed her again, and then reluctantly stood. Lucie brought a hand up to her own face. She was grinning from ear to ear. It hurt a little bit, but she couldn’t stop.
“I can’t wait to show you round,” she said.
And, just like that, he slipped out the door, and Lucie was alone in the royal suite.
Now that the Sheikh had gone, there was nothing to keep her in the hazy little bubble she’d woken into. She felt the energy and the excitement for her work building up in her again, and practically had to stop herself from jumping out of bed. If anything, the joy that her night with the Sheikh had brought her only made her more excited to get back to the site.
She walked quickly to her room. It all looked much different now, in the light, than it had when they’d stumbled back there, arms around each other. She was a little afraid of running into anyone, but knew she didn’t have to worry about the servants’ discretion. If Abdul didn’t think they were to be trusted, he surely wouldn’t have left her in his bed.
Back in her suite, Lucie showered and dressed in a frenetic hurry, then practically skipped downstairs to breakfast.
Zach was there, looking very much as though he’d managed to down an entire bottle of the honey liquor before going to bed last night. How he’d gotten it, Lucie didn’t know, and she didn’t want to ask.
She also found she wasn’t quite so annoyed at the idea of talking to him as she had been the previous day.
“How are you, Zach?” she opened.
He looked at her, suspicion in his gaze. “Did you sleep well?” he asked, rather than answer her question.
“I did,” she said, spreading butter on her toast, appreciating the fact that even in the midst of wanting to show them his country, Abdul had catered to any homesickness by providing them with a proper American breakfast.
“The beds here are wonderful, don’t you think?”
“Well, I’ve only tried out the one,” he sniped, watching her face carefully, as though she might give away whatever had happened after he’d left her and the Sheikh to their own devices.
On another day, Lucie might have been disturbed by the implication. She might have tried, for the millionth time, to talk to Zach about boundaries. But today, she found that nothing he said could bother her, and she only shrugged.
“Well, my bed was wonderful. Have they told you if we’re going to the site soon? Do you know if work is going to resume today?”
He was about to answer when a butler entered and told them that the car was ready to take them back to the dig.
Now that she didn’t care in the slightest about giving Zach the wrong impression, she found it was much easier to talk to him. It was easier, in fact, to make him listen to her thoughts on what she hoped to find at the dig site than it would have been to try and hold it all in. So the whole ride to the camp, she found herself babbling on about the day ahead.
As soon as they arrived, however, Lucie realized just how far her hopes were removed from reality.
She’d heard about sandstorms before. But somehow, when she’d pictured them, she’d always imagined them like tornadoes—wreaking havoc on some things and leaving others untouched.
Not so, it appeared, for the previous night’s storm: everything they could see was covered in a thick layer of sand and dirt. It was like another ten years had just been dumped on their site, and would have to be cleared away—and because of the importance of preserving the historical record, they would have to be just as careful in digging it all back out again.
So they set to work. It wasn’t easy, but then, Lucie had always excelled at hard work. And she was glad of the opportunity to get to know her fellow archeologists better. The more she spoke to them, the more certain she became that they were her kind of people. And between that, and the joy that was hanging on her from the night she’d just had, her spirits were still high.
But as lunch came and went, she began to worry. The Sheikh hadn’t said exactly when he would come to visit, but as the afternoon drew on, it seemed to become less and less likely that he would be coming to the site that day.
She began to make excuses to hold back the crushing doubt attacking her mind. His business might have taken longer than expected, she reasoned. Maybe he’d gotten caught up in town. None of this was a reason for concern. The man who had kissed her good morning would want to be here. Why would he have said so if he didn’t?
As the afternoon shifted towards evening, one possible reason began to take hold in Lucie’s mind. Perhaps, she thought, he’d told her that so that he could leave without her making a fuss.
When an official-looking envoy pulled up to the camp, she dismissed her fears out of hand—but it wasn’t the Sheikh who got out. Instead, it was a servant—a nameless official that Lucie didn’t recognize—informing her and Zach that the Sheikh had hoped to host them again that night, but had had other plans come up most unexpectedly. The official explained that he had brought their bags so that they could stay out at the camp as originally planned.
Then he unloaded their bags, and was gone again, lost to the desert.
And with that, any defense Lucie had against the sea of emotion that was beginning to creep over her was gone. She was awash in anger and grief.
And, worst of all, Zach saw it. The earlier Zen-like attitude she’d had towards him, unable to be annoyed at anything he said or did, evaporated with her hopes of seeing the Sheikh again. It took all the self-control she had not to snap as he tried to make conversation on their walk from the site to the camp that would be their home for the remainder of the trip.
He was prying, trying to find out exactly what had happened between her and the Sheikh. Well, Lucie thought, that was a good question. So, now, did she.
TEN
The rest of the week passed without major incident. There were no more sandstorms; nothing to break up the monotony of digging out the sand deposited by the storm and trying to uncover the work the team had already done beneath it.
As for Lucie, she didn’t mind the monotony. Even though there was little chance of anything new being uncovered, she knew of cases in the past when extreme weather had knocked loose discoveries that otherwise never would have been uncovered. It wasn’t much, but it kept her from being too frustrated at the lack of progress she was making with her dissertation research.
Over the days that followed, her admiration for the people she was working with—Zach excepted—only grew. And she was reassured by the fact that some of them—many of them the best and brightest in their field—had come from circumstances not unlike her own.
But even in this there was some sadness, as the realization that all the archeologists at the dig were of such high personal and professional caliber only served to remind Lucie of the man who had personally selected them. Even this little home she had found was tainted by the memory of him, and the great chasm between what she had thought he felt for her, and what he actually had.
The Sheikh still reigned supreme in her mind, and she hated the power he had over her. One stray thought of him, and suddenly an hour was spent wondering where he was; remembering, touch by touch, the night they had spent together.
It just made no sense to her. She had always trusted her instincts with people, and had seldom been led astray. She’d always prided herself on that, growing up, and it had saved her from a lot of trouble.
How had she been so wrong about this man? If the Sheikh was real
ly so dispassionate that he didn’t even want to come and see her one more time, how had he seemed so tender and intimate with her that night? Why had it felt that they had made a real connection?
This question, above and beyond the feelings of betrayal and rejection that she felt, was what occupied her the most. It was this question that made her feel hesitant to leave the country without seeing him one more time.
She knew she had to do something about it. She knew she must find a way to get to him. But every day, she failed. She knew that in order to go to the palace, she would have to borrow the jeep, and she was loathe to ask Professor Hasseb, lest he suspect why she needed to go there. So every day, she would just hope that someone from the royal entourage would again show up at the dig site unannounced, and she could convince them to bring her back with them. But of course they never did.
As the sun began to set on their final day at the dig site, Lucie saw her window of opportunity closing. After bidding the rest of their team farewell, she and Zach were climbing aboard the private plane that would take them to the capital. Only this time it was taking Lucie away from opportunity, not towards it.
Once again, they were dropped at the hotel, to sleep for a few hours and prepare themselves for the journey ahead. But after Zach headed up to his room, Lucie stayed behind to speak to the driver.
“I’ve seen you before, haven’t I?” she asked, her Gulf States Arabic having improved somewhat during her time on the dig site.
The driver paused for a moment before replying.
“Yes,” he said, also in Arabic. “I’m one of the Sheikh’s drivers. He wanted to make sure you and your friend were taken care of, so that you report well of the program.”
“Can you take me to him?”
The question was impertinent, and she knew it. But she was out of time, and she was desperate. She needed to see the Sheikh, if only to get some closure. If only so she wouldn’t have the question mark hanging over her head.
The man paused. He looked like he badly wanted to say something, but couldn’t. Lucie wished she could find some way to pull it out of him. She wished she had the key to convincing him to say whatever it was that was on the tip of his tongue.
“No,” he said finally. “I cannot.”
And then he drove away.
Lucie stood there, watching the car until it rounded a corner and was lost from sight. She refused to go in, even though she knew the car was gone, silently hoping the driver would change his mind and take her to the man who had scorned her.
But nothing happened, and eventually she had to face the fact, and go inside the hotel.
A few hours later, the car that came to take her and Zach to the airport had a different driver, who would not speak to her. The trip was over, and Lucie realized with a dull pang that any association with the Sheikh she may have had was lost to the sands of the desert and time.
ELEVEN
Lucie was caught between a rock and a hard place. For the last few weeks, since returning from her ill-fated trip to Al-Brehoni, she had wanted desperately to forget what had happened there, but in working on her dissertation, had been forced to constantly relive it.
She had a deadline, if she was to finish this year, but she was running out of time. Already, the undergrads were getting into crunch time on their classes and heading for exams, and the other postgrads were worrying about editing and final dissertation organization. The air was a mix of the excitement of spring and the desperation of approaching deadlines.
Lucie wanted to finish her essay. She needed to. Not just because of her own inner need to achieve, but also because, having tasted the life of exploration that would hopefully come after it, she felt like another year spent arguing with herself over the proper placement of paragraphs would kill her.
Then there was the fact that, as soon as she finished her dissertation and went through her dissertation defense, she would be done with Al-Brehoni for good. If she wanted to, she could just step away from having anything more to do with the country. If she did so, she thought, maybe she would stand a chance of forgetting about what had happened that magical and ill-fated night.
In her quest to be free of Al-Brehoni and its king, Lucie had to sift through a constant barrage of reminders of the man she was trying desperately to forget. Every time she wrote the words “Al-Brehoni”, she found it got a little harder to accept what had happened there.
And, quite besides that, Lucie also knew that her dissertation was in trouble.