by Dani Collins
Say something, she thought, and let her tongue wet her lips.
His gaze lowered to her mouth.
Her breath evaporated.
She found her own gaze dropping to his mouth, wondering how it would feel to have those smooth lips rubbing against hers. Her heart was fluttering like a trapped bird, her pulse pounding in her ears.
He lifted his hand to hover hotly next to her cheek, scorching her. His brows jerked in some type of struggle. Was he going to kiss her?
It was remarkable yet terrifying. Did she really want to do this? It was so wrong, but he was right there.
“Miss Davenport, are you in there?” Bashira called from outside.
Fern’s heart went into free fall. Her conscience gave her a hard shake and she jerked back, shocked.
“I am,” she stammered, discovering her hand was still trapped under Zafir’s on the pole.
His grip tightened briefly before he released her with a flare of his fingers. He lifted away his touch as though she’d burned him. A muscle ticked in his cheek. He looked very displeased. Accusatory, but also confused.
She surreptitiously touched her mouth, and avoided looking at him as she edged around him to open the flap of the tent.
The rush of fresh air, dry and hot as it was, made her realize how stifling it had been inside, where things had been sultry and musky. Her heart was still pounding hard and loud. It took everything she had to muster a smile for the children as they approached.
“Mama said these are for you.” Bashira struggled with Jumanah to drag a basket across the sand toward her. Tariq followed, staggering under the weight of a bedroll on his shoulder.
“Have you met my son?” Zafir asked as he emerged beside her. He didn’t stand so close as to be improper, but the air crackled with energy that bounced back and forth between them.
Fern stepped forward to escape the field of it. “Not yet.”
What had just happened in there? Was he messing with her? She hadn’t known what to expect from Amineh’s brother, but cruelty wasn’t on the list. The thought that he would toy with her for his own amusement was not only painful, but also opened the gap of deep vulnerability in her even wider. She wouldn’t be able to avoid him here.
He moved forward to take the bedroll off his son, introduced the boy then disappeared inside the tent to lay it out.
Far too intimate a thing to do. How was she supposed to sleep on something he had touched?
“Your cousins speak very highly of you, Tariq,” she said shakily. “I’m looking forward to getting to know you.”
The boy regarded her with a very serious expression. Not his father’s eyes, thank goodness. His were like black coffee, but they held the same intelligence and confidence.
“They speak well of you, too, but may I say with all proper respect that I no longer have need of a nanny. I have a guard.” He quarter turned to indicate a man observing from a position near the children’s tent. “To protect me from outside threats. I am allowed to make my own mistakes and learn from them.”
Pleasantly diverted by that statement, Fern nodded. “I can see you’re mature enough to do so. But I’m not a nanny. I tutor the girls in English.”
“I’m on vacation,” Tariq stated promptly. “My English is excellent.”
Abundant self-assurance was obviously a genetic trait. Her lips were still fiery and buzzing from having Zafir stare at them. Now they twitched with amusement.
“I hope you’ll join us for our field lessons anyway,” Fern said. “I’m excited to explore the oasis. I brought a microscope, some tracking books and sketching supplies. Perhaps you could teach me some things about your country and its wildlife.”
“Oh, yes, I could do that,” he stated with generosity. “My father is also very knowledgeable,” he said as Zafir emerged again to stand at her side. “He finds an animal even when it’s trying to hide.”
Fern outright refused to look at Zafir with that remark hovering like a balloon ready to burst. She was not interested in being laughed at even more.
“That would be a treat,” she murmured, throat tightening with indignation. “But he’s already gone out of his way on my behalf. I don’t want to impose.”
“You would do it for my cousins, wouldn’t you, Baba?” Tariq said, neck craned to look up at his father.
“Of course,” Zafir promised with a hand clasping warmly to Tariq’s shoulder. “That’s why we are here. To spend time with our family. You’ll show our guest where to find everything? I can’t put off confirming that everyone has arrived safely as scheduled.” Turning to her, Zafir explained, “Rescues are difficult and time sensitive, so we have very low criteria for setting them off. Any delay of a message will do it. Excuse me.”
As if nothing had happened between them, he nodded and walked away.
Of course, nothing had happened, she reminded herself. Maybe she’d imagined that whole thing.
Except her cheek still burned where he’d almost touched her.
She forced her gaze not to linger on his back, but she couldn’t help wondering what that back would look like naked. Tanned and strong. When had she ever, ever fantasized about running light fingers down a man’s spine? Or sprawling naked upon one?
This place was supernatural, casting a spell of some kind over her.
Distressed, she forced her attention to the children. They showed her where to find boiled water for drinking and pointed out the latrine and gave her a short broom to use to sweep out scorpions—really?—if they wandered into her tent. Then they left her to unpack as they scampered off in search of wild dates.
Fern entered the privacy of her tent and let out a long, anxious breath. Amineh had talked about the oasis like it was a place of freedom, but Fern had a sense of being kidnapped—into luxury, sure. The tent was bigger than the tiny bedroom she’d grown up in. The bedding and pillows the children had brought her were silky and colorful, while the pallet Zafir had unrolled was wide enough for two.
Stop it.
How had she even wound up here at the end of the earth? She’d grown up expecting she would take a position in a village day school, perhaps going home to a tidy flat where she’d have a cat named Fabio. Her only aspiration had been to provide the same ray of hope Miss Ivy had instilled in her—to help withdrawn, unhappy students discover their own hidden potential.
Hers had apparently been the ability to become an international teacher.
She hadn’t even considered an overseas position while her mother had been alive, but after her mother had passed away, Fern had needed a fresh start. On a whim, she’d applied to a placement agency and expected to wind up in a missionary school, but had found herself in the running for this job.
It still felt like a miracle that she’d won it, but her quiet nature seemed to fit with a culture that valued modesty. She and Amineh had got on immediately, which surprised Fern. At first she had thought it was only because Amineh appreciated Fern’s genuine affection for the girls and her earnest desire to act in their best interests. Now she knew Amineh better, she recognized a like soul in the sense that they’d both struggled to find their place in the jungle of female cliques during their school years.
Amineh and Zafir, Fern had learned, were the product of a rather notorious affair between an Arab sheikh and an English duke’s daughter. They’d ping-ponged back and forth between their parents, not quite fitting fully into either culture. Amineh had found stability by marrying her brother’s best friend, Ra’id, and living permanently in his country.
Zafir still fought for the right to rule their father’s homeland, Q’Amara. He’d married the daughter of a sheikh, trying to ease resistance at having a man with such heavy Western influences governing their country.
Somehow she couldn’t picture him wearing the same sad frown Amineh wore when she
talked about their difficult early years. He seemed too fiercely proud to allow prejudice to reach his heart. It was hard to imagine a man that dynamic and confident struggling with anything.
Peeking out of her tent, she saw him down at the water, shin-deep in the spring where the children had told her bathing was allowed. He stood with his sharp profile angled upward to the top of the worn canyon on the far side of the water. Then he crouched, not taking any heed that his robe was soaked through. He scooped his hands into the water and splashed his face, then lifted his gutra to wet the back of his neck.
She swallowed, going weak as she watched him. He was so comfortable in his skin, so self-assured and compelling.
It dawned on her that this was a crush. She was suffering a full-blown case of unfounded infatuation, behaving exactly like her adolescent schoolmates used to. She stood here spying on a boy, acting geeky and awkward and keyed up, entertaining uncharacteristic fantasies of kissing the back of his neck. How puerile. If only his wife was alive to deter her.
Look away, she told herself, but she couldn’t make herself do it. Why did he have to be out there acting all brooding and sexy anyway?
He stood and turned to stare directly at her tent. His shoulders were set at what seemed a tense angle, his demeanor projecting dissatisfaction.
She couldn’t tell if he saw her, but she retreated to the back wall.
This was going to be an interminable two weeks.
CHAPTER TWO
FERN USED THE excuse of ferreting out her supplies and setting up her mock classroom to avoid everyone for the rest of the day. She usually ate alone so when she smelled the evening meal, she found Nudara, who fetched her a bowl of spicy stew and flatbread with some kind of yogurt dolloped on top.
Taking it back to her tent, Fern told herself the peacefulness was nice. The bustle of the camp settled as everyone sat to eat. The children’s laughter rang out often, along with Amineh’s and the occasional rich male chuckle—one of which made Fern listen harder and feel...
She sighed and shook her head at herself. The light breeze whispered through the palm leaves above her, snickering. An unknown bird tittered at her.
It grew dark quickly, but the nearly full moon rose shortly after. The trip had been organized around the fattest moon as that was the likeliest time for the Bedouins to visit the oasis. The waxing orb’s glow turned the landscape a pale blue and a velvety breeze caressed her cheek as she walked her dishes back to the outdoor kitchen.
Later, after she had brushed her teeth, she put herself to bed early. She’d had a long, active couple of days, she told herself, even though she could hear the children laughing over music from a stringed instrument. No one else was turning in yet. They were visiting and having fun.
Sociology classes had taught her this sort of camp built the relationships between members of a tribe. The servants were certainly in good spirits, teasing one another and making jokes. Zafir’s coming together with his neighbor, Ra’id, had strengthened relations between their two countries in ancient ways, even if they only traded gossip. Corporations called something like this a “team-building exercise” and paid small fortunes for their employees to attend.
Fern was the luckiest person in the world to be able to experience this.
She told herself.
As she held her eyes closed against an inexplicable sting.
She had absolutely no reason to feel lonely in this wide bed. Miss Ivy would enjoy hearing about all of this when Fern had an online connection again.
Make some notes, she cajoled herself, but didn’t move. Instead she mentally wrote something entirely different, something that belonged in an erotic novel. It was a scene where Zafir came to her tent and touched a lot more than her cheek.
* * *
It was the worst night of her life. She tossed and turned, unable to shut off her mind from conjuring fantasies of making love with Zafir.
She didn’t even know how it was properly done! Obviously she knew the mechanics, but she’d been firmly sheltered from any sort of expressions of sexual passion. Her mother hadn’t allowed her to go to sexy movies or watch any of those daytime serials on television. The romance novels at the library had been read from an angle under the desk. Guilt always assailed her for enjoying those stories and more than one academic friend had shamed her for picking them up, but Fern couldn’t help wondering why was it so bad to like stories about love and happily-ever-after?
Because of the sex, her mother’s voice said in her head. Heaven help any woman who gave in to her hormones. That only brought heartache and disappointment.
Fern being the disappointment in question, she had long ago surmised.
Yet here she was, indulging her own hormones with imaginary banquets of kisses and caresses. It wasn’t the first time she’d lain in bed and imagined she wasn’t alone, but she’d never been quite so explicit with her fantasies or had a particular man in mind.
It had to stop.
Throwing off her light sheet, she quietly unzipped her tent and stepped into the cool of predawn. The camp was silent, the stillness only broken by the relentless pounding of her pulse.
Dressed in her knee-length cotton nightgown, she walked down to the beach and sighed as her feet found the damp sand at the water’s edge. The burning inside her began to ease. This was what she’d needed. A cold shower.
Was that why Zafir had come to the water yesterday?
No. No more daydreams that he fancied her. He’d only been washing off travel grime.
Still, she found herself tracking to the place where he’d stood in the water. It felt deliciously cool as it closed over her feet and climbed to the backs of her knees.
Drawn forward, she sucked in a breath as the pool deepened quickly, soaking through to weigh the fabric of her nightgown. Chilly water hit her loins, then her navel. She sucked in her stomach, got as far as her breasts and held her breath.
She dipped until the cold water closed over her and stayed under a moment, nose plugged, letting the chill seep to her bones. Then she titled back her head and rose, baptized into a creature of this foreign yet intoxicating world.
The thought made her smile naturally for the first time since arriving here. Oh, she felt a million times better!
Which was silly. One little plunge into a spring couldn’t wash away a lifetime of baggage and misgivings, but she wished it could be that easy. Her mother’s shaking finger always seemed to follow her, though, undermining her ability to enjoy the simplest sensual experience. She would no doubt criticize her for... Well, everything. Her mother wouldn’t approve of anything Fern had done since the service. Ever in her life, really.
At least she wasn’t burning with desire for a man beyond her reach anymore. She thought she could sleep now and escape all her disturbing ruminations about Zafir.
Turning, she marveled at how clear the water was, completely entranced by its perfection, feeling mammalian and part of the universe as she watched her feet. Not all creatures were herd animals, she reminded herself. Many lived alone most of their lives, only seeking another of their kind to mate—
Bare, tanned feet stood on the beach before her.
Her heart stalled and her soggy nightgown clung like a skin of dread. Her feet halted and her knees locked in denial.
How? No one else was up.
Her gaze climbed athletic shins to where unbleached linen board shorts ended at his knees.
Leave it to him to wear drawstring shorts that were still the epitome of class, tailored to hang low across his brown hips in the most disreputable yet erotic way. He wasn’t wearing a shirt and he was a perfect specimen of the human male. His tense, flat abs were bisected by a line of hair that flared across his brown chest. The pattern accentuated his broad shoulders and the relaxed muscles of his upper arms.
His
mouth was set in a grim line, the stubble on his jaw dark making him look even more piratical and dangerous than the first glimpse she’d had of him. He had black hair, she noted. Trimmed close to keep it tight against his scalp.
His brows stayed heavy over those remarkable, glittering eyes as he opened a towel with a flick. She hadn’t noticed he was holding one. He beckoned her with two bent fingers, then hissed a word in Arabic that she’d heard Amineh use to hurry the girls.
“Now,” he said in a stern whisper. “The guards don’t need to see you like that.”
Like what?
She glanced down to see her nightgown was plastered to her front, her nipples standing out from the high curves of her breasts like traffic cones. Her lack of underwear was flagrantly obvious.
The light was coming up fast with the sun. She couldn’t approach him looking like this!
Her tent looked miles away from here, however, and... Oh, help me. He didn’t wait. He waded into the water and snapped the towel around her back, barely giving her a chance to lift her arms out of the way before he closed it across her chest and tucked it tight.
She grabbed at it to finish the job herself, then brushed his hands away and glared up at him, even though she was the idiot who’d gotten herself into this mortifying position.
“I didn’t think anyone else was awake,” she hissed.
“The guards patrol around the clock.”
She scowled at the surrounding area, right up to the top of the jagged wall of the canyon, seeing no one. “Well, I wasn’t planning to swim when I came out.”
“Good thing I was.” He nodded at the towel, matching her whisper, but still managing to sound patronizing.
“I wasn’t trying to insult anyone,” she explained, upset that she’d made a cultural gaffe.
He snorted. “That was the least of my reasons for covering you.”
Again he used the tone that suggested she was a bit of a half-wit. She glared up at him, but the eye contact only sent a current of electricity through her that stayed active and hummed in her veins so her breaths stumbled unevenly. A shiver chased over her even as the burn that had kept her awake through the night rekindled.