She ached to comfort him, but didn’t even know how to comfort herself after five years. The only thing he could do to forgive himself was to go back to the world that needed him as much as he needed to be there, to find restoration in his family and his people.
But how could she tell him that when she couldn’t make herself go home, couldn’t face her own family?
‘How bad will it be for the village?’ he asked as he turned to look at the north.
She glanced at him, saw the readiness to blame himself for anything that happened at Shellah-Akbar, and deliberately softened her tone. ‘They’ll tear it apart to find the supplies—but they’ve done that before, and found nothing.’ She chewed her energy bar, choosing to hide the worst from him, and acknowledging that she felt some need to protect him. He was carrying enough guilt on those broad shoulders. ‘I told Malika and Haytham to hold to the story that you’re my husband, and we ran because we overheard the men speaking about Sh’ellah’s plans for me.’
‘Will they believe it?’
If they told Sh’ellah that, he’d go on a rampage to find me and kill you. She kept her tone gentle. ‘They might believe it. If they can’t find the food, they’ll have nothing else to go on.’
‘Where do you hide the food?’ he asked, his voice thick, and she knew she hadn’t fooled him a bit.
She carefully didn’t look at him as she said, ‘We trade on the old custom of fear of the dead, and bury everything in graves, usually beneath the coffins of the children.’
‘Your people will do that?’ he asked, sounding startled.
Understanding what he was asking, relieved to take the topic from anything that hurt him so deeply, she nodded. ‘At first they resisted, so I did it myself. Then, when Sh’ellah’s men wouldn’t disturb the dead, and the spirits didn’t destroy me for what I’d done, they helped me. I’ve found many people will put aside the most frightening of their customs and beliefs in their need to survive,’ she said quietly, ‘to save their children.’ Her parents would have done the same. It was always family first…which was why they’d had to choose: marry Hana off quickly to a bad man, or ruin Fatima’s chances of ever finding a good man. Fatima had only been seventeen.
It was said that to understand was to forgive…but though she’d always understood the dilemma her parents had faced, choosing to bow to community pressure, and sacrifice one sister for the sake of the other, she’d never found forgiveness in her heart. I was innocent, too! Did you ever for a moment think I hadn’t done what he said?
Alim turned towards the south, squinting in concentration. ‘What will you do now?’
‘Go to the refugee camp.’ But she couldn’t stay there for long; it was too public, too exposed. Her father might have sent someone to look for her there, ask for her by name, or for a woman with her description, including the Australian accent—which was why the burq’a came everywhere with her, and she spoke Maghreb whenever possible. ‘Then they’ll reassign me to another village that needs a nurse.’
‘There’s a dust cloud about four kilometres away, heading towards us,’ he said, frowning to the south.
‘Pick up anything that tells them we were here, use your jacket to cover footprints and body imprints and let’s go,’ she said tensely. She pulled a ripped cotton sheet from her backpack in four pieces, and tied two to his ankles, and to hers. ‘It’s far from perfect, but the ground is so dry our footprints will be difficult for their trackers anyway.’
‘Do we run, or try to jump from rock to rock as long as we can?’
Caught by the innate wisdom—he’d assumed they’d keep hiding in the creek bed, and he was right—she smiled at him, and found her foolish lungs trapping air inside her when he smiled back. ‘Tonight you’ve earned your name, Alim. The rocks, as fast as safety allows.’
‘I have my moments—as do you, happy woman.’ He winked at her. She could tell he was pleased—her foolish heart certainly leaped at the smile, at the unexpected emotional intimacy—and the inexplicable sense of oneness she’d felt with him from the first moment she’d seen him torn and bleeding in the truck came back in double force. She couldn’t tear her gaze from him—and the worst part was it was as emotional as it was physical. She felt bound to him somehow.
‘We have to go,’ he said softly, his eyes warm, dark as he smiled, and his mouth—oh…
‘Yes,’ she whispered, her eyes locked on his half-smile, lips parted, breathing fast. A thrill so strong it almost hurt ran through her, breasts to fingertips. Her body swayed towards him.
He bent until his breath whispered along her lips like a tender kiss. ‘We must go now, Sahar Thurayya. I won’t let him take you, not while there’s breath in my body. Let me go first this time, my star. I’m actually useful at jumping rocks and finding the most stable ones.’
She couldn’t speak, aching for the almost-touch…but she managed a nod.
He bent to pick up the packet from his energy bar and made a mess of the soil where they’d slept, and the moment passed—no, it didn’t pass; it slipped into his pocket, into her heart, awaiting its chance. And she knew it would come.
She followed him from rock to rock, leaping like mountain goats, her mind in turmoil, her heart and body fighting for—what? There could be nothing between them. She’d only known him two days, yet she ached and hurt with desire for him as she never had for any man.
Taking the lead yet asking her first was just another way he’d shown her the man he was. Alim was a complex blend of traditional and modern, Arabic and man of the world—but even with his humour and his kindness, and a smile that melted her inside, he was still a man; and she wasn’t free to feel attracted to him, or to dream of a future.
She was trapped…if not by this life on the run, then by tradition, her father’s pride—and by Mukhtar. She might not have made the vows herself, but her father had done so for her, and he’d signed the marriage certificate in her name. She hated the man her father had given her to in marriage, but she had no choice. Mukhtar had made sure of that.
Chapter Four
THEY’D been leaping and running alternately for a couple of hours when Alim’s brain began crash-banging against his skull and his feet no longer felt certain on the ground.
He came to an abrupt halt. Hana would have barrelled into him if she hadn’t had superb self-control—or if she hadn’t been watching him for signs of collapse. She stopped right behind him and said, softly, ‘Ibuprofen and water?’
Yes, she’d been watching, waiting for him to fall. She was thoughtful and high-principled, imperious queen and caring Florence Nightingale rolled into one. She might be the daughter of a miner, but a woman with Hana’s integrity and inner strength was destined for some high place.
His mouth and throat, even his lungs felt scorched, parched as the earth beneath their feet. ‘Yes.’ It took all his control not to groan aloud. ‘Please,’ he ground out.
In moments she’d handed them to him, and he drank gratefully.
‘Drink it all, Alim. You’re dehydrated. We still have four canteens left, and we’ll hopefully reach a small well by nightfall tomorrow.’
She knew her way through this arid wasteland. She’d worked out her escape route well in advance. It told him far more than she intended…and she’d called him by name again. Even if it was because she currently felt superior to him, he felt a grin form. From the moment she’d touched him, her guard had been falling. As unbelievable as it was, she did desire him.
He left a few mouthfuls of water for her. ‘You need to drink too, or you’ll end up with a dehydration headache, and then where will we be?’ he teased, even through the pain.
She mock-bowed again, bending right over and peering up at him from about the level of his hip. ‘Yes, O my master,’ she rasped, and he chuckled as she took the canteen. She’d had the cringing tone of Gollum down pat. ‘Please take this and rub it on your forehead—it will help until the tablets take effect.’ She held out a small dark bottle to him.
/> He took the tiny dropper bottle from her, and sniffed its contents. ‘Peppermint and lavender oils?’
She grinned. ‘Yes, it is, and no, we are not going to use it to kill the stink of sweat and mud. We need it for headaches when we run out of ibuprofen. So use it sparingly, here—’ she pointed to his forehead ‘—and here.’ She touched his pulse-point in his throat, a brief, sweet flutter of a muddy finger, too soon over.
She waited until he’d rubbed some of the fragrant oils on his forehead before lifting the canteen to her lips, drinking so fast he knew she’d been as thirsty as he.
She must be closer to dehydration than him. She’d been giving him more water all along, citing his concussion as the reason.
‘You love caring for people,’ he remarked as she packed away the oil bottle and the empty canteen. ‘And being in control,’ he added, teasing her to lessen her suspicions that he was digging again—which he was.
‘Yes, I guess I do.’ She flashed him a rueful smile, her white teeth startling in the darkness and her dirty face. ‘It’s why I became a nurse—that, and my father wouldn’t have allowed me any other profession without being married first.’ A shadow crossed her face, her smile vanished. She said no more.
‘It must be killing you, not seeing your family,’ he said, taking a stab in the dark. Until now he’d thought her alone in the world. Now he sensed the truth lay deeper.
Her eyes sparked in the night with dangerous fire. ‘Is it killing you?’
He stared at her unblinking for a moment, and decided to meet the challenge. ‘You know who I am, why I’m in Africa.’ Because it’s as far from my privileged, fast-lane life as I could find on short notice…where they wouldn’t think to look for the missing sheikh.
And he’d stayed because—well, because he had to. For the first time in his life, he wasn’t the second heir, Fadi’s replacement, or The Racing Sheikh. The people here, from the aid agencies to the villagers, needed his skills, not for entertainment, but to save their lives.
Hana bowed again, but without the impish fun, the softness in her eyes vanished. ‘It wasn’t hard, my lord. Your face is famous. Your disappearance became a worldwide interest story.’
‘Especially among our people,’ he agreed through gritted teeth. She knew too much about him and his secrets, and he had to piece hers together by all she didn’t say.
Even in the black of night, he saw her face pale. ‘Stop there.’
‘So you are from Abbas al-Din? Are you on the run from your father, or the husband you claim you don’t have?’ he pressed, wanting something, any part of her, the vulnerability and loneliness he felt beneath layers as strong and as fragile as the burq’a she’d worn the first day.
‘Stop.’
She wasn’t looking at him, but her tension was so palpable she looked like a string pulled as far as it would go without snapping. ‘All right.’ After a few moments he asked, ‘Did you know who I was from the start? Was that why you saved me?’
She sighed. ‘Not in the truck, or when I stitched you—but I knew by the time Sh’ellah’s men arrived. Be grateful for that—if I hadn’t known I wouldn’t have hidden your face, and they’d have taken you. As for coming with you now, I had no choice—but I would have saved anyone who needed my help.’
He could feel the truth in every word. He should be grateful that she’d been honest with him, but it hurt far more than it should have.
Two days was all that had passed since they’d first met, yet she meant more to him than she should. Possibly because she’d saved him so many times; possibly because she was one of his own, and he hadn’t been aware how deep his hunger ran to be with his own people again—
And most probably because she was Hana, his dawn star who shone in a dark world: an honest woman who refused to lie even when it could save her.
‘So you’re saying I’m just anyone? One of hundreds you’ve probably saved?’ His voice was rough with the weird mix of anger and gratitude simmering in him.
She turned her face to him, frowning. Flecks of dirt fell from her cheeks with the movement. ‘Would you rather I saved you because of who you are?’
‘No,’ he muttered. She was right; he wouldn’t want that. So what did he want from her?
That was the trouble; his emotions felt as confused as his concussed brain. But from the start, Hana had humbled him, amazed him, fascinated him—and the combination was deadly for a man who had as many secrets as he did. But she’d known who he was all along, and said nothing until he’d asked, until he’d prodded her pain and she’d responded without thought.
She’d treated him like any other man. She’d laughed at him, ordered him around—desired him with honest heat…
Or had she? Had everything she’d said and done been a lie, centred on fascinating the deformed, lonely sheikh until he was her emotional slave?
‘So what’s your plan when we return to the world?’ he drawled to hide his sudden, blinding fury. ‘There’s probably quite a reward for my safe return to Abbas al-Din. Or are you hoping for an even better reward than money—my mistress, perhaps? Or even my wife, if you think wealth and position can make up for having to tolerate me in your bed?’
He didn’t know what he expected her to do—slap him, toss half the energy bars and water at him and demand they go their separate ways…cry and protest her innocence…furiously remind him she’d saved his life before she’d known his identity—
Shame scorched him as he remembered that. He opened his mouth—
But then she finally responded: wild, almost jackal-like laughter. ‘You have got to be kidding me,’ she gasped, her face alight with hard mirth. She doubled over, her gusts of laughter growing stronger by the moment. ‘I’m seducing you!’
Alim stared at her, shocked into silence. ‘What’s so funny?’ he asked at last, when she seemed to be sliding into full-on hysteria.
She straightened, still chuckling, but the eyes that met his were diamond-hard, glittering with an emotion he couldn’t stand to see in her. ‘Until you resume your true identity and position in Abbas al-Din, my lord, you have no right to demand answers of me. Until then, I can safely promise I will not be calling the media to collect any reward, and I certainly won’t be seducing you at any time in the near future. So ironic…’ She shook her head and slid down to the ground, laughing with that cold cynicism he’d never thought to see in his deep-principled, caring saviour.
The irony was lost on him, but he saw one thing clearly: something had made Hana run from her world, and he’d tapped into it with his anger—and his believing the worst of her after she’d saved him so many times. That was what it came down to.
What had he done?
Through a painful stone lodged in his chest, he forced out, ‘Hana, I—’
‘Don’t waste time with an apology you won’t mean and I won’t believe.’
Her cool words broke into the apology budding in his heart, stopping it dead. She was back on her feet, shouldering her backpack. ‘Silence would be best at this point. Let’s go.’
Her face was remote, cool as ice water splashed in his face—and again, she’d treated him like she would any man who deserved her withdrawal. Despite recognising him, he wasn’t a figurehead to her. He was Alim, and she was showing him the consequences of his unleashing his foolish mouth on her.
Since meeting her he’d butted in on her private world, hurt her and forced her to flee her village, destroying her fragile illusion of safety in Shellah-Akbar. And now he’d added humiliation to the list, treating her as a mercenary predator willing to sleep with him for what she’d get from it.
The worst of it was he had a feeling that, no matter how ashamed he felt, Hana was shouldering a far greater burden from his unthinking accusations.
It was almost sunrise again. They’d been walking ten hours, and Hana had felt Alim’s remorse walking between them like a shadow-creature the whole time. She’d felt it hovering there, aching for release, for the past twenty-four hours.
She’d felt his shame through the last of their night-walk last night, his anxiety to make it better through his care that she rest her head on his jacket as she slept today. She’d heard his worry in his insistence she drink first, and the bigger share of the energy bar he’d given her, saying with an uneven laugh that it held no appeal after the fourth or fifth bar. But though he didn’t push her or talk about it, she knew what he craved.
Forgiveness. A simple word, but so hard to practise when people she cared for, people she trusted believed the worst of her, over and over; and now, with a weary acceptance, she knew Alim had been added to that list. People she’d trusted who’d betrayed her. People that she cared for, who believed she was…
Oh, God help her, she cared for him, and that he’d been able to accuse her of those things at all meant he’d believed it. Whether he’d believed for a moment or an hour or a lifetime didn’t matter; whether it was based on his lack of self-belief didn’t change it. It was done, he’d said it, and her heart felt like a lump of ice in her chest. The only way she could survive the next few days and save him, and herself, was to close down until she said goodbye to him for ever.
She couldn’t go through it again, couldn’t care, couldn’t trust and have it betrayed, leaving her—like this. All she could do was slam the shutters down on her heart, show nothing and hope to heaven she could survive this bleak emptiness a second time.
As they prepared for breakfast the silence seemed so loud it screamed over the sounds of the creatures waking for the day in the scrubby hills to the west. The hope and the need for her forgiveness crouching beneath his compliant quiet filled her stomach with sick churning until she couldn’t swallow a single mouthful of her food.
She couldn’t give him the absolution he wished for—but she had to say something, so she blurted the first thing that came to mind. ‘You haven’t used the oil on your skin for a while. It must be itching.’ She rummaged in the backpack, and thrust the oil for his scars at him.
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