Lost to the Desert Warrior

by Sarah Morgan

  Afterwards Layla lay there, numb. Maybe she should be grateful for the protection of the darkness, but she wasn’t. The knowledge that he could only make love to her if it was in the dark hurt her more than she would have thought possible.

  She turned her head, plucking up the courage to talk to him about it, but before she could speak she heard a high-pitched cry coming from close by.

  Layla sat upright, heart pounding. ‘What’s that? It sounded like a child.’

  And then the screams began.

  * * *

  Raz moved quickly, his hand on the knife he kept strapped to his belt whenever he was in the desert.

  The screams sliced through him, ripping his composure into shreds, because he knew who screamed.

  His strides fuelled by a primal need to protect, he tore open the entrance of the tent next to his and saw the child sitting upright, eyes staring in terror, forehead glistening with sweat, as she screamed while Nadia stood there helplessly, hopelessly out of her depth.

  ‘I can’t get her to stop.’

  In seconds he had the child in his arms, folding her tightly. ‘What is wrong with her?’

  He heard the raw edge to his tone but the girl simply shrugged defensively.

  ‘She’s awake but she won’t respond to me. It’s as if she’s having a fit or something.’

  He smoothed the child’s hair, gazed into those staring eyes and felt an anxiety so acute it slowed his thinking. He prided himself on the speed and accuracy of his decision-making and yet now, when it was so important to get it right, his brain was motionless.

  ‘Her breathing is fast. Her pulse is fast. Get someone medical in here immediately.’

  A calm voice came from the entrance to the tent.

  ‘It isn’t a fit and she isn’t awake.’

  He turned his head and saw Layla, dressed only in a thin nightdress, her hair tangled and tousled from his hands. Her gaze was fixed on the child. ‘She’s having a night terror. My sister had them all the time at the same age. You shouldn’t wake her.’

  “She’s already awake. Her eyes are open.’ Nadia’s eyes were cold and unfriendly.

  Raz ignored her. ‘You have seen this before?’ Fear made his voice harsh, but Layla seemed calm and unflustered.

  ‘Many times. It’s very unsettling to witness, but I can assure you she will remember nothing of it in the morning. Who is closest to her? Who does she know the best?’

  Her gaze flickered expectantly to Nadia and Raz drew a deep breath.

  ‘Me.’ The confession was dragged from him, because he hadn’t yet decided how to broach this topic and this wasn’t the way he would have chosen. ‘I have the closest relationship with her.’

  Was she shocked?

  If so, she didn’t show it. Nor did she question what that relationship was.

  ‘In that case you should be the one to tuck her back into bed. Snuggle the sheets around her to make her feel safe. Talk to her quietly. It’s not what you say that matters, it’s the way you say it. You need to hold her securely. Blow out all the candles except one. Darkness helps. When she goes back to sleep, stay with her for about ten minutes. Once she is deeply asleep it’s unlikely to happen again.’ Having delivered that set of instructions, she looked at Nadia. ‘We should leave. The fewer people the better.’

  The other girl’s expression was stubborn. ‘She knows me.’

  ‘It’s better that way.’ Layla’s voice was firm. ‘She needs quiet and just one person she trusts.’

  ‘Do as she says.’ Raz lowered his voice and eased the child back under the covers. She was quivering and shivering and it broke his heart to see her. His urge to call a doctor was powerful, but for some reason he was inclined to give Layla’s suggestion a try, all the while wondering why he was following the advice of a woman he had no reason to trust.

  She’d said it was the tone that mattered, so he spoke nonsense, reciting poetry from his childhood, his hand stroking those fragile shoulders until gradually the little girl calmed and relaxed under his fingers.

  Her breathing slowed. Her pulse slowed with it. And as hers did so did his.

  Her eyes fluttered shut, those eyelashes dark shadows against cheeks swollen by crying.

  Raz sat until the change in her breathing told him she was deeply asleep.

  His shoulders ached with tension. His head throbbed with it. Responsibility pressed down on him until he felt not as if he had the world on his shoulders but the universe.

  Satisfied that she really was asleep, and unlikely to stir, he rose carefully to his feet and left the tent in search of answers.

  Nadia was hovering outside, her expression defensive and defiant. ‘I could have settled her. You should not have asked her advice.’

  ‘How long has this been going on?’

  Her hesitation told him everything.

  ‘A while.’

  That reluctant admission did nothing to ease his stress levels.

  ‘Why wasn’t I told?’

  ‘You were away.’

  ‘But everyone knows I wish to be told of anything that affects my daughter.’

  ‘I didn’t think it was significant. She doesn’t remember it in the morning.’

  Holding onto his temper, knowing that he needed time to cool down before he spoke what was on his mind, Raz clenched his jaw and gestured to the tent he’d just left. ‘Stay with her.’ Ideally he would have stayed himself, but he needed information so he strode back into his own tent and found Layla standing still in the middle of the room, her hands clenched into fists by her sides, stress evident in every rigid line of her body.

  She’d lit the candles and the tent was bathed in a soft, gentle light that revealed sheets still rumpled and twisted from the wild heat of their lovemaking.

  She turned as he entered the tent and their gazes locked and held.

  Awareness rushed between them and sexual tension crackled like static in the air.

  Now you’re a woman, he thought, and then blocked that out because he knew this was not the time to address the other issues that were piling up.

  ‘Thank you for your help. You knew what was wrong? You called it a night terror?’

  ‘Yes.’ Her confidence reassured him, because he was far from convinced he shouldn’t have called for medical assistance.

  ‘You have seen it before?’

  ‘Many times.’ Her voice was tight, her eyes shadowed by ghosts and darkness. ‘My sister Yasmin started having them when she was five and it carried on for over a year. It might have been longer. I don’t really remember. Every night, about an hour after she’d fallen asleep, she’d wake screaming, eyes wide open. She seemed to be awake, but she was asleep. The first time it happened I was just like you—I thought she was awake.’

  ‘But she wasn’t?’

  ‘No, and it’s very unsettling. It took me a while and some research to realise she was actually asleep.’

  Of course she would have researched it. He knew virtually nothing about her, but he knew that much. ‘And did your research suggest a cause?’

  ‘There is no single cause, but there are different triggers. A fever, extreme tiredness, and—’ She licked her lips and turned her head away so that he could no longer see her eyes. ‘And stress. Stress can cause it.’

  Guilt twisted inside him, because he knew without a doubt that the trigger in this case was very likely to be stress. And he knew the cause of the stress. ‘And in your sister’s case?’

  ‘It was definitely stress.’

  Still she didn’t look at him, and he remembered her reaction to their conversation earlier.

  You know nothing of the life my sister and I led.

  Raz looked at the tension in those slender shoulders and realised he was looking at far more than
a reaction to what had just happened in the tent next door. ‘What was she stressed about?’

  ‘This isn’t about my sister.’ She evaded the question. ‘This is about the little girl. Has she been through a bad experience?’

  How was he supposed to answer that?

  The truth lodged somewhere behind his ribs, Raz turned away and paced to the far side of the tent.

  It occurred to him that their relationship was already turning into a minefield of things they didn’t talk about, issues they didn’t address. The complications were endless.

  ‘How did you stop it happening?’

  ‘I couldn’t stop it. I could only deal with it. And I tried to make her feel more secure so that she didn’t go to bed scared.’

  ‘She was scared?’

  They were exploring two parallel lines of conversation and he was aware that she was avoiding his questions as skilfully as he was avoiding hers.

  ‘They say overstimulation of the central nervous system can cause it. The temptation is always to shake them awake, but it’s better if they can just go back to sleep.’

  ‘So there was nothing you could do?’

  ‘I tried very hard not to let anything frighten her.’

  There are some aspects of our past neither one of us wishes to revisit.

  He caught the bleak look in her eyes and realised just as there were layers to him she hadn’t even glimpsed, so there were layers to her. And they were dark layers.

  How could it be otherwise, growing up with a man like her father?

  Only now did it occur to him how little he knew about his new bride.

  An uncomfortable feeling spread down his neck and across his shoulders. ‘Did she have reason to be frightened?’

  ‘I started sleeping in the room with her. Sometimes that helped.’

  ‘Layla, why was your sister frightened?’

  It was only the second time he’d used her name and he saw her still.

  Then she turned her back on him and picked up a robe, slipping it on and covering herself, shielding herself from him in every way. ‘If you want to deal with the night terrors, the best thing is to talk to her family and find out what is likely to be causing them.’ She fastened the robe around her waist. Her hair poured down her back, thick, shiny and as dark as a starless night. ‘That shouldn’t be a problem as you seem to know her well.’

  Was that the second or third time she’d ignored his question about her life in the palace? Every time he raised it she deflected it. And suddenly he knew this relationship was going to be impossible if they shared nothing.

  One of them had to make the first move.

  ‘I do know her well. I know her better than anyone.’ He had to push the words past his own natural reluctance to confide. ‘She’s my daughter.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘YOUR DAUGHTER?’ UNPREPARED for that revelation, Layla simply stared at him. ‘You have a daughter?’

  ‘She is six years old.’

  He had a daughter.

  She sank down onto the bed, her legs shaking, racking her brain for the information she had on him and discovering it to be depressingly sparse. ‘I—I didn’t know. I had no idea.’

  She muttered the words to herself, examining this further piece of evidence to support her suspicion that it was possible to be intimate with someone and yet still know nothing about them.

  It didn’t make any difference that she’d shared something with him she’d never shared with anyone else. He was still a stranger.

  ‘There are few who know, and those who do know better than to speak of it.’

  His voice was flat and she looked at him blankly, shocked into silence and shaken by the enormity of it.

  ‘Why don’t people speak of it? Why would you hide the fact that you have a child?’

  ‘I lost my father. I lost my wife—’ He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t need to.

  Layla knew her face matched the colour of his.

  ‘No.’ She shook her head in instinctive denial of that hypothesis. ‘That wouldn’t have happened.’

  ‘How can you be sure?’ His tone was raw. ‘You insist on having evidence for everything—show me the evidence that my daughter would have been safe. Did your father live by a code of honour? Did he have boundaries beyond which he wouldn’t go? If so, then please enlighten me, because I have seen nothing like that in my dealings with him.’

  The shame of it covered her like a filthy, dark sludge. She wanted to dive into the oasis and scrub her skin clean. ‘I can’t show you evidence. I understand why you kept your daughter’s existence a secret. But when I suggested marriage I would have thought—’

  ‘What would you have thought? That I would have confided in you? You arrived in the desert out of nowhere. I married you because I saw the sense in what you proposed but let’s not pretend that this marriage is a union of trust.’

  His words shook her because in her head she’d started to spin a different scenario. When she looked at him all she could see was the burning heat in his eyes and all she could think of was his body, hard and hot against hers. Out of bed they were strangers but in bed? In bed they were as close as it was possible for two people to be and what they did in bed had started to dominate her brain. The craving inside her had intensified to the point that she found herself wishing the daylight hours away because at night there was a chance they’d be together. She found herself hoping desperately for the dark because it was only in the dark that he came to her. Swept away by the darkness and the wildness of the passion she’d started to imagine that this was real but now she realised she’d been deluding herself.

  ‘That is all true, but I am your wife now and that also makes me—’

  ‘Do not say the words.’ His voice was thickened with emotion. ‘Do not even think of yourself as my daughter’s mother.’

  The words slid under her ribs like a blade.

  She tried to ignore the sharp pain that made it difficult to breathe. Used logic to remind herself that his response was understandable in the circumstances.

  The fact that he would kiss her, touch her, didn’t mean he trusted her with his daughter.

  And she really couldn’t blame him for that, could she?

  Right now he was the powerful protector, ready to shield his daughter from any threat, and it was clear he considered that threat to be her.

  Feeling his struggle to suppress the emotion that threatened to overwhelm him, Layla groped for the best way to handle the situation. ‘At least tell me her name.’

  ‘Her name is Zahra.’

  ‘That’s a pretty name. Does she know you have married me?’

  ‘No.’ He was brutally frank. Everything about him was designed to repel her gentle attempts to ease closer. ‘There is no easy way to tell a child I have married the daughter of the man responsible for the death of her mother.’

  The knife in her ribs twisted. ‘Had I known you had a daughter I never would have suggested this marriage. I had no idea there was a child involved. It changes everything.’

  ‘It changes nothing. This marriage was never personal so what difference would it have made?’

  ‘I would not have sacrificed your daughter’s happiness for—’

  ‘For the future of Tazkhan? And what about your sister’s safety? What about your own marriage to Hassan? Because that’s why you came to me, isn’t it? You wanted my protection.’

  ‘Yes, that’s all true. I was honest about that right from the start. But I didn’t want those things at the expense of a little girl’s happiness. A little girl who has already suffered a major trauma in her life.’ Layla was shaking so badly she wasn’t sure her legs would hold her. ‘There is no way I would have foisted myself on her as a stranger. At the very least I would have suggested I
take time to get to know her. To gain her trust.’

  ‘That would have created a delay we could not afford, and this was never about building a relationship. And you are assuming you would have gained her trust.’

  ‘I would certainly have worked hard to do that. I have experience with children. Give me the opportunity and I will prove it to you.’

  The shutters came down on those eyes. ‘No. We will wait and see if the night terrors settle and then re-evaluate.’

  ‘Perhaps they would settle if she had someone she could bond with. Someone she is close to.’

  He turned slowly, his eyes like ice. ‘My relationship with my daughter is very close.’

  ‘Yes, I can see that.’ She thought about the way he’d soothed the child. About the anxiety and love on his face and the patience he’d shown. It had warmed her because she’d never seen a man like that with a child. ‘But you’re away a great deal. You have your business interests—’

  ‘That is an inevitable part of life. When I can, I take her with me, and when I can’t I make sure I return here as quickly I can.’

  ‘But when you are away who looks after her?’

  He didn’t answer immediately. ‘She is with Nadia, who loves her very much.’

  Nadia?

  Layla felt as if she were walking on eggshells. This wasn’t the time to point out that Nadia had seemed out of her depth at the moment of crisis. ‘How have you kept Zahra’s existence a secret?’

  ‘I have the support of many people.’

  ‘But I don’t.’

  He glanced at her with a frown. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘No one speaks to me. This marriage has not been welcomed by the people who love you.’ Suddenly she felt overwhelmed by it all. By the distance that couldn’t be closed by physical intimacy alone. ‘How can this possibly work even on the most basic level? If you don’t trust me, why would they?’