Challenging the Doctor Sheikh

by Amalie Berlin

  Nothing she did took Dakan from her mind. She didn’t even know what he was supposed to be doing in the desert—how could sand tell him anything except that life was hard?

  During the weeks since Dakan’s exile to the desert, Nira and Leila had spoken daily, though not about Dakan, and because Nira knew it upset the Queen to think of Dakan out there, and because she was the Queen and this whole royalty thing still wigged Nira out a bit, she didn’t force the subject. Leila wasn’t her Mum, so she needed different tactics from shock and awe.

  Into the third week, by the time their midweek beach prowl rolled around, Nira had reached her breaking point. She met Leila and immediately launched in. “I have to say this before I forget how I rehearsed it.”

  Leila nodded, her expression sharpening with focus.

  “I want to go to Dakan, wherever he is. I think he needs someone to talk to. He doesn’t like to talk about feelings or even think about them. If he’s supposed to meditate and find answers, how is he going to do that when he doesn’t even...?” Hell, how did that part go? “He doesn’t even know himself. Do you know where he is? Can you help me get to him?”

  Leila’s smile was slow. “His life isn’t in much danger there. He has been at our desert abode, he’s not suffering as you think he is. At least not physically. Emotionally... Well, when there is nothing left for him to distract himself with, Dakan will listen to that quiet voice in his heart.”

  “So this is a thing he does?”

  Leila shook her head and stepped in to put her arm around Nira’s shoulders. “No. My youngest is very like me in that he has a great capacity to creatively amuse or distract himself. But he also has Fatiq’s stubbornness.”

  “So what happens if he doesn’t have some kind of epiphany when he’s there? How long does his exile last?”

  “It lasts until he can give a satisfactory response for the incident and his handling of this mess. Or perhaps until he simply gives in and does what Fatiq wishes.”

  “Marry me?”

  Leila nodded.

  “Oh, that’s exactly what a woman wants to hear about her reluctant possible future husband. If it turns out he’s the less stubborn of the two and gets bored, he might decide to marry me just so he can have electricity again.”

  “I don’t think that will happen.”

  “I could help him, Leila. If we’re alone, he’ll talk to me. I know he will.”

  “Give him more time.” Leila steered her toward the water. They always walked at the water’s edge. It was no good to walk on the beach without getting your feet wet and feeling the sand between your toes.

  Too much like walking in the desert.

  * * *

  When Nira got to the penthouse the next morning for work, Leila was sitting at her desk, waiting. The first thing that hit her was surprise, then fear.

  “Has something happened to Dakan?”

  The Queen rose. Behind her chair sat a medium-sized travel bag. “Dakan is fine. I’m here to help you, but only if you agree not to share your decision when I have finished saying what I came to say.”

  Keep her decision to herself? She could do that. “I agree.”

  “The day you came to us, Dakan asked me to protect your freedom. Yesterday my first instinct was to protect you physically, then I remembered his request. So here I am.”

  The conversation was quick, and Leila left as soon as it was over.

  Two hours later the helicopter landed on the outside edge of the oasis, letting Nira off with her bag.

  A man came out to meet her and Nira handed him an envelope Leila had given her, granting permission to be there.

  With nothing to argue about, he gestured to the big tent—as if Nira could miss the thing—and left her to it.

  Inside, she found layers of Arabian rugs, pillows for sitting on, cascades of white silk, intricate bronzed lanterns and a fire pit—though she couldn’t imagine where wood to burn came from, or even if it was for burning wood.

  It was so large there were rooms, separate tents connected together with enclosed passageways leading from one to the next.

  In one, a bedroom, there was a massive four-poster bed and a thick velvet rope above it. Okay, that was a little weird.

  She went through the whole complex, at least everywhere she could find, and Dakan wasn’t there. But the massive bed looked comfortable, so she returned there and climbed up onto it. In the middle, she found an open notebook with an ink pen lying on the open page.

  Left to right writing.

  English.

  She leaned over to peek at it, and the words “Dear Nira” stood out.

  A letter to her.

  She reached for the book.

  * * *

  As he now did every day, Dakan returned to the camp at dusk. Tonight, one of the groomsmen met him in front of the tent and held an envelope out to him. He found his mother’s elegant script on the front, but it wasn’t addressed to him. He stepped into the tent and removed his shoes to get a little more comfortable, lit a lantern and opened the envelope.

  He hadn’t expected to hear from her yet—Dakan knew by now that people watched him, and servants made reports. The family knew he was fine, aside from the headache that hadn’t left him since he’d arrived. The one that had stayed so long he’d started to think he had a blasted brain tumor...

  What he found inside the envelope sent a thrill through him, and left him feeling a little breathless. Dropping the letter, he picked up the lantern and went deeper into the tent.

  Nira had permission to be there.

  He found her in the harem room, a lantern hanging nearby and his notebook open in her lap. If she’d read the whole thing, she’d never give up on him, even though she should. But he couldn’t think about that now—he was so incredibly grateful to see her...

  Her hair was down and she wore loose-fitting trousers and a T-shirt. Little bare feet wedged beneath each knee, she didn’t seem to realize he was there.

  “Why did you pick the harem room?” he asked, unable to help the smile that came when she lifted her eyes to him.

  “Because I’m not a royal, and this is the royal abode. It seemed like the most appropriate room for me, class-wise.”

  “I’m not a royal either right now. Perhaps we should both join the harem.”

  She fidgeted with the corner of one page, nervously flicking it back and forth. “I think we’re too well educated for that. Though I have to comment on this book. There are twelve letters addressed to me, their perforated edges still perfectly intact. When were you going to send them? The same day you decided to trim that beard, Wild Man?”

  Her tease made him smile again, but his throat felt thick and his tongue sluggish. “I had no one to impress.” He cleared his throat and walked fully into the tent to sit on the corner of the pillow-mattress. “I didn’t intend to send them to you.”

  “Then why did you write them?”

  “To try and make sense of things. I missed our conversations, so I wrote to you.”

  “Who is Aafaq?”

  Dakan reached for the notebook, but she pulled it out of his reach.

  “Aafaq was what they called my little brother. He was born too soon in order to save Mother’s life. Zahir told me to talk to the desert, but that’s just not me. If I’m going to sit in the desert and talk to anything, it’d be my little brother. His grave’s nearby.”

  There it was again, that compassion in her eyes that felt like a caress.

  “Is that where you were today? It can’t be too close. The helicopter is loud.”

  “I heard it. Just decided it was Father, and he could wait. If I’d known it was you, I’d have come right away.”

  “You would’ve?” The sadness he’d inflicted on her pulled at her brows, still present even if
she was happy to see him, and that light was there too. “You did a good job of avoiding me at the palace. You should know, I took a gamble coming here.”

  “What gamble?”

  “If we don’t talk through this and work things out, I’ll be sent back to England and the project given to someone else.”

  Dakan lifted a hand to rub it over his face, and immediately knew how he must look. Dirty. Hairy. Not at all princely. But then, that was who she’d come to see. She didn’t like it when he got stiff and princely.

  “You shouldn’t have come, then.”

  “It’s too late now. If I leave, your people here will report to the palace that I was here. For better or worse, we need to work this out and I think we can.”

  “You continue to give me too much credit.” He lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. “I thought you came to talk about your father. Have the Al-Haaken contacted Father?”

  “I don’t know, and I really don’t care unless it’s important to you.” She scooted to his side, but didn’t touch him. “I want to talk about the letters.”

  “The letters are me trying to explain what I’m thinking after my graveside chats with Aafaq.”

  She flipped through the pages, though he was certain she’d read it all before he’d returned. “I like the questions at the top of the pages. How would I be different if Aafaq had lived? Why does it bother me to be labeled ‘Born to Follow’?” She met his gaze, her brow lifted. “That’s the first two pages devoted to relationships between brothers.”

  “Aafaq is my brother. I don’t know the question to ask, so I just started the conversations thinking about what it means to be brothers. If I’d been second in line but not the youngest, would I be different? Would I have gravitated more toward Zahir’s territory, been more like Prince Dakan—as you dubbed me—without forcing it?”

  “Territory. If we were home, I’d make it a drinking game. Every time you said ‘Zahir’s territory,’ you’d have to do a shot.”

  “Too bad we’re not in England.”

  “If we were, we wouldn’t talk. We’d just get drunk and then nakedness would inevitably follow.”

  Damned right it would. His willpower was shot.

  “You frame it as relationships between brothers, but your brothers didn’t cast your role. Your parents did that. The King—who I’m sure loves you in his authoritarian way—was the one who said you were born to follow. He probably didn’t think about how that would stick with a child. And that would bother anyone, especially someone in your position. If someone told you that you were predetermined for greatness, that’d be a lot easier fate to embrace than being born to do whatever your brother told you. It’s not about Zahir, it’s about having your free will reined in before you could even understand what it meant.”

  Dakan really hated thinking about feelings, but he loved it that she was close enough to him now that he could touch her. She wouldn’t let him take the notebook, so he reached for her hand again and let himself soak in the tangible physical relief he felt touching her.

  His head instantly stopped aching.

  She set the notebook on the bed beside her, freeing her other hand to reach for his. “What’s wrong?”

  “My head...feels so much better I’m a little light-headed.”

  He needed her around, even if it was an entirely selfish desire.

  “Do you want me to stop?”

  He shook his head. She wanted to talk, so he wanted to do whatever she wanted. Even if it was on unpleasant topics, he had missed their talks. He’d missed her voice. Her scent. Everything.

  “When you’re in London and you see Zahir, do you feel the need to be Prince Dakan?” Her thumbs began stroking his fingers.

  “No.”

  “Then I don’t think you’re really talking about brother problems. It’s not about Zahir. You can let go of that guilt.” She momentarily pulled her hand away to flip the notebook pages and read back his words, “‘I enjoy working on the hospital. It lets me do something important for my country—which is a new experience for me. I’ve never been important to the country, or felt I could be without something happening to Zahir, a thought that brings a mountain of guilt.’”

  “I know what I wrote,” he murmured, catching her free hand again. “Do you know the question?”

  “I know the answer,” she said softly, smiling in that soothing way.

  She knew the answer? “What is it? Tell me and I’ll come back.”

  “No. If I tell you what to think, it’s never going to be real for either of us. If you ever decide you can have what we both want, even if you’re uncertain about everything else in life, you have to be certain about us. I need you to know it like I know it, deep in your heart.”

  “If you tell me, I’ll believe, habibi. I swear.”

  “I didn’t come here to do your thinking for you.” She lifted his dry, weathered hands and kissed the thumbs wrapped over her fingers. “I know you can do it. It’s all in that notebook. Have you gone back and read it all together?”

  “No.”

  “You should. Even if there’s not one mention of territory in this book. All the times you’ve mentioned Zahir’s territory in conversation points to it meaning something you haven’t explored yet.”

  “All it means is that I’m better at different things than he is. I’m not him. If he’s better at something, he should be the one doing it. People shouldn’t expect me to be good at it too just because he is. We’re different.”

  “Yes, you are. So different it looks contrived, like all those television shows and movies about opposites who live or work together, and the kooky shenanigans that ensue when they try to get along.” She paused and pondered a moment before announcing, “The things you’ve said are Zahir’s territory are emergency medicine and misbehaving in more satisfying ways, like bombing your Lego house rather than chopping it up. What else?”

  “Nira.”

  “No, Nira is pretty much only Dakan’s territory, whether he wants to claim it or not.” She suddenly pulled her hands free of his, and he wanted to grab her and pull her to him again. “Read the letters with fresh eyes, as if I’d written them, without all your preconceived ideas about what you can and cannot do or what your place is.” She leaned towards him and reached down to cup his scruffy cheeks. “And I don’t care what answers your family want you to find. I only care about you.”

  He closed his eyes, nothing coming to him to say other than pleas for her to stay.

  “I love you, and I know you love me. I even knew it before I read it. And it’s not the kind of love you can walk away from. I’ve seen up close the effects of twenty-seven years of heartbreak...always bitter and cold and broken. I don’t know if he ever truly loved her—I hope he did before it got twisted—but I know she loved him. It never went away.”

  “Nira...how can I—?”

  “Wait. There’s one more thing I know. We are supposed to be together. And you’re the only thing standing in our way.” Her eyes welled up and she lowered her head until her smooth, cool forehead touched his, and her tears fell on the cheeks she held.

  She let go and straightened. He couldn’t tell whose tears were on his face any more.

  “Find me when you’re ready,” she said, her voice shaking with effort, then turned and walked out of the tent.

  Dakan reached for the notebook.

  * * *

  For the next two days they made love every night, and during the day he went to Aafaq, this time armed with the notebook Nira believed held the answers he needed, but the only questions he cared to have answered were: Why couldn’t he have her? Where did this certainty that he couldn’t come from?

  On the third day he took extra water and food with him to Aafaq’s grave, intent on staying until he’d sorted himself out. He had no idea why his f
ather let her stay there without sending the helicopter to retrieve her. He had to sort it out before they took her away from him again, or before she lost faith and left him, even if he longed to spend every minute with her—every minute that twisted together paradise and agony.

  * * *

  Sometime in the middle of the third night Nira felt the bed give beside her and Dakan spooned up behind her. He’d warned before leaving that he wouldn’t return until he had an answer, so she’d expected him to be away for days. Her heart immediately launched into a staggering rhythm before he’d even put his arms around her.

  “You have answers?” she whispered, then squirmed around to face him. The lantern she kept lit cast a golden light over his tanned face, and she saw that light in his eyes for the first time in a long time, and the twinkle of mischief she’d so missed.

  “You might kick me if I tell you.”

  “I’ll definitely kick you if you don’t tell me.”

  Tugging her beneath him, he rolled her onto her back and sought her mouth. Their kisses were always full of passion, but since that blessed building had swallowed her up they’d been full of love and urgency. The past few days’ need had become longing tinged with heartache, and every touch of his lips had broken her heart.

  But his kiss now held nothing but love, hope, and promises. He tasted like honey, heady and indolent, like he had all the time in the world.

  When he finally lifted his head, she knew the wait was over. It was like peace flowed off him.

  “Zahir will be King one day, and the King should always be treated with courtesy and respect,” Dakan said softly, combing his fingers through her hair as he held her gaze, staying against her, his face inches away. “It would be disrespectful for me to be better at something than he is, or to even try to be. I’m the one who was born to follow, and I hate it being phrased that way. I didn’t—I don’t want to just follow. I want to do great things for our people too. So to reconcile those issues, whatever way Zahir went, I went in the other direction. I didn’t even realize I was doing it.”