Billion dollar baby bargain.txt

by Неизвестный

  signed with a modelling agency.

  As for Salah, at nineteen he showed more clearly the man he would be: slim but powerful, with broad,

  thin shoulders, a dark, intense gaze and a voice that came from his toes. He was also broody, inscrutable,

  and very sure of his opinions.

  Of course she fell in love with him. Of course she did. The friend of childhood whom she already

  adored, transformed into a romantic hero? Salah was now intensely good-looking, darkly masculine—

  and so much more adult than the boys at school. And his innocent integrity was a complete contrast to

  the predatory male sleaze her father and minders kept at a distance in the modelling world.

  He was clearly sunk by the new Desi, whose flowing hair moved even when she didn’t, whose creamy

  skin glowed with sensual promise, whose bikinis showed off the curve of full small breasts, fabulous

  legs, smooth abdomen, and firm rump, and who could scarcely eat for fear of gaining an ounce.

  That was the year, by an unlucky coincidence—though they thought it perfect enough then—that both

  her brother Harry and her friend Sami missed the usual holiday on the island. Samiha had gone back to

  the Barakat Emirates for a visit, and at the last minute Harry had got a summer job to earn money for

  university. He came to the island only on odd weekends.

  It was only natural that Desi and Salah should spend their time with each other.

  That summer, too, there was a heat wave, and maybe it was the exhaustion factor that meant her parents

  didn’t notice the building chemical reaction between them, or maybe it was just their hippy laissez-faire

  attitude; Desi never knew.

  On the mainland there were forest fires, but the islands, although oven-hot during the day, mercifully got

  rain at night. Mornings began cool and fresh, with mist lifting off the lake, but by ten the temperature

  was soaring, and by eleven most of the paying guests were prostrated by the heat.

  Everybody hated the intense heat—everybody except Desi and Salah. Salah was used to such

  temperatures, and as for Desi—she felt she was waking from a lifelong sleep. The heat energized her,

  made her blood sing, her muscles flex, as if she were a runner waiting to begin a race she knew she’d

  win.

  Not just the heat, of course, contributed to the feeling.

  They became inseparable. Looking back on that summer, Desi remembered bright hot days lasting

  forever, and an all-encompassing joy in sheer being. They ran together, swam together, talked, explored.

  They didn’t stop competing with each other, of course. But that only added to the intensity, spiced their

  meetings, kept them on their toes.

  “Salah?”

  They gazed at each other for a frozen moment, and suddenly, treacherously, against all the odds, the

  warm, sweet, sensual memories of a decade ago stirred to melting in her. The sun-burnt warmth of his

  naked chest against her trembling hand. Black eyes filled with love and need. The intoxication of desire

  that he had tried so nobly to resist….

  Kiss him hello. You need to knock him off balance right at the start, before he gets his lines of control in

  place.

  Desi couldn’t have moved to save her life. She couldn’t have kissed Salah to save the world. All she

  could do was stand there, her gaze locked with his, and wonder how she would ever manage to do what

  she had come here to do, while yesterday’s vision of a full, young, passionate mouth and eyes intense

  with longing arose to confuse the impression of tight control and harsh judgement she saw in his face

  now.

  Then his mouth moved.

  “Who were you expecting?”

  “Not you.”

  If he had expected anything, it was not that his heart would leap so painfully at his first glimpse of her.

  This fact annoyed him almost as much as her daring to come here. It argued a weakness in him, and he

  would not be weak where she was concerned. He was no longer a boy, to be at the mercy of his own

  needs, and hers. He would not be manipulated by her sexuality, practised as it was. He was a man, as she

  would discover.

  Her right eyebrow flared up in the nervous way he remembered. Her eyes seemed slate grey now, as if

  her anxiety had drained them of colour. She had chameleon eyes, a fact he remembered well. He had

  never met a woman whose eyes changed colour in such a way. In his memory they were mostly

  turquoise, deep and rich, like the jewel. Green sometimes when they made love in daylight…and

  sometimes this green-tinged, slate grey….

  “I was not expecting you, either,” he said grimly.

  “Then I wonder who you’re here to meet.”

  “I hoped that you would change your mind. You should have.”

  “Excellency,” the passport officer murmured, and His Excellency Salahuddin Nadim al Khouri surfaced

  to take her passport from the outstretched hand. A muscle in his jaw moved.

  “Come, Desi,” he said, turning to lead the way. He pronounced it, as he always had, Deezee. The

  memories it summoned up skated on her nerves. Desi, I love you. I will love you longer than the stars

  burn.

  Now that the gaze was broken, she could move. She fell into step beside but a little behind him. Like a

  good Muslim wife, she told herself, and with an irritated little skip that was totally unlike her, she caught

  up with him.

  Her heart was in turmoil, not least because of the way he had changed. Was this what the desert did?

  Was this the kind of man it grew? Fierce, hard…dangerous to cross?

  But she had to cross him. She had come here to cross him.

  I’m sure he never got over you. He’d probably give his right arm for the chance to kiss you.

  She had even believed that she would enjoy settling scores with him. What a fool she was. If anyone was

  going to suffer from their encounter, it would not be this closed, proud man.

  He led her through a door marked with an elegant sweep of Arabic letters above Private in English.

  They passed along an empty corridor in charged silence. She tried to think of something ordinary to say.

  If only he would ask her about the flight! Couldn’t he feel how the silence built tension? Or didn’t he

  care?

  “We flew in over the Barakati desert,” she offered, stupidly, because how else would a plane get to the

  capital of Central Barakat? “It’s the first time I’ve seen desert like that! It’s so…well, beautiful is the

  wrong word. It has a haunting…”

  He turned his head and her little speech died as the black gaze collided with her own.

  “People have strong reactions to the desert,” he said. “But whatever your feelings for it, the desert does

  not change. It is dangerous whether you love it or hate it.”

  The clear attempt at intimidation irritated her. He might as well have said, I am dangerous whether you

  love me or hate me.

  And I’ve done both, Desi told him silently. But no more. I got though having any feeling for you a long

  time ago.

  “Funny, so is the Arctic,” she said aloud, because two could play at the innuendo game. “Would it be

  better to freeze to death, or fry, do you think?”

  His mouth tightened. “It is better to survive.”

  For a moment the scar showed white against the skin drawn tight over his cheekbone. It traced a path to

  above his ear and was lost in the thick black hair under his keffiyeh.

  “And I guess you’d kno
w,” she said.

  Salah’s been wounded. For one unguarded moment she relived the overwhelming anguish that had hit

  her with those words. She was astonished to discover how shaken she was by the evidence of how close

  he had come to death. Her hand ached suddenly, as if with the need to touch. But she wasn’t here to

  soothe any hurt of Salah’s.

  “Yes,” he agreed.

  As they reached the end of the corridor a uniformed guard, clasping a fist to his chest in salute, opened

  the door for them. Salah paused to issue instructions to him as Desi passed through into blinding

  sunlight.

  She stopped. “My bags!”

  Salah continued without pausing. “Come,” was all he said, and his burnous streamed out behind him like

  a king’s cloak as he stepped out into the hot desert wind.

  The heat smacked her, a living thing. Desi stopped to take her first breath of the dry, orange-scented air

  with its tang of plane diesel.

  And suddenly here she was. The place he had promised to bring her, ten long years ago. The place she

  had dreamt of, yearned for—believed would be her home. The desert, he had assured her, where men

  were men, where life was lived and love was loved with the deepest intensity. Where passion was a part

  of nature and human nature.

  Where his passion for her would never die.

  How many times, under his urgent, loving guidance, had she visualized herself in the desert, and how

  often, long after it was hopeless, had she wished and pleaded for life to have worked out differently!

  Begged fate to allow her to retrace the steps that had taken her away from that life with him. Ten long

  years on, she was here.

  And she would give a year of her life to be anywhere else.

  “So hot!” she cried, trying to shake the feeling. “It’s only ten o’clock!”

  “This is not a good time for foreigners in Central Barakat,” Salah said.

  “By foreigners do you mean any foreigner? Or just me?”

  “Are you so different from ordinary people, Desi? Has fame made you weak?” he asked, but didn’t wait

  for an answer. “Not many foreigners come at this time of year, unless to work in the oil fields. Next

  month will be cooler.”

  Next month would be too late. It’ll be hell on earth, Desi, but if you don’t go now, I’m lost. She would

  never forget the mixture of rage, grief and exhaustion in Sami’s voice, the voice of a woman driven to

  the edge, fighting not to go over.

  She glanced at Salah, wondering again how a boy of such passion as she remembered in him could have

  turned into a man ready to contemplate what he was now contemplating. But his face was closed,

  impossible to read.

  Ten years ago she had understood every expression as it crossed his face. Now he was unreadable. As

  well read stone. What had done this to him? His injury? War itself?

  A white limousine hummed in quiet readiness at the bottom of the steps. A chauffeur in black trousers,

  white polo shirt and a headscarf like Salah’s leapt out to open the passenger door. As she slipped inside

  with Salah, an airport official arrived, carrying the two battered leather satchels that had accompanied

  her around the world over the past ten years. They were stowed in the trunk, doors banged, and the limo

  moved off.

  And suddenly she was the last place in the world she would ever have chosen to be again: alone in a

  small space with Salah.

  Two

  A t the height of the heat wave, Desi’s father had accompanied her to Vancouver on a two-day

  modelling gig. Hating to miss one moment of time shared with Salah, she would have cancelled the

  engagement if she’d dared, and in the stifling heat of the city, she had wondered, not for the first time,

  why her friends envied her. She missed Salah with a desperate intensity, and could not wait to get back

  to the island. When they returned, it was Salah who met them at the ferry dock.

  “Your mother is a little sick with the heat,” Salah explained, but when he looked at her, Desi knew. The

  knowledge was like chain lightning in her blood, striking out from her heart again and again, every time

  she thought of it: he had to come. He couldn’t wait even the extra half hour to see her.

  “It has not rained since you left,” he told her, and Desi’s heart kicked with what he meant.

  “You’ll want to tell Salah all about your trip,” her father said, with masterly tact, or, more likely,

  masterly insensitivity. So she got in the front with Salah while her father sat in the back reading the local

  paper. But they did not talk much. There was a killing awareness between them, so powerful she felt she

  might explode with it.

  The tarmac was practically steaming in the heat, as if it would melt the tires, and when they turned onto

  the unpaved road that led to the cottage dust billowed up around them in an impenetrable cloud.

  “Like my country,” Salah said. “Like the desert.” And Desi half closed her eyes and dreamed that they

  were there, that he was driving her across the desert to his home.

  “I wish I could see it,” she whispered. “It must be so beautiful, the desert.”

  “Yes, beautiful. Like you.”

  He might as well have punched her in the stomach. She had never dreamed love would be like this,

  gasping for air, every cell of her body ready to burst.

  “Am I?”

  “I will take you to see it one day,” he promised. “Then you will know how beautiful you are.”

  “Yes,” she said softly, and they looked into each other’s eyes and it was as if the promise were sealed

  with a kiss.

  The kiss came later, as they sat on the dock, wet from swimming, watching as the sunset behind the trees

  painted the lake a rich gold.

  “In my country I will show you an ocean of sand,” he said. “The shadows at sunset are purple and blue.

  And every day it is different, because the wind—what do you say?—makes it into shapes.”

  “Sculpts,” she offered.

  “Sculpts, yes. In the desert the wind is a sculptor. I wish I were a sculptor, Desi,” he breathed, and his

  hand moved up to explore the line of her temple, cheek, chin, and then slipped behind her neck under the

  wet hair.

  It was her first kiss, and it was unbelievably, piercingly sweet. It assailed her body as though a thousand

  tender mouths touched her everywhere at once. With Salah bending over her, their mouths fused, she

  melted down onto the dock, and the sun-warmed weathered wood against her back added its mite to the

  overwhelming sensation that poured through her.

  Her hand lifted of its own volition to the warm skin of his chest, his shoulder, and a moment later Salah

  lifted his mouth to look at her. His face was gold and shadow, the most beautiful thing she had ever

  seen. They gazed into each other’s eyes.

  “Desi, I love you,” he said; she breathed, “I love you, Salah,” and all around them was perfection.

  She had never seen real desert so close before. Mountains and sea were her natural background; from

  her childhood she had never questioned the rightness of that.

  Until now. Now, as she watched an eternity of dusky sand pass, smoky tendrils of longing and belonging

  reached out from the stark landscape into the vehicle, into her being, her self, and clasped her heart.

  “So,” Salah said, in a harsh voice that immediately brought her back to the now. “So, Desi, you come to

  my country
at last.”

  She could feel her emotions rising to the bait, and fought down the impulse to rake over their ten-yearold

  history.

  “Well, I guess you could…”

  “After ten years, what have you to say to me?”

  “I didn’t ask you to meet me, and I’ve nothing to say to you,” she said, forgetting Sami, forgetting

  everything except basic life-saving procedures.

  “You lie. What do you come for, if not this?”

  This?

  “What are you talking about?” she demanded.

  He looked at her for an electric moment, his eyes blazing as if he were struggling against some powerful

  impulse, and she held her breath and awaited the outcome.

  “You know what I mean.”

  She licked her lips. “Didn’t your father tell you why I’m here?”

  Salah snorted. “My father’s work! Even the immigration official knew better than to believe it. Why do

  you come to me now? What do you want? What do you hope I can give you? You are too late.”

  She couldn’t believe this. What was Time, then? Ten years since they had spoken, but here they were,

  picking up the argument as if scarcely an hour had passed.

  “I don’t want anything from you! Who told you I wanted—?”

  He pulled her sunglasses off, flinging them down on the seat between them.

  “Do not hide behind darkness and tell me lies.”

  “What do you think you’re doing?” she grabbed the glasses up again, fumbling to unfold them.

  “When women veil their hair it is to protect their modesty. When they veil their eyes it is to conceal

  deceit.”

  It was impossible to put the glasses back on, after that, impossible to leave them off. She glared at him,

  anger rising in her.

  “And when men accuse women it’s to avoid facing their own guilt. What do you want?”

  “We will discover. But I did not go to you, Desi. You came to me.”

  “That’s a Napoleonic ego you’re nursing there, Salah. I came to your country.”

  The flesh on his face tightened. “To visit my father,” he said, measuring every word.

  “Exactly!” she said. “I think we’re back where you started, aren’t we?”