by Неизвестный
not trust herself if Salah made a serious assault. The armour that had served her for years was not up to
this challenge. Her heart was melting with grief and regret, her skin was electric with feeling.
She wouldn’t let it happen. It would be a betrayal of everything. It would kill her to make love with him.
“But isn’t that why you’ve come just at this moment, Desi?”
“What do you mean?”
“Your timing is too good to be coincidence. You know I can never again make love to you once I am
married. Our chance would be lost forever.”
“You don’t think being engaged to my best friend puts you out of bounds already?”
“We are not engaged. No discussions have yet taken place. And a man must come to terms with his past
before he marries, isn’t that so?” Salah said. “So that he can go to his wife without…regret. You have
haunted me, Desi, how can you imagine otherwise? If I am going to marry, first I should have—what do
you call it?—closure.”
Her heart was beating in hard, painful thumps. In her worst imaginings she had not foreseen losing
control over the proceedings so quickly.
“And how, exactly, would sex with me give you closure?” she asked bitterly. “Is it an ego thing? Are
you hoping to hear me say that sex with you set the benchmark and nothing since has lived up to it?”
“Is it true?”
“No, it is not!”
“You always lied badly,” he said.
“And you always had an ego as thick as butter.”
“I judge by my own experience, Desi,” he said.
The admission rushed through her like wildfire. She felt faint.
“I don’t believe you! A few weeks, ten years ago!”
“And what about you? Don’t you, too, wish for this closure?”
“I got closure long ago,” she lied. No closure was possible for a blow like the one he’d delivered. “The
day you told me I was soiled merchandise.”
“And this old man, was he a good lover?” Salah asked, an expression in his eyes she couldn’t read.
“What old man would that be?”
“The one you nearly married, Desi. Do you forget lovers so easily? Did he please you as I did?”
“Leo was forty-five!”
“Was it—”
“And it’s none of your bloody business!”
She picked up one of the glasses and took a gulp of water. It blasted into her mouth, burned her throat,
stung her nerves. She gasped and coughed.
“My God! What is this?” she cried, staring down at the glass in horror.
Salah laughed aloud. “Wine, Desi,” he said, just as her brain belatedly interpreted the taste and gave her
the answer.
“Oh, that’s wild!” The tension of the past minutes exploded into laughter as she sank back against the
cushions. “For a minute there I thought you…” she broke off when she saw where she was heading.
“Have you ever done that?”
“Tried to poison you?”
“Drunk one thing when you were expecting something else!”
“In England, once,” he confided, “I drank what I thought was coffee. It was not coffee. For two seconds,
I thought, they have given me pigs’ urine to insult me! Then I realized it was tea.”
She let out a whoop. The incident shook them both out of the mood of angry recrimination. They lay
laughing together over nothing, like the old days, the old nights, under the moonlit dock.
They had always laughed together. It was one of the things she’d loved most, missed most…
Laughter shared with a lover. It didn’t get better than that.
And now, when he was no longer threatening, when her guard was down, the layers of protection she
had laid down over the past tore away. In one moment she was naked again. Her heart coiled with
yearning. Oh, what had they done? What had they lost?
The waiter arrived with the next course, a tray with a dozen little dishes that all looked impossibly
succulent. Just as Salah had promised, ten years ago.
She had to stop this. Salah was already dangerous enough without help from her own feelings. If there
was one thing she was not going to do on this trip, it was get seduced into sex for the sake of closure.
For him it would be closure. For her, she saw suddenly, it might be just the opposite.
Desi sat up and tucked her feet under her.
“So, when do we go?” she asked in a bright voice, as the dishes, one by one, were laid on the cloth
between them. “Do we leave first thing in the morning?”
He jerked his chin in the way she remembered. “Not tomorrow. You need at least a day to acclimatize
before going into the desert. Maybe two.”
“But—”
“And I have business tomorrow. The day after, if you insist. At sunrise.”
She nodded agreement. “How long does it take to get to the site?”
“How long?” Salah was examining the various offerings with close attention. “That depends.”
“It depends? On what?”
The last dish was set down, the waiter bowed and left, and Salah began spooning various bits of food
onto a small plate.
“On what?” he repeated absently. “Oh—it may depend on the weather, the wind…”
“The wind? What, we’ll be sailing?” she asked ironically.
“You are not so ignorant about the desert that you do not know that wind can be a dangerous enemy.”
“I suppose weathermen predict the weather in Barakat as well as elsewhere.”
“Climate change impacts the desert as well as elsewhere, also.”
“So a big wind might blow up from nowhere and we’ll get stuck in the sand?”
“It is not unknown. Not even unusual. Try this, Desi,” Salah said, reaching out a long arm to set an array
of taster-size morsels in front of her.
The odour of the food reached her nostrils then, utterly intoxicating.
“Oh, that smells amazing!” she cried, scooping up a morsel of something mysterious, then heaved a sigh
as the flavour hit her taste buds. “That’s delicious. That’s the food of the gods!”
You make it sound like the food of the gods, she had said.
He looked at her, and she knew he was there again, too. She sought for something to say to dislodge the
time shift.
“So do we—”
“Why does my father’s work interest you, Desi?”
Her heart sank. She tossed her hair back to look at him. “It was all in my letter. Didn’t your father tell
you?”
“You tell me.”
Damn. This wasn’t fair. The letter, mostly composed by Sami, was supposed to have paved the way,
established all the lies. Desi was all right about living the lie, since so much depended on it, but she
hated having to tell it, face to face. Especially to Salah. Especially now.
Especially as it was, she knew, so ludicrously unlikely a lie.
“Did he tell you that I’m going back to university to do a degree?”
“Now?”
She nodded uncomfortably. “I’ll start part-time this year…if I can. Middle Eastern history and
archaeology.”
“Why? Don’t you have a very successful career?”
“Modelling won’t last forever,” she said, and it was perfectly true. “I want a smooth transition when the
time comes.”
“A smooth transition into archaeology? What awoke this sudden interest?”
“Not that sudden. I’ve been curious about archaeology ever since that summer the university came to dig
on
the island,” she said. “Remember that First Nations site they were digging? We used to go and watch
every day. I never forgot the thrill of seeing someone uncover an arrowhead!”
That part at least was true: eleven-year-old Desi had been fascinated as the past was unveiled: the
discovery of the floor of the longhouse, the settlement’s refuse mound, the arrowheads of chipped stone.
One of the students had encouraged her interest, telling her what each find said about the people who
had lived on the site, showing her how the history of two hundred years ago could be discovered even
without written records.
“Two hundred years?” Salah had said in youthful disdain. “In my country we have cities five thousand
years old!”
Desi had reacted to the challenge with predictable outrage. “So what?” she had cried. “I bet there are lots
of countries where they have them ten thousand years old!”
His mouth smiled when she reminded him; his eyes were too shadowed to read.
“You made me so mad! But I think I made up my mind then that one day I’d come to Barakat and see
what you were talking about, a city five thousand years old!”
“And now you are here.”
She hated the way he said it.
“Won’t you find archaeology tame after a career as a supermodel?”
“It beats marketing a perfume called Desirée,” she said dryly. Her distaste for that at least was no lie.
“‘Feminine, delicate, but with a smouldering hint of sensuality.’ Or a chain of restaurants: Desi’s Diner.
How would you like it?”
He had the grace to laugh.
“But isn’t a chain of restaurants with a smouldering hint of sensuality just what the world needs?”
She rolled her eyes. “Not from me.”
“And only an urgent visit to my father’s site will save you from this fate?”
How she hated the lies! But Sami’s anguished voice was there in her head… I’ve only got one chance to
derail this thing…
“I told you—it’s the only time I have free,” she said. “This is the time I go to the island every year. I
thought how great if I could get in on the ground floor with your father and he let me volunteer on the
site for a couple of seasons. That’s a requirement of the course.”
The explanation had sounded halfway reasonable during the planning stage. She wasn’t sure now.
To her relief, Salah hardly seemed to hear. He was tearing at a chicken wing.
“Try this,” he said, leaning right over to hold up to her mouth a piece thick with a purply-black sauce.
Desi automatically opened her mouth and bit into the tender flesh, then grunted at the rich, melting
flavour.
“Mmm! What is that black stuff? I’ve never tasted anything so yummy in my life!” she said when she
could speak.
“Pomegranate sauce. Another speciality of the mountain tribes.”
A drop of sauce was on her cheek too far for her tongue to reach. Salah caught it with a fingertip and
presented it to her mouth. She licked instinctively, then her eyes flew to his.
He slid his wet finger deliberately across her lower lip.
The hoarse intake of her breath told him everything. A jolt of electricity zapped the night air. In his
black eyes two tiny golden flames were reflected, as if to warn her his touch would burn. His white teeth
tore off a bite from the same piece he had offered her, and the sensual intimacy of that hit her another
blow.
Desi dropped her eyes and made a business of wiping her cheek with a napkin. She tried to think of
something to say, but her mind had been tipped onto its back and lay there, kicking helplessly. She felt
gauche, inexperienced. As if the ten years were smoke and mirrors.
Silence fell, a silence thick with feeling, expectation, a question asked and answered.
She began to eat.
The little lamps on the cloth lighted his hand as he ate, emphasizing the strength of his fingers, the fluid
grace of his wrist that transformed into power whenever he grasped a bit of naan or a goblet.
Involuntarily the memory came to her of that same hand, painted in moonlight and shadow, rough and
tender with inexperienced passion as they lay under the dock.
Sometimes, too, his mouth and jaw were touched with gold: a stern mouth, a full lower lip that the
chiaroscuro painted in more sensual lines than was revealed in ordinary light. His eyes were mostly
shadowed, except for a black glinting in the darkness.
“You go to the island still?” he asked. She wished he had started any topic but that one, but she had to
answer.
“My parents live there full time now. I spend a month there every summer, and Christmas if I can.”
He asked after her parents, her young sister, after Harry, her brother. Softly, softly, he drew her into
remembering. She knew it was deliberate, to prove some point, to set some mood—but she could neither
prevent it, nor resist.
The shadows, the stars, his voice, the talk of those island summers—everything conspired to take her
back to the sweet hours they had lain undetected and undisturbed in their refuge under the ancient dock,
their world of two. She began to feel like that child-woman again, on the brink of discovery of self and
other, of love and desire, of her own sexual power, and another’s.
He had been her lover. She knew what it meant for those hands, with light and shadow playing on them
like this, to caress and stroke her. Sometimes when his hand disappeared again into shadow, her body
shivered in the unconscious expectation of a caress.
Desi sank into the embracing cushions as they talked, her legs folded with unconscious grace, naked toes
curling as she rested on one elbow and ate with her fingers. All her guard had come down. She was
eating more food than she’d had at one go for a decade. This was a total sensual delight.
He watched her soften, and the predator in him gloried in his success even as he told himself it meant
nothing.
The last course was put in front of them then, a pastry oozing with the promise of sweetness, and she
summoned resistance at last. “That looks lovely, but I never eat sugar,” she said.
“This is made with honey.”
“Or honey.” But for once she could not resist. “Just a taste,” Desi said.
Fatal mistake. “Oh, that is just too delicious!” she exclaimed, hastily dropping the little gold fork.
Salah bent his head, and she saw his eyes clearly. They glinted amusement at her, and something else,
and her blood leapt so painfully in response she almost whimpered.
“Do you push temptation away so easily, Deezee?” he asked, his voice caressing her nerve endings like
soft sandpaper.
She looked at him, a hard man if there ever was one. “Don’t you?”
“Not such temptation as this,” he said. She knew he did not mean the little honey-crusted sweet. Flame
flickering in the black eyes, he picked up the sweetmeat from her plate with his fingers, tilted his head
back and caught it on his tongue.
It nearly flattened her. Sensation roared over her skin, bringing every cell to attention.
His gaze caught hers before she could turn away, and it was all there in her eyes. She saw him read it.
The heat rose up in her cheeks, but she could not tear her gaze from his.
Her eyes were emerald with desire. He smiled like a wolf, dark and determined, and said what he did not
want to say….
&nb
sp; “Shall I come to your bed tonight, Desi?”
Warmth flooded her body. Oh, how could she be so weak? She’d had ten years to get over this!
“No.”
He shrugged. “Then you must come to mine.”
“Mmm. I’ll be riding a flying pig.”
She was falling apart, and it was only the first day. Desi took a deep, trembling breath. She was headed
out of her depth here. The sooner she got out of the palace and onto the dig with other people, the better.
She sat up, drew her legs under her, pressed a cushion behind her back.
“So, you never actually told me: how many hours will we be on the road?”
“Hours? What do you mean?”
“What do you mean?”
“Desi, the trip across the desert will take four days at least, probably five.”
Eight
H ow was flight? Have you seen HIM yet?
Where R U?? Please call!
There were five texts from Sami on her BlackBerry, each one more frantic than the last, and a half a
dozen missed calls. Desi should have texted Sami from the Arrivals hall or, failing that, the car, and was
stunned to realize she had forgotten. She’d completely forgotten her phone, if not her life, from the
moment she’d met Salah.
Has he murdered U? What is going onnnnnnnnnn?
Desi sat with the thing in her hand. She should call Sami to update her, but…she just did not want to talk
about Salah and their meeting and the dinner she’d just shared with him.
Or the fact that she had turned down the chance to share his bed.
Meanwhile, she had to respond.
Sry, sry!! Horrible jetlag. S picked me up, going to sleep now. Ttyl, she sent.
She ruthlessly shut the phone off before Sami could call. Then she lay in the fairytale bed, surrounded
by soft lamplight and ancient luxury, trying to think. Trying to get distance on the evening she had just
experienced.
Five days in the desert alone with Salah! How was it possible? How had Sami not known?
What would she do, alone with him day after day, night after night, a forbidding stranger who somehow
shared a past with her? A man who thought making love with her would give him closure?
He wanted her. His love might be dead—he said it was, and she believed him—but Salah wanted her.