by Jessica Hart
As the darkness closed in, she built a fire for comfort, using the acacia branches she had found. She had some trouble getting it started, until she remembered her Filofax. It seemed so long since she had made such a fuss about bringing it with her, and she held it between her hands, staring down at it as if it were already part of a past life. Had it really been so important to her? She remembered bitterly all those years when she had been so spoilt and indulged. She had had nothing to do with her day except enjoy herself.
Couldn't she at least have done something useful, like a first-aid course? It wouldn't have taken much of her time, but at least she wouldn't have been quite so inadequate now.
She flicked through the pages of telephone numbers, recognising the names, but as if they were people she had met in some film. How many of them would be any use or comfort now? Fair-weather friends, she thought sadly, remembering how few of them had stood by her when she needed them.
Piers had been a good friend, but she knew he would be as lost as she was in a situation like this. Max would never let things overwhelm him, she realised, but then Max didn't need a telephone to organise his life. Slowly, she tore out several pages and screwed them into spills.
'What are you doing?' Max whispered through cracked lips, and her stomach lurched with relief at the lucid expression in his eyes.
'Making a fire,' she told him, touching a match to one of the spills and watching the flame flicker and then burn high as it caught hold. 'I thought I would heat up some soup. You should try and have something.'
'Isn't that your precious diary you're tearing up?' His voice was weak and thready, but there was still a touch of the old acid Max in it. 'I thought you couldn't function without it?'"Cairo added a few more spills to the fire and slanted a smile at him. 'I can't. Look how useful it is now.' She assumed a virtuous expression. 'I knew it would come in handy.'
'And there was I thinking you didn't know what you were doing in the desert!' Max said feebly, and managed a smile.
He seemed so much better that her spirits soared, but, although he drank half a mug of soup, he soon slipped back into a restless fever which threatened to burn him up. Cairo wouldn't let herself sleep. She crouched by his side all night, holding his good hand between both of hers while he tossed and mumbled. Sometimes he called her name as if he was looking for her, and she felt her heart twist with guilt. It was all her fault.
'I'm here,' she said, the tears running down her face. 'I'm here. I won't go away. I'll do anything you say if you'll just get better, Max. Please. Please.'
By dawn, she was almost incoherent with exhaustion herself. She had kept the fire going all night, and was stoking it up to make some more tea when Max croaked her name behind her.
'Cairo?'
Cairo spun round. She was grimy with dust and ashes and there were huge black circles under her green eyes, but her face lit up as she saw that his fever had broken. 'Max!' she exclaimed in delight. Kneeling down beside him, she examined his face. He was looking ravaged, but his eyes were clear and the terrifying flush had died from his cheeks. 'How are you feeling?'
'I'm fine—thanks to you.' Max reached out and touched her hand very lightly. 'Who'd have thought you'd make such a good nurse?'
'I was useless,' she said bleakly, thinking of how helpless she had been to stop the onslaught of the fever.
'You weren't useless,' said Max. His eyes held a sudden glint of humour.
'You know I'd be the first person to tell you if you had been, but for once you weren't! I don't remember much about last night, but whenever I surfaced, you were always there, mopping me down, talking to me, giving me drinks of water.' He paused, and his hand tightened over hers. 'I needed you to cling on to, Cairo. Perhaps the fever would have run its course anyway, but it would have been a lot worse without you.'
The release from tension let exhaustion wash over Cairo, crashing through the barriers of her fragile self- control. Her face twisted. 'It wouldn't have happened at all without me,' she cried, and somehow her head was on his chest as she burst into tears. 'Oh, Max, I'm so sorry!' she sobbed exhaustedly.
'It was all my fault. Everything's my fault. I'm so sorry.' She knew that the last thing he needed was a hysterical woman weeping all over him, but she couldn't help herself.
Max stroked her hair with his good hand. 'It's all right,' he soothed. 'It's over now. You're exhausted, Cairo. Did you get any sleep at all?'
'I couldn't,' Cairo wept, muffled against his chest. Her shoulders heaved. 'I thought...I thought...' She couldn't finish, couldn't stop crying.
He let her cry for a bit, and then made her sit up, knuckling her eyes like a child. 'I'm sorry,' she gulped between jerky little sobs. 'I'm behaving very badly.'
Max tucked a strand of hair behind her ear with a wry smile. 'Why don't you make some tea?' he suggested patiently. 'Then you can have a sleep.'
'I couldn't sleep!' Cairo was still on the verge of hysteria. 'What about you?'
'I'm not going anywhere,' he pointed out. 'I'll be all right.' He didn't look all right to Cairo. His face was drawn with pain and he was still very weak. 'You can lie down next to me and then we can both sleep,' he said.
'But—'
'No arguing,' he interrupted her, and, in spite of his weakness, the teasing note was unmistakable. 'I might have been hallucinating, of course, but some time last night I could swear I heard you promise you'd do exactly as I said in the future!'
Cairo flushed. 'I did, and I will, but—'
'But nothing,' said Max, sounding more and more like himself. 'You'll be no good as a nurse if you're too tired to think straight, and, anyway, you need to rest that ankle of yours.' He frowned as he saw how swollen it was. 'You shouldn't have been carrying those packs with your leg in that condition!'
'I had to,' said Cairo, touching the ankle gingerly. She had been too worried about Max to think about it last night, but now she could feel its dull, angry ache once more.
'I know you did,' said Max more gently. He hesitated. 'I didn't think you had it in you, Cairo. I thought you were a spoilt brat who'd fall to pieces at the first sign of a crisis, but I was wrong. You may be infuriating most of the time, but last night I was glad you were here.' It was a rather backhanded compliment, but Cairo felt a glow of warmth at his approval and was suddenly, stupidly shy. 'I'll make the tea,' she muttered, unable to meet his eye.
They shared the mug of tea in silence. Max had closed his eyes as if the effort of talking had exhausted him, but he opened them as he drained the mug. 'You look terrible,' he said.
'Thanks!'
'Why don't you clean your face? You'd feel better, and since you insisted on lumping all those lotions and potions along with you you might as well use them!'
Cairo touched her face, grimacing at the sandpapery feel of her skin. 'Are you sure you can bear to watch?' she said, remembering his caustic comments last time. How long ago that seemed!
'I'll survive,' Max said. That disquieting glint of amusement was back in his eyes again. 'You've been through enough trauma without having to cope with the possibility of a wrinkle as well.'
Cairo was horrified when she examined her grimy, tear- stained face in the little mirror, and she had to use the cleanser several times before she had finally removed the last of the grime. It was extraordinarily comforting to do something as ordinary as clean her face. Max had been right. She felt ten times better already. Smoothing on moisturiser, she glanced over the top of the mirror to tell him so, only to find him watching her with a curiously arrested expression, and for some reason, she felt herself blush.
She snapped the mirror shut. 'Do I look any better?' she asked, for something to say.
'Yes.' Max's light eyes still rested on her face. 'In fact, you look the best I've ever seen you.'
Taking it as a joke, Cairo dropped the bag back into her rucksack and went to lie rather awkwardly on the sleeping mat beside him. 'I didn't realise I looked quite that bad at the camp,' she laughed, remembering wis
tfully how cool and clean and soft she had been then.
'You looked all right,' said Max gruffly, settling his splinted arm into a more comfortable position. He glanced at Cairo. She was looking thin, and the high, distinctive cheekbones stood out. The flawless skin was burnt brown, making her eyes look ever greener, but her features were blurred with exhaustion and her eyelids were already drooping. 'I think I prefer you like this, though,' he said quietly, so quietly that Cairo wasn't sure that she was meant to hear.
She slept all day. When she finally woke, she was lying with her face pressed against Max's shoulder, but she didn't move away immediately. It was cool and comfortable lying there in the shade, listening to his steady breathing, and in the end it was only hunger that made her stir.
There was a packet of dehydrated stew in Max's pack. The fire had long died down to a circle of white ashes, so she heated the meal on the paraffin stove, and they shared it companionably. It was as if all the tension and animosity between them had burnt out with Max's fever. Cairo felt completely different. They leant back against the rock together and watched the stars appear in the blue-black sky.
'Where did you get that damn-fool name from?' Max asked suddenly. 'Even at that wretched New Year's Eve party I can remember thinking that it was typical of you not to have an ordinary name like everyone else.'
Cairo winced at the memory of the party. It reminded her too much of the spoilt, silly girl she had been. 'I was born in Cairo,' she said. 'I don't remember it at all, but my father always said that they were so happy there they decided to call me after the city.' She gave a reminiscent smile, thinking of her father. 'He was always very romantic.'
'Romantic? Jeremy Kingswood? You are his daughter, aren't you?'
She nodded, wondering if Max knew about the scandal surrounding her father, but his next words seemed to indicate that the news hadn't yet reached the Sahara.
'I wouldn't have guessed he was romantic,' he said with an ironic look. 'I always thought he was one of the most successful businessmen around—and the most ruthless.'
Cairo was silent. Many people had thought that of her father, and most had rejoiced at his downfall. 'He wasn't ever like that with me,' she said at last.
'My mother died when I was very small, so we were always close. He used to spoil me. I think a lot of people thought he would buy me presents to stop him feeling guilty about not being around all the time, but it wasn't like that at all. I just loved being with him.'
She paused to watch a shooting star drop into the blackness. Until she came to the desert and met Max, she had never realised quite how spoilt she had been. She had taken her father's love for granted, she realised. The luxury she had grown up in had made her just as vain and self-centred as Max had said, and she remembered uncomfortably how she had behaved with Max at the beginning. No wonder he hadn't liked her.
'It wasn't the presents that spoilt me, though,' she went on slowly. 'It was growing up knowing that for my father I was special, adored no matter what I did.' Cairo gave a rueful smile. Max would never think of her like that. 'I suppose I got too used to having my own way. My father never criticised me. I used to think he was perfect.'
Max looked at her curiously. 'Used to?' he echoed. 'Don't you think he's perfect any more?'
Cairo thought of the revelations that had come out in the newspapers when the Company Fraud Office had first been called in to investigate her father's affairs. She had learnt then of a man who seemed to have no connection with her adoring father.
'No, I don't think he's perfect,' she said quietly. 'But I still love him. He's my father. Nothing can change that.' Forgetting that Max was unaware of the scandal surrounding her father, she sent him a challenging look, half expecting him to scoff, but the eyes that met hers held an unreadable expression.
'You're more forgiving than I am,' he said, looking away. His voice was bitter. 'I thought my mother was perfect until I was nine, but as far as I was concerned she stopped being my mother when she left Joanna and me behind. Joanna's four years younger than I am. You can imagine what it does to a little girl of five to be abandoned by her mother.'
Cairo said nothing. She could also imagine what it had been like for a small boy of nine, who had thought his mother was perfect.
'Our father didn't want anything to remind him of our mother, so we were left to our own devices a lot,' Max went on after a moment. 'I always felt responsible for Joanna.' He shrugged. 'I suppose I still do. She's always been so vulnerable. Because she was so young when our mother left, she used to glamourise her, and then tried to imitate her when she was older. She let herself be swept into that social world, but she just can't cope with all the hypocrisy and double dealings.' He sighed, and Cairo was conscious of a pang of jealousy that she couldn't provoke that look of concern on his face.
'Whenever things go wrong for Joanna, I have to go back to London and sort her out.'
'Can't she sort herself out?' Cairo asked, more tartly than she intended. 'I thought she was supposed to be like me?'
'Only superficially. Joanna's not strong like you.'
'I wasn't strong until I had to be,' said Cairo, thinking of how quickly she had had to learn to cope when her father's world collapsed.
'Perhaps, but I don't think Joanna would ever have been able to cope with a crisis the way you did. She's always been so unsure of herself. Joanna does have charm, but she's a pastel person, whereas you...' He broke off, and his eyes rested on Cairo's face. 'You're more vivid.'
Cairo's eyes met his with a jolt that caught the breath in her throat, and there was a moment of taut silence before he turned away, as if regretting his words. 'Joanna needs someone to look after her,' he continued, and Cairo felt disappointment settle coldly around her. She had been so sure that he was warming to her, but it seemed he was far more concerned with his sister.
His face had darkened. 'That ought to have been her husband's job. I never liked him—he was a typical advertising executive—but Joanna would marry him. It was obvious he was only interested in her money, and now that he spent most of it he's decided to dump her in favour of some eighteen-year-old model. Joanna was devastated, but just as she seems to be getting over Toby she's gone and got herself involved with someone who sounds just as unsuitable. The same type of smooth operator, full of pseudo-charm and practised lies. Not only that, she thinks he's already having an affair with another woman.' Max rubbed the bridge of his nose in a worried gesture. 'Joanna's letters are getting more and more fraught. If it goes on like this, I'll have to go back to London and see her.'
Cairo couldn't help thinking that Joanna might cope better if she didn't have her capable elder brother to rely on. Max obviously adored his sister, she thought with another pinch of jealousy. She wished she hadn't coped so well now. Perhaps if she had been more pathetic, Max would realise that she needed someone to look after her as well.
She wondered if he would go to London as he had said. Cairo found it hard to imagine him in the city, wearing a suit and striding along the crowded streets. She couldn't imagine him anywhere but here, in his battered hat and shabby, oil-stained clothes, completely at home under the vast desert sky.
If he did come to London, she would be able to see him again. The thought slid insidiously into Cairo's mind with a small thrill of expectation, followed immediately by the cruel realisation that Max might not want to see her.
Why should he? He had been so much nicer since she had nursed him through his fever, but it didn't mean he had changed his mind about her. She would still represent everything he most despised about his mother's lifestyle. She had behaved like the spoilt, arrogant brat he had accused her of being, and in the end she had even put his life at risk. Why on earth would he want to see her after she had made such a thorough nuisance of herself? Max had every reason to dislike her, Cairo realised dismally, and would probably breathe a sigh of relief when he finally got rid of her.
CHAPTER SIX
TWISTING the enamel mug round in her
hands, Cairo glanced at Max under her lashes. He was looking up at the stars, his eyes narrowed in thought, and as her gaze drifted over the planes of his face, over the angular cheekbones, along the stubborn line of his jaw, to rest inevitably on his mouth, she felt a slow trembling start deep inside.
It was just reaction, she told herself in panic. Anyone would feel strange after a sleepless night. She didn't really want to reach over and touch him, to make him turn and smile and kiss her and say that of course he wanted to see her again. Of course she didn't. She was simply suffering from a classic patient-nurse syndrome. She had been worrying about him so much over the last few hours that now she was obsessed with him, that was all.
Without warning, Max turned his head to find her watching him, and their eyes locked before she had a chance to look away. Cairo felt as if a hand was squeezing tight around her heart. She couldn't move, couldn't breathe. All she could do was look helplessly into Max's eyes, dark and indecipherable in the moonlight, and wonder if he could read the longing written in her own.
You're .not in love with him, she told herself as she lay next to him that night, trying not to think about how close he was. You've got nothing in common. He belongs in the desert, you belong in the city. He's cool and self-contained, you're frivolous and spoilt. He's simply not your type.
Falling for someone who despised you was just asking for trouble.
I can't be in love with him, she decided. I won't be.
'Our water's not going to last much longer,' Cairo said to Max the next morning. She was being studiously brisk and practical, and was making a point of keeping a careful distance from him.
She doubted if Max even noticed. He lay on his sleeping mat, drawn and rather listless. He had slept restlessly, and she knew he was still in pain, though he refused to admit it.
He pulled one of the empty water containers towards him now, grimacing as the movement jarred his arm, and shook it with a frown. 'I'd better go and get some more,' he said. 'There's a guelta a couple of hours from here where the water table comes to the surface. I could fill up there.'