Oasis of the Heart

by Jessica Hart

  He wasn't there.

  The disappointment was so sharp that Cairo wanted to cry. She had never cried over a man, she reminded herself fiercely. Never! Bruce didn't seem to notice anything amiss, so she supposed she must have talked and smiled automatically, but later she had no idea what had been said. All she could think about was that Max didn't even care enough to come along and have a drink with her.

  If he had walked into the bar then, she would have thrown herself into his arms, but the realisation made Cairo so angry with herself that she pulled herself together sharply. She was being utterly pathetic! What had she allowed to happen to herself if she, Cairo Kingswood, had let herself get into this kind of state about some grumpy geologist? He was more interested in his precious rocks than he was in her!

  She wasn't going to waste any more time thinking about him. Her chin lifted in unconscious pride. If she hadn't known that he was her best chance of finding a location in such a short time, she would have told him that she never wanted to see him again. As it was, she owed it to Piers and Haydn Deane at least to go, but this time it would be on strictly businesslike terms.

  She would take some photographs, arrange guides and permits in Menesset and go home. Cairo told herself she couldn't wait.

  She pretended not to notice Max when, he finally appeared, even though her heart gave a great lurch at the sight of his cool, austere figure in the door of the mess. His eyes flickered towards her, but he didn't even smile. He just went calmly up to the counter, helped himself to a meal and went over to sit on the other side of the room.

  Cairo sucked in her breath through clenched teeth. She had practically crippled herself carrying his rucksack along the gorge to give him some water, she had worried herself sick about him, she had even torn up her Filofax to make him tea, and he couldn't even be bothered to come over and say hello!

  Her green eyes glittered dangerously. Turning deliberately to Bruce, she gave him a dazzling smile that made him blink, and spent the rest of the evening showing Max, if he had cared to look, just what a charming, seductive, witty woman he was ignoring.

  Bruce clearly couldn't believe his luck. Cairo risked an occasional glance beneath her lashes at Max to see how he was reacting, but, to her fury, he merely looked dour and quite uninterested. He ate his meal, exchanged a few words with the other men at his table, and walked out, leaving Cairo feeling curiously deflated.

  She slept fitfully that night, unaccustomed to the soft bed. It was hard to imagine how scared she had been the first night she had slept out under the stars. Now the walls and ceiling confined her, and the rattle of the air-conditioner grated on her nerves. She missed Max more than she was prepared to admit. Somehow she had got used to listening to him breathing and knowing that she only had to reach out to touch his reassuring strength.

  The restless night left her tired and irritable, and Max was clearly feeling much the same when she hurried up to him the next morning. It was twenty past five.

  Cairo had been unable to face the prospect of putting on her grubby shorts again, and had pulled a dress out of her suitcase. It was a cool, comfortable cotton in soft pinks and greens, buttoning down the front of her waist and then hanging in soft folds around her slender legs. It would be ideal for sitting in a car all day, she had thought as she pulled it hurriedly out of her suitcase at five o'clock. After tossing and turning all night, she had dropped into a deep sleep in the early hours and had overslept. Max would be unimpressed—if he was still there.

  He was there, but the sardonic expression on his face told her that she had guessed correctly.

  'Where do you think you're going?' he demanded. 'A garden party?'

  Cairo's lips tightened. She had hoped to overwhelm Max with her cool femininity, but he showed no signs of being overwhelmed. She was determined not to let him guess how long she had spent thinking about him, and tattered pride was making her tense and defensive. 'What's wrong with my dress?' she demanded. 'We're going in a vehicle, aren't we?'

  'We are,' Max confirmed. He nodded his head at a battered old jeep standing near by. 'That's it over there.'

  Cairo stared at it, appalled. 'I thought we'd be going in the pick-up.'

  'The pick-up isn't mine. I just get a lift in it occasionally. The rest of the time I use the jeep.'

  'But there's no roof!' she wailed. 'I'll get filthy again!'

  'It'll just be a bit of sand. You have to expect that in the desert,' said Max with a predictable lack of sympathy.

  'I'm going back to put on my shorts,' said Cairo, turning, but was brought up by a hard hand oh her arm.

  'Oh, no, you don't. You're already twenty minutes late, and I'm not waiting any longer.' •

  'But my dress is going to get ruined!'

  'Tough,' said Max. 'If you didn't learn about wearing sensible clothes when we went up the plateau, that's your problem.' He picked up Cairo's pack and tossed it in the back of the jeep. 'Get in.'

  Sulking, Cairo wrestled with the door, opened it with difficulty and brushed fastidiously at the dusty seat before she sat down.

  'I don't know why you bother with doors if you haven't got a roof,' she grumbled.

  'Stop complaining,' he said, starting the engine. 'You wanted to come, and there are no other vehicles available at this short notice. You're lucky I'm taking you at all. You're the one who's in such a tearing hurry to get back to London.'

  'If we went later, would we be able to have a car with air-conditioning?'

  Cairo was unable to resist asking.

  'You've changed your tune, haven't you?' said Max unpleasantly. 'At the guelta you were panicking about not getting home in time.'

  'I do have to get back.' Cairo sighed, remembering. 'Piers will be waiting and—'

  'Piers?' Max interrupted her.

  She threw him a curious look. 'He's my partner,' she explained.

  'Not Piers Ward-Willoughby, by any chance?' he asked in a strangely grim tone.

  'Yes.' Cairo turned to look at him, astonished at the coincidence. 'Do you know him?' Where on earth would Max have come across the sociable, charming Piers? They were chalk and cheese!

  'I know of him,' Max said in the same ominous voice. 'Which means I also know all about you.'

  'Me?'

  'I gather you and Piers spend a lot of time together?' he went on with heavy sarcasm.

  Cairo was completely baffled. 'He's my partner. Of course I see a lot of him.'

  'I don't suppose it bothers you that he's running around with two women at one time?'

  'I don't suppose you could tell me what you're talking about?' Cairo retorted in a frigid voice. She was fed up with this!

  Max changed gear angrily. 'Joanna's in love with Piers—or she thinks she is.

  Her letters are full of him. She's just got over her divorce, and this Piers is making her miserable.'

  What did that have to do with her? Cairo wondered angrily. 'It doesn't sound like Piers,' she said curtly. He had always preferred to make his way by charm rather than hard work. He could be tiresomely flippant at times, but never cruel. 'He's not a heartless schemer, if that's what you're worried about. I can't believe he'd hurt anyone deliberately.'

  'That's what Joanna says. Apparently there's another woman in the background who's got her claws into him. From all I can gather, this Piers is just after her money, but Joanna says he really loves her and it's this other woman who's determined to have him. She's afraid she's going to lose him.'

  Cairo was sick of hearing about Joanna and her problems. 'It sounds to me as if your sister is being completely wet,' she said roundly. Nearly as wet as she had been about Max last night, but she was over that now, she reminded herself hastily. 'If she's so in love with Piers, why doesn't she stand up and fight for him?'

  'Joanna's not a fighter like you.' Max's jaw was set as he glanced at Cairo.

  'She can be pretty when she tries, but she's got no confidence in herself. She wouldn't stand much of a chance against you.'

 
Cairo stared at him, as the realisation struck. 'You don't really think this other woman is me, do you?'

  'It seems fairly obvious,' said Max tightly. 'According to Joanna, Piers spends an awful lot of time with this woman, who's beautiful and glamorous and confident—all the things Joanna isn't, and you are. Not only that, she's trying to get Piers involved in some shady business scheme that Joanna thinks will ruin him.'

  'Joanna doesn't know what she's talking about,' said Cairo in tight-lipped emphasis when she could speak. For a moment she had been so taken aback that she could only gape at Max, but now white hot fury was searing through her. 'Piers may well be having an affair with her, although I've never so much as heard him mention a Joanna, but he certainly isn't having an affair with me!'

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  MAX looked at her suspiciously. 'You don't deny you're in business with him?'

  'No. Why should I?' Cairo shook back her hair angrily. 'But if you think that I've slogged all over that wretched plateau for a shady business, you and your precious Joanna have got another think coming! And for the record,'

  she swept on, 'I did not inveigle Piers into the business. It was his idea, not mine, and we're partners in the purely business sense of the word, so you can tell Joanna that, too!'

  Max was silent, a muscle working furiously in his jaw, obviously unwilling to be convinced. 'I can understand why Joanna felt threatened by you,' he said after a while.

  'It's more than I can,' said Cairo tartly. 'I've never even met her.'

  'She must have seen you somewhere. You've got all the looks and confidence that she lacks, and enough wealth to tempt Piers. I gather he hasn't got any money, and is the sort of man on the lookout for a rich wife.

  He couldn't do much better than Jeremy Kingswood's daughter, could he?'

  Cairo began to laugh. If only he knew! Jeremy Kingswood's daughter had nothing but debts and liabilities, as Piers well knew. She and Piers were as desperate as each other to make some money. 'I suppose you could say that it was money that brought us together,' she gasped at last.

  'I'm glad you find it so amusing,' Max said coldly. 'I don't happen to find it funny that my sister is being made miserable, for whatever reason, but I'm prepared to accept that you're not having an affair with Piers if you say so.'

  'Big of you!' said Cairo in an acid voice, and turned her face deliberately away. He was unbearable. Arrogant, pigheaded, prejudiced and absolutely insufferable! How could she ever have even considered being in love with him? She hated him! How dared he accuse her of having an affair with Piers just because his sister was too stupid to ask Piers outright?

  Chin tilted aggressively, Cairo stared through the cracked windscreen. She wished she'd never embarked on this awful trip. She'd never been in such a dilapidated vehicle before; it was little more than a sand-encrusted chassis with tattered seats and a jumble of wires holding the whole thing together under the bare metal dashboard. It was a wonder it could go at all.

  They were driving away from the plateau, and the desert was flat and featureless and monotonously brown beneath a huge, burningly blue sky.

  The track itself was well used, ridged with corrugations, and the jeep rattled and protested madly as they raced over them, jolting across a tyre track every now and then with spine- jarring impact.

  Cairo 'was not enjoying herself. She had looked forward to the luxury of travelling by car rather than on foot, but she had imagined a smooth, air-conditioned vehicle, not this boneshaking old rustbucket which seemed to suck in the dust. It got everywhere, lay thick on the metal dashboard and the seat between them, stuck to her skin and her hair and coated her dress in a layer of dull brown. To add insult to injury, Max somehow managed to look as cool and clean as when they had set out.

  I hate him, said Cairo to herself again.

  They drove for a couple of hours before Max suddenly veered off the piste and headed over towards a ridge in the distance. Cairo preserved an icy silence and refused to ask where they were going, but as they got closer the ridge resolved itself into a mass of black, dramatic rocks, their stark silhouettes softened by the sweep of glittering sand dunes.

  Cairo got stiffly out of the car. She could see already that it would be a perfect site for the shoot, but she didn't feel like giving Max the satisfaction of telling him so. Instead, she ostentatiously ignored him and took a whole roll of film from different angles. When she looked round, Max had disappeared, presumably to survey some of his precious rocks. Much she cared! Cairo sat on a rock in the meagre shade and fanned herself with her notebook. There was no doubt that this was the ideal spot.

  After a while she began to get bored and look at her watch. Max was taking his time, but she was damned if she was going to go and look for him. The sky glared down at her and the heat bounced off the rocks as the minutes ticked away, and when there was still no sign of Max she was sure that he was keeping her waiting deliberately.

  'Where have you been?' she demanded when he finally strolled back into view holding some obscure surveying instrument.

  'Working,' he said shortly. 'Contrary to what you seem to believe, I have other things to do than dance attendance on you. I'm doing you a big enough favour letting you come along at all without jumping to attention whenever you snap your fingers.'

  'There's no need to be such a martyr about it,' snapped Cairo. 'You offered to bring me, if you remember. If it was going to be such a trauma for you, you should have kept your mouth shut.'

  Max threw the instrument in the back of the jeep. 'Is it too much to hope that you could keep yours shut?' he said unpleasantly.

  Cairo had to struggle with the door again, and relieved her feelings when she finally got in by banging it shut.

  'Don't slam the door!' snarled Max.

  'Why not? Afraid the whole thing will fall apart?'

  'There's nothing wrong with this jeep!'

  'No, nothing that a new chassis, new doors, new windscreen and a new engine wouldn't cure!'

  'It works perfectly well,' said Max through gritted teeth. 'That's what's important. Of course, it's typical of you to be more concerned by how a thing looks rather than how it operates. Personally, I'd put reliability over appearance any day—and that goes for people as well as cars!'

  He turned the key in the ignition as he spoke, only to produce an ominous grinding noise, followed by silence.

  'Sorry, what was that about reliability?' Cairo asked, sugar sweet.

  Max shot her a filthy look and tried the key again, with exactly the same result. Swearing under his breath, he groped beneath the dashboard for the bonnet-release handle.

  'What's wrong?'

  'The engine won't start,' he said curtly, and Cairo bridled..

  'I may not be the world's best mechanic, but even I could work that one out!'

  Max straightened. 'Do you know one end of a combustion engine from another?' he asked between clenched teeth.

  'I know how to check the oil.'

  'That'll be a big help,' he said sarcastically.

  'There's no need to be so patronising,' Cairo ^snapped. 'I only wanted to know what was wrong. I don't want to be stuck in the desert with you again!'

  'The feeling is quite mutual,' said Max in an icy voice. 'I don't happen to know what's wrong yet. For a start, I can't see through metal, so I don't know what's going on in the engine, and, even if I did, the answer wouldn't mean anything to you.'

  'It might,' lied Cairo. 'I'm not a complete idiot.'

  'Then why do you behave like one?' Max asked, provoked beyond endurance. Jumping down from the jeep, he banged his door shut with unnecessary force and strode round to the front of the vehicle.

  'Don't slam the door!' she shouted after him.

  Max glared at her through the windscreen, but contented himself with jerking up the bonnet and cutting her from his view.

  Cairo sat, arms folded defiantly, and glowered through the cracked windscreen at the lid of the bonnet. It had been a sort of dull green once, but wa
s now so ingrained with sand that it looked brown.

  Why was Max being so obnoxious? For a dangerous moment, Cairo allowed herself to remember the man she had known on the plateau. He had stroked her hair when she had cried, and held her in his arms to keep away the terrors of the night. She could remember every time he had smiled at her, every time he had touched her. Cairo's mind veered away from remembering how he had kissed her, and she scowled at the bonnet. She hadn't ever liked him, really. She had just been dependent on him, and she wasn't going to be dependent on him much longer. He might have had his moments on the plateau, but they had been exceptions, and since they had come down he had been downright unpleasant. Well, that was fine by her, Cairo thought huffily. She would just ignore him.

  She concentrated on ignoring Max for a few minutes, but when he still didn't emerge from behind the bonnet, she succumbed to curiosity and climbed down, after another short, sharp altercation with the door, and went to peer over his shoulder at the engine.

  'Well?'

  He glanced at her with dislike. 'If it means anything to you, the carburettor has seized up.'

  'Oh.' Cairo tried to look as if she knew what a carburettor was. 'Will you be able to fix it?'

  'Probably. I'll have to strip the carburettor right down, though.'

  'Can I do anything?'

  Max sighed irritably. 'The most useful thing you can do is sit down and shut up. I can't concentrate with you hanging over me like that.'

  'I was only trying to help,' said Cairo, affronted.

  'Well, help by keeping out of my way and not asking any more stupid questions!'

  Offended, Cairo turned on her heel and went back to her seat. Let him do it all by himself, then! She had left the door open this time to save her nails and her temper any further wear, but still her resentment simmered as she swung her legs up on to the bench seat and settled herself as comfortably as she could. It looked like being a long, hot wait.

  The minutes crawled by in oppressive heat, the silence broken only by the sound of Max tinkering away at the engine and a solitary fly which had appeared out of nowhere and was buzzing around Cairo's face. What was it doing out here? Cairo wondered irritably, flicking it away with her notebook. There was nothing here for a fly or anything else. Only rocks and sky and sand.