by Jessica Hart
The fly landed on her arm and she slapped at it. Why didn't it go and buzz around Max? Cairo was thoroughly hot and bored by the time she remembered a magazine she had stuffed into her rucksack at the last minute.
She hadn't had time to read it on the plane, and she had brought it along in case she needed a good excuse to ignore Max.
Clambering over into the back, she rummaged around in her pack and pulled the magazine out triumphantly. At least she could read to take her mind off the sweat trickling down her back and how horrible Max was being.
The magazine looked glossy and somehow out of place in the dusty jeep.
Cairo weighed it in her hands and then, on an impulse, lifted it to her face so that she could smell the paper, overcome by a wave of nostalgia for people, places, civilisation, anything other than this vast, brown emptiness. She didn't belong here any more than the magazine did.
An image of the plateau popped unbidden into her mind. She was sitting by the guelta with Max, drinking tea, listening to the bees, and wishing that she could stay there forever. Cairo stared unseeingly down at the magazine. The memory was so vivid that it hurt, and she had to wrench her mind away from it.
She was glad she had come with Max today, she told herself as she turned to the interview page. It had put paid once and for all to that bizarre idea that she might have been attracted to him, and reminded her just what her priorities were. She was going to pay off her father's debts and then settle down in the city, where she belonged, and she would never give Max or the desert so much as another thought.
Determined to believe it, Cairo adjusted her sunglasses and absorbed herself in the magazine, so successfully that she was not aware that Max had come round to stare at her until he spoke.
'Are you sure you're quite comfortable?' he asked with heavy irony, watching her incredulously over his door. There was a smudge of oil on his cheek and his eyes looked very light in his dark face.
'Yes, thank you,' said Cairo absently, her mind still on the winter collections.
She had used to go to Paris and Milan to see the new designs; how long would it be before she could buy herself any new clothes? Recalling where she was, she laid the magazine down on her knees. 'Have you finished yet?'
For one terrifying moment, she thought Max was going to lean in and strangle her, but after a visible struggle he merely said through his teeth, 'No, I have not finished. It's a hundred and twenty degrees out here—hotter under the bonnet—and I've had to strip down the carburettor completely. If you think you can do it any faster with your renowned mechanical skills, you're very welcome to come and try, and I'll catch up on where the hemline is this year!'
'There's no need to jump down my throat!' With studied insolence, Cairo reopened her magazine. 'I'm sure you're going as fast as you can.'
The next instant, the magazine was torn from her hands as Max opened his door and lunged in. His face was suddenly very close to his own, and his grey-green eyes were ablaze with anger.
'I've had just about enough of you and your spoilt, selfish attitude! You don't appreciate how lucky you are to be seeing the desert like this. Oh, no! You're so narrow-minded that you'd really rather sit there and flick through a magazine that's so full of deceit and pretension that it probably means a lot to you. As long as you get your own way, nothing else matters, does it?' A muscle jumped furiously in his jaw. 'First of all you make me drag you with me up to the plateau, make it virtually impossible for me to do any work up there and now, when I'm sweating my guts out to get you to your precious locations, you have the nerve to sit there calmly reading that tripe and ask me if I've finished!'
Cairo's eyes narrowed to an intense, glittering green as she snatched back the magazine. 'You were the one who wanted me to stay out of your way. I didn't realise that what you really wanted was for me to hover over you with a handkerchief to mop your brow and tell you how marvellous you are just because you're weird enough to like this place! Why should I appreciate the desert? It's hot and it's uncomfortable and it's boring, and I'm stuck in the middle of it with some latter-day Lawrence of Arabia who's so full of prejudices about London that it's almost funny and who dares to lecture me about being narrow-minded!'
'You'll be stuck for longer than you bargained for if you don't put that down right now and give me a hand,' Max threatened.
'Oh, for heaven's sake!' Cairo threw down the magazine and glared at him.
'What do you want me to do?'
'Just start her up— if it's not too much trouble for you.'
He went back to lean over the engine, and Cairo turned the ignition key when he gave her the order. The engine spluttered into miraculous life and there was a muffled shout from behind the bonnet.
'What?' she yelled over the racket.
'I said turn her off!' bellowed Max.
Cairo cut the engine and listened as the enveloping silence descended once more.
'All right,' he said. 'Come here.'
'Yes, sir,' she muttered, clambering down. 'What now?'
Max handed her some spanners. 'Hold these while I just tighten up the bolts.'
'Please?' she reminded him in a saccharine voice.
'How would you like me to drive off and leave you here?' Max directed his question pleasantly to the carburettor.
'You wouldn't dare!'
'I wouldn't push the point if I were you.' He thrust a spanner into her hand and helped himself to one of the others she was holding. 'The way I feel at the moment, it would be justifiable homicide and probably a great service to society in general!'
After a couple more adjustments, he slammed down the bonnet and told her curtly to get back in the jeep.
'I don't know why you're being so unpleasant,' said Cairo as they set off once more. 'I've told you, I haven't got anything to do with your wretched sister's problems.'
'It just seems very funny that Joanna's life is being turned upside-down again by a woman who is beautiful and heartless and in business with Piers... but not you, apparently. Tell me, how many beautiful, heartless women does Piers do business with?'
Cairo gritted her teeth. 'I am not having an affair with Piers. I never have and I never will. We're business partners and friends, that's all. Why won't you believe that?'
'You can't tell me a man like that could keep his hands off a girl like you!'
'You seem to be able to do it without any difficulty,' Cairo retorted before she could help herself.
'That's because I—' Max broke off as the jeep lunged to a halt, its wheels turning uselessly in the soft sand. Banging his fist against the steering-wheel, he swore fast and fluently.
'Now look what you've done!' Cairo accused him. 'We're bogged.'
Max slumped back in his seat. 'Marvellous! How did you work that one out?'
he asked, rubbing his temples in frustration. 'This is all your fault.'
'My fault?' she squeaked indignantly. 'How does it get to be my fault? I wasn't driving.'
'If you hadn't been arguing, I might have been able to concentrate on what I was doing.'
'Who did you blame for all your problems until I came into your life?' Cairo asked acidly.
'I didn't have any problems until I met you!'
They jumped out of the jeep at the same time, both venting their feelings on the doors, and shouting across at each other childishly, 'Don't slam the door!'
The jeep was so deeply bogged that its chassis had buried into the sand. Max swore and kicked the wheel arch.
'That'll 'help,' said Cairo acidly.
He looked murder and threw a shovel towards her across the jeep. 'Get digging,' was all he said.
Cairo managed to sidestep the shovel and it landed with a muffled thud in the sand. Picking it up reluctantly, she began scraping the sand away from the front wheel on her side, until Max gave an exclamation of disgust.
'I said dig, not flick grains of sand around!' he said. 'We'll be here all day at the rate you're going. Put a bit of elbow grease into it!'
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'Oh, shut up!' Cairo snapped, but she redoubled her efforts.
It was back-breaking work. For every shovel she scooped out, half of the fine sand seemed to trickle back into the hole from the sides, and they had to dig out the back wheels and under the chassis as well as the front. The back of Cairo's dress was drenched in sweat and the long skirts kept getting in the way as she bent with the shovel.
'Why didn't you stop as soon as you felt yourself driving into all this sand?'
she demanded, wiping her scarlet face with the back of her arm.
'I would have done if you hadn't been yakking at me,' Max snarled. 'Keep digging!'
The sun beat down mercilessly, and the heat was making it hard to breathe.
Cairo got herself into a rhythm—bend, scoop, bend, scoop—by chanting, 'I hate him, I hate him, I hate him,' under her breath, and it was the only thing that kept her going.
Max worked with characteristic efficiency, and finished digging out his side long before her. He could easily have come round to help dig on her side, but instead he stood, leaning on his shovel and watching her sweat with a sardonic expression on his face. Cairo would have died rather than ask him to help. She pressed her lips together firmly and bent over her shovel once more.
'I hate him, I hate him,' she muttered to herself.
By the time she was finished, she was utterly exhausted and could only collapse over her shovel, wondering if she would ever feel cool again. Max laid sand mats in front of the front wheels and went round the jeep lowering the tyre pressure.
'I should be able to drive her out now,' he said to Cairo, ignoring the fact that she was lying in an untidy heap on the sand, still gasping for breath. 'But I won't be able to stop until the ground feels firmer. If I lose momentum, she'll just dig in again.'
Cairo struggled into a sitting position. She couldn't go through that again!
'OK.'
'So you'll have to follow on foot with the sand mats,' he went on. 'I can't stop and pick you and them up, and I'm certainly not leaving them behind.'
'Why can't you stay behind?' Cairo demanded, using the shovel to haul herself to her feet.
'Because you're not experienced in desert driving,' Max explained with exaggerated patience. 'You'd probably bog us again.'
'I could hardly do worse than you so far,' she said waspishly.
'If you don't stop whingeing, I won't wait for you at all,' said Max, starting the engine to drown out any further protests.
Cairo blew the hair wearily off her forehead and watched the jeep drive up the sand mats and bowl off into the distance. Jamming her hat back on to her head, she hoisted a sand mat under each arm and began trudging after Max.
The jeep shimmered through the heat haze like a mirage, never seeming to get any closer. Cairo was convinced that Max had driven further than he needed to just so that she would have a longer walk, and she was livid by the time she finally threw the sand mats into the back of the jeep.
'You did that deliberately!'
Max was leaning against her door, looking cool and relaxed. He raised an eyebrow at her. 'What?'
'You could have stopped at least half a mile back!' Cairo waved an arm behind her.
'I couldn't be sure of the sand,' Max said blandly. 'You might feel like digging out the jeep again, but I certainly don't.' He looked her up and down, from her battered hat and red face, to the limp dress caked with sand, and, to Cairo's fury, his light eyes creased with malicious amusement. 'You look rather hot, Cairo. Would you like a drink?'
He held the water bottle out, and she snatched it from his hand with a black look, but as their fingers touched, she felt such a shock of electric awareness that she nearly dropped it. Max had felt it too. She could see it in his eyes before he turned away, and her hand shook as she tipped back the water bottle. How could someone treat you as ruthlessly as Max had done all morning, and still be able to make you thrill at the merest brush of his fingers? It wasn't fair.
She could feel the awareness of that one brief touch simmering between them as they drove on over the sand. Just one touch, but it was enough to relight those other memories she had tried so hard to forget today: his hands against her skin, the taste of his mouth, the warm, smooth strength of his shoulders beneath her fingers.
Cairo slid a glance at Max under her lashes. He was scowling at the sand ahead, dark brows drawn together and jaw thrust forward. His mouth was set in a tight, angry line, and his hands gripped the steering-wheel so tightly that his knuckles stood out. What did he have to be so cross about? she wondered resentfully. She was the one who had had to trudge for miles in the burning heat with the sand mats.
Then she wondered what he would do if she leant across and kissed the corner of his mouth.
Cairo's lips tingled at the thought. Stop it, she told herself and wrenched her eyes away. You hate him. Don't even let yourself think about how it would feel.
The roar of the engine seemed to come from miles away. Cairo felt as if there was a pocket of silence enveloping her and Max. It was alive with hostility and a relentless tension that clawed at her nerves. She found that she was breathing very carefully, and although she kept her eyes rigidly ahead she was horribly aware of Max driving taut and controlled beside her.
If she closed her eyes, the image of his mouth danced tauntingly behind her eyelids, and when she opened them again to stare at the empty horizon, the memory of his touch burned in her mind.
It was a relief when Max turned off the piste again and headed towards what appeared to be a solid wall of rock rising out of the desert. It gave Cairo something else to look at and something else to think about.
'Where are we going?'
'There's a guelta in here,' he said briefly, negotiating a path through an opening in the rocks. 'We'll spend the night by the water.' They emerged into an expanse of small boulders, bleached white by the sun, like a vast pebble beach adrift in the desert. The jeep bumped its way very slowly over the smooth stones until it dropped gratefully back on to smoother terrain and there, in front of her, was the pool, so deep and clear and green among the rocks that it looked almost unreal.
There were a couple of acacia trees near by, and an oleander bloomed at the edge, its pale pink flowers looking almost surreal against the bare backdrop of stone, but nothing else appeared to take advantage of the water. It just gleamed there mysteriously, with nothing to clutter its limpid depths. When Cairo peered in, she could see every pebble on the bottom.
Max was unloading the jeep and ignoring her. It was just as well she had brought that magazine, Cairo thought resentfully. After the way he had treated her all day, she wasn't going to sit around all evening and wait for him to notice her!
Hoisting out her own rucksack, she ostentatiously laid her sleeping mat as far away from Max's as she could. 'You'll be glad to know that I've got my own sleeping bag this time,' she couldn't resist saying to Max.
'I thought you didn't have one,' he said with a hard stare.
'I asked Bruce to lend me his,' she said, shaking the bag out and spreading it over the mat.
'I'm surprised you didn't ask him to come along and share it with you,'
sneered Max.
Cairo's eyes narrowed dangerously. 'What do you mean by that?'
'Judging by the way you were fondling each other last night, I thought you might have tried it out with him already.'
'I suppose I should be grateful that you deigned to notice that I was there at all,' said Cairo in a voice that dripped ice. 'But I was certainly not fondling, and nor was Bruce.'
'It looked like fondling to me. I've never seen such a revolting display!' Max yanked savagely at the cord of his rucksack and pulled out his own sleeping bag, which he threw on to the mat.
'You'd think anyone behaving in a vaguely civilised manner was revolting,'
said Cairo, too angry to notice that she was emptying her pack quite unnecessarily.
'You call that civilised? I can think of plenty of terms fo
r the way you were batting your eyelashes and fawning all over Bruce, but civilised isn't one of them! The poor man didn't know what had hit him,' Max jeered. 'Of course, I might have known you wanted something. All that effort just to get a sleeping bag off him... or was it something else?' he added nastily.
Cairo had kept her back pointedly turned, but now she swung round. 'It wasn't anything! I happened to be enjoying Bruce's company, which is more than I can say about yours.'
'I didn't get that impression when you were snuggling up under my sleeping bag,' Max taunted her. 'Or was that just you behaving in a civilised way?'
Provoked beyond endurance, Cairo advanced on him, green eyes blazing. 'I wouldn't waste my time being civilised to you! I've never met anyone so arrogant and inconsiderate and insufferable, and if you think I'd ever go near you unless I was absolutely desperate, you must need your head examined! I can hardly bear to touch you!'
'Oh, yes?' snarled Max, grabbing her roughly and swinging her up into his arms before she realised what was happening. 'The only thing I need my head examining for is ever agreeing to have anything to do with you!'
'Put me down,' ordered Cairo as he strode over towards the pool.
Max stood at the very edge of a boulder and gave her a ferocious smile. 'Of course. You can't bear me touching you, can you? Well, we can soon do something about that,' he said, and threw her out into the deepest part of the pool.
Her mouth still open in outrage, Cairo plunged into the water with a tremendous splash that shattered the desert calm. It couldn't have been all that cold, but the contrast between the water and the hot air gave it the impact of diving into a pool of ice, and she was beside herself with shock and fury as she surfaced.
'You... you...!' She spluttered and coughed in frustration, unable to think of a word bad enough. 'I hate you!' she managed to shout childishly in the end.
'Good,' said Max with a nasty grin from the boulder. 'That makes it mutual.'
Cairo's flailing feet found the pebble bottom as she struggled towards the edge, hampered by her sodden dress. When she got to the boulder she was standing up to her chest, and she reached up a hand to let Max pull her out.