Oasis of the Heart

by Jessica Hart

  CHAPTER TEN

  CAIRO lay on the lumpy bed and stared at a crack in the ceiling. When the scandal first broke around her father, she had been shocked and distressed, but there had been nothing like this numbing sense of misery. Then, she had had her father to fight for and plan with. She had been desperately unhappy the last time she had left Menesset, too, but at least she had known she would be coming back, and there had always been that secret hope that she would see Max again. Now, she didn't even have that. He had gone, without even saying goodbye.

  It was a relief to put the group on the plane the next morning and stop smiling. Jasmin's taunting beauty was a constant reminder of the last time she had seen Max, and the mere sight of her lacerated Cairo with bitter jealousy. Bearing the model's comments about future jobs in mind, Cairo had tried to appear cheerful and efficient as she ushered everyone through the airport formalities, but the effort left her feeling drained.

  She was going to have to get used to it, she realised bleakly. She had a lifetime to get through without Max.

  Back in Menesset, she paid off the drivers and added a generous tip. They deserved it after putting up with that lot, Cairo thought. The constant complaints and negative attitudes of her compatriots towards the desert had been embarrassing. She hated to think that she had been like that. No wonder Max had despised her.

  She spent the morning being diplomatic and thanking every official she could find at his desk, though why she was thanking them for making her wade through reams of red tape and complicated bureaucratic procedures before they would stamp a permit or tell her she was in the wrong office she wasn't quite sure.

  She made a point of thanking everybody in the hotel too. Jasmin had not been the only one to make no secret of her opinion of the facilities, and Cairo had been humbled by the staff's gentle courtesy in the face of such rudeness.

  She managed to keep smiling throughout the manager's long speech of appreciation, but escaped at last to carry her bag down to the market square where the taxis waited in the shade of the tamarisk trees.

  Whenever she had seen them before, there had been a whole fleet of cars parked together, their drivers leaning against the bonnets and smoking cigarettes as they gossiped, or sleeping sprawled across the front seat. Cairo had always wondered how on earth they all made a living. Apart from the airport and the camp, there wasn't anywhere else to go in a taxi.

  That afternoon, only two taxis sat in the shade. Both drivers sat in the front car, smoking, and watched Cairo's approach with appreciative eyes.

  She put down her bag and bent to speak through the window, but when she asked in French if they would take her to the airport, the men shook their heads. Wondering if they'd misunderstood, she asked again, and when this met with no more response was reduced to spreading her arms and making aeroplane noises.

  'You seem to be having some difficulty.' Max's cool voice spoke behind her and she swung round, arms still outstretched. He was wearing his hat and his old khaki shirt, and the light eyes were unmistakably amused as they surveyed her.

  For a moment, Cairo simply stared at him, while her eyes drank him in, until she noticed the amusement in his eyes deepen and realised suddenly that her arms were still imitating wings. She dropped them hastily, struggling to control the heart that was battering uncomfortably against her ribs. His obvious amusement annoyed her. Here she was, breaking her heart over him, and all he could do was laugh at her!

  'I thought you'd gone,' she said rudely.

  'Did you?' Max didn't sound very concerned.

  'You know I did. Don't worry, Jasmin passed on your message very clearly.

  You were going away and didn't want me bothering you.' Cairo's chin came up. 'Not that I had any intention of trying to find you!'

  'Did Jasmin tell you I asked her to give you that message?' asked Max, his eyes still glinting infuriatingly.

  What was so funny? wondered Cairo bitterly. 'No,' she said. 'But it was painfully obvious.'

  'I see.' Max didn't even bother to deny it. He glanced down at Cairo's bag. 'It looks as if you're leaving.'

  'I'm trying to,' she said with a vengeful look at the taxi drivers. 'My plane leaves in an hour and a half, and I've got to get out to the airport, but they don't seem to want to understand.'

  'Would you like me to talk to them for you?' he asked, evidently determined to make sure that nothing stood in the way of her leaving.

  Cairo's pride wouldn't let her admit how much his attitude hurt, not even to herself. It was agony to be near him and not be able to touch him. Having longed to see him just once more, she was now desperate to leave, terrified of giving in and simply throwing herself at his feet. She didn't want Max to remember her like that.

  'Thank you,' she said stiffly.

  He plunged into rapid, gesticulating Arabic with the two men. There seemed to be a lot of laughter involved, Cairo thought suspiciously. Surely it didn't take this long just to tell one of them to take her to the airport?

  Max turned to her at last. 'This one can't go because he's waiting for his cousin, and the other wants to eat in half an hour and if he goes to the airport he'll be late back.'

  'Great!' Cairo pushed her hair behind her ears and sighed. 'You'd think they'd be grateful for some business, wouldn't you? It's not as if they've been rushed off their feet all day. How am I supposed to get to the airport?'

  'I'll take you if you like,' Max offered. 'I'm going out that way anyway.'

  'Thank you, but you did enough for Haydn Deane yesterday,' Cairo refused with cold dignity. 'I'm sure I'll be able to find someone to take me.'

  The suspicion that he was making fun of her was too much to bear, and she turned quickly to walk away before he saw how desperately hurt she was.

  His heart wasn't breaking at the prospect of never seeing her again, and she clung to her pride as she walked stiff-backed down the wide shady street.

  Pride was all she had left.

  Cairo walked around the market place, and up and down the neighbouring streets, but the taxis had all mysteriously vanished. At this rate she would miss her plane, she thought, glancing worriedly at her watch.

  The Range Rover slid to a stop beside her. 'You might as well get in,' said Max, leaning across to open the passenger door.

  Cairo bit her lip and looked up and down the road in the desperate hope that a taxi might suddenly materialise, but there was only a donkey flickering its ears in the shade, and two women shrouded in black, chattering as they headed towards the market place.

  She didn't have any choice. Climbing reluctantly into the car, Cairo sat rigidly upright. It was as if Max had determined to make things difficult for her, to taunt her with his presence and the mocking amusement in his eyes, and she clutched her hands together in her lap. All she wanted now was to go home; somehow she would have to get through this trip with him, and then it would be over, and she would be able to cry.

  The air-conditioning was deliciously cool and the upholstery luxurious compared to the wreck Max had taken her in before. 'What's wrong with your jeep?' she asked after a moment's silence, hoping her voice wouldn't quaver with the threat of tears.

  'The jeep's fine,' Max said.

  'Then why are you borrowing this again? Or did Jasmin give you a taste for luxury?'

  'It's not borrowed. It's mine.'

  'Yours?' Cairo turned to stare at him, tears momentarily forgotten in the slow dawning of outrage. 'Do you mean to say,' she said very carefully, 'that you took me out in that crummy old jeep and let me get covered in sand when all the time we could have been driving in this?'

  The crease at the corner of Max's mouth deepened in amusement. 'I'm afraid so.'

  'Whereas only this was good enough for Jasmin!' Cairo was too angry to remember that she had been determined not to show him how hurt she had been.

  'You see, Jasmin's not like you,' Max said, as if that explained everything.

  'I suppose I should be honoured that I'm being driven in the same car as
Jasmin,' she snapped. 'Or is that just because you're anxious to make sure that I actually leave?'

  'Not as anxious as you seem to be to go.' He turned his head to look at her, his eyes very light. 'Do you really want to?'

  Cairo's jaw was clenched, her green eyes ablaze. 'I can't wait!'

  'That's a shame,' said Max with no trace of regret, and swung the wheel so that the car veered off the road and raced off at a tangent to the tarmac. 'I'm afraid you're just going to have to wait!'

  'What are you doing?' cried Cairo, startled and clinging to dashboard, as the car rocked over the ridges in the sand. 'I'll miss my plane!'

  'You will,' Max agreed cheerfully, changing gear. In their wake, the dust rose like a swirling cloud as they bowled across the sand.

  Cairo pressed her lips together. 'This isn't funny, Max. Take me to the airport at once!'

  'Why?'

  'Why! Because I want to catch my plane, of course!'

  'Well, I want to talk to you,' said Max firmly. 'If you still want to get on the plane tomorrow, I'll take you to the airport and buy you a new ticket. That's fair, isn't it?'

  'But Max, this is madness! Where are you going?'

  'To the pool.' He glanced at her. 'You remember the pool, don't you, Cairo?'

  Cairo looked away. Of course she remembered. Why was he taunting her like this? 'I don't see why you have to kidnap me,' she said defiantly. 'You had plenty of opportunity to talk to me yesterday if you wanted to.'

  'I couldn't talk to you with all those ghastly people around.'

  'I didn't notice you thinking that Jasmin was ghastly,' Cairo said, unable to disguise her bitterness. 'In fact, you gave a very good impression of being besotted!'

  'Did I?' Max sounded pleased. 'I must be a better actor than I thought.'

  There was a silence while Cairo assimilated this. 'Actor?' she echoed cautiously at last.

  'You don't really think I'd be taken in by someone like Jasmin, do you?' he said with an amused look.

  'But...I don't understand,' Cairo said helplessly. 'Why go through all that pretence?'

  'To make you jealous, of course.' Max put his foot on the brake and changed down as the car cruised to a stop. 'I thought it was obvious.'

  He turned off the engine, and the silence enveloped them. They sat in the car, marooned in a vast expanse of sand. Cairo could have turned in a complete circle and seen nothing but horizon, broken only by the occasional outcrop of rock in the distance that was no more than a smudge shimmering in the heat. Above them, the sky was a deep, unrelenting blue.

  'No,' she said slowly, hardly daring to hope. 'It wasn't obvious.'

  Max sat forward and leant his arms on the steering- wheel. The lurking amusement had vanished, leaving him suddenly serious and somehow uncertain. He didn't look at Cairo. 'I missed you when you left,' he said. 'I told myself I was glad you had gone. I told myself you didn't belong here and that Piers was welcome to you, but I still missed you.' He paused, his eyes fixed on the flat, limitless horizon. 'The desert seemed empty without you.'

  Cairo couldn't speak. She could only sit and watch his profile, hardly daring to let herself hope again, while the cold claws of misery began to release themselves very cautiously from her heart.

  'Of course, you'd made it very clear that your job was more important to you than I was,' he went on after a moment. 'I'd hoped that you were beginning to like the desert, and I was very bitter when it seemed that you couldn't wait to get back to London after that night we spent together at the pool. I decided I'd been a fool to even think that you had changed. When I left you at the camp, I just wanted to forget about you, but I couldn't. I kept turning round expecting to see you. I wanted to hear your voice and see you smile. I wanted to touch you.' His voice was very low. 'I wouldn't even have minded watching you fuss around in your make-up bag!'

  Cairo found her voice at last as a smile trembled on her lips. 'I can't believe you missed that!'

  'It was part of you,' said Max. 'Of course I missed it.' Still leaning on the wheel, he turned his head to look at her. 'Eventually, I just gave in. I knew you'd be coming back with the shoot, and as I know all the officials in Menesset it was easy to find out when you were arriving. I hung around the town, just hoping to see you. As soon as I saw Jasmin, I knew she must be part of your group, so I attached myself to her. I wasn't sure if you'd want to see me, but I thought if I could just tag along with everyone I'd be bound to get the chance to talk to you.'

  'But why did you make such a fuss of Jasmin?' Cairo burst out. 'You must have known what I thought!'

  'It only occurred to me when I saw the look on your face when you saw us together.' Max half smiled. 'You've got a very expressive face, Cairo, and if looks could kill, Jasmin would have disintegrated on the spot. That's when I began to hope. You wouldn't have been that jealous if I hadn't meant anything to you, so I played up to Jasmin—a little too successfully! She wouldn't leave me alone.

  'In the end, I told her I had some urgent work to do and wouldn't be able to stay in Menesset to see her that night. The message you thought I'd sent you was the only way I could think of to get rid of her! She did tell me that you would be staying behind until the later flight, though, so I decided I would just wait until everyone else had gone.'

  Cairo looked down at her hands. 'Did she also tell you about my father?' she asked quietly. She couldn't let herself be happy until she was sure that he knew everything.

  'Yes, she did.' Max had still made no move to touch her. 'Why didn't you tell me?' His voice was warm and gentle, and Cairo felt sudden tears sting her eyes.

  'I knew how you felt about corruption,' she said with difficulty, twisting her fingers together. She always found it hard to talk about the shame she had felt when she had first discovered what her father had been doing. 'My father was guilty of that, and now he's suffering the consequences, but I didn't think you'd have any sympathy with him. To you he'd just be a typical example of city dishonesty, but for me he's still the loving, generous father he always was.'

  'Jasmin said you were working to pay off his debts,' said Max. 'Is that why you were so desperate to make this job a success?'

  Cairo nodded. 'I can't let my father down. I know that he only did what he did so that he could carry on spoiling me, and I feel so responsible,' she whispered in a sudden rush of anguish. 'You were always telling me how spoilt I was, and I thought that if you knew just what had made all the spoiling possible you would just despise me even more.'

  Max reached out and touched her hair very lightly. 'I would never despise loyalty, Cairo.'

  'Jasmin said you looked appalled when she told you about my father,' she said, unable to disguise her bitterness.

  'I did, but it was only because I realised how much I'd misjudged you. I was doing what I always accused you of doing, and judging by appearances. You carry this air of glamour around with you, Cairo. It doesn't matter what you wear or what you're doing.' Max hesitated, letting his hands slide around the steering-wheel.

  'Because you were beautiful and self-assured, I thought you would be as vain and superficial as my mother, but I should have known better. I'd had ample opportunity to see how brave and funny you were, and when Jasmin told me about your father I realised how loyal you were too. It wasn't a good feeling to know just how wrong I'd been about you.' His gaze rested on her face. 'Your father is a very lucky man. I envy him.'

  'You do?' Her eyes were huge and puzzled.

  'You love him very much, don't you?'

  'Yes,' she said. 'Yes, I do.'

  Max looked back towards the horizon. 'I haven't given you any reason to love me. I haven't spoilt you and cosseted you like your father. I've shouted at you and criticised you and deliberately made things hard for you in the hope that you'd give up and prove to me that you were just like all the city girls I'd ever met who were all froth and no substance. But you never gave up. You just gritted your teeth and climbed up to that plateau, and walked through the locusts, and dug out the
jeep, and the more gutsy and determined you were, the more I fell in love with you.' He paused. 'I didn't want to fall in love with you, Cairo. I tried my very hardest not to. You were like a thorn in my side. Everything about you seemed designed to remind me that you were probably as spoilt and selfish and superficial as my mother. I remembered you perfectly well from that party. I'd noticed you all evening, and I didn't like the fact that I could find a girl like you attractive. It was exactly the same when you turned up in the desert, absolutely determined to have your own way. I was equally determined not to like you, but I couldn't get the thought of kissing you out of my mind. Every night I had to hold you in my arms and not touch you, and it made me very bad-tempered!'

  'Didn't you ever wonder why I was so cross?' Cairo asked, a glow just starting in her eyes, and Max shook his head slowly.

  'No. I'd given you every reason to hate me, and I thought you did. At the guelta... I wondered, but you seemed so determined to finish the job and go home, I thought you couldn't wait to leave, so I didn't even try. And after that night at the pool, when I asked you to stay and you wouldn't, I decided I must have been wrong in thinking that it had meant as much to you as it had to me. I didn't know about your father then, or why you felt you had to go back.'

  'You only asked me to stay for one more day,' Cairo said. 'I couldn't let everyone down just for one day, no matter how much I wanted to stay.'

  'I didn't want to frighten you with talk of forever,' he explained. 'I can't offer you the kind of life you're used to, Cairo. I'm just not that kind of man. I felt I couldn't ask you to give up everything to stay here with me in the desert. It was only when I saw the way you looked at me yesterday that I thought I would ask you anyway. You said once that you had never got married because you were waiting for a man who really loved you...' He trailed off.

  Cairo had never seen him so unsure of himself.

  Her heart was so full that for a moment she couldn't say anything, and Max misinterpreted her silence. 'It's a lot to ask, I know,' he said with a show of briskness, and glanced at his watch. 'I do understand. I just wanted you to know how I felt.' He reached for the ignition key. 'I'll take you to the airport now. There's still just time to catch your plane.'