Her Desert Prince

by Rebecca Winters

  Rafi’s skin took on an ashen color.

  “Though she never admitted it to me, I’m positive she wanted his child when she realized she couldn’t have him.”

  Unspeakable pain turned his features to a facsimile of his former self. “I don’t believe you.”

  “A DNA test would provide definitive proof, but I have something else that will convince you.”

  His eyes impaled her. “What proof?” In them she saw grief so profound, she had to look away.

  “It’s even stronger evidence than the medallion. I’ll show you. In my wallet there are some pictures of my mother.”

  She watched the struggle he was having to swallow. “Let me see them.”

  Lauren moved out of his arms and reached for her purse. Inside her wallet she kept a packet of pictures. She pulled out the three she’d put in of her parents. The first colored photo she handed him showed a full-length picture of Lana holding Lauren outside on the deck of her grandmother’s apartment. At five months Lauren’s golden hair had come in curly and gleamed in the sun.

  Rafi took the photo in his fingers and looked at it, then at Lauren. “But this is a picture of Samira!”

  “It’s an amazing likeness of her. When I met your sister, I could see my mother in her. But if you’ll look closely, you’ll notice Lake Geneva is in the background and she’s holding a blonde baby. That’s me at five months.”

  “No,” he moaned the word.

  Gaunt with shock, he looked at the other two pictures she handed him. Both of them showed her blond father holding Lauren, with his arm around her mother.

  A lifetime seemed to pass before a haunting groan came out of him filled with soul-deep anguish. He caught her to him. They clung with a desperation that racked them both.

  “Tell me this is a nightmare and we’re going to wake up,” he begged.

  “I wish I could,” she whispered, her agony beyond tears, “but you had to hear the truth. Celia named my mother Lana, an Arabic name. Our grandfather never knew. Neither did my mother. Celia told her that the man who was her father was just a man she’d met. Ships passing in the night.

  “She claimed she never knew what happened to him, but it wasn’t important because she and Lana had each other. That was all they needed.”

  A pulse throbbed at the corner of his mouth. “How could she have kept that news from my grandfather?”

  She studied him through glazed eyes. “You of all people should know the answer to that question. His betrothal had taken place years before. He sent Celia away so there’d be no scandal. She loved him too much to cause him any distress.

  “My mother had to accept the explanation and let it go. A few minutes ago when I realized who you were, don’t you think I wanted to die? Now I’ve got to let you go the same way.”

  When she eventually found the strength to ease away so she could look at him, she didn’t recognize the man; he seemed to have aged ten years.

  “Lauren—”

  She forced herself to smile through the tears. “You have a phrase for everything. ‘It is what it is.’ That’s what we have to say now.”

  “But it isn’t what it is—” he fired back in pain. “I won’t allow it to be.” He shook her gently. “No one knows about this but you and me. We’ll forget everything because I’m not losing you!” He crushed her mouth beneath his.

  For a time she responded, losing track of time and place because she couldn’t help herself. But then the reality of what they were doing took hold. Much as she wanted to kiss and be kissed into oblivion by him, the truth was between them and she couldn’t keep this up. It was no use.

  As soon as he allowed her breath she said, “I could wish you’d told me who you were that first day. Then I would have closed my heart off to you, or broken down and told you we had the same grandfather. You always talk about fate. I’m afraid this time it had something else in mind for us.

  “If only you could undo our history, Rafi, you truly would be a god, but you’re still mortal and that means I have to go. Every minute I stay here, it’s making it that much harder to leave.”

  “I won’t let you.” He tightened his arms around her, kissing her with refined savagery.

  “We have no choice,” she half sobbed the words. “Don’t you see?” She caught his face between her hands. “We have two strikes against us. Even if we weren’t related, I can’t remain here another second and jeopardize the life you were born to no matter what you say. You’ll be king one day. Princess Azzah will be your queen. It’s written!”

  Finding her inner strength, she escaped his arms and flew out of his office. Outside the building, Nazir ran after her, but she didn’t stop until she reached the helicopter, out of breath. He helped her inside with a concerned look on his face.

  “Tell the pilot to take me to El-Joktor immediately. The prince has set me free. Please do this for me, Nazir. Please,” she begged with all the strength of her soul.

  “Yes, mademoiselle.”

  Since Lauren had fled from his arms like a sand devil spinning away with the speed of light, Rashad had sealed himself in his Raz apartment. Now that it was evening, the helicopter had come back for him.

  During the short flight back to Al-Shafeeq, Nazir reported that everything had gone smoothly at El-Joktor. He had walked Lauren on to the jet without problem. Since then, he had had word that her flight had landed in Geneva. Was there anything else he could do for Rashad?

  With nothing more to be done, Rashad assured him there’d be a big bonus in his paycheck for services rendered. After thanking the others, he went inside the palace and headed straight for his parents’ suite. When he walked in, Farah came flying across the sitting room and threw her arms around his waist.

  “I’m so sorry for speaking to you the way I did last night. Please forgive me, Rashad.”

  “There’s nothing to forgive because I know love motivated you.” He kissed her forehead. “I deserved it and a host of other things you didn’t say.”

  “This morning I came to say goodbye to Lauren, but she’d already gone.”

  Rashad closed his eyes tightly. “She’s in Geneva as we speak.”

  “You can pretend all you want, but I know you love her.”

  He studied his sister who’d always been there for him. “I won’t lie to you about that, but she’s gone now, so there’s nothing more to be said.” Their grandfather’s blood flowed in Lauren’s veins, too. One couldn’t jump high enough to get over that camel’s hump.

  She touched his face. “You look ill.”

  “It will pass.”

  “No it won’t!” she stamped her foot in a rare show of temper. “Go in to the bedroom and tell our father you can’t go through with your marriage next month.”

  That checked him. “How did you know about the change of date?”

  “Father’s been looking for you all day and could not find you. No one knew where you were, not even Nazir. Your phone has been turned off. He got so upset he called the entire family and told everyone to look for you.

  “I knew you were with Lauren, but I didn’t say anything to give you away. When I asked him why he was so upset, he let it slip that you have to let Sheikh Majid know of your agreement about the new date for the wedding by tomorrow night.”

  “I’ll go in to father now. Is mother with him?”

  “No. She’s still talking to the chef about the meal preparations for our birthday party in a few days. You know how she is.” Farah’s eyes filled with liquid. “She wants everything perfect for us, for you. So do I, but I know you’re never going to know joy. You can’t go through with this wedding, Rashad. It won’t be fair to you or to Princess Azzah.”

  Rashad ran a hand over his face in despair. As he’d found out this morning, life wasn’t fair. “Bless you for being you, Farah.” He kissed her once more, then strode quickly to the bedroom where his father sat on the side of the bed with his bad foot propped on an ottoman piled with cushions.

  His father
simply stared at him. He didn’t need to speak. Rashad already knew every word he would say if he chose to express himself.

  “Farah met me in the sitting room. Forgive me for giving you a scare, father. I—”

  “You need explain nothing. I have my own eyes and ears around the palace. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have lived this long. The American. Is she gone?”

  “Yes.”

  His father’s dark eyes pierced through to Rashad’s soul. “For good?”

  A boulder lodged in his throat. “Yes.”

  “Good. Did you send her away with your baby?”

  Rashad threw his head back in torment. “No. There’s no possibility.”

  “That’s even better. The wound that bleeds inwardly is the most dangerous. Tell me what’s going on that has you writhing body and soul.”

  Rashad’s pacing came to a halt. “When we buried grandfather four months ago, was he wearing his medallion?”

  The change of subject caught his father off guard. “Who told you he wasn’t?” he snapped uncharacteristically.

  Pain shot through Rashad. Lauren’s truth was the truth. He was crucified all over again with that knowledge.

  “No one,” he whispered.

  “Since you know he wasn’t wearing it, why did you ask me?”

  Rashad shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. I just wanted you to know it’s been found.” He reached in his pocket and drew out the medallion and chain. After staring at it for a minute, he put it in his father’s hand.

  Dumbfounded, his father eyed Rashad strangely. “How did you come by it?”

  Rashad drew up a chair next to him. “The American woman was wearing it around her neck when I flew her to the palace more dead than alive.”

  His father’s eyes filled with wonder. “Go on.”

  “Yes. Go on,” his mother said. She’d come in the bedroom without Rashad being aware of it. She looked like an older version of Basmah, tall and lovely. She sat down on the bed next to his father.

  For the next little while Rashad told them everything from the beginning, leaving nothing out. When he’d finished, his father said, “And throughout all this business, you fell in love.”

  “Yes.” Rashad jumped up from the chair, unable to contain his emotions. “But she has Grandfather’s blood in her just as I do.” Nothing could have shocked him more in his life. No news could have devastated him more.

  His father nodded. “Now I understand why you feel you can never see her again.”

  Rashad stared at his parents for a long time. “I realize I’m a great disappointment to the two of you, but what I felt for her went beyond honor or duty the moment I carried her from the sand to the helicopter. It felt as though she’d been delivered to me. For me…

  “Before I found out we had a grandfather in common, I planned to come to you and tell you I couldn’t go through with the marriage to Princess Azzah because I intended to marry Lauren. When I took her to the Garden of the Moon, I realized I couldn’t live without her.”

  His mother eyed him with tenderness. “That doesn’t surprise me. You’ve always been led by what you believed in your heart, Rashad. I’ve been listening to everything you’ve said.” She looked at his father. “I think it’s time we told him, Umar. Don’t you? I know we agreed not to as long as it wasn’t necessary, but now I know that it is.”

  “Tell me what?” He couldn’t imagine.

  “If you want to know the answer, you need to be patient enough to sit down and listen to a story,” his father chastised him.

  His mother smiled. “It’s a story you’ll like.”

  That’s what she’d always said when he was a boy too restless to hear all the words between the beginning and the end.

  “Forgive me, Mother, but I’m not eight years old anymore.”

  “No,” she murmured. “That’s why you have to listen to your father.”

  His father cleared his throat. “It begins on the night I was camped on the desert with our patrols because there’d been a raid on one of our villages and we were keeping a watch out for more. I decided to scout around. My right hand, Saud, rode with me.”

  Yes. He knew. There was no man Umar had loved more than his childhood friend, Saud, but Rashad had heard the story many times of how Saud had protected his father from death before meeting his own, and he couldn’t imagine what this was leading up to.

  “The assassins had stormed through Saud’s village first and killed many of the women and children, Saud’s wife included.”

  Yes, he knew that, too. His father had ridden to that village and had found her lying in a pool of blood.

  “What you don’t know was that she’d delivered a baby that night who lay under her.”

  That did surprise, Rashad. His eyes swerved to his father’s.

  “He was still alive.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ON THE MORNING FOLLOWING her flight from Al-Shafeeq, Lauren drove to the cemetery and put white daisies on all three of the family graves. She lingered over her grandmother’s.

  “I took the trip you took, Grandmother, and guess what? I, too, fell in love with a great Prince of the desert, but our love wasn’t meant to be. Instead of bringing home his baby beneath my heart, I have two cigar boxes, one with his father’s image on the top, the other of your beloved Malik. I don’t even have a photograph of Rafi.” Tears dropped onto the marker.

  “Like you, I can’t go back to get one. All I could do was leave the medallion. It’s in the hands of the man I love. Help me find a way to survive, Grandmother. Please.”

  Unwilling for people to see her in this condition, Lauren hurriedly left the cemetery and drove back to the apartment. She knew she had to keep busy or go insane and decided she would start some major housecleaning. One day soon she’d phone her friends, but not right now.

  After parking her car on the street behind two limos, she got out, then came to a complete standstill. At least ten men wearing native robes and headscarves blocked the main entrance. Her heart jumped at the sight of them.

  “Mademoiselle Viret?”

  “Nazir—” she cried, shocked at the sound of the familiar voice.

  He walked over to her. “Bonjour, mademoiselle.” He smiled. “Please forgive the intrusion. If you would be so good as to come with us, we’ll escort you to the plane King Umar has sent for you.” The group had surrounded her, leaving her with little room to maneuver.

  Her legs felt like water. “Don’t you mean Prince Rashad?” Why would he do this now? It was a cruelty she wouldn’t have expected of him. There could be nothing between them.

  “No, mademoiselle. The king wishes you to return immediately. He would have come, but he can’t travel in his condition. He asks if you will be kind enough to spend a few days at Al-Shafeeq with him and his family. He would like to meet Princess Lauren, the American granddaughter of King Malik.”

  Princess—

  This meant Rashad had told his father everything. Lauren couldn’t stop her body from trembling. “Much as I would love to meet him, I can’t.” She needed to root Rafi out of her heart. Of course that would never be possible, but to return to Al-Shafeeq…

  “Prince Rashad predicted you would say that. He asked me to tell you that he will be away from the palace while you’re there.”

  Her pain grew worse.

  “Since he won’t be present, he says there’s no reason for you not to come. It will make his father and mother and his sisters very happy, unless you can’t forgive him for a deception he felt compelled to carry out at the time for the safety of his family.”

  She rubbed her temples where she felt a headache coming on from all her crying.

  “He at least asks you to forgive him as you would one who believes that the ways of his tribe are the laws of nature.”

  Oh, Rafi. Another one of his unique sayings that made her want to laugh and cry at the same time. This one wound its way into her heart with the rest of them.

  She bit her lip. “Ar
e you saying the king wants me to come now?”

  “Yes. He hoped it would be a good time since you haven’t yet settled back in to your home here.”

  Rafi might not be at the Oasis right now, but he knew her whereabouts and had eyes in the back of his head. “I would have to pack.”

  “The prince says that unlike other tourists you are a master at packing lightly. He is very impressed.”

  Oh Rafi…

  “The King urges you to come. He says to remind you he’s not well. He may not be your father, but you share the same blood and he already loves you as his half-daughter. He’s aware your own father died before you could get to know him. Will you please accept him as your second father and allow him to spoil you a little bit?”

  Her eyes smarted. Sheer blackmail.

  Like father like son.

  Lauren found King Umar to be much like any father and grandfather, surrounded by his family and loving it. The real miracle was that Lauren was a legitimate part of that family. He and his wife accepted her as if she were their long-lost daughter.

  For three days they’d gathered at meal times in the king’s sitting room to hear the story of her grand mother’s great love affair with King Malik.

  Naturally the conversation turned to Lauren and the things she’d done with her life. The older children bombarded her with questions about the places she’d traveled, the sights she’d seen when Richard Bancroft had been alive to take her on some of his expeditions.

  On the third afternoon, Farah asked Lauren to go on a horseback ride with her around the perimeter of the Oasis. Knowing she’d ridden Zia before, Abdul had the mare saddled and ready for her. The horse made a nickering sound and nudged Lauren in greeting. When she mounted her, the memories were so overwhelming, it was almost debilitating for her.

  “The family loves you, Lauren.” She and Farah rode side by side. Their bodyguards went along at a discreet distance.

  “I love all of you.”

  “Before you leave, there’s something you should know.”

  Lauren couldn’t do this anymore. “Farah—if this is about your brother, I’d rather nothing was said.”