by Trish Morey
And she welcomed finding more.
The car slowed, even as her heart raced. Dinner with Rashid. Could they really be friends? After today, she wanted to believe it possible.
He was still holding her hand when the car pulled up to the steps. She liked the feel of her hand in his. She liked the way it made her feel, liked that today their hitherto stumbling relationship had advanced to another level, one that involved both trust and respect.
There was someone there waiting for them, standing on the steps in addition to the guard of honour that seemed to grace their every entry and exit. Someone tall and broad-shouldered with deep black hair and he was looking at their car and smiling.
‘Who is that man?’ she said, and Rashid looked to where she was indicating.
‘Zoltan!’ he said, with a wide smile. A man Rashid was clearly beyond excited to see from the way he didn’t notice when she slipped her hand from his, and Tora figured the dinner invitation was off.
* * *
‘Zoltan!’ Rashid called as he jumped from the car. ‘You’re early.’
Rashid ran up the steps and pulled his friend into a hug. ‘I was told you were arriving tomorrow.’
Zoltan laughed. ‘I thought I’d surprise you.’
‘It is a good surprise. Thank you for coming. You don’t know what this means to me.’
‘To me, too. Whoever thought a humble orphan child turned petroleum and gas billionaire would ever finally make good?’ he joked before turning serious. ‘You have had a rough ride of it lately, I understand.’
Rashid shook his head. ‘I am glad you could come. There is so much to tell you.’
‘Tell me over dinner.’
And Rashid suddenly remembered and looked around, to where the cars of the convoy were spilling their contents, but with Tora nowhere to be seen.
‘Tora,’ he said. He’d asked her to have dinner with him and now she was gone and he felt her absence like a sudden hole in a perfect day.
‘What did you say?’ Zoltan asked, and Rashid once again felt the jolt of pleasure that his brother was here. It was probably for the best that she’d gone, he thought, given the circumstances. At least it saved an awkward introduction. With any luck, Zoltan wouldn’t have heard he was married. He’d save that gem for later. There were more important matters to discuss right now.
‘So tell me,’ he said, turning his back on the hollow feeling in his gut as he led Zoltan into the palace. ‘How are Aisha and the family?’
* * *
It was for the best, Tora told herself as she made her way back to her suite. He was so excited to see his friend, he would have regretted asking her to have dinner with him the instant he saw him. Besides, dinner would have been pointless. It was all so pointless. She would be going home soon and leaving this world behind. Why establish links that would have to be broken?
Because when it all came down to it, this wasn’t about her. This was about ensuring a bond between Rashid and Atiyah, and the signs were heartening.
It was enough.
Yousra was waiting for her in her apartments, singing to Atiyah as she rocked the baby’s cradle. She looked so relieved when she saw Tora coming, Tora thought the girl was going to burst into tears.
‘How was she?’ Tora whispered with a frown, peeking over into the cot expecting to find a sleeping child, only to find two dark eyes that immediately locked onto hers and widened before her face crumpled and she started wailing before Tora could duck out of the way.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said to Yousra, scooping the child into her arms. ‘I shouldn’t have left her.’ After all the turmoil she’d already suffered, all the losses, Atiyah had grown used to having Tora around, only for Tora to disappear for hours, and her heart was breaking for the little girl. She should never have agreed to go with Rashid.
And she knew she couldn’t afford to think that way. Knew that it was wrong. She couldn’t afford to become a fixture in this child’s life, and yet already it was happening. She should have returned home as she’d been supposed to. She should have handed Atiyah over and walked away. And she would have, if Rashid hadn’t come up with this whole crazy marriage deal.
And now the longer she stayed, the harder it would become because the more attached to her Atiyah would become, and one day soon she’d be leaving for good and Atiyah would be hurt all over again.
She swayed as she pressed her lips to Atiyah’s soft curls and felt tears sting her own eyes as Atiyah’s tears threatened to rip out her heart. Staying longer was such a double-edged sword. It gave Atiyah security for a little while. But it gave Tora more time to fall in love with a precious dark-eyed child.
She’d never felt this way about one of her charges before. She’d never come so close to feeling what a mother must feel—protective and defensive and determined that she should have only the best of everything, including love. But then, she’d never had such a tiny baby to look after.
If only Rashid had been more accepting of his sister in the start. If only she hadn’t felt as if she had to compensate, to give Atiyah the love she should have got from him.
Damn.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
NIGHT FELL FAST, the way it seemed to do here, the daylight hurrying away to make way for the night. Atiyah settled the same way, her bellowing cries becoming snuffles and then sniffs and before long sleep had overtaken her. Tora knew she had to wean herself off Atiyah and take a back-seat role in looking after her, but still she sent Yousra to visit her family and have a night off after her trying day. She’d talk to Rashid tomorrow about getting an extra carer then. He was busy with his friend tonight and, besides, for now she was happy to sit back and relax with the meal they’d had sent up to her and check her emails.
She smiled when she found one from Sally with the subject line I love you!
After she’d read the message, she was sniffing and there were tears in her eyes for the second time tonight. Steve was doing all the right things according to his test results and he was ready to be transferred to Germany. Sally had been able to tell the doctors to get the ball rolling.
They wouldn’t waste any time now. If all went well and Steve could hang in there, Sally wrote, he’d be on his way within the next day or so towards the treatment that could save his life. And there were no promises, she said, being brave, but it was the only chance he had and they were staying positive and whatever happened, she owed Tora a debt she could never repay.
Happy news, Tora thought, blinking away the tears. The very best kind of news. And she was glad of Rashid’s deal now, for all the grief it had caused her, and for all the grief it would inevitably cause her when she had to return home.
It would be worth it if the treatment worked.
It would all be worth it.
* * *
‘So what’s she like, this half-sister of yours?’ Zoltan asked, plucking grapes from a bunch on a platter. They were seated on low sofas in one of the palace reception rooms that had doors that opened onto the gardens so that the scent of frangipani wafted in.
‘I don’t really know,’ Rashid said. ‘She’s a baby.’ But then he thought about Tora leading him to Atiyah’s cradle to look down upon the sleeping infant and felt a pang of pride. ‘She’s a cute little thing, though.’
‘Huh,’ said Zoltan. ‘That’s all you can say? Spoken like a man who hasn’t had children yet. Just wait until you have your own. You won’t be so vague about the details then. You’ll be hanging out for that first smile and that first tooth.’
Rashid snorted. ‘Dream on,’ he said, because even if he was warming to the child, he wasn’t about to go all gooey over her any time soon. Not like Tora at least, who had been so excited about Atiyah smiling.
‘That’s where you’re wrong, brother,’ Zoltan said, waving a grape between his thumb and
forefinger for emphasis, ‘An Emir needs an heir. So you don’t want to wait too long—you’re not getting any younger.’ He popped the grape between his teeth and crunched down.
Rashid shook his head. Just because he’d had some kind of epiphany out at the oasis today, didn’t mean he was looking to ensure there were an heir and a spare any time soon. ‘Give me a break, Zoltan. One thing at a time.’
‘Not a chance. Now you’ll have to find yourself a wife. Last desert brother standing, but not for long. You don’t have a choice any more. Your footloose and fancy-free playboy days are toast.’
It was all Rashid could do to stop from blurting the news that in actual fact he was married, just to shut his friend up. Because that would be a mistake and there would be no shutting Zoltan up once he learned that particular snippet of information. What was more, he’d be off and running, firing off messages to Bahir and Kadar before they got here, get their wives all excited in the process, and Rashid would never hear the end of it.
No, he had serious stuff to get done before he let that particular cat out of the bag. He didn’t want them to know about Tora just yet. He didn’t want them making a bigger deal out of it than it was. Let them find out in their own good time—but by then he’d be halfway to sending her home.
Although why that left him suddenly cold, he wasn’t entirely sure.
‘You make marriage sound such fun,’ he said, suddenly grumpy, and not just because he knew for a fact that it wasn’t fun and that in his case it was nothing more than the means to an end. ‘Anyway,’ he said, needing to change the subject, ‘I didn’t ask you here to talk about my love life. Let’s get to work.’
* * *
Rashid stood on his terrace, his hands spread wide apart on the balustrade, looking up at the inky sky. Below in the gardens the fountains played and the birds settled in for the night, the world at peace.
While inside him his emotions clashed and raged in a war that had forgotten what peace was. It didn’t seem to matter the decision he’d made today, or maybe his emotions clashed because of it.
Duty.
Self-doubt.
Fear.
Duty.
It always came back to duty.
His heart thumped like a drum, a tattoo cursing the ever-present, inescapable duty. His stomach squeezed tight and he inhaled the dark night air in response to the bite of pain. It didn’t matter what he’d decided out in the desert today, his first session with Zoltan had given him no comfort. There was so much to do. So much he needed to learn. So many doubts about what was possible to best help this country and its people...
Fear.
He wasn’t used to feeling fear.
He had never failed at anything he had put his hand to, but then he had made choices that reflected his desires and wants. He’d decided his path. He’d worked hard and acted on hunches and educated guesses and he’d been successful by taking calculated risks and when those hunches had paid off. But it had always been his choice to do those things and follow that path.
Never before had he been sucked into a bottomless pit from which there was no escaping and where there was no choice.
Duty.
Self-doubt.
Fear.
Together they tangled and churned until his gut felt battered and heaving and one thing emerged victorious from the mayhem, as if that one thing had been lying in wait, ready to step into the void.
Need.
Powerful and insistent, it rose up like a mushroom cloud that reached out to fill every part of him. He turned and looked along the terrace, towards her suite, to where the glow from her lamps spilled into puddles.
Tora.
Talking to her today had been the one thing that had let him make sense of the tangled thoughts in his mind when nothing else had. She had listened and understood. She had shown him the simple fun of paddling.
And he had repaid her by leaving her cold.
And without being aware that he’d made a decision, his feet started walking.
Towards the light.
Towards Tora.
* * *
She should be sleeping. She kept telling herself to put the book down, but she was reading a book about Qajaran, about its treasures and its colourful history and the wars and crusades that had touched its shores and crossed its desert borders, and she was fascinated. And being right here, in the Old Palace that had seen so much of what she was reading, brought it all to life.
Just one more chapter, she promised herself as she glanced at the clock and turned the page anyway.
She jumped at the soft rap on the glass, her heart giving a crazy leap in her chest so that she almost didn’t hear when the tap came again. She slid from the bed, her feet cool on the marble tiles, and pulled on a robe, because, whoever it was, she wasn’t going to be caught on the terrace in just her nightgown again.
‘Tora,’ she heard, and she didn’t know whether to be worried or relieved when she recognised Rashid’s voice. ‘Are you awake?’
The door to the terrace was open to let in the breeze, but she stayed her side of the filmy curtain, just inside the room, an invisible barrier between them. ‘What do you want?’
He shook his head as if he didn’t know why he was here, standing outside her door in the middle of the night. ‘I don’t... No, nothing. I wanted to apologise for how things worked out tonight. For leaving you in the lurch when Zoltan arrived.’
‘It’s okay. I understand. Your friend would be wanting to catch up with you.’
He nodded. ‘And,’ he said, his lips pulling to one side as he struggled with the words, his eyes troubled, ‘I just wanted to see you.’
Her heart tripped and her breath caught in her throat. Her mind told her it meant nothing—but her heart...her heart wanted to believe the words he had said, just a little. ‘I had a good day today, thank you.’
‘Good. I didn’t have a chance to thank you. For your thoughts. I will speak to Kareem tomorrow.’
And she remembered that she’d wanted to talk to Rashid, too, about changing the arrangements for Atiyah, so that she wouldn’t grow too fond of her, but that could wait, because right now the night air wore a velvet glove that stroked her skin, bringing with it the scent of him, warm and musky, masculine and spicy, much like Qajaran itself.
And she remembered another night, and her head on his shoulder, drinking in that scent, thinking it would never get old, that she would never get enough of it.
‘What’s it like,’ he said suddenly into the silence, ‘when a baby smiles?’
She blinked at the question, wondering where it had come from when this was a man for whom babies didn’t seem to register. ‘It’s like sunshine in a hug,’ she said. ‘It’s like the world lights up and wraps you in love.’
He nodded, but his eyes looked as conflicted as ever, as if he was warring with himself, and she wondered what he’d made of what she’d said or what he’d expected to hear. ‘Good. I would like to see that. I won’t keep you any longer.’ He turned to leave, but he looked so tortured, this man who had the weight of Qajaran on his shoulders, that she couldn’t bear him to go like that, so she touched his forearm.
‘Rashid?’
He looked down at her hand as if it were a foreign object. ‘Yes?’
She pulled herself up, and pressed her lips to his fevered skin, a kiss that was tender and sweet, a kiss designed to soothe rather than inflame. ‘Thank you, for coming by,’ she said, before letting go and drawing back into the relative safety of her suite. ‘Goodnight.’
* * *
He was still too keyed up to sleep. Rashid lingered on the terrace under the soft dark sky lit with its sliver of moon and sprinkle of stars and breathed deeply of the night air, air that came scented with frangipani and the blossom of lemon and lime, the ache in
his belly subsided for now, the factions raging inside him finding an uneasy truce.
Only the need remained undiminished.
Need for a woman who gentled away his fears merely by her presence and her own evocative perfume and the press of her lips gentle on his cheek. Need for a woman it had taken every ounce of his self-control not to pull her to him and forcibly satisfy.
The need—and something else he couldn’t quite put his finger on.
* * *
He went to sleep dreaming of Tora and her honeyed voice that played in his mind over and over, so that he woke with it still in his head.
He asked Kareem when they met over breakfast if he knew it, a lullaby about oranges and apricots and fat pigeons. ‘It seems familiar but I cannot work out where I have heard it before.’
Kareem regarded him solemnly, his eyes a little sad. ‘You would have heard it, of course. It is a classic Persian lullaby, very popular, very beautiful. It is a song your mother used to sing to you when you were just a baby.’
Sensation skittered down his spine like spiders’ legs. ‘But my mother died when I was just a few months old. Surely I couldn’t remember that?’
The older man shrugged. ‘Perhaps your father sang it after she was gone. Who can say? But it is something left to you from your parents—a link to your past—something to be treasured.’
He sat back in his chair with his hand to his head. Treasured? For the life of him he couldn’t picture himself with his father, let alone imagine his father singing him a lullaby. He might have believed it once, but not now. It didn’t fit with a man who had hidden himself from his son for thirty years.
Kareem smiled sadly. ‘He loved you, Rashid. I know that it is hard for you to believe, but, for better or for worse, he did what he had to do. As you, his son, have to do.’
Rashid sighed.
His father loved him? Why did he have such a hard time believing it?
* * *
‘So when can I meet her?’ Zoltan asked after a heavy morning going through protocols and affairs of state with Rashid and Kareem and the Council of Elders.