He sounded stern, almost angry.
She met his gaze, knowing other people had found the decision hard to accept but wanting this man to understand.
‘I did it willingly. It was my idea to carry their child—you have to believe that. Oh, I knew the dangers. I knew I couldn’t get too emotionally attached to the baby, but Bill and Oliver were so besotted that was easy.’
‘Until the accident?’
Emotion closed her throat again but she was not going to cry! Not again!
Instead she nodded.
‘Bill was killed, Oliver is in a coma, and the poor baby is in limbo.’
‘But surely now you’ll keep him or her,’ Khalifa protested.
Liz sighed.
‘You’d think it would be that easy, wouldn’t you? But, in fact, if Oliver comes out of the coma, and if he still wants the baby, really it’s his.’ She tried for a smile but knew it hadn’t worked too well when Khalifa reached out and drew her close again, holding her against his body, stirring her body so heat moved in places she hadn’t known existed and tremors of excitement not only fizzed but bounded along her nerves.
She wanted to snuggle closer, to bury herself in him—not an easy task given the size she was—but to lose herself in sensation for just a short time would be so blissful, so soul-restoring. She snuggled just a little bit…
* * *
The kiss began as nothing. All he did was hold her close to comfort her, then press his lips against a bit of skin that was right there beside them. The pale bit near her temple where a pulse fluttered as his lips touched it.
How it became a lip kiss he later couldn’t work out, but lips had certainly been involved and awkward as it had been in the front of a vehicle, with a very pregnant woman, it had galvanised his body in a way he’d never felt before.
She tasted of peach and honey and warmth and woman, her lips opening to him, her breath coming in little gasps that tightened his body even more. His hands found her breasts, and a tiny moan escaped her lips, catching on his tongue—igniting him.
A thousand reasons not to be here—not to be doing this—were thundering in his head, but nothing mattered except the kiss…and holding her and having her kiss him, feeling her hot, soft body up against his, tasting the honey and the peaches and the woman…
He supposed it had to end, yet he felt distinctly put out when she drew away, rubbing her hands across her face then turning to look at him.
‘Oh, I’m sorry!’ she cried. ‘Oh for heaven’s sake! I can’t believe I did that!’
He was assuming she meant the kiss, but when she pulled a handkerchief from her handbag and reached out towards him, he realised the kiss, apparently, had meant nothing more than comfort and her distress was the result of something quite different.
As she rubbed ineffectually at a bright yellow streak of saffron across his kandora, he wasn’t sure whether to be offended or amused.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he told her, taking her hand and closing it gently over the handkerchief.
She looked at him now, at his face—met his eyes, her own seeming naked, defenceless, without the terrible glasses.
‘None of it?’ she asked.
‘Ah!’ he said. ‘As to that, I don’t know! Can you deny the attraction between us?’
A shake of her head, a grimace, then she sighed.
‘At least I can blame my hormones being out of kilter,’ she said, attempting a smile so valiant it made his toes curl. ‘What’s your excuse?’
And when he didn’t answer—how could he when he didn’t know?—she spoke again.
‘And what’s even more bizarre is how you could possibly be attracted to so hugely pregnant a woman? Is it a kinky thing?’
He laughed and reached out to push the hair back off her face.
‘I’ve no idea,’ he told her, knowing she deserved honesty. ‘Though I can tell you I’ve seen my fair share of pregnant women and it’s never happened to me before.’
‘Which is probably a good thing,’ Liz replied, the sternness in her voice belied by the smile with which she said the words. ‘So let’s put it down to an aberration and ignore it,’ she suggested. ‘I’ve got a job to do and from all I hear you’ve got about a hundred different duties on top of your hospital work, so we’ve really no time for a dalliance.’
‘Dalliance?’ he echoed, not knowing the word.
‘A little fling—a flirtation—that kind of thing,’ she told him.
‘Ah,’ he said again, and wondered just what else there was to say.
Not that she gave him a chance.
‘It was just a kiss,’ she said, setting her glasses firmly back in place. ‘Let’s not make too much of it. Now you know where I am at the moment, you’ll understand I don’t need any further complications. I’m here to do a job and I’ll do it. I’ll get the unit going for you then return home to have this baby and sort out something for it. Honestly, Khalifa, that’s about all I can cope with at the moment.’
He heard truth in her words—heart-rending truth—and marvelled that she’d coped as well as she had up to now. He wanted to tell her how much he admired her, and offer any help within his power, but she’d obviously decided the conversation was finished for she was clambering out of the car then steadying herself on the door as she slid off her sandals.
‘Do you realise this is the first bit of desert I’ve seen since the plane landed and I saw sand hills in the distance? I want to feel the sand, to see if it’s as soft as it looks.’
She stepped away from the car, squishing her feet in the sand, then bent to take a handful and let it fall like water from her fingers.
‘It is!’ she called to him, her delight so obvious he had to smile.
And had to join her as she climbed the hill. He took her hand as it grew steeper and hauled her up to the top.
They sat together, not too close but close enough that he knew she could feel his warmth as he felt hers. Not far away a random gust of wind stirred the sand into an eddy.
‘There’s a sand sprite,’ he said, pointing to it.
‘We’d call it a whirly-whirly,’ she said, as the lifting twirl of sand danced across the surface of the dune.
‘But are your whirly-whirlies real?’ Khalifa asked her.
‘Real?’
He nodded, smiling at her surprise.
‘My people believe the sand sprites are good spirits—a little like djinns but less mischievous. There’s a story of a sand sprite we tell the children.’
Liz lay back in the sand, so at ease with this man she barely knew, so delighted to be in this strange place, she wanted the moment to go on and on.
‘Tell me?’
He smiled at her, then relaxed, easing back on to one elbow so he could watch her face as he talked.
‘The legend tells us that once, long ago, there was a sand sprite who had magical powers. At night she turned into a beautiful woman, and she went about the land, fixing things that the djinns had interfered with, making things right for people, helping them.’
He paused then added, ‘Not unlike a certain Australian doctor in that way.’
‘I’ve been doing my job, nothing more. Just get on with the story.’ She was embarrassed by his words but not as embarrassed as she felt every time she saw the smear of yellow across his white gown, or thought of how she’d reacted to his kiss.
‘Well, one night she met a prince who was so handsome and dashing she couldn’t help but fall in love with him, so now, every night, instead of doing good deeds she sought out the prince and spent her time as a human kissing him.’
‘Which just shows the danger of kisses,’ Liz put in, only half joking.
‘It does,’ Khalifa agreed very solemnly, ‘for kisses led to other things and in the end they spent a night making love, but what the sand sprite didn’t realise was that once she’d made love with a human, she couldn’t go back to being a sand sprite ever again and had to stay as a human for ever.’
‘The
y made love? This is a children’s story?’ Liz queried.
Khalifa grinned at her.
‘In the children’s version they get married.’
‘But if it’s told as a cautionary tale, what’s the catch?
Did they not live happily ever after? Did she prefer being a sand sprite to being human and pine away and die? Did the djinns take over the world, without her to undo their mischief?’
‘I’m not entirely sure,’ Khalifa admitted. ‘My grandmother told me the story and her stories usually carried a warning of some kind. “Be good or the djinns will get you” was the most common.’
‘Perhaps the story was more for girls,’ Liz offered. ‘A warning about the dangers of kissing handsome princes.’
She sat up and dusted the sand off her hands, then gasped in wonder as she turned and caught the full beauty of a desert sunset. Above the sea of dunes, the sky was aglow with orange fire, streaks of red along the horizon and paler gold melting into the dark blue of the evening sky.
‘I hope she came to life in time to see this every evening,’ Liz whispered, reaching out to rest her hand on Khalifa’s because she had to share the beauty and the wonder of it, for all she knew touching him was dangerous.
‘I’m sure she did,’ he told her.
They sat in silence, hand in hand, until the colours faded from the sky, then he helped her to her feet and steadied her as they clambered down the sand hill and back to the vehicle.
‘Thank you,’ she said, when she’d fastened her seat belt and he was about to shut the door. ‘Thank you for giving me comfort when I needed it, for telling me the story, and most of all for sharing the beauty of that sunset with me.’
He touched her lightly on the cheek.
‘It was my pleasure,’ he said, and for some obscure reason the words made her feel sad again, as if something wonderful had ended when, in fact, there was so much still ahead. The palace, and seeing more of this magical country, and then there was her job—setting up the new unit—a challenge she’d been looking forward to.
So maybe the sadness was hunger.
She was silent as he drove back to the main road, silent as they passed through the outskirts of the city, where streetlights were coming on and the dusk masked any difference she might have noticed in daylight. But as they approached the palace Khalifa watched her turning this way and that as if the rammed-earth walls of what had been an old fort needed to be viewed from many different angles.
‘This is your palace?’
‘Close,’ he told her. ‘The fort was built in ancient times. See the turrets there along the western wall? They were the lookouts for the enemies.’
‘Did enemies only come from the west?’
‘Foreign enemies,’ he admitted. ‘Though there were plenty of fights between the tribes themselves but that was more a sport—which team would win the competition this year, that kind of thing. When foreign enemies came, all the teams—the tribes—joined together.’
The vast wooden gate into the fort swung open as the car approached, the two men who had lived to open the doors now replaced by an automatic opening mechanism. Although the two men still sat, one of either side of the door, rising to their feet and saluting as he drove in.
‘Oh!’
A small sound, but enough to delight him, for it told him Liz had been startled by the beauty of the courtyard that lay behind the walls. Formally laid out with a sparkling fountain in the centre, it held fruit trees as well as ornamental plants, and gardens filled with roses, all now in full bloom.
‘It’s unbelievable,’ she said. ‘To see such beauty when all around is dry and barren. Of course the desert is beautiful, too, in its own way, but this is lovely.’
She shook her head and Khalifa was filled with absurd happiness at her appreciation.
‘Has it always been this way?’ she asked, as he pulled up at the bottom of a shallow flight of steps that led up to the veranda in front of the guest quarters.
‘Always,’ he said. ‘I think I told you Najme was built on an oasis. Many centuries ago the caliph—that is our term for highness—ordered water to be channelled underground so the garden would always be green. And although the gates are kept closed at night, by day anyone can enter the courtyard and rest in the garden. Children can splash in the fountain and their mothers can pick fruit. The rule is you take only what you and your family will eat that day, so there is always plenty for everyone.’
‘And that happens? People take only what they need?’
‘Of course,’ he said, but in his head he was putting the words into another context, remembering the kiss, certain from her reaction that she’d taken only what she’d needed—comfort—from it. Then she’d warned him off. Put it down as an aberration, she’d said.
Which was just as well, given his track record with pregnant women! An image of Zara popped obligingly into his head and he knew with total certainty that nothing must come of the attraction.
CHAPTER SEVEN
LIZ was still gazing around at the lush colour of the courtyard, unable to believe such beauty had been hidden behind the dull red walls of the fort. Khalifa opened the door and helped her down from the car and his touch on her arm not only brought the usual reactions but with them a determination to ignore all physical manifestations of this attraction and to steer clear of this man whenever possible. She would treat him as her boss, nothing more—no chats or teasing or bleating out her problems…
He led the way up shallow steps and kicked off his sandals at the front door. She stared at the jumbled collection of sandals already there and forgot her good intentions, reaching out to hold his shoulder as she slid her own sandals off, asking, at the same time, ‘This is a guest house? Do you have so many guests? There must be more than a dozen pairs of sandals lined up there.’
He steadied her then bent to add her sandals to the rather ragged line, then pointed out the small pairs.
‘Four children, I would say, although my grandmother has tiny feet so if she’s back from the Endless Desert one pair could be hers. Then the…’
He paused, frowning, and Liz wondered if he recognised one pair in particular, but when he continued, she realised he’d been working out how to explain.
‘We have young women who look after the house and cook and mind the children. They are not exactly servants for they are usually related—members of our tribe—and their families live here with them so all the children grow up together. My child, if she had lived, would have grown up with the other children, and everyone who is in the house for a meal sits down together for it—all the women and children.’
It sounded very democratic, yet Liz had to ask.
‘And the men?’
‘In the past, when we were nomadic and our people roamed the desert, the men ate together by the fire outside the tent. This was to guard the women and the children inside. They could also discuss the days ahead, plan hunting trips or forays into foreign territories. Now the men talk politics, which is probably the same thing, but many men now eat with their wives and children—the evening meal at least. Many of the family now live in Al Jabaya, so you’ll find mainly older family members here and the young women who look after them.’
He was leading the way into a wide vestibule as he spoke and Liz followed, although her mind had snagged on the image of the fire outside the big tent, the men around it, cleaning guns perhaps, guarding their women and children.
‘Khalifa!’
The first child who appeared was a very small girl who raced towards Liz’s boss and threw herself into his arms. Other children followed, then a couple of older women, three young women, heads demurely covered with bright scarves, but their faces alight with happiness at seeing the man she was with.
‘This is Dr Jones,’ he said to the gathering crowd. ‘I would introduce you all, but learning too many names at once will confuse her. Who will be taking care of her?’
A young woman in a blue headscarf stepped forward.
‘And I am Liz,’ Liz told her, stepping forward and holding out her hand.
Mori took it shyly and gently squeezed Liz’s fingers then said, ‘If you would like to come this way, you can rest before dinner.’
Liz began to follow, then realised she hadn’t thanked Khalifa for bringing her here. But when she turned he’d moved away and was deep in conversation with an older woman in black. The woman’s hand was resting on his arm, and from the way he looked at her—with love, Liz thought—it had to be his grandmother.
She wanted to ask if the baby’s mother’s relations had been found, but Mori was moving further away and one glance down the seemingly endless corridor off the vestibule told Liz if she didn’t follow she might be lost for ever.
The room Mori showed her into was bigger than her entire flat back home, the en suite bathroom the size of her living room. The floor was tiled in what looked like marble, the walls the dark pinkish red she’d seen on buildings in the city, but they were striped with horizontal bands of gold that matched the elaborate patterns woven in gold thread in the curtains around the bed, and the gold and red embroidery on the thick carpet beneath her feet.
‘This is beautiful,’ she breathed. ‘All the colours of the sunset over the desert dunes.’
‘Khalifa calls it the sunset room. When he rebuilt the palace so he’d have a home in Najme he named all the guest rooms.’
Did he, now? Liz thought, pleased with this tiny glimpse into a sentimental part of the man she was only beginning to know.
Beginning and ending, she told herself. He’d comforted her when she’d needed it, and comfort had led to a kiss, but her life was already swamped in confusion, and she had no intention of making it even more convoluted by giving in to her attraction to the man.
She opened her small bag and realised that just about everything in it was dirty. She’d gone through all but one of the outfits she’d brought with her. This last she’d shoved in on the off chance she might have to get dressed up some time—a long, floaty dress in different shades of blue. Holding it up, she wondered whether it was appropriate, but Mori, looking at it, assured her it was beautiful and that most of the women dressed up for dinner.
The Sheikh and the Surrogate Mum Page 9