‘At night?’ she said, curving the suspicion of a smile.
‘Perhaps there was a prancing stallion involved,’ he suggested with more than a suspicion of irony.
‘In fact, there was,’ she said, blunt as ever. She was glad of the new ease between them, and didn’t want to do anything to put a spoke in that.
‘So how did I look?’ he asked.
She shrugged. ‘Pretty good, considering there’s no prancing stallion in the mix.’
He smiled. ‘Only pretty good?’
She felt the heat of Shazim’s smile in every part of her body as they walked side by side, back to the clinic.
‘Anyway, welcome again to Q’Aqabi,’ he said as he opened the door. ‘I hope your first working day went well?’
‘I couldn’t have asked for more,’ she said honestly.
Breath hitched in her throat as Shazim paid her the compliment of the traditional Q’Aqabian greeting, touching his forehead, his lips and then his heart. ‘I hope you will be very happy here, Isla Sinclair.’
For the first time, she felt like curtseying to him, but a shiver of arousal soon chased that thought away, and she confined herself to a circumspect response. ‘Thank you, Your Majesty.’
‘Shazim,’ he reminded her, fixing his stare on hers.
‘Shazim,’ she repeated softly, thinking his eyes were as deep and dark as the ocean—and her heart was going crazy.
If Shazim had been attractive before, he was a devastating distraction in the desert. He seemed more primal here, and his power was undeniable in a land where physical strength and understanding of the wilderness could save lives.
She also knew what she was doing, Isla reassured herself. She might not know the desert as well as Shazim, but she was confident in her ability, and in her common sense, and all she asked for was to be a small but vital cog in the engine that drove Shazim’s conservation project.
‘Well,’ she said when he closed the door behind them. ‘What now? Are we heading back to the palace?’
‘Not yet.’
A ripple of alarm attacked her, until Shazim explained. ‘Now we relax, swim, celebrate—there’s a village nearby where a new underground spring has been discovered. I thought you’d like to come with me and join in the celebrations. You’d be meeting some of the people you’d be working for. This is their land. We are only their servants, and you should meet them.’
‘Of course.’ She was eager to meet the local people...though the thought of going deeper into the wilderness with Shazim was daunting.
* * *
‘Oh, no—I don’t ride,’ Isla protested when they went outside to find that one of the rangers had brought up two horses.
‘You must ride. You have to for this trip,’ Shazim insisted. ‘It’s the quickest way for us to reach the village.’
His reproving stare acted like a firm hand moving slowly across her body, until the desire to see more of the desert with Shazim became an irresistible urge.
‘You’ll need some suitable headgear,’ he said, staring with a frown at her safari hat.
Before she’d had chance to refuse, he had deftly wound a long scarf around her face and neck.
‘No more excuses,’ he commanded. ‘Mount up.’
She could do this, Isla told herself firmly as she eyed up the horse with suspicion. The horse eyed her back with matching suspicion. She loved animals. She loved being able to help them when they were sick, and seeing them recover best of all, but could she, who had never ridden a horse in her life before, ride through the desert alongside a sheikh, who was about to spring onto the back of the prancing stallion of her dreams?
‘What are you waiting for?’ Shazim prompted.
She sucked in a shocked breath as he put his big hand over hers, but he was only showing her how to hold the reins. He guided her other hand to the pommel of the saddle, and now his big frame was just a breath away. Her entire body was trembling. If she made the smallest movement she would touch him.
‘Put your foot in my hand,’ he instructed, marshalling her straying thoughts. ‘I’m going to lift you, and then you must settle gently onto the saddle.’
She was anxious, and the horse knew it. She got there somehow, and used every muscle she possessed to ensure she didn’t land heavily in the saddle. But now she was too high off the ground.
‘This isn’t going to work,’ she exclaimed. ‘He knows I’m nervous.’
‘Then, your only option is to ride in front of me,’ Shazim instructed curtly as he picked up his reins.
She only had to take one look at his warhorse to change her mind. ‘I’ll manage,’ she said grimly.
‘Better not—’
She yelped as he lifted her off the saddle, and lowered her onto the saddle in front of him. She barely had chance to open her mouth to protest before the stallion lunged forward. And then it was too late. She was pressed up hard against Shazim, and they were moving as one. A shuddering breath shot out of her body as she registered every hard muscle in his powerful frame—
Shazim was a sheikh, the ruler of this land, and she worked for him. There was no romance. There were no billowing tents, no sandy shores of an oasis, no silken cushions, or pierced brass lanterns casting a honeyed light, waiting for her. There was just hard work, and the joy she always found in helping animals. She must keeping reminding herself of this... She was not here to lose her head—and heart—to a sheikh!
‘I can’t understand that you’ve never learned to ride,’ Shazim said, frowning as he eased the powerful animal into a rolling canter.
It was a moment before she could reply. She was scared, she was thrilled—who wouldn’t be? She was on the back of a mighty horse in the arms of a powerful sheikh.
‘Why would I learn to ride?’ she managed at last on a tight throat. She was still getting used to the unaccustomed gait. ‘You live in a different world from me. You ride for necessity, while I take a bus. I’ve done plenty of fantasy riding as a little girl, but never in the arms of a sheikh—’
He laughed. ‘You need to relax,’ he said, binding her even closer.
And how was she supposed to do that?
It was only one small step from growing tense again, to wondering if fate had thrown them together for a purpose, and she had to remind herself yet again that she was a hard-working vet, while Shazim was a king, and master of all he surveyed. When her time in Q’Aqabi was done, she’d go home and he would stay here. There was no point wondering where the Lion of the Desert was taking her, or what they’d do when they arrived.
* * *
He should have left Isla to travel with his rangers. He was enjoying this too much. He had wanted her to share this special moment of triumph with his people, to help her understand the country she was here to help.
He moved her hand away when Isla tried to collect her hair and tie it back. Her scarf had flown off, and she was concerned that she didn’t lash him in the face with it. But seeing that glorious hair flying behind her like a banner was all the impetus he needed to urge his stallion on. He leaned forward and she leaned with him, making the temptation to brush her hair aside and kiss her neck overwhelming.
CHAPTER EIGHT
HE WAS PRESSED up hard against her when Isla caught her first sight of the village lights twinkling in the distance. Her face lit up the night as she swung around to exclaim, ‘Oh, Shazim, it’s so beautiful!’
And so was she, he thought, though the glow of pleasure on Isla’s face only emphasised her innocence, which made her seem more vulnerable than ever.
‘And there’s an oasis!’ she said with excitement.
‘Of course. All settlements are sited close to water—’
‘Which is why they’re so scarce in the desert,’ she added.
Her excitement touched him. He had never noticed how beautiful her pure energy was before. It went beyond the physical to something that shone in her eyes. Seeing everything through those eyes was like seeing it for the first time for him.
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‘Look, Shazim...’ She pointed out across the oasis. ‘The water’s so smooth, it’s like a silken veil covered in spangles of moonlight.’
He smiled at her romantic description but quickly forced his mind back to practicalities. ‘Put your scarf back,’ he said. ‘There’s a wind kicking up, and you don’t want to get your hair all clogged with grit and dust.’
‘Thank you,’ she said as he helped her to arrange the folds of cloth. Her voice on his skin was like a soft caress.
* * *
The touch of Shazim’s hand on her neck had made her quiver with arousal and she could only hope he hadn’t noticed. She didn’t want to do anything that could be misinterpreted by him, or that might threaten their professional working relationship. She didn’t want to do anything to spoil this perfect night—
Don’t feel too guilty, her inner cynic warned her, because perfect doesn’t last...
‘People have come from miles around,’ Shazim explained, distracting her from this troubling thought. As they drew closer to the village she could see how many campfires were studding the darkness with pinpoints of light, and she thrilled at the thought of meeting his people, but it was Shazim’s breath, warm on her neck, that made her body thrill.
‘Are you cold?’ he asked as she shivered with awareness of him.
‘I’m excited,’ she answered with a healthy dose of truth. ‘I’m excited to see something so new to me, and to join in the celebrations.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Shazim assured her in the deep, husky voice that made her tremble again. ‘You’ll be safe with me.’
Would she? Was Shazim a safe haven, or was he a dangerous destination for a woman who knew so little about love?
Love?
Sex, Isla conceded ruefully. She knew so little about sex. Shazim, on the other hand, was a totem to physicality, and she doubted there was much he didn’t know.
So...would she be safe?
She’d only find that out when she got there.
‘I’m happy for you—’ She turned to flash a look into Shazim’s heavily shadowed face, and felt another thrill of awareness. ‘I’m happy for Q’Aqabi, and for your people. I know what this latest discovery of a new water supply must mean to everyone.’
He hummed in reply, and the vibration of that sound transferred from his body to hers.
News of the important discovery had spread like wildfire, and the city of tents made the small village appear to sprawl for miles. The sound of music and laughter, and conversation, constantly rose and fell like the murmur of surf on a distant shore.
‘Dreaming again, Isla?’ Shazim prompted as she sighed.
Realising that she’d leaned back against his chest to enjoy the moment, she huffed a smile and pulled away again fast. ‘I’m a very practical woman,’ she argued. ‘You must know that by now.’
‘Should I? And does your practical nature mean that you are forbidden to dream?’
There was humour in Shazim’s voice, and his comment raised a flutter of alarm. It was as if he had a window into her mind.
‘What was your childhood like, Isla?’
She tensed at the unexpected question.
‘Relax,’ Shazim insisted. ‘The stallion has to tackle a steep incline, and he doesn’t need you tensing up, making it harder for him.’
No. Only his master was allowed to do that.
‘Didn’t your investigators tell you everything about me?’ she queried, hoping the question would let her off the hook.
‘Bare facts only,’ Shazim said. She felt him shrug. ‘I receive a briefing for everyone I’m likely to meet on a tour.’
So he was unlikely to know more than those bare facts about her, which was a relief. She didn’t want to think back to the time Shazim was asking about, and remained silent as his horse picked a path down the dune.
‘Everyone has a story to tell that goes beyond a cold-blooded report,’ Shazim elaborated once they reached safe ground. ‘I’d like to hear yours.’
‘Well, I don’t know anything about you,’ she defended, then realised that she had definitely overstepped the mark. She could tell by the way Shazim had tensed. It wasn’t her place to interrogate him, but as her employer he had the right to know more than those plain facts he had mentioned.
She wasn’t the only one with pain in her past, and that should make her more understanding, not less. ‘I was an only child, studious and serious,’ she began. ‘I’m sure you’re surprised to hear that,’ she teased, trying to make light of it. ‘I read a lot.’
‘And cultivated a vivid inner life thanks to your reading, I imagine?’ Shazim suggested.
She smiled. ‘I wouldn’t deny that. I certainly had a vivid imagination. I still do. I’ve read that many only children have a lively inner life to take the place of all the adventures they might have had with their siblings—’
Shazim cut her off. ‘What about your father? You never mention him.’
A chill ran through her at Shazim’s prompt. ‘I can hardly remember him,’ she said truthfully. Having successfully shut out the beatings and her mother’s screams, the best she could come up with was, ‘He left when I was very small. There was never another man in my mother’s life.’ It wouldn’t have helped to add that the police took her father away, or that he was later locked up for assaulting several other women.
‘And then, while you were studying at university, your mother became sick.’
‘Long before that, but the illness became critical when I went away.’
‘So you came back.’
‘I broke off my studies, yes.’
‘Though they mean so much to you,’ Shazim prompted.
‘Nothing meant more to me than my mother.’
His eyes clouded briefly as if he understood. Some had said her mother’s illness and premature death had been the result of the years of cruelty at Isla’s father’s hands. Isla could never think back without wishing she could have taken on her mother’s pain.
Shazim waited until she was ready to continue, and then he said, ‘I apologise if my bringing up the past upsets you.’
His voice was gentler than before, but he had opened a wound that had never properly healed. ‘Why do you want to know these things?’ She sounded defensive.
‘I’m interested in the welfare of everyone on my team. Do you find that so strange?’
‘No,’ Isla admitted. And it was up to her to handle the emotional fallout. It wasn’t Shazim’s fault that his questions had cut so deep. ‘My mother was sick for most of my childhood. As I grew older, her illness progressed—’
‘Until you became her full-time carer,’ Shazim supplied when words choked off in her throat. ‘You nursed her selflessly until the day she died, and gave up your education to do so.’
‘Gladly.’ Isla flared up as remembered pain lanced through her. ‘Because I loved her—love her,’ she amended passionately.
It was a relief when Shazim didn’t attempt to shower her with sympathy, and simply stayed quiet until she spoke again. ‘It was a bad time,’ she admitted then, and with a considerable understatement.
‘Yet you pulled yourself together and went back to university.’
‘It was my mother’s dearest wish. She insisted that I must.’
‘She must have been a wonderful woman.’
‘She was.’
‘She would be very proud of you,’ he said quietly.
‘Thank you.’
They rode on in silence after that, with the simple village growing ever closer, until he said, ‘And you grew up in a castle.’
‘Not exactly inside the castle—that was a cold, unfriendly place. Not like this village,’ she added as the warmth and music from the celebration washed over them. She only had to think back to the years of debauchery at the castle to know that this simple life had to be better. ‘My mother was the cook at the castle,’ she explained, ‘though I suppose that’s another fact you already know.’
‘It’s good to hear y
our side of things,’ Shazim said. He had slowed the stallion to a lazy walk and had let his reins hang loose, as if he really wanted to hear her side of the story, and was making time to do so before they entered the village. ‘All I know is that you were raised in the grounds of a castle in Scotland, alongside a family that could politely be called eccentric.’ He gave an easy shrug. ‘Who wouldn’t be interested in that?’
‘The Anconners held drug-fuelled parties,’ Isla stated bluntly. ‘I suppose you’ve heard that too. They cared nothing for their reputation, or for that of their staff. My mother stayed on out of a misplaced sense of loyalty, and we lived in a staff cottage on the estate.’
‘But you had to leave—I don’t understand. Why was that?’
Isla was silent for quite a while as she thought back. Shazim’s grip tightened around her waist as if he wanted to reassure her. ‘We left the cottage when my mother became too ill to work,’ she explained. ‘We had to,’ she said when Shazim gave a jerk of surprise.
‘You had to?’ he said in a bemused tone.
‘If my mother couldn’t work, we had no place at the castle.’
‘Is that why you moved into the room where you still live now?’
‘Yes.’ She didn’t want to talk about it. It hurt too much to think of her mother uprooted when she had needed the familiarity of her own home the most.
But Shazim refused to let it go. ‘One room must have been a bit of a comedown after a castle?’
‘We made it home. It was our home, and we were safe there. No one was going to throw us out.’ Her voice reflected her emotion as she remembered the tiny room that she had shared with her mother in the last days of her mother’s life.
Isla had made it safe, Shazim concluded. Isla had protected her mother like a lioness with a cub, reversing their positions when it became necessary—the cared for becoming the carer in her mother’s hour of need.
‘I loved our cottage on the castle estate,’ she murmured wistfully. ‘It wasn’t much, but it was home—my mother made it home, so I did the same when we moved into that room. We didn’t have anything much, but the funny thing is I don’t remember going without anything. We were warm and safe...’
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