The Sheikh's Last Gamble

by Trish Morey

But both children accepted their tokens with the solemnity the ceremony called for, and then the formal part of the ceremony was over and a smattering of children amongst the tribespeople soon drew Chakir and Hana into their games.

  As afternoon slipped into evening, they moved to a circle of seats under the darkening sky where a camp fire was already blazing and where three musicians were plucking tunes on their stringed instruments or beating time with their drums. Here they feasted from the endless platters of spiced meats and roasted vegetables, followed by rose-scented sweets washed down with thick, sweet coffee.

  It was the perfect evening, Marina thought as she watched her children playing and making new friends, while the air was filled with scented wood-smoke and a haunting song that seemed to expand to fill the landscape.

  She watched Bahir talk to Ahab at his side, and she wondered about this place Bahir had brought them to. Wondered again about his family and why they were not here to greet him, when others like Ahab had openly welcomed him home.

  Why had he never shared the details of his past?

  A bundle of waning energy landed heavily in her lap, short-circuiting her thoughts—Hana, giving up on the game, panting and breathless, her eyelids struggling to remain open.

  She cradled the child in her lap, stroking her hair back from her face. ‘Are you tired, Hana Banana? Do you want to go to bed?’

  ‘No,’ the toddler said emphatically, rubbing one eye with her fist. ‘Not tired.’

  ‘I know,’ Marina said, smiling, rocking the child gently in her arms, knowing the exact moment she fell asleep, her head lolling back. She leaned down and pressed her lips to Hana’s cheek, thinking of her mother in that moment and wishing that she could be here, a tear sliding unbidden down her cheek.

  Mother and child, Bahir thought, listening with one ear to what Ahab had to say, but fully intent on her with the sleeping child in her lap. How could a woman look sexy cradling a child that was not even his? But somehow she managed it. She still had the power to make him burn.

  He nodded to Ahab, agreeing on a point as he watched her rise gracefully to her feet, though it could be no easy task to do so with the dead weight of the child in her arms, while Catriona rounded up a weary Chakir.

  ‘You’re not leaving already?’ Ahab said, rising alongside him.

  ‘It’s the children,’ she said. ‘They’ve had a long day.’

  ‘I’ll stay with them,’ Catriona said. ‘You come back.’

  Bahir rose. She looked so slight and the child so awkward and floppy-limbed. ‘Can I help?’ he asked, not knowing what that might actually involve.

  She responded by clutching the child even closer to her chest, as if she would not trust him with her. ‘We’ll manage, thank you.’

  ‘We will see you shortly?’ Ahab asked.

  But it was to Bahir’s eyes she directed her gaze, Bahir who felt her uncertainty, her fear and even something like temptation. ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Princess Marina is a fine mother,’ Ahab said as the small group padded across the sand towards their tent. ‘Her children are a credit to her.’

  And, as much as Bahir resented the presence of the girl, and as much as he resented what it meant, he could not disagree.

  ‘Have you gone to visit them yet?’ the old man asked a little later as he rose to prod the fire into life, the haunting notes of the stringed oud catching on the desert air like a poem on the breeze.

  Ahab’s question caught him unaware. Bahir didn’t have to ask who he meant, but he’d been listening intently for any sound of Marina’s return and he had not been thinking of them. But he was here in Jaqbar, wasn’t he? Wasn’t that enough for them? It wasn’t as though he could change anything. He shrugged, more carelessly than he felt. ‘Is there any point?’

  The old man nodded sagely. ‘You should go. They have waited a long time for you to come.’

  Bahir said nothing, knowing in his bones that the old man was right, that reconnecting with his homeland meant finding his family. But the closer he had come, the more uncomfortable he had felt. After all, what could he tell them? That he might as well have lost his life with theirs for all the good he had done in the world? That he had wasted years of life in the gambling dens of the world?

  He could not bring himself to say those things. So instead, he just answered with the barest inclination of his head and a hand he rested on the old man’s bony shoulder, hoping the old man would understand, as Marina returned in a whisper of fabric and a scent that complemented the pristine desert air and made it all the sweeter.

  He breathed it in. She was back. And he was relieved, not only because he had been worried she would not return, but because Ahab now had somewhere else to direct his probing questions, affording him breathing space to deal with the demons of his past the way he needed to.

  And he would deal with them, he thought as Ahab asked Marina about the children and he zoned out, an unswallowable lump in the back of his throat, that sliding weight inside him scraping across his gut at the thought. And, of course, some time he would go.

  He owed them that much.

  But only when he was ready.

  It was late. The musicians had gone and Ahab and the others retired, the fire now a bed of coals. She knew she too should go to bed, but the moon was a heavy golden pearl hanging in the sky, turning the desert into a honeyed nether world, and the air was shimmering with expectation. Expectation of what, she didn’t know, except that neither of them seemed willing or able to retire and break this fragile spell that existed between them.

  And it occurred to her that, in all the time they had been together, they had never done anything so utterly simple. They had spent time in casinos and ballrooms, and had made love in the bedrooms and bathrooms of some of the most palatial hotels in the world, but they had never enjoyed the simple pleasure of watching a camp fire burn down under a pearlescent desert moon.

  He looked beautiful in this light, she thought, stealing a glance when he was staring into the fire. The angles and planes of his face were either lit with a flickering glow or hidden in shadowed mystery.

  A face that could still warm her blood with just one glance, so masculinely beautiful that she had to look away. She sighed and lifted her face to the moon, bathing her skin in its brilliance, wanting to drink in the serenity of this moment and hold it close to her for ever, wondering why such a moment should happen upon them now, when it was already too late.

  And it was too late. For they had had their time, and it had been amazing, both of them soaring above the world of mere mortals, the sex sublime, the heights of passion reached unimaginable.

  Only to be burned up on her savage re-entry into the world.

  She closed her eyes, wanting to block out that dark memory. That time was so long ago. And now, for whatever reason, the fates had brought them together again and they had to find a way to move forward.

  For now they shared a child.

  Dear Chakir, who had turned her life around and made her realise that there was more to life than parties and avoiding responsibilities. For how could you avoid responsibility when you were a mother? You had no choice but to grow up.

  The moon felt soft on her face. She would go to bed soon. She had not been going to come back at all, but Catriona had told her she was far too young to go to bed yet, and there had been something in Bahir’s eyes—an invitation? A plea?—and whatever it was had drawn her back, like a moth to the flame, to the fire.

  And there had been nothing to fear. Nothing had happened other than they had discovered they could sit in companionable silence around a camp fire and drink in the sounds of the desert night, while tingling with delicious awareness with every breath.

  There was something about this woman, Bahir thought as he watched her turn her face to the moon, her eyes closed—something elemental that he had never seen before until that stormy night on the terrace and she had danced when spun in the spray from the crashing waves.

  Something that mad
e him wonder if he had every truly known her.

  He had always thought her just a good-time girl—and she had been then, wild, abandoned and wanton in bed, taking as much as she gave—but there was more to her than that. For she had depths and resources he would never have imagined. And a fiercely protective instinct where her children—one of them his—were concerned.

  She was the mother of his child.

  His child.

  And yet, even though he could see those traits, even though he might otherwise applaud them, the eternal questions still gnawed away at him. Why had she turned to someone else so quickly? How could she have forgotten what they had shared? Out of spite? Or because she had never truly loved him?

  It had to be that. What else could it be?

  He looked at her upturned face, tracing the noble profile, the high forehead, the delicate uptilt of her nose, the long black lashes that swept her cheek, and those lips that had once been his sensual playground and his alone.

  He had to ask himself the question—why had he ever let her go? Why had he let her walk into someone else’s arms and someone else’s bed?

  She sighed and turned to him, too fast for him to look away and pretend he hadn’t been staring. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she said after a moment’s hesitation. ‘The moon, I mean.’

  ‘Yes,’ he simply said, unable to shift his eyes from hers, knowing where the true beauty in this night lay.

  Somewhere out in the desert an owl hooted. The fire crackled, spitting sparks into the air, and the moon hung low and fat in the sky, filled with expectation.

  He could kiss her now under that moon. The air was ripe for it, the whole desert seemingly poised and waiting.

  He had no right to make the desert wait.

  She watched him draw nearer, shrinking the space between them until she could feel the heat emanating from him, feel the air shift with his approach. His breath was warm around her face, his dark eyes on her mouth, and she knew he was going to kiss her—and knew that there were one hundred good reasons why she shouldn’t let him.

  But for the life of her, with her senses buzzing and her skin alight, she couldn’t remember a single one …

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  HIS lips tasted of sweet coffee and promises, of heated desire and the unmistakeable flavour of the man himself.

  ‘It won’t work,’ she said in spite of the promise in his kiss, some shred of logic filtering through the fog of desire, that shred telling her that they been here before and it had not ended well that time.

  He hushed her with his clever mouth and his persuasive lips and she let herself be persuaded for just a moment, giving herself up to his kiss and his touch, his hand at her throat feeling a frantic heartbeat in his touch, not knowing if it was his or hers.

  The moment stretched and stretched. But she would stop this, she told herself, remembering another night when she had given herself up to his love-making, another night when she had given in to desire and passion only to be bluntly reminded of what he really thought of her. She remembered the anger she had felt then, trying to summon it up to give her strength when all she could feel was desire, need and the pulsing insistence between her thighs.

  The low fire crackled and popped, somewhere close by a camel softly snorted, and the indulgence of a moment became a minute or longer.

  ‘Come to my tent,’ he murmured, his hot mouth at her throat, his big hands molding her to him, his tongue writing its own scorching invitation on her flesh.

  ‘No,’ she whispered, turning her face away from his mouth, wishing she had been stronger from the start, wishing she was not so damned weak when it came to him despite all the hurt he had caused her, all the anger and despair. No, she revised—because of all the hurt, anger and despair. She should be stronger. ‘I can’t.’

  But he didn’t let her go. Instead his hand found one aching breast, brushing his thumb across her straining nipple, and she groaned into his mouth as spears of pleasure let fly to her core. ‘Let’s finish this, Marina. This time let’s finish what we have started.’

  With his hand making magic on her breast, and his hot mouth promising every conceivable pleasure, his words sounded so reasonable, so rational, that she almost succumbed.

  But she had never wanted reasonable or rational from him. She had only ever wanted his love, in return for hers. And, in the end, that was what had killed their relationship.

  She dragged in air, summoning all the strength she could find as she took his face between her hands and eased him away, a tear squeezing from her eye when she saw his eyes looked as tortured as she herself felt. ‘Bahir,’ she said, shaking her head slowly. ‘Our time is past. It is gone. There is no point to this.’

  Her words were met with an expression of disbelief, as if he could make no sense of her words. She smiled softly, trying to make him see. ‘You know there is no point.’ She watched his face as disbelief turned to disagreement and then anger. She waited and hoped that at least a flicker of understanding might follow, when he suddenly spun away from her and stood, clutching his head in his hands like it was set to explode and he needed to keep the two sides together.

  ‘What do you want, Marina?’

  She stood and straightened her abaya, smoothing out imaginary creases while she searched for an answer to his question. ‘I want Chakir to know his father. Maybe even to have a good relationship with him.’

  Chakir? He hadn’t even been thinking about the boy. He’d been thinking about a woman who could turn him inside out with just one glance, who ran hot and cold in order to torment him.

  ‘And us? What about us?’

  She blinked back at him. ‘If it is possible, I would like us to be friends.’

  Friends!

  She could look at him with those damned siren’s eyes and that mouth—she could kiss him with that mouth—and yet tell him she wanted to be friends? How could they ever be merely friends? Couldn’t she see that?

  He looked up at the winking moon and wanted to howl out his anger, his frustration and his rumbling discontent. But instead he just sighed into the desert air. ‘It’s late,’ he said, trying not to snarl, not entirely sure he was succeeding. ‘I’ll see you to your tent.’

  He slept badly, a night of fractured nonsensical dreams filled with an unending and ultimately futile pursuit of something unseen that kept moving and shifting, something always just out of his reach.

  Of course he would be frustrated, he rationalised the next morning as he hung over the sink and doused his head with cold water to clear the residual bleariness away. Twice now, she had worked him to fever pitch. Twice now she left him achingly hard with no release.

  When had she grown this ability to say no, she who was once so eager for sex that she would not wear underwear in case it slowed them down? She who had never once said no to sex with him in all the time they’d been together, the one who had initiated it just as often as he had?

  She thought that after all that, they could go from lovers to just friends? Who was she trying to kid?

  Not him. Maybe she was trying to kid herself.

  ‘The vehicles are packed,’ Ahab said behind him from the door of the tent. ‘Whenever you are ready, Bahir.’

  He turned and thanked his old friend, already girding his loins for another day in her company. But maybe a day sightseeing in the Melted Gorge and showing his son the wonders of the region would distract him. Maybe a day trying to convince her she was kidding herself would distract him.

  He looked at his face in the mirror as he towelled off the last of the water, trying hard not to notice the tiredness around his eyes. He could damned well do with a distraction.

  But it wasn’t the distraction he was looking for when he saw Marina sitting in the back seat with the children looking subdued and Catriona seated in the passenger seat alongside him. Interesting, he thought, climbing behind the wheel, feeling somewhat vindicated. So Marina was determined to stay out of his way? Maybe because she didn’t think it was that simpl
e to remain just friends either.

  They set out in convoy across the desert floor along a wide flat road edged with random boulders hewn from the mountains around them, half a dozen vehicles filled with half the tribe, a holiday atmosphere prevailing as they set off to spend a day in the mountains.

  If Marina was trying to hide from him, so be it. He focused on the excitement of his son, answering his eager questions about where they were going and what they would see. Even managing to answer the girl’s one question when it came, without needing her prompt from the back seat, smiling to himself when he saw in the rear-vision mirror that she had noticed.

  He could play the friends game, if that was what she wanted. He could tolerate a child she had made with someone else—that wasn’t his—if it helped get Marina on side and convince her that being merely friends was nowhere near enough.

  Onwards the convoy travelled across the stony desert, towards the mountains that loomed blue and imposing before them. They passed by a salt lake where storks rose in a black-and-white cloud that momentarily blotted out the morning sun. They passed by a pointy-eared desert fox standing sentry atop a sand dune, suspiciously monitoring their approach before they got too close and it turned and padded silently away.

  He loved that his son got a kick out of these things, and he got a kick out of seeing his excitement. It was almost like being a boy again himself, except …

  No, not that, he thought, knowing he could not bear it if that happened to him. It was too late now to wish he would never have a child, but he would never wish what had happened to him on anyone, let alone a son of his.

  She watched his eyes in the mirror, observing him from the back seat, silently applauding him when he explained something to Chakir, cheering him when he finally acknowledged a query from Hana, taking the time to answer. Hana had listened with her fingers in her mouth and with all the concentrated studiousness of a two-year-old. She, on the other hand, had listened with some kind of joy because for the first time she had not had to intercede on her daughter’s behalf.

  Instead, Bahir had answered her question as if it had been Chakir who had asked him. For that she was grateful and more than a little impressed. For a man who had never wanted children, he showed an interest in his son she would never have thought possible. For a man who had made a point of excluding Hana up until now, he seemed at least to be making an effort not to shunt her aside.