by Trish Morey
She wondered if Bahir had actually heard her last night, and understood her plea to be friends, and understood what that meant. She should not have stayed so late, getting wooed by the magical desert night, thinking that magic was meant for her. She should never have let him kiss her. But maybe her pleas had broken through some kind of barrier.
Maybe they could be friends after all.
It would not be like what they had shared before—there could be no return to those heady reckless times—but it would be something.
The gorge was tucked away like a secret, nothing to show it was there, the visitors disembarking to follow a trail that led towards a broad and winding cleft into the mountains. Excitement among the visitors was high. The children and adults were eager to enter the gorge—and not just for the picnic they knew they would enjoy afterwards—and it wasn’t long before Marina could see why. The track narrowed as they progressed, winding and twisting its way through the rock, the walls either side growing higher.
And as they moved deeper into the cleft, the colours of the rock changed from sun-bleached white to a hundred shades, through honey and caramel and beyond, like someone had melted the rock and poured it back in swirling layers, while in other places crystalline colours of purples and vibrant greens sparkled from the walls.
‘Wow,’ said Chakir when Bahir had asked them to look up into a shaft where every colour they had already seen seemed to coalesce and merge in rippled layered poetry.
Hana just stopped behind her brother and stared upwards, her eyes wide, drinking it in, trying to make sense of it all. She pulled her fingers from her mouth to reveal a wide smile. ‘Pretty,’ she said.
She saw Bahir’s eyes on Hana, a small frown hovering at the bridge of his nose, before he turned his gaze to her and the frown slipped away. He cocked one eyebrow, as if waiting for her reaction, and she had to resist the urge to think he had brought them to the place purely for her benefit and hers alone. She smiled. ‘It’s amazing.’
But it was the smile he sent right back at her that zapped up her spine and lit all the places that had ached with want last night. And she shivered with the unwanted pleasure of it, wondering if there would ever come a time when he did not make her sizzle with just one look.
Had she been kidding herself last night with him? Would she ever be satisfied with merely being friends with a man who she knew could blow her world apart with one touch of his clever fingers or one swipe of his wicked tongue?
She swallowed down on a pang of fruitless longing. But they had proved it would not work any other way. She wasn’t that reckless good-time girl any more. She could no longer afford to be. And he seemed to be filled with a hatred for something that almost consumed him.
They both had changed in the intervening years. They were both different people, but they were both also Chakir’s parents. So for their son’s sake, then, it would have to be friendship and they would just have to try to make it work.
The group emerged both awe-struck and panting from the climb out of the gorge to a picnic lunch set in the shadow of the cliff, Chakir and Hana took no more time than it took to grab the first thing they could off a tray before running off to play with their new-found friends.
‘They’ll be okay?’ Marina asked, taking a few steps after them as her two trailed after the others, itching to follow herself just in case.
She sensed him at her shoulder. ‘They’ll be fine.’
She took a deep breath and forced her feet to stay where they were, but it was so, so hard to see Hana running so wild and free when she had promised to take good care of her. At home in Tuscany, she knew the local hazards. It was another thing here, in the desert, where everything was so new to them and so unfamiliar. Even when they had visited her father’s home in Jemeya, they’d been there for such a short time that there’d hardly been time to venture outside the palace walls, let alone run around in the desert.
‘But there are dangers in the desert.’
‘As you say, princess,’ he said. ‘In the desert, there are always dangers lurking.’
His words had her looking at him, looking into his dark eyes, wondering at his meaning and wishing for things that she knew she should not. Knowing he was right. For the dangers of the desert were everywhere.
And right now Bahir was the most dangerous thing of all.
She turned away, shivering, her eyes following the children running and wheeling in circles, their arms outstretched like that flock of cranes they’d seen earlier today. Hana—tiny, precious Hana—lagged behind them all, flapping her arms and making her smile. ‘And that’s supposed to make me feel more comfortable, is it?’
She heard his sigh beside her. ‘Maybe you could cut her some slack.’
‘What? Cut who some slack?’
‘The girl,’ he said, adding, ‘Hana,’ before she could correct him. ‘You act like she’s made of glass or something, always hovering over her. Why don’t you let her just be a child?’
‘You don’t understand,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Hana’s special.’
He grunted. ‘I can see that.’
She glared at him. ‘You just don’t like her. Full stop.’
‘Why should I? I didn’t ask you to bring her. She’s not my child.’
‘And that’s all that matters is it? The only people who count are those fathered by your fertile loins?’
‘What do you expect me to say? I never wanted a child. That you present me with one was enough to deal with, without his sister coming along for the ride.’ He looked over at her and shrugged. ‘But she’s all right. Kind of cute, in a way.’
Her head swung around. He’d actually noticed something about Hana besides the fact she wasn’t his? Maybe that question of hers he’d answered in the car hadn’t been an aberration. Maybe his stance was softening towards the tiny girl. ‘She’s beautiful,’ she said, thinking of Sarah, seeing her mother’s pixie face every time she looked at the daughter. Hana was a miniature Sarah. Even her laugh reminded her of her friend.
‘Not that she looks a lot like you.’
Danger shimmied down her spine, electric and sparking, chasing away any feelings of well-being and putting her senses on red alert. Somehow she managed a shrug, feigning indifference, while her self-protection systems registered the need to close this conversation down and now.
There was one sure way. ‘Perhaps,’ she said, already turning back towards the safety of the group, ‘that’s because she looks more like her father.’
Who was he? he wanted to ask as he watched her go, both dissatisfied with her answer and disgruntled that she could so boldly walk away, her back so stiff and straight, her jaw set high, as if she was claiming some kind of moral high-ground. Who was this wonderful man that his daughter was so special? Where was he now and what was he doing? Was he busy with a wife while he put Marina up in his mountain retreat and let her look after his child?
Whoever he was, one thing was certain: his child would never live in another man’s house, no matter who Hana’s father was.
He watched her return to the picnic, to a group of women including Catriona where they exchanged words and both glanced over to where the children had been playing before. He followed their gaze to see them all now squatting in a circle, one of the older boys making pictures in the sand with a stick. He would be telling them a story, Bahir knew. He could almost hear drifts of the boy’s unbroken voice on the still air.
He remembered sitting in such a circle himself, listening to his cousin telling a story about the first Bedouins and how they had conjured up a camel in their dreams, a soft-footed beast that would carry them safely across the shifting desert sands, and how they had been woken by a terrifying noise only to find the first camels bellowing outside their tents, impatient to be put to work.
He saw his son listen, open-mouthed in wonder. He heard his laughter, and that terrible weight inside him shifted unexpectedly again, jamming up tight against his lungs so he could barely breathe.
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The wind lifted and he heard it almost sigh as it swirled past in a rustle of sand and the whispered voices of his brothers, of his mother and his father, of all the people of the tribe calling to him.
He put his hands to his head and spun around, his feet taking him further away, away from the chatter of women and the low murmurings of the men; away from the laughter of children. But the one sound he really wanted to blank out was the sound of the ghosts of the past.
Didn’t they understand?
He wasn’t ready to face them yet.
Marina watched him go, sensing his pain in every tortured step. ‘Will he be all right, do you think?’ she asked as Ahab joined them. ‘Do you think someone should go with him?’
The old man watched through sun-creased eyes. ‘Some things a man can only do by himself.’
She looked at him, wondering at his answer, wondering at the things he was not telling her before she looked back at the retreating form of Bahir in the distance. ‘But he’s hurting.’
‘The hurt he is feeling was inflicted a long time ago. Perhaps he is only now starting to feel the pain.’
‘What hurt? What happened to him? Is it something to do with his family?’
‘Bahir will tell you,’ the old man said, with a nod of his sage head. ‘In his own time.’
He wandered aimlessly, retracing his steps and finding himself back in the gorge, where the coloured walls rose high above him, ancient and full of the wisdom of the world. A wisdom that eluded him, a wisdom he had no clue to understand, until a mournful wind sang through the gorge and drove him away. He then found himself back near the picnic under the cliffs, knowing he was walking in senseless circles and not understanding, but simply driven to walk.
Until it occurred to him that his life was on the same aimless course.
That she was right.
Because, when it all came down to it, what did he actually do? He gambled. What did he produce? Nothing. Not really. Of course, it was easy to think he was producing something when he was winning. He was making money. He had stacks of chips to show for it, he had investments salted away with whatever proceeds exceeded his immediate expenses, and there were plenty of those, because he was good at what he did. But, beyond that, what did he do? What good was he to anyone?
God, he thought, suddenly sick of the soul-searching, sick of it all. He had planned to come to the desert to lift his spirits, not to find fault with himself. So what that he didn’t own a home? He didn’t need one. So why must he beat himself up about things he could not change and did not need changing?
He was good at what he did. He was the best. When it came to playing the roulette wheel, nobody risked so much or won so much. Wasn’t that some kind of achievement in itself?
A cry rang out in the desert air—a child’s cry. He’d half-turned towards the sound, taking in the picture around him, registering a scattering of children across the sands wandering tired and thirsty back to the picnic, when he heard Marina’s cry.
‘Hana?’ she called, half-question in her voice, half-fear, just before the girl’s scream came again, shrill and panicked and slicing through the desert air like a sharpened blade. And this time he found the source. The girl was screaming from where she’d fallen on the rocky ground, her tiny limbs rigid. For a split second he assumed she must have hurt herself falling while trying to keep up with the others, and he waited for her to pick herself up off the ground, until he noticed her attention focused on the ugly black shape marching menacingly towards her across the sand.
CHAPTER NINE
‘HANA!’ he roared, already launching himself towards her. ‘Hana, get up. Move!’
But the child was petrified with fear as the arachnid marched purposefully on, its tail curved over its head, poised and ready to inflict its sting.
The air erupted with cries of panic and warning as everyone suddenly realised what was happening. His lungs heaving, Bahir sprinted the distance between them, barely registering others charging for the scene, aware only that there was movement. His eyes were on the girl.
‘Mama!’ she squealed between sobs, pushing herself backwards across the sand on her hands, her eyes fixed on the approaching terror.
Why didn’t she run? She had to run. She was much too small to survive a sting from a scorpion and he would never get there in time. All of these thoughts ran through his head in the seconds it took him to reach her, seconds that stretched and bulged with impossibility as he dived in one desperate lunge and plucked her from the path of danger, rolling away across the desert floor.
For a moment the girl in his arms was too shocked to make a sound, but as he stood she recovered enough to scream again, louder this time if it were possible, howling her protest and twisting her body away, wanting desperately to be free.
And, even though one of the men wielded a stick and flicked the scorpion away, he would not let her go while that thing was anywhere near.
‘Hana!’ Marina cried, her feet flying across the sand towards them, her robe flapping hard against her legs, and he saw her beautiful face drained of so much colour that she could have been made of the desert sands.
The girl held out her arms to her and, breathless, Marina took the child and clutched her to her chest, pressing her lips to her curls as she sobbed helplessly against her shoulder. ‘Oh God, Hana,’ she said as her sobs quietened. ‘It’s okay. You’re all right now.’
She looked at Bahir through tear-filled eyes, her voice still shaky. ‘I tried not to panic. I thought about what you said and I forced myself not to run to Hana straightaway and pick her up like I usually do. And then I saw it moving on the sand next to her.’ She shuddered, rocking the child in her arms. ‘If you hadn’t got there in time …’
He cursed himself for his ill-timed advice. ‘I should never have said anything to you. If I’d thought it was as serious, I would have been there sooner.’
Eyes a man could drown in blinked up at him. ‘Thank you.’
He dusted himself off to give his hands something to do other than to pull her trembling form into his arms, child and all, and comfort her. ‘You might want to check her for scratches,’ he said. ‘I tried to keep her off the ground, but she might have got a scrape or two.’
Chakir caught up with them, his eyes bright with excitement. ‘Can you teach me how to do that?’ he asked, and Bahir almost found it in himself to laugh.
‘Maybe later,’ he said, thinking that they’d had enough excitement for one day. Besides, there was something he had to do, something he could not put off any longer, the voices in his head became louder and more insistent. But first he had to get this lot home. ‘I think right now we should head back to the camp, don’t you?’
The journey home was a quiet one, both the children asleep within five minutes of setting off, exhausted after the day’s activities, Catriona sleepily staring out of her window and dozing off long before they reached the camp.
This time Marina sat in the front seat alongside him, watching his long-fingered hands on the wheel, looking relaxed and confident, feeling anything but relaxed and confident herself as she tried to make sense of the man alongside her—a man who cared nothing for a child and yet had risked his own life to protect hers. For she was under no misapprehension as to the enormity of his actions. A scorpion sting could threaten the life of a grown man, shutting down his respiratory system, closing his throat and paralysing his lungs. A child Hana’s size wouldn’t stand a chance, not out here so far from medical assistance.
She glanced behind her, saw that they were all asleep and said softly to him, ‘You saved her life today, you know.’
He shrugged, as if it was nothing; as if it was something he did every day. ‘I was the closest to her, that’s all.’
‘Maybe. And I know I thanked you back there,’ she said, ‘but I’m not sure it was anywhere near enough. Thank you for doing what you did and reaching Hana in time.’
He glanced across at her. ‘I would have done the same fo
r any child in danger.’
‘I know, it’s just that I know you’re not that interested in Hana. Whereas Chakir, on the other hand …’
He swung his head around, a scowl tugging at his brows. ‘You think I would save my own son and yet leave another’s child to suffer a terrible fate?’
‘No.’ She shook her head, knowing that had come out wrong. ‘That wasn’t what I meant. I was just surprised that you were the one to act when it wasn’t your child in danger, and when you had made such a point in the past about her not being your child.’
He shook his head and looked back at the road. ‘So maybe at the time that didn’t seem the most pertinent detail.’ And she felt his rebuke in his words as he drew a thick black line under the conversation before she’d had a chance to say the things she really wanted to say.
The things she should say.
For in Bahir rescuing Hana, she’d been reminded of her own rescue from the twisted Mustafa, who’d kidnapped her sister, Aisha, to claim the throne of Al-Jirad for his own. And then, when that purpose was foiled, kidnapped her to frustrate his half-brother Zoltan’s ascension to the thrown. She’d tried to downplay Bahir’s role in her rescue, tried to make out he was only there because his three friends, Zoltan, Kabar and Rashid, expected it—and maybe that had been one element of it—but he had still been one of their party. He had still been there to ensure her safe return to her family.
And now he had rescued her again, for in saving Hana he had saved the promise she had made to the dying Sarah.
She sighed. ‘I’m sorry. Now I’ve gone and offended you. What I was actually trying to lead up to, though so clumsily I’ll admit, was to thank you, and properly this time, for your part in my rescue from Mustafa. I don’t think I’ve ever done that. I’m only sorry now that it’s so overdue.’