Master of the Desert (13 page)

If only Ra’id could welcome her, Antonia thought wistfully as he accompanied her on the tour. But, of course, Ra’id was only doing this because she was expecting his baby. He probably wouldn’t let her out of his sight now—but not for the reasons she had hoped. He might be walking at her side, but she was on her own—as her mother had been before her. Antonia was looking for a very different resolution. Her mother had wanted to escape, while Antonia was determined to stay. She wanted to bloom where she was planted and make a go of things here.

They had looked inside many rooms, but when Ra’id stopped outside a particular door she got the strangest feeling. ‘This is my mother’s room, isn’t it?’ she said, not really needing Ra’id to confirm that it was.

He said nothing as he opened the door onto what, at first sight, appeared to be yet another soulless, dusty room.

Antonia was determined to keep her emotions in check this time, but there wasn’t a part of her that wasn’t aware of Ra’id or a fragment of her heart that didn’t yearn to have him close to her again. She missed the easy camaraderie they’d come to share on the island, when it had been just a girl called Tuesday and a man called Saif. But now there was a king and a girl who was nobody, except for the fact
that she was expecting the king’s child. She had value as the incubator of Ra’id’s child, Antonia acknowledged, but equally she was a liability to him.

So she must plan for the future.

She stared around walls that seemed to beg her to linger so she could see the possibilities. ‘I’d need some form of transport to get in and out of town,’ she murmured out loud, thinking of all the shopping she would have to do to turn this place into a home.

He stared at her long and hard, and then he said briskly, ‘A four-wheel drive should suffice. It isn’t far to the city—and, of course, you’ll have a full complement of staff. You can have a driver and a helicopter at your disposal, if you think that’s necessary. I’m sure we can come to an accommodation that suits both of us equally.’

‘An accommodation?’ That sounded like a cold, soulless thing. And, as for suiting them both equally, she doubted Ra’id knew much about equality, and cared to learn about it even less. ‘Will I be free to use the resources on my land?’ She was thinking local wildlife, the flora and fauna, when Ra’id’s expression darkened.

‘Do you imagine you’re going to find oil here?’ he demanded.

‘No, of course not, but I was hoping you might allow a number of specialists to advise me on the best way to showcase local wildlife and crafts.’

‘I could make some enquiries when I return to the capital,’ he conceded.

‘When
you
return?’ Antonia’s courage dwindled to nothing, but then she firmed her resolve. Ra’id had never
pretended they would be living anything other than separate lives; it was up to her to get used to it.

‘I’ll leave you to take a look around in private,’ he said.

‘No. Please stay.’

‘As you wish. I’ll open the shutters for you.’

As he did so the light streamed in, and she noticed something glinting so softly she almost missed it. Lying forgotten in the dust, a tiny necklace sparkled in the light. She scooped it up and slipped it into her pocket. It was a diamond-studded heart on a broken chain, and carried enough vibrations for her to know that it must have landed on the floor when someone had snatched it from their neck as they ran out of the room.

Her mother, maybe—tearing off the necklace before she’d left the citadel for good?

Ra’id remained silent in the background as she walked slowly round the room. It was impossible not to notice the many photographs, poignant reminders of a small boy with dark, curly hair and bronzed skin—a boy who looked a lot like Ra’id. ‘So, this is my brother,’ Antonia murmured, lifting up one of the frames to study the image more closely before carefully putting the frame back in its place.

‘This room hasn’t been touched since your mother left—in a hurry, I’m told.’

And who could blame her? Antonia thought, shivering as she remembered the tiny heart on its broken chain currently residing in her pocket. ‘It seems unfair that anyone would accuse Helena of deserting her little boy.’

‘What would you call it?’ Ra’id demanded from his very different perspective. ‘When she was heard crying out that Razi was the worst mistake she had ever made?’

‘I would call this imprisonment,’ Antonia said, gazing at the heavy door with its prominent lock and bolt. ‘Maybe my mother was no longer attractive to your father once she’d had a baby—I don’t know the reason. She was frightened and very young. But I do know Helena must have been distraught, losing her child, and she wouldn’t have kept all these photographs around her if she hadn’t loved her son.’ Antonia’s hand flew to her mouth as she stared around what to her seemed little better than a prison cell. ‘I’m not surprised Helena seized the opportunity to escape.’

‘And yet you want to live here?’

‘I wouldn’t be living here under duress.’

And she was a very different woman from her mother, Antonia realised, knowing all the fripperies of life she had previously thought so important to her had only left her hungry for real-life experience, like an unrelieved diet of canapés when what she longed for was steak and chips. ‘And any time I want to leave, I’ll just have to jump in the car…’ The words froze on her lips as Ra’id stared at her, and somewhere deep inside her heart she felt a stab of panic.

H
E LEFT
her tidying her mother’s room. He couldn’t bring himself to stand over her, and any thought of gloating as Antonia viewed the sad trivia of a life given over to pleasure had vanished. Whether he cared to accept it or not, Antonia had made him see things differently. Helena had been a victim, and a very young victim at that, with no means of helping herself. He could see that now, and his father should have seen it years back, but it was too late to revisit the past and change the mistakes that had been made. Instead, he chose to do something about the present, which in this case meant getting down and dirty with the plumbing to see if it was possible to bring water here.

It would take major restoration work, he concluded, but it could be done. He found he was pleased about that as he closed the door on the ancient boiler-room and walked up the steps into the light. He was just brushing off his hands when he spotted Antonia heaving a sack out of the building. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he said, racing across the courtyard to lift it out of her hands.

She squinted her eyes against the sun in order to stare
up at him. ‘Collecting things for the thrift shop. You do have them in Sinnebar?’

‘Yes, we do.’ He gave himself a moment to rejig his air of command into something more accommodating for the mother of his child—a woman so determined to go ahead with her plan it wouldn’t have surprised him to see Antonia with a spade, digging a trench to change the water course by herself, if she had to.

‘You collect and I’ll carry the bag for you,’ he suggested, wishing he could remain immune to the fact that Antonia had obviously been crying. She’d put on a brave face for him while they had been in her mother’s room, but the moment he had left it, she must have broken down. ‘We’ll stack them in here,’ he said briskly, trying to harden his heart to her and failing miserably. ‘I’ll have everything collected and cleaned, and then distributed to the appropriate agencies.’

‘So you do have a heart, Ra’id,’ she said.

‘I wouldn’t go that far,’ he said dryly, but he was relieved that Antonia was recovering. This visit couldn’t have been easy for her, mentally strong as she was. So much for his determination not to get drawn in! He almost convinced himself that today was different, and that today he had no alternative other than to help her out; having agreed to help Antonia make the place habitable, he would delegate the work to the most appropriate team of experts the moment he returned to the capital, and at that time he would distance himself from her. ‘Now, I think you should rest.’ He was concerned for her, and worried that her enthusiasm for the project would make her forget that she needed to look after herself now.

‘Rest? Rest where?’ she said, gazing anxiously around the derelict ruin she had inherited.

Following her gaze, he felt her uncertainty, and her sense that the enormity of the task she had taken on might just be too much for her in her present condition.

Feeling nothing when she stared at him trustingly was a battle fought and quickly lost. ‘I’m going to take you somewhere to rest up where you can bathe in fresh, clean water.’

‘The water you’ll be bringing here,’ she said quickly, as if he might be allowed to forget.

‘That’s right,’ he said, admitting to rueful admiration as he went to fetch her horse. ‘The water you’ll need if you’re still interested in restoring this place?’ He turned to look at her when he’d checked the girth.

‘Still interested?’ she demanded. ‘You don’t know me, Ra’id.’

But he was beginning to. This time she didn’t pull away when he offered her a leg up onto her horse.

This just wasn’t fair. Of all the things Ra’id had said or done, bringing her here was the cruelest—somewhere so beautiful, so tranquil, so instantly enthralling.

They rode the short distance in silence. She didn’t know where Ra’id was taking her beyond his promise of rest and fresh water, but as they crested the dune and she saw his tented pavilion on the shore of the oasis she could have cried at the beauty of it—and with despair that this aweinspiring wilderness she was quickly coming to love could never be hers to enjoy free of Ra’id’s disapproval.

She felt gritty and grubby as she eased in the saddle to
survey the limpid and oh, so tempting waters of an oasis streaked with moonlight. ‘What do you think?’ Ra’id asked, reining in his prancing stallion beside her. ‘I think it’s the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen in my life,’ she said honestly, starting the steep descent.

Leaning towards her, Ra’id steadied her horse. ‘If you want to take a dip, I’ll keep watch while you swim…to make sure you’re safe.’

‘You’d do that?’

‘Of course,’ he said, as if it were no big deal.

They had reached the flat ground, and Ra’id was waiting to help her down. ‘I can manage, thank you,’ she said, freeing her feet from the stirrups, but she was weary as she slid down from the saddle. She pulled herself round before facing him. The days of showing her soft underbelly to the world, and to Ra’id al Maktabi in particular, were well and truly over. ‘Would you like me to light a campfire while you see to the horses?’

Ra’id unbuckled the saddlebags and threw them over his shoulder. ‘If you’re up to it.’

‘I’m up to it.’ She rested one hand on her horse’s warm, steadfast neck for a moment, thankful for the survival course her brother had insisted she must take before involving herself in any more dangerous sports.

‘Then let’s set up camp.’

‘Do we have food?’

He patted the saddlebags.

‘You’ve thought of everything.’

Not quite. He had totally underestimated her, Ra’id concluded as Antonia walked ahead of him to the pavilion.

She wasn’t quite out for the count, and had enough fizz left in her to agree when Ra’id offered to light the fire after she had helped him with the horses. ‘You swim,’ he said. ‘Go on—you’ve earned it.’

She had nothing to prove, Antonia realised. She didn’t have to stand on her pride, or work herself into the ground. They’d been a good team, and they could both cope with outdoor living, though Ra’id understood this terrain a lot better than she ever would, and he would know just where to look for tinder.

She couldn’t see Ra’id when she reached the edge of the oasis, so she dropped her clothes and plunged naked into the water. The sudden chill on her overheated skin was like a healing balm, and as she powered into her first stroke she felt her cares float away. Everyone needed time out, Antonia reflected, rolling onto her back so she could stare up at the lantern moon. This precious time in the desert had been a welcome reminder that she could make a difference if she tried.

She would make a difference, Antonia determined, idly swishing her hands in the water to keep her afloat. Turning towards Ra’id’s beautiful pavilion, she started swimming towards it. This was a scene that belonged in one of her fantasies, but if it had been she could have engineered a happy ending rather than this travesty: Ra’id and Antonia trapped in the middle of a drama of their own making, a drama that should have ended well before they made love…

But thank goodness it hadn’t ended, Antonia reflected, caressing the still-flat planes of her stomach as she waded out of the water.

He watched Antonia until she was safely out of the water and dressed again, and then, without her seeing him, he returned to the campfire he had lit earlier. Should he show her what he had found in her mother’s room? Was she ready for it, or had she suffered enough emotional upheaval for one day? Would it be better to throw it on the fire? While Antonia had been scooping something off the floor, he’d been too—something that had dropped off her mother’s dressing table, another pathetic, hand-scribbled note.

‘Ra’id!’Antonia exclaimed, drying her hair with a towel he’d laid out ready for her. ‘You’re cooking fish again.’

‘In anticipation that you will fillet it for me again.’

‘I might,’ she said, her lips curving at the memory, though she hunkered down a good distance away from him. ‘Of course I will!’ she exclaimed now, as if some thought had suddenly occurred to her. ‘If you promise I can have that water.’

‘A filleted fish in exchange for my precious water-supply? Do you think I’m mad?’ He might as well have added ‘Do you never give up?’ But he knew the answer to that already.

‘Shake on it?’ she said boldly.

He looked at the tiny hand stretched out to him, and just in time remembered how the desert affected him. It was another magical setting, where they could be anyone they wanted to be while they were here—the only difference now was they both knew there were consequences to embracing that freedom.

‘You’re smiling,’ she said as he ate the morsels of fish she had prepared.

‘Am I?’ He frowned.

‘What’s wrong, Ra’id?’

He wasn’t about to share his thoughts with her. He had concluded that the enemy to duty wasn’t self-indulgence, but love. He wasn’t sure he had the weapons to fight that enemy off. ‘Why don’t we have a swim?’ he said, badly in need of a change of scene.

‘It’s too soon,’ she cautioned him.

‘Then we can stroll round the oasis, and when I judge the time is right I’ll throw you in.’

She was off like a hare from the traps. ‘Not if I see you first,’ she called back to him, laughing.

They didn’t make it to the water. The restrictions of the real world had been lifted again and nothing stood in their way. She was young, seductive and he wanted her.

She was fine until Ra’id brushed against her. He’d kicked sand over the fire and helped her clear everything away. She had identified the thick, nobbly palm-trunk behind which she intended to leave her clothes, and he was at the water’s edge when something frightened her, a crawling thing…

A harmless lizard, Ra’id reassured her as it scuttled away.

‘Okay, so I’ll get used to them,’ she said determinedly.

‘If you intend staying in the desert, I’d definitely advise it.’

There was humour in Ra’id’s voice and warmth in his eyes. She didn’t imagine it. She had been hanging on for a sign that he would mellow so they could discuss the future together, and it turned out the desert had cast its spell over him again. In the capital he was the undisputed king,
but the wilderness was a leveller that stripped everyone’s position in life away. And Ra’id came out of that well…

Very well, Antonia reflected, feeling increasingly aroused as he continued to stare at her. There was so much strength in his dark gaze, so much wisdom and understanding of her needs.

‘You’re aroused,’ he murmured.

‘Am I?’ she whispered, making it sound like a challenge.

‘So aroused, if I touch you you’ll come.’

She was too shocked to answer, by which time she was in his arms. He carried her into the pavilion and laid her down on the freshly laundered cushions. She was enveloped in the scent of sandalwood and sunlight as she sank into their scented folds. Moments later she was naked, and so was Ra’id; he had judged her level of arousal perfectly.

‘You greedy girl,’ he murmured as she abandoned herself to the onslaught of pleasure.

She was whimpering, open-mouthed in surprise that such levels of sensation were possible when he eased her legs over his shoulders. Being back with him was like a miracle, and so was the speed with which he could coax her into readiness again.

‘Let me ride you!’ she demanded, desperate to feel him deep inside her.

‘You set the pace,’ Ra’id agreed, settling back on the cushions.

She lowered herself cautiously. Ra’id was huge, and she had to take him in gradual stages. His touch was tantalisingly light on her hips as she sank slowly down. Then he was touching her, delicately, skilfully with one fingertip,
and she was moving faster, with more confidence…wildly, and with abandon.

He turned her so fast she had no chance to protest—and why would she, when he was giving her exactly what she needed firm and fast?

Ra’id climaxed violently with her, and they clung to each other for minutes that turned into drowsy hours; two people, so close they were one.

‘Do you ever tire?’ she asked him a long time later.

‘With you?’ Ra’id gave her an amused glance. ‘Never.’

This time he made love to her tenderly, as if he cherished her above all things. She wouldn’t allow herself to believe that, of course. She knew it was some primal instinct at work that prompted a man to feel that way about the mother of his child. If she allowed herself to believe in his feelings for her, Ra’id really would possess the means to break her heart.

But he didn’t make it easy for her. Brushing her hair back from her face, he moved slowly and deeply, kissing her eyelids, her lips and her neck, making love as if they had all the time in the world and he rejoiced in that as much as she did.

Dawn was busily brushing away the clouds of night when she woke in his arms. Would she ever become used to Ra’id’s strength, or his beautiful body? Antonia wondered, snuggling close, determined to make the most of whatever time they had.

‘So, you’re awake,’ he murmured.

‘Just,’ she admitted, loath to be the first one to break the spell.

‘It can be like this always, Antonia. For you and me.’

‘What do you mean?’ She turned to look at him.

‘We can be together,’ Ra’id said, as if that were obvious.

‘And the baby?’

‘Of course the baby,’ he exclaimed softly. ‘We would be a family.’

She rested against him, thinking how wonderful that would be—how perfect. But life was never perfect. Ra’id was a king, and whatever plan he had brewing in his head she wanted to hear it before she agreed. ‘Tell me more,’ she said.

‘Not now.’ He smiled a slow, sexy smile. ‘It will be a surprise.’

When had she learned to be such a pessimist? Antonia wondered, moving away. How much more did she want than this? Coming back to rest her head against Ra’id’s naked chest, she inhaled his familiar scent, telling herself that nothing could be more perfect than this. She should be happy. She should be optimistic about the future.

So why wasn’t she?

Because this was all an illusion, Antonia admitted; this wasn’t right. Or, rather, she wasn’t right for this. She wasn’t her mother, and she wanted more than to be hidden away—the sheikh’s plaything. She wanted a family. She wanted to work. She wanted to make a difference.