Strangers in the Desert

I’ve always liked to sing. And I’m good at it,” she said proudly.

“I never heard you sing before tonight.”

“I sang plenty growing up, but it was for myself. If I never sang for you, then I suppose I was afraid to. Afraid you would disapprove.”

“I might not have,” he said softly.

“I must have thought so.”

“Perhaps you did.” He was unapologetic.

Isabella clutched the blanket in a fist. This was such an odd conversation. She was married to this man, and yet he was a stranger to her. They were strangers to each other, if this conversation was anything to go by.

“We must not have spent a lot of time together,” she ventured.

“Enough,” he said, his eyes suddenly hot, intense.

Isabella dipped her head, hoping she wasn’t blushing. Clearly she wasn’t a virgin, and yet she couldn’t remember anything about her first sexual experience with him. About any sexual experience with him.

“How long were we married before … the baby?”

“You were pregnant the first month. And you disappeared only a month after Rafiq was born.”

She pressed a hand to her stomach beneath the blanket. It was so hard to imagine she’d ever been pregnant. “So we weren’t together a year.”

He gave his head a shake. “Not quite, no.”

She was trying so hard to process it. Because they were married. He hadn’t faked a bunch of documents to prove it to her. These were printed copies of actual newspaper articles.

Far more likely—and harder to understand, quite honestly—was the fact her parents had lied. Oh, she didn’t really expect that her mother had orchestrated this fiction Isabella had been living with—or that she’d had a problem going along with it. No, it was her father who’d done so.

And Isabella couldn’t figure out why.

Was Adan abusive? Had her hurt her? Was her father simply being protective?

She considered it, but she didn’t believe that was the case. Because Adan had been very angry with her, yes, and he’d been arrogant and presumptuous. But he hadn’t for one moment made her feel physically threatened. If he had, she wouldn’t be here.

Or at least not willingly.

She was uncomfortable with him—but not because she feared him.

Isabella pressed two fingers to her temple. It was so much to process.

“Does your head hurt?” Adan asked suddenly.

She was surprised at the answer. “Yes.” She’d been so focused that she hadn’t realized her temple was beginning to throb. Soon, the headache would spread to the other side. And she’d left her migraine medicine on the kitchen counter. She didn’t get them often, but when she did, they weren’t in the least bit pleasant.

Adan pressed a button on his seat and a flight attendant appeared. He ordered a glass of water and some ibuprofen. When it arrived, she gulped down the tablets, though she didn’t expect they would do any good.

“Perhaps you should sleep,” he said. “There’s a bedroom at the back, and a bathroom where you can wash your face.”

She should sleep, and yet she couldn’t quite yet. “Do you have a picture of him?” she asked quietly.

The corners of his mouth grew tight. Then he pulled out his cell phone and pressed a few buttons. When he held it out to her, the breath caught in her throat.

The little boy staring at the camera was adorable, of course. But it was more than that. She gazed at his face in wonder, searching for signs of her own features. She saw Adan easily in the dark hair and dark eyes. But the chin, that was hers. And the shape of the nose.

A tear slipped free and slid down her cheek. “He’s two now?”

Adan nodded as he took the phone back. She wasn’t ready to stop looking at the photo, and yet she couldn’t ask him to let her see it again.

She’d missed so much. So damn much. His first word. His first step. She scrubbed a hand across her face. Her head throbbed. Her stomach churned. She wasn’t sure if it was the headache or the heartache causing it, but she felt physically ill.

Isabella shot to her feet. Adan rose with the grace of a hunting panther, his brows drawn together. “What is wrong?”

“I have to—the bathroom.”

Adan pointed and Isabella bolted for the door. She made it just in time, heaving the contents of her stomach into the toilet. When she finally straightened, she caught sight of her face in the mirror. She looked like hell. Like a girl who’d got into her mother’s makeup and put way too much on in an effort to look more grown-up.

Isabella turned on the taps—bronze taps on an airplane, so much fancier than the usual airline bathroom—and began to scrub her face with hot water and soap. The tears started to flow as she scrubbed. She tried to stop it at first, but then decided to let herself cry. He would never hear her with the water running.

She scrubbed hard, as if she could scrub away the past two years and clean her memory free of the black curtain cloaking it at the same time. Her head continued to pound, but she cried and scrubbed until the makeup was gone and her tears were finished.

She hoped Adan would be gone by the time she returned to her seat—in his office, or sleeping in one of the staterooms—but she wasn’t that lucky.

He looked up as she approached. His expression didn’t change, but she was certain he hadn’t missed a thing. She looked like hell. Her face was pink and her eyes, though not puffy yet, soon would be from the crying.

“You are ill?” he asked.

“It’s the migraine,” she replied, shrugging. “If I have my medicine, it doesn’t get that bad, but without it …”

“You did not bring this medicine, I take it.”

“I was a bit preoccupied.”

“Tell me the name of this drug,” he commanded. “It will be waiting for you when we arrive in Jahfar.”

She said the name, then folded herself back into the reclining chair.

“You should lie down on a bed.”

She waved a hand. “I’d rather not walk that far right now, if you don’t mind.”

He rose, and before she knew what he was about to do, he’d come around to her chair and reached for her. She started to protest, but her head hurt too badly to put up much of a fight as she was lifted against his chest.

He was warm, hard and so solid. She felt safe for the first time in years. Safe.

And yet it was an illusion. Now, more than ever, she needed to guard herself against emotion. Because she was emotionally raw right now, vulnerable.

She felt so much. Too much.

She could feel his heart beating strong beneath the palm she’d rested on his chest, could smell the delicious spicy male scent of him. He carried her toward the back of the plane and into a room that contained a double-size bed. The sheets were folded down already, and the lights were dim. Heaven for her throbbing head.

He set her on the bed and she lay back, uncaring that she wore jeans. Adan slipped her shoes from her feet and then pulled the blanket over her. She closed her eyes, unable to watch him as he cared for her.

Because he didn’t really care for her, did he?

“Sleep, Isabella,” he said.

“Adan,” she said when he was at the door.

“Yes?”

She swallowed. Her throat hurt from crying. “I’m sorry.”

He merely inclined his head before pulling the door shut with a sharp click.

Adan didn’t sleep well. He kept tossing and turning, kicking off the covers, pulling them back again. In the next cabin, he imagined Isabella huddled beneath the blankets and sleeping soundly.

He had to admit, when she’d walked out of the bathroom earlier with her face scrubbed clean, he’d been gutted by her expression. She’d been crying, he could tell that right away. Her skin had been pink from the hot water she must have used, but her nose was redder and her eyes were bloodshot. She looked as though she’d been through hell.

And maybe she had. She’d seemed so stunned as she’d absorbed the news about their marriage, about Rafiq. About her death.

Adan pressed his closed fist to his forehead. He had no room for sympathy for her. He had to do what he’d come here to do. His country depended on it. His son depended on it.

He would not risk Rafiq’s happiness. Isabella was his mother, but what kind of mother was she? She’d abandoned her baby. Even if she truly didn’t remember doing it, she had. And she’d been in possession of all her faculties at the time. What had happened after, he did not know, but she’d chosen to leave.

Whether she’d truly walked into the desert or whether it was a fiction she’d cooked up to cover her tracks, he wasn’t certain. But whatever the truth, her father had helped her.

He would deal with Hassan Maro soon enough.

Right now, he had to deal with Isabella.

Adan threw back the covers. There was no sense in lying here any longer when he could get some work done instead. After he’d showered and shaved, he dressed in a white dishdasha and the traditional dark red keffiyeh of Jahfar.

A new shift of flight attendants was busily preparing breakfast in the galley. When they saw him, all activity immediately stopped as they dipped into deep curtsies and bows. He was still getting used to it, really. As a prince, he’d received obeisance, but not to the level he now did as a king. It was disconcerting sometimes. He was impatient, wanted to cut right to the matter, but he realized—thanks to Mahmoud’s tutelage—that the forms were still important to people. It set him apart, and there were still those in Jahfar who very much appreciated the traditions of their ancient nation.

“Would you like coffee, Your Excellency?” a young man asked.

“Yes, thank you,” Adan replied. “Bring it to my office.”

He went into the large space and sat down behind the big wooden desk. His computer fired up instantly, and he checked email. Then he brought up a window and typed in a search phrase: selective amnesia.

The coffee arrived, and Adan drank it while he read about dissociative amnesia, systematized amnesia and a host of other disorders. It was possible, though rare, for someone to forget a specific person and all the events surrounding that person. Did Isabella know it, too? Had she looked it up and decided to use it as an excuse?

And yet that would have required that she had known he was coming. Adan frowned. Whatever the case, he would have her examined by a doctor when they arrived.

He picked up the phone and called his assistant in Jahfar. Adan ordered the man to request that Hassan Maro come to the palace the next day, and then asked him to find a specialist in psychological issues.

An email from Jasmine popped into his inbox as he was finishing the call. He opened it and read her chatty missive about the fitting for her bridal costume and the preparations for their wedding feast.

A shaft of guilt speared him. He hadn’t told her where he was going when he’d left.

He’d known Jasmine since they were children. There’d never been a spark between them, but they liked each other. And she was kind, gentle and would make a good mother to Rafiq, as well as to their future children.

Jasmine was a safe choice. The right choice.

Adan worked a while longer, eating breakfast at his desk, and then emerged to find Isabella sitting in the same seat as last night, her bare legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles as she studied the papers in her fists. The papers from last night, he realized.

She looked up as he approached. There was no smile to greet him, as there once had been. She still seemed nothing like the girl he’d married. That woman had been meek, biddable and sweetly innocent. It hit him suddenly that she’d been as forgettable as a table or a chair, or any other item you counted on but didn’t notice on a daily basis.

This woman was sensual, mysterious and anything but biddable. There was a fire in her. A fire he’d never observed before. And he couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Her face without all the makeup was as pure as an angel’s. Her hair was as wild as yesterday, dark gold with lighter streaks that didn’t come from a salon. He’d only ever seen her with long, straight locks that she usually wore in a loose chignon. This was a completely bohemian, surfer-girl style that he wasn’t accustomed to.

She was wearing a dress today, a blue cotton sundress that showed too much skin for his liking, and a pair of sandals.

“You slept well?” he asked.

Her green eyes were still smoky, though not as smoky as yesterday when they’d been surrounded in dark makeup. She looked troubled, not rested.

“As well as can be expected, I guess.”

He understood the sentiment.

“We will arrive in Jahfar in another three hours or so,” he said.

She set the papers aside. “And what happens then, Adan?”

“Many things, I imagine,” he replied, purposely keeping it vague.

“When can I see … Rafiq?”

He noticed that she swallowed before she said his son’s name. His son, not hers. Not anymore. She’d given up that right two years ago. And he would not subject Rafiq to any confusion, not when he was about to marry Jasmine.

“You cannot, I’m afraid. It is out of the question.”

CHAPTER FOUR

ISABELLA stared up at him, wondering if the shock and hurt she felt were showing on her face, or if it was only inside that she was being clawed to ribbons. The pain was immense, but she refused to cry. She was finished with crying. She’d cried in the bathroom and she’d cried in her bed in the night while the plane’s engines droned endlessly on, but she would not cry again.

Nor would she accept his decrees as if he were her own personal dictator.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.