HERA HERSELF CAME to collect Sarah to take her to dinner.
Sarah had just returned from a short sortie into the courtyard and realised that whatever she wore during the day it would have to cover all her skin, as, at dusk, the air was still hot, so by day the sun must be fierce.
Although maybe she’d be gone tomorrow.
Maybe Harry would realise the impossibility of their being here together, and what?
Ask his mother to rescind the invitation?
Hardly.
So he’d avoid her. That would be the best. Hera would ask someone else to show Sarah Ambelia...
‘Please don’t think we are offering gifts with the clothes we have for visitors to wear,’ Hera said, after checking out Sarah’s outfit. ‘We have the clothes available for those who don’t intend a visit here and would have nothing suitable to wear. I think it would be best for you to choose some of our traditional tunics and trousers for daytime, to protect your beautiful skin.’
‘But—’ Sarah protested, before a small hand on her arm stopped her objection.
‘You must not think that anything is wasted. If visitors do not wish to take with them the clothes, or, for that matter, the toiletry items they have used, we pass them on to several houses we have for women from less fortunate circumstances, women who are escaping abusive husbands or families, or who have nowhere else to go.’
Sarah nodded. She knew such organisations existed back at home, and in Australia, even some that took half-used bottles of shampoo and other toiletries.
But here?
Hera must have read her thoughts, for she smiled a little sadly and said, ‘Unfortunately it happens everywhere, my dear. People are people all over the world. But, come, we have only a few of the family in to dinner tonight, but they will be anxious to meet you.’
Because of the baby? Or to check out suspicions of a connection between her and Harry—Rahman?
Sarah followed Hera back towards the front of the building, turning off through another arch about halfway down the hall. Although the room was large, it was so full of people she had to wonder just how big the al-Taraq family was if this was just a few of them.
Then Harry was there—Rahman, for he was in his robes—but the hand that touched hers and fired her skin was definitely Harry’s.
This was bad, worse than bad—horrendous. How could she be close to him and not look at him, touch him, remember what they’d shared?
‘I will not introduce you to all of them at once,’ he said, and she realised she should have added listen to him to the list. ‘But my other sisters and my brother-in-law and a favourite aunt or two—that will do for tonight. Are you up to it?’
He sounded as if he was flirting.
But they’d never really flirted.
Maybe because she’d forgotten how and their attraction had been strong enough to skip that bit.
But looking up at him, seeing the smile in his eyes, yes, he was definitely flirting.
‘And just how many more relations are there that that will do for tonight?’
‘Countless,’ he said, with a chuckle that stirred every nerve in her body.
Heaven forbid, she was here in a palace, with the man she...loved?
‘I don’t think I should be meeting any of them,’ she muttered at him as the possibility that her feelings might run that deep shocked her into anger.
‘It is all right, Sarah,’ he assured her. ‘Everything will be fine. Just relax and enjoy yourself.’
Relax and enjoy herself in a room full of exotic strangers?
‘Just for me?’ he murmured, and her bones melted at the smile accompanying the words.
‘Why not?’ she responded, deciding he was right. Whatever happened in the future, there was no reason not to enjoy the present—and what a stupendous and astounding present it was.
So she allowed herself to indulge in the pleasure of Harry’s hand on her elbow, in the warmth of his body close to hers.
He guided her through the crowd and she nodded and smiled and turned away thanks and praise for her coming to help the family, all the time wondering how many of the women were seeing through their ‘professional colleagues’ act and wondering just how well they knew each other.
Probably all of them because in between introductions Harry was whispering in her ear, teasing her with memories of other whispers.
And she was responding, with quick retorts and, well, almost flirting.
‘Time for dinner,’ Harry said, giving her elbow a secret little squeeze.
He ushered her towards the back of the room, and Sarah realised it was nothing more than a very large ante-chamber, opening out through more arched doors to a splendid spacious area, a huge mat already loaded with platters of food dominating the middle of it.
‘We do have rooms with dining tables and chairs,’ Harry said quietly in her ear, ‘but tonight with all the women’s gossip antennae twitching in the air, the sheer numbers meant we needed to eat in here.’
He led Sarah to one of the long sides of the mat where Hera already sat, her legs tucked neatly to one side. Several other women were sitting now, so Sarah followed their lead, tucking her legs to the side, the cushion beneath her making the position quite comfortable.
She looked around, noticing for the first time that there were children present—a lot of children. They must have been lost in the crowd of adults or maybe had been playing outside.
‘The men, like men everywhere, I believe, will gather at the far end,’ Hera said, nodding her head to where Harry was striding along the side of the room.
‘That way,’ Hera added with a sly smile, ‘they can pretend to be above the gossip, although they will insist on hearing every word of it from their wives when they get home.’
‘You are comfortable to sit like this?’ a voice on Sarah’s other side asked.
Sarah turned to look at the woman. She was one of Ha—Rahman’s sisters, she was sure.
‘When I came home from school and university, it would to take me ages to get used to it again, and even now we sit on chairs at a table at home, so my legs aren’t as supple as they used to be.’
The woman was beautiful, a red tunic giving her classic features, smooth olive skin and deep brown eyes a radiance that Sarah could only envy.
‘What did you study at university?’
Sarah wished she remembered the woman’s name but most of her mind had been on not revealing just how much pleasure a simple touch on her elbow could bring.
‘I got a First in psychology,’ the woman said. ‘I thought it might help me fathom just how this family works.’
She smiled and gave a little shrug.
‘It hasn’t helped,’ she added, ‘but I’m useful around the hospital both with patients and staff.’
She studied Sarah for a moment before speaking again.
‘I suppose you’re sick of people thanking you for what you did for Miryam’s baby, but we do all appreciate it. You’re probably wondering why Rahman didn’t ask one of his old colleagues from London, but—’
‘But apart from having to see and talk to them, which would have hurt him immeasurably, he wouldn’t have wanted to insult them by standing in on the operation, which was obviously what your sister wanted.’
‘And I did psychology!’ Neela—she was Neela, Sarah remembered—said, smiling again and patting Sarah’s hand.
‘You must love him very much to have seen all of that,’ Neela said, and Sarah was so flummoxed she dropped the piece of bread she was eating and stared at the other woman—probably with her mouth agape.
‘Me?’ she finally managed. ‘Harry? Love? No, no, you have it wrong—we’re colleagues, maybe friends, although we’ve not known each other long, that’s all.’
The words must have come out in such a mangled mess that Neela patted Sarah’s hand again, while Hera, on the other side, nodded as if with satisfaction.
The meal was superb, platter after platter of delicious food, some with tastes Sarah recognised, others new and different.
‘You have seen the resort Rahman has built?’ Hera asked.
‘Yes. It’s very beautiful and the research he’s funding at the laboratories there is very important.’
‘Ah, but is it enough?’ Neela asked, and without thinking Sarah shook her head.
She turned her attention to a small ball of nuts and seeds that Hera had put on her plate, but Neela was persistent.
‘And?’ she asked.
Sarah shrugged, still hoping to avoid the discussion.
‘I know him well,’ Neela said, ‘and love him so I—all of us—only want the best for him.’
Sarah turned to look at the woman who was still probing—a psychologist’s probing or a sister’s?
‘When we first met,’ she admitted to Neela, ‘I accused him of opting out of the paediatric surgery he was so good at—of walking away when he still had so much to offer current and future surgeons, even if he couldn’t operate.’
She paused but something in Neela’s eyes forced her to continue.
‘I think I hurt him quite badly,’ she admitted.
‘Did he hit back at you?’
Sarah stared at the other woman in disbelief.
‘It’s not witchcraft or even psychology, but I know my brother well. He only hits back when he’s cornered and refuses to admit to something he’s accused of.’
Sarah just shook her head.
How they’d got onto the topic of her and Harry’s meeting at Wildfire—memories of which still had the power to hurt her—she didn’t know, but the way Neela spoke of her brother only made Sarah feel more deeply for him and his pain from the loss of the work he’d loved.
‘So what are you going to do about getting him off this wild circling of the world, checking this, checking that, and back into the work he loves?’
‘Me?’
Sarah was so astonished by the question the word came out as a squeak.
‘Yes, you! You’re a colleague.’
Something gleamed in Neela’s dark eyes. Was it suspicion they might be more than that, or was she simply attempting to sort out her brother’s life?
‘Yes, but in a minor way. Not in the same league as your brother—not anywhere near where he was, and even could be.’
‘Yet you’ve had him back in Theatre, a place he’d sworn he’d never see again, not once but twice.’
Sarah breathed deeply. She was drowning here, drowning in Neela’s persistence.
Yet still she had to protect the man she...
Loved?
Surely not—not in four or five days. Love didn’t happen that way.
‘Well?’
Had her face changed? Had Neela read something in it as the shock of the random thought hit her?
She could handle this!
‘They were both emergencies,’ Sarah said firmly. ‘Now, tell me, I don’t think Harry ever said where he was kept, but is Rajah here at the palace?’
‘Nice change of topic,’ Neela told her, but she was smiling as she spoke so Sarah guessed she wasn’t offended.
‘You haven’t met Rajah yet?’
It was Sarah’s turn to smile.
‘I arrived, went to the hospital, played Harry’s hands for the operation, then came here, slept, showered and here I am.’
‘I suppose it has been a big day for you, but I’ll tell Rahman you were asking. He’ll probably introduce you to Rajah tonight. It’s not far to walk.’
Neela was smiling again but although Sarah couldn’t read guile in the lovely eyes, she guessed it was there.
But why?
She had to have missed something somewhere. Harry—Rahman—was supposed to be marrying some woman chosen by his family, so why was his sister suggesting the pair of them have a walk after dinner, probably in moonlight?
Please, let there not be moonlight...
Sarah looked along the rows of people seated comfortably at the sides of the mat, and in spite of his traditional clothes picked out Harry easily.
Because he was looking at her?
You will not blush, she told herself, although she could already feel the heat crawling up her neck.
She coughed to cover her confusion then remembered Harry moving close to her, patting her back, turning it into something else—a first embrace.
She glanced his way again but he was speaking to a man in a business suit by his side.
‘That’s my husband he’s talking to,’ the super observant Neela told her. ‘Most of the menfolk aren’t here tonight. My father and Miryam’s husband will be at the hospital until they are sure the baby is out of danger, while my other brother is overseas at present—America, I think, maybe at the United Nations—and the husbands of the other women avoid what they call “gossip gatherings”.’
Neela paused then added, ‘But that doesn’t stop them giving their wives the third degree when they get home. I think men are probably worse gossips than women, although they’d never admit it. Do you agree?’
‘I’ve not really thought about it,’ Sarah answered honestly, not having had many men close to her in recent years to judge such a thing.
Although...
‘My husband hated gossip,’ she said. ‘Working in a hospital, which are always hotbeds of it, he used to talk about how even the smallest of stories doing the rounds could grow into something large enough to break up a marriage, or hurt someone badly in some other way.’
‘Your husband?’
Of course Neela had seized on that!
‘He died,’ Sarah said, and turned her attention to Hera before Neela could probe further.
‘This pastry is delicious,’ she said to the older woman. ‘Is it a traditional recipe?’
Hera smiled at her.
‘Neela wearing you down, is she? I’d like to say it’s because of her job, but she’s always been the most inquisitive of all my children and definitely closest to Rahman.’
‘She’s been very kind,’ Sarah said weakly, suddenly aware that Hera would have heard most, if not all, of the conversation.
But Hera must have understood because she talked about the pastry, soaked with lemon and honey, and other traditional dishes; about the bread that was made fresh every day, and how oil and dates had been stored in the nomadic days of the family.
Sarah listened, mesmerised by the stories of the past that Hera told, Neela joining in from time to time, prompting her mother’s memory or offering her own favourite stories.
‘I’m glad to have a settled life,’ Neela said, ‘but the desert stays in the soul of our people. All of us have to get out beyond the palace walls to listen to the silence or the wind shushing the sand against the dunes, to feel the sun warm us through to our very souls. I think maybe Rahman forgot that in his frenetic journeys around the world.’
Hera nodded then smiled as she added, ‘But he is home now, and for that we must be thankful.’
‘That and other things, I suspect,’ Neela said, but Hera ignored her, instead directing Sarah’s attention to a new platter of desserts that had arrived in front of them.
She tasted coconut in the dessert and again looked along the mat...
* * *
He couldn’t help but glance her way, checking her as she sat demurely there beside his mother.
It was an unbelievable sight in some ways, but there she was—visible as well as present in the air around him, for he could feel her presence, too.
Sarah...
Neela’s husband was telling him about some great business deal he’d pulled off, but Rahman—he was Rahman here, although to Sarah he was Harry—well, whoever he was, wasn’t quite as fascinated in the story as his companion thought him.
He was too caught up in wanting Sarah—Sarah, who’d entered the ante-chamber with his mother, a vivid green shirt framing her pale face and flaming hair.
Having only seen her in black and white, the sight of her had somehow filled his heart with gladness that she was here, in his home, except...
He wanted her, wanted her more badly than he’d ever wanted anything, even the continuation of his career, but of course he couldn’t have her, not physically, not here in Ambelia, where jungle drums were as nothing compared to the whispers of the sands.
So the want ached inside him as he nodded to keep his brother-in-law convinced he was rapt in the story, and ate, and tried not to look along to where Sarah sat.
Neela was beside her—that was dangerous. Neela could draw out secrets from a stone.
Beautiful, that’s how she looked—Sarah, not Neela.
‘Are you actually interested in what I’m telling you?’ his brother-in-law demanded, and Harry smiled and shook his head.
‘Not really. I must be tired—the flight home, the baby...’
Stupid excuses really when all of the family were almost as at home in their jets as they were on the ground, and the baby’s situation had never been drastic.
‘Worried about the changes to your future? Neela tells me the woman’s changed her mind.’
Harry shook his head at the speed with which news travelled in this country. He and his mother had only spoken to Yasmina’s mother that afternoon.
Now, that had been fun!
He’d felt such a worm, but even if nothing eventuated between himself and Sarah, he’d known he couldn’t, in all fairness, marry another woman.
Meeting Sarah again, maybe even loving her—could it be love? He had no idea—but even if it wasn’t love—
‘I cannot believe this!’ he muttered to himself.
‘That the woman broke it off? You didn’t even know her. It shouldn’t bother you,’ his brother-in-law protested.
Harry—he was Harry when he was thinking of Sarah—shut his lips tightly so the growl that had threatened to escape was captured unspoken.
But not unfelt—
Was this what frustration felt like?
He’d been shocked and angry when he’d learned he couldn’t operate again, but he’d slapped away the useless emotions and plunged into other work.
Probably so he didn’t keep thinking of the loss.
But he hadn’t been frustrated.
Only too aware the word was more used in a sexual context than a general life kind of frustration, he was now feeling both.
Frustrated that he couldn’t touch the woman he—well, wanted to touch, and frustrated that his life no longer provided a clear path in front of him.
When he’d taken up the search for an encephalitis vaccine he’d been drawn into other activities that had kept him constantly busy, but now?
Was it because the vaccine, for some forms of the disease, was about to go to clinical trials that he was no longer satisfied, or had Sarah’s dig about minions being able to do what he did, dug deeper than he’d realised?
Then, being back in Theatre again, not once but twice...
This time the growl did escape but fortunately his brother-in-law was telling his neighbour on the other side about his latest business coup so it probably went unnoticed.
He glanced towards Sarah again and saw his mother rising from her place, Sarah and Neela with her. As the senior male present, it was his duty to escort his mother from the room, wasn’t it?
He rose lithely to his feet and moved quickly towards them, taking his mother’s arm to lead her to one of the sitting rooms where coffee would be served.
Behind him, people were standing, jostling each other, talking in louder voices now the feast was over, but he only had eyes for Sarah, and ears for the murmur of her voice as she asked Neela what happened next.
‘Next I think Rahman takes you to meet Rajah,’ his irrepressible sister said, throwing him a wink over their mother’s head.
‘What a good idea,’ his mother said, and Harry frowned.
It would be just like his sister to have sussed out that there was something between them, but for his mother to be pushing them together?
‘Go with Rahman,’ his mother said, detaching her arm from his hand and easing Sarah towards him. ‘I will explain to the family that you are tired but need some fresh air before you retire.’
After which, for his benefit, he knew, his mother repeated, ‘Fresh air.’
Neela grinned at him, but Sarah was looking so lost he took her elbow and drew her away from the head of what had become a procession towards the room where coffee would be served.
‘You look beautiful,’ he told the woman beside him, as he led her down the long hall towards the rear of the main palace building.
‘Well, I’m not sure about that, but I can tell you I’ve never been so nervous in my life. I had no idea what was going on in there.’
‘Neela pressuring you for answers?’
Sarah looked at him now, and smiled.
‘Just a bit!’ she admitted. ‘But I doubt she got much she didn’t know. She’s aware you’re unhappy away from the job you love. I think your mother knows that, too.’
Harry shook his head.
‘Perceptive women in my family,’ he muttered. ‘Did they, perhaps, come up with answers to my plight? They know full well I can’t operate any more.’
‘But you could still be involved,’ Sarah insisted, stopping to look directly at him as she spoke.
He shrugged his shoulders, and nodded to the man who was opening the wide back door for the pair of them, and producing, to Sarah’s obvious surprise, the shoes she had kicked off at the front door what seemed like another life ago.
‘I think that’s where we came in,’ he said. She heard what could only be a rueful note in his voice.
‘That was only my opinion,’ Sarah protested, ‘and you’d awoken bad memories, so I struck out at you, but that doesn’t mean what I said was wrong.’
‘Heaven save me from opinionated women,’ Harry grumbled, but the woman by his side didn’t respond. Instead she stood and gazed around her, apparently taking in the beauty of this, the kitchen garden, with its neat rows of citrus and stone fruit trees, a fountain playing in the centre of the path that lay between the rows.
‘It’s an orchard but you’ve made it beautiful with symmetry and patterns like the carpets inside,’ she murmured.
It was Rahman who appreciated the compliment but Harry who took pride in the woman who had seen the design for what it was.
‘We try to echo the patterns of carpets in all our gardens,’ he said, taking her hand and bringing it to his lips to kiss it lightly on the back.
He felt her shiver of response, and his own acceleration of the need he’d felt since she’d first arrived in Ambelia.
And cursed...
* * *
It was a dream.
Being here with Harry, in this fantasy palace with smooth marble floors and carpet gardens beyond the doors, and on her way to meet an elephant.
She was asleep—it had to be a dream—but the surge of feeling through her body when Harry’s lips brushed her hand suggested that she must have been awake.
Awake, and oh, so aware of the man beside her...
But he was who he was—Rahman here, not Harry—so a furtive kiss beneath a sculpted apricot tree was not going to be an option.
She could smell the faint hint of roses in the water in the fountain—more fantasy, a land where fountains sprayed rosewater—and walked towards it by the side of the man she couldn’t kiss.
And she knew with terrible certainty that she shouldn’t have come—shouldn’t have answered his plea for help, for all he’d answered hers.
For seeing him again, having him beside her like this, she couldn’t help but realise the holiday wasn’t over—if what they’d had had really been a holiday romance.
Not for her, anyway.
‘He’s down this way,’ Harry said, breaking into her musings and guiding her down a side path where raised beds, set out in precise geometric patterns, held garden vegetables.
Sarah told herself to lighten up, to relax and enjoy the wonder of this new experience—to set aside all other thoughts and feelings and live for the moment.
Easier thought than done when Harry’s light touch on her arm joined them, providing a conduit for messages to hum between their bodies.
Although that would probably be happening without the touch, she admitted to herself, then realised they’d left the garden through an arch in a tall earthen wall and were entering what appeared to be a jungle.
‘A jungle in the desert?’
Harry laughed.
‘With water we can grow anything, even jungles, and while the sea along one of our borders provides us with water for desalination, we will never be without it.’
Another gate, again through high earth walls, this one carefully locked with a key code for entry.
Harry called and to Sarah’s delight an animal—probably an elephant—answered. Then, rumbling towards them from the shadowed trees appeared the huge bulk of the animal he called Rajah.
‘But he’s beautiful,’ Sarah whispered, awed by the huge beast who stood so quietly in front of them.
She reached out and touched the rough hide on his trunk as Harry made formal introductions.
‘Sarah, Rajah. Rajah, Sarah.’
The big beast seemed to nod, and Sarah stepped back a little, needing to take him in more fully.
‘I’ve never been this close to one before—never realised just how big they are.’
‘He’s a beauty,’ Harry said, so much pride in his voice Sarah had to laugh.
Harry looked at her for a moment, then he, too, laughed.
‘Some first date for a woman—being introduced to an elephant.’
Sarah studied his still-smiling face.
‘Is it a first date, Harry?’ she asked.
‘I think so,’ he said. ‘I know we skipped that bit on the island but, given the circumstances, I thought I could make up for it here. Take you places, show you things, while we get to know each other better.’
‘But are you free to do that? Your mother said something about you seeing to things, but are you free?’
He frowned and she wondered, if he’d broken the arrangement, just how hard it must have been for him.
‘I could never have married another woman while feeling the way I do about you. I’m not even sure how that is, which is why we need to go back to the beginning, leaving out the lust part and just get to know each other.’
‘And why would we want to do that?’ Sarah asked, as too many emotions jostled in her head.
He grinned at her.
‘Well, for a start the lust part is impossible here, where every move we make will be watched and broadcast far and wide. I do have some responsibility to my family. I hadn’t thought it through—I needed you for the op, but I also needed to see you, not even considering that seeing each other would be all we’d be able to do.’
‘And fully clothed at that,’ Sarah teased, as she realised just how he must have felt. ‘But why the courtship?
The smile disappeared, and he frowned slightly.
‘Because it’s the right thing to do,’ he said firmly.
Whatever, she decided. If it meant spending a little more time with him, even time made agony because they couldn’t touch and kiss, she’d take it.
‘Okay,’ she said, then to her surprise he took her carefully in his arms and kissed her. Not a heated kiss of passion, like ones they’d shared before, more a first-date kiss, a goodnight kiss...
Or was goodbye lingering behind it?