Liz Fielding: The Sheikh's Guarded Heart

Apparently reassured, he carefully washed away the dirt and dried blood from the bruised back of her hand before turning it over to clean the palm. He moved to her wrist, washed every bit of her arm with the same care.

Then he began again on the other hand. Time was, apparently, of no importance.

He emptied the bowl, refilled it. ‘Fresh water for your face,’ he said, and she swallowed. Hands, arms were one thing. Her face was so much more personal. He’d have to get closer. ‘I… Yes…’

‘That’s too hot?’ he enquired, as she jumped at the touch of a fresh pad to her cheek, let out an incoherent squeak.

‘No…’ The word seemed stuck in her throat but she swallowed it down and said, ‘No, it’s just…’ It was just that her grandmother’s brainwashing had gone deep. Bad girls let men touch them. In her head she knew that it wasn’t like that, that when people loved one another it was different, but even with Steve she’d found the slightest intimacy a challenge. Not that he’d pressed her.

He’d assured her that he found her innocence charming. That it made him feel like the first man in the world.

Innocent was right. No one but an innocent booby would have fallen for that line.

While she knew that this was different, that it had nothing to do with what her grandmother had been talking about, it didn’t make it any easier, but she managed a convincing, ‘It’s fine…’ refusing to let fall tears of rage, remorse, helplessness—a whole range of emotions piling up faster than she could think of words to describe them. After a long moment in which the man waited, apparently unconvinced, she said, ‘Truly.’

‘You must tell me if I hurt you,’ he said, gently lifting the hair back from her face.

All she wanted was for him to get on with it, get it over with, but as he gently stroked the cotton over her skin it was just as it had been with her hands, her arms. He was tenderness itself and her hot, dry skin, dehydrated and thirsty, seemed to soak up the moisture like a sponge.

‘I’m just going to clean up your scalp here,’ he warned. ‘I think you must have caught your hair when you were struggling with the seat belt.’ It stung a little. Maybe more than a little because he stopped, looked at her and said, ‘Shall I stop?’

‘No. Really. You’re not hurting me.’ Not much anyway.

Pride must abide.

Words chiselled on to her scalp.

He lifted her long tangled hair, holding it aside so that he could wash the nape of her neck, and she gave an involuntary sigh. If she could only wash her hair, she thought, she’d feel a hundred times better.

‘Later,’ he said. ‘I will wash your hair tomorrow.’

She was smiling into the soft wool keffiyeh coiled around his neck before she realized that he’d answered her unspoken thoughts. She considered asking him how he’d done that. Then waited. If he was a mind-reader she wouldn’t need to ask…

There was a tap on the door and someone called out.

He rapped out one word. He’d spoken in Arabic but the word was unmistakable. Wait. Then he laid her back against the headrest and she whispered, ‘Shukran.’ Thank you.

She’d bought a teach yourself Arabic course, planning to learn some of the language before joining Steve. She hadn’t just want to be a silent partner. She’d wanted to be useful. A bit of a joke, that. She’d served her usefulness the minute she’d so trustingly signed the papers he’d placed in front of her.

Hanif al-Khatib smiled at her—it was the first time, she thought. The man was so serious…Then he said, ‘Afwan, Lucy.’

Welcome. It meant welcome, she thought. And she knew he meant it.

In all her life, no one had ever treated her with such care, such consideration, as this stranger and quite suddenly she was finding it very hard to hold back the dam of tears.

Obviously it was shock. Exhaustion. Reaction to the accident…

She sniffed, swallowed. She did not cry. Pain, betrayal, none of those had moved her to tears. She’d learned early that tears were pointless. But kindness had broken down the barriers and, embarrassed, she blinked them back.

‘You are in pain, Lucy?’

‘No.’

He touched a tear that lay on her cheek. ‘There is no need to suffer.’

‘No. They gave me an injection. I just feel sleepy.’

‘Then sleep. It will make the journey easier for you.’ Then, ‘I will return in a moment,’ he said.

She nodded, her mind drifting away on a cloud of sedative. She jerked awake when he returned.

‘I hope you will not mind wearing this,’ Hanif said, helping her to sit up, wrapping something soft and warm around her, feeding her arms into the sleeves.

She had no objection to anything this man did, she thought, but didn’t have the energy to say the words out loud.

‘How is she?’

Hanif had left Zahir in Rumaillah to make enquiries about his guest and now he roused himself to join him in the sitting room of the guest suite.

‘Miss Forrester is still sleeping.’

‘It’s the best thing.’

‘Perhaps.’ She’d been fighting it—disturbed, dreaming perhaps, crying out in her sleep. It was only the sedatives prescribed by the hospital keeping her under, he suspected. ‘What did you discover in Rumaillah? Was the embassy helpful?’

‘I thought it better to make my own enquiries, find out what I could about her movements before I went to the embassy. If you want my opinion, there’s something not quite right about all this.’

‘Which is, no doubt, why you tried to dissuade me from bringing her here,’ Hanif replied, without inviting it.

‘It is my duty—’

‘It is your duty to keep me from brooding, Zahir. To drag me out on hunting expeditions. Tell my father when I’m ready to resume public life.’

‘He worries about you.’

‘Which is why I allow you to stay. Now, tell me about Lucy Forrester.’

‘She arrived yesterday morning on the early flight from London. The immigration officer on duty remembered her vividly. Her hair attracted a good deal of notice.’

He didn’t doubt it. Pale as cream, hanging to her waist, any man would notice it.

Realising that Zahir was waiting, he said, ‘Yes, yes! Get on with it!’

‘Her entry form gave her address in England so I checked the telephone number and put through a call.’

‘Did I ask you to do that?’

‘No, sir, but I thought—’

He dismissed Zahir’s thoughts with an irritated gesture. ‘And?’ he demanded.

‘There was no reply.’ He waited for a moment, but when Hanif made no comment he continued. ‘She gave her address in Ramal Hamrah as the Gedimah Hotel but, although she had made a booking, she never checked in.’

‘Did someone pick her up from the airport, or did she take a taxi?’

‘I’m waiting for the airport security people to come back to me on that one.’

‘And what about the vehicle she was driving? Have you had a chance to look at it? Salvage anything that might be useful?’

‘No, sir. I sent out a tow truck from Rumaillah, but when it arrived at the scene, the 4x4 had gone.’

‘Gone?’

‘It wasn’t there.’

‘It can’t have vanished into thin air, Zahir.’

‘No, sir.’

Hanif frowned. ‘No one else knew about it, other than the woman at Bouheira Tours. What did you tell her?’

‘Only that one of their vehicles had been in an accident and was burnt out in the desert. She was clearly shaken, asked me to describe it, the exact location. Once I had done that she said that I must be mistaken. That the vehicle could not belong to them. Then I asked her if Miss Forrester was a staff member or a traveller booked with them and she replied that she’d never heard of her.’