Ann Lethbridge - Mills & Boon New Voices - Foreword by Katie Fforde

Loneliness.

She sat up, her eyes adjusting to the dim light from the brazier in the middle of the tent. She lay on a large feather mattress, piled high with furs, but she’d somehow managed to kick them all away in the night.

Reaching for a fur, she realized there was a large shape in the bed with her. A man.

Zafir.

He’d left her here last night, telling her to get some sleep. She’d thought she might be shown to her own tent, but he’d informed her there was no other place to go—unless she wanted to go to Sheikh Abu Bakr’s harem.

She definitely did not.

So she’d climbed into this bed and fallen asleep, never realizing he’d returned. And she could clearly see what the problem was now that he was here. Zafir had always stolen the covers.

She tugged the fur away, putting as much distance between them as possible.

“What is wrong, Genie?” he asked, his voice gravelly with sleep.

“You took the covers.”

“Never.”

She could almost laugh if this situation weren’t so surreal. Because he’d always denied stealing the covers when she’d awakened in the night in his apartment.

“It’s a bad habit of yours, and you know it.”

His laugh sent heat spiraling through her. “So you have always said. My wife said the same, so perhaps it is true.”

Now, why was her heart throbbing at the thought of another woman knowing him so intimately? It wasn’t a surprise, after all. A wife would notice those things. She didn’t bother asking which wife.

He propped himself on an elbow. There was the gulf of the bed between them, but still it felt too intimate to be here like this. Too right and too wrong at the same time.

“Has there been anyone special in your life?” he asked, almost as if he could see the wheels turning in her head as she thought about him with a wife.

“Yes,” she said automatically, because she couldn’t bear to tell him the truth. That he had been the only special man in her life.

“Then I am sorry it didn’t work out.”

“Me too.” Now, why did that bring a well of tears to her eyes? And why did she have to work so hard to keep them from falling?

“Much has happened in the last ten years, has it not? Have you been as successful as you’d hoped?”

“I’ve done well enough,” she said. But what was success, really, when she spent her days poring over old documents and maps, living in harsh conditions while she dug pottery shards from ancient dirt? It was what she’d wanted, what she’d worked for, and yet there was something empty about it too.

She’d thought, after Zafir, she might meet a man who shared her love of ancient history—a fellow archaeologist who wanted all the same things she wanted.

And yet though she’d met plenty of men who might fit those criteria, none of them had touched her heart the way Zafir had.

“You will be pleased to know, by the way, that everyone on your team is accounted for. The men who attacked your camp have been disciplined. Unfortunately you were caught between those warring factions I told you of earlier.”

Her guilt at nearly forgetting about her colleagues when her senses were so overwhelmed with Zafir was somewhat allayed by the news that they were all well.

“I should be there to help them collect everything. It will need to be catalogued again, and—”

“They are aware that you are a guest of the King of Bah’shar.”

The King of Bah’shar. It gave her a chill to think of Zafir as king, and yet it seemed appropriate too. He’d always been larger than life—and he’d been the only person she’d ever known who had a security detail in college. She’d never been able to forget he was someone important. Imagining a life with him had been impossible. How true that had turned out to be.

“And how much longer am I to remain your guest ?” In her earlier excitement about the temples she’d forgotten to ask how long he intended to keep her here. Stupid, Genie.

“A few days, no more.”

“What am I supposed to do for a few days? Stay in this tent? Isn’t there another way?”

“We will not be staying. Tomorrow we return to Al-Shahar.”

“But I thought you had to stay here…”

“I am the King, habiba . I go where I wish. Tomorrow I wish to return to Al-Shahar. My meeting with the Sheikhs will continue there.”

“Why can’t you just tell them to do what you want? You are the King, after all.”

His sigh was audible. “Yes, one would think it should work that way. But Bah’shar is an ancient country, and things have always been done a certain way. Blood feuds often go back many generations. My father tended to ignore the violence so long as the Sheikhs paid their obeisance.”

“Why can’t you do the same?” Not that she thought violence should be ignored, but she wanted to know why it was important to him.

“I could, I suppose. But then things happen—like border raids, where old fools let their men kidnap Western archaeologists. It makes us look bad in the eyes of the world. I wish us to move forward as a people, not wallow in the past.”

“Isn’t tradition important?”

“Of course. But so is progress. And I believe we can have both—though there are those who resist.”

“I remember that you were going to build skyscrapers. Do you ever get to do that?”

He sighed again. “I did, for a while. Perhaps once I’ve settled into this new role as king I will be able to do so again.”

They’d only been together six months, but she remembered his enthusiasm for building—his sketches and grand plans. He’d been in love with the idea of creating and she’d been in love with him. God.

“I’m sorry things didn’t work out the way you’d hoped,” she said.

“It is as it was intended to be. I accept that.” He threw back the covers and sat up. “Are you tired?”

“Not really.” Too much adrenaline in one day. And too much shock.

“Then come. I wish to show you something.” He hesitated a moment. “You once told me you could ride. Was that the truth?”

“Yes, but I won’t be joining the Olympic equestrian team anytime soon.”

His teeth flashed white in the dim light as he stood and held out his hand. “That is sufficient.”

Genie stared at his outstretched fingers. Did she really want to go anywhere with him? To risk even a moment more in his company than absolutely necessary?

But what was the alternative? Refuse and have him climb back into the bed with her?

She put her hand in his. Electricity snapped along her nerve-endings, sizzling into her core.

No matter how she sliced it, she was in big trouble here. A few days might as well be an eternity.

“What do you think?” Zafir asked.

Genie could only stare at the undulating sand dunes—no, mountains —spreading as far as the eye could see. She’d excavated in the desert before, she knew what sand dunes looked like, but she’d never seen anything so beautiful as the pink-tinged dawn sky, the red sand that glistened with moisture which would soon be burned off by the hot rays of the sun—and she’d certainly never witnessed it from the back of a white Arabian mare.

The horse’s delicately arched neck belied her strength. She’d run up this mountain of sand as fleet-footed as a gazelle. Now she stood, her nostrils flaring, her proud head held high, her bridle dripping with tassels that shook with each prancing movement.

Genie turned in the saddle. Zafir was staring at her. He sat his mount so easily, the white fabric of his dishdasha a sharp contrast with his stallion’s bay flanks. He looked at home here, regal and otherworldly—like someone she should never have met in a million years.