Marguerite Kaye - Summer Sheikhs - Sheikh's Betrayal / Breaking the Sheikh's Rules / Innocent in the Sheikh's Harem

Salah stood in the doorway of the mess tent, a cup of coffee in his hand, watching from a distance. The grace with which she moved up the long buried slope of that ancient temple where his distant ancestors had once worshipped love. In the shimmer of heat he seemed to see her through millennia. As if she belonged there, the high priestess of the religion of love.

Once he had worshipped at that shrine, had drunk from the honeyed chalice. Then with his own hand he had smashed it to fragments.

All the pieces of his life had come apart a few hours ago, and no new image had yet formed. He seemed to himself to be still staggering under the blow. All his landmarks were gone, blown down by the whirlwind of the horror of what he had done.

But the answer was here. He gazed at the lithe beauty of her as she talked earnestly to his father. She lifted her arm to point into the distance, and a last ray of the setting sun caught her suddenly, haloing her figure with flames of red gold, imprinting the shape on his heart, where it matched some shape already there…

The answer would be found here.

‘Everyone eats in the food tent,’ Salah told her a little later, leading her across the moonshadowed desert towards the trailer where she would sleep. ‘Supper will be ready in half an hour. Or someone can bring you a tray here.’

Desi heaved a breath. Everything was suddenly catching up with her, and she knew she couldn’t sit through a meal with the bunch of cheerful, enthusiastic volunteers she had seen in her tour of the site, especially as it seemed all the starstruck girls were going to want her autograph. She would feel stronger in the morning. Right now she felt she would burst if the least demand were made on her. She desperately needed to be by herself.

‘I’m not hungry. If I can have a glass of water I’ll go to bed now.’

‘There’s water in the trailer. Desi, I—’

‘No,’ she said, flinging up a hand, her voice cracking with emotion. ‘Please. There’s nothing to say.’

‘There is everything to say,’ Salah said. ‘Do you think we can leave it where it is?’

She couldn’t take any more. Not tonight. Not ever. ‘I’ll say good night, Salah.’

But his hand closed on her arm, heat burning through her skin to war with the coldness in her heart.

‘Walk with me,’ he said. ‘Deezee!’

Even now, even after what she had learned, his voice roughing up her name had power over her, like a cat’s tongue on a sensitive spot. The knowledge filled her with distant fury. That nickname in his mouth was like blasphemy now. Bitter hurt welled up in her, choking her so that she could not speak to resist.

‘Come with me.’

And she turned and went with him out beyond the cluster of caravans and trailers, into the empty desert.

A full moon was climbing up the sky. The giant rocks threw heavy black shadows onto the sand, making a landscape unlike anything she had ever seen before, strange and otherworldly.

‘Desi, I was blind. Blind and a fool.’

She closed her eyes as a sense of waste and devastation flooded her. She shook her head.

‘Too late,’ she choked. ‘Too little, too late.’

‘Don’t say it!’ he commanded. ‘It can’t be too late, Desi. I won’t let it be too late! We are still young, we have so much life in front of us.’

‘Are you young? I’m old. I feel a hundred years old. I’m tired and life has passed me by. And I don’t want to talk about this. Is that all you wanted to say?’

He stopped and turned to face her. Moonlight carved his face like rock.

‘What are you saying? Do you think we can just walk away from this? You loved me once. Love is still possible. That I know. When we make love, you tell me so in everything but words. Desi, I—’

She felt exhausted, bruised. ‘I think our watches must be out of sync, Salah.’ She glanced down at her wrist in the milky gloom. ‘Yeah, by, let’s see—about ten years.’

‘A mistake destroyed those ten years,’ he insisted. ‘A stupid, ignorant mistake. And if we don’t mend it now, it will destroy the rest of our lives. We have to find our way through this.’

‘The only mistake that would destroy the rest of my life would be to listen to you.’

‘You know it is not true. You would not be so hurt now if you did not…Please. Let us not go on in this terrible error. Look into your heart, Desi, and hear me.’

Like a wounded animal goaded beyond its endurance, she rounded on him.

‘Look! You wanted closure, am I right? That’s what you wanted! Now you’ve had closure. You’re going to get married, I think you said. Well, off you go, and good luck to you!’

‘Do you think I can marry Sami now?’ he almost shouted.

‘But it doesn’t matter who you marry, does it?’ she reminded him harshly. ‘What happened to “the best love comes after marriage”?’

‘How can I marry another woman now in the hopes of learning to love her?’

‘I have no idea. But then I never understood the principle in the first place.’

‘Desi, I made a mistake. That mistake has ruined our lives for ten years.’

‘You’re a powerful Cup Companion who lives in a palace. I don’t wake up for less than ten thousand dollars. I don’t think we can call this ruination.’

‘You speak of the world. I speak of the heart.’

‘Do you?’ Desi gave vent to a snort of bitter laughter. ‘That’s a good one!’

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