Michelle Celmer - The Desert Bride of Al Zayed / Best Man's Conquest - The Desert Bride of Al Zayed / Best Man's Conquest

“That’s no answer.” At last she looked at him. “I want a time limit.”

“I don’t know.” He stared at her, brooding. Hoped she didn’t see all the way to his soul to the dark, black well of sorrow and confusion that lay there. “The thread of his life is close to snapping. He is very weak and in much pain. The doctors say it could be a week or two weeks. They don’t give him longer than a month.”

“A month!” She hesitated, her eyelashes lowered again. Her teeth closed on her bottom lip.

He waited, giving her time. She was impatient. Tariq narrowed his gaze on her teeth, the endearing gap between them, and wondered what it was about this Neil that had her so enthralled that she’d come back to the country she’d sworn never to return to, to get her divorce. The pictures of the man, procured from the detective agency he’d hired immediately after her call to his father’s aide, showed an ordinary-looking man with a thatch of blond hair and an innocuous smile. Nothing pointed to Jayne having a sexual relationship with this man, this Neil.

Yet.

Right now that was the only thing keeping Tariq sane.

He had banished her. But he had not yet divorced her. He, Sheikh Tariq bin Rashid al Zayed, owned her. And what he owned he kept. Until he decided to rid himself of the troubling possession. As he would.

After his father died.

At last she looked up at him, her eyes darkened by shadows of turmoil. Her features pinched and drawn, a woman driven beyond her limits.

“Okay, I’ll stay. But not for more than a month. I want your word on that. If your father hasn’t…” Her voice trailed away.

“Died?” he supplied.

“Yes.” She paused and shifted, looking dreadfully uncomfortable with the direction the conversation had taken. Then it came out with a rush. “Even if he hasn’t…well…died, I want to go home in a month. I want you to swear you will give me a divorce.”

It was time to cut her a little slack. It was extremely doubtful that his father would survive that long. “You have my word. Stay for the month and you will get the divorce you desire.” Tariq allowed his voice to soften. “You will find my father…changed. He’s very ill. He has moments when the medication takes effect and he is not himself.” It pained Tariq that his strong father was so frail, so weak, in his body and his mind. It devastated him that disease had crept up undetected on the seemingly invulnerable Emir. “For that month you must promise me that you will strive to convince my father in his lucid moments that we are reconciled.”

She drew a deep breath, then whispered, “I promise.”

Three

The following morning Jayne crept silently into the Emir’s quarters. A couple of men huddled in the antechamber murmuring prayers and didn’t notice her sneaking past. The male nurse in the bedchamber nodded to Jayne as she entered.

Jayne was shocked at the change in the tyrant who had made her life such a misery. Sheikh Rashid lay in the high bed, his face gaunt, the bones showing through skin as pale as parchment, his lips drained of all colour. He turned his head when she paused beside him. Jayne had a glimpse of rheumy eyes, great black sunken rings around them, and then his eyelids closed again.

“He is not well today,” the nurse said. “He has been drifting in and out of consciousness, confused about what is real and what is not. The painkillers are not helping.”

“What exactly is wrong with him?” Jayne asked delicately.

“He has cancer of the bowel. It has been eating him, sapping his vitality.”

So it was true. The old Emir really was dying. But Jayne felt no satisfaction…or even regret. Instead, a searing sadness followed by a vast well of emptiness filled her.

“I’m so sorry.”

Sheikh Rashid’s eyes opened. For a moment there was a flare of recognition. Jayne recoiled. The Emir muttered something indistinct.

“He is talking to you,” the nurse said. “Bend closer.”

Wary, as if he could bite, Jayne moved closer. She leaned forward.

“Lina,” she thought he whispered.

Jayne frowned. “He’s saying something.” She waited a moment, then reached out awkwardly and touched the pile of bedclothes. “I am here.”

“Lina,” he whispered more insistently.

Her eyes troubled, Jayne said to the nurse, “I think he is confusing me with someone else.” She patted the bedclothes, feeling the bony shoulder through the coverings.

His eyelids fluttered down and his breathing became regular.

“He’s sleeping. Your presence is soothing him.”

There must be some mistake. If he knew about her presence, the Emir would be rabid with rage. Withdrawing her hand, Jayne backed away to the door.

When Jayne went searching for Tariq a little while later, the disturbing sense of unease aroused by her visit to the Emir still had not left her. She found Tariq in the mews where the royal raptors were housed. Squinting through the dim light to the back of the building, Jayne made out Tariq’s form clad in his distinctive white thobe .

She picked her way past a row of hooded birds perched on railings. There had been times in the past when she’d thought the birds were accorded more respect and affection than she had been.

The falcon perched regally on Tariq’s glove glowered at her with suspicious eyes that reminded her instantly of Tariq—even though these were dark and his were pure gold. It was a larger bird than she’d expected to see. But the bird had the same long, pointed wings and dark eyes.

“That’s not Khan,” Jayne said, referring to Tariq’s prized bird. The bird gaped at her, its beak open, a show of aggression to an unfamiliar intruder.

“This is Noor, a young bird that I’m training. Like Khan, she’s a shaheen—a peregrine—but she doesn’t know you.”

“She’s bigger.” Jayne eyed the bird’s open mouth with caution. The feathers on the falcon’s head and neck were black, and a dark stripe extended down from the eye to the throat. Noor’s throat and cheeks were white with narrow banded stripes on her breast and flecks across her back.

“She’s a female, they’re up to a third larger than the males. Here.” Tariq passed Jayne a small piece of meat. “Place it in her open beak. It will stop her threatening you.”

Jayne fed the bird gingerly, wary of the sharp beak. When the titbit was gone, Noor tilted her head expectantly. “No more for now,” Jayne told the bird. To Tariq she said, “Where’s Khan?”

“Khan died. A long time ago.” The shadows in his eyes told her he was thinking of more than his beloved falcon.

Jayne could prevaricate no longer. “Your father is much worse than I expected.”

“I told you that he is dying.”

“I didn’t—” She broke off. I didn’t believe you . “I didn’t realise how bad it was. The nurse said that he has cancer.”

Tariq nodded. “He fought it with everything he had. He has lost the most important battle of his life.”

“I’m sorry.”

The words sounded so inadequate.

Tariq must have thought so, too, because he raised a mocking brow. “I doubt it. You always hated him.”

Jayne stared at him mutely. Now was hardly the time to correct him, to tell him that Sheikh Rashid had hated her with a ferocious intensity that had sometimes scared her witless. The Emir had seen her as an interloper, and had taken every opportunity to make her feel like an outsider, until he’d poisoned even Tariq against her.

The falcon shifted restlessly on the glove, bringing Jayne’s attention back to the bird. She studied the leather jesses bound to her legs. Noor was as captive as she had once been. “Noor wants your attention.”

“She’s hungry. She wants food.” Tariq moved his other hand into the bucket containing strips of meat. The falcon tensed, her head coming forward, anticipation in every line of her body. Tariq placed the piece of meat on the glove and the falcon lowered her head and took it.