Diana Palmer - Lord of the Desert

Philippe came back and studied her from his great height. “You’re worried,” he said abruptly.

“Sorry.” She pinned a smile to her face as she got to her feet, clutching her half-finished bottle of water. “I was thinking about my new job, if I get it.”

“And worrying,” he persisted.

She grimaced. “I don’t like using a plane ticket in someone else’s name and pretending I’m her, even if he does eventually hire me anyway.”

He smiled. “I think you have very little to worry about in that respect. As for the plane ticket, the concierge will change it for you, into the right name, and Mustapha or Bojo there—” he indicated their tall driver and guide still lingering at the shop counter “—will even take you to the airport and wait with you.”

“They will?”

He grinned at her shocked expression. “Isn’t this done in your country?”

“No, it isn’t,” she said flatly.

“To each his own,” he said tolerantly. “You will find life a little different in this part of the world.”

“I already have,” she said. She laughed gently. “I don’t know that it’s good for me to be pampered like this. I’m just a very ordinary paralegal.”

One eye narrowed. “I think, Gretchen Brannon, that you are not very ordinary at all.”

“You don’t know much about women from Texas.”

“A gap in my education which I hope to correct in the next few days,” he said gallantly. With a twinkle in his black eyes, he added in the classic line from an old Charles Boyer movie, “Will you come with me to the kasbah?”

She laughed helplessly. “I really do watch too many movies. I only thought there was one kasbah until the cabdriver at the airport told me what they were.”

“Charles Boyer and Humphrey Bogart films,” he mused. “They portray a very different Morocco.”

“Yes. Those days are long dead.”

“The old ways, perhaps. Not the intrigue,” he informed her. He put a hand under her elbow to guide her through the gates of the old city and into the maze of narrow streets and small shops. He leaned down to her ear. “Do you see the man in the beige suit wearing sunglasses? No, don’t turn your head!”

She had a flash of vision out of the corner of her eye. “Yes.”

“Now, do you notice the gentlemen in dark suits and sunglasses nearby?”

“I saw them earlier…!”

“Bodyguards.”

“Really?” She sounded breathless with excitement. “Whose are they? Do they belong to the man in the beige suit?”

He pursed his lips amusedly. “Who knows? Perhaps he works for one of the Saudi princes who have estates outside Tangier.”

“The one the guide pointed out, with the heliport and armed guards at the gate?”

“That one. They go sightseeing from time to time. Yesterday I saw the ex-president of Spain in town.”

“So did we! I’ve never met a head of state, former or not.”

He kept his eyes carefully on the path ahead and didn’t reply.

“Those bodyguards, I guess they have guns?”

“Nine millimeter Uzis and they know how to use them.”

She gasped. “Good Lord. I hope nobody attacks him.”

“Nobody knows him,” he said lazily. “Heads of state from the Middle Eastern countries wander around here all the time and are never noticed. They blend in.”

“If you notice the Sheikh of Qawi, how about pointing him out to me?” she asked facetiously. “Maybe I can throw myself on his mercy before I arrive in his capital city like an unclaimed parcel.”

He put on his own sunglasses and grinned. “I can promise you, his own subjects wouldn’t know him in a European suit.”

“Is he…perverse?” she asked bluntly, worried in spite of Maggie’s assurances.

He stopped dead and looked down at her. His eyes, behind the dark lenses, were concealed. “What?” he asked icily.

She bit her lower lip. “My friend, Maggie, said that there were rumors about him and young women. She said they weren’t true and that he started them himself.”

“He did,” he said quietly. “I can promise you that you will be in no danger from him. In fact,” he added thoughtfully, “I think you may find yourself pampered as you never expected to be, under his protection.”

She drew in a breath. “I hope you’re right!” she said fervently. “Oh, look at those shawls!”

She rushed forward to a display over the doorway of a shop. There was a black shawl with pear-shaped fringe work that took her breath.

“A Moroccan scarf, like those the women wear around their heads when they go out in public,” he said. “In Qawi, we call a head covering a hijab. Do you fancy it?”

“I suppose it’s very expensive,” she said, glaring up at him. “But you’re not buying it. If I can afford it, I’ll buy it for myself.”

He grinned. “Ah, that American independence asserts itself! Very well.” He spoke to the man in that gutteral tongue she still didn’t recognize and laughed as he glanced down at her. “It is fifty-six dirhams,” he told her.

“Fifty-six…!”

“Seven American dollars,” he translated.

She let out her breath and smiled. “I’ll take it!”

He helped her find the coins to pay for it and let the man package it for her. He put the parcel under his arm and led her through the maze of other shops where she bargained with delight for a small pair of silver earrings and a worked silver and turquoise bracelet.

“There,” he said as they went down a long cobblestoned path, “is the palace of the Raissouli.”

It took her breath away. The tiles, in white and many shades of vibrant blue, were combined in the most beautiful mosaic pattern she could have imagined inside the white, white walls of the exterior. There was little inside to see, but she touched the ceramic tiles with utter fascination.

“All the tile work is geometric,” she murmured.

“Worshipers of Islam are forbidden from representing anything human or animal in the patterns,” he explained. “Thus the geometric designs.”

“They’re so beautiful.” She sighed with pleasure. “When I think of our concrete and steel and brick buildings back home…”

“But you have wooden ones as well,” he reminded her.

“Yes, old Victorian homes with exquisite gingerbread woodwork. I’ve seen those. In fact, our ranch house is built like that. It isn’t luxurious or anything, but it’s rather pretty when it’s freshly painted.”

He studied the gleam of her platinum hair as they went back out into the sunlight and back out the gates of the old city and onto the streets. “Do you ever wear your hair down, Gretchen?” he asked softly.

“It’s very fine and flyaway,” she said with a smile. “Besides, it gets in my face in the wind, especially the sort they have here in Morocco. It blows constantly.”

“How long is it?”

She searched his curious eyes. “It comes down a little past my waist. Why?”

“I know another woman, also an American, with hair much like yours.” He grimaced. “She cut hers. I imagine her husband encouraged her,” he added darkly. “He knows how much I admire long hair.”

Her eyebrows arched. “Her husband?”

He glared. “They have a son, almost two years old.”

“She turned you down, I gather?”

His chin went up. “I would not offer marriage,” he said evasively. “He did.”

“Why, you rake,” she teased.

He didn’t smile. If anything, he looked grim and introspective.

“Sorry,” she said at once. “I suppose she meant something to you?”

“She was my world,” he said abruptly. “But there again, fate robbed me.” He glanced beyond her and frowned.

She turned, in time to see the man in the beige suit now standing with the bodyguards. One of the two men in black suits on the side of the street was making an urgent gesture with one hand. The man in the beige suit motioned to Philippe.