Lynn Harris - Strangers in the Desert

“You were a virgin.”

She stamped down on the blush that threatened. Were a virgin? “That wouldn’t have been a secret. Tell me something I might have told you—something personal.”

He flung his hands wide in exasperation. “Such as? You weren’t very talkative, Isabella. I believe you once said that your single goal in life was to please me.”

“That’s ridiculous,” she answered, her voice little more than a whisper. Because she had been raised to please a man, to be the perfect wife, and it was exactly the sort of thing she would have been expected to say. But to actually have said it? To this man?

He gazed down at her with glittering dark eyes settling on her mouth, and she suddenly had a picture in her head of him kissing her. The image was shocking. And she didn’t know whether it was a memory or a desire.

LYNN RAYE HARRISread her first Mills & Boon ®romance when her grandmother carted home a box from a yard sale. She didn’t know she wanted to be a writer then, but she definitely knew she wanted to marry a sheikh or a prince and live the glamorous life she read about in the pages. Instead, she married a military man and moved around the world. These days she makes her home in North Alabama, with her handsome husband and two crazy cats. Writing for Harlequin Mills & Boon is a dream come true. You can visit her at www.lynnrayeharris.com

LYNN RAYE HARRIS

www.millsandboon.co.uk

In memory of Sally Jo Harris, beloved aunt-in-law, intrepid adventurer, and amazing human being. I can’t believe I will never get to talk about books, travel, great coffee and fabulous food with you ever again. You brought joy wherever you went, and you left us too suddenly. We miss you.

“… THE possibility she is still alive.”

Adan looked up from the papers his secretary had given him to sign. He’d been only half paying attention to the functionary who’d been speaking. Since his uncle had died a week ago, there’d been so much to do in preparation for his own coronation that he often did as many things at once as he could. “Repeat that,” he ordered, every cell of his body revving into high alert.

The man who stood inside the door trembled as Adan focused on him. He bowed his head and spoke to the floor.

“Forgive me, Your Excellency. I said that in preparation for your upcoming nuptials to Jasmine Shadi, we must investigate all reports that reach us in regards to your late wife, since her body was never recovered.”

“It was never recovered because she walked into the desert, Hakim,” Adan said mildly, though irritation spiked within him. “Isabella is buried under an ocean of sand.”

As always, he felt a pang of sadness for his son. Though Adan had lost a wife, it was the fact Rafiq had lost his mother that bothered Adan most. Theirs had been an arranged marriage, not a love match. While he hoped that Isabella had not suffered, he could drag up very little emotion for her.

Isabella Maro had been beautiful, but she’d been unremarkable in every other way. Quiet, lovely and well-suited to performing the duties of their station, she’d been exactly what his wife should have been. And though he hadn’t been the heir to the throne then, he had no doubt she’d have made a lovely queen.

A lovely, bland queen.

It wasn’t her fault. Though she had been half-American, she’d been raised by her father as a traditional Jahfaran woman. He would never forget that when he’d met her shortly before their wedding, he’d asked her what she wanted out of life. She’d told him that she wanted whatever he wanted.

“There has been a reported sighting, Your Excellency.”

Adan gripped the pen he’d been signing papers with and spread his other hand flat on the desk. He needed something solid to hold on to. Something to remind him that he wasn’t in the middle of a nightmare. In order to ascend the throne formally, he needed a wife. Jasmine Shadi was to be that wife, and he was marrying her in two weeks time. There was no place in his life for a phantom.

“A sighting, Hakim?”

Hakim swallowed. His nut-brown skin glistened with moisture, though the palace had been modernized years ago and the air conditioners seemed to be working fine.

“Sharif Al Omar—a business competitor of Hassan Maro’s, Your Excellency—recently returned from a trip to the island of Maui. He says there was a singer in a bar there, a woman who called herself Bella Tyler, who resembled your late wife, sire.”

“A singer in a bar?” Adan stared at the man a full minute before he burst into laughter. Isabella had survived the desert and now sang in a bar on a remote Hawaiian island? Impossible. No one ever survived the burning Jahfaran desert if they weren’t prepared.

And Isabella had not been prepared. She’d wandered alone into the deepest wastes of Jahfar. At night. A sandstorm the next day had obliterated every trace of her, though they’d looked for weeks. “Hakim, I think Mr. Al Omar needs to see a doctor. Clearly, Hawaiian sunshine is somehow more brutal than our Jahfaran sun.”

“He took a picture, sire.”

Adan stilled. “Do you have this picture?”

“I do, sire.” The man held out a folder. Mahmoud, his secretary, took the file and set it on the desk in front of Adan. He hesitated only a moment before flipping open the cover. Adan stared at the picture for so long that the lines started to blur. It could not be her, and yet …

“Cancel all my appointments for the next three days,” he finally said. “And call the airport to ready my plane.”

The bar was crowded tonight. Tourists and locals alike jammed into the interior and spilled out the open walls onto the beach below. The sun had just started to dip into the ocean, and the sky was turning brilliant gold when Isabella walked onto the stage and took her place behind the microphone. The sun sank fast—much faster than she’d ever believed possible when she’d first arrived on the island—and then it was gone and the sky was pink, the clouds high over the ocean tinged purple and red with the last rays.

It was a brilliant and beautiful sight, and it always made her heart ache and seem full all at once. She’d grown accustomed to the melancholy, though she did not know from where it sprang. She often felt as if a piece of her was missing, but she didn’t know what that piece was.

Singing filled the void, for a brief time anyway.

Isabella looked out at the gathered crowd. They were waiting for her. They were here for her. She closed her eyes and began to sing, losing herself in the rhythm and feel of the music. On the stage, she was Bella Tyler—and Bella was completely in control of herself and her life.

Unlike Isabella Maro.

She slid from one song into the next, her voice wrapping around the words, caressing them. The lights were hot, but she was used to the heat. She wore a bikini and a sarong for island flavor, though she did not sing many island songs. Her eyelids felt weighted down beneath the makeup she wore. She always applied it thickly for the stage, or it wouldn’t show up in the bright lights. Around her neck she wore a white puka-shell necklace. A matching bracelet encircled one ankle.