Bride Behind The Desert Veil (The Marchetti Dynasty 3)

‘Are you sure you don’t want to take the chair? That doesn’t look very comfortable.’

He shook his head and put an empty plate in front of her. ‘Help yourself.’

At that moment Liyah realised she was famished. In the stress of the last week she’d barely eaten, and she didn’t do well on low food supplies. The food looked...amazing. There was hummus and flatbread. Dolma vine leaves stuffed with meat. Succulent pieces of lamb with balls of spiced rice.

She picked a selection and put them on her plate. She heard a cork and saw him pour white wine into a glass.

He handed it to her. ‘Drink?’

Liyah took it, and watched as he poured himself a glass. He raised it. The candles imbued the whole scene with a golden glow that didn’t go anywhere near helping her to keep a grasp of reality.

‘Here’s to...unexpected encounters.’

Liyah lifted her glass. She could feel any desire to try to restore sanity, to remember who she was, where she was, fatally slipping away, to be replaced by a wholly different and far earthier desire.

She touched her glass to his and it made a low melodic chime. She echoed his words. ‘To unexpected encounters.’

He lifted his glass to his mouth, and just before he took a sip he said, ‘And what we make of them.’

CHAPTER TWO

‘AND WHAT WE make of them.’

Liyah took a sip of her wine as she absorbed that comment. This man was altogether too bold and confident, but he’d woken something inside her. Something equally bold. If not as confident.

‘Your eyes are green.’

Liyah looked at him. ‘My mother’s eyes were green.’

‘Try the lamb. It’s delicious.’

Liyah picked up a piece of lamb, along with some of the rice, and popped it into her mouth. The meat practically melted on her tongue and the spices in the rice made her taste buds come alive.

‘You know this place well.’

It wasn’t a question. Liyah swallowed her food and nodded. ‘I’ve always come here. It’s usually empty. It doesn’t serve as a stopping point as it’s so close to the city.’ To the palace. She pushed her mind away from that reminder.

‘Your bird is very tame. How old is he?’

Liyah bit back a smile. ‘She.’

The man smiled and she nearly fell off her chair. It changed him from being merely stupendously gorgeous to something not of this earth.

‘I shouldn’t have presumed.’

Liyah recovered her wits. ‘She’s been mine since I was a child. I trained her out here in the desert.’

‘Does she have a name?’

Liyah felt self-conscious. No one had ever cared about her bird except for the falconer at the palace. ‘Sheba.’

‘Like the Queen? She is a beautiful bird.’

‘Yes, she is.’

‘Almost as beautiful as her owner.’

Liyah’s mouth dried. Her heart thumped. He thought she was beautiful. But she knew that she wasn’t really. She was too tall. Her hair was too wild. She couldn’t fade gracefully into the background like other women. She always stuck out. Which made her think of her time in Europe. Her dark skin and height had marked her out from the start. Making her a target for people who wanted to exploit her for fun.