Secrets of the Oasis

‘What?’ he said harshly. ‘That just because we grew up in the same place and spent time together we would be friends for life?’

Something inside Jamilah wasn’t obeying her mental command to just shut up. ‘It was more than that… What we had was different. You spoke to me, spent time with me when you wouldn’t with anyone else… This last three weeks…I thought what we’d always shared had grown into something…’

A look of forbidding cold bleakness crossed Salman’s face, and finally Jamilah curbed her tongue, wondering why on earth she was laying herself bare like this.

‘You followed me around like a besotted puppy dog for years and I never had the heart to tell you to leave me alone. This last three weeks was about lust, pure and simple. You’ve grown into a beautiful woman and I desired you. Nothing more, nothing less.’

That was it. Whatever feelings Jamilah might have harboured for Salman over the years froze and withered to dust inside her. He’d also destroyed any halcyon memories she’d had of a bond between them. She forced words out through the excruciating pain. ‘You don’t need to say any more. I get the message. Whatever heart you may have once had is clearly gone. You’re nothing but a cold bastard.’

‘Yes, I am,’ Salman agreed, with an indefinable edge to his voice.

Jamilah finally managed to move, and turned round to go, stepping out of the destruction of the fallen shopping around her. She couldn’t even attempt to pick it up.

At the door she heard Salman say, with cynicism ringing in his voice, ‘Say hello to my beloved brother and Merkazad for me. I don’t intend seeing either any time soon.’

Or you. He didn’t have to say the words. They hung in the air. Jamilah opened the door and walked out, and didn’t look back once.

One year ago.

The Sultan of Al-Omar’s birthday celebrations were as lavish as ever. They were taking place in the stunning Hussein Palace, which was in the heart of the glittering metropolis of B’harani, right on the coast of the Arabian peninsula, about two hours drive from mountainous Merkazad.

One of the Sultan’s aides had been pursuing Jamilah on and off for years, and she’d finally relented and agreed to come to the party as his date. Her belly clenched now, because she had to acknowledge that the main motivation behind her decision to come was because Salman was going to be there.

Each year the tabloids across the globe exulted in reporting feverishly on which A-list beauty he’d decided to take as his new mistress. He never came to the party with anyone, but he always left with someone.

Her date had left her side for a moment in the thronged ballroom. It was the first night of celebrations which were meant to be for family and close friends only, but approximately two hundred people milled about the room.

Jamilah’s skin prickled, and she cursed herself for her rash decision. She’d taken it because in all the years since she’d last seen Salman in Paris she hadn’t been able to get him out of her head, and she’d started having dreams again. Dreams of when she was six years old and standing at her parents’ grave, when Salman had come to take her hand and infused her with a strength so palpable she’d never forgotten it.

She knew it was ridiculous, but she’d fallen in love with him at that moment. And even though she’d long since disabused herself of the notion that that childish love had grown and developed into something deeper, she couldn’t help her heart clenching at the evocative memory.

She cringed inwardly now when she thought of how her teenage years had been lifted out of the doldrums every time Salman had made a visit home from school in the UK, and she, tongue-tied and blushing, had been reduced to a puddle of hormones. But then his visits had become more and more infrequent, until he’d stopping coming home at all, turning her world lacklustre and dull.

She didn’t have to be reminded of how Salman had regarded her lovesick attentions. It was bad enough that her motivation for going to Paris to study had had as much to do with the fact that Salman lived there than because it had always been her father’s wish that she study in his home city. And she’d paid heavily for that decision.

Bitterness flooded her.

The dreams were the last straw. She couldn’t go on like this, so she’d hoped that if she came to the party, if she saw Salman living the debauched lifestyle of the notorious playboy Sheikh that he was, he’d disgust her and she’d be able to move on. At least enough to feel some measure of closure.

She’d imagined greeting Salman with a look of practised surprise, a tiny smile of recognition. Not a hint of the emotional turmoil she’d suffered these past years would show on her face or in her eyes. She’d ask him how he was, while affecting a look of mild boredom, and then, with a perfunctory platitude, she’d drift away and that would be it. She would be over him. And he would be left in no doubt that their brief affair meant nothing to her at all…

Except it hadn’t happened like that. As she’d been leaving her room she’d looked up from her bag, distracted, to see a tall, dark, broad figure in a tuxedo ahead of her. She’d nearly called out, because she’d thought it was his brother, Nadim. They shared the same height and build. But then she’d realised her mistake and it had been too late as a sound emerged from her mouth.

She’d had a first fleeting impression of him, cutting a lonely, solitary figure, and then he’d turned round with a frown on his face which had only grown more marked as he’d registered who she was. Jamilah had been too shocked and stunned at being faced with him like that in an empty corridor to say anything.

He’d rocked back on his heels, hands in the pockets of his trousers, and whatever fleeting hint of vulnerability she might have sensed about him had been smashed to pieces as his gaze had dropped down her body with lazy, sensual appraisal. ‘Jamilah…we finally meet again. I was wondering if you’d been avoiding me.’

His deep, drawling voice had impacted upon her somewhere deep and visceral, and for one awful moment Jamilah had been transported back in time to that devastating evening in Paris, in his apartment. She’d given up any hope of sticking to the script she’d perfected in her head. With an iron will, she’d struggled to regain composure and sent up silent thanks for the armour of a designer dress and make-up. She’d forced herself to move, stride forward, fully intending to walk past him, but he’d caught her arm and the feel of his hand on her bare skin had caused her to stumble.

She’d looked up at him, and her treacherous heart had beat fast—too fast. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Salman. Why on earth would I be avoiding you?’

An inner voice answered: Because he broke your heart into tiny pieces and you’ve never forgotten it.

Jamilah noticed then that faint grooves were worn into the brackets of his mouth. His eyes were hard—far harder than she remembered them being.

‘Because I’ve never seen you at the Sultan’s party before.’

Jamilah wrenched her arm free. ‘This isn’t exactly my scene. And, not that it’s any of your business, I decided to come tonight because I was invited by—’