The Sheikh's Disobedient Bride

That afternoon they traveled in silence through the crowded streets, past small neighborhoods and walled estates, palm trees shocking green against whitewashed buildings and the cobalt blue sky.

Arriving at the private airport used exclusively by royalty and the wealthiest of the wealthy, Tair walked Tally from the limousine to the jet on the tarmac.

He moved to take her elbow to help her up the stairs but Tally shook him off. If he was sending her away he didn’t need to be so damn helpful.

He entered the jet with her, checked to make sure everything was okay before putting her small knapsack on the cream and red wool carpet.

Fighting tears, Tally stared at the carpet, thinking even her khaki knapsack looked forlorn.

“You’ll be home before you know it,” Tair said. “Soon this will just seem like a bad dream.”

She shook her head. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t make a single sound.

Tair leaned forward to kiss her goodbye but she stepped back, moving away. If he didn’t want her, he couldn’t kiss her, either.

“It just wasn’t mean to be,” he said.

“You don’t love me?” she asked, finally finding the words even though they were horrible to say.

He was silent and then the answer came. “No.”

Tally turned away so she wouldn’t have to watch him leave. But as the airplane door closed Tally felt as if her heart was being ripped apart.

He didn’t love her.

Four words, four little words but words with the power to cut. Crush. Break her.

Like he just did.

Tally couldn’t even cry, not then, not during the flight that went on and on. Not while the taxi took her from Boeing Field’s executive airport home. Not while she struggled to unlock the door of her apartment.

But once the door shut, once she turned on the lights and looked around the place she hadn’t been in nearly six months her control shattered.

He didn’t love her. He’d never loved her. It was just a bad mistake.

The first week she was back she didn’t think, couldn’t think, couldn’t even function. Tally spent more time in bed than out of it. More time with her face buried in her pillow crying her eyes out than functioning like a normal human being but she couldn’t function. Couldn’t eat. Couldn’t sleep. Could only cry as if her heart were breaking. And it was breaking. It was shattering into little pieces of nothing.

He was horrible, hateful. How could he have sent her home like this?

How could he care so little that he’d just toss her aside? Throw her away as though she were garbage. Refuse.

It’d been so long since she’d been rejected like this, so long since she’d felt so bad about herself.

She thought he had cared. Maybe not deeply, forever love, but enough. Enough. Enough to keep her, love her, make her his.

Stop this, she told herself, stop thinking, feeling—just stop. Eyes swollen from crying, Tally rolled from bed, desperate to put an end to the hurt, and the tears, and the heartbreak.

Despite her misery, she forced herself out to buy groceries. A day later she made herself watch a movie on cable television. On the weekend she went for a walk despite the black clouds overhead, walking for hours through rain; along the wharf and the piers where the ferries arrived and departed, silently sailing like giant wedding cakes on the dramatic Puget Sound. She walked to keep the tears from coming and it worked. As long as she kept moving, she was fine.

Ten days after returning she picked up her camera and went out to shoot whatever inspiration came.

But then on day seventeen Tally developed her memory cards of film and flipped through a couple hundred shots before coming across the last picture she took in Ouaha. It was the shot from the medina, near the well when the gunfire rang out and everyone ducked and covered as Tair and his men rode like hell’s fire down the streets, taking Tally with them.

Tally studied the print for a long moment, seeing the children she’d been focusing on and yet there in the background was a horse pawing the air.

Tair.

Tair.

And just like that she was back in Ouaha, back in his home of sand and stone, back with the endless nights and the blistering heat.

Tally closed her eyes, and crumpled the photo in her hand. She wouldn’t remember. Wouldn’t go there. And instead of letting herself remember anymore, she e-mailed her editor and the senior editor she worked with letting them know she had prints she’d be sending. And then she got into her darkroom and began developing her black and white shots the old-fashioned way, taking time with processing, blowing up some shots, cropping others, printing on the special thick acid free paper she favored.