‘Already we must go?’ she said, smiling sadly in Tora’s direction. ‘It’s been so good to be here. So good to meet you.’ And she pulled Tora into a hug that felt bittersweet, because whatever her hopes and dreams, given the dark look on Rashid’s face, she had an uneasy feeling in her stomach that she would never see Aisha or the other desert wives again.
Tora went to Atiyah’s cradle, ready to take her inside, when Rashid suddenly stepped forward in her path. ‘No. Leave her. I will take my sister.’
And Tora’s gut clenched at the tone in his voice. Something was seriously wrong.
* * *
Aisha and Zoltan and the children were gone and Rashid must have spirited Atiyah off somewhere because she—along with Yousra—hadn’t made an appearance since she’d returned to the suite.
But what had she done between this morning and this afternoon to deserve such a cold-shouldering? Other than to be overheard saying that she loved him?
Even if she hadn’t intended blurting it out as she had, was that so serious a crime?
She sat down on the sofa and switched on her tablet. Maybe there would be some good news waiting for her, something to lighten this cloud of impending doom that she’d sensed in Rashid’s cold eyes.
There was an email from her cousin she groaned at but ignored—no doubt Matt wondering where the money was—because there was one from Sally that demanded her attention—one that had the subject header Prayers needed!
Feeling sick to the stomach, she opened it up and read its contents as the cloud of impending doom circling above her head rained its poison down on her.
Oh, my God—please, God, no!
And the news was so awful, so devastating, that she had to tell someone, had to share this burden. She ran to her door and pulled it open, confused when she found two palace guards waiting outside, blocking her exit. She swept tears from her cheeks as she asked, ‘What are you doing here?’
‘By order of the Emir,’ one proclaimed, ‘you must remain where you are. You are now a prisoner of Qajaran.’
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
TORA STOOD IN the centre of her suite, too uptight to sit, too frozen by fear to move. There were guards on the terrace, too, and behind the interconnecting door to Rashid’s suite. Guards everywhere, but why? On a day where it was sweltering outside, inside she felt chilled to the core.
Tora clutched at her goosebumped arms, her face still streaked with tears she’d shed in protest and shock at being arrested in a palace halfway around the world from her home.
A palace where nobody would ever find her, even if they knew where to come looking. And the vulnerability of her situation hit her. A lone woman, a long way from home, at the mercy of a man she’d thought she was beginning to understand—beginning to love.
Fool!
But what had she done to deserve being treated this way?
Nothing! She was sure of it.
She sniffed. She would make sure she told Rashid the same too.
A guard marched across the terrace in front of her windows. ‘I want to see Rashid!’ she called out.
The guard didn’t so much as twitch in response, just kept right on marching as if she hadn’t spoken.
‘I demand to see the Emir!’
Tora waited, her heart thumping so loud in her chest, but nothing changed. Nobody was listening.
Nobody cared.
And her grief and pain and confusion coiled together inside her like the smoke from a candle flame that had been extinguished, acrid and swirling, until a new emotion rose out of it.
Fury.
It turned her shock to resolve and her tears to ice, setting her jaw to aching tight and her fingernails clawing into her arms. So the guard wouldn’t tell Rashid she wanted to see him. So he wanted to make her wait. Well, let him. Because when he eventually arrived, she would be ready for him.
* * *
There was a thunder cloud hanging over him. Dark and threatening, it weighed heavily down upon him, blackening his world and poisoning his mood.
Tora.
He had not expected to be betrayed by her. Maybe at first he would have thought it possible. A woman picked up in a bar who coolly demanded a quarter of a million dollars when asked to name a price—why wouldn’t he expect a woman like that to want to take advantage of the situation?
But that would have been at first.
Because since that time she’d worked her way into his life and under his skin. Floating on the air as she seemed to do in her silk robes, displaying an insight into economic and social matters he hadn’t expected, telling him that he was strong.