Heart of a Desert Warrior

“I learned how to tuck little girls in when I was a child myself.”

“Explain,” he pushed.

“My parents sent me to boarding school when I was six. I was terrified at night without our housekeeper there to tuck me in and tell me a story.”

“I know this is a common practice, sending away one’s children, but not one I could ever approve of for my own.”

She didn’t imagine a man who considered family as important as Asad did would. That knowledge cemented her certainty that his parents’ defection to Geneva had hurt him badly, though he might never acknowledge it.

“It’s actually not as frequent a practice in America as it is in England, particularly not for children as young as I was, but there are some schools who will board their students from the age of six.”

“And your parents saw fit to send you to one of these?”

“Yes.”

“But how does that explain your experience with small children?”

“When I had been there a year, another six-year-old girl came to board, as well. Though I was second youngest of all the boarders, I was seven then and used to the life. The rest of the children in our grades were day schoolers.”

“Day schoolers?”

“They came for the day, not to live.”

“I see.” He stopped her before they returned to the feast. “But you were a night schooler? No that would not be right.”

She smiled at his attempt to get the word right. “I was a resident, or a boarder.”

“Oh, yes, of course. And this little girl…”

“They put her in my room because we were so close in age. I could hear her crying in her bed that first night. She missed her parents terribly.”

“So, you comforted her?”

“I had a little flashlight. I used it to read her a book. Then I sang to her until she fell asleep.” Iris had returned to her own bed after that, more comforted than she had been at bedtime since going to the school.

“It became a routine.”

“Yes. She was only there for a semester. Her parents had been in an accident and couldn’t care for her, but as soon as they could, they came and got her.”

Iris had been without a roommate until the next year, when they’d put the two newest and youngest residents in a room with her again, since she’d been so good with her other roommate. “The girls’ dormitory mother made sure that the youngest residents were always put in my room.”

“Even when you were older? That must have put a cramp in your style.”

Iris laughed. “Not so you would notice. I was a very shy girl, but I knew how to comfort the little ones and help them transition to boarding school life.”

“They were lucky to have you.”

“It was mutual. I would have been very lonely otherwise.”

“Didn’t you have friends?”

“Of course.”

“But not close ones,” he guessed far too perceptively.

“I made the mistake of growing close to a couple of girls in the beginning, but then they left.” And she’d learned not to let people get too close.

They always left. But then Asad had come along and she’d opened her heart again…only, he’d left too.

“And now?”

“Now?”

“Do you have friends now?” he asked in a strangely tense voice.

“Russell.”

“Russell? Your assistant?”

“You say his name like it’s a dirty word. He’s a really great guy.” Iris liked the geological assistant who told corny jokes only another geologist would get.

“Are you attracted to this really great guy?” Asad asked with dangerous quiet. “He is a great deal younger than you.”

A junior at his university, Russell was about as much younger than Iris as she had been than Asad when they were together. “He’s twenty. Anyway, what difference does it make to you?”

“Answer me. Are you two in a relationship?” he said, the last word laced with disgust.

She rolled her eyes. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were jealous.”

“Who says I am not?”

She laughed, the sound cynical. “Oh, come on, Asad. Like you are going to be jealous of a geeky science boy.”

“Are you attracted to geeky?”

She could have been, she realized. Not Russell, necessarily. He was very much like a younger brother, but maybe to someone else like that. If there hadn’t been Asad to spoil her for others. “You asked me if I had friends, Asad. That’s what he is. My friend.”

And a pretty new one at that.

“Good.”

“I’m glad you think so.”

“But you don’t have a lot of friends back home.”

“No.”

“Yet you are a very good friend to have.”

She made a sound of disbelief. If he’d really believed that, he wouldn’t have given her up so easily. Would he?

“You were my friend once. It was only later that I realized what I lost when that friendship had to end.”

“There was no had to, Asad. You were done with me and you dumped me. Stop trying to rewrite history.”

“I am doing no such thing. Do you really think we could have remained friends when I married Badra?”

He had a point. And Iris probably shouldn’t care that he’d missed her friendship, and yet coming to believe it dulled some of the old pain of losing him.

“I would like to be friends again,” he said when she made no reply.

She didn’t believe him. “You want me back in your bed. That’s not friendship.”

“For us it can be.”

“Really? And when I return to the States, what then?”

“I do not intend to eject you from my life again,” he said in a tone that made the words a vow.

It disconcerted her, and frightened her, as well. Because those words were not merely a promise…they were a threat, too. “I don’t think I’m any more prepared to be your friend after leaving here than I was before.”

What she meant, but didn’t say, and hoped he clued into, was that for Iris it had been more than casual sex and friendship. And unfortunately, probably always would be.

“Give it a try. Let us see where it goes.”

It wouldn’t go to the altar; at least this time she knew that. Knowledge of the truth had to make some kind of difference in the outcome, didn’t it?

“You want me in your bed.”

“I do.” At least he admitted it.

“And you want to be my friend.” For now, anyway.

“Yes.”

“What will that make us?” she asked uncertainly.

“Whatever we want it to.”

This time she heard what he said, not what she wanted to hear. He wasn’t making any promises.

She wanted to be his world like he’d been hers, but that was never going to happen. What did she say to this offer, though? She’d missed Asad so much because she’d let him into a place in her heart she’d kept protected from her very earliest childhood.

Now he was offering more than a tumble in the sack. He was offering a renewal of their friendship that supposedly would last into the future.

She wasn’t sure she wanted that to happen, but she was equally unsure if she wanted to hold herself back from him while she was in Kadar. Iris had spent six years avoiding intimacy, taking no other lovers and dreaming of Asad more nights than she cared to count.

Could having what he called a liaison with him help her to let go of him forever? Just being away from him hadn’t done the trick. Psychobabble said people needed closure to move on. If she ever wanted to break the lonely boundaries of her life, Iris had to move forward. She had to take a chance again.

So, maybe that was exactly what she needed…closure on a relationship that was never meant to be in the first place.

One truth she could not escape: Iris had missed this man every day since he had walked away.

Losing him the first time had nearly destroyed her, but maybe being with him again, knowing it was temporary, would help to heal her now. Maybe letting him in again was the only way to break the boundaries she’d set around her lonely life.

She’d like to believe she could refuse him, but recognized that putting it to the test might see her disappointed. Regardless, she realized she didn’t really want to.

Understanding better what had been going through his head six years ago—and realizing how betrayed he’d been by Badra—changed Iris’s view of their shared past. At the very least, it made her realize Asad was not invulnerable to hurt.