Secrets of the Oasis

Jamilah’s own lush mouth firmed. ‘Something like that.’ And then, before she could stop herself, she asked curiously, ‘Why did you come home?’

A dangerous glint came into Salman’s eye. ‘I’ll tell you if you have dinner with me tonight.’

He was flirting with her.

Jamilah’s belly tightened in rejection of that even as a rush of heat washed through her body. She firmed her jaw. ‘Just because your odious friends have gone, I am not available to entertain you in their absence.’

She stalked over to the door and started to close it purposefully, uncaring of the fact that Salman was in the way. To her abject relief he stepped back. But just before she could close it he stopped it with a hand and said, ‘I’m going to be here for a few weeks, Jamilah…you won’t be able to avoid me for ever.

Especially not now that we’re going to be under the same roof.’

Jamilah snorted indelicately. ‘This castle is big enough for an army. We won’t have to make much of an effort to stay out of each other’s way, Salman. And, believe me, I have no intention of seeking you out. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve had a long day, I’m tired, and I want to go to bed.’

Much to her chagrin, she still couldn’t close the door. She glared up at Salman and tried not to notice that he’d shaved. His jaw was dark and smooth. His clean and intensely masculine scent teased her nostrils. He was one of the few men she knew who hadn’t ever worn overpowering cologne.

‘This isn’t it, Jamilah, not by a long shot. We have unfinished business.’

Fear caught Jamilah’s insides into a knot. She knew she simply would not be able to survive if Salman decided he wanted to seduce her again just because he was bored, or curious. ‘We finished any business we had a long time ago, Salman, and the sooner you realise that the better. And, quite frankly, I don’t care if this is your home and you’re the acting ruler—just stay out of my way.’

When Salman stood on the balcony of his suite a short while later, he felt a hardness enter his belly. The view of Merkazad at night was spread below him. It was a small city but beautiful, full of soaring floodlit minarets and ancient buildings nestling alongside more modern architecture. When he’d been much younger, before the rebel invasion, he’d loved to watch it at night and dream of all sorts of fantastical tales, and the great wide world beyond…but then, during and after the incarceration, it had become a prison to be escaped at all costs…

He was waiting for the inevitable rise of emotion, for nausea to cripple him as it had done whenever he’d looked at this view before. But emotion wasn’t rising in its usual unassailable wave. Instead he felt suspiciously calm. As if something had shifted and this view was no longer as malevolently threatening as it had been for years.

All he could think about was Jamilah and how beautiful she’d looked just now, with that fall of silky midnight-black hair in a curtain around her shoulders and down her back. His gut clenched. She had looked tired. Faint purple shadows under her huge blue eyes. And that vulnerability had made him want to gather her up into his arms and carry her somewhere far away, into the dark starlit night, and lay her down underneath him. He amended his impulse. He just wanted her. He didn’t want to protect her.

But he had once… He’d been twelve and she’d been just six when she’d broken through the numbness encasing him to provoke a protective instinct. He could remember the moment by their parents’ graves as clearly as if it were yesterday. She’d been so still, so stoic. He’d felt an affinity with her that he hadn’t felt with anyone else.

The earth shifted ominously beneath his feet as he had to acknowledge that perhaps Jamilah could be the key to his unfamiliar feeling of equanimity. That thought disturbed him far more than any view could.

Two nights later, as Jamilah lay in bed unable to sleep, she had to admit to herself that she probably would be better off if she was seeing Salman every day. Perhaps it would inure her to his presence? A voice laughed mockingly in her head at that. But anything had to be better than this awful restless hot feeling. She was useless at work, jumping at the slightest sound. She was turning into a nervous wreck.

She’d heard people talking and speculating about him—especially the younger girls at the stables. ‘Is it true he’s more wealthy than even Sheikh Nadim?’ ‘He’s the most handsome man I’ve ever seen, but why doesn’t he come to the stables?’

This last comment had been made dreamily by one of the girls who’d run an errand to the castle. Before Jamilah could say anything, her chief aide, a man called Abdul, had said curtly, ‘He is the Sheikh. And he can do as he wishes. Now get back to work.’

Jamilah had looked at him aghast. Abdul was the most mild-mannered man she’d ever known, and had worked at the stables for longer than anyone could remember. He rarely opened his mouth to anyone. The girls had scuttled off, and he’d immediately apologised to Jamilah red-faced, clearly mortified. She’d waved off his apology, not knowing where the sudden passion had blazed from, and with the curious feeling that he’d been defending Salman. But from what?

With a groan of frustration, mixed with anger at her obsessive thoughts about Salman, Jamilah threw back the covers and got out of bed. She stripped off and went straight to her shower, where she endured the icy spray until her teeth were chattering—as if she could numb all feeling.

‘You will have dinner with me tonight.’

Salman’s voice was an autocratic decree from the ruler of Merkazad. If it had been Nadim, Jamilah would have said yes immediately. But it was Salman, and as her suddenly sweaty hand gripped the handset of the phone in her office she said waspishly, ‘Why should I?’

Salman sighed, and her skin prickled.

‘Because we need to discuss some things…’

Her heart thumped. ‘I have nothing to discuss with you.’

Salman said, with an edge to his voice, ‘What you said to me the other day appears to be true. As much as I might be acting ruler, I’m being constantly diverted to you.’

Jamilah couldn’t even feel a bit smug for a second. She just said faintly, ‘I told you you’d need to earn their respect.’

‘And until that day dawns I’m afraid that I need you—’

Jamilah’s mind blanked when he said those words, and she had to concentrate just to keep up.

‘To have dinner with me and discuss official business. Or do you want me to bother Nadim and his pregnant wife while they are spending time with her family?’