Heart of the Desert Read online

  ‘You weren’t here for a massage?’

  ‘No,’ Sophia admitted, ‘but I will be back again—if you will have me. I really have had the most terrible headache. I never thought a massage could clear it but I was wrong.’ She gave Georgie a tired smile. ‘I worry about my son.’

  ‘Have you spoken to him?’

  ‘I have. He is here in London.’ Georgie’s heart leapt but only for a moment because now it was confirmed he was here, it hurt that he hadn’t made any attempt to call. ‘And you are every bit as beautiful as he describes, every bit as warm and as loving.’

  ‘He’s spoken about me?’

  ‘Ibrahim is not one for confiding but, yes, finally he admitted what was on his mind. He misses you.’

  ‘He hasn’t called.’

  ‘He worries about you,’ Sophia said. ‘Worries at the cruel press you will receive in Zaraq and what it will do to you.’ She gave Georgie a smile. ‘He saw what it did to me. I left, and for two years the press went wild about me. My husband forgave my indiscretion, the people of Zaraq did not. But I do not need their forgiveness. I have a wonderful life here, and my husband comes often.’

  ‘But you miss it?’

  Sophia gave a nonchalant shrug, ‘Sometimes—but I am happy here, where I can be myself. I have told Ibrahim the same.’ Sophia denied the pain in her soul and looked Georgie in the eye as she did so. Not for a second did she feel guilty for lying. All she saw was the chance to keep her son.

  To avoid losing the last of her family to the desert.

  For years she had pleaded with Ibrahim not to return and for many of those she had never thought he would. Yet since the wedding there had been a restlessness to him that at first she had tried to ignore, but seeing him from afar lead a county in crisis, hearing him talk about building a future for the people of Zaraq, she had been sure she had lost him—that again the desert had won.

  Then he had told her about Georgie, about a woman who could never live there, a woman that he loved, and finally Sophia saw a way into the future, with a family to grow old with, with grandchildren who weren’t strangers and Christmas and birthdays not taken alone.

  ‘You can have both worlds,’ she had told him. ‘Don’t turn your back on love. You will find a way, Ibrahim. Together you can work it out.’

  And she told Georgie the same thing.

  ‘He told me you were fragile, and of all you have been through.’ And that confused Georgie, because she thought Ibrahim saw her differently. ‘But you are not ill now. I can see for myself that you are strong. If the papers in Zaraq speak badly of you, you will not crumple. Anyway, as I pointed out to my son, you will be here. He can protect you, defend you … He should not let your past affect your future.’

  ‘I don’t think we’ve got a future.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be so sure.’ Sophia smiled. ‘I know how you feel, Georgie. I understand your fears, and if you need someone to talk to, if you want to talk to someone who can relate, you have my details.’

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  IT DID not abate.

  There was a constant call and he tried to ignore it.

  There was blackness in his heart and restlessness in his soul.

  His tie choked every morning.

  The city streets were crowded, the rain was filthy, but home could be here.

  He had listened to his brothers, to the king, but he did not agree with them. He had listened to his mother too as she urged him not to close that door to his heart.

  That he did have choices.

  And he would exercise them, Ibrahim had finally decided. Home would be here and he could still help the people of Zaraq.

  He climbed the stairs to Georgie’s small office in long, deliberate strides, his mind made up and nothing could change it.

  ‘I’ve got a client due any moment …’ She recognised his footsteps on the stairs and did not look up because she didn’t want to look at him—didn’t want to see his face, didn’t want another image added to what she must somehow one day erase.

  ‘I am your appointment. I had my PA make it in her name.’ The details did not matter. ‘I need to see you …’

  ‘It’s better if we don’t.’

  ‘Better for who?’ Ibrahim demanded. ‘Do you feel better, not seeing me?’ He saw her pale face, worried about her slender figure. ‘We need to talk.’

  ‘I’m not ready to talk.’ She wasn’t. The sight of him, the scent of him, to have him in her space, was overwhelming. She wanted to touch him, to fall in his arms, but she was scared to have to lose him all over again.

  ‘Then don’t talk, just listen.’ He swallowed. ‘I would be proud to have you as my wife.’

  ‘But?’ Georgie questioned.

  ‘There is no but.’

  She was quite sure there was and she didn’t want to hear it, was scared to look at him and ask the question that she knew she must. So she forced her eyes upwards, saw the pain in his eyes and knew how badly she’d been missed. She made herself ask the question.

  ‘What about my work?’ She danced around the issue and yet subtly she broached it—so subtly, even Ibrahim did not realise it.

  ‘I’m not asking you to give anything up.’

  ‘You love that land, Ibrahim. You want to be there, I can see it, I can feel it, I know it …’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes.’ And it was true.

  A curse that attached to him, that lived within him, but he could have both, of that he was sure.

  ‘We will live here. I can return for work, to see my family, but our home will be here.’

  And she wanted to say yes, she wanted so much to say yes, to fall into his arms, to accept his offer, to be his wife. Every beat of her heart propelled her to say yes, to give in to the throb of her body, but she was less impulsive now than she had once been, stronger now, and would first take care of herself.

  ‘And I will return with you?’

  He hesitated a moment before he shook his head. ‘When the news comes out about your past, there will be outrage—but you will be here, I will protect you from that.’

  ‘I don’t need your protection,’ Georgie said. ‘Because it’s not going to happen.’

  ‘I’m offering you—’

  ‘Half a princess, that’s what you’re offering me,’ Georgie sneered, surprising herself at the bitterness in her own voice, but it was there, right there beneath the surface, black and angry, just like the truth beneath his shiny offer. ‘Well, I’m worth more than that.’

  ‘I will give you everything you need here.’

  ‘But you cannot take me to your home. I cannot live there like my sister …’

  ‘So you want a palace?’ He too was bitter. ‘You want all the finery?’

  ‘Yes,’ Georgie said. ‘If I marry you, I want all of it.’

  ‘You’re not who I thought I knew,’ Ibrahim said, but she was ready for him.

  ‘I’m better than her,’ Georgie said. ‘And every day I get better. You know I’d have taken it a few months ago, hell, I’d have taken it last week. I’d have taken any crumb you offered just to be with you, but not now …’

  ‘Hardly crumbs.’ He was offering her everything he possibly could and then some—half his life spent in a plane just to be with her at night.

  ‘I don’t just want birthdays and Christmas and a husband at weekends. I don’t want access arrangements with a family that hates me. I won’t be an army wife to a country that won’t even acknowledge me.’ And she met his eyes with another demand. ‘And don’t ever describe me as fragile again.’

  ‘I never have.’

  But she didn’t believe him.

  ‘You don’t have to protect me, or hide me from my past. I’m glad for every last mistake I’ve ever made because six months ago, six days ago, had you come and offered me this, I’d have taken it.

  ‘I would have been your bride without question but not any more.

  ‘I want you in my bed each night.

  ‘I
want the palace and the desert and sometimes I want to come back home to London,’ she told him, each sentence delivered more strongly than the last.

  ‘I want it all and I deserve it, and if you can’t give it to me, if you can’t share all of you, then I won’t take the half that you’re offering. I’m better off single, better off being able to go freely to Zaraq and see my sister and niece, better off being my own person than an exiled wife.’

  ‘You’re saying no?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Georgie said.

  ‘All that I can give you …’

  ‘Save it for the wife your father picks for you, Ibrahim,’ Georgie said. ‘Save it for your virgin.’ She almost spat at the thought of it, but she contained herself with words. ‘No matter how well you teach her, she’ll never be as good as me.’

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  THE trouble with angry words, Georgie thought, as he stormed from her office, was that you didn’t get to rehearse them.

  She wanted to run after him, to reframe her words, to explain better—that she wasn’t talking about sex, wasn’t declaring herself as the world’s best lover. Well, she was, but only to him.

  And it wasn’t just about sex. It was the conversations, the thoughts shared that he could surely never repeat so easily with another.

  But she would not run after him, she was stronger than that.

  Fragile indeed!

  How dared he?

  So she took to her oils and inhaled melissa, then hurled the bottle against the wall when she smelt Bal-smin, just as Sophia had, because now it would always take her back to the desert.

  Always.

  How could Sophia stand there and tell her she was happy when her son and her grandson lay buried in the desert, when she had heard Ibrahim tell his father how she had wept at the birth of Hassan’s son.

  Sophia had lied and Georgie didn’t blame her a bit for it.

  Maybe she should go and talk to her, but honestly this time. Perhaps it might help to hear her true pain, to confirm how it felt to be half a wife, to seal the decision she had made.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  ‘YOU fool!’ Ibrahim strode in, straight past his mother, to where his father sat. He left a trail of black energy that had his mother standing at the door fearful to go in, for, try as she might, she could no longer halt them. She could not contain the conflict between the two men she loved most.

  ‘You dare to speak to me like that.’ The king rose to defend himself. ‘I am your father, I am your king.’

  ‘You are not my king,’ Ibrahim said. ‘You will no longer be my king, for I am done. The knife of the family should not cut—and yet you have cut my mother out.’

  ‘There was no choice.’

  ‘You are king,’ Ibrahim sneered. ‘You get to choose. You make the rules.’

  He could hear his mother crying in the hallway, but he would not stop. ‘She deserves to be at home with you, not holed up in another country as some secret. She is the mother of your sons.’

  ‘She cheated.’

  ‘As did you!’ Ibrahim challenged what no man should. He stood and questioned the ways of old, the ways that chained him, his father, his family from a future. ‘You had mistresses, many, even when you were with her …’

  ‘I am king!’ Indignant, he roared. ‘Your mother had four young children. I was helping her so she could focus on the children, not have to worry herself attending to my needs …’

  ‘What about her needs?’ Ibrahim roared. ‘Clearly she had them, but you were too blind to see.’

  ‘Ibrahim, please,’ Sophia begged from the hallway. ‘Please, stop.’

  As Georgie pulled up at Sophia’s house she could see her at the door, bent over and crying, and as she climbed out, she heard raised voices and Sophia ran to her. ‘He will kill him for how he is speaking. Stop him, Georgie. You must.’

  But he would not stop and Georgie knew it. As with Felicity, there were too many words left unsaid, a confrontation that needed to be had, so she held Sophia’s hand and listened as Ibrahim roared. ‘You didn’t even give her the dignity of ending it.’ He shook his head in disgust at his father. ‘You need to bring her home.’

  ‘My people will not accept her and they will not respect me if I am seen to forgive her.’

  ‘Some won’t!’ Ibrahim challenged. ‘But there are many who will respect you a whole lot more—your son included.’

  And the king looked at his youngest son, the one he could not read, the one he had accused of being the weakest when he had wept in the desert and just would not stop. The child that wept till it choked him, till he vomited, when his body should have been spent, when he should have curled up and accepted his lesson. Still Ibrahim had not, because he would not give up on what he believed in, and the king saw then the strength in his son.

  ‘I love Georgie,’ Ibrahim said. ‘She will be my wife, and without her by my side, I will not return to Zaraq. I will never return and neither will our children.’ He meant it. The king knew his son meant it. ‘If I am to be a prince, she is to be royal—as my mother should be.’

  ‘You can’t just give it all away.’

  ‘I just have.’ There wasn’t a trace of regret in his voice and Georgie closed her eyes as she listened and learnt just how much he loved her.

  ‘You cannot just turn your back—the desert calls …’

  ‘There is no call from the desert. The call was from my heart.’

  ‘Don’t mock the ways of old.’

  ‘But I’m not,’ Ibrahim said. ‘The desert knows what it is doing, because it brought us together. It’s the ruler who is blind.’ He was done with his father. Now he just had to find Georgie, but even before he turned round she was there beside him and she took his hand, not just for him but because she was still intimidated by a king.

  ‘Is this what you want for him?’ the king challenged, and Georgie wasn’t so strong.

  ‘You don’t have to give it up, Ibrahim. We can work something out. I know how much you love it.’

  ‘They have to love me too,’ he said, and it sounded a lot like her. ‘I would be a good prince, a loyal prince. I can help them move forward and bring much-needed change, but only if they want all of me, and a part of me will always be with you.’ He meant it, Georgie realised, he truly meant it. Gone was the tension and doubt. There was no fight inside him, no wrestling with himself, and without a glance backwards he walked from the house, taking Georgie with him.

  ‘Do you realise what you’ve done?’ Georgie asked.

  ‘Do you?’ Ibrahim checked, for the first time in his life bordering on embarrassed, because all that she wanted he could not now give her. ‘You won’t even be half a princess.’

  ‘Am I yours?’ Georgie asked, and he nodded. ‘Are you mine?’ she checked, and he closed his eyes and nodded again.

  ‘Then I have everything.’

  She looked down at his fingers coiled around hers, to the darkness and light that they made, then up to his eyes and the talent behind them—and there was her palace.

  She had her prince.

  EPILOGUE

  ‘THE hard part will soon be over.’

  Ibrahim meant the formal part of the wedding, but as she smiled back at him, it meant something more too.

  The hard part was long over, but if it reared up again, she could face it.

  Could face anything with Ibrahim by her side.

  ‘Soon,’ Ibrahim said, ‘we can go to the desert.’ Now he looked forward to his time there. Now he understood that it was wiser than anyone could begin to understand.

  But his mind did not linger there. This night his attention was on Georgie. She didn’t like the spotlight, the limelight, and he shielded her from it as best he could, and thankfully, though it was their wedding, there was another couple that dimmed the glare just a touch.

  Zaraq was celebrating two happy couples today, Georgie and Ibrahim and also their king with his queen.

  The people had always loved her, had mourne
d her son on her behalf, and now she was back, glowing and radiant. She sat at the table by his side as the king read his speech.

  He was proud of his country and people and he thanked them for sharing this day, and he was thankful to his wife too, especially, he added on a whim, for her patience. Even Ibrahim managed a wry laugh and then his father looked right at him and he was proud as he thanked both his youngest and the wildest, even for rebellion, because challenge was good, the king said, it was how we learned. And he smiled at Georgie and thanked her too—because she had taught him so much.

  Then the hard part was over and seemingly now they could enjoy.

  Except Georgie couldn’t.

  She stood at the stop of the stairs, heard the beat of the music and the crowd urge them on, the procession that danced them, and his hand in hers.

  ‘I can’t do this.’

  ‘You are doing it,’ Ibrahim said, because she could walk if she wanted to and that would be enough, but he knew she was capable of much more. ‘You’re doing it now.’

  Had the king been so jubilant at Felicity’s wedding, so happy and proud?

  She could see her mother, smiling, and the radiant face of Sophia, who was home now, and her sister glowing.

  But more than that there was Ibrahim beside her and halfway down the steps, with him beside her, Georgie found her rhythm, found she could dance, even terribly, and still he adored her.

  She was as she was, perfect to him.

  Which gave her courage she had never imagined she could have.

  To dance those last steps and accept the love that surrounded her and not care if she stumbled or fell, because Ibrahim was there to catch her. And she was there too for him.

  She danced the zeffa, moved toward him and away from him, danced around him and beside him, felt the beat in her stomach that spread down her thighs to her toes, and now she could give in to it and then there was contact and she rested in his arms.

  ‘Take me to the desert.’

  ‘Soon,’ Ibrahim said, because still there was duty, so they danced one more dance then two and then headed to a loaded table, where Georgie took her time to select from the lavish spread.