Читать книгу Red-Hot Desert Docs - Carol Marinelli, Amalie Berlin - Страница 14

CHAPTER SEVEN

‘READY FOR THE OFF?’ Annie, her favourite nurse at the care home, asked on the night before Adele flew to Mamlakat Almas.

‘I am!’

‘You’re eye’s looking a lot better.’

Adele had been icing it regularly and using the arnica cream that Zahir had suggested. The spectacular purple bruise had now faded to pale yellow.

Sometimes she felt as if she had dreamt their kiss.

As if her mind, tired of nothing happening, had manufactured it.

Yet she knew it had been real and though the last few days had been busy she had dwelt on it regularly.

Hourly.

Maybe every five minutes or so!

Even though Zahir had said everything would be provided, she had spent a small fortune on underwear, nightdresses, dressing gowns and slippers in case she had to go the Queen at night.

It was very hard dressing for mother and son, Adele had thought as she’d closed her case on her hopefully subtly sexy lingerie.

But then she also knew there would be no furtive kisses or hot sensual Arabian nights.

She would be working and Zahir had told her anything more would be very much frowned on at his home.

And, from the little she knew, things were different there and her lovely new underwear had no hope of being seen.

Still, it was better to be safe than sorry!

‘It will just be for two weeks,’ she told her mum as she kissed her goodbye.

Yet it was about more than a two-week break. Adele knew that by taking this step she was if not cutting the cord then loosening it a touch.

Annie did too.

‘You know we’ll take good care of her.’

‘I know that you will and I’ll call every day.’

As she left the nursing home Adele felt different.

Of course she would be back and she would always visit but this was a huge step in reclaiming her life.

It was very hard to get to sleep and it felt that as soon as she did her alarm went off.

The car duly arrived and Adele was only too happy to close the door on the flatmates from hell.

She had bought some linen trousers and a long-sleeved top for the journey and then regretted it as her trousers had already crumpled while waiting for the car to arrive.

The driver made small talk as he drove her to Heathrow, but they took a different entrance from the main one. Soon she was in a very plush room and there was Leila but there was no sign of Zahir.

Leila had the pale, sickly pallor of someone who had spent time in hospital and indoors but apart from that she seemed well. ‘I am so pleased to see you, Adele.’ She beamed. ‘This is Hannah, one of the nurses who has been taking care of me at the hotel.’

There was a detailed handover.

Leila had seen Mr Oman for a post-operative check-up the day before and Adele was told that he was very pleased with her progress.

‘This is his phone number,’ Hannah said, as she went through the file. ‘You are to ring him if there are any concerns. Here is a course of antibiotics for Queen Leila, if he feels it necessary for her to take them. However, Mr Oman also said that he has full faith that the healers can care for her from this point on. He has written a letter for them. They can also contact him with any concerns that they might have.’

Hannah said goodbye and Adele looked out at the royal jet, scarcely able to believe that soon they would be boarding.

‘I am so excited to be going home,’ Leila said. ‘Zahir and Dakan should be here soon.’

And here they were.

Always, always, he looked immaculate.

Just not today.

His suit looked a bit rumpled, as if he had slept in it, and he really needed to shave.

Oh, she hoped he didn’t!

Adele hadn’t seen or heard from Zahir since they had kissed, and she tried to remember how she used to greet him before...

That’s right, she’d smile and he’d ignore her!

It had worked for twelve months and it worked now, for Adele smiled and Zahir duly ignored her.

It was Dakan who returned her smile.

In fact, he came over. ‘My mother’s ever so pleased that you’re going home with her. I brought some antibiotics just in case they were required...’

‘It’s okay,’ Adele said. ‘Mr Oman has already taken care of that.’

‘These are for you,’ Dakan said, ‘in case you need them. Are you allergic to anything?’

‘No but—’

‘Adele, believe me, you don’t want to get ill there. I’m sure Zahir has got some with him but he may well be busy or away. Have these with you just in case.’

‘Thank you.’

A flight steward came out to greet Leila and Dakan went over to his mother and they embraced.

Leila’s eyes filled with tears and, though they spoke in Arabic, it was clear to Adele that Leila found it hard to say goodbye and that she wanted both of her sons home.

It was time to board and Leila did so without fuss, though she needed a little help with the steep stairs.

Adele felt dizzy with anticipation as she boarded the royal jet and Leila greeted the captain, co-pilot and the rest of the crew.

They greeted her so formally—even Hannah had called her Queen Leila—that Adele realised the great privilege it had been to talk to Leila so informally.

The Queen and Zahir sat in a lounge area and Adele did what she could to make Leila comfortable. She gave her a little cushion to put over her incision and helped her to strap in for take-off.

‘Are you wearing your anti-embolism stockings?’

‘I am.’ Leila nodded, and lifted the bottom of her robe to show that she was.

‘Good,’ Adele said.

Adele was guided a little further back to a gorgeous leather seat that was set apart from the lounge, but she would be able to watch the Queen and would hear her if she called. She was told that her room was further down at the rear of the plane and she could sleep there later.

Adele had thought maybe it would be small jet, but it was huge, and lavishly furnished.

Still, she tried to focus on Leila.

It was the most rapid take off. Almost as soon as Adele sat down the plane started moving and before long they were levelling out. Adele looked down and saw they were already over water and when she noticed Zahir looking at her she gave him a small smile.

This was normal to him.

It was a huge adventure to her.

Once they were able to move around Adele found her room. It was small but there was a very comfortable-looking bed and a small shower. It was like first-class travel and this was just for the staff! There was a muslin nightdress laid out for her on the bed.

As well as that, hanging up was a coral-coloured robe and some pretty jewelled shoes.

She thought about what Zahir had said about everything being provided and it felt as if she had entered another world.

She came out and Zahir was on his computer and was chatting with his mother when the meals were served.

Adele took her cues from the flight stewards. She was seated to the rear and would take her meal there, whereas Zahir and Leila ate at a polished table.

Adele chose a lovely mint soup and a small bread roll for starters but her stomach was too tied in knots to have a main course.

Dessert was a light, pale custard with a rich rose-water syrup over it.

She saw that Zahir had declined dessert.

A foolish mistake, Adele thought, and closed her eyes in bliss at the taste and then opened them to see him.

He made her blush.

With one glance from Zahir she felt heat in her face.

* * *

Once the meals had been cleared away, Zahir declared he was going to bed.

He went into his suite, stripped off and showered.

He hadn’t slept last night. He had gone out but had soon returned to his apartment and drunk cognac, wondering when, if and under what circumstances he might return to England.

He pulled on black silk lounge pants and closed his eyes but sleep would not come.

Zahir, in an attempt to drag his mind from Adele and those awful linen trousers, made a couple of phone calls to some architects and tried to line up some meetings.

One of them, Nira, sounded promising and she had some questions that she put to him.

Adele, on the other hand, tried not to think of Zahir asleep a matter of metres away as Leila took out her sewing.

‘Come and see this, Adele,’ Leila said.

‘Oh!’ Adele walked over and looked down, and saw that the Queen was embroidering a small square. The silks were so rich and the stitching so detailed it really was exquisite. ‘It’s beautiful. What are you making?’

‘A blanket,’ Leila told her. ‘I have been making it for many, many years.’ She took out a few squares from the sewing bag for Adele to see. They were all different, and each one was a work of art in itself. They ranged from flowers, to delicate letters, to beautiful coloured birds.

‘These must take hours and hours.’

‘They do,’ Leila agreed. ‘It is a stitching technique that has been passed on through generations. Each square has a different symbol or flower...soon I shall put them all together. It has been a labour of love.’

Soon, though, Leila put away her embroidery and declared that she was very tired. ‘I don’t understand why, though, I slept well last night.’

‘You were up early,’ Adele pointed out.

‘I am always up early.’

‘It’s your first proper outing since surgery, so being tired is to be expected,’ Adele said.

‘Well, I’m going to go to bed, if you could come and help me.’

‘Of course, but you do need to walk around first.’

The Queen wasn’t sitting in cramped economy class but she had just undergone abdominal surgery and that was a major risk factor for embolisms.

‘You’re bossy,’ Leila moaned, and then she smiled at Zahir, who had come out of his room and was on his phone.

Of course, Leila didn’t nearly faint at the sight of Zahir in black silk lounge pants and a naked torso.

That would be Adele.

And neither did Leila care that his hair was wet from the shower and that his feet were bare.

That would be Adele too.

Oh, she tried not to notice him speaking in Arabic into his phone as he opened up the laptop he had left in the lounge.

Finally Adele walked Leila to her room and it was Adele rather than Leila who breathed out a sigh of relief as she closed the door on Zahir.

It was as beautiful as any five-star hotel.

There was a large walnut dressing table and a pretty lemon-coloured bed, which had been turned back.

Adele helped Leila to change into a nightgown and then Leila sat on the edge of the bed and Adele helped her with her legs.

Really, she was unsure whether Leila could not manage or simply was not used to doing it herself.

‘I’ll come and wake you in a couple of hours so that you can do some leg exercises.’

‘Very well. If I need you or I am concerned about something I shall have a stewardess alert you, but now it is time for you to get some rest too, Adele,’ Leila said. She could be bossy too! ‘There should be a robe for you to change into before we land. There will be more of a selection for you when we get to Mamlakat Almas. Could you please dim my light on your way out?’

Adele did so.

‘Thank you,’ Leila said. ‘Now you go and relax.’

It was incredibly hard to, though, especially when she came out of the Queen’s bedroom and saw that Zahir was still talking on the phone.

She went to sit on her allocated seat and then changed her mind and decided to head to her own room, but Zahir ended the call then.

‘Adele, come and sit in the lounge.’

‘No.’ Adele shook her head. She was blushing, but not from embarrassment. She was heated and turned on just at the sight of him and the memory of their kiss. Sitting on a sofa with him dressed in next to nothing had no chance of ending well.

He knew what was on her mind.

‘No staff will come unless they are summoned.’

‘What if your mother gets up?’

He smiled.

‘My mother doesn’t get out of bed without the help of a maid. You’ll know when she wants to get up! Come on.’ He gestured with his head for her to join him. ‘We need to talk.’

They did and so Adele went over.

She went to sit on a chair but he patted the seat on the sofa beside him and rather tentatively she sat down.

‘I was just speaking with an architect and arranging to meet.’ He pointed to his laptop screen and she saw building plans.

‘I’m not returning to London, I haven’t renewed my contract,’ Zahir, rather bluntly, told her. ‘I am hoping to bring about change to the health system...’ He gave a small mirthless laugh. ‘Actually, there is no real system.’

‘None?’

‘There is one small hospital but it is under-resourced and overstretched. Most doctors stay a month and leave and I don’t blame them. My father is resistant to change.’

‘When you say you’re not coming back, for how long?’

‘Maybe never.’ And he was brutally honest then. ‘I have long held off on marriage, but my father will insist on it if change gets under way.’

And just as that evening when she had seen the flowers, and had known they had not come from him, today she knew that marriage could not apply to her.

‘There are many traditions and legends and rules in my land,’ Zahir explained. ‘I could take the whole flight to tell you about them and only then would we scratch the surface. The main thing I am trying to explain is that I cannot see my country accepting you. That is why I have done nothing about us.’

‘Zahir, I don’t want to live there,’ Adele said. ‘I would never leave my mother for a start, but we could have had a year, Zahir. A whole year of...’

And she felt like slapping his cheek for his restraint. ‘Now you’re leaving, just as I find out you wanted me all along. Why did you tell me all this now when there’s nothing we can do? Why did you say to your mother I could come when you knew you were going to marry? Why kiss me...?’

‘Would you prefer that I hadn’t?’ he asked. ‘I could have left, and let you carry on assuming that I disliked you. You could have had your holiday in France and returned and found out I had gone...’

She tried to picture it and she didn’t like what she saw.

‘Perhaps I would have returned in a few years’ time and by then I’d be married, perhaps you would be too.’

And she sat there.

‘All I can tell you is that I was not ready to say goodbye and had you not come today, it would have been goodbye, Adele.’

‘What happens now?’

He shrugged his broad shoulders.

‘That’s no answer.’

‘Because I haven’t been to the desert to ask for a solution.’

No, she did not understand their ways.

Neither, fully, did he.

He had sought solutions under the sun and the stars on many occasions.

The answers were always the same but in various orders.

Do what is essential.

Be patient.

In time the answers will unfold.

Yet they hadn’t.

He did not want his father to die, yet that was the only solution that Zahir could see.

‘Adele, it was either say goodbye in the car that morning and you would never know how I feel, or bring you to my home. I chose the latter.’

Adele looked into his beautiful eyes and she was now very glad that he had.

To have never known his kiss, to have never sat here looking him in the eye, as painful as it might prove, she was glad to be here.

There was an ache for contact and he solved that with his thumb, running it along her bottom lip.

‘I want to kiss you,’ he said, and he looked at her mouth as he spoke.

‘Someone might come.’

‘Not unless I summon them.’

And she looked at his mouth too.

‘Leila might call. Anyway, I’m working.’

‘If you are needed they will buzz through to your room.’

She half expected the oxygen masks to suddenly ping down, she felt so light-headed.

‘This might be the last chance,’ Zahir said, and he saw the struggle in her eyes.

‘Just a kiss?’ Adele checked, because just a kiss surely couldn’t be wrong.

‘Just that,’ he said.

She stood on legs that felt unfamiliar and walked the length of the lounge and past the Queen’s room.

There were no staff around, the only sounds the engines and her own pulse whooshing in her ears.

She stepped into the small bedroom and told herself that there was no chance they would be caught.

Yet she knew this was wrong.

Zahir came in then and turned the lock on the door.

All this for a kiss.

‘One kiss,’ Adele said, as he went for the drawstring of her linen pants.

‘Just one,’ Zahir said, and her thighs were shaking as she stepped out of her clothes.

She lifted her arms and he peeled off her top.

He unhooked her new and very lacy bra and peeled it down her arms and his eyes took in her small breasts and looked down at her stomach.

Her knickers were silver and tiny and he could see the dark blond hair peeking out the top.

And Adele could see him hard beneath black silk.

She looked at his solid chest and broad shoulders. With this kiss their skin would make first contact. She lowered her head to taste his broad muscled chest.

‘Don’t waste your one kiss there,’ he said.

His voice was gravelly and thick with desire and Adele felt as if hands had closed around her throat because she was struggling to breathe.

He moved her so that her back was to the wall and as she went to reach for him he took her wrists and raised them so that they were above her head and then he held them against the wall. He looked at the lift of her breasts and how she was shaking with arousal.

‘You’re presumptuous,’ Adele accused, and he smiled a slow smile.

‘I am.’

He restrained her yet his own restraint was gone and he kissed her so hard that their teeth clashed.

One kiss, which made Adele twist against the restraint of his hands as she fought for her chance to hold him and drag him in.

He denied it.

One kiss, where their chests finally met, and she wanted to move her mouth just to taste his shoulder but that would break the deal of one kiss.

Her breasts flattened against him as he crushed her.

His erection slid against her stomach and she wanted it lower. He just bored into her and, with a craving for more contact, with nothing else for it, she attempted to hook her leg around him, but he widened his stance so that her foot dropped to the floor.

But now he was lower.

His tongue moved with the same motion as his groin and it was still one kiss but it had been spiced with dynamite.

Her jaw ached with tension and that tension slid to her neck and raced down her spine. Her thighs pressed together and Adele was rocking her groin into him. As she started to shudder he released her hands.

She held him between them as she came, and he felt the rip of tension and the stilling of her tongue, the slight squeal that he swallowed as she gripped him hard.

And it was still just one kiss as he silvered her palm and fingers and Adele felt him hot on her stomach as they pressed into each other.

Then he kissed her back but not to reality, for that was lost to her now.

And then he was gone.