Читать книгу Summer Sheikhs - Эбби Грин, Marguerite Kaye - Страница 19

THE sun flamed up in the sky on the right, a perfect circle of burning fury that promised the greater ferocity to come, and the grey line of the mountains’ shadow rushed towards them, chased by golden sand.

‘That’s quite a vista,’ Desi murmured. It was a dizzying view all the way to white-topped Mount Shir, brooding high above the foothills like the lion it was named for.

Salah glanced at her, and away again. She looked like what she was—a beautiful woman who had known passion in the night. And he realized, from the change he saw in her, that it had been a long time since she had experienced the kind of lovemaking he had given her. Her skin had a glow that had not been there before; her eyes were soft with remembered pleasure, her mouth was swollen with the memory of kisses.

His kisses.

He felt a burst of masculine satisfaction. That was the measure of a man, or one of them: to give his woman true pleasure—so that afterwards she was sweet, like honey. His own body ached and sang with the thought of her sweetness, and for him, too, it had been lovemaking like nothing he had known for ten years.

‘I told you once that you would like it,’ he said, but he was not talking about Mount Shir.

Then he heard his own thoughts—his woman. But she was not his woman, not now, not ever again. And he was a fool if he let sex cloud his thinking about her. She had betrayed him once, when he needed her most. She was almost certainly betraying him now, betraying his country, perhaps—for although he had no proof of what she really wanted here, he could be very sure at least that she was lying to him.

Sex made fools of men. He knew that, he had seen it happen to others. He would not be of their number. He would keep a clear head. He had four or five days to get the truth from her. Desire must not blind him to the need to do it. Sex must not be allowed to interfere with his plans. He reached out and pressed the radio into life, to puncture the mood in the truck’s cabin.

He had been ten times a fool to think he could undertake this task without risk.

Desi smiled and stretched in her seat, letting the incomprehensible chatter from the radio blend into the background like music. Every muscle in her body simultaneously protested and relayed a honeyed memory of the lovemaking just past.

Salah had been wild with need in the night, seeking the solace of her body over and over, as if to make up for ten lost years in a single night. When they arose at daybreak Desi had no idea whether she’d slept. The mix of languor and energy in her body was like nothing she’d ever experienced before.

The memory of their lovemaking was in the vehicle with them now, heavy in the air, liquid in her cells. She was sensitive even to the pressure of the air against her skin; any movement was slow dancing in honey.

A few more minutes of driving in shade, and then, with a little explosion of light, they were in full sunshine.

There was a smile in her being, and it played with her eyes and the corners of her mouth. Desi leaned lazily back and watched the landscape. Silence fell for minutes, during which she savoured shimmering crystal sharp air, blinding light, purple-grey shadows under distant foothills.

Watching the shadows retreat across the desert as the sun climbed higher could almost be a life’s occupation, she reflected. And again she had that strange feeling of belonging, as if the desert had been waiting for her and would now claim her.

He had not mentioned the letter, but she thought he would soon. He had to. Could he explain, would he apologize? Surely now they could discuss what had happened so long ago with some detachment?

She shifted nervously. Everything was too overwhelming, happening too fast. If he did bring it up, where would that lead them? Was she ready for that?

Would she end up telling him about Sami? she wondered suddenly. No real explanation was possible between them without that, but…how would he react? She had promised Sami she would not tell Salah. If she risked betraying that…she had no idea where the discussion would go.

‘So much traffic!’ she said. ‘Does everybody start early, or have they been driving all night?’

‘This is the main road to the oil fields. In summer everyone avoids driving in the middle of the day.’

In his voice she thought she heard a reflection of her own nervous reluctance to start on something where they could not be sure of the end. Well, there was time. Five days they would be alone. Five days to try to sort her thoughts. No hurry.

They drove in silence. Now and then Salah pointed out an ancient ruin in the desert, or a distant nomad encampment. Desi laughed aloud when they came up behind a pickup truck carrying a young camel which was hunkered down with its legs folded beneath it, complacently regarding them over the tailgate, chewing its cud.

‘And my camera’s packed in my case!’

‘You have a camera?’

‘Of course! I want to—’

‘You will not be able to take photographs at the dig,’ Salah said.

‘Oh! Is—’ But she was afraid to ask why for fear of exposing her ignorance. ‘Have you been to the dig before?’ she asked instead.

‘A few times,’ Salah said. ‘When it was first discovered.’

‘What can you tell me about it? I couldn’t find any information. Sami said it might be contemporary with Sumer. It sounds really exciting.’

It was barely three weeks since Desi had first heard of Sumer, the ancient civilisation that thrived between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers five thousand years ago, but she wasn’t faking her interest. There was something about five thousand years of history that sparked her imagination now as much as when she was eleven.

She had crammed a lot of study into the short time she had to prepare. But although she could bone up on the Sumer period and archaeology in general, she had found absolutely nothing about the site Salah’s father was working, so far from where ancient Sumer had prospered. Some mysterious outpost, some far city?

‘My father is maintaining very close secrecy until he can publish,’ he said. ‘You he could not refuse, but no other outsider has been allowed to visit. No media. A hand-picked team. You understand.’

‘I see,’ Desi said lamely, who didn’t know what it meant to ‘publish’ a site, couldn’t imagine why an ancient site would be kept secret, and was dismayed to learn she was on the receiving end of such a massive favour. ‘I didn’t realize what I was asking for. I mean…’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Sure?’

‘Sure you didn’t realize what you were asking for.’

His voice was hard suddenly. In anyone else she would have called it suspicious, but what could he be suspicious of as far as the dig went?

‘I’m new at this,’ she pointed out mildly.

‘And just by chance you happen upon the most tightly kept secret of archaeology of the last thirty years and discover an interest.’

It was suspicion. She couldn’t imagine what he suspected her of, but after last night, how could he speak to her in such a voice?

‘I didn’t go looking for this, you know,’ she pointed out calmly. ‘Sami is my best friend. Why shouldn’t she tell me about her uncle’s work when I told her what I was planning? I’m sure she has no idea how secret it is. She’d have said something.’

‘Sami should not know about it herself.’

‘She knows because it’s the reason marriage negotiations aren’t taking place yet. Till your father gets back from the dig. But by all means let’s not discuss the dig if you’d rather not!’ Desi said. ‘Let’s talk about something else. We’ve made love two nights running. Have you got the closure you wanted?’

Immediately she wished the words unsaid.

Salah turned his head and looked at her with a look so smouldering she felt physical heat. Memory roared up, making her weak.

‘Have you?’ he countered.

‘I wasn’t the one looking for closure. Why won’t you give me a straight answer?’

‘You were looking for something. Have you got it yet?’

‘I was looking to go to your father’s dig,’ she snapped. How much hurt he could still inflict! ‘Are we there yet? No? Well, then, not.’

He flicked a glance into her eyes.

‘So you didn’t come here to see me?’

‘Salah, how many times do you need that question answered?’

‘Truthfully, only once.’

‘By which you mean, you won’t accept any answer till you hear what you want to hear. I’m happy to oblige. What answer would you like? Let’s get it out of the way.’

‘Desi.’ His voice was almost pleading, and her eyes jerked involuntarily to his face. ‘I know that you are not here for the reason you say. I know you. You can’t tell me a lie and I don’t know it.’

‘You don’t know anything about me,’ she said, as bitterness welled up in her throat. ‘You don’t know me now, you didn’t know me then. You couldn’t have written that letter if you’d known the first thing about me.’

He shook his head at the attempt to derail him. ‘Tell me why you have come.’

‘Not from any motive you are contemplating.’

‘Is that an admission? What motive, then?’

‘Oh, leave it alone!’

The honeyed languour was gone from her body. Sunlight was beating into the car with such ferocity she was getting a headache. Heat and sun rarely bothered her, she blossomed in the heat, but this was different. A strip of chrome on the wing mirror was reflecting the sun straight into her eyes. She realized she hadn’t put on her sunglasses, opened her bag and pulled them out.

‘Hiding your eyes won’t help.’

‘On the contrary, it may prevent a headache,’ she said sharply. A herd of camels grazed on nothing in front of a settlement of half a dozen mudbrick houses. Tourists pressed cameras against the windows of a bus, snapping pictures as they passed. The highway curved around to the west; Mount Shir was behind them now. Ahead was an endless stretch of sand, shimmering in the heat, the highway a silver-grey ribbon laid across the vastness.

The road to nowhere, she thought.

After lunch in a small village restaurant, where they waited out the midday heat for another hour, Salah turned the four-wheel drive vehicle off-road and struck out across the dunes.

Now they were completely alone. Within a few minutes they had left all signs of civilisation behind, and were surrounded by the rich emptiness of the desert. Heat shimmered over the dunes; the sun was a white blast furnace against a blue of startling intensity; the pale sand, broken by rocky outcrops now and then, stretched to infinity. Only when she turned to look back at Mount Shir was there any relief for her eyes.

After several hours, the sun began to set ahead of them, the sky turning fiery red and orange and the sun getting fatter and heavier as it approached the horizon. As she watched, the sky shaded to purple, and now the sun was a massive orange ball, larger than she recalled ever seeing it before. When it began to sink behind the horizon, the sky above turned midnight blue.

The sun disappeared in a blaze; the sky went black very quickly. And still they drove.

Salah did not put on the headlights. The world was shadows. There was no human light visible anywhere, just stars and a moon almost at the full, bathing the dunes in ghostly purple. Desi was seized with a sudden, atavistic dread.

She shifted nervously. ‘When do we stop for the night?’

‘Soon,’ he said. ‘An hour or so. Are you tired?’

She shrugged and took a sip of water from the bottle ever present between them.

‘A little. Aren’t you going to put the headlights on?’

‘What for?’

‘Can you drive in the dark?’

‘Why not?’

‘But how do you know where you’re going?’

Salah laughed. ‘There is only one way to navigate in the desert, Desi—by the sky. In daylight, by the sun. At night, by the stars. My forebears have done it for many thousands of years. Don’t worry—if my ancestors had not been good navigators, I would not be here.’

She laughed, and the strange dread lifted. They spoke little, but a feeling of peace and companionship settled over her as they drove on into the night. She almost forgot the harsh accusations of the morning in her pleasure at being with Salah in a world of two.

She had no idea how long they drove when at last a flickering light appeared in the distance. ‘What’s that? Is that a town?’

‘You will see,’ he said, and flicked on the headlights.

A cluster of strangely patterned tents met her eyes: a Bedouin encampment. By the time they reached it, a party of tall robed men was there to welcome them. Under instruction, Salah parked the Toyota against the wire fence of an enclosure, and they got out to be greeted by the men.

They were a tall race, clearly. The men towered over her in their flowing robes and turbans, with the dignified bearing of those who have never lost their connection to the land. They chatted with Salah in soft welcoming voices and led them past the wire enclosure, which proved to be a camel corral. In the flickering torchlight as they passed she saw a dozen beasts crouching on the ground, chewing and whuffling, their outrageous long curling eyelashes made even more seductive by moonshadow. Her heart leapt with the alien magic.

They were led to the centre of the encampment of tents, where there was torchlight and a charcoal brazier. Other men were moving about, laying a carpet with plates and food. Another took their bags and disappeared.

‘Is this a hotel?’ Desi asked in amazement.

‘It is a nomad camp. But the people are by tradition very hospitable. They are used to strangers appearing out of the desert. There are guided tours of the desert for foreigners. Such tourists nowadays often stay with the desert nomads like this.’

Desi was enchanted. A tall moustachioed man of impressive bearing and impregnable dignity bent to offer her a silver basin and a bar of soap, poured water over her hands as she washed, then gave her a weather-beaten square of cloth to dry them.

‘Is this a work camp?’ she asked. ‘Why are there no women?’

‘Women do not serve strangers,’ Salah said. ‘In the morning probably some will come and show you their craft work.’

‘Lovely! What sort of things do they make?’

‘Dolls, pottery, maybe. You will have to wait and see.’

Very soon food was laid before them.

‘Is it the desert air, or is this food totally delicious?’ Desi demanded, falling on it with a reckless abandon that she would have to pay for by eating starvation rations soon.

‘We haven’t eaten since lunch,’ Salah pointed out mildly.

‘Yes, but I’m so used to going without food, it shouldn’t get to me like this,’ Desi said. ‘I’ve been eating far too much since I got here; at this rate I’ll have to fast completely for a week!’

‘Not on this trip, please. The desert is dangerous enough without that.’

Desi nodded, taking his point, and consciously slowed her eating.

‘They use so much oil!’ she protested. ‘In the palace, too. Is that what makes it so flavourful? How on earth does everybody in this country not turn into an elephant?’

Salah laughed aloud. ‘Olive oil,’ he corrected her, as if he were talking about gold. ‘Olive oil is very healthy, as well as giving its delicious flavour to food. We grow our own species of olive. Barakati olive oil is rare but very prized in the world, and very little is exported. Its flavour is excellent.’

When the last of the food had been presented, they were politely left with only each other and the stars. Above them a shooting star rushed along a golden pathway to oblivion.

Suddenly the night air was heavy around them, weighted with awareness. And now that there was nothing to cloak it, their hungry need rose up like heat from the sand to cloud the space between them.

‘They are preparing our tent,’ Salah said, his voice low and hoarse. ‘Will you sleep with me, tonight, Desi? I want you.’