Her journey had taken on the aspects of a magic-carpet ride to a fabled world, for here and there around the rooms were huge brass urns like the ones in Ali Baba’s story, and strange-looking lamps Aladdin would have recognised!
It’s an adventure, she told herself.
Enjoy it.
Work will wait.
Oh, how she longed to believe that—to relax and enjoy the thrill of the new—to see something of the world beyond this room, the wide, empty desert, the rising red dunes, the colour and scents of the markets and the noisy delight of the camel auctions Samarah had spoken of with such vivid words and obvious love.
Impossible, of course, Alex knew that much! The reason she worked two jobs wouldn’t wait—not for long. Bad enough that her brother had cheated his bosses, but how could he have been so stupid as to get involved with dodgy money-lenders? With people who would have no qualms about threatening his wife and vulnerable daughter?
Alex sighed, then turned her attention to practical matters, like getting out of this country she was yet to see.
Apparently Samarah had a niece who was a doctor. As soon as she returned from overseas, Alex would be free to leave. Samarah’s son, the king, was also a doctor, but Samarah was adamant it was not his highness’s job to look after her.
In the meantime?
For a start, she should get up off the bed, find her way outside, possibly dropping breadcrumbs on the way so she could find her way back, and have a look around. Arriving in the dark of very early morning, she’d gained nothing more than the impression of an enormous building, more like a walled town than a house. She’d been led along dimly lit corridors, past shadowy rooms, then seen Samarah settled into bed, sat with her a while until she slept easily, then slept herself. Now daylight was nearly done and she’d seen nothing—
‘Please, you will come.’
The young woman who’d been fussing over Alex since she’d woken up halfway through the afternoon was hovering in the doorway.
‘Samarah? She’s sick again?’
Alex shot off the bed as she asked the question, looked around for her shoes then remembered she’d left them in the doorway the previous night. She brushed back the stray hairs that had escaped her plait, and followed her guide.
‘Samarah is there but it is the prince who wishes to see you.’
‘The prince?’
‘His new Highness.’
It was all too confusing, so Alex kept walking, trusting that a conversation with this august personage would sort out a lot of things, not least of which was when she could return home.
Her carer led her out of the building, into a covered colonnade that joined all the houses around a beautiful central courtyard, with fancifully shaped trees, and massed roses in full bloom and fountains playing tinkling music, the cascading water catching the sunlight in a shimmer of such brilliance Alex felt her breath catch in her throat.
What a beautiful, magical place …
‘Come, come,’ the woman urged, slipping on her sandals and motioning for Alex to do the same, but although Alex responded, she did so automatically, her mind still lost in the delight of her surroundings.
That all this lush beauty should be hidden behind the high walls she’d glimpsed last night!
They walked around the colonnade, passing another dwelling, eventually reaching the end of the rectangular courtyard. In front of her, Alex could see carpets spread, with fat cushions and a low settee placed on them. Samarah was there, and some of the women who had been in Australia with her, their low-voiced chatter reaching out to Alex, making her feel less apprehensive about this meeting with the ‘new highness’.
But as she drew near, the women moved away, drifting lightly down into the courtyard, Samarah among them, so only a man in a white robe remained on the plush red velvet settee on the vivid carpets.
Azzam looked at the pale, tired woman who appeared in front of him. Not a golden blonde, more a silver ghost, slim and insubstantial, the shadows beneath her grey eyes the only colour in her face.
Was it the strain he read on her neat features—a strain he knew was visible in his own face—that made him pause before he spoke? Or did he have some fundamental weakness—some predilection for blondes—that clouded his judgement?
That suspicion, though he instantly denied it, strengthened his will.
‘I am Azzam,’ he said, standing up and holding out his hand. ‘My mother tells me you have been good to her and I wish to thank you.’
‘Alexandra Conroy,’ she replied, her voice soft but firm, her handshake equally solid. ‘And I’ve done no more for your mother than any doctor would have done. Adult onset asthma is not only very distressing for the patient, it can be extremely serious.’
She paused and the grey eyes, made paler by their frame of dark lashes, studied his face for a moment before she added, ‘But of course you’d know that. You’re the doctor, your brother was the lawyer.’
Another pause and he saw her chest rise as she drew in a deep breath.
‘I am sorry for your loss. It is hard to lose a sibling, doubly hard, I would imagine, to lose a twin.’
The simple, quietly spoken words pierced his soul, the pain of losing Bahir so acute that for a moment he couldn’t speak.
Had it been the wrong thing to say? Alex wondered. She found the man’s silence discomforting, but more distracting was the glimpse she’d had of his eyes—a startling green, gleaming out of his olive-skinned face like emeralds set in old parchment.
‘Please, sit,’ he eventually said, his voice cooler than the evening air, making Alex certain she’d breached some kind of protocol in mentioning his brother’s death. She eyed the cushions, then the settee, which had taken on the appearance of a throne as she’d approached. But he waved his hand towards it, so she sat, then regretted it when he remained standing, putting her at an immediate disadvantage.
‘My mother’s asthma? It came on suddenly?’
If a discussion of his mother’s health was all he wanted of her, why was she feeling uneasy?
Because there’s an undertone in his voice that sounded like—surely not suspicion …
She was imagining things.
Yet the sense that this man was judging her in some way persisted, making her feel uncomfortable, so her reply was strained-hurried.
‘I work for a clinic that does—I suppose you’d say house calls—to hotels on the tourist strip of the Gold Coast. About four weeks ago, the clinic had a call from the hotel where your mother was staying. I was on duty and I found her breathless and fatigued, and very upset, which wasn’t so surprising as it was her first such attack.’
‘You treated her?’
An obvious question, yet again she heard some underlying emotion in it.
Putting her silly fancies down to tiredness, not to mention an inbuilt distrust of men as handsome as this one, she explained as concisely as she could.
‘I started with an inhalation of salbutamol, then a corticosteroid injection. Her breathing became easier almost immediately, but I put her on oxygen anyway, and stayed with her. The next day, when she was