‘I am sorry, Zahir. But I have given you my answer and prefer to be left here alone. However, I pray that you come to your senses and forget about making such a soulless marriage with the Emir’s daughter. Have you never wanted to fall in love like our father did? Like our ancestors did… like I did, too?’
A pair of incandescent long-lashed blue eyes flashed in Zahir’s mind, instigating such a powerful longing inside him to see their owner again that he fought to contain it and return to cold, hard reality instead. Icy reason told him that even to entertain such a hurtful memory was to go down a road made impassable by bitterness and disillusionment. The woman had rejected his entreaty to return to Kabuyadir and his arms outright. Never again would he risk his heart that way, or give his trust to a woman.
When he finally spoke his voice was gruff. ‘The premise is pointless, and I am not a masochist willing to experience more pain and anguish than I have endured already. No, that is not a path for me. Now, can I bring you anything back from the city?’
‘No, thank you. Just go safely and return home soon.’ With the barest glimmer of a filial smile, his sister returned to her lonely musing over the clear still pond at her feet.
Gina had fought hard in her case to win the right to travel to Kabuyadir and examine the jewel she and her colleagues had been researching these past few weeks, and she’d won the battle. Still, it was a double-edged sword to go back to the place where she’d experienced her greatest joy and deepest pleasure and know that she’d foolishly trampled the chance she’d had to be with the man she loved into the dirt.
Now, as her colleague Jake Rivers drove them to the airport, she stared out of the passenger window of his small Fiat in silence, reflecting on returning to the place where she had lost her heart to a handsome, enigmatic stranger—a stranger she had dreamt about almost every night for the past three years. The dreams endlessly replayed that incredible night they had spent together under the desert stars.
‘Zahir.’ She murmured the name softly.
Not for the first time she wondered where he was and what he was doing. Was he married to a girl from his own land now? Was he father to a child that played happily at his feet and made him ache with pride? Did he ever think of Gina and remember the incredible instant connection they had shared? Or had he relegated it to a moment of madness he regretted because she’d callously rejected his invitation to return in preference to forging ahead with her career?
Chewing down hard on her lip, she felt her insides flip in anguish. She’d wanted to make her father proud and honour her mother’s memory, but in doing so she’d sacrificed perhaps the one real chance of happiness she would ever have. Bad enough that she hadn’t seen Zahir again after that one night, but to think that he might despise her for the choice she’d made was a psychological blow beyond cruel. Please, God, no…
‘What did you say?’
Realising she had spoken out loud, Gina glanced round at her erudite bespectacled colleague, her face hot. ‘Nothing… just thinking aloud for a moment.’
‘I can’t believe you’ve been to Kabuyadir before. What was it like?’ Jake asked conversationally as he negotiated the route to the long-term car park.
Shutting her eyes for an instant, Gina felt it all come flooding back—the scent of exotic spices and incense, the sound of languages with their origins in ancient Persian and Byzantine empires, the vibrant glowing colours of the wares in the marketplace, and the fragrant perfume of the Husseins’ garden that was hypnotically carried on the sultry wind.
Most of all she recalled Zahir’s strong-boned face, and eyes so chocolate-dark that one arresting glance had been enough to steal her heart and keep it his for ever…
‘Whatever description my words could give you wouldn’t do it justice. Why not just see for yourself when we get there?’
He sent her a smile as he parked. ‘All right, then. I will. By the way, how’s Professor Collins doing? What’s he working on at the moment?’
Jake’s tone had both admiration and curiosity in it, and Gina kept her expression as neutral as possible. Usually she tried to stick to a policy of keeping her personal life well out of her professional one, but she supposed it was inevitable that her ambitious young colleague would be curious. He had confessed to her from the very first that he was Jeremy Collins’s ‘greatest admirer’ because of what he had achieved in his long and distinguished career.
‘I have no idea what he’s working on, but he’s been a bit under the weather lately, to tell you the truth. Thankfully I found him a new housekeeper, who seems very thoughtful and caring, so I’m trusting he’ll be okay while I’m abroad.’
She hoped she didn’t sound as anxious as she felt. Suddenly her father seemed worryingly forgetful and fragile, and her heart bumped a little beneath her ribs when she thought of him struggling with the daily chores most people found easy.
That was why she was so thankful that she’d found Lizzie Eldridge. As his new housekeeper she would be just perfect. A forty-something single mum of an eleven-year-old, she was down to earth and immensely practical, as well as kind. She and Gina’s father had hit if off straight away. He was in safe hands, she thought as she wheeled her suitcase across the concrete to the dropping-off point for the bus that would take them to the airport entrance.
‘I can’t wait to see the jewel “in the flesh” as it were,’ her companion enthused as he walked beside her. ‘That central diamond—or Almas, as they call it—is quite something. The owner can’t be short of a few quid, seeing that he’s the local Sheikh an’ all, so I wonder what’s made him think of selling it?’
‘That is surely none of our business?’ Gina responded with an arch of her brow. ‘All I know is that it’s a tremendous privilege to study the history of such a jewel…a jewel that research had corroborated hails from seventh-century Persia.’
‘Hmm…’ Unrepentant, Jake grinned. ‘I wonder what he’s like, this “Sheikh of Sheikhs” as he’s known? Can you believe we’ve been invited to stay at his palace instead of some local flea-bitten hotel?’
‘I’d be careful about coming out with things like that when we’re in Kabuyadir, Jake. It might be construed as disrespectful…which it is.’
‘Have you always been such a good girl, Gina?’ The hazel eyes behind the fashionable ebony glass frames were definitely speculative as well as teasing. ‘Don’t you ever let your hair down and just, well…misbehave?’
It was such an outrageous comment that Gina sensed herself flushing hotly. She had ‘misbehaved’ once— in Kabuyadir, as a matter of fact—but at the time it hadn’t seemed at all as if she was doing wrong. Under the circumstances it had seemed like the most natural thing in the world, because it had been purely instinctive and right. She certainly didn’t regret what others might regard as her moment of madness if they knew about it. Not even once.
Running her hand over her tidy French pleat, she felt the leap of intense longing to see Zahir again almost overcome her. ‘I’m not perfect, Jake. I have my foibles just like anyone else. Let’s leave it at that, shall we?’
There were moments in a person’s life when the sheer wonder of a sight left an imprint on the heart and mind that would never be erased. Stepping into the vast mosaic and marble courtyard of Sheikh Kazeem Khan’s ornately gilded palace was one of them.
Shielding her gaze against the dazzling sunlight that rendered the tall golden turrets almost impossible to look at for long, even with her sunglasses on, Gina glanced over at an equally mesmerised Jake and shook her head. Words seemed unnecessary.
Lifting her face up to the skyline again, she noted the impressive stone-built watchtower, hovering even higher than the golden pinnacle of the roof. Once upon a time this palace must have been the most intimidating and impenetrable fortress. It wasn’t hard to imagine what