‘You are reminded of something? A place? A time?’
‘No, not really.’ She coughed again and reached for a glass.
‘Yes,’ he said harshly, as all his intentions for the evening went up in smoke. ‘The island. I, too, Desi. The first time I sat here under the trellis at night I remembered those nights under the dock. We looked up at stars glowing with endless beauty, telling us it was the right time, the right place, the right one.’
Desi gazed at him, frozen, the glass halfway to her mouth.
‘You remember, Desi?’
‘Do I?’ she asked bitterly. Tears were ripping at the back of her throat, but she was damned if she would give him that victory.
‘Yes!’ he said fiercely. His face was shadowed in the candlelight, his eyes hidden, his mouth hard. ‘Yes, you know how our love was! Tell me! I want to know that you remember.’
‘Why, since you forgot?’
‘I thought the stars would die before my love for you. I told you that, didn’t I? When each of those stars is a blackened lump, my love will still be burning for you. Isn’t that what I told you?’
Her throat closed tight. She set the glass down again without drinking. ‘I don’t remember,’ she said, her eyes shadowed and grey.
‘Ah, that is well. Because I was wrong. My love did not last.’
‘No kidding. And are you proud of that fact? I’ve always wondered.’
‘Proud?’ His eyes flashed. ‘Why should I be proud? I was shamed, for you and for me. My love did not die honourably, like a star, consuming itself in its own burning. You know how it died.’
‘Your love died because it was fantasy from day one. The stars going out? It wouldn’t have withstood a hiccup.’
The waiter appeared out of the night, shocking them both into silence, and set down a basket of bread and another filled with sprigs of greenery before disappearing again.
‘Tonight,’ he said, ‘they will bring us the foods I told you of, in those starry nights when we lived a dream.’
She closed her eyes and breathed for calm as memory smote her. ‘Why?’
‘Because it was a promise. A man keeps his promises,’ he said. ‘Even ten years too late.’
A kiss with every mouthful.
She had not expected this. Of all the reactions she might have imagined in Salah, the last would have been that he would actually want to bed her. Flames burst into life in her stomach. No. No.
‘Just so long as you don’t expect me to keep mine,’ she said grimly.
He smiled. ‘But I know well that you do not keep your promises, Desi. Who knows better than I? That other one you promised to marry and then did not?’
The bitter memory was bile in her throat. ‘I changed my mind there.’
‘Yes,’ he said with emphasis. ‘You changed your mind.’
Why was he doing this? What did he want? She was miles from understanding him. For years she had waited for his call, hoping against hope. Until her love died and nothing was left but dust and ashes. He must know that. The choice had been his.
‘And you didn’t, I suppose?’
He stared at her for a long, electric moment during which his eyes seemed to pierce her soul. A hard, angry gaze that was nothing like the boy she had loved. Then he tore off a bit of bread, plucked up a sprig of the greenery, wrapped it expertly in the bread, and held it out to her.
‘This I told you of. Sabzi-o-naan. This is traditional in the mountains.’
Desi took it and put it into her mouth. The pungent taste of a herb she didn’t recognize exploded in her mouth and nostrils, sweet and fresh, and she made an involuntary noise of surprise.
His eyelids dropped to hide his eyes for a moment, then his dark gaze burned her. ‘I taught you to make that sound,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I thought it would be the music of all the rest of my life.’
Heat rushed through her at his words, tearing at defences she now saw were pitifully weak. ‘Stop this,’ she said.
He reached for the herbs again, pulling off a sprig that he put into his own mouth.
‘Stop?’ He handed her another little bouquet of naan-wrapped herb. ‘How, stop? You are here in my country, where you promised to come. Now I keep my side of the bargain. I promised you would delight in these herbs. Do you?’
She took it from him again, and put it in her mouth, because there was nothing else to do. Not even in her nightmares had she imagined such ferocity as this.
‘Very nice,’ she said woodenly.
‘The freshness in your mouth. I told you then that I would kiss you after every bite.’ Her lips parted in a little gasp. ‘A kiss with every mouthful. You remember, Desi? Shall I keep that part of the promise, even though ten years have passed?’
‘No, I don’t,’ she said woodenly, and ‘No,’ again.
‘No?’ he said. She couldn’t see his eyes. ‘That is not what you came for, my kiss? But then, what did you come here for, Desi? Why do you come to my country, to the heart of my family, if not for this?’
He offered her another little twist of bread and herb, but she shook her head and reached into the basket herself.
‘Why did you get involved?’ she countered. ‘There was no need!’
‘But yes!’ He lifted a palm. ‘My father was determined to allow you to visit. The rest followed.’
‘He said he would arrange a guide. Why should it be you?’
‘Who else? You know what I owe your family—so many years of hospitality! You know that such hospitality must be reciprocated.’ A fleeting instinct told her there was something else here, but she was too bombarded to be able to pin it down. ‘So, Desi, I say to you that you knew your guide would be me. Our meeting was inevitable. And I ask again, why are you here? What do you want from me?’
‘I want nothing from you, Salah.’ She opened her mouth to tell him that she would hire someone else to be her guide, thought of Sami, and closed it again. He was right, after all. This was all according to plan. He was only mistaken in whose plan it was.
‘Why do you lie? What you come for is no shame. A woman has a right to experience pleasure. If her Western lover can’t give it to her, she must look for one who does.’
‘I’m sure you’re right,’ she countered. ‘But believe me when I say I really don’t need to search so far afield.’
He lifted his hands. ‘How can I believe it, when you are here?’
A puff of irritated laughter escaped her.
‘And even if I did, you are the very last person I’d come to.’
‘No,’ he said, with such certainty she almost believed he could read her mind.
‘Trust me, Salah,’ she said. ‘You are imagining this. Every part of what you imagine is the product of your own fantasy. I am not remotely interested in reviving old times with you.’
He laughed and before she could stop him, clasped her wrist. She felt her pulse hammering against his thumb. She thought he was going to pull her against him again, it would be so easy, but abruptly he let go.
‘It is in your blood. In every part of you. As in me,’ he said, with a kind of angry self-contempt. Her heart kicked.
He waved a sultan’s wave and a waiter came from nowhere and