The Sheik Who Loved Me (18 page)

As they trekked into that sea of sand, moving north to Al Abèche, toward Libya, she and David would enter the most arid and hostile region of the Sahara, where moisture was virtually nonexistent and dunes reached four hundred feet and more in height. Al Abèche was a town that hung onto a thread of life in that desiccated wasteland, and they would travel an old Bedouin route to get there.

It was tough for Jayde to get her head around the fact that it would take three days to reach their destination while the urgency of the situation was so acute. But as Sauvage had said, Tariq’s demands had afforded them the luxury of time to get it right.
“We have only one shot and we must make it a clean one,
” he’d said. And traveling into Al Abèche any other way would most certainly alert any informants or rebels in the area. They had to try and blend in as best they could. It was that or stay on Shendi and wait. And neither she nor David were the waiting sort.

And while she and David traversed the desert, Sauvage would gather his team in Egypt and Gio would keep the lines of negotiation open with Tariq.

Jayde heard a sound to her right. She swung around. It was David. She sucked in a breath of relief. He was striding toward her, camel stick in hand, three camels in tow. Two were a creamy white, the other one red. He’d already saddled them. Two goatskin water bags, or
guerbas,
were strapped to one. The others were loaded with grain. From one dangled a blackened cooking pot and an old kettle.

“What took you so long?” she called out to him.

“Camel shortage at the market,” he called back. “They had mostly calves or untrained bulls that turn into frothing demonic man killers if the mating urge hits.” He jerked his head toward the three beasts in tow. “Found these three geldings at the butcher’s yard. I reckon they have some life in them yet.”

David grinned as he neared, his teeth a slash of stark white against his skin, which was already darkening from the fierce desert sun. It sent a crazy spurt of desire through her. She hadn’t seen him smile since they’d made love on his yacht.

He was dressed in similar garb to hers, but he had his
jambiya
thrust through a tie at his waist. But even in peasant dress he was regal. He looked like the sheik, the true leader that he was. And like this crumbling and once-majestic desert city of Tabara, he had one foot in an ancient world, another in a new one. If anyone was to build a bridge between the two ways of life, this was the man. Seeing him like this, she could suddenly understand him in a profound way. She could almost feel the spirit that drove him. And it only deepened what she felt for him already.

She brushed the sensation aside. She couldn’t afford to feel anything. Because once they rescued Kamilah, he and his daughter would walk away from her. It would be over. She knew that. He hated her for her betrayal. He blamed her for this tragedy. And the only reason he’d brought her with him now was for the sake of his child.

But she couldn’t take her eyes from him. She was entranced by his enigmatic presence, the way he moved in this environment with the elegance and ease of a man born to the sands of the Sahara. Right now there wasn’t a trace of Anglo-Saxon about him, apart from the unsettling blue of his eyes against his dark skin. The color was made even more striking as it picked up the indigo blue of the cotton head cloth he wore.

“What are you staring at?”

“You.”

He grunted and handed her the head rope of the red camel. “You sure you can handle these creatures?”

“I am.” She took the rope from his hand.

David watched, ready to leap to Jayde’s aid.

She allowed the beast to sniff her, then she tugged on the head rope and expertly couched the animal. He raised a brow in surprise. This woman was something else. She acted like a desert native.

His admiration flattened almost immediately. That’s exactly what she was trained to do. To insinuate herself into situations and blend in like a native. She’d been trained to deceive, and because of this very skill he was admiring now, she’d been chosen by a government agency to betray him.

He felt his jaw clench. He watched Jayde proceed to lug her big bag over to the couched animal. She hefted it up and began to meticulously secure it to the saddle horn. It looked heavy, cumbersome. “What’s in there?” David asked, watching carefully as she tied the knots, making sure he wouldn’t have to recheck them once she was done.

“Nothing much.”

“Put it on the other camel, the one for the supplies.”

“No.” she simply. “I need to keep this one with me.”

“Why?”

She shot him an odd look. “It’s my personal bag.”

He frowned, watching as she secured a second bag to the camel. A much smaller one. His chest constricted. It was the little bag with Kamilah’s things. His hand shot out in reflex. “I’ll take that one.”

Her eyes flashed to his. She hesitated. “Sure.” She handed it to him. Their fingers brushed as he took the bag from her. The electricity of the touch stilled them both. Their eyes locked. And neither needed words to share what was going on their minds. This little bag was a symbol of why they were both here in the desert. And the magnitude of what still lay ahead hung heavy between them.

They worked in silence to load the rest of the bags. Then David watched again to make certain Jayde knew how to mount these notorious desert beasts.

She slipped into the saddle with ease, pressing her heels into the camel’s neck. She tugged on the rope, made a clicking sound with her tongue, and the beast rose like a wobbly leviathan.

And in spite of himself, a grudging admiration arose in David. The woman knew what she was doing all right. He wasn’t going to have to worry about her abilities. He could now focus solely on the task ahead.

With the three camels loaded and strung together, they left the outskirts of Tabara and made their way down the cascading dunes to a small wadi, a riverbed where dark water pooled and a few date palms straggled in sand as white as snow. There they would water their camels and set out as soon as the sun dipped over the horizon.

A handful of children ran behind them on skinny brown legs as they made their way down to the wadi. Their grubby little faces ranged in shades from dark chocolate to pale coffee. The colors of Africa. And in their eyes, David saw Kamilah’s. And in their laughter, he heard hers.

His stomach clenched violently. His hand fisted around the head rope. He lifted his chin to the distant horizon. And in his heart he said a silent prayer. He prayed the gods of the desert would spare his child from the crazed wrath of his half brother.

By the time the sky turned to purple velvet and only a faint violet streak lingered where the sun had slipped behind distant dunes, they had their camels watered and supplies once again secured.

They set out at a rhythmic pace. David let Jayde take the lead. He followed up the rear, behind the camel that carried supplies and grain. Keeping distance between the two of them had been automatic since the moment their hands had brushed over Kamilah’s belongings.

The air was still viscous with heat, but the wind was now smooth and soft against his face. They settled into the undulating and mesmerizing rhythm of their camels, traveling in absolute mind-numbing silence for hour after hour after hour.

The sky above them was vast. Stars moved across the heavens in a transcendent display as the hours ticked down toward dawn. Every now and then the movement of a falling star caught David’s eye and he began to feel that familiar sensation descend on him as he traveled into the sandy void.

It was a feeling he didn’t really have words for. It was spiritual, one of the reasons the Sahara had kept pulling him back throughout his life. Out here David was acutely aware of the fragility of his humanity. He got a sense of perspective he could only imagine was akin to the feeling space travelers got when they looked back at the brilliant blue marble of a planet they called home.

Quite simply the desert helped him put life in perspective. It was where time warped and everything seemed possible.

Even getting his daughter back.

As he rode he watched the hypnotic and sensual sway of the woman on the camel ahead of him and he found himself wondering if it was the same for her. What was she thinking as they headed into this void of sand? In so many ways she was a woman after his own heart. She challenged him in more ways than he could imagine. And she did things to his body he hadn’t dreamed possible. As he let his mind go, he found himself wishing it had been different. That there had been a possibility of a future for them. That she could have been his
Sahar,
a gift to him and Kamilah from the sea.

He shook his head.

He was beginning to feel the effects of fatigue. They’d been going all night without a stop. He looked to his right and saw that a copper tinge was already beginning to bleed into the sky, heralding the arrival of the sun.

He settled back into the hypnotic sway of the camel. And almost instantly his mind took off again. He found himself wondering if perhaps there could still be a future for them.

No.

He jerked his mind back. He was being a fool. She was a government agent doing a job. And once this mission was over she’d simply move on to the next. She would slip as effortlessly into some other world as she had into his. And perhaps as easily into another man’s heart. There was no room for him and Kamilah in a future like that.

Then her words echoed like a ghostly taunt in his head.
You made it impossible for me not to…to love you.

His throat constricted. Yeah, so maybe she’d fallen for him. But it had been the biggest mistake of her life. She’d said so herself.

He swallowed the bitterness in his mouth. That was then. That was Sahar. This was now. This woman was Jayde.

But something still ate at him, something he just couldn’t let go. The need to know began to, once again, burn in his gut as the copper on the horizon fired into a livid orange and the Sahara sands began to glow.

He clucked his tongue, urged his camel to move faster until he’d caught up and was riding alongside her.

“Jayde?”

She swung her head around and her eyes caught his. David’s heart stalled. She’d never looked more beautiful to him as she did right now in her peasant gear with a piece of cloth tied like a turban over her head. In the golden dawn light her eyes were a liquid and lambent green made only more beautiful by the deepening bronze tan of her skin. In spite of her obvious fatigue, she looked proud. Regal. A princess of the desert.

“What is it?” she asked.

He’d lost his train of thought the second he’d looked into her eyes. “I…ah…back on Shendi, you…you told me your amnesia was real.”

“It’s the truth, David.”

“When, Jayde, when
exactly
did your memory return?”

She halted her camel, shifted around in the saddle to face him. “Why?”

The sun exploded over the horizon, and the sands around them caught fire. He squinted as his eyes adjusted to the flare. “I need to know. Did you remember before…before we were together, on the yacht?”
Before we made love.

The look that shifted into her eyes made his heart sink. “David, you told me once you abhorred a liar. I’m not going to lie. Everything I tell you from now is the whole truth.” She studied his face.

But he said nothing, just waited.

“I began to remember first in little bits and pieces. I didn’t know what was happening and I thought I might be imagining things. It scared me. Then…then when you showed me into your office and I saw the map of Azar with all those little pins, I got a big chunk of the picture. And then, at dinner…when I saw Tariq’s face, that’s when it all really started slamming home. It all just came down on me and I was totally confused. I needed to sort it out…in my mind.”

He glared at her. So she
had
known. He clenched his jaw. She had known before he went to her on the pier. He kicked his camel forward.

“David—”

He ignored her. She’d known who she was when she’d made love to him. And that burned like all hell.

“David!” she demanded. “David, stop! Listen to me!”

He stopped, turned slowly back to face her.

“What I felt for you was true, dammit.
That
was not a lie. What we shared was
not
a lie!” Her eyes flamed like the growing globe of heat rising fast in the sky. “You put life back into me, David.” Her voice caught. “Don’t you see? I had
nothing
before I met you. Dead to emotion from the day my mother killed herself. You made me live again! And I didn’t ask you to do it. I didn’t ask you to make me feel again.” Ferocious emotion brought angry spots of color to her cheeks. He could feel heat beginning to rise from the sand.

“And now—” her voice quavered “—and now that I’ve felt what it’s like to…to love…I’ve lost it all. Everything. Every damn thing that means anything to me. I’ve lost you. Kamilah. My job.” Her voice broke. Tears shone in her eyes. “Don’t for one minute think I’m enjoying any part of this. I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t ask you to sneak in under my guard.”

His chest cramped. “Jayde—”

She held up a palm. “Forget it. Just forget it. Don’t say a thing. We’ve got a job to do and that’s the only reason I’m here. You know it. I know it. So let’s get on with it.”

“Jayde, I…I’m sorry.” And he truly was. For her. For himself. For his child. For what had happened to his brother. For the unfulfilled promise to his dead father. For his mother who could never love the desert. “I’m sorry,” he said again.

Her mouth opened.

“Yes. I’m sorry. For everything. I…I wish it could have been different.”

She stared at him. Then something shuttered in her eyes. She pressed her mouth into a tight line and kicked her camel forward in a spurt of dust.

He let his camel drop back. He felt shaken. Shut out. Unsure.

And in love.

Yes. He couldn’t hide from it. He was in love with this incredible woman. And there was a desert of distance between them.