The Sheik Who Loved Me (8 page)

“Kamilah, I know it’s strange. I find it very difficult to understand myself. But I do remember a lot of things, just not who I am, or how I came to learn the things that I do know. I haven’t the slightest idea when I read Andersen’s
Little Mermaid.
I just know that once upon a time I did. Maybe
my
mother read it to me.”

The dark eyes studied her with brooding intensity.

“Why is that story your favorite, Kamilah?”

The little girl fiddled with her fingers in her lap. “’Cause my mummy liked it and she used to read it to me.”

Sadness clogged Sahar’s throat. She stroked Kamilah’s silky hair. “I guess you are like the Little Mermaid, too, huh? Because you also lost your voice.” Sahar smiled tenderly.

“I guess.” Kamilah sat silent a while. Then her eyes flashed up to Sahar’s. “Do you think the ending in the book is happy?”

David made his way along the corridor. He needed to find Fayha’ and inform her that Tariq would be dining with them tonight. He stepped out to cross the courtyard when he heard Kamilah’s and Sahar’s voices. Instinctively he froze in the shadow of a mosaic column.

They were just feet from him, sitting on a marble bench facing the fountain. Kamilah’s little face was turned up to Sahar’s. Sahar’s wild hair cascaded down her back, the sun bouncing off glinting gold highlights among the auburn. They looked like a painting, a Madonna and child. He was held transfixed.

Then he heard his daughter’s clear little voice over the sound of the tinkling fountain. She was asking Sahar if she thought the ending of a book was a happy one.

“Hmm, that’s an interesting question,” he heard Sahar say. “I guess it depends on how you look at it. What do
you
think?”

Kamilah pulled her legs up onto the bench, wrapped her arms around her knees. “The Little Mermaid didn’t get to marry the prince.”

“No, she didn’t.”

“Because the prince got confused,” said Kamilah. “He mistook the Little Mermaid for someone else, and he fell in love with that person instead. I don’t think that part is happy.”

David leaned closer, greedy for the sound of his daughter’s little voice, the sound of the words she’d had locked up inside all this time. For almost two years he hadn’t had a window into his daughter’s soul. And now here she was, opening up to Sahar. And he was getting a glimpse. But at the same time, a perverse jealousy twined itself around his heart. He wanted it to be
him
on that bench with Kamilah. It
should
be him.

“But even though the mermaid lost the prince, she did get her own reward,” offered Sahar. “She sacrificed herself for her love, and for that she got a chance to have an immortal soul, which mermaids don’t ordinarily have.”

“I know,” said Kamilah, her voice suddenly incredibly sad. “But I think she should have gotten the prince.”

David’s fists balled. An ache swelled in his chest. He wanted to step out into the bright sun, claim his place alongside his child. But he couldn’t move. He was afraid he’d break the magic, stop the talking. He watched Sahar take his daughter’s hand. “Kamilah,” she said gently, “when the Little Mermaid threw herself into the sea, she started an incredible journey on her way to getting an immortal soul. She became like a piece of sea foam and she could float around the world bringing happiness to good children.”

Kamilah’s head drooped a little. “I know,” she said resignedly. “When the Little Mermaid visited the good children, she was invisible. They never knew she was there, watching over them.” Her eyes flashed suddenly up to Sahar’s. “But
I
knew that if the child was very, very, good, she would get to see the mermaid one day. That’s why I went down to the beach every day to wait. I thought maybe my mummy would send one to me. To be my friend…and to be daddy’s friend.”

The words grabbed David by the throat. He couldn’t breathe. Is
this
why his daughter had insisted on going to the beach every day since they’d arrived back on Shendi? He hadn’t had a clue. How could he not have known this? How could he not have been there in a more profound way for his child?

“So you waited at beach where you found me?” asked Sahar. David could hear the tenderness in her voice.

“Yes,” said Kamilah. “I waited at Half-Moon Bay because it looks just like the beach in the book where the Little Mermaid used to watch the prince.”

David watched in dumbstruck awe as Sahar tilted Kamilah’s chin and looked down into the child’s eyes. “Kamilah, you
do
understand that I am not really a mermaid, don’t you?”

He stilled, waited for his daughter’s response, petrified.

Kamilah silently studied Sahar, head to toe. Then she pursed her lips. “What
are
you then? You haven’t got any clothes and you haven’t got a house and you haven’t got a memory. You
gotta
be a mermaid. I
want
you to be a mermaid.” Her voice quavered. “’Cause if you’re not…you will go away. I don’t want you to go away.”

Every muscle in his body strapped tight.
This was enough!
He had to stop this. Here in front of his eyes was the perfect example of why he couldn’t let this continue. Because it was going to kill his daughter when Sahar left. They would all be back at square one. He
had
to step in, tell Sahar to back off.

She could stay on his island but she was to stay
away
from his daughter.

Sahar put her arm around his daughter’s slight shoulders and hugged her close. “Oh, honey, right now I also wish I could be your mermaid. But you know what, whatever I am,
whoever
I am, something in the stars allowed you and me to meet. Something made me wash up on that shore while you were waiting. And for whatever reason that happened, we can give this story of ours its
own
happy ending, okay?”

Kamilah looked up at her.

“Is that a deal, Kamilah?”

David tensed.

“Yes,” his daughter said. “I like happy endings.”

“We all do, Kamilah. We all do.”

David was furious. Sahar had no right making promises she couldn’t keep. Happy endings were for fairy tales. This was reality. Reality had no promises of ever after or happiness. His nails dug into his palms, and he took a step forward. Then he went rigid as he heard her next words.

“Would it help you to talk about what happened to your mother in that accident, Kamilah?”

David’s stomach churned violently. What in hell did she think she was doing?

Kamilah looked up at Sahar. “Do you want to hear it?”

“Sometimes it’s good to talk about difficult things,” she told his child. “Because then you can share the unhappiness with someone else and it can make things easier to bear. And sometimes it helps to get it off your chest because if you hold it inside too long, it can really hurt and make you feel sick in many different ways.”

His little girl nodded with a wisdom beyond her years. When she spoke her voice was crystal clear and it ripped out his soul. “We were in daddy’s boat, at the reef. We had gone diving—”

No!

He could not listen. Would not.

He did not want to hear the accusation come from Kamilah’s own lips. For two years he’d lived with it in her eyes. He could not hear the words. Not now. Not ever.
Damn this interfering woman to hell!
He spun on his heels and stormed off in search of Fayha’. He’d get Sahar later, give her a piece of his mind. She’d gone way too far.

Sahar felt the muscles in her chest tense. She wasn’t sure if she was doing the right thing, but she sensed deep in her gut that this was what the child needed. To talk. To put into words what she’d bottled up inside for two years.

“Mummy stayed up on the boat with me while daddy went under the water,” Kamilah said. “And when daddy was deep under looking at the fish, there was a bang and a funny smell and then the boat caught fire. My mummy rushed for the extinguisher, but the end of the boat exploded. The explosion hurt mummy and the boat tipped up on the one end and we started to go under really fast. We both fell into the water and mummy was bleeding.” She shuddered. “A lot.”

Sahar’s jaw clenched. She could almost see it. She could
feel
it. As if she’d been there.

“I was far away from mummy,” said Kamilah. “She was way off to the other side of the burning boat and the waves were coming in between us. Daddy came up when he heard the explosion. He came up in the middle of us. I could see mummy going under the waves but she yelled for him to save me—” Kamilah choked “—to save me first.” Tears streamed down her face.

A shiver chased down Sahar’s spine. The blood drained from her head. She hugged the child tight. She could literally feel the water sucking at her, see the little girl going under behind the huge swells, taste the burning salt in her own throat, the claws of terror. Her body went cold. It was as if
she
was there. As if
she
was remembering. Something from long, long ago. But she couldn’t pull it from the void.

“Daddy got me and he swam and put me on the beach. He went back for mummy.” Another shudder racked her little body. “He was too late. She’d gone under already. He really tried. He tried so hard. I could see him. He went under and under and under and he was coughing and he was crying and screaming at the sky, and I was so scared and sore from the cuts and the bleeding and the fire.” Another sob choked her little body. “Daddy tried so hard…but…the…the mermaids took her.”

Sahar felt tears streaming down her own cheeks. She held Kamilah very tight. She stroked Kamilah’s hair. “It’s okay, baby, it’s okay. It’s good to talk about it. It’s good to get it out. Because then you can deal with it. Your mummy did such a wonderfully brave thing. You must be very proud of your mummy and your daddy. Very proud.”

Kamilah sniffed and rubbed her nose. “I am proud of them.”

And as she spoke, Sahar’s heart cracked. This family had been through an awful tragedy and it had barely begun to heal. She kissed Kamilah softly on the top of her head. And once again she vowed not to let this child down. Or her father. She would do what it took to help the two of them. Because somehow, buried deep in her memory, she sensed she knew just how this kind of tragedy could tear a family apart. And how, without help, the wound might never mend. And it would continue to destroy.

But she had to promise herself another thing. She had to resist the powerful physical attraction of David Rashid. Because until she knew who she was, who might be waiting for her, she could not possibly begin to think of a relationship at that level.

Chapter 7

D
avid worked until the sun was in its zenith and the air thick and shimmering with heat. He knew Kamilah would be resting at this hour, along with most of his staff. It was the right time to confront Sahar.

He was clear about what he intended to tell her. Quit with the mermaid fantasy stuff and stay away from his daughter. She could be gone within days. He expected her to keep to herself until then. If she was going to be on his island, she’d best know her boundaries. And his.

David searched his palace, but he couldn’t find her anywhere. His frustration mounted along with the heat. Anyone in their right mind was under shadow, grasping for respite from the oppressive noon heat of early summer.

Even the birds had gone quiet.

But Sahar was not resting in her room. She wasn’t in any of the courtyards. She wasn’t in the massive pool, cooling off under the fountains that splashed into it.

The last place David looked was the kitchen. There he found Farouk, the only member of his staff not taking a siesta. Farouk didn’t have a problem with the heat. He was busy cleaning the kitchen countertops.

“Have you seen Sahar?” David asked him.

The man’s toffee-colored skin gleamed with perspiration. He wore the traditional head cloth of the Azar nomads. Farouk wiped his brow with the loose edge of the cloth. “You mean the woman from the sea?”

Irritation spiked. “Yes, where is she?”

Farouk tipped his head toward the wide, arched doorway that led outside. “She’s in the kitchen garden.”

“In
this
heat?”

“She asked if she could help.” Farouk shrugged. “I told her it would be better when the shadows grow long. The sun is very hot today. But she said she needed to do something useful. She said she was tired of just sitting around, so I gave her a job.”

A hesitancy sneaked in under David’s resolve as he made his way to the door.

“
Sahar.
It’s a good name,” Farouk called after him. “Shendi has come alive since she arrived.”

David didn’t answer. He stepped out into the herb and vegetable garden that lay off the kitchen and a wave of heat slammed into him, knocking the breath right out of his lungs.

The garden was enclosed by tall stone walls and crisscrossed with paved pathways. It was a marvel in this climate and made possible only because of the sweet water pumped from the deep wells on Shendi. Creeping thyme filled the cracks between the paving stones. Vegetables burgeoned from beds and were identified by seed packets propped up on sticks. Little stone benches rested against the walls under trees heavy with ripe fruit.

She was at the far end of the garden, bent over, jabbing a trowel into the moist earth, her back to him. An oversize straw hat, battered and crumpled, shaded her head. Watson’s hat. She’d tried to tame her wild curls into a thick braid that hung down the center of her back, but soft spirals of fine hair floated free in the rising heat currents. The sun caught the amber and gold fire in the strands.

David walked quietly up to where she was hunched over, angrily thrusting her trowel into the ground, forcing it to yield up monstrous carrots. As she uprooted them, she tossed them with a clunk into a large blue enamel bowl at her side.

She’d changed out of the dusty muslin clothes but another oversize shirt covered her lean frame, also one of Watson’s. Pale-blue cotton. It all but covered the khaki shorts she wore. Watson’s shorts, bunched in at the waist and wide and baggy over her smooth thighs.

She was doggedly refusing to wear anything of Aisha’s. She was more than going out of her way to respect his feelings.

Guilt niggled at him and his resolve wavered further. Suddenly nothing seemed simple. What was it that he was going to demand of her? Keep out of his business? His life? Stay away from his child? It suddenly seemed unreasonably harsh. He swallowed. The midday heat was making his mouth dry, his head thick. It didn’t usually affect him this way. Heat was a familiar thing in his life. But there was nothing about this situation that was familiar.

David stood silent, watching her, trying to find his focus, listening to the hum of bees and clicking of tiny grasshoppers among the vegetation. Her garden tool scrunched against soil as she stabbed at the earth. Her movements were snappy in spite of the temperature. Her body language screamed frustration. He watched as she tossed another bright-orange carrot into the bowl with a clunk. The livid color was in stark contrast to the verdant green of the leafy tops that hung over the side of the deep-blue bowl.

David stared at the colors, the contrasts. Everything seemed unusually bright, his senses extraordinarily heightened.

He wiped his brow. It must be the sun, he thought.

He glanced at the sky. The sun was at its zenith and there was not a wisp of cloud in sight, not a hint of breeze in the air.

He turned his attention back to Sahar. Her hands were covered in soil. She was fully engaged in her task in the same way she’d been engrossed in her game of tag with Kamilah. He found this deeply alluring.

She unearthed another carrot, tossed it in with the others. The bowl was almost full now. Still David didn’t speak, couldn’t. He was fascinated. There was something so earthy, so organic about the vignette in front of him. Something basic and honest and life-affirming about the way she was digging in this time-old garden that had fed generations before them.

He cleared his throat.

She gasped, spun around, stared up at him, lips parted in surprise. “David, you startled me!” She rose slowly to her feet, trowel in one hand, carrots in the other.

There was dirt on her knees. The brown smudges drew his eyes down the length of her lean, tanned legs.

“Do you always sneak up on people like that?”

He dragged his eyes up from her legs, along the length of her body, to her face. Her features were dappled by the shade of her straw hat, her wide eyes an impossibly luminous and bewitching green in this light.

“I’ve been looking for you,” he said, stepping closer. He could smell the musk of freshly turned earth. And he could smell her. The heat was lifting her fragrance into the air. Citrus. Warm. And female. His nostrils flared reflexively.

She angled her head to get a better line of sight from under the battered brim of her hat. Up close he could see a fine sweep of almost imperceptible gold freckles across her nose, her cheeks flushed from the kiss of the sun.

“And now you’ve found me.” She smiled, hesitantly. “What did you want me for?”

Oh, he wanted her all right. Right now. Right here. He moistened his lips, trying to find focus. But he couldn’t quite get his mind back on track. Her skin was slick with the soft sheen of perspiration. Mesmerized, he watched as a small bead of sweat shimmered down from the hollow of her throat toward the valley between her breasts. His eyes followed the droplet as it slithered down into her shirt. He felt a sudden dizziness. It was the sun, he told himself. The heat.

His eyes slid slowly back up to her face. She was watching him warily from under the brim of her hat, like a wild cat in the shadows. Time seemed to hang still, warped by the waves of heat. The buzz of the bees grew louder in his ears. His focus shrunk to another tiny jewel of perspiration that traveled like a tear from the side of her eye. David watched the glistening drop slide slowly down the subtle swell of her cheek to dangle precipitously on her jawbone. She sensed it, swiped it away, leaving a smudge of dirt along the side of her chin.

He reached out reflexively and wiped the dirt from her jaw. Her breath caught sharply in her throat.

His hand stilled. “You’ve got dirt on your face,” he explained, his voice thick.

Her mouth tightened. “Thanks.” She turned away from him, dropped back to her knees, tossed the carrots she was holding into the bowl, jabbed angrily again at the earth.

She was cutting him off. That’s what he wanted, wasn’t it? So why did it sting?

“Why were you looking for me?” she asked as she dug.

“I need to talk to you about Kamilah.”

She glanced up at him.

“Why don’t you come inside? We can talk there, get a drink.”

“We can talk here,” she said bluntly.

He blinked. He hadn’t expected resistance. People seldom resisted his will. David crouched down beside her and reached for a carrot, as if asserting his ownership, his control over everything including the vegetables in this garden. He dusted it off against his pants, crunched his teeth into it, watching her as he chewed.

Something shifted again in her features. She turned abruptly away from him and concentrated on unearthing another root. “What about Kamilah?” she asked as she turfed the carrot into the bowl.

“I want you to stop with the mermaid nonsense.”

She went dead still. Then she turned slowly to face him, her eyes narrowing. “What
nonsense,
exactly, David?”

Again he moistened his lips. The heat of the sun beat relentlessly through the fabric of the shirt on his back. A trickle of sweat ran down under his arm to his waist. “It’s hot as hell out here,” he said. “You’ll get sunstroke. Come, let’s go inside.”

She didn’t budge. “
What
nonsense?” she insisted.

He blew out a hot breath of frustration. Well, if she wanted this on her terms, her choice of turf, she’d get it.

“Kamilah has been through a lot, Sahar. I don’t want to go into all the details because it’s
not
your affair. This is Rashid family business, and I expect you to keep out of it. I want you to stop filling her head with fairy-tale garbage. Life isn’t like that. There are no happy endings. I don’t want you filling her head with unrealistic expectations.”

Her jaw dropped. She stared at him. “You were listening to us?”

“It’s my island. My palace.”

She glared at him in silence.

He shifted uncomfortably. Another trickle of sweat traced around his underarm, slid slowly down the length of his waist.

Still she said nothing.

Irritation simmered under his skin. “Do you understand me, Sahar? You’re welcome to remain on Shendi until your memory returns, but you are
not
to interfere in my life.”

She jerked to her feet. “
Your
life?”

Her reaction startled him. He looked up.
Mistake.
Her legs were astride, feet planted angrily into the ground. He was uncomfortably conscious of a gap between the hem of the wide, oversize shorts and those smooth, long thighs. Fixated, he stared at the opening. Something hot and slick slipped low in his belly. He felt his blood rush from his head.

He quickly stood up, seeking the advantage of height, forcing his brain back on track. But it only made him dizzy.

“This is not just
your
life, David. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but you’ve got a little girl who desperately needs to share what she’s been through. She
needs
to talk. Have you even considered the fact that
you
may the one who’s been blocking her efforts to reach out?”

She was lecturing him? How dare she? “Sahar—” His voice came out in low warning. But she refused to back off. She was on a roll and she was going to have her say.

“You’re all cramped up with your own damn anger, David. You’re so busy wallowing in your own guilt that you can’t see what your child needs. I saw how you shut her out this morning. She came down to the stables to be with you. She was reaching out, David. And you snubbed her.”

“Damn you, woman,”
he snarled, grabbing her wrist. He wrenched her toward him. It silenced her instantly. His fingers tightened like a cuff, digging into her skin as his eyes bored angry into hers. “How
dare
you? I love Kamilah more than anything in this damn world. She’s all I have left. I’ve hired the best specialists, the most expensive tutors. I’d move heaven and earth for her—”

“David,” she interrupted, her voice suddenly soft, caring, so gently feminine that it knocked him completely off stride. “Kamilah doesn’t need heaven and earth. She doesn’t need specialists. She just needs
you.
She needs her daddy. She needs to play. She needs to be a child.”

His throat constricted around his words. Because he knew she was right. Her presence on Shendi had shown him that.

“She just needs you to hold her, David. Is that really so hard?”

His fingers tightened around her wrist. But she didn’t flinch. She just stood there probing his soul with those haunting eyes, getting right inside his bloody head. She was scrambling his radar. He was primed for a fight, and she’d come at him sideways, knocking his knees out from under him with her soft voice and liquid eyes.

And words of truth.

He wanted to lash out at her, hurt her for doing this to him. He wanted to pull her to his chest, kiss that incredible mouth, plunge himself between her legs. But he didn’t dare move. Because he wasn’t sure what in hell he
would
do. So he held dead still. Too close to her mouth, to her beautiful breasts. So close that the scent of her filled his nostrils, his mind, drugged his senses.

“Why the anger, David?” she asked softly.

That’s what Watson had asked him. He sucked in a shuddering breath.

She reached up, placed her palm against his cheek. The simple gesture cracked him. It took all his control to hold back the bank of emotion that exploded painfully behind his eyes. God, this woman was splitting him right open. She’d ripped back his barriers and exposed him. And now her simple touch was blowing salt into his wounds. He clenched his jaw and held on desperately to the volatility heaving inside him.

She moved her body closer to him. “Let me help you, David,” she whispered.

“Why?” his voice came out hoarse.

“Because I can see your pain.” She hesitated. “Because I’ve ridden with you on a horse and I know that inside is a man aching to be free again. Free like you felt on that stallion…with me.”

She was unreal. She could see right into him. How could she possibly know the depth of what he’d felt on that horse? Where in hell had this woman come from?