The Ice Maiden's Sheikh

His eyes met hers, and she sensed a kind of shock in his gaze. A muscle in his cheek twitched, but whether with annoyance or an impulse to laugh she couldn’t tell. It was funny, but she was too annoyed to find it so.

“You blame your cousin for not giving serious consideration to your doubts about her engagement, but you do not listen to my doubts about yours. Who has the double standard now?” he said, with the air of a man pulling a brand from the burning.

Laughter trembled in her throat, but she was afraid of letting her guard down with him. Jalia bit her lip.

“Great! We’re both hypocrites,” she said, shaking her head.

Instead of making a reply to that, Latif jerked forward to stare out the window.

“Barakullah!” he breathed.

He had turned into the wide boulevard that led down to the seafront. At the bottom was the broad, sparkling expanse of the Gulf of Barakat, and miles of bright sky.

Jalia narrowed her eyes against the glitter. Off to the right a forest of silver masts marked the yacht basin.

“A yacht!” she cried. “Of course! I’ll bet she knows someone on a boat—maybe some friend even sailed over for the wedding. The perfect hide—”

“Look up,” Latif interrupted. He stretched an arm past her head, pointing into the sky, where a little plane glinted in the sun as it headed up the coast towards the mountains.

“That plane? What, do you think—?”

“It is Bari’s plane.”

Jalia gasped hoarsely. “Are you sure?”

“We can confirm it soon enough.”

“But what—?” Jalia fell silent; there was no point babbling questions to which neither of them had answers.

Latif turned the car along the shore highway. After a few minutes he turned in under an arched gateway in a high wall, and she saw a small brick-and-glass building and a sign announcing the Island Air Taxi service to the Gulf Eden Resort.

Out on the water several small planes were moored, bouncing gently in the swell. Latif stepped on the brakes and pointed again. Ahead of them on the tarmac, carelessly taking up three parking spaces, as if the driver had been in too much of a hurry to care, sat a large white limousine, parked and empty.

They slipped out of the car.

“Is that it? Is that the al Khalids’ limousine?” she asked.

He nodded thoughtfully.

“My God,” Jalia breathed. She felt completely stunned. She stared up at the glinting silver bird in the distance. “Is Noor at the controls, do you think? Why? Where can she be going? And where’s Bari?”

Latif turned his head to run his eyes over the half dozen other cars in the lot, then shook his head.

“His car is not here.”

She stared up at the plane as if the sight of it would tell her something. A gust of wind struck her, blowing the green silk tunic wildly against her body. She felt a blast of fine sand against her cheek.

Latif stiffened to attention beside her. He was still looking into the sky, but not at the plane. Frowning, Jalia turned her head to follow his gaze.

In the past few minutes a mass of cloud had boiled up from behind the mountains, and even as she watched it was growing, rushing to shroud the sky over the city.

Over the water the sky was still a clear, hot blue, but that couldn’t last. Jalia turned her head again to stare at the plane, watching anxiously for some sign that it was banking, turning, that the pilot had seen the clouds building and made the decision to put down again.

But the little plane, the sun glinting from its fat wings, sailed serenely on.

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