One More Night with Her Desert Prince...

Sam looked up when she heard Khalid’s deep voice. He was standing beside Jessica’s seat, a frown drawing his elegant brows together. His comment had sounded very much like a rebuke to her and she reacted instinctively.

‘I have no intention of assuming anything. I shall assess the situation first and then decide what can be done to rectify the problems.’ Her eyes met his and she had to suppress a shiver when she saw how cold they were. Just for a moment she found herself recalling how he had looked at her that night, his liquid-dark eyes filled with passion, before she brushed the memory aside. Maybe Khalid had wanted her for a brief time but he had soon come to his senses after that article had appeared in the newspapers. After all, what would a man like him, a man who had the world at his feet, want with someone like her?

Sam bit her lip, determined not to let him know how much his rejection still hurt. It wasn’t as though it had been the first time it had happened or the last but it was incredibly painful to recall what had gone on that night. Even though she had worked hard to get where she was, she had never been able to rid herself completely of her past. Oh, she might know how to dress these days, might have refined her manners and shed her accent, but she was still the girl from the rundown estate whose mother had brought home one man after another and whose brother was in prison.

She took a deep breath and used it to shore up her defences. The truth was that she hadn’t been good enough for Khalid six years ago and she still wasn’t good enough for him now.

Khalid inwardly cursed when he saw the shuttered expression on Sam’s face. Why on earth had he said that or, at least, said it in that tone? Sam knew what she was doing. She wouldn’t be here if he had any doubts about that. Peter had kept him informed of her progress over the years and Khalid knew that she was making her mark in the field of obstetrics. Sam was clever, committed, keen to learn and a lot of people in high places had recognised her potential. Rumour had it that she would be offered a consultant’s post soon and it was yet more proof of her ability.

He knew how difficult it was for women to rise through the ranks. Although most people believed that equality between the sexes was the norm in modern-day Britain, it wasn’t only in countries like Azad where women came off second best. It happened all over the world to a greater or lesser degree. His own field—surgery—was one of the worst for discriminating against women, in fact. Although he knew he was good at what he did, he also knew that it helped to be male. And rich. And have the right connections.

Sam had none of those things going for her but she was making her mark anyway and he admired her for it. She had guts and determination in spades, which was why he had been attracted to her in the first place. Sam had been very different from the other women he had known.

The thought hung in the air, far too tantalising to feel comfortable with. Khalid thrust it aside, needing to focus on what really mattered. How he had felt about Sam was of little consequence these days.

‘Of course. And I apologise if you thought I was criticising you,’ he said smoothly. ‘You are the expert in this field and, naturally, I shall be guided by you.’

She gave a small nod in acknowledgement although she didn’t say anything. Khalid hesitated, wondering why he felt so unsure all of a sudden. He wasn’t a man normally given to self-doubts—far from it. However, her response made him wonder if he should have been a little more effusive with his apology. He didn’t want them getting off to a bad start, after all. It was on the tip of his tongue to say something else when Jess let out a yelp.

‘Look! That can’t really be what I think it is? Oh, Peter has to see this.’

Khalid moved aside as Jess shot out of her seat. Bending, he stared through the porthole, smiling faintly when he realised what had captured her attention. After the time they’d spent flying over the barren desert, he could understand why Jess had such difficulty believing her own eyes.

‘It’s like something out of a fairy tale. It can’t possibly be real.’

The wonder in Sam’s voice brought his eyes to her face and he felt a rush of tenderness envelop him. Sitting down on the recently vacated seat, he pointed to a spot a little to her right.

‘Oh, it’s real enough. Look over there and you’ll see the lights on the runway.’ He laughed deeply, feeling his chest tighten when he inhaled the lemon fragrance of her shampoo as she turned to do his bidding. It was an effort to continue when his breathing seemed to have come to a full stop. ‘It looks less like a fairy-tale palace when you see the modern-day accoutrements that are needed to keep it functioning.’

‘What a shame.’ Sam shook her head, oblivious to the problems he was having as she studied the lights. ‘It would have been nice to believe the fantasy even if it was only for a few minutes.’

She glanced round and Khalid stiffened when he saw how soft her eyes looked, their colour echoing the pale grey tones of the doves that flew over the summer palace. They had been the exact same colour that night, he recalled. A softly shimmering grey. He could picture them now, recall in perfect detail how she had looked as she had lain on the bed, waiting for him to make love to her.

The memory was too sharp, too raw even now. Khalid couldn’t deal with it and had no intention of trying either. He stood up abruptly. ‘We shall be landing in a few minutes. I need a word with the pilot, if you’ll excuse me.’

He made his way to the cockpit and told the pilot to radio ahead and make sure the cars were standing by to meet them. There was no need for him to do so, of course. Everything had been arranged but it gave him something to do, a purpose, a reason to get away from Sam and all those memories that he’d thought he had dealt with years ago. As he made his way back to his seat, he realised with a sinking heart how wrong he had been. The memory of that night hadn’t gone away, it had just been buried. He wanted to bury it again, bury it so deep this time that it would never surface, but could he? Was it possible when Sam was here, a constant reminder of what he had given up?

Khalid glanced across the cabin and felt a chill run through him as he studied the gentle lines of her profile. He had a feeling that he might never be able to rid himself of the memory of that night. It might continue to haunt him. For ever.

By the time they were shown to their accommodation, Sam was exhausted. Maybe it was the length of time it had taken to get there but she couldn’t even summon up the energy to look around. Jess had no such problems, however. She hurried from room to room, exclaiming in delight.

‘A sunken marble bath! And a separate wet room!’ Jess opened a huge glass-fronted cabinet and peered inside. ‘Oh, wow! Look at all these lotions and potions. It’s like having our very own beauty salon on tap.’

‘Not quite what I was expecting,’ Sam observed pithily, tossing her bag onto the bed. There were three bedrooms in the guest house they’d been allocated, each decorated in a style that could only be described as lavish. Opening her case, she tipped its contents onto the umber silk spread, which matched the draperies hanging from the bed’s ornate gilt frame.

‘Me too. I thought we’d be camping out in a grotty old tent in the middle of the desert but this is great.’

Jess went into one of the other bedrooms and Sam heard a thud as she threw herself down onto the bed. She sighed, wishing she could share Jess’s enthusiasm. If she had to describe her feelings then she would have to say that she felt … well, cheated. Surely Khalid hadn’t brought them all this way so they could lounge around in the lap of luxury? She’d honestly thought she would be doing valuable work, making a positive contribution towards improving the lives of the desert women, but how could she do that if she was cloistered away in here?

The thought spurred her into action. Leaving her clothes in an untidy heap on the bed, she hurried from the room, calling to Jess over her shoulder, ‘I’m just going to have a word with Khalid.’

‘Okey-dokey. I think I’ll treat myself to a bath,’ Jess replied dreamily. ‘No point letting all those goodies go to waste, is there?’

Sam didn’t bother replying. There was no point taking the shine off things by telling Jess how she felt. Crossing the huge marble-floored sitting room, she wrenched open the door then paused uncertainly.

Night had fallen now and she wasn’t sure which way to go. The female members of the team had been shown to their accommodation by one of the servants and Sam hadn’t taken much notice of the route as she had followed the woman through the grounds.

She turned slowly around, trying to get her bearings, and suddenly spotted the pale gleam of the palace’s towers through the palm trees to her left. There was a path leading in that direction and she followed it until she came to a ten-foot-high wall. There was a gate set into it and she turned the handle, frowning when it failed to open. She tried again, tugging on the handle this time, but it still wouldn’t budge and her temper, which was already hovering just below boiling point, peaked. If Khalid had had them locked in then pity help him!

Khalid took a deep breath, hoping the desert air would wash away the stresses of the day. He had honestly thought that he had been ready for what would happen but nothing could have prepared him for being around Sam again. He frowned, trying to put his feelings into context. It was bound to have been stressful to see her again—that was a given. However, he had never expected to feel so raw, so emotional. He was a master at controlling his feelings but he hadn’t been able to control them today. Not with Sam. He had felt things he had never expected to feel, reacted in a way that shocked him.

It made him see how careful he would need to be in the coming weeks. He had to remember that he had nothing to offer Sam apart from a life that would stifle her as it had stifled his own mother. He wouldn’t be responsible for doing that, for taking away everything that made Sam who she was. Sam was brave, kind, funny and determined and he couldn’t bear to imagine how much she would change if he allowed his desire for her to take over.

The thought lay heavily in his heart as he strode along the path. The summer palace was built on the site of an oasis and the grounds benefited from an abundance of fresh water. The night-time scent of the flowers filled the air as he made his way through the grounds. Normally the richly, spicy aroma soothed him but tonight it failed to move him. The scent of Sam’s shampoo still lingered in his nostrils and nothing seemed able to supplant it.

Khalid’s mouth tightened as he nodded to the guard standing outside the entrance to the male guest quarters. He had to stop this, had to remember why Sam was here, which wasn’t for his benefit. She was here to do a job and once it was done she would go back to her own life and he would go back to his. There was no future for them together and he’d be a fool to imagine that there was.

If he had been willing to take a chance he would have taken it six years ago, made love to her and made promises that he would have kept too. He had wanted her so much, wanted her in his arms, in his bed, in his life, but he had realised after those articles had appeared in the press the damage it would cause if he had acted upon his feelings.

Maybe he had wanted her, and maybe she had wanted him too, but it wouldn’t have been enough to make up for what would have happened if news of their relationship had leaked out. Sam would have been subjected to constant scrutiny by the press, her every action commented on, her family’s shortcomings discussed ad nauseam. He had seen how hurt she had been, how upset, and he had known that he couldn’t bear to see her subjected to that kind of pressure on top of everything else she would have had to contend with if they had stayed together.

He sighed. Sam would have had to give up such a lot, her independence, her career; give up being who she was, in fact, and it had been far too much to ask. Even though he spent a lot of his time working in London, Azad was his home and he always came back here. If he had brought Sam here to live, she would have had to conform to a way of life that was completely alien to her. Although changes were taking place, women in Azad still faced many restrictions. Perhaps Sam could have handled it at first even with the added strain of all the unwelcome publicity, but eventually she would have found the life too oppressive, as his mother had done.

He couldn’t have stood that, couldn’t have tolerated watching her love turn to resentment, which was why he had done what he had that night. Khalid took a deep breath as he made himself face the cold hard facts. It had been better to destroy her love for him once and for all than watch it slowly wither and die.

Sam rolled over, struggling to untangle herself from the silken folds of the sheet. Reaching out, she pulled the alarm clock closer and sighed. Three a.m. and she was still wide awake. She had tried everything she could think of, counted sheep, recited poetry, thought sleep-inducing thoughts, but nothing had worked. Her body might be exhausted but her mind wouldn’t slow down. It kept whizzing this way and that, yet always ending up at the same point: that moment six years ago when all her dreams had been shattered.

Tears filled her eyes but she blinked them away. She had done all the crying she intended to do and she wasn’t going to start again. So Khalid had changed his mind, decided that he hadn’t wanted her—so what? The world hadn’t come to an end, the heavens hadn’t fallen in and she had survived. If anything, it had made her stronger, made her value herself more. She had stopped apologising for her background, stopped feeling that she didn’t deserve to be where she was. When it had come to breaking off her engagement last year, she hadn’t hesitated. The relationship wouldn’t have worked and she had known that … as Khalid must have known that their relationship had been doomed to failure.

Sam sighed as once again her thoughts returned to Khalid. Rolling over, she tried to get comfortable. She needed to sleep or she’d be fit for nothing tomorrow or, rather, today. Closing her eyes, she allowed her mind to drift, deciding it was easier than trying to steer it in any direction. Pictures flowed in and out of her mind: the desert they had flown over; the summer palace shimmering like a mirage in its lush green setting….

The sound of stealthy footsteps made her eyes fly open and she peered into the darkness. Was there someone in the room, Jess perhaps? Barely daring to breathe, she eased herself up against the pillows and felt her heart knock against her ribs when she saw the outline of a man silhouetted against the window. It hadn’t occurred to her to close the shutters and she could feel the fear rising inside her as the figure approached the bed. Grabbing the clock off the nightstand, she held it aloft, wishing she had a more substantial weapon with which to defend herself.

‘Get out or you’re going to regret it!’

‘Sam, it’s me.’

Khalid’s deep voice was the last thing she had expected to hear. The clock slid from her fingers and landed on the floor with a crash. Sam stared at him as he came closer, still not sure if he was real or a figment of her imagination.

‘Khalid?’ she whispered, her own voice sounding husky in the silence. ‘Is it really you?’

‘Yes.’

He bent so that she could see his face and her breath caught when she saw how his eyes glittered with an emotion she couldn’t interpret. When he moved closer, so close that she could feel the warmth of his breath on her cheek, she almost cried out. It took every scrap of will power she could muster to lie there and not do anything, not react in any way at all. Khalid had come to her and it was up to him to tell her why.

‘I’m sorry to wake you, Sam. I know how tired you must be after the journey.’ His voice sounded softer, deeper, strumming her nerves like a violin bow, and she shuddered.

‘What do you want?’ she murmured, wishing that she sounded more certain and less unsure.

‘You.’ He suddenly smiled, his teeth gleaming whitely in the moonlight. ‘I need you, Sam.’

CHAPTER THREE

‘THE BABY’S BREECH. It’s too late to turn it or perform a C-section so we’ll have to deliver it vaginally.’

Sam turned to Jess and smiled. Although the young mother, Isra, couldn’t understand what they were saying, she would soon guess how serious the situation was if they showed any signs of concern. Sam could tell that the girl was terrified and it wouldn’t help if they lost her confidence at this point.

‘I’ve not delivered a breech before,’ Jess murmured, following Sam’s lead and smiling broadly. ‘I hope you have.’

‘I’ve done my share,’ Sam assured her, washing her hands in the basin of water on the dresser. There was no point stating the obvious, that the breech deliveries she’d been involved with had been carried out in the safety of a highly equipped maternity unit. They didn’t have such luxuries on tap here so they would have to manage the best way they could.

‘I need a word with Khalid,’ she told Jess, refusing to dwell on the negatives. She had delivered several breech babies and every single one of them had survived. There was no reason to think that this baby wouldn’t survive too. ‘Our biggest problem is going to be the language barrier so we’ll need an interpreter.’

‘OK. Anything you want me to do?’ Jess asked, sponging Isra’s face.

‘Not really. I’ll only be a moment,’ Sam assured her.

She left the bedroom, frowning when she discovered that there was nobody about. After Khalid had woken her, he had led her to the servants’ quarters. Isra was the wife of one of the palace cooks and she and her husband lived in the grounds. Although their house was only small, much smaller than the one she and Jess were sharing, it was spotlessly clean and tidy.

Sam peered into a kitchen, which boasted a woodburning stove, and a tiny but well-equipped bathroom as she made her way along the passageway. From what she could see, the staff were well catered for and it was good to know that they were treated with respect. She came to the sitting room, which was also small but very attractive with brightly coloured rugs on the tiled floor and heaps of cushions on the low couches. It all looked very comfortable but decidedly empty. Where was everyone?

Sam stepped out of the door, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the darkness, and heard footsteps approaching. Just for a second her mind whizzed back to those moments in the bedroom when she had spotted the silhouette of a man highlighted against the window and she felt her heart race. If she’d known it was Khalid, would she have felt more afraid or less? Would it have been better to face an intruder than to face him and have to go through those seconds when she’d thought he had wanted her for a very different reason?

‘How is she doing?’

Khalid’s voice cut through her thoughts, cool and clear in the silence of the night, and Sam shivered. She turned towards him, taking care to maintain a neutral expression. There was no way that she was going to let him know how she had felt, definitely no way that she was prepared to admit that she had wanted him too, although not for his skills as a surgeon. It would be foolish to do that, foolish and dangerous as well. Giving Khalid licence to toy with her emotions again was a mistake she didn’t intend to make.

‘The baby’s breech,’ she informed him crisply. ‘It’s too late to perform a section so we’re going to have to deliver it vaginally but we’ll need an interpreter. The mother’s co-operation is vital in this situation.’

‘Of course,’ Khalid agreed, frowning.

Sam’s brows rose. ‘Is there a problem?’

‘Unfortunately, yes. The female interpreter I’ve hired isn’t joining us until tomorrow.’

‘Surely there must be someone else here who speaks English.’

‘Of course. However, they are all male.’

‘So?’

‘So it wouldn’t be right to allow them to be present at the birth.’

‘Why on earth not?’ Sam exclaimed.

‘Because men are not allowed to be present at the birth of a child, not even the father, let alone an outsider.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ Sam declared hotly.

‘It may seem so to you but it’s a cultural issue.’ He shrugged, his face betraying little of what he was feeling. If he was annoyed by her outburst it didn’t show, Sam thought, but, then, why should he feel anything? Khalid was indifferent to her, as he had made clear. The thought stung so that it was an effort to focus when he continued.

‘Isra would lose the respect of her husband and her family if it were to happen. It’s out of the question, I’m afraid.’

‘How about if you did it? I mean, you’re a doctor, Khalid, so surely that makes a difference?’

‘I’m afraid not. Although views are changing in the city and there are even a few male obstetricians working in the hospital, the desert people still hold fast to the old ways.’

‘Then what do you suggest?’ Sam demanded, in no mood to compromise. Her feelings didn’t enter into this, she reminded herself. It was her patient who mattered, not how hurt she had been when Khalid had rejected her. ‘I need Isra to work with me, do what I tell her to do as and when it’s necessary. It’s vital if we hope to deliver this baby safely.’

‘The only thing I can suggest is that we erect a screen across the window. Then I can stand outside and relay your instructions to her without actually being in the same room.’

‘That sounds like a plan,’ Sam agreed slowly, then nodded. ‘Yes. It should work so long as you’re able to hear what I’m saying.’

‘Oh, that won’t be a problem.’ He smiled faintly, his beautiful mouth turning up at the corners. ‘You have a very clear and distinctive voice, Sam. I’ll have no difficulty hearing you.’

‘Oh. Right.’

Sam felt a rush of heat sweep up her face and was glad of the darkness because it hid her confusion. That had sounded almost like a compliment and it was something she hadn’t expected. She turned away, hurrying back into the house before the idea could take hold. Khalid could have meant anything by the comment or he could have meant nothing and she would be a fool to get hung up on the idea. She quickly explained to Jess what was going to happen, half expecting the other woman to find it as ridiculous as she had done. However, Jess merely shrugged.

‘I’ve come across it before. Some of the African tribes don’t allow men to be present at a birth.’

‘Really? I had no idea,’ Sam admitted. She glanced round when she heard noises outside the window. ‘It sounds as though Khalid is getting everything organised. We’d better get set up in here.’

She and Jess worked swiftly as they spread a sterile sheet under Isra and donned their gowns. Sam decided that she would need to perform an episiotomy to help ease the baby’s passage. As it was presenting bottom first, it was harder for it to make its way out into the world and a small incision in the perineum would help enormously. It would also prevent the perineum becoming badly torn.

‘Can you explain to Isra that I’m going to do an episiotomy?’ she said clearly, glancing towards the window. A wooden screen had been erected across it so she couldn’t see Khalid and could only assume he was there. ‘If you can tell her why it’s necessary, it should make it less scary for her.’

‘Will do.’

His voice floated back to her, soft and deep and strangely reassuring. Although she couldn’t understand what he was saying to Isra, Sam knew that his tone would have reassured her if she’d been in the young woman’s position. It obviously did the trick because Isra stopped looking quite so scared.

Sam worked swiftly, administering a local anaesthetic before making the incision. The girl lay quite still, bearing the discomfort with a stoicism that filled Sam with admiration. ‘Well done,’ she told her, patting her hand.