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‘The house is a twin of the one next door?’ He was looking around a black and white tiled foyer, a wooden staircase curving up on the right, doors opening off the passageway on the left. He hung his discarded clothing on the banister again.
‘Exactly the same, except that I’ve only one consulting and treatment room downstairs, and upstairs I’ve converted all the space into a small flat. Come on up.’
Gemma felt a shiver start at the top of her spine and travel down to her toes as she uttered the invitation. But why? She’d been attracted to men before, not often, admittedly, but it had happened. And there’d been handsome men, and wealthy men, and very ordinary men that had stirred something in her—but attraction had never felt like this. Never so instant, so physical, so—hot?
She unlocked the door into her flat, mentally chiding herself for not accepting the man’s invitation to go out somewhere for lunch. Once he’d been into the flat, his image, she guessed, would haunt it.
Shaking her head at such fanciful thoughts, she waved him into the big room that was divided into functions by its furniture—living room, dining room and at the far end a small kitchen.
‘Compact and functional,’ he said, looking around but not taking an armchair in the living area, moving instead to the kitchen bench where he pulled out a stool and settled on it. ‘And a coffee machine! Thank heavens. Do you do a strong espresso?’
Gemma turned the machine on and programmed it, setting a small cup under the spout. She felt uncomfortable now that she had such a luxury in her own home yet the kitchen-cum-tearoom in the centre was so poorly furnished. Embarrassment curled her toes.
‘It was a present from a cousin,’ she said. ‘I could hardly give it away to the centre.’
Sheikh Yusef Akkedi, the highness, smiled at her.
‘So defensive,’ he teased, making the toe-curl far worse than it had been. ‘Believe me, in my tent in Mogadishu, I treasured little comforts myself. Not a coffee machine but a small coffee pot I could put over a flame, and coffee grounds I hoarded like a miser.’
Gemma turned from where she was digging lettuce and tomatoes out of her refrigerator and stared at him.
‘You mentioned Africa before, and I know of the wonderful work medical organisations do in such places, but—’
‘But me?’ he said, smiling again, although this time the sadness was back in his eyes. ‘You hear Sahra use the “highness” word and wonder what such a person is doing working with refugees?’
‘Well, yes,’ Gemma admitted, taking the little cup of espresso from the machine and passing it to him, being careful to set it down in front of him so their fingers didn’t touch. It was bad enough having him close, but touching him? ‘Even being a doctor,’ she added, pulling herself together.
‘The “highness” part is very recent,’ her visitor replied, unaware of the confusion he was causing in her body. ‘And totally unexpected. My oldest brother inherited the title from my father, but there are no strict guidelines of succession in my country. The current ruler chooses his successor, choosing someone he believes will follow in the way he has ruled. He might choose a brother or a cousin, although my father chose his eldest son. Unfortunately my brother didn’t want the task. He is an aesthete and prefers to spend his life in spiritual learning and contemplation. He could not tell our father this for it would have disappointed him, but when my father died my brother relinquished the crown.’
‘Passing it to you,’ Gemma put in, wondering if there was an actual crown or if it was a figure of speech. She wondered about the country her visitor now ruled. There’d been no mention of it, but she knew it would be a long way off—way beyond her hope of ever reaching.
And that couldn’t possibly be regret she was feeling…
Yusef moved his head, just slightly, indicating she’d guessed incorrectly. Was she interested or just making conversation? With women he could never tell, a gap in his education he put down to not having known his mother, although there’d been women aplenty in his life. Transient women, he considered them, there for a while but moving on, perhaps being forced to move on by his lack of commitment to them—his detachment—
‘My brother intended passing the title to his next brother, the one above me, because that is how it would most easily have been done,’ Yusef explained. ‘But even before my father died that brother was working with foreign companies, bringing them in to search for oil, making treaties that would allow them access to whatever they discovered in return for favours for the country.’
The woman frowned at him.
‘You sound as if you disapprove, but isn’t that how the countries around yours have been able to go ahead? And hasn’t oil made the people of those lands wealthy?’
‘Of course it has, and what my business brother does is good—essential—and that is his life—his love,’ Yusef told her, a little curtly, though why her pointing out the obvious about their wealth should worry him he didn’t know. Maybe it was because her frown had disturbed him. ‘But you must know that wealth is not everything. Wealth, as I said earlier, attracts more people to the country. My brother sees this as a good thing. He does not see the overcrowded schools and hospitals and clinics, the sick children and mothers who have suffered in childbirth.’
‘But with money surely all of this can be altered,’ Gemma pointed out. ‘More hospitals built, more medical care, more schools.’
‘More schools so more diseases can spread,’ he muttered, and heard the bitterness in his voice. ‘Physically things can be fixed in time,’ he admitted, ‘but the values of my people from the early tribal days have been sharing and caring—looking after each other. I want to find a way to keep these values while at the same time bringing my country into the twenty-first century.’
Now the woman smiled at him, and her smile caused more disturbance than her frown.
‘I think I can see why your oldest brother chose you, not the one above you to be the highness,’ she said, and he realised she was teasing him—gently, but still teasing.
‘You keep mentioning the highness word, but that is all it is, a word.’
‘A word with power,’ she said, still smiling slightly. ‘So, what about your profession? Will you still have time to practise? What hospital facilities do you have? And universities? Do you train your own doctors?’
She sounded genuinely interested so he set aside his strange reaction to the teasing to respond.
‘We have a beautiful new hospital with accommodation for staff beside it, and a university that is still in its infancy, although our first locally trained doctors will graduate this year.’
‘Men and women?’
‘Of course, although it is harder to persuade women to continue their studies to university. That is one of the tasks ahead of me, the—I suppose you would say emancipation of the women of my country, so women can find a place and are represented in all areas of life. This is very difficult when traditionally business and professions were considered the domain of men.’
‘In the Western world as well,’ Gemma assured him. ‘We just got started on the emancipation thing a little earlier than some other places. But you talk of your country—’ Gemma sliced tomatoes and cucumber as she spoke ‘—and I don’t even know its name. Is it an African country that you were working there?’
She glanced up at him and saw his face change—well, not change so much but relax just slightly as if an image of his country or one small part of it had flashed across his mind.
‘Not in Africa but on the Gulf—a country called Fajabal.’ He spoke softly, yet so confidently Gemma wondered if she should have heard of it. She ran the names of Gulf countries she did know through her head but no Fajabal came up.
‘Fajabal?’ she repeated, thinking how musical the name was.
‘It is a contraction of two words, fajr, meaning dawn, and jabal, meaning mountain,’ his deep voice continued.
‘Dawn mountain,’ she said, feeling again the familiar tug of distant lands—lands she’d never see except in pictures. But it was better to be thinking about the lands she’d never see than the way this man, sitting so close, was affecting her.
‘Mountains of dawn is how we think of it,’ he corrected, offering her a smile that confirmed all her feelings of apprehension. The man was downright dangerous.
‘That’s a beautiful name—poetic and evocative.’
‘It is a beautiful country, small, but varied in its geography as we have the red-gold desert sands, craggy black mountains and the clear turquoise sea.’
Gemma finished the sandwiches. Maybe one day she’d get over her fear of flying and actually go somewhere like Fajabal. Though maybe not to Fajabal if all the men were as dangerously attractive as this one.
She put the sandwiches on plates, found some paper napkins and pushed a plate towards her guest.
‘You are going to sit down?’ he said, and knowing if she remained standing in the kitchen while she ate it would look peculiar, she walked around the bench, grabbed the stool beside the one Yusef was using, and returned with it to the kitchen.
‘Easier to talk if we’re facing each other,’ she muttered by way of explanation, while, in fact, she knew it would be easier for her to eat not sitting next to him where bits of his body might accidentally brush against hers, and cause more of the uneasiness it had been generating since his arrival.
‘I am pleased, no, more than pleased, totally impressed by the centre and by the work you and your staff do there,’ he began, then he took a bite of his sandwich and chewed on it, leaving Gemma with the distinct impression there was a ‘but’ hanging silently on the end of the sentence.
‘I will definitely increase my contribution to it, and I would like to fund your second house, but I wish for something in return.’
Ha, here comes the but. But how big a but could it be? What strings could he possibly want to attach that they couldn’t accommodate?
Gemma chewed her own sandwich and waited.
Dark eyes studied her intently and he put down his sandwich, wiped his hands then said quietly, ‘I want you to come to Fajabal.’
Chapter Three
GEMMA stared at the once again impassive face, disbelief making thought impossible. She’d half suspected, from the time she’d heard from his secretary that the Mystery Benefactor wanted this meeting, that he might want something more than to check out the centre. But never in her wildest dreams could she have imagined this.
‘You want me to come to Fajabal?’ she said, thinking maybe her ears were playing up and he hadn’t said that at all.
‘You could leave tomorrow and both centres would keep running smoothly, you said so,’ he reminded her. ‘In fact, you have leave due and a replacement starting tomorrow.’
‘How do you know that?’ She snapped the demand at him but it was better to be thinking about his seeming omniscience than thinking about a place called Fajabal, red desert sands and all.
‘Should I not read the reports you so dutifully send? Would you not expect that of me?’ The words were cool and crisp and he seemed to sit a little taller—every inch the sheikh highness for all he was sitting at her small breakfast bar, eating a salad sandwich.
Gemma was reminded of her grandfather and had to fight the instant reactive cringe.
And fight back!
‘I would have thought you had minions who did that for you—draw your bath, read your reports. You probably even have someone who could have checked out the centre for you, rather than having to come yourself.’
‘Ah, but I came for you,’ he replied, the dark eyes fixing on hers so it seemed like some other kind of message—one that sent fire racing through her veins and what could only be desire pooling in her belly.
Could he turn on that kind of magnetic attraction? Had he done it to divert her anger, however feeble it had been?
Impossible! She was reading things that weren’t there into his words.
‘So, Fajabal?’ The deep voice lingered on the name, turning it into musical notes.
Longing replaced desire—if that’s what it had been—a longing so deep and strong she doubted she could fight it. To go to Fajabal? To actually travel to a foreign land? To a land with the magical, mystical name of Mountains of the Dawn?
If only…
‘Perhaps if I tell you of my plan you will understand,’ Yusef said. He’d watched so many expressions flash across his companion’s face he had no idea how to sort them out. There’d been wonder, and excitement, certainly, but fear, he thought, as well. Was she less confident than she appeared, this woman who had achieved so much?
She nodded in response but seemed to have retreated from him, something that caused a momentary pang, for he felt their emergency work as colleagues had forged the beginnings of a bond between them. While the attraction—but it was better not to consider that, although it was definitely there, as strong as he had ever felt for any woman.
‘I spoke of education for the women of my country, and while many women have been attending schools and colleges and even universities for many years, there are women who are still outside the mainstream of modernisation. These are tribal women, from the nomadic tribes who have roamed all the desert lands of the Middle East right through the centuries, but in recent times more and more of these tribes have made their homes in Fajabal, escaping war and oppression in other countries.’
‘People like those I spoke of, but instead of washing up on your shores, they have come across the deserts to your land,’ she said, smiling at him so his determination to ignore the attraction weakened once again.
But he’d caught her attention—now all he had to do was keep it.
‘You are right. However, settling into life in one place is not easy for these people and unless I can make it work, tribal divisions I have seen in other countries could arise, tribal divisions that lead to the horrors of civil war. If I can help these new settlers feel at home, all will be well, but right now, with overcrowded facilities, with children picking up contagious diseases at school, things are not good.’
‘Could it really be as bad as civil war?’ she asked, looking so anxious he hurried to allay her concern.
‘I sincerely hope not but there are divisions already within my country—there are those who believe money solves everything, but these people, my brother amongst them, do not see the sick children in hospital, the malnourished babies, the overcrowded facilities. Until these issues are addressed, Fajabal will never be the great country that it could be.’
He paused and shook his head, trying not to think of his brother and the unrest that was probably spreading in his, Yusef’s, absence.
‘But surely this is a problem—the lack of facilities, the overcrowding—someone local could solve. Why are you talking to me?’
He studied her, trying to find a reply that would swing her decision his way, when her voice told him all too plainly that she didn’t want the job. Yet now he’d met her and seen her in action with two very different patients, he knew he had to have her. As an employee, of course, no matter that his body had reacted to that thought.
‘You looked at some issues in your city—women’s issues and medical issues—and worked out a solution to meet the needs of two very disparate groups. I need someone from outside to take a look at what is happening in Fajabal. You have experience in helping women settle in a new country. The people, women in particular, I wish to help are also settling into a very different world—a modern world. It is not your actual training I require but your fresh eyes.’
‘But surely there are a hundred doctors who could do that for you?’
She sounded desperate now, although he couldn’t understand why she would have such an aversion to the idea that she wouldn’t even discuss being part of it.
‘More than a hundred, I am sure, but I fear they would fail because there is a philosophical aspect to it as well. I have already told you that I would hate my people to lose the values by which they’d lived for centuries. These are the things that have made us strong in the past and will again in the future. We cannot throw them away. You would understand that and could plan to help the new settlers with the courtesy and tact they deserve—helping them within the parameters of their lifestyles. More than that, you have the ability to instil your beliefs into others who will carry on the work. That is what I want from you.’
He studied her, trying to work out what was wrong. That something was wrong he had no doubt. She’d retreated from him.
‘Is it personal, that you do not wish to travel at this time?’ he asked, and caught a rueful smile tilting up one corner of her lips as she shook her head.
Not personal, then what? Why?
How stupid was this? Gemma chided herself as she pushed away her half-eaten sandwich. Although she hadn’t admitted it even to herself, she’d been beginning to feel she was ready for a new challenge. Much as she loved the work she was doing, now both houses were established and running well, her life lacked the fizz and excitement that had accompanied setting up the centres and, to be honest, now they had this man pouring money into the place, she no longer even had the challenge of worming it out of government agencies.
And to work in a foreign country—helping women and children who really needed help, and teaching them to adapt to a different lifestyle yet in a way that was in keeping with their traditions, even to learn of their traditions and learn from them? Wasn’t that the dream of a lifetime?
Of course it was—she could feel the excitement of the project humming in her blood.
Yet here she was, refusing to contemplate it because it entailed a plane trip.
She glanced at the man across the breakfast bar, hoping he hadn’t noticed the shudder that went through her at the thought, because no way could she admit her fears to such a confident man.
‘Are you thinking deeply—considering the idea—or wondering how you can politely say no?’
‘There’s no polite way to say no,’ Gemma began, but he silenced her with a raised hand.
‘Then don’t say it. Think about it. I will have someone drop off information about Fajabal and an outline of how I see the clinic working, plus a job description and wage package for you. Maybe you would have time to study it this afternoon, then have dinner with me tonight to discuss it further.’
What could she say? The man had done so much for the centre, it would be churlish to refuse without even looking at his plans.
She nodded, and he stood up, pushing away his empty sandwich plate.
‘Good,’ he said, sounding as satisfied as if she’d already agreed to go to Fajabal with him, then he smiled at her. ‘Remember, as you read the information, that we have already established a—is rapport the word I need?’
‘You probably speak better English than I do,’ Gemma muttered at him, unwilling to admit even something as nebulous as ‘rapport’ existed between them, although something certainly did. Unless it was all on her side—
‘Not better,’ he assured her, ‘but I have read a lot of the English poets, even Shakespeare who is very good—very wise—about human relationships.’
Gemma found herself frowning at him, having only ever considered Shakespeare as a necessary evil to be got through in high school.
‘You rule a country and have time to read Shakespeare?’
He smiled and she wished she’d dropped the conversation back at ‘rapport’. His smile made her stomach, nearly empty, churn uncomfortably and she could feel blood heating her face.
‘There is always time for poetry, as there is always time to hold a baby in your arms and feel the blessing it bestows. Poetry can teach us much. One of our great Arabic poets once said something to the effect that love doesn’t come from long companionship, but is the offspring of affinity, created in a moment. I am not saying that there is love between us, but was not affinity created early on?’
Gemma stared at him, hoping the tumult inside her wasn’t evident on the outside. Surely he didn’t mean the attraction she was feeling was mutual. Surely he was talking of their colleague-type affinity.
Yet the truth was there, deep inside her, that she did feel an affinity for this man—or maybe she was confusing affinity with attraction. Attraction was different, it was chemical, it could be ignored.
With difficulty, she decided as she followed him to the door, mesmerised by the wide shoulders and the way the broad back sloped down to a narrow waist and hips. He was a sheikh, a highness—he was so far out of her league it was impossible so it was time she stopped checking out his attributes at every opportunity.
Like now, when he’d turned at the doorway and smiled, white teeth gleaming behind those sensuous lips, eyes glinting humorously at her as he said, ‘Is it safe to walk downstairs, or will some other wandering soul be waiting to accost you?’
Gemma stopped in her tracks, held frozen by the effect of that smile—that glint.
Oh, come on! she told herself. Get your brain into gear. You’re not some thirteen-year-old meeting a heart-throb popstar.
But she could only stare at him, so when he took her hand and lifted it to brush his lips across her fingers, she didn’t snatch it back or slap his face or do anything at all but continue to stare at him.
‘Later,’ he said, then he strode off down the stairs, collected his jacket and tie and, slinging them over his shoulder, departed. As he opened the door Gemma noticed that the limo that had driven him up earlier was still waiting outside, which was a funny thing to be thinking of when her brain was numb and her fingers trembling from a kiss.
Entering the foyer of the Nautilus that evening, Gemma felt an unfamiliar dread settle on her shoulders. Nothing to do with the man she was to meet—more to do with the fact that the posh hotel was the kind of place her grandfather had always taken her to celebrate a birthday or good results on a school report card. She had dreaded the outings, alone with her grandfather, certain she’d drop her knife or burp and bring that look of condemnation into his eyes…
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