Exile or marriage, the choice is hers...

Sheikh Tariq al Askeba knows Lila Halliday is trouble... From the moment the Australian pediatric doctor arrives wearing an ancient amulet stolen from his family years before, scandal precedes her.

Lila is stunned to discover the sordid history of her birth mother’s pendant. She came to Karuba to discover her true heritage, not set the whole palace in uproar! Knowing there’s no other way to quell the upheaval, Tariq gives her a shocking ultimatum: leave...or become his desert bride!

‘Marry you? Am I supposed to leap about in excitement at that thought? Or am I supposed to feel honoured? To be married to such an important man as Sheikh al Askeba!’

Lila thought she was doing quite well—given the total shock Tariq’s words had generated. But yelling at him wasn’t enough…not when she felt like grinding her teeth or punching something.

But marry Tariq—who’d been forced to offer marriage? Not love, just marriage...

Her heart scrunched in her chest. But that was stupid—this was a land where the head ruled the heart and his head had offered marriage.

But what alternative did she have?

Leave this place which she’d just discovered for certain was her heritage? Leave the family she’d only just found? The family she’d sought for so many years?

But the alternative was exile!

Could she really just walk away?

Dear Reader,

These days so many people seem to be tracing their ancestry, but for Lila the search to find out about her parents is more a search for her own identity. Orphaned at four, in a foreign country, she’s had little to guide her in her search: some scraps of music, memories of a box her mother treasured…and the pendant her mother had tied around her neck the day of her accident.

The last thing she expects to find as she follows her tenuous leads is love, but that is the ultimate reward for her tenacity in following the clues to her parents’ lives. As you will realise my love affair with sandy desert countries is still strong, and I hope you enjoy the romance of them as much as I do.

This is my second book involving Hallie and Pop’s foster family in the little coastal town of Wetherby—the first being Izzy and Mac’s story in A Forever Family for the Army Doc. And now I’ve become acquainted with them all there will be two more books to come!

Meredith Webber

Engaged to the Doctor Sheikh

Meredith Webber

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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MEREDITH WEBBER lives on the sunny Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia, but takes regular trips west into the Outback, fossicking for gold or opal. These breaks in the beautiful and sometimes cruel red earth country provide her with an escape from the writing desk and a chance for her mind to roam free—not to mention getting some much needed exercise. They also supply the kernels of so many stories it’s hard for her to stop writing!

Books by Meredith Webber

Mills & Boon Medical Romance

The Halliday Family

A Forever Family for the Army Doc

Wildfire Island Docs

The Man She Could Never Forget

A Sheikh to Capture Her Heart

The Accidental Daddy

The Sheikh Doctor’s Bride

The One Man to Heal Her

Visit the Author Profile page at millsandboon.co.uk for more titles.

Praise for Meredith Webber

‘The romance is emotional, passionate, and does not appear to be forced as everything happens gradually and naturally. The author’s fans and everyone who loves sheikh romance are gonna love this one.’

—Harlequin Junkie on

The Sheikh Doctor’s Bride

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Praise

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

EPILOGUE

Extract

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

LILA SAT IN the huge jet, surrounded by strangers, all intent on their own lives. Did they all know where they’re going or, like her, were they travelling into the unknown?

A shiver started in her stomach at the thought of just how unfamiliar her destination might be, and to divert her mind before she became terrified of what lay ahead, she thought of the family, her family, all gathered at the airport to wish her well.

Hallie and Pop, her foster parents, and the gaggle of loved ones she’d grown up with, bonded into sisters and brothers by the love of two wonderful people. There were in-laws now, and nieces and nephews...

True family.

The next plane was smaller, though more luxurious, but it wasn’t until she boarded the third flight of what was beginning to seem like a never-ending journey that she met real luxury. Not a big plane by any means, but beautifully appointed, with armchair-like seats, and attentive stewards offering tasty delicacies and tantalising sweets.

The novelty of it kept her going until one of the attendants leant over her to point out the window.

‘We are coming in to land at Karuba Airport now and as we circle you will see the rugged mountains, the dunes on the desert plains, and the pink flamingos on the lake. You will see how beautiful our country is, and it will welcome you like a lover.’

The seriousness in the man’s eyes—the obvious love of his country shining through the words—told Lila he meant nothing personal in the words.

But a country that would welcome her like a lover?

Poetic, that’s what it was!

And poetic was how it looked. Great slabs of rock, thrown by giants, built up into mesas and pyramids, smooth and brown, with glowing green foliage showing in the deep valleys—were they oases? But the flamingo lake eluded her, and the sand she saw was golden brown, not pink.

No, the pink had to be a confused memory—a pink toy on beach sand—it had to be.

The plane kissed the runway, settled, and taxied to a pristine white building, with many domes and minarets, their spires tipped with gold.

A fairy-tale palace for an air terminal?

The passengers disembarked smoothly, moving through a tunnel into the cool air-conditioned building, the usual immigration and customs checks lying ahead.

From her place in the queue, Lila studied her fellow travellers. Some were locals returning home, the women in burkas with bright flashes of pretty clothing visible beneath them. A number of the men wore robes, black decorated with intricate gold embroidery, while others wore beautifully cut and fitted business suits.

A cosmopolitan place, Karuba?

It was her turn at the immigration counter. She handed over her Australian passport with the completed immigration form and waited while it was examined—and examined again—just as she was examined, the man behind the counter looking from her picture to her face as if somehow she’d changed her appearance on the journey.

He studied the immigration document she’d filled in before disembarking, while the people behind her shuffled uneasily in the line, and concern began to bloom in her chest.

Had the official pressed a bell of some kind on his desk, alerting the second man that appeared? Clad in an immaculate dark suit, pristine white shirt and bright red tie, he smiled at her through the window.

Not an especially welcoming smile, but a smile nonetheless.

Not that it eased the concern...

‘Dr Halliday, we must speak to you,’ he said smoothly—too smoothly? ‘If you would like to come this way?’

Should she ask why?

Refuse?

She’d just landed in a foreign country and who knew what might be happening?

‘Do you need help?’ the passenger behind her asked.

‘I don’t think so. I’m here to work at the hospital. It might be that someone on the staff is waiting to meet me,’ she told him. ‘But thank you.’

Lila gathered up her carry-on luggage and prepared to follow the man who’d summoned her, he behind the wall of immigration windows, she in front of it.

It’s just the hospital doing a special welcome thing, she told herself, but the fingers of her right hand went to the locket she wore around her neck and she twiddled with it as she always did when nervous or uncertain.

‘Just through this way,’ he said when they came together at the door into a long passage. ‘We will not detain you long.’

Detain?

Detain was not a nice word—it had bad connotations—detainees were prisoners, weren’t they?

She was shown into a comfortable enough room, and the well-dressed official offered her a chair and sat opposite her.

‘You have been to our country before?’ he asked, so carefully polite Lila felt a chill of fear feather down her spine.

‘Never,’ she said. ‘I have come to work in the hospital, in the paediatric section. That’s my specialty, you see.’

Perhaps she should have added that she thought her parents might have come from Karuba, but as everyone at home had told her it was a long shot—all she’d seen was a vaguely familiar box—she decided not to mention it.

The man seemed to be studying her—discreetly enough—but the attention was making her more and more uneasy.

‘I have the details of the doctor at the hospital who employed me,’ she said. ‘Perhaps you would be good enough to contact him for me.’

She dug in her handbag for the email she’d received from the man, confirming her appointment, and as her fingers touched the piece of paper, she remembered just what a presence he had had, even on a fuzzy computer screen.

Tariq al Askeba—either the head of the hospital or head of Paediatrics, she hadn’t quite managed to get that straight.

She handed the email to the official, and was surprised to see the frown that immediately gathered his eyebrows.

‘You are to work with Sheikh al Askeba?’ he demanded.

‘Yes, I am,’ Lila responded firmly. ‘And I’d like you to contact him as soon as possible so he can sort out whatever is going on here.’

The man looked even more upset.

‘But he is on his way now,’ he said. ‘You are perhaps a friend of his?’

‘I am about to be his employee,’ Lila countered.

‘Then he will be able to sort it out,’ the man assured her, although his increasing nervousness was now making her very worried indeed.

Fortunately, the worry was diverted when the door to the room opened silently and a tall, regal figure in a snowy white gown, and a black circlet of braid holding an equally white headdress in place, strode in.

An eagle was Lila’s first thought. Were there white eagles?

But the deep-set eyes, the slightly hooked nose, the sensuous lips emphasised by the closest of beards told her exactly who it was.

Even on a fuzzy video image, Dr—or Sheikh?—al Askeba had radiated power, but in full regalia he was beyond intimidating—he was magnificent...

Magnificent and, if the lines of fatigue around his eyes and bracketing his mouth were anything to go by, exhausted.

She stood, held out her hand and introduced herself. Long, slim fingers touched hers—the lightest of clasps—more from manners than in welcome.

Neither was there welcome in the dark eyes that seemed to see right through her, eyes set beneath arched black brows. Or in the sensuous mouth, more emphasised than hidden by the dark stubble of moustache and chin.

‘Dr Halliday, forgive me. I am Tariq al Askeba. I am sorry you have been inconvenienced. I had intended being here to meet you but—well, it’s been a long night.’

The words were right—the apology seemed genuine—but the man was studying her closely, confusion now adding to the exhaustion she could read in his face.

He turned to the first man and spoke quickly, musically almost, the notes of the words echoing way back in Lila’s memory and bringing unexpected tears to her eyes.

‘We have upset you,’ he said—demanded?—turning back to her and obviously noticing her distress.

She waved away his protest.

‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘I’d just like to know what’s going on. What am I doing here in this room? Why was I separated from the other travellers?’

She was trying to sound strong and composed but knew her fingers, toying nervously with her pendant, were a dead giveaway.

‘If I may,’ he said, coming closer to her, all but overwhelming her with a sense of presence she’d never felt before.

Power?

Why would it be?

He was just a man...

But he reached out his hand, calmed her fidgeting fingers, and lifted the pendant onto his long slim fingers so he could examine it.

She should have wrenched it away from him, or at least objected to him touching it, but he was too close—paralysingly close—and she could feel the warmth from his hand against the skin on her chest.

She tried to breathe deeply, to banish the uneasiness she was feeling, but her breaths were more like pants, so much was he affecting her.

‘This is yours?’ he asked at last.

‘Of course,’ she said, and cursed herself for sounding so feeble. ‘My mother gave it to me when I was small.’

He straightened, looking down at her, dark eyes searching her face—intent.

Intense!

Bewildered?

‘Your mother?’

Once again she, not the pendant, was the focus of his attention, his gaze searing into her, his eyes seeing everything.

And when he spoke, the word—one word—was so softly said she barely heard it.

‘Nalini?’

And somewhere through the mists of time, and hurt, and sorrow, the name echoed in her head.

‘What did you say?’ she whispered, shaking now, totally bewildered by what was going on, terrified that ghosts she’d thought long dead had returned to haunt her.

‘Nalini,’ he repeated, and she closed her eyes and shook her head.

But closed eyes and a headshake didn’t make him go away.

‘You know the name,’ he insisted, and she lifted her head. Looked into eyes as dark as her own, set in a face that seemed carved from the same rock as the mountains she’d seen from the plane.

Had he hypnotised her so that she answered?

Hesitantly—the words limping out—thick with emotion...

‘It might have been my mother’s name. It might have been! The police asked again and again, after the accident in Australia, but I didn’t know it. I was too young.’

Her body felt as if it was breaking into pieces, but as clear as the voices of the two men present she could hear another man’s voice calling, ‘Come, my lovely Nalini, come.’

They were at a beach, she could see it clearly, her father paddling in the waves, calling to Nalini...

Her father’s voice?

It was her mother’s name!

Had her interrogator sensed her despair, that he released the pendant and rested his hand on her shoulder? Heat radiated from the light touch of his palm.

‘Your mother is dead?’

The question was asked softly, gently, but he’d gone too far.

She’d been so excited when she’d finally found the name of the country she believed to be her mother’s that she’d pushed madly on with her quest, getting a job and making arrangements to go there. Travelling outside Australia for the first time in her life, to a place she’d only recently heard of, and might yet prove wrong. But to be treated like this, with—yes—suspicion of some kind on her arrival, with no explanation or excuse, it was just too much.

‘Look,’ she said, standing up to give herself more presence, although at five feet five that didn’t amount to much, ‘I have come here as a guest worker in your country with all the proper documentation and I have no idea why I’m being held here. I want to know what’s going on and I’d like to see my consul, please, and you might ask him to bring a lawyer.’

The Sheikh stepped back but she knew he wasn’t giving way to her—he was far too authoritative, too controlled.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘please, sit down again. I can explain, but perhaps some refreshments... You would like tea, coffee, a cool drink?’

Without waiting for a reply, he waved the other man from the room, giving an almost inaudible command that obviously would produce a variety of refreshment.

‘It is the locket, you see,’ he said, sitting opposite her as she sank into the chair, knees weakened by her momentary rebellion. ‘The immigration official recognised it. I would need to examine it to be sure, but it is very like a piece of jewellery that, among other pieces, went missing from the palace many years ago.’

Lila’s fingers felt for it again, remembering the familiar shape—the comforting shape—of it.

But his words were playing on a loop in her head. His words, and a hint of...menace, surely not—in his voice.

‘Missing?’ she queried, and he paused, then was saved from answering by the first man reappearing, followed by two women bearing trays, one with a coffee pot, teapot, cups and saucers, and a selection of cold drinks on it, while the other carried a tray with an array of food from tiny sandwiches to olives and cheeses and fruit.

‘Please,’ her new boss said, waving his hand at the trays on the table. ‘Help yourself.’

Does he really expect me to eat? Lila wondered.

Has he no idea just how knotted my stomach is?

How terrified I am?

‘I would rather finish whatever is going on here,’ she said, hoping she sounded firmer than she felt. ‘You are making me feel like a criminal when I have done nothing wrong.’

Okay, so the last words had come out a little wobbly and she’d had to swallow hard before she could get them said at all, but behind the polite façade of the two men in the room she could sense a tension—a danger?—she couldn’t fathom.

‘May I see the locket again?’

He reached his hand towards her, non-threatening words but a command in his tone.

‘I don’t take it off,’ she said, unwilling to be pushed further.

Stubborn now!

‘It was my mother’s last gift to me. About the only thing I remember from that day—the day my parents died—was my mother fastening it around my neck, telling me it was mine now, telling me it would protect me—my Ta’-wiz.’

Her fingers clung to it, hiding it from the stranger’s curious eyes.

‘They both died?’

Dr—Sheikh?—al Askeba’s words were gentle but Lila refused to let them sneak under her defences. She’d told the story before and she could tell it again—dry eyed, the anguish that had never left her hidden behind the mask of time.

‘In a car accident. The car caught fire, a truck driver who saw it happen pulled me from my seat in the back before the car exploded.’

‘And you were how old?’

Lila shook her head.

‘We guessed four—my new family and I—but we never knew for certain.’

‘And your mother’s name was Nalini?’

More worried now the conversation had turned so personal, Lila could only nod, although she did add, ‘I think so, but I had forgotten.’

The words caught at her and she raised despairing eyes to the stranger.

‘How could I have forgotten my own mother’s name? How could I not have remembered? Yet when you said it I saw her in my mind’s eye.’

She closed her eyes, more to catch wayward tears than to keep the image there.

Then cool fingers touched hers, easing them just slightly from the locket. She felt it lifted from where it lay against her skin, heard his small gasp of surprise.

‘You were burned?’

‘The car caught fire.’

‘And the locket burnt your skin—some protection!’

‘No, I survived!’ Lila reminded him, angered by his closeness—his intrusion into her life. ‘It did protect me.’

But now he’d grasped her fingers, turning them to see the faint scars at the tips there as well.

‘You kept hold of it?’

The words were barely spoken, more a murmur to himself, then he squeezed her fingers and released them, stepped back, apologising again for the inconvenience, adding, ‘I had rooms arranged for you at the hospital, a small serviced apartment close to a restaurant on the ground floor, but I think for now you should stay at the palace. You will be safe there, and maybe you can help us solve an old mystery.’

‘Palace?’ Lila whispered. ‘No, I’ll be very happy in an apartment at the hospital. The sooner I get settled the sooner I can make it a home. I’m sorry, I have no idea what’s going on but whatever it is I don’t like it, not one little bit.’

He smiled at her then, the exhausted stranger with the even stranger ways.

‘Perhaps you are home, Nalini’s daughter, perhaps you are home.’

* * *

Tariq knew he was staring. Not openly, he hoped, but darting glances at the young woman who was so like the one he’d loved as a child.

He’d been eight, and Nalini had been beautiful, brought into the household because she was Second Mother’s sister, to be company for her, someone familiar.

But very quickly she’d become everyone’s favourite. Back then she’d been like the Pied Piper from the old European fairy tale and all the children in the palace had followed where she led, laughing with her, playing silly games, being children, really, in a place that had, until then, been rather staid and stolid.

Tariq was pouring coffee as the memories flashed past, handing a cup to their guest, explaining they would be leaving as soon as her luggage had been collected.

She took the cup he offered her and looked up into his face, her almond-shaped brown eyes meeting his, anger flickering in them now.

‘And if I don’t want to live in the palace?’ she asked, steel in her voice as if the tiredness of the long journey and the stresses of her arrival had been put aside and she was ready to fight.

‘It need only be temporary but if you are Nalini’s daughter then you are family and as family you must stay in our home.’

How could he tell her that things had not gone well for the family since Nalini’s—and the locket’s—departure and things were getting worse. He was a modern man, yet it seemed imperative that the locket return to the palace where its power might reignite hope and harmony.

Not that she could read his thoughts, for she was still fighting him about his decision.

‘Because I’m family? Or because you think my mother stole the locket?’ she challenged, setting the tiny cup back on the table. ‘What makes you think it was her? For all you know she could have seen it somewhere and bought it! Maybe she was from Karuba—was the same Nalini you knew—and it reminded her of her home. But stealing from a palace—how could anyone do that?’

Al’ama, she was beautiful, sitting there with anger sparking in her eyes! The simple cream tunic and flowing trousers—loose clothing the hospital advised visiting staff to wear—emphasised rather than hid a shapely body, the colour enhancing the classic purity of her features and lending warmth to the honey-coloured skin.

Not that he could afford to be distracted...

‘Nalini lived at the palace because she was family, as you will, if you are family,’ he said firmly, as the door opened and a nod from the man beyond it told him they were ready to leave. ‘Come, there are more comfortable places where we can discuss this, and probably a better time. You must be weary after your journey, and should rest. Later, we will talk.’

He put out his hand to help her up from the low seat, but she refused it, standing up herself, very straight—defiant...

Tariq cursed himself. He’d handled this badly from the beginning. A long night searching bone-marrow donor registers had led to nothing, then the call from the airport, when what he’d really needed was a few hours’ sleep.

So, tired as he was, seeing the woman—a woman called Halliday who looked so like Nalini—had thrown him completely. He’d been thrust into the past and a time of tension, bitterness and even hatred in the palace.

Added to which, she was wearing the Ta’wiz, the most sacred of the objects that had gone missing at the time of Nalini’s disappearance. Customs and immigration officials had been on the lookout for all the jewellery for decades but the Ta’-wiz was the one they all knew best, for the hollowed-out crystal with the elaborate gold-and-silver casing around it was believed to carry the spirit of the people’s ancestor.

The immigration officer would not have needed to look closely at it, for he would have felt its power, as Tariq had the moment he’d entered the room, for this simple piece of jewellery was believed to have spiritual qualities—and the strongest of these was protection.

He waved her towards the door, and followed her, looming over her slight form like an evil jinn.

Lila, her name was Lila, he remembered, and right now he wanted to go back in time, to have been at the airport when the plane landed, not finishing a despairing computer search for the magic formula that might save his brother.

He could have greeted her properly, taken her to the hospital, maybe not even noticed the locket around her neck.

The scars on her fingertips told him she’d clung to it as her mother—as both her parents—had died in a flaming inferno. Apart from it being a last gift from her mother, it had protected her, of course she didn’t want to take it off.

Neither could he take it from her...

But perhaps with it safely back in the palace—even in the country—some of the uncertainties and ill-fortune of the last decades would diminish and peace could be restored.

He shook away such thoughts. His country had grown from a collection of nomadic villages to a world presence in a matter of decades and his concern was that it had happened too quickly for many people to adjust and the happiness everyone had expected to come with wealth had somehow eluded them.

* * *

Swept along in this surreal dream, Lila followed the man who had first taken her to the small room down more corridors and finally out onto a covered parking area.

A driver in striped trousers and a long striped tunic leapt from the only car parked there, a huge black vehicle, to open the back door, the tail of his turban dropping forward over his shoulder as he bowed towards her.

Uncertainty made Lila look back, but the large man—her new boss—was right behind her, sober-faced but nodding as if her getting into the car was the right thing to do.

Not that she had a choice unless she decided to run straight out into the blinding sunlight and just keep running.

To where?

Home and family, and the only safety she knew, were all a long way off. Besides, she’d come here to find out about her birth family—her parents—about their country! So she’d put up with the tall man’s bossy ways and just go with the flow.

For the moment!

She tightened her lips then smiled to herself as she imagined her sister Izzy’s reaction to such lip-tightening.

‘Beware, the quiet one is ready to erupt,’ Izzy would have said, and usually laughter would have followed, because Lila wouldn’t have erupted.

But Izzy wasn’t here to laugh her out of it. Izzy was thousands of miles away with a new husband and a new father for her daughter...

And she, Lila, was on her own.

Her fingers crept up to touch the locket, shaking it as if she might be able to hear the tiny grains of sand the kind young woman at the University International Day had put into it for her.

Though not pink sand...

She knew there’d been pink sand once...

The man, Dr—Sheikh—al Askeba, was in the vehicle with her now, not close, for the seat was wide enough for four people, but she could feel his presence as a vibrant energy in the air.

‘How did you know to come here? To Karuba? Had your parents told you of it?’ he asked, and Lila turned to stare at him—or at his strong profile for he looked not at her but straight ahead, as if someone else might have spoken.

She shook her head.

‘I just kept looking,’ she said quietly, remembering the dozens of times when something that had seemed like a lead had turned to nothing.

‘But with your parents dead how did you know what to look for?’

Now he turned to her, and she saw the question echoed in his eyes. Not an idle question then, not small talk. This man wanted to know, and she guessed that when he wanted something he usually got it.

‘I didn’t, not really, but sometimes I would hear a note or phrase of music and it would hurt me here.’ She pressed her fist against her chest. ‘Or I would see something, a design, a colour, that brought my mother’s face to mind. I grew up in a small country town so I had to wait until I went to the city to go to university before I could really start looking. But then, with studies and exams...’

‘So, it’s only recently you discovered something about Karuba?’

Lila smiled.

‘You could say that,’ she told him, remembering the joy of that particular day. ‘From time to time I gave up, then something would remind me and I’d be off again. Two days before I emailed to apply for a job at the hospital here, I heard about an International Student Day at a nearby university.’

‘And you went along, listening for a scrap of music, seeking a design, a pattern?’

‘You make it sound like a plan,’ she said, suddenly wanting him to understand. ‘But it was never that, just a—a search, I suppose, a first clue that might lead somewhere else. You see, when the accident happened, the police tried for many months to identify my parents—to find out who they were and where they were from, looking for family for me, I suppose. But all they found were dead ends.’

He nodded as if he understood, but all doctors could do the understanding nod so she didn’t put much stock in it.

But when he asked, ‘And this last time you looked?’ his voice was deepened by emotion, as if he actually understood.

Lila smiled with the sheer joy of remembering.

‘There were stalls everywhere, but I could hear the music and I followed it. And at one stall, beneath a big tree, I saw a small wooden box with a patterned silver inlay.’

She paused, emotion catching at her throat again.

‘Something in the pattern...I mean, I’d seen many boxes over the years but this one took me straight back to my mother, to the little box she had always kept close. Her sand box, she called it. I touched it and the girl—the student—handed it to me.’

‘So you asked where it was from?’

Lila nodded.

‘At first I couldn’t speak, I just held it, felt its warmth, felt my mother’s hand on it, my hand on hers. But then I realised that I had the name of the country where my mother might have been born. I had my first real clue.’

CHAPTER TWO

HE SHOULD HAVE let her go, seen her safely to the hospital and forgotten the Ta’wiz, pretended it was just a locket—such things were sold all over the world, like amulets and chains with women’s names written in Arabic, pretty tokens and jewellery, rather than sacred objects.

He should forget the laughing Nalini of his youth, and the problems of his people. He should let this woman do her job, serve her twelve months’ contract and depart.

From all he’d heard as he’d chased up her references, she was an excellent paediatrician—what more could he ask of her?

But glancing sideways at her as she sat, bolt upright, her head turned to look out the window, her shining dark hair in a loose plait down her back, he knew he could no more have pretended she was just a doctor than he could have walked naked through the shopping mall.

In fact, the second would probably have been easier, because he would have debased only himself, while ignoring this woman’s sudden presence in his country would have been...

Traitorous?

He wanted to talk to her, to ask her more, to hear that soft husky voice, but anger at her treatment—deserved anger—was emanating from that straight back.

Until they reached the wide, ceremonial road that led straight to the palace gates.

‘Oh, but they’re gum trees,’ she cried, turning back to look at him, her face alight with surprise and delight. ‘Eucalypts—from home!’

And several things clicked into place in Tariq’s head.

First was the confirmation that she was beautiful. Not blindingly attractive as Nalini had been, but with a quiet radiance that shone when she smiled.

And secondly, the trees!

Australia!

Two years after Nalini had disappeared, a gift of two hundred eucalypt seedlings had arrived at the palace, packed in boxes in a container, sender unknown. The only clue had been a picture of an avenue of such trees and his father had taken it that they were meant to be planted on the approach to the palace.

Had his father suspected they were a gift from the runaway that he had had the trees tended with more care than new-born babies?

Now they grew straight and tall, and had brought a smile to the face of the newcomer.

A smile so like her mother’s it touched something in his chest...

Should he explain—about the disappearance of Nalini, about the trees arriving?

No, it would be too much too soon, although living in the palace she’d hear the gossip soon enough, even if it was close to three decades old.

Although he could explain the trees.

‘They were a gift, sent unexpectedly to my father, and he planted them along here.’

That would do for now.

She smiled at him.

‘They look great. They obviously like it here. Where I grew up was on the coast and although we had sand, we had rain as well so the trees grew tall and strong. Can you smell them? Smell the scent of the oil? Sometimes at night it filled the air, and especially after being in the city it would tell me I was home.’

‘The desert air is like that,’ Tariq told her. ‘Cities seem to confuse our sense of smell, but once we’re out of them it comes back to us, familiar as the sound of the wind blowing sand across the dunes, or the feel of cold spring water in an oasis.’

Lila heard the words as poetry, and stared at the man who’d spoken them. He’d erupted into her life, caught her at a time when anyone would be vulnerable—new job, new country, new customs and language—then confused her with her mother’s name.

Seeing the familiar trees had strengthened her, and she decided to go along with whatever was happening, not that she’d had much choice up until now. But she’d come here to find out about her parents, and this man had known her mother.

Had suspected her mother was a thief?

So maybe she had to stay in the palace, if only to clear her mother’s name...

She turned away, catching a glimpse of a large building at the end of the avenue.

A very large building, not replete with domes and minarets but with solid, high stone walls, earth brown, and towers set into them at regular intervals.

Guard towers? For men with guns?

More a prison than a palace, surely?

Her mother had been a thief?

No, that last was impossible!

She was letting her imagination run away with her, but as they drew closer to the imposing façade, she shivered.

‘It is old, built as a fort, not a palace,’ her companion explained. ‘But inside you will see. It is a home.’

He said the words with the warmth of love and she smiled, remembering how forbidding her childhood home, an old nunnery, had looked from outside, yet how homelike it had been.

‘It’s the people inside that make a home,’ she said, and saw his surprise.

Then his smile.

And something changed...

Something inside her gave way, weakening her when she would have liked to be strong.

Needed to be strong...

* * *

Tariq glanced at his companion, aware of the complications he was undoubtedly bringing into his life by insisting she stay in the palace. She would be accommodated in the women’s house, which he knew, both from his early childhood within its confines and from sisters, aunts and cousins, was a hotbed of intrigue, gossip, innuendo and often scandal.

But if she was family this was where she belonged.

And if the Ta’wiz was genuine, and the thrill he’d felt as he’d touched it suggested it was, then this was where it, too, belonged.

She was looking all around her, taking in the forbidding walls, a small frown teasing her delicate eyebrows.

‘The gold on the walls?’ she said. ‘I took it to be decoration—a bit odd on a fortress but still.’

She paused and turned to look at him.

‘But it’s script, isn’t it? That lovely flowing Arabic script? What does it say?’

He could lie—tell her anything—tell her it said ‘Welcome’, but the memory of his father’s anger as he’d marched, often dragging his eight-year-old son, around the fortress walls, demanding the words be written faster, was imprinted in his mind.

As were the words!

He looked out at them now, as if to read them, although they were written on his heart.

‘They say,’ he explained slowly—reluctantly—“The head must rule the heart.”’

‘All the way round?’ the visitor asked, obviously astonished.

Tariq shrugged.

‘It is my father’s motto and there may be variations on the theme,’ he said, trying hard for casual while remembered anger tore at him. ‘Here and there he may have put, “The heart must follow the head,” but you get the gist of it.’

‘And he wrote it all the way around?’

The woman, Lila, was wide-eyed in disbelief.

‘‘And inside too,’ Tariq told her, finally summoning up a small smile as the silliness of the whole thing struck him. ‘He claimed it was an ancient ancestral ruling that had kept the tribe in power for so many generations. But in truth I think it was to annoy First Mother, who had the temerity to complain when he took a second wife.’

Ya lahwey, why was he telling this woman the story? Didn’t the British have a saying about washing dirty linen in public? Wasn’t that what he was doing?

But the pain he’d felt for his mother—First Mother—had imprinted that time like a fiery brand in his memory and still it burned when he remembered it.

Beside him he heard the visitor murmuring, and just made out the faintly spoken words—‘The head must rule the heart.’

‘Maybe,’ she finally said, loudly enough for him to hear, ‘it is a good rule to live by. Do you follow it?’

You don’t have to answer that, his ruling head told him, but as she’d asked...

‘For my sins, I do,’ he admitted, as they waited for the big gate to be opened. ‘My head told me that the country needed doctors more than it needed more princes, and children’s doctors in particular, to take health facilities to those who live far from the city.’

He paused.

He’d said enough.

But as the visitor gasped at the vision inside the palace walls—his father’s vision—he felt compelled to finish what he’d been saying.

‘It has caused a rift between us, my father and I.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said softly, but then she looked around and he had to smile at the astonishment on the woman’s beautiful face. The old walls of the fort might remain, but inside was an earthly paradise made possible by the unlikely combination of oil and water. Oil revenue paid for all the water in his land, paid to have it desalinated from the ocean, so once what had been desert could blossom with astonishing beauty.

‘But this is unbelievable,’ the woman, Lila, whispered, turning her head this way and that as she took in the formal gardens, the bloom-covered bowers, the fountains and hedges, and carefully laid-out mosaic paths.

‘It has been my father’s life work,’ Tariq told her, pride in his voice hiding the tug he felt in his heart as he thought of his father, ailing now, distanced from him, heart-sore over Khalil, a son from his second wife. Once he, Tariq, had chosen to do medicine Khalil had been brought up to be ruler, trained almost from birth. But now Khalil was ill with leukaemia his father was caught in a tussle over his choice of a successor should Khalil not survive.

Wanting Tariq to change his mind but too proud to beg...

Tariq shook away the exhaustion threatening to engulf him. He’d get his visitor settled, sleep for a few hours, then return to the hospital. He’d already assigned a staff member to act as guide and liaison for the new doctor but of course she was at the hospital, not here.

He’d get...he paused, his mind ranging through numerous sisters, half-sisters, female cousins and friends... Barirah.

Khalil’s oldest half-sister, faithful and devoted like her name. Looking after Dr Halliday would take her mind off her brother’s illness and her devastation that her own bone-marrow donation had failed to cure him.

The vehicle pulled up at the base of the shallow steps leading up to the covered loggia that surrounded the entire building. While the driver held the door for the newcomer, Tariq strode ahead, summoning a servant and sending her to find his half-sister.

Dr Halliday was following more slowly, turning as she came up each step to look back at the garden, as if fascinated by its extravagant beauty. On reaching the top, she glanced around at the array of shoes and sandals outside the front door, and he saw her smile as she slipped off the flat shoes she was wearing.

‘It’s like picture books I’ve seen,’ she said, turning the smile towards him. ‘All the shoes of different shapes and sizes, all the sandals, outside the door.’

It was only because he hadn’t slept that her smile caught at something in his chest, and he was relieved when Barirah appeared, pausing by his side to kiss his cheek, asking about her brother, already knowing there’d be no new news.

‘I need you to look after our guest,’ he told her. ‘She is coming to work at the hospital but I want her living here.’

Barirah raised her eyebrows, but Tariq found he couldn’t explain.

‘Come,’ he said, leading her to the edge of the paved area where the newcomer still gazed at the garden. ‘Dr Halliday, this is Barirah, my sister—’

‘One of his many sisters and only a half one at that,’ Barirah interrupted him. ‘And I’m sure you have a better name than Dr Halliday.’

The visitor smiled, and held out her hand.

‘I am Lila,’ she said, her smile fading, turning to a slight frown, as she looked more closely at Barirah.

And seeing them together, Barirah now wearing an almost identical expression, Tariq cursed under his breath, blaming his tiredness for not realising the full extent of the complications that would arise—had arisen, in fact—by bringing Lila Halliday to the palace. Better by far that she’d stayed at the hospital where she’d just have been another doctor in a white coat, rather than possibly a first cousin to a whole host of family, not to mention niece to Second Mother.

And wasn’t that going to open a can of worms!

‘Who is she?’ Barirah was demanding, moving from Lila to stand in front of Tariq, easing him back so she could speak privately.

‘She might be your cousin,’ was all Tariq could manage.

‘Nalini’s daughter? And you’ve brought her here? Are you mad? Can’t you imagine how Second Mother’s going to react to this? I might not remember much about that time but the tales of her reaction to Nalini’s disappearance have become modern legends. Second Mother burnt her clothes on a pyre in the garden and our father had to build a fountain because nothing would grow where they had burnt.’

Tariq touched his half-sister’s shoulder.

‘Lila came looking for her family and I think that might be us,’ he said gently. ‘Isn’t that enough reason for us to welcome her?’

Barirah rolled her eyes but turned back to look at the visitor, still standing at the edge of the loggia.

‘You’re right,’ she said, and heaved a deep, deep sigh. ‘She’s family so she’s welcome, but...’

She turned back to look at Tariq.

‘You’d better be around to protect her. Don’t you dare just dump her on me and expect me to run interference with Second Mother. I’m already a pariah in her eyes because I refuse to marry.’

Lila had guessed the conversation the Sheikh and the young woman who looked so like her had been about her, but what could she do?

Put on her shoes and leave the complex? Walk out through the beautiful gardens and the forbidding stone walls and—

Then what?

Besides, there was this nonsense about the Ta’wiz—about her mother being a thief.

Could she walk away from that?

Definitely not!

And being here in the palace, she might be able to find out what had happened way back then, learn things about her mother—and possibly her father too. And wasn’t that why she’d come to Karuba?

She turned as the pair came towards her.

The woman called Barirah smiled at her.

‘Tariq tells me we are probably cousins—that you are probably Nalini’s daughter,’ she said, in a softly modulated voice. ‘So, as family, you are more than welcome.’

She hesitated then leaned forward and kissed Lila on both cheeks.

The gesture brought tears to Lila’s eyes. Tiredness from the journey, she was sure, but Barirah must have seen them for she put her arms around Lila’s shoulders and drew her into a hug.

‘Come, I will find you a room and someone to look after you. Tariq, our guest might like some refreshment. She doesn’t need to face the whole family at the moment, so perhaps you could order some lunch for the two of you in the arbour outside the green guest room? I have appointments I can’t miss.’

Ignoring Tariq’s protest that he needed to get back to the hospital, Barirah put her arm around Lila’s shoulders to lead her into the house.

‘I will put you in the green room—it was Nalini’s room but has been redecorated. You might as well know now, because it’s the first bit of gossip that you’ll hear. My mother, who was Nalini’s sister, went mad when Nalini left and destroyed the room and all the belongings she’d left behind. My mother is still bitter, but at least my brother’s illness—he is battling leukaemia—is keeping her fully occupied at the moment.’

The flood of information rattled around in Lila’s head. Jet-lag, she decided. She’d think about it all later.

Think about why the man walking down the marble hall behind them was sending shivers up her spine as well.

It had to be jet-lag...

* * *

‘But it’s beautiful!’

Having led her down innumerable corridors, Barirah had finally opened a very tall, heavy, wooden door to reveal what a first glance seemed like an underwater grotto of some kind.

The ‘green’ used to describe the room was as pale as the shallowest of water running up on a beach on a still day—translucent, barely there, yet as welcoming as nature itself. It manifested itself in the silk on the walls and the slightly darker tone in the soft curtains, held back by ropes of woven gold thread.

The bed stood four-square in the middle of the room, the tall wooden posts holding a canopy of the same material as the curtains, while the bedcover had delicate embroidery, vines and flowers picked out in gold and silver thread.

‘It’s unbelievable!’ Lila whispered, walking across to a small chest of drawers to trace her fingers along the silver filigree design set into the wood. ‘Is this design traditional?’

Barirah smiled.

‘It is the most common motif in our decoration although by no means the only one. It shows the vine that grows over the dunes after rain, and see here...’ delicate fingers traced the pattern ‘...the moonflower.’

It was the palest pink, perhaps more mauve in tone, open like a full moon, a half-open bud beside it, and seeing it pain speared through Lila’s heart and she fell to her knees, her hands reaching out to touch the flowers, to grasp the material and bring it to her face, feeling it against her skin, smelling it...

Barirah knelt beside her, held her, while she cried, then dried her eyes with a clean white tissue.

Lila turned to face her.

‘My mother had a shawl—she wore it over her head and around her shoulders. It was this pattern! Why didn’t I remember? How could I have forgotten that?’

Tariq, in the arbour outside the doors that opened into the garden, had heard the words, heard the anguish in the woman’s voice, and wondered just how hard it must have been for a four-year-old to have lost not only her parents but the world as she had known it.

Barirah was helping Lila to her feet, comforting her with soft words and soothing noises, and he stepped back, showing the servants where to leave the food, then waiting for the two women to appear.

He sat, resting his tired eyes behind closed lids, dozed perhaps, aware he should be seeing his father, telling him of this development but not wanting to put further stresses on their guest.

Had he been less tired, he realised now—too late—he’d have taken her to the hospital, let her get on with her work. Officials could have confiscated the Ta’wiz, verified it, and it could have been returned to the palace, without her.

But even as these thoughts rambled through his exhausted brain, an image of the woman, Nalini’s suspected daughter, hovered behind his eyelids, her dark almond eyes sparking with anger at him, her fingers clinging to the pendant—a last gift from her mother.

No way would she have given it up.

‘He’s been working far too hard.’

Barirah’s voice woke him from the half-dream, woke him as his memories of Lila’s angry eyes had shifted to an image of her soft lips—woke him just in time, really...

The two women joined him in the arbour, Barirah making her apologies for having to leave.

‘But Tariq will take good care of you and, when you are rested, take you to the hospital to show you around.’

She gave Lila a brief kiss on the cheek and departed on silent feet, leaving Tariq to wonder again just how big a mistake he’d made in bringing the woman here.

His guest was eyeing the array of food with almost childlike delight.

‘But what is it all? You must tell me,’ she said, moving around the table to see each dish more clearly. ‘Olives I know, although the pink ones are different. And the little white balls—cheeses? Hallie, my foster mother, made labneh—cheese from yoghurt—but it was a little dull.’

But there was tension beneath the flow of words, and Tariq realised that the young woman had been hit by so much information and so many new and emotional experiences in the few hours since she’d arrived that she was running on adrenalin.

‘Sit,’ he ordered, and tired as he was he stood up, selected a brightly patterned plate and began to place an array of small delicacies on it.

He handed it to her, laid a napkin on her knee and said, ‘Try a little of each. You’ll soon learn what you like and what you don’t. And I’m sure you’ll recognise tastes you’re familiar with, though they may be delivered differently.’

She took the plate from him and looked up into his face.

‘Thank you,’ she said quietly, simply, her dark eyes smiling now, the lips he’d seen behind his eyelids curving slightly.

He definitely should have taken her to the apartment at the hospital!

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