Kam came toward her and took her hand, leading her onto the flat rock, then exerting gentle pressure as he said, “Sit.”

Jen sat, as much to escape the touch of his hand as from obedience. Memories of the kiss fluttered uneasily in her body.

“Now, breathe the cooling night air and watch the sunset,” Kam ordered.

I don’t want the beauty of the desert creeping in, she wanted to say. It is too seductive, too all-encompassing.

But his was the name that trembled on her lips as he lifted his head, the better to see her face in the dusk light; his the name she whispered as she leaned into him and raised her mouth to his again.

MILLS & BOON

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MEREDITH WEBBER says of herself, “Some ten years ago, I read an article which suggested that Harlequin was looking for new medical authors. I had one of those ‘I can do that’ moments, and gave it a try. What began as a challenge has become an obsession, though I do temper the ‘butt on seat’ career of writing with dirty but healthy outdoor pursuits, such as fossicking through the Australian Outback in search of gold or opals. Having had some success in all of these endeavors, I now consider I’ve found the perfect lifestyle.”

Desert Doctor, Secret Sheikh
Meredith Webber

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Desert Doctor, Secret Sheikh

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ONE

JEN lifted the almost weightless child onto her hip and turned towards the car approaching them, hoping the driver would stop before he reached the tents so the cloud of gritty sand the vehicle was kicking up would settle outside rather than inside her makeshift hospital.

He did stop. The battered four-wheel-drive pulled up some twenty metres from where she stood, but a perverse drift of wind lifted the trailing red cloud and carried it in her direction, so she had to step backwards in order not to be engulfed in its dust. She put her hand over the little girl’s nose and mouth, and scowled at the man stepping out from behind the wheel.

Unexpected visitors usually meant trouble. Most of the small states in this area had moved quickly into the twentieth century and then the twenty-first, with modern cities, wonderful facilities and the best of medical care, but in Zaheer, the ruling sheikh did not agree with modern ways and though he himself was rarely seen, his minions made the presence of even essential aid services uncomfortable.

The man who disembarked wore rather tattered jeans and a T-shirt, not the flowing robes of the usual official sent to ask what they were doing and to be shown around, suspicion of the organisation’s aims bristling in the air.

This man was very different, though why Jen had that impression she couldn’t say.

Was he a traveller lost in the desert, or something else?

Some instinct she’d never felt before warned her to be wary but she dismissed this vague unease with a sharp, unspoken Nonsense! Beneath the dust on the vehicle there appeared to be some kind of logo, so maybe he was an official, or an aid worker from another organisation.

She wanted to ignore him, to turn away, tired of the battles she fought with red tape, but with more refugees arriving at the camp every day she needed all the help she could get, and he might just be helpful to her.

She stood her ground.

But she didn’t smile.

Which was probably just as well, she realised as the man stepped out of his dust cloud and she caught her first good look at the tall, well-built figure, the tanned skin, the dark, dark hair and—surely not green eyes?

She looked again as he came closer—they were green, pale, translucent almost, and so compelling she knew she was staring.

But all in all he was a man women would stare at automatically, and smile at as well—probably to cover the fluttering in the region of their hearts.

Not that she did heart flutters over men—not since David…

‘Dr Stapleton?’

The visitor’s voice was deep, but with a huskiness that suggested he might have a cold or sore throat, or that he might have cultivated it—a bedroom voice, practised for seduction…

Seduction? Where had that thought sprung from?

‘Yes!’ she managed, nodding to reinforce the spoken confirmation, knowing the fleeting thought of danger was nonsensical.

‘I’m Kam Rahman,’ the stranger said, stepping closer and offering his hand. ‘Head office of Aid for All heard you were in trouble—trying to look after the medical needs of the people in the camp as well as run the TB programme—and sent me along to look into setting up a medical clinic here and to investigate the needs of the refugees.’

‘You’re a doctor?’ Jen asked, taking in the threadbare jeans and the T-shirt that looked older than she was, once again trying not to be distracted by the blatant maleness of the body inside them.

‘Trained in London,’ he said, bowing deeply. ‘But my father was an official of sorts in this country so I grew up here and speak the language, which is why Aid for All thought I’d be more useful here than in South America, where my language skills would be useless. Although, given the way the world works, it’s a wonder I didn’t end up there.’

He smiled, perhaps in the hope she’d enjoyed his little joke, but the smile made the sense of danger stronger and Jen found herself taking a backward step and shifting Rosana so the child was between her and the stranger.

Not that the man noticed her movement, or registered that she hadn’t taken his proffered hand. He was too busy looking around, his keen eyes scanning the tent city that spread outward from the end of the road.

‘You’re more than welcome,’ Jen told him, although inside she didn’t feel at all welcoming. Inside she felt disturbed, which, she supposed, wasn’t all that unbelievable because the man, with his erect carriage, his strong body, high cheekbones, the slightly hooded but miss-nothing green eyes, oozed sex appeal.

Startled by the directions of her thoughts, she realised it had been a long time since she’d noticed a man as a man, let alone considered whether he was sexy or not.

But there was something else about him that diverted her from personal reactions, something in his bearing…

Authority?

Now, why would she think that?

‘So, are you going to show me around?’

The same authority in his voice, and it was authority—of that she had no doubt.

He’d thrust his hands into his jeans pockets, making the fabric tight around his butt as he turned, the better to see the extent of the camp, and Jen was distracted again.

Aware she should be thinking about the reason the man was here, not whether or not he had a good backside, Jen dragged her mind back into order.

‘You’re really an Aid for All worker—really a doctor?’

He turned back to her and smiled, which didn’t help the disturbance in her body, then he crossed to the dirty vehicle and rubbed his hand across the passenger door to clear the dust from the logo.

‘See, same as yours.’ He nodded towards the equally dusty vehicle she and her team used. ‘I don’t have my framed medical graduation certificate with me—hard to hang things on the walls of tents—but I do have some ID.’

He plunged his hand into his pocket and pulled out a plastic-covered tag similar to the one Jen wore around her neck.

‘There, we match,’ he said, slipping the cord over his head.

Kam with a K, she noticed, but the ID looked genuine.

So why did she still feel wary about this man?

Because he was so handsome?

Well, if that was the case, she’d better get over it. The people in the camp needed all the help they could get.

‘Come on, I’ll show you around,’ she said, as Rosana wriggled in her arms.

Jen looked down at the little mite, dark eyes huge in her thin face, stick legs bent with rickets, stomach distended from starvation. ‘There isn’t much to see, well, not in the medical tent. It’s very basic. If you’re setting up a general medicine clinic, maybe we can get another tent for it so we’re not tripping over each other.’

She looked hopefully at the newcomer.

‘I don’t suppose you brought a tent?’

He was frowning at her—frowning angrily—as he shook his head, although she couldn’t think why he should be angry.

Until he spoke.

‘Weren’t tents supplied by the government? Tents for the refugees as well as tents for the people helping them? Didn’t I hear that somewhere?’

Jen shrugged.

‘I don’t know, although I have heard that the old sheikh has been ill for a very long time so maybe the country isn’t running as well as it should be. And Aid for All certainly had a battle getting permission to test for and treat TB in the camp, so once we received the permission we weren’t going to push our luck by asking for more. The tent we use was housing a family when we arrived, and they moved out so we could have it.’

Kamid Rahman al’Kawali, heir to the sheikhdom but travelling incognito through his country, shook his head as he looked around at the tent village. Things were far worse than he and his twin brother Arun had imagined. And they had to take at least part of the responsibility, for they’d pretended not to notice what was happening in Zaheer, throwing themselves into their hospital duties, telling themselves their medical work was more important than disputes between government officials, changing what they could change at the hospital where they worked, but slowly and cautiously. They’d been constantly frustrated in their endeavours because, even ill, their father had been strong enough to refuse to hand over any authority to his sons.

So they’d worked, and learnt, attending conferences and courses all over the world, finding good excuses to not visit their father until the last possible moment when they’d come out of duty to their mother, not out of concern for an irascible old man who had made their childhoods a misery, and who had refused to move with his country into the twenty-first century.

He had despised the city that had grown where the old capital had been, the new city built by foreign oil barons made richer by the oil they pumped from beneath the desert sands, and by foreign hotel chains who had built luxury housing for the oil barons.

He had objected to the idea of his country becoming a democracy, although when he realised it was inevitable he had made sure his brothers and their sons had stood as candidates and been elected to look after the interests of the family. Then he’d hidden himself away in the fastness of his winter palace, the hereditary, but not ruling, ruler, allowing those in the far-off city to do as they wished. That aim seemed to be to make the city more prosperous, not to mention glamorous enough to be attractive to foreigners, and to ignore the fate of the rest of the country.

Which was why a foreign aid organisation was now testing for TB in a tent in this refugee camp near the border of the neighbouring country, while in the city, in nearly new hospitals, first-class surgeons recruited from around the world were performing face lifts and tummy tucks not only on women but on men who had become soft and flabby from indulging in their wealth.

Foreign aid! How could this have happened when the whole basis for the tribal life of his people was looking after their own? And the people in this refugee camp, although they may have come in from over the border, were still their own, descendants of the same tribes that had roamed the desert for centuries.

Kam sighed and looked at the woman in front of him. The smooth skin of her face, framed by a dark scarf, was lightly tanned and sprinkled with freckles that had a look of casually scattered gold dust to them, while her eyes were a darker gold, brown, he supposed they’d be called, but so flecked with golden lights the brown was hardly noticeable. Pink, shapely but unpainted lips, slightly chapped—had no one told her the dry desert air could suck all moisture out of you in a few hours?—were pursed by worry or concern…

And why was he suddenly so observant?

With so much to learn and so much to do to right the wrongs of the past, this was no time to be noticing a pretty woman…

‘I can get tents,’ he said.

‘Just like that? You can get tents?’ Jen demanded. ‘I’ve been sending messages to the city for months now, saying we need more help—Oh!’

She lifted her hand and held it to her mouth—to stop herself putting her foot further into it?

‘You are more help,’ she muttered, then smiled tentatively at him. ‘I’m sorry I haven’t been more welcoming. But tents?’

Kam returned the smile.

‘Influence in the city—I grew up here, remember.’

He was fascinated by the freckles but knew he shouldn’t stare, so he let his gaze rove casually over her, then smiled once more to cover the fact that his attention had been so easily diverted.

Again!

‘Tents are easy.’

Jen didn’t miss his casual scan of her body, but she refused to blush, although she was only too aware of what a sight she must present, her Western garb of jeans and a long-sleeved shirt covered by a long, all-enveloping grey tunic, red desert sand coating it and probably her face as well, and turning her blonde plait, beneath her headscarf, a dried-out, gingery colour.

But his inspection of her apparel—and his apparent dismissal of it, although she had attempted to adapt her clothing to meet the customs of the land—had annoyed her sufficiently to go on the attack

‘Good, and if you’ve that much influence, I’ll make a list of other things we need.’

He held up his hand.

‘Best if I work it out for myself,’ he said. ‘After all, I know these people and can assess what will suit them, while you might be imposing Western needs on them.’

‘I would think clean water and sanitation would be basic needs for anyone,’ Jen muttered, but she suspected he was right as far as details were concerned.

‘Of course, and these things, too, can be provided,’ he assured her.

‘And perhaps better housing before the worst of winter blows along the valley,’ Jen suggested hopefully.

He looked around and Jenny tried to see the camp through his eyes—the motley collection of patched and tattered tents, the tethered goats, the children running down the alleys between the dwellings, a small flock of ragged-looking sheep grazing on the lower hillside, while two hobbled camels slept nearby.

He shook his head.

‘Housing? I don’t think so. These people are refugees from across the border, this isn’t their country. If we build them houses, aren’t we telling them that they will never return to their own lands? Wouldn’t we be taking away their hope?’

He was extraordinarily good-looking and it was distracting her, and the distraction made her snippy. Although she could see where he was coming from, she wasn’t ready to give in too easily.

‘You don’t want these people who have lost everything to have some comfort and a proper place where they can be treated while they are ill?’ she demanded.

‘I would love them to have comfortable homes and a hospital as well, but back where they belong—back where they grew up and where their families have roamed for generations. Back in the places of their hearts! Here, surely, if we build something resembling a permanent camp, they will feel even more lost, displaced and stateless. It’s like saying to them, “Give up all hope because the war will never end in your country so you’ll just have to sit here on the edge of ours and live on whatever charity can provide.” I doubt there are people anywhere in the world who could accept that, let alone these fiercely proud desert inhabitants.’

‘Well, you obviously know best,’ Jen said, turning away from him towards the big tent and adding under her breath, ‘Or think you do!’

An anger she couldn’t understand was simmering deep inside her, although she didn’t know what had caused it—surely not this man pointing out something she should have known herself? And surely not the passion that had crept into his words as if he truly understood, and possibly felt, these people’s yearnings for their home?

No, passion was to be admired, but there was something about the man himself that stirred her anger, an air of—could it possibly be arrogance?

Kam turned away to speak to a man walking past and Jen took the opportunity to check him out again.

A number of doctors, like a number of professionals in any field, were arrogant, but they usually weren’t dressed in well-worn jeans and tattered T-shirts. They were more the three-piece-suit brigade.

She sighed. She hated generalising and here she was doing it about a stranger—and about other members of her profession.

And why was she thinking of him as a man—noting his looks and manner—when she hadn’t thought that way about a man since the accident—hadn’t ever expected to think about a man that way again?

She reached the opening at the front of the tent, and turned to wait for him to catch up, while once again a sense of danger assailed her.

‘This is where we work and where I live. You can have a look in here then I’ll find someone to show you around the camp so you can get your bearings.’

He looked as if he was about to argue, but in the end did no more than nod and follow her into the tent.

She led the way, still holding Rosana on her hip, trying to see the place that was clinic, hospital and home through his eyes. Various bits of it were partitioned off by bright woven rugs she’d bought from the traders who came regularly to the camp, determined to get whatever money they could from the desperate refugees.

In the clinic corner, the morning ritual of TB testing was going on, men, women and children all coughing obligingly into tiny plastic cups, while one of Jen’s local helpers spread the sputum onto a slide and labelled it with the patient’s name.

‘As you probably know, the refugees are mostly mountain people,’ she explained to her visitor, ‘driven out by the warring tribes across the border, and by starvation because with the war going on they can’t plant their crops or take their livestock to good pastures.’

Her guest—or should she start thinking of him as her colleague?—nodded.

‘I imagine in these overcrowded conditions diseases like TB can spread quickly, and with complications like AIDS in some cases, your first priority must be to complete this eradication programme.’

Maybe she could think of him as a colleague.

It would certainly be easier than thinking of him as a man…

‘Except that things happen, of course, to get us off track,’ she explained. ‘A child gets too close to a fire and is burned, a woman goes into labour—naturally we have to tend them. In these people’s eyes—and in reality, I suppose—we’re a medical team, so they come to us for help.’

And though still wary of him—of the person, not the doctor, she decided—she gave him the welcome she should have offered in the first place.

‘For that reason it’s great to have you on board. You can do the normal medical stuff and we’ll get on with the TB programme.’

‘TB treatment involves a period of nine months.’ He interrupted her so firmly she took a step back. ‘You intend being here that long?’

He spoke with a hint of sceptical suspicion that fired the simmering embers of the anger she didn’t understand to glowing life.

‘What do you think? That I’m playing at being a volunteer? That I came here for some kind of thrill, or maybe kudos—so people would see what a wonderful person I am?’

She scowled at him.

‘Of course I’m here for the duration of the testing and treatment, although it might not be a full nine months, but then again, with more people coming into the camp all the time, it might be longer than that.’

He was obviously unaffected by scowls, or scorn, or anger. He waited until she’d finished speaking, then asked, ‘Why not a full nine months?’

‘Because we’ve cut treatment time to six months through a selection of different medication,’ she told him, tilting her chin so she could look him in the eyes. ‘Once someone is on the programme it’s mainly a matter of supervision to make sure they take their medication. Isolation would be good, if there was somewhere we could send those with the disease, but then again, to take these people from the few family they have left would add to their problems. We treat the physical things as we can, but the mental burden they carry—the sadness—we can do nothing for that.’

The visitor stared at her as if she’d suddenly begun to speak in tongues.

‘And you care?’ he asked.

Jen stared at him in disbelief.

‘Of course I care. Why wouldn’t I care? I presume you’re here because you care, too, or is this some ruse? Are you some kind of government spy sent here to see what’s happening in the camp, or an Aid for All spy, checking I’m not selling the TB drugs on the side? Is that why you’re here?’

‘I’ve told you why I’m here,’ he replied, all cool arrogance again. Maybe it was the voice—so very English.

Rich English.

Was his father a foreign oil baron that Kam had grown up here? Or, in spite of that English voice, did the blood of a long line of desert warriors run through his veins? She’d learnt enough of the local people to know they were a proud race.

Although the questions kept popping up in her head, or maybe because of them, Jen ignored him, setting Rosana down on a mat on the floor and nodding to one of the women helping with the TB testing to keep an eye on the child. She was about to show him the layout of the tent when she became aware of approaching excitement, the shrieks and wails and general hysteria coming closer and closer.

Stepping past her visitor, she was heading out of the tent when he pulled her back, pushing her behind him and telling her to stay there.

As if she would! She moved up to his shoulder so they exited the tent together, and saw the excited crowd, a body held between a number of men, women shrieking lament behind them.

‘He was thrown over the fence. Men on horses threw him. It is Lia’s husband. They have beaten him with whips.’

Mahmoud, one of many men in the camp who spoke a little English, explained this as the group moved closer, and as Jen stepped to one side and waved to the men carrying the patient to bring him inside, she heard her visitor cursing quietly beside her.

But cursing didn’t help. She led the men behind a partition in the tent and indicated they should put their burden down on a plastic-covered mattress on the floor. Then she knelt beside the man and saw the blood-soaked, tattered remnants of his gown, in places sticking to his skin, on others torn right off. They turned him on his side, as the wounds were on the front and the back of his chest and on his calves. Jen found a couple of cushions she could prop behind his knees to keep him in that position.

The man was moaning piteously, but when the stranger spoke to him in his own language he found the strength to answer.

Jen, meanwhile, was wondering where to begin.

‘Pain relief before we start to examine him, I think.’ Her colleague answered her unspoken question, kneeling on the other side of the man but looking across him at Jen. ‘What do you have?’

Jen did a quick mental scan of her precious drugs.

‘I’ve a small supply of pethidine but we should run it through fluid in an IV for it to work faster.’

Fluid—she had so little in the way of fluid replacement, a couple of bags of isotonic saline solution and a couple of bags of five percent dextrose in water, which was also isotonic. The man had bled a lot and both would help restore plasma levels and though she hated using up what few supplies she had, she knew she would.

Was she frowning that her colleague, who’d been taking stock of the patient’s injuries, now turned his attention to her?

‘You do have some fluid?’ he asked, and she nodded and stood up, asking one her assistants, Aisha, to bring a basin of water and cloths to bathe the man, before heading for the little partitioned-off section of the tent that was her bedroom and digging into the sand in one corner where she’d buried this treasure.

‘You bury it?’

She turned to see Kam standing near the rug she’d hung to provide a little privacy to this area, and now he was frowning, although she was the one disturbed to have him in her space.

‘To keep it safe from thieves.’

He shook his head and walked away.

Tubing, cannulas and catheters were buried in another part of the area she looked on as her room, and she dug them up and dusted sand off the plastic bags in which she’d buried them.

‘I don’t have much IV fluid replacement,’ she said, when she joined him by the patient. She was angry with herself for sounding apologetic, but he merely shook his head, though he frowned again as he saw the sand dropping from the bundle she was unwrapping.

If frowns were any indication, he was one angry man…

‘And what you have you must hide? Isn’t that overdoing things? Do you feel you can’t trust these people? How can you help them if distrust is in the air all the time?’

Anger sharpened the demands.

‘I don’t hide things from the people in the camp,’ Jen told him, defending the refugees, although she knew some of them might steal from need. ‘But raiders come from time to time. Even if they don’t need medicines themselves, they can sell them. It’s one of the reasons drug-resistant TB has spread so widely. People steal the medicine, sell it to unsuspecting locals in the souk, and never tell the buyers they need to take far more than one box of tablets in order to be cured.’

She knelt beside the patient, opening the small trunk that held their most used medical needs, like antiseptic and swabs and small sutures. She found what she needed and first bathed the man’s left hand then swabbed it, before bringing up a vein and inserting a cannula into it.

Marij, Jen’s other assistant, had passed a blood-pressure cuff and small monitor to Kam, who was now checking the man’s BP and pulse, while Marij and Aisha were cutting off the tattered remnants of the man’s robe, leaving pieces that were stuck to open wounds, which would be removed later.

Jen set up a drip, pulling a wooden box that had once contained TB drugs close to the man so she could sit the bag of fluid on it, then she broke open the ampoule of pethidine, drew the contents into a syringe and injected it into the fluid, adjusting the flow so their patient would receive it slowly over a prolonged period of time.

But as more and more of the man’s clothing was cut away and Jen saw the depth of some of the wounds, she began to wonder if they would be able to help him.

‘How could anyone do this to someone else?’ she whispered, awed by the ferocity of the attack.

‘They must have taken him for a thief or, worse, a spy,’ Kam said, his voice grim.

‘But—’

Once glance at his stern, set face stopped further protest and she reminded herself she was there to help, not to judge. She concentrated on their patient.

‘I suppose we can only do what we can,’ she said, thinking how little that might be—what if there were internal wounds they wouldn’t know about until too late? Although now she had someone with whom she could work, maybe they could save this patient.

The visitor nodded.

‘I know you’re a TB clinic but would you have surgical instruments? I think if we can debride some of the damaged skin, there’ll be less likelihood of infection.’

Jen thought of the odds and ends of instruments she’d acquired over the last three years, now packed in among her underwear in the battered suitcase in her makeshift bedroom.

‘I’ll get what I have,’ she said, but as she rose to her feet she wondered why Kam Rahman didn’t have all this equipment himself. If he was from Aid for All and coming here to run a medical clinic in conjunction with the TB clinic, surely he’d have brought supplies and equipment with him.

She glanced his way but the badge he’d shown her was now tucked inside the T-shirt. Later she’d take a closer look at the logo on his vehicle—better by far than thinking about digging under the T-shirt for his ID…

CHAPTER TWO

WHY was she suspicious of him? Because he was far too good-looking to be an aid worker? Did she have preconceived ideas that they all had to be long-haired and wear sandals and not speak like an English prince? As she considered these questions, she stacked all the instruments, sterilised by boiling and now wrapped in paper, on a battered metal tray and carried it out to put it beside the stranger, then suggested Marij empty the bowls of water and bring fresh.

‘That’s some collection,’ Kam said, as Jen unwrapped her treasured instruments and set them on the tray where they could both reach them.

‘Three years of humble begging,’ she joked, but from the way his lips tightened he didn’t think it was at all funny.

Which it probably wasn’t but, then, there wasn’t much to laugh about here, so the man had better loosen up and get used to feeble humour or he’d frown his way into a deep depression.

‘Sutures?’ he asked.

They were in the chest with the dressings—and fortunately she had plenty of them, mainly because they were the first things people pressed on her back at home when she visited hospitals or surgeries, asking for donations.

‘Now, how are we going to work this? Do you want to cut and swab and I’ll stitch or would you prefer to stitch?’

Jen stared in horror at the damage that had been done, not only to the man’s back but to his chest as well. In places the lash, or whatever had been used, had bitten so deeply into his flesh she could see the grey-white bone beneath it.

‘I’ll cut and clean,’ she said, and heard something of the horror she was feeling in the tightly squeezed-out words.

‘He’ll be all right,’ her colleague said, his voice gentle as if he knew she was upset. ‘It looks far, far worse than it really is. And with me to stitch him up, there’ll barely be a scar.’

‘Surgeon, are you?’ Jen teased, though it was unlikely a specialist would be deployed to somewhere like this camp.

‘And why not?’ he parried, leaving Jen to wonder…

He spoke again, but this time to the patient, the slightly guttural words of the local language rolling off his tongue. The man opened bleary eyes then closed them again, and Kam nodded as if satisfied the drug was working.

‘Let’s go,’ he said, and Jen started at the neck and began to cut away the cloth that was embedded in the wounds, preserving what skin she could but needing to debride it where it was too torn to take a suture. Desert sand encrusted the wounds and the blood-hardened fabric, so the job was slow, but piece by piece she removed the foreign material, leaving a clean wound for Kam to stitch.

From there she moved to the wounds just above his buttocks, so she and Kam weren’t jostling each other as they worked, and slowly, painstakingly, they cleansed and cut and stitched until the man’s back resembled a piece of patchwork, sutures criss-crossing it in all directions.

Jen squatted back on her heels and Kam raised his head, tilting it from side to side, shrugging impressively broad shoulders to relieve tension in his neck. For a minute the green eyes met hers but she couldn’t read whatever message they might hold. Pity? Horror? Regret?

Emotion certainly, and she felt a little more kindly towards him. So many doctors, surgeons in particular—and she was pretty sure he must be one—could remain detached from the work they did, believing it was better for all concerned for them to be emotionally uninvolved.

‘Do you want to swap jobs?’ Jen suggested, as Kam roughly taped a huge dressing to the man’s back then tilted him so he was lying on it. They both watched the patient to see if there was any reaction, but as he remained seemingly asleep, they assumed the pethidine was working and he couldn’t feel the pain of the wounds on his back.

‘You’ve been bent over there for over an hour. I can at least move around,’ Jen added.

He glanced at her again.

‘You like sewing?’ he asked.

‘Not really,’ Jen said, wondering how he could make her feel so uncomfortable. He was, after all, just a colleague.

Problem was, of course, she’d never had a colleague who looked like this one…

Or felt any physical reaction to a man for a long time…

She hauled her attention back to the subject under discussion. ‘But I’ve done most of my hospital work in A and E, so I’ve had plenty of practice.’

She was sounding snappish again and knew it was because it niggled her that this man could get so easily under her skin.

Because she was physically attracted to him?

Balderdash! Of course she wasn’t.

‘I’m sure you’d do as good a job as I, but now I’ve begun I’ll finish it.’

And finish it he did, Jen cutting and cleaning, Kam sewing, until all the deepest wounds on the man’s back, chest and legs were stitched, while the less deep ones were neatly dressed.

Jen, finishing first, checked their patient’s blood pressure and pulse again, then studied the readout with trepidation.

‘His blood pressure’s dropping. I saw you examining him all over earlier—there were no deep wounds we’ve missed?’

Kam shook his head.

‘But there’s extensive bruising to his lower back and abdomen, which suggests he might have been kicked. There could be damage to his spleen or kidneys and internal bleeding, which we won’t find without an X-ray or ultrasound.’

‘Do you have a radio in your car? Do you know enough about the health services available locally to know if we could radio for a helicopter to take him out?’

Kam shook his head.

‘I imagine you drove in, camping out in the desert for one night on the way. That’s not because we—I mean the locals—want to put aid workers to as much hardship as they can, but because of the mountains around here. They have temperamental updraughts and downdraughts that can cause tremendous problems to the rotors on a helicopter, so they don’t fly here. Fixed-wing aircraft are a different matter, they fly higher so aren’t affected, but, of course, there’s no handy airfield for even a light plane to use!’

He studied her as if to gauge her reaction to his explanation, but when he spoke again she realised he’d gone back further than the helicopters.

‘You asked about a radio in my car—yes, I do have one, but so should you. One in the car and one for your office or wherever you want to keep it—they’re listed on the inventory you’re given with your supplies.’

Jen smiled at him.

‘The one in the car disappeared within two days of our arrival and the other one a couple of days after that. You can’t dig a hole and bury radios. No matter how well you wrap them, you can’t seal them completely and they tend to stop working when sand gets into their bits.’

She was smiling at him, but Kam couldn’t return the smile, too angered by the artless conversation. He couldn’t believe that things had got so bad people were stealing from an aid organisation, although he imagined these refugees had so little, he could hardly blame them for the thefts.

But how to fix this? How to redress the balance in his country? Could he and his twin achieve what needed to be done in a lifetime? Arun was working in the city, talking to the people there, seeking information about the government and whether, as their father’s influence slipped, corruption had crept in.

Or had the people elected into positions of power only seen the city as their responsibility, ignoring what was happening in the country, ignorant of this camp on the border?

As he and Arun had been, he reminded himself with a feeling of deep shame. He couldn’t speak for his twin, but nothing—neither work and study programmes, nor his father’s orders to keep his nose out of the ruler’s business—excused the way he, as heir, had allowed neglect to hurt his people. And nothing would stop his drive to fix this hurt.

Nothing!

Their patient groaned and Kam brought his mind sharply back to the job in hand.

‘A drop in blood pressure certainly suggests he’s bleeding somewhere. If you’re short of fluid, we should consider whole blood.’

The woman he’d been surprised to find in this place nodded. He’d known she was here, of course, but he’d expected…

What?

Some dowdy female?

OK, not some dowdy female, but definitely not a beauty like this golden woman was. He checked the dusting of freckles again and even in the dimmer light of the tent saw the colour of them.

‘Sorry?’ Checking out her freckles, he’d seen her lips moving and realised she was talking to him.

‘I was just offering to take some blood from him and test it, then maybe find some volunteers willing to be tested,’ Jen suggested.

‘His friends will surely volunteer. Take some blood. You can test it here? You have a kit?’

She nodded.

‘Good,’ Kam said, pleased his mind was back on the job, though the greater job still awaited him. ‘We’ve got him this far, let’s see if we can finish the job. Internal bleeding will sometimes stop, leaking vessels sealing themselves off, but if it doesn’t, without an ultrasound I’d have to open him up and have a look. He’s suffered so much already I wouldn’t like to risk it until he’s much stronger, so let’s wait and see. We’ll have to monitor him closely, of course.’

We’ll have to monitor him? The words echoed in Jen’s head.

The stranger intended staying?

Here?

In her tent?

Of course he intended staying—he was another aid worker, one who was sorely needed, and right now there wasn’t another tent to house him or his clinic.

Unease fluttered like panicking moths in her stomach—or maybe that was hunger, it was well past lunchtime.

She turned her attention back to the job she was supposed to be doing—taking blood.

Marij had returned, having belatedly finished the morning’s TB testing.

‘Can I help?’ she asked, in her soft, gentle voice.

‘Would you type this blood for me?’ Jen asked her, handing her the vial.

‘Of course,’ Marij replied, adding, ‘And then you’ll want volunteers—I will ask around and begin typing them as well.’

Jen turned her attention back to the patient.

‘Shall we ease him back onto his side? And what about antibiotics? I have some but they’re in tablet form. For a start at least, he should be getting them through his drip. And tetanus? Who knows if he’s ever had a tetanus shot, but if it was a horse whip he was hit with, he’ll need one.’

He helped her move the patient back onto his side, propping cushions gently against his injured back to keep him from rolling over.

‘I’ve stuff like that in the car,’ Kam said. ‘Not much because this visit was more a recce to see what was needed, but I’ll go and get what I have.’

Once again suspicion fluttered in Jen’s chest. Would he really undertake a two-day drive just to see what was happening? And then drive back to the city to get what was needed and drive up here again? Six days going back and forth across desert roads that could swallow a car whole?

Or was the flutter discomfort at the thought of the man moving his things in here—moving in himself?

So close that if she woke in the night she might hear him shifting in his sleep, hear him breathing?

But where else could he stay? Until they had another tent, and she’d believe he could muster one when she saw it, he’d have to live and work here. If she put up another rug across the far corner…

She shook her head at her own folly. Whatever it was about this man that was affecting her, it wasn’t going to be stopped by a brightly woven rug hung down between them. The way they blew when the tent sides were rolled up to allow cool air in, another rug would barely provide privacy.

She checked her patient, then looked up as a shadow fell across them. The cause of her concern was standing over them, a large cardboard box in his hands.

Was she staring that he offered a half smile?

The flutters she felt were definitely not suspicion, and all the more worrying because of that.

‘I have some more pethidine,’ he said, such an ordinary conversation, ‘and antibiotics. The blood test?’

‘Marij is checking now.’

Jen climbed carefully to her feet, but even with care she stumbled when she put her weight on a foot that had gone to sleep.

Kam’s hand reached out to steady her, his grip surprisingly strong. She turned to thank him, but the words wouldn’t come, held captive in her throat by something she couldn’t explain.

She stamped her unresponsive foot, and caught his lips curving into a smile.

‘That’s not a sign of a tantrum,’ she assured him, with a tentative smile of her own. ‘The darned thing’s gone to sleep. And so’s my brain. I know you introduced yourself earlier, but did I? My name’s Jenny.’

She held out her hand and watched him take it—saw the tanned skin of his fingers against her own pale flesh, felt warmth and something else—something she didn’t want to put a name to.

‘I knew the Jennifer part, but wondered if you shortened it.’

Jenny removed her hand from his, and tucked it in the pocket of her tunic, out of danger’s way.

‘Jen, Jenny, even, hey, you—I answer to them all,’ she said, trying desperately to sound casual and light-hearted, although her arm where he had touched it, and the fingers he’d briefly held, burned as if they’d been branded.

The patient’s name, they learned, was Akbar, and his blood group was B.

‘Mine’s B,’ Jenny told Kam, who was sitting, cross-legged, by their patient, talking quietly to Lia, Akbar’s wife. ‘Let’s do a cross-match and see if it’s OK for him to have mine.’

Kam studied her for a moment, wondering about this woman he’d found on the border of his country. Wondering if she was the first fair-haired Westerner to ever tread these particular desert sands.

Wondering if he should take her blood…

Take her, as his ancestors might have…

The sudden heat in his body shocked him back to the matter in hand. Of all the times to be distracted by a woman…

‘You need your strength for your job,’ he objected.

It was a token protest and she took it that way.

‘The loss of a couple of pints of blood won’t hurt me,’ she insisted, handing him a syringe with a needle attached so he could draw blood from her forearm for cross-matching. She had pulled off her soiled tunic and now rolled up the sleeve of her shirt so he could access a vein, yet he felt strangely reluctant to move closer to her—to touch her.

He had to move closer—how else could he withdraw some blood?—and if their patient was bleeding internally, and his blood pressure drop suggested he was, he would need blood.

Kam crossed the distance between them in one long stride and took her arm, seeing as he did so pale scars like snail tracks, paler than the lightly tanned skin and puckered here and there.

Without regard to the intrusiveness of the gesture, he ran his forefinger lightly down the longest of them, then looked up into her eyes, knowing she’d read the question in his own.

Defiance was his answer, as clear as if it was written on a whiteboard. Ask me if you dare, she was saying, and though Kam knew he shouldn’t, he couldn’t help himself.

‘Accident?’

She nodded briefly then swabbed the spot where a vein showed blue beneath the fine skin of her inner elbow.

Take the blood, she was saying with the gesture—take the blood and mind your own business. But Kam’s mind was already racing off along a tangent—did the scars explain why such a beautiful woman, and she was beautiful in her golden, glowing way, would hide herself away in a refugee camp on the edge of a little-known country?

Was she hiding only these surface scars or were there deeper ones?

Had she lost someone she loved, leaving scars on her heart?

‘Was it bad?’

She stared at him as if she didn’t understand his question, but a shadow had crossed her face and he had his answer.

Very bad, that shadow told him, while the set of her lips again warned him off further questions.

But his sympathy for her made him gentle as he held her arm and eased the needle into the vein. He watched the vial fill with dark blood, trying to keep his mind on the job—on their patient and what might lie ahead for him, and for himself and Jenny as his doctors—not on snail-track-like scars on a woman’s arm, or the dark shadow that had crossed her face.

Fortunately, the woman—Jenny—recovered her composure and her sensible conversation brought him back to the present.

‘If it works in a cross-match, you can take it directly from me to him, although you’ll have to keep an eye on him for any transfusion reaction because I’ll be lying beside him.’

She smiled as if this were a little joke at her expense, but Kam couldn’t return the smile, his thoughts veering back to the puzzle of why this woman was willing to do so much for people she didn’t know, in an inhospitable place, and with no friends or family to support her.

Had she come to escape her memories?

Her pain?

‘Well?’ she prompted. ‘Are you going to do a cross-match or should I?’

With his mind back on the job, Kam took another vial and drew a little blood from their patient, Jenny acting as nurse, tightening the tourniquet on the man’s arm to bring up a vein then taping a dressing over the small wound. Kam mixed the contents of the two vials, watching anxiously for any sign of clotting, which would tell them the blood samples were not compatible. But the blood didn’t clot and the intrepid woman who puzzled him now produced a cannula and loop of tubing.

‘Let’s go,’ she said, sitting down beside Akbar while one of the nurses who worked with her explained to Akbar’s wife what was happening.

Lia shifted to sit beside Jenny and hold her hand, babbling her thanks for the gift of blood—the gift of life.

‘You need to be higher,’ Kam told the unexpected donor. ‘Are you all right to sit up if we stack pillows behind you?’

‘I’ve two bedrolls behind the partition,’ Jenny told him. ‘I can sit with those behind me to prop me up and that way my arm is higher than Akbar’s and it will feed down into him.’

She half smiled, while the nurse, Aisha, fetched the bedrolls.

‘It will be up to you to check the blood’s going the right way. I don’t want to be taking more of it from the poor man.’

Not only was she here in this desperate situation but she was joking about it. Kam thought back to the women he had studied with, both women from his own land and Western women, but none of them had been anything like this particular female doctor. No fuss, no nonsense, just get on with the job.

Although there was one problem now he thought about it…

‘I don’t think we should run it direct into Akbar. We should measure the amount—both for your sake as a donor and his as the recipient,’ he said, trying to be as efficient as she was at getting on with the job. ‘Do you have a container?’

‘The fluid bag is nearly empty. What if we run my blood into it, a pint at a time, then transfer it across to Akbar? We could fill something else, but at least we know the bag is sterile. And we can time it, so we know how long it takes to fill a bag then do away with that middle stage when he needs more.’

Kam realised he should have thought of these things. Had he become too used to have everything he needed for his work right at his fingertips—too used to modern medical practices—to think laterally?

Setting the questions aside, he did as she’d advised, siting the cannula carefully into Jenny’s arm, feeling the slight resistance as he pushed the needle through her skin then withdrew it carefully from the cannula, leaving the tube in place. He let this fill with blood before closing off the fluid running into Akbar and replacing that tube with the one through which Jenny’s blood was running.

He switched the tubes again and began running the precious red liquid far more slowly into the patient. And he did watch for a reaction, feeling Akbar’s skin, already hot with the beginnings of a fever, probably caused by infection, seeking other signs of transfusion reaction like violent shivering. But Akbar’s body gave no indication that the stranger’s blood was upsetting him. He lay still and barely conscious and hopefully would remain that way for some time, below the level of pain, while antibiotics and the body’s natural defences began to heal his wounds.

‘As if such wounds could ever heal!’ Kam muttered to himself, but his second patient had heard him. ‘To be beaten must be the height of humiliation,’ he added, to explain his thoughts.

‘We can only do so much,’ Jen reminded him, as they sat and watched in case there was a delayed reaction. ‘We can get him physically well, then hope that love and support and his own determination will get him the rest of the way.’

This was too much altogether for Kam—the woman was too good to be true. There had to be a catch, some reason she’d hidden herself out here, hiding her body under all-enveloping clothes and her golden hair under a scarf.

Surely this was taking escape too far!

‘Why are you here?’

In this, his land, such a question was extremely rude, but Kam asked it anyway, wanting to know, although uncomfortable with his curiosity.

‘To run a TB eradication programme,’ she replied, a tiny smile flickering about her lips. ‘We’ve covered that.’

‘But why here? There must be people in your own land who need medical help. Your accent says you’re Australian—isn’t that right?’

She nodded, but her gold-brown eyes looked preoccupied, as if she’d never really thought about answers to his questions before that moment.

‘I do work in the outback at home as well,’ she finally told him. ‘One placement at home, then one overseas.’

She paused, studying him for a moment as if deciding whether she’d elaborate on this answer or not.

What had she seen that she spoke again?

‘I actually like the foreign placements better. At home, I feel a sense of helplessness that I will never be able to do enough, as if my efforts are nothing more than one grain of sand in a wide desert—scarcely seen or felt, and certainly of no significance. But here, and in other places I’ve been—in Africa, in Colombia—I feel whatever I do is helping, even if it’s only in a very small way. And I do particular projects, like this TB programme, that have a beginning and an end.’

This time her smile was wider, and her eyes gleamed as if in offering him a confidence she was conferring a present on him.

‘I look on these trips as my reward.’

Kam saw the smile but her eyes, not her lips, had caught, and held, his attention. Hadn’t someone once said that the eyes were the mirror of the soul? In this woman’s eyes he’d seen compassion, and pain for their patient, and now a gleam that suggested a sense of humour.

Which she’d certainly need out here.

But still he was intrigued. ‘So, working, moving on—that’s what you like. Is it the freedom? The lack of ties to one particular place or person?’

She studied him for a moment, then she nodded.

‘It’s what I like,’ she confirmed.

‘You are a very strange woman.’

Her smile broadened.

‘A very ordinary woman,’ she corrected him. ‘Some people see the things I do as noble or self-sacrificing but, in fact, it’s totally selfish, because I love doing it—love the adventure of going somewhere different, the challenge of meeting goals under sometimes trying circumstances, the fun of learning about another culture, meeting people I would never have met if I’d stayed at home, tucked safely away in a GP practice, seeing people a hundred other doctors could see and listen to and treat.’

Kam was checking Akbar’s pulse as Jenny explained this, but his disbelief registered in a quick shake of his head.

‘And is there no one left behind you who is harmed by your adventures? No one left to worry?’

He turned to look at her, certain she would tell the truth but wanting to watch her face where, he was sure, he’d read hesitation if she chose to avoid his question.

‘My parents are both GPs, in a safe practice, one I might one day join, but although they wouldn’t choose to do what I have done, they live vicariously through my travels. They support me and scrounge equipment and drugs for me, and take in strangers I send to them, people from distant lands who need more medical attention than I can provide. They had a Guatemalan family live with them for six months while local reconstructive surgeons fixed their daughter’s face. She’d been born with a double hare lip and cleft palate.’

Kam shook his head again, unable to find the words to express his surprise, although his own people would take in those in trouble just as easily. But he’d always considered that the way of the desert, born out of need when the support of others might make a difference between life and death.

‘Let’s see if the blood is doing any good. I’ll check his blood pressure.’

The woman’s practical suggestion jolted him as his mind had wandered far from his patient.

‘I keep forgetting we don’t have monitors doing these things for us all the time,’ he admitted

Jenny smiled and shook her head.

‘No such luck. But before they had all these fancy things, doctors managed and so will we.’

Kam returned her smile.

‘Of course we will.’

He watched as she inflated the blood-pressure cuff and they both watched the readout on the small screen of the machine. Akbar’s blood pressure hadn’t dropped any further, but neither had it risen.

‘Let’s give it an hour,’ Kam suggested. ‘Are you feeling all right? Would you like a break from this tent before you give the second pint? A walk or, better still, a cup of tea? What eating arrangements do you have? It seems a long time since I had breakfast at my campsite.’

‘A cup of tea and something to eat is easily fixed,’ Jen said as he put out a hand to help her to her feet.

She took the offered hand reluctantly, no doubt because of the uneasiness and flutters, but she was grateful for it as he steadied her.

‘This way.’

Telling Aisha where she’d be, she led Kam towards the food tent, squaring her shoulders and walking straighter as she recalled his upright posture and the slightly arrogant tilt of his head, wondering again about the blood of desert warriors…

The food tent was set up by a different volunteer aid organisation and stocked with tinned and dried foodstuffs. Most of the refugees collected food from the canteen but cooked and ate within their family groups, but those who had no families now ran the tent as a kind of cafeteria, providing hot water for tea and coffee and meals three times a day.

‘Smells good,’ Kam said as he entered.

‘Stew,’ Jenny explained. ‘Not made with goat but with canned corned beef and dried vegetables. It tastes much better than it sounds.’

‘Or you get very hungry out here in the desert and would eat anything,’ her companion said, and Jen suspected he was teasing her. But would he tease, this stranger with the profile that could have been used as a model for an artist to etch an emperor’s face on an ancient coin?

She had no idea and was slightly concerned that she’d even considered it because teasing, even gentle teasing, felt like personal attention…

The women tending the big kettles and stew pots handed them small glasses of tea and indicated they should sit while the bowls were filled with food.

Jenny lowered herself easily, used by now to this custom of sitting on one leg while the other was propped in front of her to use as an arm rest as she ate.

‘You adapt quickly to local customs?’ Kam said, half-teasing again as he nodded at the position she’d taken up.

‘These people have had thousands of years to work out the best way to sit while eating—why would I want to do otherwise?’

She sipped her strong, sweet tea—the sugar was added as the water boiled—and watched the shadow of a smile pass across his face, then he too sipped at the steaming liquid, raising his head to speak in another tongue to the woman who was putting food in front of him. Jenny knew they were words of thanks and praise because, rather than the guttural sounds of everyday talk, they had the soft, musical notes that, to Jen, always sounded more like spoken poetry than day-to-day language.

‘I may be able to sit properly,’ Jen told him, ‘but no matter how hard I try, I can’t get my “Thank you” to sound like you make it sound. I think it would take a lifetime to learn the Arabic language.’

‘And another lifetime, or two or three, to learn different tribal variations of it,’ Kam told her. ‘I can probably make myself understood to the people of the camp, but every tribe has words that are common only to it. Do you know that in Arabic there are eight hundred words for sword, three hundred for camel and two hundred for snake?’

‘Putting the sword—an instrument of death—at the top of the most useful word list?’

He studied her for a moment then smiled a real smile, one that lit up his rather stern face and revealed strong, even white teeth.

‘Definitely not. They have even more words for love.’

The huskiness was back in his voice, and Jen shivered as a strange sensation feathered down her spine.

She glanced at her companion, hoping her reaction hadn’t been obvious to him, and was pleased to see he’d turned his attention to the woman serving their meals, speaking again, perhaps telling her how good the food smelt.

Another of the women set a bowl of food in front of Jenny and handed her a thin round of bread.

‘Eat,’ she said, then smiled shyly, as if embarrassed by showing off the English word.

Jen returned the compliment by thanking her in Arabic, although she knew her pronunciation was hopeless—especially after hearing Kam’s fluid, rhythmic use of the same words.

They ate, Jen now adept at scooping up the food with her bread, holding it always in her right hand and using pieces of it as easily as she’d use cutlery at home. But as she ate uneasiness crept in, born of not knowing what to make of the stranger who already seemed so at home in the camp.

‘We shall check on our patient then sit outside for a while,’ he decreed, as if picking up on vibes she hadn’t realised she was giving out. ‘Today’s experience has probably made you think of other things that a proper medical clinic will need.’

‘I refuse to think about work while I’m eating,’ Jenny said, wiping the bread around her bowl to soak up the last bits of gravy. ‘Especially as we haven’t had dessert yet.’

As she spoke one of the women approached, a big metal dish of sheep’s milk yoghurt in her arms. She scooped some into Jenny’s bowl, handed her a spoon, then passed her a tin of golden syrup, a carton of which had somehow found its way into the camp’s supplies.

‘Best dessert in the world,’ Jen told Kam, scooping golden syrup onto her yoghurt. ‘Sweet and sour and very yummy. The women here think I’m mad!’

He watched her eat, shaking his head when the woman offered him yoghurt and Jenny urged the golden syrup on him, but she’d only taken a couple of mouthfuls when Rosana appeared, crawling across the floor of the tent and settling herself into Jenny’s lap. Now Jenny shared, spooning most of the treat into Rosana’s mouth, cuddling the little girl and talking to her all the time, although she knew Rosana didn’t understand a word she said.

‘She has no family?’ Kam asked as they left the tent, Rosana once again perched on Jenny’s hip.

‘Not that we can find. In fact, I think she might belong to one of the warring tribes or clans across the border.’

She paused, stopping beneath a spindly juniper tree, knowing questions could be considered rude but intrigued enough to ask anyway.

‘Having lived here, grown up here, do you know enough about these countries to understand the war that is going on over there?’

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