The Sheikh and the Surrogate Mum (16 page)

‘Your bird? A falcon?’

Liz breathed the words, unable to believe she was going to see a hunting bird in flight—unable to believe an already amazing day could get even more extraordinary.

‘Let’s go,’ Khalifa said, and he took her arm and led her to the car, opening the door for her then helping her in, something he’d done before, but this time it seemed…

More intimate?

No, she was imagining it—building on the kiss and the impact it had had on her body.

He was in the car himself now, starting the engine, his long, slim fingers relaxed on the steering-wheel.

Long slim fingers that had stroked her back—

Forget the kiss! Think of something else!

‘You said Saif had set up our camp. You sent him out to do this?’

Khalifa glanced her way and smiled again.

‘I didn’t send him,’ he said, a little stiff now. ‘I am more than capable of setting up a camp but he insisted on doing it, or maybe Rimmi gave him his orders. All he’d say was that he wanted us to be comfortable, and to be sure there was food you could eat. He doesn’t trust me as a cook. The bird was a surprise, something I hadn’t expected.’

‘But he knew it would please you? He knows you so well?’

He didn’t turn this time, all his concentration on getting the vehicle up the sand dune, but he nodded, then said, ‘Probably too well,’ in such a rueful voice Liz had to wonder what he’d meant.

It seemed they must have driven up and over and down at least forty more dunes before once again she saw, in the distance, a dark shadow on the ground. As they drew nearer it materialised into a tent, but a tent unlike any Liz had ever seen. It was broad and low-set, slung a mere five feet above the ground, the sides sloping down onto the sand, poles and ropes holding and anchoring it.

‘In the past, the tents were made from camel skins, the rugs woven from either camel or goat hair. These days the tents are made from factory-made fabric, but still keep the dark colouring of the originals, and the rug-weaving is still practised.’

He pulled the car up to one side of the tent and Liz saw, set out in front of it a brightly patterned rug and a stack of firewood, while a small fire was set beyond the rug. She could picture the scene from times gone by, with the men, backs to the tent, looking out past the fire into the darkness, looking out for trouble! Inside the tent she could make out two flat mattresses, not unlike the ones she’d been resting on earlier in the day. There was also a low table and, incongruously, a number of cool boxes, no doubt containing the dinner Saif didn’t trust Khalifa to cook.

She slipped out of the car and stretched, then looked around for her companion, finding him bent over a box in the shade of the tent. Moving closer, she could tell it was the kind of cage used to carry small cats or dogs, and as Khalifa slipped a heavy gauntlet onto his arm, she realised the bird he’d spoken of, his falcon, was in the cage.

‘May I come closer?’ she asked, uncertain just how falcons might take to strangers.

‘Of course,’ Khalifa told her. ‘She’s wearing her hood so you won’t frighten her.’

‘More likely she’ll frighten me,’ Liz joked, but Khalifa was concentrating on the cage, undoing the latches then putting his gauntleted hand close to the ground, murmuring to his bird, words Liz couldn’t understand.

The bird hopped out. She was far smaller than Liz had imagined, perhaps the size of an owl. She saw what Khalifa had meant by the hood, a little leather cap on the bird’s head. It was sitting on the glove now, and she could see strings coming from around its legs, the strings now clasped between Khalifa’s fingers.

‘She’s beautiful,’ Liz whispered, taking in the snowy breast of the bird and the dark bands of colour on her back and wing feathers. Khalifa was petting her, stroking her, talking soothingly, and it seemed to Liz the bird understood exactly what he was saying. He took the hood off her head and she turned to look at him, her eyes bright and inquisitive.

‘She looks like you,’ Liz told him, as she saw the two heads in profile, both imperious, haughty, aware of their power and the attraction of it.

Khalifa raised his eyebrows then spoke again to the bird, carrying her away from the tent, holding his arm up, then releasing the strings he’d held between his fingers.

Wide wings raised high, the bird seemed to stretch, then she lifted into the air, circling as she rose with what seemed like effortless ease until she grew so small it was hard to see her. Just a speck, circling and circling.

‘She must have fantastic eyesight if she can spot her prey from that height,’ Liz said.

Just as she spoke the bird dived, arrowing towards the ground before rising again, a smaller bird in its talons.

‘Oh!’

‘Do you find it cruel?’ Khalifa asked, correctly interpreting Liz’s exclamation.

‘Not cruel, because she has to eat—we all do. But it was unexpected, I suppose. I had no idea what she’d eat.’

‘Quail tonight—but in the past the birds hunted to feed the families who bred and kept them. There’s very little food in the desert and often whatever the birds caught was the only protein the families ate. Now it is sport, but back at Najme for sport we use small stuffed bunnies and birds that are flung from a bow to give the bird the impression of movement.’

The bird had returned, dropping the quail at Khalifa’s feet and returning to perch on his gauntlet.

‘I’ll feed her now and then she will fly without hunting, fly just for the delight of it, to feel the air beneath her wings and the air currents carrying her upwards.’

He took the two birds back towards the shade, and Liz sensed he regretted letting her see the kill, as if it—or her reaction to it—had changed something between them.

She followed him and watched, understanding that she couldn’t judge either bird or man. The bird had followed its nature, it had been born knowing it had to hunt to eat.

‘I do understand,’ she said, squatting awkwardly beside him, wanting more than anything to recapture the closeness they’d shared at the well.

Wanting him to kiss her again? her head asked.

Probably, was the honest answer.

Her meal finished, the falcon hopped back on Khalifa’s arm and he held it high until the bird took off again.

‘Do you want to catch her?’ he asked, pulling off the gauntlet and offering it to Liz.

‘Would she come to me?’

He dug in his pocket and produced a whistle.

‘Put on the glove then blow this and hold your hand up high.’

Excitement rose as Liz pulled on the heavy leather covering, then put the tiny whistle to her lips. It made a sharp, high-pitched sound, barely heard, yet the bird turned in the air and as Liz raised her arm, it dived straight down, alighting, not at three hundred and fifty kilometres an hour but as lightly as a feather on the glove.

‘Oh!’ she whispered, this time in utter wonder, for the bird, close up now, was even more beautiful than she’d first thought, the soft feathers gleaming in the last rays of the sun, the proud head turning this way and that.

Khalifa guided Liz’s hand down towards a stand. The bird stepped onto it and looked around, her bright eyes taking in her surroundings.

‘Will she stay there?’ Liz asked.

‘I’ll attach a leash to her jesses, the little strings that hang down from her anklets, and fix her there so she’s safe. But I don’t think she’d fly away unless she was startled by something.’

‘She’s amazing,’ Liz said, spellbound by the beauty of the bird.

‘She is,’ Khalifa said, and he put his arm around Liz as she stood looking, and the arm made her wonder if he was still talking about the bird.

He guided her towards the tent.

‘Will you relax inside, or should I bring some pillows out to the rug beside the fire?’

It was such an ordinary question Liz forgot about there being subtext in his conversations. He was nothing more than a kind man, and his touch was simply supportive, while the kiss…

Well, the kiss could have been nothing more than happiness at being back in his special place in the desert and wanting to share his delight.

‘Outside, please,’ she replied. ‘I could sit and watch the desert change for ever.’

He turned towards her as if to say something, then shook his head and ducked into the low tent, returning with one of the padded mattresses and a couple of big cushions in his arms.

‘Sit!’ he ordered when he’d arranged them to his satisfaction on the rug.

He held her arm, supporting her weight, while she sank down onto the ground, then he insisted she make herself comfortable, helping adjust the cushions behind her back.

‘A drink? I’ll check what Saif has left us, but there is sure to be some iced tea, and I would think pomegranate juice if you’d like something more exciting.’

Liz smiled up at him.

‘I think pomegranate juice is appropriate for the desert,’ she said, stretching back against the cushions and smiling to herself as he disappeared into the tent.

‘You are happy?’ he asked when he returned.

She had to pause and think about it, then answered honestly.

‘I am,’ she said. ‘Right now, this very minute, all my problems seem so far away, and being pampered, offered drinks, being waited on—that’s special.’

He squatted beside her to hand her the drink, his dark gaze scanning her face.

‘I imagine you are far too independent to accept much pampering,’ he said, easing into a sitting position beside her—close but not too close.

She was about to agree, then remembered.

‘Actually,’ she admitted, ‘I was showered with pampering when I first became pregnant. Bill and Oliver couldn’t do enough for me. It was all I could do to take off my own shoes when I stayed overnight for a visit.’

Khalifa took her free hand and squeezed her fingers, although this was the first time he’d heard her speak of her brother and his partner with sadness but not deep pain in her voice.

‘Everything will be all right,’ he told her, and although it was an empty promise when so much in her life was in limbo, she accepted it with a smile and lifted her glass towards him.

‘Cheers!’ she said.

‘
Shucram
!’ he replied, lifting an imaginary glass and touching it to hers.

‘
Shucram
? Is it Arabic?’

‘It is what we say as a toast. You like the word?’

‘I do,’ Liz agreed and raised her glass again. ‘
Shucram
!’

It was a nothing conversation, words passing back and forth, but something else was passing back and forth as well—awareness.

Or was it only one-way traffic, he wondered, this tingling in his skin, the rush along his nerves, the tightening of his body?

She was pregnant!

Yes, but try as he might to reject the thought, he was beginning to believe that he found her pregnancy just as sexy as the rest of her. At first he’d thought it was just the hair, and then the way she laughed, and her creamy skin, and her eyes behind the glasses. But the pregnancy definitely wasn’t offputting, and the more he got to know the woman inside the outer shell, the more the attraction grew.

‘Are you not having a drink?’ she asked, and he heaved himself off the rug and headed for the tent, not for a drink but to collect his thoughts.

He fished around in the cool boxes and found that the ever-reliable Saif had packed snacks, even labelling the flat platters with a sticker—’Use these for snacks’. Saif really did think his boss was an idiot.

Idiotic right now.

He wasn’t even sure if he was reading the signs of a mutual attraction—kissing him back, pressing her body into his—correctly.

He put the snacks onto the platter, removing the sticker first, then poured himself a glass of juice and returned outside.

Liz was lying back, looking all around her, wide eyes taking in the beauty of the desert as the shadows grew longer and the sinking sun left the dunes black-shadowed and mysterious. But the sky was brightening in the west and soon the colours of the sunset would be reflected in the crystalline sand, so they’d be afloat in a sea of red and gold and orange, even vermillion and saffron, these last two better words because they held some of the beauty of the colours.

It held them silent, the nightly transformation of the desert sands, and only when the colours faded and dusk fell about them did Liz move, putting down her glass on the platter and turning to lie on her side, looking at Khalifa.

‘I can see why you stayed an extra year,’ she said quietly. ‘As well as its spectacular beauty, this place brings a sense of peace, doesn’t it?’

‘It’s because you can’t fight it and win,’ he told her. ‘You can only survive in the desert if you learn to live with it, learning all its many moods, bending to its will rather than trying to bend it to yours. The road we followed to the oasis and the well is a great example. It was built by my brother to open up the desert, but slowly and surely the desert is reclaiming it. Not that it matters when we have vehicles that can traverse the sand, but no man can tame the desert.’

‘Neither should they want to,’ Liz said. ‘We’ve already tamed too much of the world’s land, and we need these wild places to—would it sound silly if I said to replenish our souls?’

He moved the tray so he could touch her face.

‘Definitely not silly,’ he said.

He wanted to touch more of her, to feel his hands slide over her skin, to lift her hair and kiss the nape of her neck beneath it, to lie with her so their bodies learned the shape and texture of each other.

‘I’ll get our dinner. Knowing Saif, he’ll have stuck to cold meats and salads so I don’t have to show my lack of cooking prowess, but as it’s getting cool, I’ll light the fire anyway.’

He edged away from the distraction of Liz and lit the fire, then went into the tent and lit the lantern and the candles Saif had left for them.

The light was soft, but it was enough for him to discover his guess had been right. Inside the largest of the cool boxes were platters of meat, already laid out, and salads in bowls. The last of the cool boxes held an array of fruit. That, he’d leave until later.

He brought out food, setting it beside his guest so she could reach everything with ease. Plates followed, and damp napkins in a thermos flask so they were still warm and faintly scented.