Heart of the Desert (12 page)

H
E WAS
in London.

Since their last night together, as surely as Georgie checked her horoscope in the morning, so too she typed ‘Zaraq’ into her search engine.

Clicked ‘News’.

And just as she had so often, she scrolled through the latest offerings.

The illness that had crippled the country was all but over.

Hassan and Jamal had brought their baby home.

The king was pleased with his youngest son, so pleased that after a brief return home the king had again headed for the UK to resume
business
. Her eyes scanned faster than her fingers could click and though Ibrahim was often mentioned, today was not one of those days.

For four days now there had been no mention of him, but he was in London Georgie was sure, because Felicity had been vague when Georgie had tried to find out, and though there was no way she could properly explain it, her body told her so.

It was the hardest thing to continue working.

As much as her medically minded sister raised an eyebrow, as much as it didn’t make logical sense, Georgie’s work was more than touch, more than scent. To be effective it required a piece of herself, and as Georgie greeted her clients throughout the week, there weren’t many pieces left to give.

Between each one she checked her phone, her messages, her emails.

She fed the craving that would not abate then forced herself to go on.

‘I had booked a scalp massage, but tonight I have to go out.’ Sophia Porter was a new client and Georgie checked carefully through the questionnaire she had filled in. ‘Perhaps I should rebook, though I was hoping I could purchase something …’ The woman closed her blue eyes and pressed her middle finger to her forehead. ‘I suffer with migraines. I’ve tried so many medicines, so many different treatments.’

‘Why don’t you let me give you a hand massage?’ Georgie offered, because it was her favourite initial contact. It was so non-invasive. It was often all her young clients would allow, but as the woman wavered, perhaps thinking Georgie was being pushy, she offered, ‘Complimentary, and you can see if it helps before you buy anything.’

Sophia rested back in the chair, and Georgie prepared her oils. She had no ready-made blends, preferring to assess the client first and make her choices instinctively.

Lavender was a favourite for migraines, but sensing Sophia’s anxiety she added clary sage and then a drop of marjoram, then Georgie moistened her hands with the fragrant brew and took her patient’s hands.

Like a kitten who had never been let out, the woman’s hands were soft, quite beautiful in fact, long fingered and exquisitely manicured, but despite Georgie’s best efforts her client would not relax, asking Georgie questions. Sometimes talking relaxed people, so Georgie told Sophia she’d just got back from holiday.

‘Anywhere nice?’

‘My elder sister lives in Zaraq. It’s an island—’

‘I have heard of it.’ Sophia smiled.

Georgie opened another vial and took out the dropper. Some melissa might help to help relax her client, and with scent being a key to memory, in that moment she was back in the desert. Her hands stopped working as well as they had, because they were shaking a little as she recalled him. As she paused to regroup, Sophia closed her eyes and inhaled.

‘Ah, Bal-samin …’ Sophia relaxed back in the chair. ‘Tell me about Zaraq. Is it very beautiful?’

‘Very,’ Georgie admitted, and she felt the woman’s hand relax as she talked and so she talked some more, told her about the endless sands and the miracle of finding a shell in the middle of a desert. She pulled gently on each finger in turn till the tension seeped out; she told her of the sky that went on for ever and the sun that beat down, feeling like a skullcap on your head, of the mad winds and strange rules, and when it hurt to
recall it, when she could not speak of it and not weep, she looked up and saw her client asleep.

‘My headache is gone,’ Sophia said when Georgie woke her gently. Despite Georgie’s protests, she insisted on paying and also purchased some melissa oil, and she gave the most enormous tip. ‘You have a gift.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Could I book again?’

‘Of course.’ Georgie opened up her calendar on screen, and went to type in details from the form Sophia had filled in.

‘Mrs?’ Georgie checked. ‘Or Ms? You didn’t put your title.’

‘There wasn’t a box for “Queen”.’ Sophia said, and Georgie felt her heart still, felt as if she had been lied to. ‘Put Ms. That is what I go by here—it is far easier than trying to explain.’

‘You weren’t here for a massage?’

‘No,’ Sophia admitted, ‘but I will be back again—if you will have me. I really have had the most terrible headache. I never thought a massage could clear it but I was wrong.’ She gave Georgie a tired smile. ‘I worry about my son.’

‘Have you spoken to him?’

‘I have. He is here in London.’ Georgie’s heart leapt but only for a moment because now it was confirmed he was here, it hurt that he hadn’t made any attempt to call. ‘And you are every bit as beautiful as he describes, every bit as warm and as loving.’

‘He’s spoken about me?’

‘Ibrahim is not one for confiding but, yes, finally he admitted what was on his mind. He misses you.’

‘He hasn’t called.’

‘He worries about you,’ Sophia said. ‘Worries at the cruel press you will receive in Zaraq and what it will do to you.’ She gave Georgie a smile. ‘He saw what it did to me. I left, and for two years the press went wild about me. My husband forgave my indiscretion, the people of Zaraq did not. But I do not need their forgiveness. I have a wonderful life here, and my husband comes often.’

‘But you miss it?’

Sophia gave a nonchalant shrug, ‘Sometimes—but I am happy here, where I can be myself. I have told Ibrahim the same.’ Sophia denied the pain in her soul and looked Georgie in the eye as she did so. Not for a second did she feel guilty for lying. All she saw was the chance to keep her son.

To avoid losing the last of her family to the desert.

For years she had pleaded with Ibrahim not to return and for many of those she had never thought he would. Yet since the wedding there had been a restlessness to him that at first she had tried to ignore, but seeing him from afar lead a county in crisis, hearing him talk about building a future for the people of Zaraq, she had been sure she had lost him—that again the desert had won.

Then he had told her about Georgie, about a woman who could never live there, a woman that he loved, and finally Sophia saw a way into the future, with a family to grow old with, with grandchildren who weren’t strangers and Christmas and birthdays not taken alone.

‘You can have both worlds,’ she had told him. ‘Don’t turn your back on love. You will find a way, Ibrahim. Together you can work it out.’

And she told Georgie the same thing.

‘He told me you were fragile, and of all you have been through.’ And that confused Georgie, because she thought Ibrahim saw her differently. ‘But you are not ill now. I can see for myself that you are strong. If the papers in Zaraq speak badly of you, you will not crumple. Anyway, as I pointed out to my son, you will be here. He can protect you, defend you … He should not let your past affect your future.’

‘I don’t think we’ve got a future.’

‘I wouldn’t be so sure.’ Sophia smiled. ‘I know how you feel, Georgie. I understand your fears, and if you need someone to talk to, if you want to talk to someone who can relate, you have my details.’

I
T DID
not abate.

There was a constant call and he tried to ignore it.

There was blackness in his heart and restlessness in his soul.

His tie choked every morning.

The city streets were crowded, the rain was filthy, but home could be here.

He had listened to his brothers, to the king, but he did not agree with them. He had listened to his mother too as she urged him not to close that door to his heart.

That he did have choices.

And he would exercise them, Ibrahim had finally decided. Home
would
be here and he could still help the people of Zaraq.

He climbed the stairs to Georgie’s small office in long, deliberate strides, his mind made up and nothing could change it.

‘I’ve got a client due any moment …’ She recognised his footsteps on the stairs and did not look up because she didn’t want to look at him—didn’t want to see his
face, didn’t want another image added to what she must somehow one day erase.

‘I am your appointment. I had my PA make it in her name.’ The details did not matter. ‘I need to see you …’

‘It’s better if we don’t.’

‘Better for who?’ Ibrahim demanded. ‘Do you feel better, not seeing me?’ He saw her pale face, worried about her slender figure. ‘We need to talk.’

‘I’m not ready to talk.’ She wasn’t. The sight of him, the scent of him, to have him in her space, was overwhelming. She wanted to touch him, to fall in his arms, but she was scared to have to lose him all over again.

‘Then don’t talk, just listen.’ He swallowed. ‘I would be proud to have you as my wife.’

‘But?’ Georgie questioned.

‘There is no but.’

She was quite sure there was and she didn’t want to hear it, was scared to look at him and ask the question that she knew she must. So she forced her eyes upwards, saw the pain in his eyes and knew how badly she’d been missed. She made herself ask the question.

‘What about my work?’ She danced around the issue and yet subtly she broached it—so subtly, even Ibrahim did not realise it.

‘I’m not asking you to give anything up.’

‘You love that land, Ibrahim. You want to be there, I can see it, I can feel it, I know it …’

‘No.’

‘Yes.’
And it was true.

A curse that attached to him, that lived within him, but he could have both, of that he was sure.

‘We will live here. I can return for work, to see my family, but our home will be here.’

And she wanted to say yes, she wanted so much to say yes, to fall into his arms, to accept his offer, to be his wife. Every beat of her heart propelled her to say yes, to give in to the throb of her body, but she was less impulsive now than she had once been, stronger now, and would first take care of herself.

‘And I will return with you?’

He hesitated a moment before he shook his head. ‘When the news comes out about your past, there will be outrage—but you will be here, I will protect you from that.’

‘I don’t need your protection,’ Georgie said. ‘Because it’s not going to happen.’

‘I’m offering you—’

‘Half a princess, that’s what you’re offering me,’ Georgie sneered, surprising herself at the bitterness in her own voice, but it was there, right there beneath the surface, black and angry, just like the truth beneath his shiny offer. ‘Well, I’m worth more than that.’

‘I will give you everything you need here.’

‘But you cannot take me to your home. I cannot live there like my sister …’

‘So you want a palace?’ He too was bitter. ‘You want all the finery?’

‘Yes,’ Georgie said. ‘If I marry you, I want all of it.’

‘You’re not who I thought I knew,’ Ibrahim said, but she was ready for him.

‘I’m better than her,’ Georgie said. ‘And every day I get better. You know I’d have taken it a few months ago, hell, I’d have taken it last week. I’d have taken any crumb you offered just to be with you, but not now …’

‘Hardly crumbs.’ He was offering her everything he possibly could and then some—half his life spent in a plane just to be with her at night.

‘I don’t just want birthdays and Christmas and a husband at weekends. I don’t want access arrangements with a family that hates me. I won’t be an army wife to a country that won’t even acknowledge me.’ And she met his eyes with another demand. ‘And don’t ever describe me as fragile again.’

‘I never have.’

But she didn’t believe him.

‘You don’t have to protect me, or hide me from my past. I’m glad for every last mistake I’ve ever made because six months ago, six days ago, had you come and offered me this, I’d have taken it.

‘I would have been your bride without question but not any more.

‘I want you in my bed each night.

‘I want the palace and the desert and sometimes I want to come back home to London,’ she told him, each sentence delivered more strongly than the last.

‘I want it all and I deserve it, and if you can’t give it to me, if you can’t share all of you, then I won’t take the half that you’re offering. I’m better off single, better off
being able to go freely to Zaraq and see my sister and niece, better off being my own person than an exiled wife.’

‘You’re saying no?’

‘Absolutely,’ Georgie said.

‘All that I can give you …’

‘Save it for the wife your father picks for you, Ibrahim,’ Georgie said. ‘Save it for your virgin.’ She almost spat at the thought of it, but she contained herself with words. ‘No matter how well you
teach
her, she’ll never be as good as me.’

T
HE
trouble with angry words, Georgie thought, as he stormed from her office, was that you didn’t get to rehearse them.

She wanted to run after him, to reframe her words, to explain better—that she wasn’t talking about sex, wasn’t declaring herself as the world’s best lover. Well, she was, but only to him.

And it wasn’t just about sex. It was the conversations, the thoughts shared that he could surely never repeat so easily with another.

But she would not run after him, she was stronger than that.

Fragile indeed!

How dared he?

So she took to her oils and inhaled melissa, then hurled the bottle against the wall when she smelt Bal-smin, just as Sophia had, because now it would always take her back to the desert.

Always.

How could Sophia stand there and tell her she was happy when her son and her grandson lay buried in the
desert, when she had heard Ibrahim tell his father how she had wept at the birth of Hassan’s son.

Sophia had lied and Georgie didn’t blame her a bit for it.

Maybe she should go and talk to her, but honestly this time. Perhaps it might help to hear her true pain, to confirm how it felt to be half a wife, to seal the decision she had made.