Desert Fantasies(50)

Polly said nothing. She watched the door, waiting for Rashid to reappear. To be called back like that couldn’t be good. It had to be news about his father.

And she cared.

Polly shivered. What was happening inside?

Bizarrely, because the circumstances were so dissimilar, it brought back memories of her father’s death. Details she hadn’t thought of in years came flooding back. She remembered standing in Mrs Portman’s red-carpeted hall listening while the other woman spoke about ‘getting the little thing in her coat ready’ and ‘popping her in the taxi’.

Before then she’d thought her father would get better. That had been the longest drive of her life. Eight years old and she’d never been in a taxi on her own before. Her mother had met her at the hospital doors and had held her close.

Polly bit her lip so hard she drew blood. Rashid was no child of eight. Whatever was happening now he would be able to rationalise, but she ached for him. There was unfinished business between him and his father and that would haunt him for the rest of his life.

‘Here he is! Now we can get going.’ Bout bloody time,’ John said under his breath.

Polly spun round to look at Rashid, searching his handsome face for some sign of what had happened. There was nothing to see. His eyes were emotionless.

‘I am sorry to have delayed you,’ Rashid said by way of a greeting. ‘Shall we leave?’

He barely spared her a glance. She shouldn’t have expected he would, but it hurt that he didn’t look to her. She felt so close to him. Connected.

Because she loved him.

The thought slid into her brain but it brought no surprise. Of course, she loved him. He’d let her see the man behind the prince. Nothing she’d read about him had prepared her for that.

She was in love with the man who shielded his sister. The man who loved his brother without rivalry. The man who had sat in the cool of the evening and listened to her. He was exciting. Compelling. A man she could trust with her life.

Except he didn’t want that. She tempted him, but she was not what he wanted. He’d been conditioned to want an Arabian wife and she could never be that, however much she loved him.

Polly allowed herself to be steered into one of the waiting cars and, unlike last time, Rashid travelled alone. She sat back in the soft leather seat, free to notice the way the convoy moved off in perfect unison and the way the outriders took their place at regulated intervals.

She knew what it was like to live among the British aristocracy, but this was a mode of travel she’d no experience of outside of Amrah. Despite the beauty of Rashid’s palatial home she’d allowed herself to forget he was royalty.

She was in love with an Amrahi prince. A man of influence and power. No amount of physical chemistry was going to make anything other than a temporary relationship between them possible. It wasn’t simply a matter of cultural divide. It was status, expectation, money, connections.

In backing away from their kiss Rashid had been kind. He’d not allowed her to hope.

‘Where are we?’ Pete asked, cupping his hand to peer out of the tinted window. ‘Looks like we’re heading for a private airport.’ He whistled. ‘There are helicopters waiting. Nice.’

All three cars came to a stop in perfect alignment. The motorcycle outriders dismounted and guards with guns took their positions.

‘I suppose the great man didn’t fancy driving.’

Or didn’t think it was safe enough. That had to be a possibility, too. Rashid had personally guaranteed their safety. His father was dead or dying and he was here, keeping his word.

Polly hung back, watching as Rashid disappeared from sight and then waiting until she was directed which helicopter to go to. It was a couple of minutes, no more, before she was climbing in with the blades already spinning above. She settled herself in one of the seats, taking care to fasten the seat belt tightly across her lap, before looking up to see Rashid was at the controls.

It was a visual confirmation of the chasm between them. He lived a life of private planes, helicopters, race horses.

A prince.

She watched as he confidently ran through his pre-flight checks. Then, with a controlled lurch, the helicopter lifted up off the ground. Polly stared, glassy eyed, out of the window as Samaah became an aerial view, the modern motorways cutting a great swathe across it.

This was everything she had dreamed of seeing, the adventure she wanted, but she felt hollow inside. Around Samaah the countryside was vast and empty. For a time. Then the arid stony ground gave way to salt flats and, within minutes, she had her first glimpse of the Arabian Sea. Turquoise blue and edged with Amrah’s famous white sands.

A town spread out in the shape of a pear drop and was dominated by three craggy forts, presumably built to protect from marauding forces from the sea. Al-Jalini. And as dramatically beautiful as anything she could have imagined.

Polly held her breath while Rashid swung the helicopter out over the sea and back towards town, coming to land on a designated helipad in the gardens of what looked like a fanciful sultan’s palace. It was all arches, marble pillars and a stunning domed atrium.

Baz swore softly beside her. ‘Like something out of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, isn’t it?’

She nodded. It was exactly like that. A place for tourists who preferred their experience of Arabia to be sanitised. Polly released her seat belt and reached inside her bag for her sunglasses.

‘Let’s go.’

She nodded again and followed Baz and John as they stepped down from the helicopter into unexpectedly lush gardens. By the time she turned another pilot was at the controls and Rashid had come to stand beside her, tension radiating from him.

‘What is this place?’

‘The Al-Ruwi Palace Hotel,’ Rashid answered her question crisply, his eyes focused on the helicopters hovering like gnats above. ‘I’m sorry if the change of plan has unsettled you but it is safer to fly.’

Polly so desperately wanted to ask about his father. She wanted to reach out and smooth the crease between his eyebrows, kiss away the tiredness in his eyes. There was no opportunity, even had she dared. Baz joined them, smiling broadly. ‘Fantastic view coming in. Just wished we’d had a chance to get some shots of that.’

‘If you wish I can arrange it,’ Rashid said, turning his attention to the second helicopter.

‘Bikini-babes everywhere,’ John whispered in her ear, reaching into his pocket for his packet of cigarettes. ‘Bit different from Samaah.’ He stepped away before lighting up and Baz wandered over to join him.

Polly took a sharp intake of breath. She couldn’t wait any longer. She had to know. ‘Was the news bad?’

A tell-tale muscle pulsed in his cheek. ‘Expected.’ Rashid met her gaze briefly. ‘Hanif will ring when it is over.’

‘Shouldn’t you be there? With the rest of your family at least?’ Rashid shouldn’t be here baby-sitting a Western film crew he’d never really wanted to come.

‘I have not been asked for.’

‘And Bahiyaa?’ She asked the question even though she knew the answer.

‘Is content to remain in Samaah.’

‘Couldn’t she have come here with us?’

Rashid’s face broke into a half-smile, the bleak look vanishing. ‘To the desert? Bahiyaa would rather shave her head.’

Polly choked on a sudden laugh. It was strange how crying and laughter were so close. Flip sides of the same coin. ‘She does hate it, doesn’t she? She told me riding camels was a male preserve and that they were welcome to it.’

A frisson of awareness crackled between them.

‘S-so, is that true?’

‘Among the Bedouin people of the Atiq Desert, yes. Their womenfolk walk behind.’

‘Sexist!’

His eyes smiled down at her. ‘You have yet to sit on a camel. We will talk after.’

It was their only chance to talk before they were joined by her colleagues.

‘I have taken the liberty of arranging rooms here at the Al-Ruwi Palace Hotel. Its security is tight and they’re used to accommodating Western visitors. There are good sports facilities, a bar…’

‘Did someone say bar?’ John asked, looking about him for an ashtray only to have a uniformed hotel employee hurry over.

Polly soon wandered away. Down two broad steps to her right there were fifty or so chefs dotted along the edge of a sweeping circular courtyard and cooking on giant open grills.

‘Who knew the Garden of Eden was in Amrah?’ Pete said, coming alongside her. ‘Something, isn’t it?’

Polly looked at him curiously. This wasn’t Eden. It was like some fabricated film set. Fun, but not real. Not at all like the beauty of the whitewashed and sand-coloured buildings they’d flown over.

‘Rashid wants us to get our room keys and then we can explore what’s available here.’

‘Sorry. Yes, of course.’

The path meandered through improbable planting and passed four tennis courts. No one paid the slightest bit of attention to them until they walked into the exuberantly decorated reception hall. Then the Amrahi nationals noticed Rashid. Curious eyes turned on them from all directions and those nearest executed deep bows.

And Polly felt sad for him. Sad, not sorry. He wasn’t a man you could feel pity for. But, sad, yes. Surrounded by people but essentially very alone. She hung back, noticing the care he took of other people. The skill with which he stopped them becoming over-familiar.