The Sheik Who Loved Me
Prologue
Monstrous clouds of hot desert sand mushroomed in the fierce wind, blotting out a sun that boiled blood-orange over an angry black sea. Panic squeezed Kamilah’s heart. She scrambled up the dune as fast her little six-year-old legs would carry her. She shouldn’t be out in this storm. Her father would be furious.
But it didn’t matter now. Nothing mattered. She had to get help or the mermaid might die. After all this time, all this waiting, she had finally come.
But she was broken.
Tears stung Kamilah’s face. Her lungs burned. The wind clawed at the very roots of her hair. The ocean behind her boomed as she ran, heaving foaming water onto the outlying coral reefs, pounding it into the bay, making the ordinarily placid waters swell and surge with turbid life.
Daddy please help. Before the sea takes it away again.
The words screamed inside her brain, drowning out the gusts of wind. Words that wanted to be spoken out loud for the first time in a very, very long time.
Lightning cracked the sky. Kamilah flattened instantly to the ground, scrunched her eyes tight and waited for the crash of thunder. It resounded through her little body making her limbs tremble and her heart drum so fast she thought it might burst right through her chest.
But she had to move. She had to get Daddy. She scrambled up the sand bank, lurched over an exposed root, skidded back down. She grasped desperately for purchase as pain seared her hands, her knees. The sand stung her eyes.
But she could not give up. She would not let the sea take it back. Because Mummy had sent this mermaid. She just knew it!
David Rashid pushed a yellow pin into the large map that covered the entire back wall of his office. The pin denoted the last of the Rashid International oilfields to be reclaimed from the rebels. It too was now in full production, drawing rich black gold up to the arid Saharan surface, oil that had for centuries been buried deep under the northern reaches of Azar. Oil his father had known was there.
The smaller red pins clustered into the map up near the Libyan and Egyptian borders flagged the final desert strongholds of the now-straggling rebel army. The two big blue pins to the southeast of Azar represented the biggest prize of all, the Rashid uranium mines. And it was no ordinary uranium that Rashid International was drawing out of the earth. It had a unique molecular structure that made it invaluable in cutting edge nuclear technology. David’s mines were among only a handful in the world in a position to deliver this particular uranium. It had put Azar squarely back in the game.
David stepped back, folded his arms, and smiled. It was a coup he could be proud of. One his father had dreamed of. One that would rebuild his nation by bridging the old world with the new, that would fuel the economy and give pride and spirit back to a forgotten people, the Bedu of Azar, the warrior nomads of a country wedged between Chad and Sudan with Egypt and Libya to the north.
David’s only wish was that his father had lived to see this. And to see how he’d managed to heal the bitter rift between himself and his half brother, Tariq.
He rubbed the stubble on his jaw as he studied the clusters of red pins on the map, vaguely aware of wind tearing at battened-down shutters, swirling and shrieking in the old castle’s protected courtyards. The only question that still ate at his mind was, who was backing the rebels? But before he could chew on it, his office door flung open with a resounding crash.
David jolted, spun around. The storm winds blew fine desert sand up out of the courtyard and into his office. His daughter tumbled in with it. Her hair was a wild, dark tangle about her bloodless face, her chocolate-brown eyes wide with terror.
“Kamilah!” He lunged for the door, slammed it, shutting out the storm. He dropped to his knees and took her slight shoulders in his hands. She was trembling violently.
“Kamilah? What is it?”
Her eyes were impossibly huge, and they stared straight at him. Into him. David could barely breathe. She was trying to tell him something with those beautiful expressive eyes, eyes that hadn’t gazed directly into his for almost two years.
Every muscle in his body tensed. The sound of the storm faded into far recesses of his mind. He was afraid to move, to breathe even, fearful any slight gesture might sever the tenuous connection between him and his child. It was like a thread, fine as gossamer. He didn’t know whether to grab hold and yank it in to him, or to tread softly around for fear of breaking it. God, he never knew what to do with his beautiful baby girl. He swallowed, tentatively moved a tangled strand of hair from her pale cheek.
She didn’t back away. It fed his courage, his hope. He breathed a little deeper. He took her tiny hands in his own, looked deep into her eyes and dropped his voice to a gentle, reassuring whisper. “What is it, Kamilah? Can you tell me?”
Monstrous clouds of hot desert sand mushroomed in the fierce wind, blotting out a sun that boiled blood-orange over an angry black sea. Panic squeezed Kamilah’s heart. She scrambled up the dune as fast her little six-year-old legs would carry her. She shouldn’t be out in this storm. Her father would be furious.
But it didn’t matter now. Nothing mattered. She had to get help or the mermaid might die. After all this time, all this waiting, she had finally come.
But she was broken.
Tears stung Kamilah’s face. Her lungs burned. The wind clawed at the very roots of her hair. The ocean behind her boomed as she ran, heaving foaming water onto the outlying coral reefs, pounding it into the bay, making the ordinarily placid waters swell and surge with turbid life.
Daddy please help. Before the sea takes it away again.
The words screamed inside her brain, drowning out the gusts of wind. Words that wanted to be spoken out loud for the first time in a very, very long time.
Lightning cracked the sky. Kamilah flattened instantly to the ground, scrunched her eyes tight and waited for the crash of thunder. It resounded through her little body making her limbs tremble and her heart drum so fast she thought it might burst right through her chest.
But she had to move. She had to get Daddy. She scrambled up the sand bank, lurched over an exposed root, skidded back down. She grasped desperately for purchase as pain seared her hands, her knees. The sand stung her eyes.
But she could not give up. She would not let the sea take it back. Because Mummy had sent this mermaid. She just knew it!
David Rashid pushed a yellow pin into the large map that covered the entire back wall of his office. The pin denoted the last of the Rashid International oilfields to be reclaimed from the rebels. It too was now in full production, drawing rich black gold up to the arid Saharan surface, oil that had for centuries been buried deep under the northern reaches of Azar. Oil his father had known was there.
The smaller red pins clustered into the map up near the Libyan and Egyptian borders flagged the final desert strongholds of the now-straggling rebel army. The two big blue pins to the southeast of Azar represented the biggest prize of all, the Rashid uranium mines. And it was no ordinary uranium that Rashid International was drawing out of the earth. It had a unique molecular structure that made it invaluable in cutting edge nuclear technology. David’s mines were among only a handful in the world in a position to deliver this particular uranium. It had put Azar squarely back in the game.
David stepped back, folded his arms, and smiled. It was a coup he could be proud of. One his father had dreamed of. One that would rebuild his nation by bridging the old world with the new, that would fuel the economy and give pride and spirit back to a forgotten people, the Bedu of Azar, the warrior nomads of a country wedged between Chad and Sudan with Egypt and Libya to the north.
David’s only wish was that his father had lived to see this. And to see how he’d managed to heal the bitter rift between himself and his half brother, Tariq.
He rubbed the stubble on his jaw as he studied the clusters of red pins on the map, vaguely aware of wind tearing at battened-down shutters, swirling and shrieking in the old castle’s protected courtyards. The only question that still ate at his mind was, who was backing the rebels? But before he could chew on it, his office door flung open with a resounding crash.
David jolted, spun around. The storm winds blew fine desert sand up out of the courtyard and into his office. His daughter tumbled in with it. Her hair was a wild, dark tangle about her bloodless face, her chocolate-brown eyes wide with terror.
“Kamilah!” He lunged for the door, slammed it, shutting out the storm. He dropped to his knees and took her slight shoulders in his hands. She was trembling violently.
“Kamilah? What is it?”
Her eyes were impossibly huge, and they stared straight at him. Into him. David could barely breathe. She was trying to tell him something with those beautiful expressive eyes, eyes that hadn’t gazed directly into his for almost two years.
Every muscle in his body tensed. The sound of the storm faded into far recesses of his mind. He was afraid to move, to breathe even, fearful any slight gesture might sever the tenuous connection between him and his child. It was like a thread, fine as gossamer. He didn’t know whether to grab hold and yank it in to him, or to tread softly around for fear of breaking it. God, he never knew what to do with his beautiful baby girl. He swallowed, tentatively moved a tangled strand of hair from her pale cheek.
She didn’t back away. It fed his courage, his hope. He breathed a little deeper. He took her tiny hands in his own, looked deep into her eyes and dropped his voice to a gentle, reassuring whisper. “What is it, Kamilah? Can you tell me?”