The Sheikh’s Disobedient Bride(41)
“But even good can turn to bad.”
“Not me. If I’d gone bad, I would have been years ago. But I’ve always done the right thing, the good thing. I love art, and nature, books and adventure, and more than anything peace.”
Tair’s cheek pulled, a grim hint of a smile. “Are you sure you’re not a politician?”
Tally made a soft sound of protest. “I know this much—you wouldn’t have saved me three times if I was a bad person. You risked your own life three times for me. That means something.”
Tair didn’t move, just his lashes lowered, and yet he seemed harder, tougher. “Maybe here you pose no threat, but if I send you back to Baraka…” His voice drifted off.
He seemed to think he’d conveyed something very important, something earth shattering but she didn’t have a clue as to what it was. “How does it change in Baraka?”
“In the wrong hands, you would be dangerous.”
He was just confusing her. “I don’t understand what you mean about the wrong hands?”
“I have enemies,laeela. We have enemies and I work very hard to protect my people. The women, the elderly, the children.”
“But I would never hurt them—”
“Of course you wouldn’t. But the problem isn’t your camera or the photos anymore. It’s you. Your mind. Your memory. The pictures in your head. In the wrong hands, with enough pressure—coercion—you could reveal things that would cause us all great harm.”
Tally turned away, went to the window where night cloaked Tair’s walled mountain city. Earlier the sunset had painted the city red and pink before fading to violet but now it was dark and she could only see dim murky shapes.
Pressing her hand to her cheek, her palm felt so hot against her skin, her cheek cold, cold, cold like the rest of her. “I can not live here forever,” she whispered. “I can not stay here. This would be death for me. This would be nothing short of prison.”
She didn’t hear him leave the bed but suddenly his hands were on her shoulders. Firm, but not heavy, steady, but without pressure. “You do not know the meaning of death, then,” he said nearly as quietly. “Bur Juman is not death. Even prison is not death. Death is death. Death is death and nothing else.”
She felt her eyes burn, her throat ache as if swelling closed. “My life is spent traveling. I live in hotels. I never stay in the same place long, never spend more than a week in the same city. I just can’t live another type of life anymore.”
His hands fell away. “Maybe it is time you stayed in one place.”
“No!” She faced him, turning swiftly, passionately, her insides hot, as if on fire. “I am not ready to stay put. I am not ready to give up my life, or my work.”
“But you’re not a child anymore. You’re a woman. Thirty-one. It is time for you to have children. You must have babies before you are too old.”
Tally nearly choked on her own tongue, words strangling inside her throat. “I have only just started my career. Everything is still so new. I refuse to end my life here!”
“Marrying me, having children is not ending your life. It’s a beginning. A beginning at Bur Juman. A beginning with me.”
And that, she thought, pulling away from him, was no beginning at all. “We barely like each other,” she flashed, facing him.
“It’s not necessary.”
“Not necessary? You’re talking about marriage.”
“Wives don’t need to like their husbands. They just need to obey.”
Tally spun on her heel, clapped her hands on top of her head and walked the length of the room. This was ridiculous, the most ridiculous conversation she’d had yet, and she’d had many ridiculous conversations with Sheikh Tair lately, but this, oh, this took the cake.
Good God. Marry Tair? Live forever in his desert? Not just have his children butobey him?
Tally almost laughed, hysteria building. “You do not know me well, do you?” she spluttered, hands still on top of her head, fingers locked down against her scalp. It was that or let her panic spill out. “I am not the stay home and have babies kind of woman. I climb and run and swim and—” she broke off, dragged in air “—nothave babies. Andnot obey.” She looked at him, trying to make him understand. “I don’t obey.”
His eyebrows lifted and his lips pursed. “Not very well, no.”
“Not at all.” She exhaled again. “So save us both endless frustration and disappointment. Get me to the next big city and put me on an international flight home. I won’t even stop to buy postcards. I’ll just go. I’m out of here. I won’t even look back—”