The Sheikh’s Disobedient Bride(65)

She thought he had cared. Maybe not deeply, forever love, but enough. Enough. Enough to keep her, love her, make her his.



Stop this, she told herself, stop thinking, feeling—just stop. Eyes swollen from crying, Tally rolled from bed, desperate to put an end to the hurt, and the tears, and the heartbreak.



Despite her misery, she forced herself out to buy groceries. A day later she made herself watch a movie on cable television. On the weekend she went for a walk despite the black clouds overhead, walking for hours through rain; along the wharf and the piers where the ferries arrived and departed, silently sailing like giant wedding cakes on the dramatic Puget Sound. She walked to keep the tears from coming and it worked. As long as she kept moving, she was fine.



Ten days after returning she picked up her camera and went out to shoot whatever inspiration came.



But then on day seventeen Tally developed her memory cards of film and flipped through a couple hundred shots before coming across the last picture she took in Ouaha. It was the shot from the medina, near the well when the gunfire rang out and everyone ducked and covered as Tair and his men rode like hell’s fire down the streets, taking Tally with them.



Tally studied the print for a long moment, seeing the children she’d been focusing on and yet there in the background was a horse pawing the air.



Tair.



Tair.



And just like that she was back in Ouaha, back in his home of sand and stone, back with the endless nights and the blistering heat.



Tally closed her eyes, and crumpled the photo in her hand. She wouldn’t remember. Wouldn’t go there. And instead of letting herself remember anymore, she e-mailed her editor and the senior editor she worked with letting them know she had prints she’d be sending. And then she got into her darkroom and began developing her black and white shots the old-fashioned way, taking time with processing, blowing up some shots, cropping others, printing on the special thick acid free paper she favored.



Her editors e-mailed her back promptly. They wanted to see the pictures. They were eager to see where she’d gone, what she’d been doing these past four months in Northern Africa and the Middle East.



Tally buried herself in work, finding solace in long hours and a devotion to her art. It was at night, and on the weekends, that the lost sensation returned, that feeling she’d been drawn and quartered. Disemboweled.



It was at night and on weekends she didn’t know what to do with herself, at night and weekends when she found it strange being home. After nearly a year on the road she realized she’d become a true nomad. She knew she’d had an apartment but forgot what it looked like, felt like, and for those first two months back in Seattle she felt like a stranger in her own place.



It wasn’t even Seattle that felt so strange. It was—and Tally couldn’t believe this—being alone.



Alone. She, the girl who’d decided she preferred being alone, didn’t like being alone anymore.



Tair had done this to her. Tair. But that didn’t mean she had to cry over him anymore. She was done crying, done grieving. She’d wasted too much time as it was on a man who didn’t love her. Wouldn’t love her.



Tally was just about to head out to photograph Alki Beach when a courier arrived with a package from Baraka. She sat on the bottom step of her staircase to open the brown padded envelope. And then the velvet box inside.



Emerald fire glinted at her. It was an emerald and diamond necklace, the kind of necklace only royalty and celebrities could wear. There was a small card nestled in the white satin lining. Tair.



Tair. Terrible, horrible hateful Tair.



Hands shaking, Tally snapped the lid down. Thanks, Tair, but no thanks. She wasn’t going to be keeping this.



There was just one problem. No one would take the necklace back. With its twelve plus carats of diamonds and emeralds and the delicate platinum setting, no insurance company wanted to touch a necklace that was valued at over a quarter million dollars. Especially as the Sheikh’s address was the middle of the Sahara desert.



And suddenly Tally was angry all over again. Instead of blocking out the memories, they all came rushing back, one after the other and they didn’t fade. She remembered it all, remembered everything. The kidnapping from town. The asthma attack. The sandstorm. The quicksand. The knife. The poison.



Then Bur Juman and the first night they made love.



Tally swallowed hard around the lump filling her throat. She wasn’t going to cry. She wouldn’t cry.



But oh those battles.



She’d thought in the beginning that she’d hate him forever, thought she’d never like him, much less understand him, but that had changed. How that had changed…