Книга - Sheikh’s Temptation

Sheikh's Temptation
ALEXANDRA SELLERS


One night of electrifying, primitive lovemaking with Sheikh Arash Khosravi and Lana Holding had never let another man touch her. Separated by circumstance, she despaired of seeing him again. But their reunion proved bittersweet. For pride and pain had made her strong sheikh ruthless and as cold as the blizzard they were stranded in….Arash had risked his fortune to save his beloved country. And so he could promise gentle Lana no future. But solitude with the breathtaking beauty was too tempting for his noble resistance. Surrendering to the woman who was his torment, his delight, he vowed to have her forever. Could he keep her when he had nothing to offer…but himself?









“I Have Nothing To Offer You But Sexual Pleasure.


“Take that, one last time, and then let us forget,” Arash said.

“After tonight, never again?” Lana asked.

His jaw clenched, his eyes closed, she saw his fingers unwrap one by one from the bowl of his goblet, as though taking all his concentration.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” she asked. “I think it’s a tradition amongst your ancestors, isn’t it, when a woman has pleased you, to grant her some boon?”

His eyes flashed purple fire. “If there is anything I have that you could wish for, I give it to you.”

“You grant me whatever I ask without waiting to hear what it is?”

His head went up and she saw the shadow of a long line of proud sheikhs behind his shoulder, men whose pride had expressed itself in generosity.

“Ask your boon,” commanded Sheikh Khosravi.

She took a deep, trembling breath. “I ask you to marry me.”


Dear Reader,

In keeping with the celebration of Silhouette’s 20


anniversary in 2000, what better way to enjoy the new century’s first Valentine’s Day than to read six passionate, powerful, provocative love stories from Silhouette Desire!

Beloved author Dixie Browning returns to Desire’s MAN OF THE MONTH promotion with A Bride for Jackson Powers, also the launch title for the series THE PASSIONATE POWERS. Enjoy this gem about a single dad who becomes stranded with a beautiful widow who’s his exact opposite.

Get ready to be seduced when Alexandra Sellers offers you another sheikh hero from her SONS OF THE DESERT miniseries with Sheikh’s Temptation. Maureen Child’s popular series BACHELOR BATTALION continues with The Daddy Salute—a marine turns helpless when he must take care of his baby, and he asks the heroine for help.

Kate Little brings you a keeper with Husband for Keeps, in which the heroine needs an in-name-only husband in order to hold on to her ranch. A fabulously sexy doctor returns to the woman he could never forget in The Magnificent M.D. by Carol Grace. And exciting newcomer Sheri WhiteFeather offers another irresistible Native American hero in Jesse Hawk: Brave Father.

We hope you will indulge yourself this Valentine’s Day with all six of these passionate romances, only from Silhouette Desire!

Enjoy!






Joan Marlow Golan

Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire




Sheikh’s Temptation

Alexandra Sellers







www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


To the last weekend at Langton Lodge

and those who share the memory




ALEXANDRA SELLERS,


Canadian born and raised, first came to London as a drama student. She lives near Hampstead Heath with her husband, Nick. They share housekeeping with Monsieur, a beautiful tabby, who came in through the window one day and announced that he was staying.

Alexandra loves the people, languages, religions and history of Central Asia and the Middle East. She has studied Hebrew and Farsi (Persian) and is currently working on Arabic. She is the author of over twenty-five novels and a cat language textbook.

What she would miss most on a desert island is shared laughter.

Readers can write to Alexandra at P.O. Box 9449, London NW3 2WH, U.K.




Contents


Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen




One


Winter was taking a last swipe at the mountains. A strong wind had started to blow soon after lunch, and within an hour the beautiful spring weather had developed claws. Now, wearing the anorak and jeans that had been perfectly comfortable this morning, Lana Holding was shivering, and probably it would get worse.

Static screeched in her ear again. “Nothing,” she reported briefly, turning down the volume on the CB mike and tossing it through the truck window onto the passenger seat. She leaned against the truck and looked down at where Arash was tightening the wheelnuts, his left leg bent, his right leg extended awkwardly away from his body.

She could have helped with the job, but when, in his usual autocratic way, he had told her not to bother, she hadn’t forced the issue. She was determined to enjoy this trip through the breathtaking Koh-i Shir mountains in spite of his presence and the jinx that seemed to be dogging them. Getting into a heated argument with Arash over changing a wheel wasn’t her idea of a good time.

She sighed with ill-suppressed anxiety. “They must still be miles behind us.”

Arash pulled the wrench off the last nut and straightened. “They probably have not left Seebi-Kuchek.”

Seebi-Kuchek was the village where they had spent the night. Their little convoy had consisted of two trucks when they set off from the palace yesterday, one carrying Arash and Lana, the other two of Arash’s staff, who had come along as bodyguards or advance men or something. Or for all she knew, their role might be just to make sure she and Arash wouldn’t have to be alone.

If so, that was fine with her. Lana didn’t want to be alone with Arash, either—she didn’t want to be with him at all—but she had been impatient to get into the mountains. This morning, when the other truck had developed minor engine trouble, it was she who had suggested setting off without them.

“They can catch up with us at lunch time,” she had urged. “The weather is so beautiful. I want to get up into the mountains while the sky is clear, and what if it doesn’t last?”

She regretted it now, even more so because her instincts had been right. Clouds were building around the magnificent peak of Mount Shir, and soon this road would be just any old desolate stretch of road with no mountain views to entrance the eye.

Arash had agreed without a word, though she knew he hadn’t liked it. They had dawdled at their lunch break, waiting for the others to catch up, but it didn’t happen, and so they had gone on again. An hour later one front wheel had hit a pothole hard. Replacing the broken wheel, which had unbelievably stubborn bolts, had cost them too much time. She knew they would have to hurry if they were going to reach the village they were aiming for on the other side of the pass today.

She eyed him now. “Should we go back?”

“Your choice,” Arash said, moving to set his tools into the back of the truck. He slammed the double doors. “We can go forward or back. The distance is about the same, and each way it is unlikely we will get down out of the pass before nightfall.”

She eyed him in alarm. “What does that mean?”

“It means spending the night in the mountains.”

Lana closed her eyes and heaved a sigh. “Why is this trip so jinxed?”

“I know no better than you,” Arash said, in a calm voice which had the effect of irrationally irritating her.

“I know you don’t know, Arash,” she told him levelly. “Haven’t you ever heard a rhetorical question before?”

His response was to eye her steadily for a moment and then say, as if she hadn’t spoken, “Which shall it be, Lana? Forward or back?”

She could hear the suppressed impatience that was almost always in his voice when he spoke to her, and of course this stupid situation was no easier for him than for her. However much she disliked Arash Durrani ibn Zahir al Khosravi, cousin and Cup Companion to Prince Kavian, she knew he returned the compliment with at least equal force.

She couldn’t imagine how he had been talked into being her escort to Central Barakat, any more than she could understand—now—why she had accepted the situation.

She had wanted, unofficially, to be the first to travel through these fabulous, awe-inspiring mountains on the newly-built Emerald Highway which her father’s money had made possible. And when Alinor—her best friend from university, now Princess of Parvan—had said that Kavian had a particular reason for wanting Arash to be her escort, had hinted that she would in this way be providing cover for a secret diplomatic mission, Lana just hadn’t known how to tell her friend that the thought of making the journey in Arash’s company would leach all the joy out of the adventure for her…

So now here she was, stuck in practically the most desolate mountains on the face of the earth with Arash al Khosravi, a man who got on her nerves at the best of times.

Who was still waiting for her to decide. “You’re here, too,” she told him. “What do you want to do?”

“Let us go on,” Arash said.



Arash shifted gears for another climb on the tortuous road that, with a small chunk of Jonathan Holding’s vast wealth, was being built through the mountain ranges of Shir and Noor to link Parvan with the Barakat Emirates.

He thought back to that moment when Kavi had asked him to accompany Lana Holding on her misguided pilgrimage on the still-unfinished road. Arash had never before pleaded with his prince for any favour, but he had been horrified by the request.

He had resisted in the strongest terms.

Kavi, I ask you not to ask this of me. I cannot be the one to take her through the mountains. Surely any of the others…

“As the most trusted of my Companions, Arash, you are the only one I can ask this favour,” Kavi had replied uncomfortably, and Arash had realized there was more to this request than he himself had been told. “We owe her everything. How can I entrust her safety to any other?”

He gazed at his prince for a long moment as certainty crept over him. “Who has requested this, Kavi?”

“I myself make the request,” Kavi said, but with a tone in his voice that belied the words. Arash opened his mouth to say that it would be worse than useless for him to make this trip, and then subsided into silence.

It was true. Kavi and the country owed Lana Holding everything. Kavi had two reasons now to bless the luck that had put him and Arash at university at the same time as Alinor, now his wife, and her friend Lana. Lana, who had turned out to be the daughter of the American billionaire Jonathan Holding, had fallen in love with Parvan, and had persuaded her father to aid the tiny kingdom in the aftermath of its savage and destructive war against the Kaljuk invaders. So this was a small sacrifice for Kavi to ask of his closest and most trusted Companion.

Between Kavi and Arash there could be no such thing as a command. Arash had not sworn to obey the Durrani, for such an oath could not be asked from one of his ancient line. But he had sworn his loyalty, and such a wish, expressed in such a way, was more powerful than a command.

On my head and eyes, Lord, he had said then, bowing formally in the most ancient of exchanges.

But he wished Kavi had laid any other mission on him.



The way Arash was pushing the truck, Lana wondered if he had changed his mind after all, and intended to get down out of the pass before they had to stop for the night.

“Mash’Allah,” she reminded herself, in the way that she had learned during her time in Parvan. Whatever God wills. In terrain like this it was easy to remember the maxim that, whatever man proposes, it is God who disposes.

He heard the murmur and glanced over.

“Pardon?”

“I was just thinking that we might still make it down out of the pass to where we originally planned to stop if you keep it up like this.”

Arash shook his head. He wished it were true. “It will be dangerous to drive after sunset.”

He meant that they could not afford to risk hitting another pothole in the darkness.

Lana glanced nervously at the sky. She had been trying for the past hour to tell herself that the thick heavy clouds were moving east and the area of clear sky was no smaller than before. But they were not moving east, and the amount of blue was definitely shrinking.

He followed her gaze, but said nothing.

They rounded a curve, and he braked sharply. A spread of stones and rocks and snow had come down off the side of the mountain to spew across the road. He bumped slowly over it.

At night, without benefit of a moon, they would almost certainly have hit it before he saw it. Suddenly Lana accepted that they really would have to spend the night up here.



“What if there’s a storm?” She tried to sound matter-of-fact, but she couldn’t hide the note of dismay in her voice.

Arash flicked her a glance.

“Is there any protection up here?” she pursued.

He shrugged. “It is as you see.”

She knew in a storm they should find cover. But here, in the remotest region of Parvan, landmine warnings were still posted prominently on both sides of the road. The snow-covered, uninhabited mountains, almost as much as the valleys, had been liberally strewn with butterfly mines by the Kaljuks in the last days of the war, before their retreat.

Anything might be a landmine in disguise—a comb, a toy, a leaf….

There were teams all over the country working hard on mine clearance: Lana knew all about it, since it was her own favourite project in Parvan.

She also knew that, except for the routes that were the nomads’ regular pathways between their summer and winter grounds, including this one where the road had been built, these bleak, difficult mountains were scheduled to be the last area cleared.

It made sense to clear the valleys, the towns, the farmlands and nomad trade routes first. But it meant that even if they saw a cave or overhang, she and Arash could not just climb up to take shelter. They were safe from mines only for a few yards either side of the road, and all that had been mostly levelled to make way for the road.

A gust of wind roared down the mountainside, shaking the truck as it bumped along, spattering sand and gravel against the windshield, making her shiver.

Storm and mountain—you couldn’t beat them for making a human being feel frail and insignificant.

“We can’t pitch the tent if there’s going to be a storm. We’ll have to sit it out in the truck,” she observed in a level voice.

There was silence. He did not deny it.

Lana felt the first real thrill of alarm. Sitting in a truck overnight while a storm raged with only Arash and a survival candle for company! It defied imagination. The man could barely bring himself to be civil to her at the easiest of times.

She eyed the clouds again.

“Is there going to be a lot of snow?”

It was a stupid question, which she knew as soon as she asked it. When the weather was unseasonable in the first place, who could guess? But it was just ordinary human nature to ask, Lana figured. It didn’t really mark her as ignorant, but by the glance Arash threw her, you’d think she was a specimen of a species that lacked basic reasoning capabilities.

Arash shrugged. “Two inches? Two feet?”

“Two feet?”

“It is impossible to guess.”

His voice was rough and flat, not sharing anything with her, and she had to breathe deeply to calm her irritation. She had only been making conversation to ease her nerves, and besides, he must know the ropes a lot better than she did. She’d never been up here before, but his family estates were in the Koh-i Shir mountains somewhere, so why shouldn’t she ask an expert?

But what was the point in defending herself?

They always did rub each other the wrong way. It was one of those inexplicable, unfounded antipathies. Each would have been happy never to see the other again, she thought, if only one of them would leave town.

But Parvan was Arash’s home, and he wasn’t going to emigrate. And, apart from this short break which Alinor had insisted on, Lana wasn’t going anywhere, at least until after Alinor’s baby was born. And then—well, she wasn’t ready yet to name a day when she would leave Parvan.

She had never met such brave, strong, true people as the citizens of Kavi’s little country of mountain and desert, and here—helping, with her father’s money, to put the war-torn country back together—she felt that she had found her reason for being.

“What is this, Lana, adopt-a-country?” her father had demanded in amused exasperation at yet another request for a contribution. In one of his weak moments she had convinced him to match, dollar for dollar, all the funds she raised elsewhere. “Don’t I already support most of the villages and roads and wells and schools? And that mountain highway—what are you calling it, the Emerald Road?—is sucking up cash like a vacuum cleaner! What else can there be?”

“Dad, face it—if you don’t spend your money on something like Parvan, what’ll you spend it on? Trying to buy power, that’s what. And then you won’t be a great guy anymore, you’ll be a monster, and everyone will hate you,” she had explained ruthlessly. “And I don’t want everyone in the world hating my dad.”

“I’m not trying to buy power at the moment, Lana,” he had told her. “I’m trying to endow a museum.”

The new museum was his baby, and it needed lots of funds, too. But he almost always came through for her. And sometimes their interests coincided, for many wealthy Parvani families were forced into selling their ancient treasures to finance the rebuilding of their lives.

At least Lana could always make sure the Holding Museum paid well.

Kavi and Alinor and all the people whose lives she touched—whose villages and homes and farms were rebuilt, much sooner than could otherwise have been possible, with her father’s generous donations and the money she raised with her fund-raising events—of course were grateful.

Only Arash stood outside the circle of her admirers. As a sheikh and tribal leader with a valley full of farms and villages to care for, he had not interfered when his people had received their share of the generosity. But as the man whose own estates and family home had suffered, he would accept nothing from her.

And although she was certain that his painful limp could be helped with surgery, he had virtually pretended not to hear her offer to finance a trip for surgery abroad.

She had never understood his reasons, and she no longer bothered to try.

She turned her head to run a look over his strong, uncompromising profile as he drove, his own attention firmly on the road. He was wearing a leather jacket and denim jeans and boots, but he looked no less a sheikh than when he was in full traditional dress.

“Will this thing drive if there’s that much snow?” she couldn’t help asking.

“There are too many unknowns to predict anything with certainty,” he said.

“So we might end up waiting for a helicopter rescue?” Her heart sank. And how long would that take? she wanted to ask, but she suppressed the desire. His answer would only be another irritating refusal to guess, and she was already gritting her teeth.

“I knew I should fly,” she muttered.

Arash lifted a disbelieving eyebrow. “And why didn’t you?”

“Well, you know the answer to that better than I do, Arash!”

“I know only that Kavi asked me to see you safely to Central Barakat and that you insisted on coming by road.”

She threw him a look. “I do know, Arash, that I’m providing cover for some secret mission to Prince Omar.”

Arash frowned at the road. “I am entrusted with no mission other than delivering you safely to my cousin Omar and Princess Jana in Central Barakat.”

Of course he wouldn’t tell her if he was. “So why was it so important that you and no one else accompany me?” she demanded sceptically.

There was a short silence.

“But this was your own choice,” he said in slight surprise.

Lana’s mouth gaped. “My choice? What, to have you along? Why would it be my choice?”

“Naturally I found your motive inexplicable.”

Lana turned to look at him, her eyes narrowed. “Did you really think that I had asked Kavi to force you to come with me? Kavi couldn’t have told you such a thing!”

He threw her a glance, shrugging. “It was one possible explanation for something inexplicable.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence!” she snapped. “What did you think my motive was, Arash, just as a matter of interest?”

The truck slowed as his eyes briefly but electrifyingly met hers.

“I thought your motive would be revealed in time. I didn’t trouble, therefore, to wonder.”

“Don’t hand me that!” she commanded irritably. “If you thought I engineered this, you must have had some ideas about why! What was my reason, Arash?”

She stared at him, her mind whirling, fury already bubbling up inside, and she thought how dangerous it would be to be stranded alone with Arash, of all men. She knew there was a well of resentment in her towards him…. There wasn’t another of Kavi’s Cup Companions she didn’t like, whom she wouldn’t rather have been with now.

“What reason could I possibly have for wanting to be alone with you up here in God’s country?”

He made no reply. After a minute, she opened her mouth on a slow, outraged breath.

“I don’t believe it!” Suddenly she could hardly get the words out for the rage that assailed her. When she spoke, her voice shook.

“What did you think, Arash? Did you think I maybe wanted to get you alone to make you an offer?”

She saw a muscle leap in his jaw and was sure she had hit home.

“What kind of an offer, exactly, were you envisaging? Just a brief affair, or was I going to go so far as to propose a mutually convenient marriage of wealth with an ancient title? Was that it?”

“It was not that I believed it. It was merely one possible explanation that crossed my mind.”

“You really have to be seen to be believed!”

He slowed the truck with a quick jab at the brakes and turned to her, a blaze of fury on his face.

“You deny that such a possibility has occurred to you?”

She stared at him, the words tumbling from her lips. “Yes, I deny that such a possibility has occurred to me! What gives you the right to speak to me like this?”

His eyes were dark with feeling, and a shiver ran all over her. What on earth could be coming now?

He lifted a hand from the steering wheel and his finger pointed at the end of her nose. His eyes flashed violet, and the fury in his voice now astonished her.

“What gives me the right? You give me the right, Lana. You with your quiet suggestion that I am for sale at public tender!”




Two


It had been Lana’s idea to offer a fabulous fund-raising dinner on a jet, flying guests who had paid a substantial sum for the honour overnight from London to Parvan, where they would greet the sun as it rose over magnificent Mount Shir. Then they would land at the capital to meet the Regent Prince and his wife at a palace champagne breakfast.

On board the luxuriously appointed jet, donated for the occasion by the princes of the Barakat Emirates, subscribers were also privileged to meet some of the Cup Companions….

Lana had quickly learned that Kavi’s handsome Cup Companions had a drawing power second only to Prince Kavian himself, and she included them in nearly every fund-raising event. The long-suffering Companions joked that they were no better than performing bears at such times, but uncomplainingly took their turn.

It was just chance that Arash was one of the performing bears whose turn it was to appear for that particular fund-raiser—an event scheduled to last for nearly a day, and for most of which they were, of course, all captive on the aircraft.

Sheikh Arash Durrani ibn Zahir al Khosravi never failed to please women who fantasized about the Cup Companions. His charm was rough and unstudied; he never came across as practised or polished, but he had a natural charisma that had an effect in spite—or maybe because—of a sometimes impatient tongue.

Arash was tall, dark and arrogantly, powerfully good-looking, with a firmly held mouth behind a neat curling beard. His flashing dark eyes sometimes seemed black and sometimes glowed deep violet, a colour so unusual that people couldn’t help remarking on it.

The fact that he had been wounded in the war with Kaljukistan and walked with a limp only added to his romantic glamour.

When in addition he was wearing the Companions’ traditional state dress of flowing white oriental trousers snugly cuffed around the ankle, beaded thong sandals on strong bare feet, and a rich wine-dark silk tunic surmounted by his jewelled chain of office and his war medals—well, Lana knew it was a strong female heart that could resist.

Lana’s own heart had been immunized early, so she was in no danger, but she had seen women trip over their own feet when they were still twenty paces away.

It nearly always amused her, the effect one smile from a Cup Companion could have on the donations, but it was not amusing when the Companion in question was Arash.

Probably because she didn’t like him.

She also hated having to pretend enthusiasm for him with these adoring women. Arash, whose eyes sometimes seemed to hide a deep sorrow even when he smiled, was a rich source of inspiration for dreamers. She wanted to say, Don’t go anywhere near him, he’s dangerous to know…but of course she never did.

Anyone would have been guaranteed to ask how she knew. But she had never talked about it to anyone. Not even Alinor guessed that Arash and she had a past that had affected her so deeply that she still could hardly look at a man….

“I suppose he suffered an awful lot in the war,” Lucinda Burke Taylor had said with clinical soulfulness an hour or so into the flight, and Lana knew that Lucinda had sought her out for a purpose.

It was going to be a bumpy night.

Usually Lana had no difficulty enthusing about the Companions to smitten women, and the donations went up when she did. But this woman had already married two high-profile, low-income men, and a Chinese poet-in-exile was already next in her sights. It was as obvious as the day was long that she thought of these transactions in terms of purchase. His culture and brains for her money. And she believed it an equal transaction.

If she was going to start aiming at Arash…but it wasn’t Lana’s business. Arash would have to look after himself.

“I’ve heard he’s the Grand Sheikh of his tribe now. It sounds so fascinating!”

“If you consider losing your father and older brother in the same war fascinating.”

“Oh, of course, I didn’t mean—I just meant, the whole business of being sheikh of a tribe, in this day and age! It’s just so—!”

After a struggle Lana mastered herself. “He’s very close to the prince, too. One of his closest and most trusted advisors,” she confided.

His back turned to them, Arash was talking to someone Lana had earmarked for him. She provided each Companion with his own list of three or four of the wealthiest and most charitable people at any event. They all disliked the task, but each could be counted on to speak to everyone on his list. And usually a good proportion of Arash’s targets made donations afterwards.

“And he’s not married, right?”

The gunsight eyes followed as Arash and the guest unconsciously moved closer to them. Lana gritted her teeth.

“Not married, and hasn’t got a bean,” she heard herself say flatly.

The woman’s eyes brightened at this information.

“Really?” She turned to fix her gaze on Lana, who had to consciously refrain from ducking. “Do you mean he’s—” Her voice dropped to a confidential murmur. “Is he looking for a moneyed wife?”

It would be husband number three for her, and incidentally would mean sinking the fortunes of the dissident poet, but why not? Arash’s estates were in ruins, and just because he wasn’t accepting any from Lana didn’t mean they didn’t need an injection of cash.

It wasn’t up to her to guess whether he would consider an offer or not.

“Might be worth putting your bid in,” Lana said, glad that the other woman was apparently deaf to irony.

Arash’s gaze met hers briefly across the space that divided them. He had heard some of the discussion. But instead of sending him an apologetic look, as she would have with any of the others, Lana merely raised her eyebrows in a shrug and shepherded Lucinda in his direction.

“Your Excellency…” she began, giving full weight to his title because of the impact it had on most Westerners. But the way Arash eyed her she knew he suspected her of irony.

Well, to hell with him. He knew nothing about her. If he had known her at all, he would have understood that he could take her father’s money without obligation.

“…may I present Lucinda Burke Taylor?”

Maybe Lucinda would have better luck. Maybe Arash would be more comfortable with a cash sale. Maybe that had been her mistake. She hadn’t asked for anything in return.

Lana frowned. Mistake? The only mistake she had made with Arash was a long time ago, and she was far from making another.



“I was joking!’ she said now.

“You were not joking. She came to me as one who comes to assess a horse. She wanted to count my teeth!”

“I know she did! Don’t you know irony when you hear it?”

He glanced at her. “And Miss Burke Taylor—did she know irony when she heard it?”

“I can’t help it if she was too stupid to get my point. You’ve dealt with enough stupid, greedy women. You couldn’t have had any trouble with her—she wasn’t up to your weight at all!”

“Thank you.” He bowed ironically over the wheel.

“But Lucinda’s not the point now, is she? Where do you get the jump from Lucinda to me?”

“You?”

She breathed deep, trying to quell the irrational fury that consumed her. “Even if you thought I was serious, you have no grounds for suggesting I would want to put in a bid myself. No grounds at all!”

To her surprise, he braked and pulled over to the side of the road. He slammed the gearshift into Park and turned to her.

“What are you talking about? Why do you make so much fuss about a simple mistake?”

“I’m talking about you saying I engineered this trip so I could make a pass at you!”

He stared at her. “Are you crazy, Lana? I have just told you—”

She overrode him. “It’s been a long time since I threw myself at you, Arash, and if it is not already obvious, let me make it one hundred percent clear—I am not likely to do it again!”

“You did not throw yourself at me,” he said. “You offered yourself to me from compassion, the way a woman does when a man is going to war and may never come back.”

“Is that what you thought?” she asked bitterly.

“Is it not the truth?”

She blinked slowly, her eyes clouding. Was it? Was that what had motivated her? She could hardly remember now, but she supposed she must have had some reason for such crass stupidity.

“Maybe,” she said. It would explain something, anyway—the thing that had always mystified her. Why had she thrown herself at him when now it was so obvious they were incompatible and didn’t like each other? Just out-of-control hormones?

She sighed. “It doesn’t matter now, does it?”

“No, it doesn’t matter now.”

“And just to set your mind at rest, Arash, in case you really are afraid it might happen again, it is just possible I might be reduced to buying a husband for myself—”

“I did not—”

“But never, in a thousand million years, would I ever consider making you an offer, Arash. So if you were thinking that was the reasoning behind my offer to help you rebuild your palace or your valley or anything like that, you can relax.”

“I have—”

“I didn’t want you to come on this trip, I was blackmailed into it, and I would have flown when I discovered you were going to be my escort, only Alinor as good as begged me not to. I have no desire ever to be alone with you, for any reason whatsoever!”

“I understood this before,” he said, not without humour. “You have been at such pains to make it clear that you regretted that night, Lana, that even a stone statue would have the message by now. So I know that you do not believe what you are indignantly pretending to believe, and that you know very well that what was in my mind was no more than that Lucinda Burke Taylor had asked you to open certain negotiations for her.”

Heat rushed up under her skin, and she was filled with angry shame. Oh God! What a fool she was! Of course he would never imagine…what the hell had possessed her to accuse him of thinking such a thing? It was the last thing he would think. They couldn’t stand each other! She must be going crazy. Mountain air did that to some people.

“I am sure that Lucinda Burke Taylor handles her own negotiations. She must be quite polished by now,” Lana muttered, bending her head to conceal her embarrassment from him.

Arash laughed, and from the corner of her eye she watched the smooth movement of his throat and smiled herself. However angry she got with him, it rarely lasted. They did have that.

There was a moment of silence while she abruptly took in the fact that they were not moving.

“Why are we stopped here? Why aren’t you driving?”

He leaned forward, resting his arms over the steering wheel, and gazed out at the weather.

“We have a choice to make,” he observed.

A huge gust of wind hit the side of the truck, seeming to suck the warmth out of the little cabin, and she shivered. Looking out the window, she could see lots of rock, but nothing that offered real protection.

“What choice? Is there someplace nearby where we can get under cover?”

He lifted a hand and pointed out the window beside her. “That way,” he said. “It’s a long trek.”

She turned and stared at the rocky landscape. “What—cross-country? But what about landmines?”

“There’s another mule train route here, leading to a valley. It has been cleared by your teams. It’s a long way down the road to the next such track. It may be best to make for the valley. I think it is going to be a severe storm, Lana. High winds and heavy snow. It will not be safe to remain in the truck. There may be avalanche.”

They both automatically glanced out at the snow-covered slopes, as far up as they could see. The clouds were low, dark and increasingly ominous.

“Do you mean it’s going to be a blizzard? But Arash, what if it starts while we’re walking?”

“That is only more reason to hurry.”

“But we might wander off the route! We could get blown to bits.”

“I know the landmarks. Whatever else happens, we will not stray from the path,” he said briefly, without emphasis. They were both silent as they considered the other fate that might befall them, caught without shelter on a mountain at night during a storm.

“We have a mountain survival kit in the truck.” He seemed to come to a decision. He lifted his hand to the key to shut off the engine. “We must hurry.” He opened his door and got out.

Another gust of wind smacked at them. Arash staggered under the blast.

“Arash…” she began, but he was already at the back of the truck, opening the doors and rooting around amongst their supplies.

“Dress warmly,” he ordered. “Put on everything you can. More than you think you need.”

Well, it might be preferable to stagger through the mountains than sit in the truck with Arash waiting for the storm to hit. But she hated listening to him give orders as if he were an army sergeant and she a recruit.

“Thank you for that advice,” she muttered, to the dashboard.

She stepped out of the truck and instantly began to shiver in the icy air. He was right—her jacket and jeans would get her nowhere. She would freeze to death if the temperature dropped much further.

Her short red curls were lifted and blown flat against her head; even her eyelashes were caught by the wind.

Her jacket billowing, she staggered to the back of the truck, where Arash dragged out the bag she pointed to and dropped it at her feet. Lana bent down and started pulling clothes out of it. She hadn’t packed for cold weather; she was heading to the desert, after all. She had few suitable things. But layers were the warmest way to dress anyway.

She quickly grabbed out sweatshirts and jerseys, a pair of sweatpants, socks. Then came a couple of pairs of leggings. She gazed at them in surprise, suddenly remembering having packed them, paused for a moment, then tucked them back into the case.

“Put them on,” Arash commanded her.

She glanced up. She had thought he was fully engaged, but apparently he had time to watch her.

“Put them on,” he repeated in a voice that brooked no argument. Another wind slammed into them, smashing one of the doors of the truck closed, rocking the vehicle violently. It was icy cold, with fingers that reached inside the cotton shirt she was wearing to count her ribs. She shivered.

“Are you crazy? I’d have to take off my jeans first! I’d freeze just putting them on!”

“You will quickly get warm again when we start to walk,” he said.

She really didn’t want to strip off in the middle of the road—in front of Arash—if she could help it.

“I’m sure I’ll be all right with—”

“The temperature is still dropping. We have a long walk on exposed mountain.”

She still hesitated, and his voice got flatter and more urgent.

“Lana, we are using valuable time. Do as I say! Take off your jeans!”

The explosion over, his words hung in the air. Their eyes met.

A muscle pulsed in his jaw. She wished they could laugh. It should have amused them. But somehow, instead, she felt heat burn up in her cheeks. Lana turned away and pulled her jacket off, reaching for a jersey.

As she pulled on all her sweaters, Arash pulled on a thick tracksuit over his jeans and shirt, then a heavy sweater and down vest, and then his leather jacket. All right for him, he didn’t have to strip off his jeans, Lana thought bitterly, pulling down the zipper and shivering as she slipped the denim down over her hips.

Underneath she was wearing only a tiny pair of briefs in paper-thin yellow Lycra, and she saw Arash glance involuntarily at her bare hips and thighs before he firmly continued with his own business.

It was just male instinct, she told herself, trying to ignore her reaction to his glance. Trying not to remember the last time he had looked at her body.

Her jeans around her knees, she held down her boot heel with the other toe and tried to prise her foot free, but her feet must have swollen during the long drive—the boot was stuck.

“Damn!” she swore, wrestling with the boot for a moment before starting to hike her jeans back up.

“What is it?” Arash turned. He had dressed quickly and was packing the supplies. He held a coil of rope in his hand. “Lana, believe me, it is best if you put on everything you can.”

“I’m trying to. I can’t get my boots off!” she exploded. Now she couldn’t get her jeans back up over her hips.

Without another word Arash sank down at her feet and quickly loosened the laces.

“Lift your foot,” he commanded impatiently, and when she mutely obeyed he wrapped one hand around her ankle and worked the boot off with the other.

She shivered violently. It really was freezing. Hastily she stepped with her free foot on the gravelly road to let Arash draw off the other boot. She shoved her jeans down again, and he took over to pull them down over her knees and shins and off one foot and then the other.

Then she stood half naked in front of him, nothing on her lower body except the yellow bikini briefs. Lana swallowed convulsively, looking down at his dark, thickly waving hair as he lifted his head and frowned questioningly up into her eyes.

For a moment they were both silent, remembering.

“Ohhh, it’s cold!” she cried, pretending that she had been assailed by no memory of another life, another world.

Arash got to his feet and turned to business, and Lana shook out the first pair of leggings, lifted a foot and quickly began to work them on.

When she had put on the leggings and jeans and her sweatpants she began to warm up again. She quickly pulled on her boots and jacket, tied a big silk scarf around her head and face, pulled up her hood and made the drawstrings tight. She slipped a small toiletries bag with the bare essentials into her pocket.

Meanwhile Arash had stuffed two backpacks full, and was tying a rope around his waist. When that was done he took the other end and began to tie it around her.

“What on earth are you doing?” she demanded.

He threw her a look and went on tying the rope.

“Answer me, Arash!”

His hands stilled for one moment of what looked like irritation and he looked into her eyes at close quarters. In this grey light his eyes were the colour of crushed dark violets. She could almost smell their perfume.

“I am tying a rope around your waist,” he said levelly.

“I can see that!”

He shrugged. “You asked the question.”

“You know what I meant!”

“The reason for what I am doing is as obvious as the action itself. What do you want me to say? If you get blinded by the storm, do you relish the prospect of wandering off the path away from me and getting lost—or worse? Do not waste time on argument, Lana! Every second counts! You must submit to me in this! If you challenge me every step of the way, we are doomed.”

You must submit to me in this.

Lana swallowed. Of course he was right. He was the expert here. “Sorry,” she muttered, and then turned and slipped into the straps of the backpack he held up for her. A moment later he had shouldered another one himself, larger, heavier.

“Ready?” he asked.

Together they stepped into the storm. Survival depended on mutual cooperation now. She wondered if they could achieve it.



She had gone to London to study at university, wanting adventure, wanting travel, wanting to get away from the restrictions that her father’s sudden wealth imposed on her life.

Lana had been born and raised in an ordinary, comfortably-off family environment, with a father she hardly saw and a mother who was proportionately devoted to maintaining home and family. She rarely spent time with her father because his field was computers, and when Lana was about five he had taken the plunge of starting his own company.

Within ten years Jonathan Holding was almost a billionaire, and Lana’s life had changed completely. She had of course enjoyed the freedoms that such wealth offered, but she had equally disliked the restrictions that it imposed.

The worst effect was in her dating life. She had only been sixteen when she had had to fight off a date rape from a guy who, when a well-placed kick had finally calmed his ardour, had drunkenly apologized and confessed that he had wanted to be able to claim he had deflowered Jonathan Holding’s daughter.

He was a student at a nearby private school for boys. That night she had learned that there was a competition among the guys: the goal was to get the “virgin’s panties’ of the daughter of someone famous to hang on your gym locker door. Lana Holding’s panties would be almost as much of a feather in a guy’s cap as those of the daughter of a high-profile movie star, who was her fellow student.

That experience had made her very, very wary. Afterwards she listened to her friends when they talked about sex, about how they had meant to resist but had been overcome by their own passion, or by a guy’s, or by his arguments or bad temper, or merely by their own impatience to know what it was all about….

Not Lana. The experience gave her breathing time, and a good reason for resisting during those first cloudy, hormone-hazy days of growing up. And when the cloud had cleared a little, she had realized that she wanted a lot more from a guy than just his determination to get her underpants from her. And a lot more from herself than just her hormones crying out for relief.

She had decided to go abroad to university, where with a little luck she could be just an ordinary person again. She had taken her mother’s name to become plain Lana Brooks, though at her father’s insistence she had agreed to live in a building with extremely high security.

Lana had been lonely in the huge and luxurious apartment, until she had invited her best friend, Alinor, to share the place with her.

Alinor had already caught the eye of the mysterious graduate student Kavian Durran, who rumour said was an important member of the Parvan royal family. He was accompanied everywhere he went by the two Parvani friends who had come to England with him. Rumour said they were actually bodyguards.

One of them called himself Arash Khosravi.




Three


Lana bit hungrily into a piece of naan. “Where are we?” she asked, chewing.

Buffeted by howling winds, they had been struggling across rocky ground for well over an hour, and if there was a path, she certainly hadn’t seen any markings.

Every step terrified her. The thought of what would happen if he put his foot on a mine made her sick with fear. She had gritted her teeth till her jaw ached. Not him, she had silently pleaded. After all that he’s suffered, don’t let him… She didn’t like him, but she was a long way from wanting to watch a landmine blow his foot off.

But he had brought them safely to their first rest stop. “Five minutes,” he had said, eyeing the sky. The snow had started to fall almost as he spoke, and a layer of powder was already settling on the ground, being blown into little ridges under rocks and against stones.

Arash had set a hard pace, and his knee must be bothering him. She knew he had been hoping to reach their destination before the first sign of snow, and he did not hide his anxiety to get going again.

“In that direction,” he replied now, pointing in a direction she guessed was south, “not far from the Barakat border. Maybe twenty miles.”

“And in the direction we’re heading?”

There was warm soup left over from lunch, in the thermos flask. It had been filled this morning by a woman in Seebi-Kuchek, the village where they had spent the night, and although of course Lana had thanked her, she was a lot more grateful for it than she had imagined being.

They had only the flask lid as cup. Arash lifted the cup to his lips once for every time she did, but he could barely have warmed his lips for the amount he drank.

“We are heading towards a river valley. There we will find shelter.”

She didn’t bother to ask how much longer they had to go. They would either make it before the storm broke or they wouldn’t. She nodded, finishing the last bite of her bread, and dusted the crumbs from her knees. Arash held up the cup of soup to her.

“Finish this off.”

She was hungry. A long time ago, in a past of plenty which she could now hardly recognize, she might have drunk the soup without a thought. Lana had always been an exhuberant eater. She had never worried about her weight, or whether people—other women, mostly—had thought her fat. She loved food and she indulged herself.

But she never took food for granted now. Too often she had seen poor villagers produce their last morsel of food for their visitors…the generosity of the people here was the deepest she had ever met.

So she stood, looking down to where Arash sat on a rock, his right leg extended. He too was much thinner now, though every gesture still carried the promise of power. “Thanks, Arash, I’ve had plenty.”

She saw his pupils expand, all at once, like a cat’s. Then his eyes fell to the cup between his hands. After a moment, he lifted it to his mouth and drank deeply.

He held it out to her again. “The last mouthful is for you.”

He had drunk less than half, but she could not argue the point further. She took the cup with a nod and gratefully drained it, while Arash with quick efficiency cleaned up the remains of their meagre meal.

He stood, drawing his right foot under him in the awkward way she was used to, and Lana unconsciously tightened her lips and shook her head. She knew something could be done, if not to restore full function to the knee, at least to relieve the constant pain she was sure he suffered. She had asked a couple of surgeons about his case, and the prognosis was pretty clear. Why wouldn’t he let her father finance the operation?

They shouldered their backpacks in silence. “Ready?” Arash asked briefly, and at her nod stepped into the wind and started off. Lana followed as the rope that joined them lost its slack.

Her hands were cold. She had only two thin pairs of gloves, and other than drawing her hands up inside her sleeves there wasn’t much she could do to warm them. Pockets were out of the question most of the way—she needed her arms free for balance.

The wind was horrible; she had never experienced such cold, strong winds in her life. Thank God now, except for gusts, it mostly came from behind. Whenever it blew into her face and her nose, terrifyingly, it seemed to suck the breath from her lungs.

They had been heading downhill for some time. More than once she was blown against Arash’s back. On each occasion he stopped, firm as a rock, till she got her balance, then with a brief word set off again.

“I suppose that’s a knack you get when you’re raised in the mountains,” she called once, but if he answered her, the wind snatched away his words.

It was funny—she didn’t like him, but she trusted him. There was no one she would rather have been in this trouble with, no one she would have trusted more to get her through this.

She searched for her reasons. Because he was not a man who lied to himself. Arash never disguised his perception of reality in order to bolster his ego.

How rare that was among men.

She knew there was no one Kavi trusted more. “Arash is my right hand,” she had heard him say to Alinor once. “If I only think about a thing, it is done, as if my own hand had done it.”

He was as fine a warrior as any of his famous ancestors: the Parvanis were a nation of storytellers and she had heard plenty of stories about Arash’s war exploits, from everyone but him.

She had nothing but respect for him as a man. She had never seen him perform an ungenerous act.

Except one.

It was a pity they couldn’t like each other. But chemistry was like that, sometimes. Something primitive operating in spite of all rational process.

And she, of course, had other reasons.

They came to ground that sloped sharply upwards, and here, the vegetation having got a little thicker, the path was visible. Arash turned up a defile, and the wind simultaneously changed direction and blasted fiercely at them. The snow it carried was cold and hard, stinging her face with sudden ferocity.

Losing her balance, Lana stumbled and cried out, but though the wind seemed to steal the cry right from her throat, Arash turned and stepped quickly down to her, his hand outstretched.

She grasped it and recovered her balance, her heart beating so hard and fast that she was lightheaded for a moment. She clasped her other hand to her chest and blew out a relieved breath.

“Thanks!”

Her pack was heavy enough to have made a fall nasty. She might have broken a bone. His grip was firm, and he held her for an extra second to be sure she was safe. Her heart was still going like a drumroll.

“All right?” Arash asked. “It will be easier very soon now.”

She nodded, and he let her hand go, turned and went on.

For a moment she stood frowning down at her hand. Just with that brief touch his hand had warmed her freezing fingers.

After a long struggle, half-blinded by the snow, they crested the ridge, and the world was transformed. Lana, breathing heavily from exertion, gasped at her first glimpse of what lay below.

Behind was the familiar white and grey of rock and mountain and snow, but at their feet the ground opened, as if a giant knife had cut a gash in the fabric of the earth and the two sides had been pulled apart to reveal the earth’s deepest beauty in a vast, rich valley.

“But it’s magic!” she exclaimed breathlessly. “Oh, Arash, how beautiful! It’s like—it’s like Shangri-La!”



It was green with spring growth and the early buds on numerous trees. There were neatly planted orchards in a dozen directions, as well as the wild growth of natural forests.

There were villages, and farms with the neat, centuries-old terracing she had come to expect in Parvan. There were sheep and goats freckling the fields, and their bells jangled on the wild wind as shepherds hastily drove them home.

As everywhere in Parvan, there was evidence of the Kaljuks’ destructive bombs. Terraced fields were smashed, a roofless house gaped helplessly at the coming storm, sad skeletons of a burnt orchard clawed emptily at the sky.

But there were also signs everywhere that the inhabitants were rebuilding their lives. A half-finished new roof, the fresh bricks of a rebuilt muezzin tower, freshly plowed land.

Far to their right, a river cut through a rocky gorge and thundered in a massive, breathtaking waterfall down to the valley floor so far below. There it continued its journey as a river again, glistening between rich hilly banks all along the valley till it was lost to view.

At their feet the path they had been following suddenly became visible as a trail leading along the steeply sloping side of the valley down towards the river. It branched out in many directions, and she realized that this path was the inhabitants’ link to the caravan route and the outer world.

A blast of wind drove more stinging snow into her face as she paused to catch her breath, and Arash said, “We must hurry to get to cover. There is still some way to go.”

“Has the valley been cleared of mines?” she asked.

He nodded. “This valley was mostly spared the mines in any case, being so close to the Barakat border. The Kaljuks were afraid of bringing the Barakat Emirates into the war against them. If a pilot had made a mistake, if the mines or the bombs fell across the border…”

“I thought Central Barakat came in on Prince Kavi’s side.”

“Prince Omar is Kavi’s cousin and mine. He fought the war unofficially. His brothers, too, sent money and arms. But to engage the Barakat Emirates officially—the Kaljuks were at great pains to give them no excuse to formally declare war.”

“So this valley was luckier than some.”

He twisted his head in a nod. “As you say.”

“What is its name?” she asked, but Arash shook his head.

“Save your questions, Lana.”

He did not take the main path, leading to the left and sharply down, but a less-defined, though still visible, route to the right, in the direction of the waterfall. High on the green slope, it seemed more of a goat track than a human pathway.

Suddenly the storm broke in earnest. The muddy goatprints began filling with snow. The pattern of the wind was visible in the snowflakes’ whirling dance. Her eyes traced whorls, and spirals, and long sweeping blasts, and leaping chaos, all within the space of a few seconds.

The thought entered her mind—the secret of life is in those patterns, if only I could understand them. Then she blinked in surprise. She must be lightheaded from exertion and lack of calories. Or rapture of the heights.



One of Kavi’s bodyguards was a walking, talking sex bomb, as far as Lana was concerned. Arash Khosravi was powerfully built, and in their many discussions about the mysterious trio of Parvanis attending the university, Lana and Alinor convinced themselves that he really was a bodyguard.

He was also ruggedly good-looking, his eyes were a deep, unbelievably sexy violet, and he exuded masculine sexual confidence.

When he looked at her, Lana never felt that assessment in his gaze that she had learned to hate from men, never felt that question hovering in the air between them: Could I?

Arash’s sexual assessment was very different. When he looked at her, she seemed to hear a voice inside her head, saying, You have never wept with pleasure. I will make you do so. Or You have never been given all that you need. I will teach you how much more you need than you believe now.

She was sure he didn’t guess how far she was from the experience of real sexual pleasure.

When Kavian and Alinor started to date, Lana and Arash of course were often thrown together. Up close she had found him breathtaking. Mysterious, elemental. He was so different from the men she knew.

Even the way he carried himself was different. He walked as though the air were his own, and with every step his body seemed to restate a deep connection with the earth, as though his movements were part of the earth’s breath.

For a while she had been convinced the deep, almost primitive attraction she felt was mutual. She had told herself that Arash was choosing his moment. She imagined that he was deliberately building the intensity between them, increasing their anticipation.

She wished she had the courage to tell him her anticipation didn’t need any help. She had never felt such powerful sensual excitement in a man’s presence. Looking forward to the day Arash would make his move, she would burn and freeze and melt and shiver all at the same time.

Maybe, if she had not been so totally inexperienced, she might have been more confident that he would welcome some move from her. But he made her so nervous. What if she was imagining it all? What if her hormones had just made her sexually crazy?

The day drew nearer and nearer when he would go home….

Each day her heart ached a little more. Each day she thought, This will be the day. Each day she trembled when he was near.

And then the impossible arrived. Kavi and Alinor were leaving for Parvan the next day, and Arash was going with them. And with a deep sense of shock, Lana had realized that he was never going to make his move. And she might never see him again.

That night, at a farewell party at Kavi’s place, a little drunk—a little drunk and a lot desperate—Lana had stared across the room at Arash Khosravi where he leaned against a wall watching the proceedings, and knew that this was her last chance and that she could not let him go without a word….

She heard the introductory strains of a slow sexy song and, swaying across the room to where he stood, had slipped her body into his surprised hold, and her arms around his neck.

“Dance with me, Arash,” she breathed softly, smiling. “You’re going home tomorrow. Dance with me tonight.”



They struggled along the path that Arash chose. The evening closed in, and below them, all along the valley, lights came on in villages and isolated farms. And still they walked, the path dropping very gently as it proceeded around the valley’s slope, leading closer and closer to the waterfall. Its comforting rumble grew steadily louder, even against the blast and thunder of the wind and the thickening fall of snow.

She realized, after a while, that he had some specific goal in mind, and knew exactly how to get there. Several times before the snow got deep enough to cover all trace of the track, she noticed other tracks branching off, leading perhaps to this or that distant flickering light or cluster of lights marking a farmhouse or a village. But he always chose his path without hesitation.

Ahead of them there seemed to be nothing but shadow and the sound of the falls. Yet he moved sure-footedly, not pausing to take his bearings.

Then at last, just before evening darkened into night, when she thought her fingers and her nose must be black with frostbite, he stopped. The snow whirled, and Lana gasped as a white-grey wall loomed up in front of her.

A door creaked, and Arash led her through into a courtyard. There was less protection here than she would have imagined from the height of the wall, but the reason became evident when another gust swept aside the falling snow to reveal massive damage a little further along.

“Ya Sulayman! Ya Suhail!” Arash called, but his voice was eaten up in the roar of the storm.

There was no light anywhere.

“Is there a house?” Lana asked, peering around her. The wall was fairly typical, a kind she had seen before. It probably surrounded a large house and garden and perhaps an orchard. Generally such a place was the home of the sheikh or tribal leader, or the village chief. In her travels, finding the best projects to undertake—digging a new well here, rebuilding the mosque school there—she had often been offered the hospitality of such homes.

So it was likely that Arash had brought her to the house of the local sheikh. But it was strange that there were no lights. The house of a village chief should be full of people and lights, and, in weather like this, the courtyard and even some of the rooms might be crowded with animals. She wondered if it was even still standing.

“Yes, there is a house,” Arash responded, after shouting again and receiving no reply. “What is left of it.”

He moved forward, and she had to follow. Then, as they got closer, the snow briefly cleared, and she caught a broad vista of a once palatial, but badly damaged house. It had obviously been the home of an important sheikh. Probably the tribal leader of the whole valley, with a pedigree going back centuries.

Even half shrouded by the storm and cloaked in night, the ruin made her shake her head in sorrow. It must have been a beautiful place, built on several terraced levels up the hillside.

As they walked she saw the intricately patterned paving stones under her feet, broken now, and a dry channel said that a spring had once made its way through the garden. There were the remains of delicate archways and, just visible on the far side of the flat roof, an intact dome.

Although there were some signs of industry—a neat pile of new bricks, some boarded-up windows—no extensive repair seemed to have begun.

Arash led her towards a doorway and pushed open the door, and she followed him inside, out of the wind’s icy blast.

He shoved the door shut against the wind. They stood for a moment in total darkness. Catching her breath, she felt him fumble with something.

“Didn’t we bring a flashlight?” she asked, and found that she was speaking in a whisper.

“One moment,” Arash said, in a normal voice, and just then a match flared and she saw his hand reach for the glass chimney of an oil lamp on a small shelf just above her eye level at the doorway.





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