Книга - Lord of the Desert

Lord of the Desert
Diana Palmer


Sheltered small-town girl Gretchen Brannon was out of her element when she aligned herself with Sheikh Philippe Sabon, the formidable ruler of Qawi. They came from different worlds, yet she found a soul mate in the powerful, sensual man who'd suppressed his passions for far too long–and harbored a secret anguish.Nevertheless, he made the virtuous young woman aware of her own courage…and, in turn, she aroused his sleeping senses as no other woman could. However, now that Gretchen's heart belonged to the Lord of the Desert, danger loomed when she became the target for vengeance by the sheikh's most diabolical enemy. In a final showdown that would pit good against evil, could love and destiny triumph…?









“You will be the only occupant of my harem, playing a part,” Philippe said.


Her body tingled. “Pretending to be your lover,” Gretchen said breathlessly.

“Yes.”

She felt deliciously hot all over. The thought of his mouth on hers made her knees weak. He wanted pretense. She wanted him, and was only just realizing it. All sorts of shocking, exciting images formed in her mind. “I have no idea how someone in a harem behaves,” she said.

“Nor have I,” he said with a touch of amusement. “We will have to learn together.”

Some of the uncertainty left her expression.

“At least your virtue would be completely safe with me.” He hoped. He didn’t dare tell her what her touch did to him.

“How far would this pretense have to go, exactly?” she wondered aloud.

“It would have to be convincing,” he said.

She lowered her eyes demurely. “You’d kiss me and…so forth?”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Yes. Especially and…so forth.”



“Nobody tops Diana Palmer…I love her stories.”

—Jayne Ann Krentz




Lord of the Desert

Diana Palmer







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


To Jim, Rhonda, Nancy, Amanda and Christian

(and Hugo)

with eternal thanks!




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

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen




Chapter One


Tourists milled around the food court in the busy Brussels airport where the two American women were trying to decide what to do next.

The slender blond woman in the tan pantsuit was almost choked with mirth as she gazed mischievously up at her dark-haired, pacing companion in a green silk jacket and slacks. “Isn’t it ironic that we could starve to death surrounded by food?” Gretchen Brannon asked gleefully.

“Oh, do stop,” Maggie Barton groaned, looming over her laughing, near-hysterical companion. “We won’t starve, Gretchen. We can get Belgian francs. There are money-changing booths everywhere!” She waved her arms around expressively at the nearby shops, almost colliding with a passing couple in the crowded food court.

Gretchen’s green eyes twinkled. “Really? Where, exactly?”

Maggie let out a sigh as she tried unsuccessfully to remember enough French to read a sign.

Gretchen watched her through swollen eyelids. Unlike efficient Maggie, who could sleep on the plane, she’d been awake for almost thirty-six straight hours. “Can’t you just see the headlines?” Gretchen persisted. “‘Naïve Texas tourists found dead beside five-star restaurant…’!” She started laughing again.

Maggie was not amused. “Just sit right there. Don’t move.”

Gretchen submerged a mad impulse to salute. Maggie, twenty-six and three years older than Gretchen, worked for an investment firm in Houston where she was a junior partner. She had a take-charge manner that was occasionally a blessing. No doubt she’d find a way to get native currency and return loaded with food and drink.

Maggie came back with the money and sorted through it, frowning as she tried to remember how the currency changer had explained the coins. “We still have plenty of time to get something to eat and then take a tour of the city before our flight leaves for Casablanca this afternoon.”

Gretchen blinked sleepily. “Great idea, about the tour. Can you get a strong tour guide? I think I’ll need to be carried…”

“Food. Coffee. Right now. Come on.”

Gretchen obligingly let her friend tug her to her feet. They were an odd couple, with Maggie so tall and brunette and voluptuous, and Gretchen slender, medium height, fair and with long platinum-blond hair. They pulled the carry-on bags with them, having had the good sense not to bring more than that, thereby escaping the eternal wait at baggage claim for bags that often didn’t even arrive with the passengers.

Maggie coughed helplessly. “Everybody smokes everywhere over here,” she muttered. “I don’t suppose there’s a no-smoking section?”

Gretchen grinned. “Sure there is. It’s where the smoke is being blown to.”

Maggie made a face. “How about the food bar over there?” she asked, indicating a structure near the window. “It’s almost deserted and nobody’s smoking.”

“I could eat dry bread crusts, myself,” Gretchen agreed. “And if we don’t have enough money, I’ll even volunteer to wash the dishes!”

They had a nice order of pasta with tomatoes and mushrooms and homemade bread, on real china, with real silverware, at a counter. By the time they finished their second cups of coffee, Gretchen felt renewed.

“Now all we have to do is find a tour going our way,” Maggie said brightly. “I’ll call a tour agency and see if we can get somebody to come and pick us up.”

Gretchen only sighed. She sat down and closed her eyes. It would be so lovely to have a bed and ten hours uninterrupted sleep. But they were still hours from their hotel in Tangiers, Morocco.

Fifteen frustrating minutes later, Maggie hung up the phone and mumbled some harsh words toward it as she nudged Gretchen, who was dozing.

“I can’t read the telephone directory, it’s all in French, I can’t figure out which coins to use because I don’t speak French, and I can’t get anybody who answers the phone to understand me because I don’t speak French!”

“Don’t look at me,” Gretchen said pleasantly. “I don’t speak any French, even menu-French. I have to get by on Spanish, and nobody here seems to understand it.”

“I speak Spanish, too, but we’re in the wrong country to use it. Well,” Maggie said irritably, “we’ll just go outside and hail a cab. That should be simple enough. Right?”

Gretchen didn’t say a word. She sighed and got to her feet, dragging her carry-on bag behind her like a reluctant puppy.

The Brussels airport was large and modern and friendly. After a nightmare of dead ends they found a nice cab, with a pleasant, friendly driver whose English was every bit as bad as Maggie’s French. Nevertheless, she and Gretchen managed to convey what they wanted to do and they saw some amazing sights. The tour was long and pleasant and educational. But eventually they had to go back to the airport or risk missing their connecting flight.

Buoyed up by coffee, food, and the sight-seeing tour, Gretchen was now wide-awake and eager for Morocco, land of camels and the Sahara desert, and the famous Berbers of the Rif mountains. She could hardly wait to see the ancient land in its desert setting.

Several hours and a fascinating snack meal of Middle-Eastern delicacies later, their plane set down in Casablanca, Morocco, where they had to find the concourse for their connecting flight up to Tangier. Among the interesting customs of the flight were the distribution of traditional Moroccan foods and free newspapers in an assortment of foreign languages to travelers, and the apparently routine custom of applauding the pilot when the plane had landed safely. Maggie and Gretchen joined in the general merriment and stepped out into another world, where men and women wore long, graceful robes, and women either wore head covers with veils or scarves tied tight around their heads. There were many children traveling with their parents.

Inside the Casablanca terminal, much smaller than they expected it to be, armed guards in camouflage gear shepherded passengers to the customs desk and from there into the various concourse rooms to await their flights. The washroom, though small and rustic, had an attendant who was an English-speaking treasure of information about the city and its people. They changed American currency for dirhams at the airport after they cleared customs and before they went through baggage control and the metal detector again before boarding their connecting flight.

Casablanca was huge, a mecca of whitewashed buildings and modern skyscrapers with the same maddening traffic congestion to be found elsewhere in cities. When the plane, a double-decker, lifted off, they had another beautiful glimpse of the sprawling exotic city on the Atlantic.

Only three and a half hours later, choking on unfamiliar smoke because the passengers on this particular flight were allowed to smoke, the graceful airliner drifted down onto the tarmac at the small Tangier airport.

Finally, their passports were stamped, their luggage was checked, and they walked out of the terminal into the humid, almost tropical night air of Tangier on the Mediterranean Sea. Many cabs were parked along the road in front of the terminal, their drivers with uncanny patience awaiting the weary visitors.

The driver smiled, nodded courteously, packed their luggage in the trunk of his Mercedes, and they were, at last, on the way to the five-star Hotel Minzah, on a hill overlooking the port.

The streets were well-lighted, and almost everyone wore robes. The city had a curious face, of ancient things and venerable customs, of cosmopolitan travelers and mystery and intrigue. There were palm trees everywhere. The streets, even at night, were full of people, a few in European dress. Cars darted from side streets, horns blew. Heads poked out of perpetually open car windows and, accompanied by strange hand waving, guttural Berber spouted in friendly arguing as drivers vied for entrance into the steady stream of traffic. The faint smell of musk was everywhere, sweet and foreign and delightfully Moroccan.

It was a leap of faith into the unknown for Gretchen and Maggie, since they hadn’t been able to find a tour that featured only Tangier. They booked through a travel agency and made up their itinerary as they went. Stops in Brussels on the way to Africa and Amsterdam on the way back from Africa had been deliberate, to give them a taste of Europe. It was turning out to be a grand trip, especially since they were now in Morocco, and everywhere there were glimpses into the ancient past when Berbers mounted on fine Arabian stallions fought the Europeans for ownership of their ancient, sacred homeland.

“This,” Gretchen said, shell-shocked from long hours without more than catnaps, “is the most wonderful adventure.”

“I told you it would be,” Maggie agreed with a smile. “Poor thing, you’re dead on your feet, aren’t you?”

Gretchen nodded. “But it was worth every lost hour of sleep.” She frowned as she looked out the window. “I don’t see the Sahara.”

“The Sahara Desert is six hundred miles from here,” their driver said, glancing in the rearview mirror at them. “Tangier is a seaport on the Mediterranean, mademoiselle.”

“There goes our desert trek,” Gretchen chuckled.

“Oh, but there is much to see here,” the cabdriver said helpfully. “The Forbes museum, the Grotto of Hercules, the Grand Socco…”

“The marketplace,” Maggie said, remembering. “Yes, the travel brochures say it’s enormous!”

“That is so,” the driver agreed. “And perhaps you can hire a car and drive to Asilah, down the Atlantic coast, for market day,” he added. “It is a sight worth seeing, where all the country people bring their produce and goods for sale.”

“And maybe we can see the kasbah,” Gretchen added dreamily.

“A kasbah,” the driver corrected.

“There’s more than one?” Gretchen asked, surprised.

“Ah, yes, the American cinema. Humphrey Bogart.” He chuckled. “A kasbah is simply a walled city, mademoiselle. The shops are inside ours, here in Tangier. You will see it. Very old. Tangier has been inhabited since 4000 B.C., and the first here were Berbers.”

He mentioned other points of history all the way through the city and up a small hill to a flat-faced building that blended in with small shops. Here he stopped by the curb and cut off the engine.

“Your hotel, mademoiselles.”

The driver opened the door for them and gave their suitcases to the young man who came out of the hotel, smiling a welcome.

It wasn’t what the women had expected a five-star hotel to look like, from the outside. But then they entered the building and walked into opulent luxury. The concierge at the desk wore a red fez and a white jacket. He was busy with another guest, so the women waited with their luggage, glancing around at the elegant carpet and dark, carved wood of the sofas and chairs under a framed mosaic in an open room adjacent to the lobby. The elevator was getting a workout nearby.

The concierge finished with his other guest and smiled at the two women. Maggie stepped forward to give her name, in which the reservation was booked. In no time at all, they were on their way upstairs with the young man escorting their luggage.

The room overlooked the Mediterranean. But closer, downstairs, were the beautiful flowered grounds of the hotel with a swimming pool and many places to sit and enjoy the view toward the Mediterranean under towering palm trees, unseen from the street outside. It looked like photographs Gretchen had seen of lovely islands in the Caribbean. The sea air was delicious to smell, and the room was exotic, enormous, with separate rooms for the bathtub and toilet. There was a telephone and a small bar, containing soft drinks, bottled water, beer, and snacks.

“We certainly won’t starve,” Maggie murmured as she explored the room.

Gretchen pulled a gown from her suitcase, changed out of her traveling clothes, climbed under the sheets and went to sleep while Maggie was wondering aloud about room service…



Despite the jet lag so often talked about, they woke rested and hungry at eight o’clock the next morning and dressed in slacks and shirts, anxious to find breakfast and start looking around the ancient city that had once been part of the Roman empire.

The concierge pointed them toward the elaborate breakfast buffet and introduced them to a licensed city guide who would pick them up two hours later for a look at the city. They were cautioned by him never, never, to go onto the streets alone, without a guide. It seemed sensible to follow that rule, and they agreed to wait for the guide inside the hotel.

“Did you notice the price of the buffet?” Maggie asked when they were seated for breakfast. “Barely one dollar American, for all this.” She frowned. “Gretchen, how would you like to live in Tangier?”

Gretchen laughed. “I like it here very much, but how would Callie Kirby do without me in the law office?”

Maggie gave her a long, silent stare. “You’re going to grow old and die in that law office, alone and in a shell,” she said gently. “Daryl’s defection was the worst thing that ever happened to you, coming right on the heels of your mother’s death.”

Gretchen’s green eyes were sad. “I was a fool. Everybody saw through him except me.”

“You’d never really had any attention from a man,” Maggie pointed out. “It was inevitable that you’d go mad over the first man who treated you like a woman.”

Gretchen grimaced. “And all he wanted was the insurance money. He didn’t have any idea that the ranch was mortgaged to the hilt, and that there wasn’t going to be any money. We’d have lost the ranch if my big brother Marc hadn’t had a savings account big enough to pay off the part in arrears.”

“How sad that Daryl got out of town before your brother got to him,” Maggie said coldly.

“Marc scares most people when he’s in a temper,” Gretchen reminisced with a smile. “He was something of a local legend even before he left the Texas Rangers to join the FBI.”

“Marc loves you. So do I.” Maggie patted her hand and smiled. “I was like you, in a rut. I decided that I needed a leap of faith, a great adventure to pull me out of my complacency. So I’m going to Qawi to be personal assistant to the ruling sheikh of the whole country,” she added. “How’s that for a leap of faith?”

Gretchen chuckled. “About as big a one as you’ll ever make, probably. I hope you know what you’re doing,” she added. “I’ve heard some scary things about Middle-Eastern countries and beheadings.”

“Not in Qawi,” Maggie said easily. “It’s very progressive in culture, with an equal mixture of religions which makes it unique in the Persian Gulf. And all that oil money is going to make it cosmopolitan very quickly. The sheikh is very forward-thinking.”

“And single, you said?” she teased.

Maggie frowned. “Yes. You remember his country was invaded about two years ago, and there was a big scandal about it. I watched several news broadcasts that told about it. There were some rumors about him, too, of an unsavory nature, but his government explained them.”

Gretchen sipped coffee. “Maybe he’ll be gorgeous and sexy and look like Rudolph Valentino. Did you ever see that silent movie, ‘The Sheikh’?” she continued dreamily. “Just imagine having a fantasy like that actually come to life, Maggie. Being abducted by a handsome sheikh on a white stallion and having him fall madly in love with you! I get goose bumps just thinking about it.” She frowned. “Maybe I’m not cut out to be a modern woman. Probably I should be dreaming about throwing a handsome sheikh onto my horse and riding away with him as my captive.” A long sigh left her lips. “Oh, well, it’s only a daydream after all. Reality is never that adventurous, not for me. You’re more the type for gorgeous, sexy men.”

Maggie laughed hollowly. “I don’t have much luck with gorgeous, sexy men,” she said.

Gretchen knew she was thinking about her foster brother, Cord Romero. “Well, don’t look at me,” she mused, trying to lighten the atmosphere. “I only attract gigolos.”

“Daryl wasn’t a gigolo, he was a garden slug. You should only date men who belong to your own species,” she said haughtily.

Gretchen burst out laughing. “Oh, you make me feel so independent and brave,” she said, and meant it. “I’m really glad you asked me to come with you on this vacation and paid more than your part so I could afford it,” she added gratefully. “Even if I do have to fly back alone. I’m going to miss you,” she said quietly. “We won’t get to go shopping together or even talk on the phone at holidays.”

Maggie nodded solemnly. She was flying from here to Qawi. Her role as personal assistant to the ruling sheikh would be to assume responsibility for public relations, court functions, and organization of the household duties. It would be a challenge, and she might be homesick for Texas. But she’d told Gretchen once that anything was better than the hell of being around Cord Romero, who had made it obvious that she was never going to be part of his life.

Both had been orphans, adopted by a Houston society matron. They weren’t related, but Cord treated Maggie like a relative. He’d married a few years back and his wife, Patricia, had committed suicide after he was almost fatally wounded and he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, give up his career as a government agent. Soon after her death, he left the field of law enforcement and went to work as a professional mercenary soldier, specializing in bomb disposal.

It was what he did now, and Maggie had managed to keep her distance from him quite comfortably until the sudden death of their adoptive mother. Maggie had married a few weeks later, but her elderly husband had been an invalid and died only six months after their marriage. She and Cord had avoided each other ever since. Gretchen wondered what had happened, but Maggie never spoke of it.

When Cord unexpectedly returned to Houston and moved in the same circles Maggie did, in between foreign assignments, she applied and got a job in another country. One which, ironically, Cord had casually told her about. He’d come back from a job in Qawi just recently, helping disarm old land mines from a guerilla invasion. When Maggie had looked into the job, she’d found that it paid handsomely—much more handsomely than her own position as a financial advisor. She was determined to make a clean break from Cord this time.

On the way, she decided to have a vacation. She’d invited her friend Gretchen along, mainly because Gretchen had been so very despondent after the death of her mother and the tragic betrayal of her one serious boyfriend. So far the trip had been wonderful. But soon, Maggie would fly on to Qawi and Gretchen would have to board a plane alone for Amsterdam, from which she’d fly back to Texas.

It would be lonely for Gretchen, but she’d get a glimpse of the world. She needed that. She’d nursed her mother through cancer twice in the past six years. Gretchen was twenty-three and she was as naïve as a teenager in a convent school. She hadn’t had the opportunity to date much, with her mother so ill—and so possessive of her only child. Gretchen’s father had died when she was ten and her brother Marc was eighteen, and that had made their lives much harder. Marc lived with Gretchen and the foreman and his family on their ranch in Jacobsville, Texas, when he could get home. Marc worked for the FBI, and spent much of his life out of town on job assignments. His job hadn’t allowed him to help Gretchen with nursing their mother, although he certainly helped support them.

“Morocco,” Gretchen said aloud and smiled at Maggie. “I never dreamed I’d ever get to go someplace so exotic.”

Maggie only smiled.

“You’re very quiet,” Gretchen said suddenly, curious about her friend’s unfamiliar silences. Maggie was usually the talkative one of the two.

Maggie shrugged, cupping her coffee cup in both hands. “I was thinking about…home.”

“Shame on you. This is a vacation and we’ve just got here. You can’t possibly be homesick yet.”

Maggie smiled wanly. “I’m not homesick. Not really. I just wish things had worked out a little better.”

“With Cord,” Gretchen said knowingly.

Maggie shrugged. “It wouldn’t have worked out. He’ll never get over Pat’s death and he won’t give up his freelance demolitions work. He likes it too much.”

“People do change as they get older,” Gretchen said.

“He won’t.” There was finality and misery in the statement. “I’ve spent enough of my life hoping he’d wake up and love me. He isn’t going to. I have to learn to live without him now.”

“He might miss you and rush over on the first jet to bring you back home.”

“That isn’t likely.”

“Neither was my getting to go to Morocco,” Gretchen replied mischievously. She finished her beautifully cooked scrambled eggs.

Maggie forced a smile. “Oh well. The sheikh is relatively young and charming and a bachelor. Who knows what might happen?”

“Who knows.” Gretchen was sorry that Maggie had decided on such a drastic action. She was going to miss her terribly. Callie Kirby, her coworker at the law office in Jacobsville, was wonderful company, but Maggie had been her best friend since childhood. It had been bad enough when Maggie moved to Houston. It was a worse wrench to have her move out of the country.

“You can come and visit me,” Maggie said. “I’ll be allowed to have company. We might catch you a prince yet.”

“I don’t want a prince,” Gretchen said with a chuckle. “I’d settle for a nice cowboy with his own horse, and a kind heart.”

“Kind hearts are pretty rare,” Maggie pointed out. “But maybe you’ll find him one day. I hope so.”

“You could come back with me,” Gretchen said somberly. “It isn’t too late to change your mind. What if Cord suddenly wakes up and realizes he’s crazy about you, and you’re two thousand miles away?”

“As you said, he knows how to get on an airplane,” Maggie replied firmly. “Now let’s talk about something cheerful.”

Gretchen didn’t say another word. But she hoped most sincerely that Maggie knew what she was doing. It was one thing to be a tourist, quite another to be dependent in a foreign country. The job sounded almost too good to be true. And wasn’t Qawi a very male-dominated society where women had separate quarters and separate lives from men? It did seem odd that the sheikh would want not only a female public relations officer, but one from a foreign country known for liberated women. Perhaps there was a subtle revolution in progress in Qawi. Gretchen hoped so. She didn’t want her best friend in danger. But, she cheered herself, they still had a week in Tangier to enjoy. It was going to be a perfect trip. She just knew it.




Chapter Two


But all Maggie’s plans for her vacation and her new job went up in smoke the next morning as she accepted an unexpected long-distance call from Jacobsville, Texas. “I hate to have to tell you this,” Eb Scott, a friend of hers told her quietly. “Cord’s been hurt. He was doing a job in Florida a week ago, putting a small explosive device in a barrel for remote detonation and it went off in his face.”

Every drop of blood drained out of Maggie’s face. She gripped the telephone receiver like a lifeline. “Is he…dead?” she asked in a hoarse whisper.

An eternity of seconds later he said, “No. But he wishes he was. He’s blind, Maggie.”

She closed her eyes, trying to see that proud, independent man walking with a cane or a guide dog, trying to pick up the pieces of his life alone. “Where is he?” she asked.

“Gretchen’s brother, Marc, was in Miami when it happened. He picked up Cord and brought him home when he was released from the hospital. Cord’s at his ranch outside Houston.” There was another hesitation. “I didn’t know until Marc phoned me on his way back to Miami.”

“Is Cord alone?”

“All alone,” Eb said irritably. “He wouldn’t come down here and stay with Sally and me in Jacobsville, or even with Cy Parks. He doesn’t have any family of his own, does he?”

“Only me,” Maggie said with a hollow laugh, “if I qualify as family.” She hesitated, thinking fast. “I suppose he’d kick me out if I came home to stay with him.”

“Actually,” Eb said slowly, choosing his words, “Marc said he was calling for you when they took him to the hospital.”

Her heart jumped. That was a first. She couldn’t remember a time in their lives when Cord had needed her. He had wanted her, but only once, and he hadn’t even been sober…

“I phoned Cord as soon as Marc said he’d taken him home. Cord told me he didn’t think you’d want to look after him, but that I could call you if I wanted to,” Eb added dryly. “So I’m calling you.”

“What incredible timing,” Maggie said, her nerves raw. “I’m on my way to a new job and I have a week’s vacation left…” She glanced at Gretchen, who was eavesdropping unashamedly, and grimaced. “I don’t know how I’ll do it, but I’ll fly out this afternoon if I can get a flight to Brussels and then a nonstop flight home.”

“I knew you would,” Eb said gently. “I’ll let Cord know.”

“Thanks, Eb,” she said sincerely.

“My pleasure. Have a safe trip. And Marc said to tell Gretchen to be careful about going anywhere alone while she’s over there.”

“I’ll tell her. Cord…the blindness…is it going to be permanent?” she asked.

“They aren’t sure yet.”

She thanked him and hung up. “Cord’s been hurt,” she said without preamble, “and I have to go home, today. I’m sorry to leave you in the lurch…”

Knowing how Maggie felt about Cord, Gretchen would have allowed herself to be carried off by bandits rather than express any fear at being alone in a foreign country. “Don’t you worry about me. I can take care of myself,” Gretchen said with more confidence than she felt after Maggie explained what was going on. “But what about your job, Maggie?”

Maggie stared at her friend and her mind went into overdrive. A plan was forming…

“You can do it.”

Gretchen gaped at her. “What?”

“You can go to Qawi and take the job. Just listen,” she said when Gretchen started to protest. “It’s exactly what you need. You’ll vegetate in that little law office in Jacobsville. You’ve already given up most of your life to nurse your mother. It’s time you got a look at the real world. It’s the chance of a lifetime!”

“But I’m a paralegal,” Gretchen groaned. “I don’t know how to organize parties and write press releases. And the sheikh is expecting a widow with dark hair…!”

“Tell him you’ve dyed it, and don’t mention that you’re a widow,” Maggie said, dragging out her suitcase and heading for the closet where her clothes were hung. “You can use my ticket and I’ll give you all my spare cash.”

“This is a very bad idea…”

“It’s a wonderful idea,” Maggie countered. “You’ll have the time of your life. You may even find an eligible bachelor.”

“Oh, that’s a great idea,” Gretchen mused whimsically. “I can be wife number four wrapped up from head to toe in somebody’s harem!”

Maggie shot her a dry look. “You’ve got a lot to learn about Muslim women. They live by values we used to, and they have their own power. They have the vote in Qawi and several other countries, and their own independent finances. But there are plenty of Christian women and men in Qawi. Rumor has it that not only are the majority of the people Christian, but that the sheikh himself is one. His parentage is mixed.”

“As I recall, there was a rumor about the sheikh’s perverse sexual appetite,” Gretchen reminded her friend. “You told me yourself.”

“That was cleared up on the INN interview,” her friend said absently. “Senator Holden said that the sheikh himself had started those rumors to get Pierce Hutton’s wife to safety before her stepfather could harm her. They say he never got over Brianne Hutton.” She started pulling clothes off hangers. “Mrs. Hutton isn’t really pretty at all, but she has a beautiful smile and she wears clothes with a real flair. Maybe the sheikh was attracted because she’s so blond.”

“I suppose he’s very dark, isn’t he?” Gretchen asked.

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen him, and there aren’t many photos of him floating about. Even at his investiture, he was wearing a ceremonial bisht over his robes, along with a headcloth and an igal, and he managed to keep his face partially hidden from the international press.” Maggie finished packing, her mind still on Cord even as she organized her papers and her purse.

“Maybe he’s got warts,” Gretchen said wickedly.

Maggie wasn’t paying attention. She looked around the room. “If I’ve forgotten anything, send it back to me, will you? Here.” She handed Gretchen a handful of Moroccan paper money and some coins. “I can’t take this out of the country, anyway, and I won’t have time to change it. You spend the next week here and then fly on to Qawi. By the time the sheikh finds out you aren’t me—if he ever does—you’ll be so comfortably situated that he’ll probably keep you on anyway.”

“Optimist.” Gretchen hugged her friend.

Smiling, Maggie picked up the phone and spoke briefly and urgently to the kind man at the desk. “Thanks,” she said after a minute. “I’ll be right down.” She went to get her things together, and spoke to Gretchen over her shoulder. “He’s getting me a ticket. The car will be waiting downstairs. Mustapha’s taking me to the airport. Remember, don’t go out of the hotel grounds alone. Promise me.”

“I promise. Maggie, you be careful, too. I hope Cord’s okay.”

“Without his sight?” Maggie asked sadly. “All I can do is what he’ll let me do, and it won’t be easy. But maybe I can help him adjust. At least he needs me. That’s never really happened before.”

“Miracles happen when you least expect them,” Gretchen said comfortingly.

“I hope so. Cord could use one. Write to me!” she called as she grabbed up her hastily packed bag and went out the door.

“Of course.”

There was such a hollow silence in the room after Maggie’s departure that Gretchen could hardly bear it. There were television programs, but only on a handful of channels, and most of them were in Arabic or French. Only the news channel was in English. The room was a good size, but it was claustrophobic under the circumstances. Gretchen had to stretch her legs. She decided to go and play in the swimming pool. She might as well get a little sun while she could.



The afternoon was lonely, although she met other tourists and began to recognize them on sight. But she sat at a table by herself during the afternoon and evening meals and went up to her room early. She imagined that Maggie would be on her way back to Brussels by now to catch her flight home. She’d be alone, too.

She thought about their missed day trip and thought that perhaps the next morning she could get Mustapha to take her on the tour of the Grotto of Hercules that she and Maggie had planned for today. Then, she could go to the coastal city of Asilah the following day. It would be something to look forward to.

She slept restlessly, but felt oddly refreshed when she awoke the following morning. She put on a sleeveless yellow-and-white patterned long dress with a white knit jacket over it and left her hair long around her shoulders as she went to the concierge to see if he could help her find Mustapha.

In her haste, she ran almost headlong into a very distinguished-looking man in a gray designer silk suit. He caught her shoulders to steady her when she lost her footing and his twinkling black eyes searched her face amusedly.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” she gasped. “I mean, excusez-moi, monsieur,” she corrected, because he looked French. Sort of. He was elegant and he might have been handsome, except for the deep scars down one lean, clean-shaven cheek. His straight hair was as black as his eyes, and he had a grace of carriage that was rare in a man so tall. He was darker than most American men, but not radically so, and lighter than some of the Arabs and Berbers she’d seen here. He was very tall. Gretchen only came up to his chin.

“Il n’ya pas de quois, mademoiselle,” he replied suavely, in a deep voice, as soft as velvet. “I am undamaged.”

She grinned at him, liking the way his eyes sparked. “I’ll watch where I’m going next time.”

“You are staying here?” he asked with a polite smile.

She nodded. “For a few days. I’m on my way to a new job in Qawi, but I wanted a vacation first. It’s beautiful here.”

“A new job in Qawi?” he prompted with unusual interest.

“Yes. I’m going to work for the sheikh,” she said confidingly. “Public relations,” she added. “I’m really looking forward to it.”

He was quiet for a space of seconds and his quick, intelligent eyes narrowed. “Do you know this part of the world well?”

“It’s my first time out of the United States, I’m afraid,” she said. She smiled again. “I feel so stupid. Everybody around here speaks at least four languages. I only speak my own and a little Spanish.”

His eyebrows shot up. “Amazing,” he murmured.

“What is?”

“A modest American.”

“Most of us are modest,” she told him, grinning. “Well, a few of us are rude and conceited, but you mustn’t judge a whole country by a handful of people. And Texans are usually very modest, considering that our state is better than all the others!”

He chuckled. “You are from Texas?”

“Oh, yes,” she told him. “I’m a certified cowgirl,” she added dryly. “If you don’t believe it, I’ll rope a cow for you anytime you like.”

He chuckled again at her enthusiasm. He couldn’t remember ever meeting anyone like her except for once, a few years ago. He pursed his chiseled lips and studied her again, closely. “I understand that Qawi is smaller than even one of your states.”

She looked around her with eyes that seemed to find everything interesting. “Yes, but America is pretty much the same wherever you go,” she pointed out. “Here, the music is different, the food is different, the clothes are different, and there’s so much history that I could spend the rest of my life learning it.”

“You like history?”

“I love it,” she said. “I wish I could have gone to college and studied it, but my mother had cancer and I couldn’t leave her alone very much. I had to while I worked, of course, but I couldn’t take classes, too. There was no time. And no money. She died four months ago and I still miss her.” She smiled apologetically. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to ramble on like that.”

“I enjoyed it,” he replied, and seemed to mean it. “Mademoiselle Barton!” the concierge called to her.

It took several seconds for her to realize that the concierge had mistaken her for Maggie. Which was just as well, she supposed. She excused herself, went around the tall man with the briefcase in one hand, and went to the desk.

“Mustapha has already left to take a party of our guests to the Grotto of Hercules,” he said apologetically. “But if you still wish to go, our car is at your disposal, and we can ask one of the other guides to accompany you.”

“I don’t know…” Gretchen said hesitantly. She didn’t think she was going to enjoy the trip all alone.

“Excuse me,” the tall man interjected, joining her at the counter. “I had planned to go see the Grotto myself. Perhaps I could intrude on the young lady’s company…?”

She looked up at him with pure relief. “Oh, that would be lovely…I mean, if you’d like to go?”

“I would.” He glanced at the concierge and spoke rapidly and in a language Gretchen couldn’t begin to understand. Comments passed back and forth and the concierge chuckled to himself. Gretchen was wondering if her impulsive acceptance was going to get her into trouble. She knew nothing whatsoever about the stranger…

“The gentleman is quite trustworthy, mademoiselle,” the concierge said to her when he noticed her worried look. “I can assure you that you will come to no harm in his company. Shall I ask, uh, Bojo—another guide—to bring the car to the front door now?”

Gretchen glanced at her companion, who nodded.

“Yes, then.” She hesitated. “But your briefcase…”

He handed it to the concierge with another brief spate of comment in that same musical but puzzling language and turned to Gretchen with a smile. “Shall we go?”



The hotel’s stately Mercedes, with a tall, intelligent Berber at the wheel, easily identified by the way he wore his mustache and beard, slid easily into the flow of traffic. Their guide, like the taxi driver at their arrival in Tangier, had the window down and spoke volubly to other drivers and pedestrians with long, sweeping waves of his arm as he passed them. The stranger told her that he’d instructed Bojo to take them first to the Caves of Hercules, which she’d wanted to see earlier, and then on to Asilah.

“Bojo was born in Tangier. He knows half the population and is related to the other half,” the tall man said, lazing back against his seat with crossed arms to observe her.

“Like back home in Jacobsville,” she said, understanding. “Small towns are nice. Everybody knows everyone else. I don’t think I’d be happy in a big city, where I wouldn’t know anybody at all.”

“Yet you left your small town to take a position in a foreign—very foreign—country,” he said, and it was a question as much as a statement of fact.

She smiled absently as she looked past the driver’s head to the narrow city streets ahead, lined with palm trees and pedestrians in brightly colored clothing. “With my mother dead, and no close relatives, I seemed to be looking at a dead end of a future back home.”

“You are not married, then?”

“Me? Oh, no, I’ve never been married,” she said absently. “I had a boyfriend.” She grimaced. “He thought I’d inherit a lot of property and money when my mother died, but the property was mortgaged to the hilt and there was only enough insurance for a simple funeral. He just vanished after the funeral. He’s dating a banker’s daughter now.”

Her companion’s face hardened visibly. He was studying her intently, but she didn’t notice. “I see.”

She shrugged. “He was nice to me, and at least I had someone for a little while, when Mama was the worst.” She sighed as her eyes followed the coastline. “Before, I never got to date much. She’d been sick for a long time, you see, and there was only me to take care of her. My brother helped as much as he could, of course, but he works for the government and he travels most of the time.”

“And there was no one else who could have helped you? A close friend, perhaps?”

She shook her head. “Just my friend Maggie, but she lived in Houston. Lives in Houston,” she faltered. “I lived on our little family ranch with Mama that my brother managed to save. We have a foreman who lives there now and works for shares.”

“This friend,” he persisted in a deceptively lazy tone. “Did she come abroad with you?”

“Yes, but she had to go home unexpectedly.” She frowned, wondering if she should be so forthcoming with a total stranger.

“And left you all alone and at the mercy of strangers?” he taunted in a soft, teasing tone.

She glanced at him with a suddenly impish smile. “Are you going to offer me candy and ask me to go home with you?” she asked.

He chuckled softly. “I abhor sweets, as it happens,” he said, crossing his long legs in their elegant slacks. “And you seem a bit too astute to be picked up in such a manner.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” she murmured. “I’m partial to chocolates. I could be a real pushover to anybody with a pocketful of Godiva soft centers.”

“A fact I shall have to have to keep in mind, mademoiselle…Barton,” he said, so suavely that she missed the faint hesitation in his voice.

She searched his dark eyes, not liking to start off their friendship with a lie. “Mademoiselle Brannon,” she corrected. “Gretchen Brannon.”

He took the hand she offered and lifted it to his mouth. She grinned. “Mademoiselle Brannon,” he corrected. “Enchanté.” His eyes narrowed. “I understood the concierge to call you Mademoiselle Barton.”

She grimaced. “That’s Maggie Barton, my friend and my roommate. Her foster brother was terribly injured in an accident and she flew home this morning.” She bit her lower lip. “I probably shouldn’t ramble on about it, but she wants me to do something that isn’t quite ethical and my conscience is killing me.”

He leaned back, his eyes calm and faintly amused. “Please,” he invited with a gesture of one lean hand. “Often it helps to speak of problems to an uninterested but objective stranger.” When she hesitated, he chuckled. “We are strangers, n’est pas?”

“Yes. And I don’t guess you know anybody in Qawi?”

He lifted his eyebrows expressively.

She shrugged. “Well, Maggie got a job working for the sheikh there and since she can’t take it now, she wanted me to take her place without telling anyone who I was.”

His eyes were twinkling. “You disapprove?”

“She wasn’t really thinking straight, or she wouldn’t have suggested it. I don’t like telling lies,” she said flatly. “And I’m not any good at them, either. Besides, I don’t think I can pass for an executive-type businesswoman who’s also a widow. I’m not sophisticated and I don’t know how to plan parties or welcome visiting dignitaries. All I know how to do is legal work. I worked for a firm of attorneys in Jacobsville.”

He listened attentively, his eyes narrow with speculation and a half smile on his wide, thin mouth. “Amazing,” he murmured.

She looked up at him with wide gray eyes. “What is?”

“Never mind.” He searched her eyes. “So you think the job is beyond your capabilities?”

“Certainly it is,” she said. “I’m going to finish my vacation here and then fly to Amsterdam and go home,” she added, making her decision as she spoke.

One dark, elegant eyebrow lifted. “Do you believe in fate, Miss Brannon?”

“I don’t know.”

“I do. I think you should go to Qawi.”

“And live a lie?” she murmured unhappily.

“No. And tell the truth.” He uncrossed his legs and leaned forward abruptly. “I know the Sheikh of Qawi. Rather, I know of him,” he said unexpectedly. “He is a fair man, and he admires nothing more than honesty. Use your friend’s ticket. Take the job.”

“He won’t give it to me,” she interrupted. “He was emphatic about Maggie’s qualifications, and one of them, for some reason, was that she’d been married…”

“Tell him the truth, and take the job,” he repeated firmly. “He will make allowances. I happen to know that his need of an assistant is personal and immediate. He will not want to waste time trying to find someone else with Madame Barton’s qualifications.”

“But I’m not qualified,” she emphasized.

He smiled. “To meet people?” he chided. “You and I are strangers, yet here we are sharing a holiday trip.”

She let a smile touch her soft mouth. “That was only because I almost knocked you down,” she pointed out. “I can’t really make a habit of it, just to meet people.”

He waved a hand. “I think you will make an excellent assistant.”

“As I mentioned earlier, I can’t speak any other language except Spanish.”

“You can learn Arabic.”

“And worst of all, I’m not Muslim,” she worried.

“Neither is the sheikh.” He leaned forward with a grin. “Qawi is unusual as a nation in the mixture of her cultures. There are as many Jews and Christians as there are Muslims, owing to an unusual colonial history. You will feel right at home,” he assured her. “And in the past two years, it has become an ally of both the United States and Great Britain.” He grinned wickedly. “Oil contracts are lucrative temptations to democracies. How many friends Qawi has gained because of her new wealth!”

She smiled. “You make this sound very easy,” she told him.

“As it is.” He frowned as he studied her oval face. She was attractive, but no real beauty. However her features were nice, and she had warm eyes. Her mouth was perfect. He grimaced as he looked at it and mourned for what he could never experience again. Her hair, though, was what fascinated him. It was platinum blond, obviously long, and definitely natural. She reminded him, oh, so much, of Brianne Martin…

She was looking at him, too. She wondered how he’d gotten those scars on his face. There were others on the back of his left hand, the same side as those on his face.

He saw her curiosity and touched his cheek lightly. “An accident, when I was much younger,” he said frankly. “There are other scars, better hidden,” he added in a harsh undertone.

She smiled self-consciously. “Sorry,” she said at once. “I didn’t mean to stare. They’re not disfiguring, you know,” she added easily. “You look like a pirate.”

His eyelids flickered. “Mademoiselle?”

“You need an eye-patch and a cutlass and a parrot, though,” she added. “And one of those sexy white ruffled shirts that leaves half your chest bare.”

His delight was in the explosion of brilliance in his black eyes, in the hearty laugh that fell like music on her ears. She had a feeling that he laughed very rarely.

“Oh, and a ship,” she continued. “With black sails.”

“One of my ancestors was a Riffian Berber,” he told her. “Not quite a pirate, but very definitely a revolutionary.”

“I just knew it,” she said with glee. She searched his dark eyes and felt a thrill in the pit of her stomach that had no counterpart in her memory. Her breath was catching in her throat. No man had ever made her feel so feminine. “Have you ever ridden a camel?” she asked.

“What prompted that question?” he asked.

She indicated a man standing with a small herd of camels at the front of a hotel on the coast, whose parking lot they were just entering. “I really do want to ride a camel before I go home.”

“There are no saddles, you know,” he said as the driver parked the car and got out to open the door for them.

Gretchen looked at her gray slacks and sandals. “No stirrups, either?”

“No.”

She looked longingly at the camels. “They’re so pretty. They’re like horses on stilts.”

“Treachery!” he remonstrated. “To compare a mere beast of burden with something so elegant as our Arabian horses!”

She arched her eyebrows and looked up at him. “Do you ride?”

“Of course I ride.” He looked at the camels with distaste. “But not in a suit.” An Armani suit, but he wasn’t going to mention that.

She caught his sleeve lightly. She didn’t touch people often, but she felt safe with him. He wasn’t a stranger, even though he should have been. “Please?” she asked. “I don’t even want to go far. I just want to know what it’s like.”

It was like gossamer strands of silk brushing open nerves to have her soft green eyes look at him that way. Her fingers weren’t even touching his skin, but he felt their warmth right through the fabric, and his breath caught. Something unfamiliar tautened his tall, fit body.

“Very well,” he said abruptly, moving away from that light touch.

She dropped her hand as if he’d burned it. He didn’t like to be touched, she noticed. She wouldn’t forget again. She grinned at him as they approached the camel master. “Thanks!”

“You’ll fall off and break your neck, most likely,” he muttered darkly. He spoke to the camel driver in that same odd dialect she didn’t understand, smiling and gesturing with his hands as the other man did. They both looked at her, grinning from ear to ear.

“Come along,” the tall man told Gretchen, nodding her toward a small wooden block that was standing beside one of the well-groomed tan camels. The single hump was covered by a blanket and there was a tiny braided rope to hold on to.

“I’m not quite sure…ooh!”

The tall man had lifted her right up in his arms. He smiled at her shock as he put her on the camel’s back and handed her the single small braided rein. “Wrap your legs around the hump,” he instructed, “and hold tight. I’ve told our friend here to walk her slowly up the hill and back. No galloping,” he assured her.

She dug her small camera out of the fanny pack around her waist and handed it down to him. “Would you?”

He grinned. “Of course.”

She rode, laughing at the odd side to side gait of the beast. She waved at the grinning motorists who passed her as the camel’s owner led the camel up and down by the side of the small paved road. The whole way, the tall man watched them and took photos. He didn’t look much like a man of action, and she couldn’t really picture him on a camel. He seemed like a businessman, and he was probably as fastidious about dirt and camel hair as he would have been about mud. She’d dreamed of a man of action racing across the desert on a stallion. Her companion, who was charming and good company at least, was no counterpart of the daring sheikh she’d read about in the 1920’s novel from which Valentino’s movie had been made. It was a little disappointing. She had to stop living in fantasies, she reminded herself, and held on tight to the little rope as she bounced along.

When they returned, and the Moroccan had coaxed the camel onto its knees, the tall man handed him the camera and said something under his breath. He reached up and lifted Gretchen down in his strong arms, pausing to turn toward the camera. “Smile,” he instructed, and looked down into her wide, curious eyes. She smiled back, her heart whipping into her throat, her lips parted with lingering pleasure and the beginnings of an odd longing.

“Did you enjoy it?” he asked, hesitating.

“It was wonderful,” she said breathlessly. She searched his eyes slowly, aware of the smooth fabric of his jacket, where her nervous hands rested, and the narrow, unblinking scrutiny of those black eyes. She couldn’t quite breathe while he held her.

He felt her breath against his chin and again that unfamiliar stirring made him frown. He put her down abruptly and moved away to retrieve the camera. Gretchen stood watching him with nervous discomfort. She felt as if she’d done something very wrong. She had no idea what.

He was back very shortly. He handed her the camera and smiled politely, as if nothing had happened to mar the pleasure of her first camel ride. “The grotto is just down that path. Come along.”

She went first, leaving him to follow. There was a stall at the entrance to the Caves of Hercules and she hesitated with her eyes on a small, flat circle of rock with a raised dome and what looked like a fossil on it. Fascinated, she picked it up, finding it silky to the touch.

“Your first souvenir? Allow me,” he murmured, paying for it.

“But…”

He held up a hand to silence her protest. “A trifle,” he waved away the cost. He nodded toward the cave’s entrance. “Go slowly. This is a living cave. You will find limestone walls where, for centuries, men have hewn millstones from them.”

She went inside, feeling the cool dampness of the caves as she walked along the bare ground and mingled with other tourists. There was an opening toward the sea which looked very much like a map of Africa. The walls had circles carved out—the millstones, she thought. She cradled her souvenir in her small hands and took out her camera again, photographing the walls and, when he wasn’t looking, her strangely attractive companion. She was enjoying his company as she’d enjoyed little else in her life. And she didn’t even know his name!

She moved back toward him. He was watching the waves through the opening in the cavern, his hands deep in his pockets, his expression taciturn and brooding.

He turned as she joined him and the polite smile was back on his face.

“I don’t know your name,” she said softly.

His eyes twinkled. “Call me…Monsieur Souverain,” he said in a deep, soft tone.

“Do you have a first name, or is that some heavily guarded secret?” she teased.

He chuckled. “Philippe,” he said smoothly.

“Philippe.” She smiled.

The twinkle in his eyes became more pronounced. He pursed his lips. “Come along,” he said, turning. “We can go on to Asilah, if you like?”

“I’d like that very much,” she said honestly and then hesitated. “I’m not taking you away from any important business, am I?” she asked, concerned.

He laughed. “I have no important business after today and tomorrow,” he assured her. “Perhaps, like you, I am having a holiday.”

“I’ll bet you don’t have many,” she said, watching her step as they climbed the narrow, rocky path up to the parking lot.

“Why do you say that?”

“You act like the consummate businessman,” she told him without looking up. “I expect you’re in town on some huge project that involves all sorts of important people.”

“I was,” he said. “But the deal rather fell through before I got off the plane. I am working on another, however, which I expect will be even more successful.”

She didn’t notice that he was watching her covertly as he spoke, and that his eyes were brimming over with humor.

She looked around as they started to get back into the hotel’s car, and she caught her breath. “It’s nothing like I expected when we left Texas,” she confided. “It’s so exciting, and the people are all friendly and courteous—it’s almost like being at home, except for the way people dress and the sound of Arabic and Berber being spoken.” She turned to him with the car door standing open.

“Don’t you know anything about Morocco?” he asked gently.

She laughed. “All our television reporters talk about are scandals and political issues and the latest tragedy. They don’t tell us one thing about other countries unless somebody important is murdered in one.”

“So I have seen,” he mused.

She grinned. “That’s why Maggie and I came to Morocco, to see what it was really like. And now that we’ve been properly introduced,” she added, smiling as she extended her hand, “I’m very pleased to meet you, Monsieur Souverain.”

“I can return the compliment, Gretchen.” He brought her hand, palm up, to his hard mouth and looked straight into her eyes as his lips brushed it with a strangely sensuous motion. He made her name sound foreign, mysterious, exciting. The feel of his mouth on her skin made her uneasy, although not in any bad way. Faintly unnerved by the sensations the caress caused in her body, she pulled her fingers away a little too quickly, laughing nervously to cover the action.

He didn’t say a word until they were comfortably seated and the car was moving again, but his eyes were even more curious. She looked hunted for a moment, and that would never do. He smiled carelessly. “Would you like to hear something of the history of Tangier?” he asked.

“I’d love to,” she replied.

He crossed his long legs. “The Berbers were the first to arrive here,” he began, warming to his subject.



They passed cork factories and olive groves along the highway that led down the coast to Asilah, and Gretchen laughed as she watched camels playing in the surf at the ocean’s edge.

“They like to swim and sun themselves,” Philippe told her pleasantly, “much like tourists on holiday.”

“They’re very soft, but they aren’t as big as I expected them to be. I guess they look different in movies.”

“You saw The Wind and the Lion with Sean Connery?” he asked at once.

“Why, yes, several times,” she confessed.

“The palace of the Raissouli is in Asilah.”

She gasped. “He was a real person?”

“A revolutionary,” he agreed, “who tried to overthrow the monarchy. He failed,” he added dryly.

“My goodness, I thought it was all fiction.”

“Most of it was,” he told her. “But I also enjoyed it. In my country, foreign films are a large part of our entertainment.”

His country. France, she was certain. She smiled. “I’ve never been to France,” she mused. “I’ll bet it’s beautiful.”

“Beautiful,” he agreed, deliberately encouraging her mistaken idea of his background. “And old. Like most of Europe. The kasbah of Tangier dates back to Roman conquest and even earlier.”

“I love all of it,” she said fervently. “Every cobblestone and villa, every little shop, the people who meander through those narrow walled streets. It’s like a fairyland.”

His black eyes narrowed. “You enjoy foreign places.”

She looked over at him. “I’ve never even been out of Texas before,” she confessed. “Not even to the Mexican border. I’ve never been…well, anywhere. And to get to see Africa, of all places.” Her heart was in her eyes. “I feel as if I’m living a dream.”

“Do you know,” he murmured absently, “that is exactly how I feel.” Then he smiled, and the intensity of his gaze turned to the passing coastline.




Chapter Three


Asilah was bustling with activity. Before 1972, Bojo the guide told them, the whole city was inside the ancient walls. Now there were shops outside as well, and new construction underway. As they searched for a parking space in the crowded city, they saw small donkey-drawn carts carrying people from one side of town to the other, and just outside the kasbah on a tree-lined street near the bay, there were sidewalk cafés. But first the guide indicated that they should go away from the old walled city toward the highway, because that was where the once-weekly open air market was held.

“Market day,” Philippe told Gretchen, gently taking her arm to guide her across the busy street which was packed with cars as well as carts. “This will be an adventure.”

It was. She saw beautiful fruits and vegetables, herbs and spices, all presented in beautiful order and not one blemish on any of it. There were exotic spices, potions, clothing and hats. There were leather goods and even live chickens and rabbits for sale. Outside the ramshackle order of small tents teeming with people, donkeys and camels lay in the shade waiting for the return trip to their small villages.

“The produce is just beautiful,” she exclaimed. “My goodness, this is even prettier than in our supermarkets back home, but it isn’t refrigerated.”

He chuckled. “Yes, and on this market day, much of it gets sold to city dwellers.”

He acquainted her with the various spices and the displays of olives before the guide led them back into the city.

“Are you thirsty?” Philippe asked her.

“I could drink a gallon of water all by myself,” she panted, wiping the sweat from her forehead with a tissue from her pocket.

He grinned. “So could I.”

He and the guide led her to a small café where he ordered bottled water for her and mint tea for himself. He offered her some tea, but she declined, nervous about trying anything that didn’t come out of a bottle.

“You must try the mint tea before you leave Morocco,” he told her. “It is famous here.”

“I will. Right now cold water sounds better.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

He handed her chilled bottled water and took his mint tea to a small group of tables under a spreading tree near the walls of the old city. Their guide remained behind to speak to a shop owner he knew. “The café owns this small space,” Philippe told her, “and patrons pay at the counter and eat here.”

“This is very nice,” she said, looking around her at comfortably dressed people wandering about. “There are lots of tourists here.”

“Yes. The city is the site of an arts festival which is going on even now. The shops in the old walled city are brimming over, and Asilah has put on its brightest face for the festival. It draws people from around Europe and Africa and from all over the world.”

“You said the revolutionary’s palace was here?” she asked.

He nodded. He sipped his mint tea, finished it, and excused himself to return the china cup and saucer to the stand. She was curious about that, because most of the tourists had disposable containers like hers. Following Philippe with her eyes, she saw the extreme courtesy with which the shop owner treated him. While she was observing that, she noticed something else—foreign men in sunglasses and dark suits standing nearby. They’d parked behind them when they arrived. She wondered why they were here. Whimsically she wondered if they were shadowing some important foreign dignitary who was in disguise. When she got home, she’d have to ask her brother about foreign security. Then she remembered that she was going to Qawi, not home. It made her nervous and a little sad.

Philippe came back and studied her from his great height. “You’re worried,” he said abruptly.

“Sorry.” She pinned a smile to her face as she got to her feet, clutching her half-finished bottle of water. “I was thinking about my new job, if I get it.”

“And worrying,” he persisted.

She grimaced. “I don’t like using a plane ticket in someone else’s name and pretending I’m her, even if he does eventually hire me anyway.”

He smiled. “I think you have very little to worry about in that respect. As for the plane ticket, the concierge will change it for you, into the right name, and Mustapha or Bojo there—” he indicated their tall driver and guide still lingering at the shop counter “—will even take you to the airport and wait with you.”

“They will?”

He grinned at her shocked expression. “Isn’t this done in your country?”

“No, it isn’t,” she said flatly.

“To each his own,” he said tolerantly. “You will find life a little different in this part of the world.”

“I already have,” she said. She laughed gently. “I don’t know that it’s good for me to be pampered like this. I’m just a very ordinary paralegal.”

One eye narrowed. “I think, Gretchen Brannon, that you are not very ordinary at all.”

“You don’t know much about women from Texas.”

“A gap in my education which I hope to correct in the next few days,” he said gallantly. With a twinkle in his black eyes, he added in the classic line from an old Charles Boyer movie, “Will you come with me to the kasbah?”

She laughed helplessly. “I really do watch too many movies. I only thought there was one kasbah until the cabdriver at the airport told me what they were.”

“Charles Boyer and Humphrey Bogart films,” he mused. “They portray a very different Morocco.”

“Yes. Those days are long dead.”

“The old ways, perhaps. Not the intrigue,” he informed her. He put a hand under her elbow to guide her through the gates of the old city and into the maze of narrow streets and small shops. He leaned down to her ear. “Do you see the man in the beige suit wearing sunglasses? No, don’t turn your head!”

She had a flash of vision out of the corner of her eye. “Yes.”

“Now, do you notice the gentlemen in dark suits and sunglasses nearby?”

“I saw them earlier…!”

“Bodyguards.”

“Really?” She sounded breathless with excitement. “Whose are they? Do they belong to the man in the beige suit?”

He pursed his lips amusedly. “Who knows? Perhaps he works for one of the Saudi princes who have estates outside Tangier.”

“The one the guide pointed out, with the heliport and armed guards at the gate?”

“That one. They go sightseeing from time to time. Yesterday I saw the ex-president of Spain in town.”

“So did we! I’ve never met a head of state, former or not.”

He kept his eyes carefully on the path ahead and didn’t reply.

“Those bodyguards, I guess they have guns?”

“Nine millimeter Uzis and they know how to use them.”

She gasped. “Good Lord. I hope nobody attacks him.”

“Nobody knows him,” he said lazily. “Heads of state from the Middle Eastern countries wander around here all the time and are never noticed. They blend in.”

“If you notice the Sheikh of Qawi, how about pointing him out to me?” she asked facetiously. “Maybe I can throw myself on his mercy before I arrive in his capital city like an unclaimed parcel.”

He put on his own sunglasses and grinned. “I can promise you, his own subjects wouldn’t know him in a European suit.”

“Is he…perverse?” she asked bluntly, worried in spite of Maggie’s assurances.

He stopped dead and looked down at her. His eyes, behind the dark lenses, were concealed. “What?” he asked icily.

She bit her lower lip. “My friend, Maggie, said that there were rumors about him and young women. She said they weren’t true and that he started them himself.”

“He did,” he said quietly. “I can promise you that you will be in no danger from him. In fact,” he added thoughtfully, “I think you may find yourself pampered as you never expected to be, under his protection.”

She drew in a breath. “I hope you’re right!” she said fervently. “Oh, look at those shawls!”

She rushed forward to a display over the doorway of a shop. There was a black shawl with pear-shaped fringe work that took her breath.

“A Moroccan scarf, like those the women wear around their heads when they go out in public,” he said. “In Qawi, we call a head covering a hijab. Do you fancy it?”

“I suppose it’s very expensive,” she said, glaring up at him. “But you’re not buying it. If I can afford it, I’ll buy it for myself.”

He grinned. “Ah, that American independence asserts itself! Very well.” He spoke to the man in that gutteral tongue she still didn’t recognize and laughed as he glanced down at her. “It is fifty-six dirhams,” he told her.

“Fifty-six…!”

“Seven American dollars,” he translated.

She let out her breath and smiled. “I’ll take it!”

He helped her find the coins to pay for it and let the man package it for her. He put the parcel under his arm and led her through the maze of other shops where she bargained with delight for a small pair of silver earrings and a worked silver and turquoise bracelet.

“There,” he said as they went down a long cobblestoned path, “is the palace of the Raissouli.”

It took her breath away. The tiles, in white and many shades of vibrant blue, were combined in the most beautiful mosaic pattern she could have imagined inside the white, white walls of the exterior. There was little inside to see, but she touched the ceramic tiles with utter fascination.

“All the tile work is geometric,” she murmured.

“Worshipers of Islam are forbidden from representing anything human or animal in the patterns,” he explained. “Thus the geometric designs.”

“They’re so beautiful.” She sighed with pleasure. “When I think of our concrete and steel and brick buildings back home…”

“But you have wooden ones as well,” he reminded her.

“Yes, old Victorian homes with exquisite gingerbread woodwork. I’ve seen those. In fact, our ranch house is built like that. It isn’t luxurious or anything, but it’s rather pretty when it’s freshly painted.”

He studied the gleam of her platinum hair as they went back out into the sunlight and back out the gates of the old city and onto the streets. “Do you ever wear your hair down, Gretchen?” he asked softly.

“It’s very fine and flyaway,” she said with a smile. “Besides, it gets in my face in the wind, especially the sort they have here in Morocco. It blows constantly.”

“How long is it?”

She searched his curious eyes. “It comes down a little past my waist. Why?”

“I know another woman, also an American, with hair much like yours.” He grimaced. “She cut hers. I imagine her husband encouraged her,” he added darkly. “He knows how much I admire long hair.”

Her eyebrows arched. “Her husband?”

He glared. “They have a son, almost two years old.”

“She turned you down, I gather?”

His chin went up. “I would not offer marriage,” he said evasively. “He did.”

“Why, you rake,” she teased.

He didn’t smile. If anything, he looked grim and introspective.

“Sorry,” she said at once. “I suppose she meant something to you?”

“She was my world,” he said abruptly. “But there again, fate robbed me.” He glanced beyond her and frowned.

She turned, in time to see the man in the beige suit now standing with the bodyguards. One of the two men in black suits on the side of the street was making an urgent gesture with one hand. The man in the beige suit motioned to Philippe.

“We must go at once,” he said, propelling her down the walkway to where their guide was waiting with the black-suited men. He was quite suddenly someone else, someone who exercised authority and expected instant obedience. When they reached the black-suited men, they were standing with the one in the beige suit—the man Philippe had described as an employee of a Saudi prince. But the man wasn’t behaving like royalty at all. In fact, he was acting in a totally subservient manner, almost pleading from the tone of his voice.

Philippe snapped out questions and then orders in a language that sounded different from the one he’d used in these shops. He glanced down at Gretchen with concern and guided her back toward the car, with their guide in front and the other three men behind and to the side of them.

Gretchen didn’t speak. She had a sense of urgency and danger which made her move quickly and keep quiet. She felt Philippe’s quick, approving gaze as they made their way back to the car and got inside. The suited men got into the car behind them, another Mercedes she noticed, and they pulled out into the street and quickly back onto the highway that led to Tangier.

In scant minutes, she realized that they were gaining speed and that a third car was apparently in hot pursuit.

She glanced at Philippe with visible apprehension. He had pulled a cell phone from his pocket and was speaking into it rapidly in a foreign tongue. The car behind them, apparently following orders, suddenly whirled and blocked the narrow road so that the pursuing car had to swerve or hit them. As they raced away, the sound of rapid gunfire echoed behind them. Gretchen’s hands clenched so hard on her plastic bottle of drinking water that she almost burst it.

“It is all right,” Philippe said in a soft, comforting tone, his face hard and somber. “We are perfectly safe. You react well to a crisis,” he added with gentle praise.

“That was gunfire!” she said breathlessly.

“It was not meant for us,” he said nonchalantly. “We have only helped the young man in the beige suit avert a kidnapping attempt. I assure you, the Moroccan authorities are even now on the way to apprehend the perpetrators.”

“But they were armed,” she persisted.

He waved a hand. “Armed, but hardly in the class of Ahmed and Bruno.”

“Who are they?”

He chuckled. “Bodyguards.”

“Oh, yes. The prince’s bodyguards.”

He lifted an eyebrow and smiled at some private joke. He slid back his sleeve and checked his watch. It was thin and gold, expensive-looking. “I regret having to cut short our sight-seeing tour, but we would have had to leave soon, just the same. I have a rather important business meeting later this afternoon.” He lifted his dark head and searched her eyes. “Will you have dinner with me this evening?”

Her heart skipped and she smiled whimsically. “If you…I mean, I really would like that.”

“Bien. I will call for you at a quarter till eight.”

“All right.” She wasn’t used to having dinner so late, but the hotel didn’t serve meals until that hour. She was already hungry. Perhaps she could find something to nibble on in the small refrigerator in her room.

“Did you have breakfast?”

She hesitated. “Well, yes.”

He smiled warmly. “But no lunch. You do know that the hotel serves a marvelous little buffet beside the swimming pool around 3:00 p.m.?”

She sighed with relief and smiled back. “I do now. You see, the menus are all in French and I’ve had to have waiters translate them for me.”

“I will do that for you this evening.” He pulled out his phone again, pushed in numbers and spoke into it rapidly. The reply came at once. He listened, said something else, and put it away with a sigh. “The would-be kidnappers are in custody.”

“I’ve never seen anything like that in my life,” she said on a heavy breath.

“Sadly, I see it far too often,” he said absently. He said something to the driver, who nodded. He leaned back again and crossed his legs. “I must have Bojo drop me off at the embassy,” he told her. “But he will drive you back to the hotel and escort you inside. I have instructed him to make the concierge aware of our…adventure…this morning, and to look out for you.”

She felt as if he were wrapping her up in soft cotton, like a treasure. She barely knew him, yet he wasn’t a stranger. “Thank you,” she said, feeling that the words were hopelessly inadequate to express what she really felt.

“The entire incident was my fault,” he muttered darkly. “I was careless.”

“I don’t understand. We were only sightseers.”

They approached a group of imposing buildings in the middle of the city and the driver pulled up to the curb and stopped.

“I must go.” Philippe took her hand to his lips and kissed it lightly just above the knuckles, with his black eyes holding hers the whole time. “Don’t brood,” he added gently. “You are safer right this moment than you have ever been in your life.” He turned his head and said something sharp in that gutteral language. Their driver chuckled and replied with a wave of his hand.

Philippe left the car without a backward glance, but as the driver pulled away from the curb, Gretchen noticed that the black car with the two bodyguards slid quickly to the curb in the wake of hers and the two dark-suited men got out and followed close behind Philippe.

She frowned, wondering why they were following him instead of the Saudi prince. “Those bodyguards…” she began.

“Mademoiselle must not worry,” the driver said easily. “Monsieur is in good hands.”

“But aren’t those men supposed to be the Saudi prince’s bodyguards?”

He hesitated. “They are not in the employ of the prince,” he said finally. “They are often called upon to escort visiting dignitaries. And important businessmen,” he added hastily and smiled.

“I see. Thank you.” She smiled and leaned her head back against the seat, relieved and still a little puzzled. Now that she had a friend in Morocco, she didn’t want to lose him so quickly.



Bojo got out of the hotel’s Mercedes, which he had driven, and escorted Gretchen in to the concierge. He seemed different now, very focused and intent as he related, in the language she didn’t understand, what had happened. She noticed that while he was wearing the long striped, hooded robe favored by many Moroccan men, that underneath it he was wearing a suit. She studied him unobtrusively, noting the expensive watch on his own wrist and a diamond-studded ring on his left middle finger. He didn’t look like a hotel guide at all. But then he turned back to her, motioned to one of the bellboys and had her escorted up to her room, all with reassuring smiles and consideration. She wondered if she’d ever get used to all this pampering.

She looked at herself in the mirror and noticed a fine layer of yellow sand. The wind seemed to blow all the time, and she’d noticed that none of the cars seemed to have or use air conditioning, because the windows were always open. The sand came into the cabs and, apparently, everywhere else. She took a quick shower, careful not to use more water than she had to. Water in a desert country must be precious.

Her wardrobe was severely limited by Maggie’s insistence on only one carry-on piece of luggage. She put on a pair of white slacks with a patterned white-and-purple silk blouse and sandals and grimaced at the white Mexican peasant crinkle-cloth dress hanging in the bathroom, which was all she had to wear to dinner. Perhaps she could wear her hair long and put on her single strand of cultured pearls and their matching earrings and pass. She felt uncomfortable at the idea of disgracing Philippe, who would probably turn up in a dinner jacket and be embarrassed by her.

She went down to the buffet luncheon with apprehension, which was lessened when she saw other tourists in bathing suits filling up china plates. The waiter grinned and her and she grinned back. She realized that many of their visitors would be similarly limited in wardrobe and she stopped worrying.

She had prosciutto and melon with tiny pastries of stuffed pigeon and wondered what people back in Jacobsville would think of the entrée. She sipped water “with gas” as the waiter called sparkling water and felt like a Sybarite on holiday. The sun was warm, the grounds exquisitely beautiful and full of blooming roses and other flowers. The sounds of carefree bathers fell softly on her ears as she curled up drowsily by herself in one of two canopied swings behind the row of padded chaise lounges. Before she knew it, she was asleep.

She was dreaming. She was being rocked in a boat while the breeze stirred a loose strand of hair at her throat. Her cheek was resting on a soft pillow that seemed to beat rhythmically. She sighed and stretched, and the pillow made an odd sound.

She opened her eyes and looked up into a scarred dark face with black eyes that held an odd expression. Her cheek was against his shoulder, and she was cradled across his long legs in the swing. For long seconds, they simply stared at each other in the fading sunlight.

“How fortunate that you went to sleep out of the sun’s reach,” he said in a voice that was more heavily accented than she’d heard it before. “Sunburn can be lethal in this climate.”

“Lunch was delicious and I got drowsy,” she said in a hushed tone.

One of his hands was at her throat. He moved it in a faint caress, looking down at her soft mouth for an instant before he lifted his gaze beyond her to the sea. “I sleep very little,” he said quietly. “Mine brings nightmares.”

“About what?” she asked, intrigued by the familiarity of being held close to him when she should be nervous and wary. He was a stranger. He should have been a stranger…

He spread her fingers against the silky fabric of his jacket and smoothed over her short nails. “War,” he said quietly. “Death. The screams of the innocent in the darkness of terror.”

She stared up at him uncomprehendingly, with wide, curious eyes. “Aren’t you from France?” she asked hesitantly.

His black eyes slid down to search hers. “No.”

“Then, where…?”

The hand at her throat moved, so that his thumb pressed the words back against her lips. “It is too soon, Gretchen,” he said gently. “Much too soon for truth. Let us live in a world of utter fantasy for a few days and let tomorrow wait for answers.”

She smiled hesitantly. “What sort of fantasy do you have in mind?”

He traced her mouth tenderly. “A very innocent sort,” he said with an oddly harsh laugh. “The only sort I am capable of.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I know. Perhaps it is as well that you don’t.” He smiled down at her, cradled in his arms like a kitten. She smelled of orchids. He traced her cheek with its faint flush and her straight nose, and then her thin eyebrows as if he were sketching her. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-three,” she said honestly.

His forefinger eased between her parted lips, sensuously tracing the upper lip and then the lower one, enjoying her reactions. Her breath was jerky against his skin. Her eyes were dilating. He felt her body stir involuntarily and cursed himself and his fate.

“What are you like in passion?” he asked roughly. “Are you submissive, or do you like to bite and claw…?”

Her scarlet blush interrupted him. He scowled down at her horrified expression just before she struggled away from him and moved a foot away on the swing, trying to catch her breath.

“I don’t know…what sort of women you’re used to,” she choked, avoiding his intent scrutiny, “but I don’t do that kind of thing!”

His arm was across the back of the swing. His narrow black eyes watched her, intrigued. “What sort of thing?”

“Sleep around,” she said flatly and glared at him. “Least of all with a man I’ve only just met. So if that’s why you’ve been so nice to me, well, you’d better find a more modern woman. If I ever go to bed with a man, it’ll be my husband and nobody else. Period.”

The harshness went out of him at once. He looked at her with curiosity and, then, with utter delight. He smiled and then he laughed.

“Go ahead,” she invited warily. “Call me a prude. Say I’m living in the last century. I don’t care. I’ve heard it all before.”

“The small, still voice of reason in a mad world,” he said under his breath. “I knew that you were unique among your countrywomen,” he added huskily.

“I’m a throwback to Victorian times,” she agreed.

He took her hand in his and held it gently. “I don’t want a sexual interlude with you, Gretchen,” he said quietly.

She hesitated. “You don’t?”

He looked at her small hand and hated himself for the curse that denied him a man’s expectations. He smoothed his fingers over hers while he considered his options. He could send her home at once. It would be the best thing for her. But she opened his heart. She made him want to live. She made him laugh and smile and look at the world as a place of fascination and delight. He hadn’t felt that way for a long time. For two years, in fact. He hadn’t ever expected to feel that way again. And if it was like this, so quickly, how would it be as time passed and they got to know each other?

His features twisted. Yes, how would it be when she knew his horrible secret, when the truth came out. Would she look at him with pity, or with contempt and disgust? Could he bear to see that, in her soft green eyes?

He looked at her with torment in his face.

“Oh, don’t look like that,” she said with concern. “Whatever’s wrong, it will all come right one day. Really it will. You have to look for miracles or they don’t happen, Philippe.”

“How do you know that something is wrong?” he asked at once.

She frowned. “I don’t know. But something is.”

His breath caught in his throat. His fingers tightened on hers. He looked into her eyes and knew at that moment that he wasn’t going to be able to let her go.




Chapter Four


“It isn’t something I’ve said, is it?” Gretchen asked, breaking into his thoughts. “I know that I’m very opinionated. I didn’t mean to be rude…”

He brought her fingers to his lips and then released them. “It isn’t anything you’ve said. In fact, I quite admire your attitude,” he added with a smile. “Muslim women value their virtue. But it is a rather unusual trait in this day and age.”

“That’s what everyone says, all right,” she agreed whimsically. She averted her eyes. “My parents were very strict and deeply religious.” She toyed with a button on her shirt. “I suppose you’re Muslim?”

“No,” he said unexpectedly.

That brought her face up. She searched his eyes curiously.

“I am a Christian,” he said unexpectedly, and without explanation. “And so are many of my people. We are almost equally divided between Muslim, Christian and Jew. It makes for interesting politics,” he added with a grin.

“I’m surprised at how much I don’t know about this part of the world,” she told him. “I thought everybody was Arab, and Muslim. But I’ve learned already that many of the people who were born in Morocco are Berbers, not Arabs.”

“A people very proud of their ancient heritage,” he agreed. “The Berber language is not a written one, either. It is passed down from generation to generation verbally, and its history is woven into the carpets they sell, story by story.”

“I’d love to see them,” she said.

“Tomorrow,” he promised. “I’ll have Bojo take us on a walking tour of the city.”

“I’ve already been, but I didn’t want to look at carpets,” she said sadly. “I didn’t realize what I was missing.”

He chuckled. “Something to anticipate,” he said. “Now, I still have some telephone calls to make, so I must leave you. I’ll be along for you just before eight.”

“I only have one dress with me,” she told him. “It’s a lacy white Mexican dress…”

He guessed her thoughts from the worry on her face. “And you think I may be ashamed of you, because you aren’t wearing something very expensive?”

“Yes,” she said honestly.

He smiled. “I’m sure that whatever you wear will be charming,” he said gently. “I look forward to tonight.”

He left her there on the swing and she watched his elegant back as he walked away. One thing this country had already impressed on her was the grace of movement that these people seemed to share with Arabs. Nobody ever seemed to hurry. It was a wonderful slow pace that suited the easy manner of life and business, unrushed, unharried. She wondered whimsically if anyone here ever got ulcers. She really doubted it.



She dressed with more care than ever that evening. It had been months since Daryl had taken her out and pretended to be in love with her. She thought of him with mingled shame and self-contempt. She’d been easy prey for him, in love for the first time in her life and flattered that such a handsome young man should be so interested in her. He’d even come to sit with her at the hospital during the last terrible days when her mother was dying.

Only after the funeral had she understood his interest. He stopped by the ranch after work and offered to marry her and manage her inheritance for her. When she explained that there was no inheritance, he’d looked shocked and then angry. Muttering something about a waste of time, he’d walked away and never looked back. Her brother, Marc, had tried to warn her about him, but she’d only gotten angry and refused to listen. It was the first time a man had made her feel special and loved. What hurt was that she’d been naïve enough to believe him. But, then, her mother had been so possessive and dependent on her that she rarely got to date anyone while she was in her teens and early twenties. Even then it was mostly blind dates that were one-time occurrences. Marc had commented once that she needed to assert herself more with their mother, despite her illness, but Gretchen’s soft heart had been her undoing. When she asked for more freedom, her mother agreed, and then cried and cried about being left alone. Gretchen settled for those rare blind dates until Daryl came along.

She’d met him at the law office where she worked. He’d had Mr. Kemp do some legal work for him and in the course of talking to Gretchen, he’d learned that her mother was terminal and that she lived on a large ranch. Suddenly, he was around when she went to lunch at the local café, and she ran into him often at the supermarket. He asked her to go with him to Houston to a ballet, but she told him her circumstances. He’d laughed and said they could have a picnic in her house and her mother could join them.

Gretchen had been floating on air. Not only did he charm her, but he charmed her mother. He really did make her remaining few weeks happy and cheerful. Gretchen treasured her few stolen minutes with him, thrilling to his kisses and caresses. He’d proposed the week her mother died, and she’d had at least that future happiness to anticipate while she mourned the only parent she had left.

Then, like all dreams, it had ended abruptly. The shame and humiliation she felt was only heightened by Daryl’s very public avoidance of her after the funeral. People felt sorry for her, but she didn’t want pity. She wanted escape. Then Maggie had phoned and asked if she’d like to go to Morocco…

She came out of her depressing thoughts and back to the present. She looked at herself in the mirror. With her long blond hair loose and faintly waving down her back, and the white dress flowing around her slender curves, with pearls at her ears and neck, she looked different. She wasn’t pretty, but she wasn’t ugly, either. She felt vulnerable, too. She hoped her new friend meant what he said about not wanting a passionate affair, because for the first time, she might be at the mercy of her own repressed needs. He was far more attractive than Daryl had ever been, and he aroused a fiercer hunger in her than even Daryl had. She could tell already that Philippe was sophisticated. Probably, he’d left a trail of broken hearts and affairs behind him. She had to make sure she didn’t end up as one of them. She’d had enough grief lately.

Promptly at a quarter until eight, there was a knock on the door. She opened it, to find Philippe in a beautifully tailored dark suit with a white shirt and patterned blue silk tie. He looked elegant and rakish, like a photo in a fashion magazine, and she felt inhibited and tawdry by comparison in her chain-store dress and shoes.

His black eyes fixed on her long mane of hair and he seemed mesmerized. Slowly, his hand lifted to it, smoothing down it, savoring the feel and scent of it. His indrawn breath was audible. “And you hide it in a braid,” he murmured deeply. “What a waste.”

She smiled self-consciously. “It worries me to death when I wear it like this.”

“But you did it, for me, yes?”

She moved restlessly. “Yes.”

He tilted her chin up and searched her eyes. His thumb moved over her chin. “We are strangers, and yet we have known each other for a thousand years,” he said under his breath.

Her heart bumped in her chest. “How very odd,” she replied in a hushed tone. “I was thinking that, only this afternoon.”

He nodded. “It is, perhaps, the most cruel cut of fate,” he said enigmatically as he removed his hand. “Come along. I understand they have belly dancers from Argentina this evening,” he added with a wicked smile.

She moved a little closer to his side. “Decadent man.”

“I’m not decadent. I appreciate beauty.” He took her arm just below where the black shawl she’d bought reached with its fringe. “Believe me, I find you far more intriguing than a dancer, no matter how adept.”

“Thank you.”

“It isn’t flattery,” he said as they walked down the carpeted hall past the curtained windows that looked down on the open patio below. “I know you well enough already to know that you loathe insincerity as much as I do.”

She smiled. That was reassuring. They went down in the elevator and walked down the steps that led into the courtyard, where a central fountain was surrounded by beautiful mosaic tile. Tables with white linen tablecloths and napkins and pink china were set with silver utensils and crystal glasses. Several couples were already seated, and a beautiful dark-haired woman in a white dress with lavish colored embroidery was sitting on a stage with her accompanist, both with guitars in their hands.

“Tonight’s entertainment,” he informed her. “She is from the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, and she sings like an angel.”

“Do you know her?”

He shook his head. “No, but I came here from Madrid. She was appearing in a hotel there, too.”

“Madrid?”

They paused while a white-jacked waiter in a burgundy fez led them to a table. Philippe seated Gretchen and then himself. The waiter left menus and departed. “I do business all over the world,” he told her with a gentle smile. “You might call me an ambassador, of sorts.”

“That explains the bodyguards, I guess.” He looked puzzled and she shrugged. “I saw them follow you into that building this afternoon and asked Bojo about them. He said that they often watch out for businessmen as well as visiting dignitaries.”

He let out an odd sigh. “Yes, they do.”

“I enjoyed this afternoon very much,” she said abruptly. “It was kind of you to offer to go with me. It’s lonely now that Maggie’s gone. I suppose she’s in Brussels now, waiting for her flight back to the States.”

“Have you ever been to Brussels?” he asked curiously.

“Yes. Maggie and I flew from Brussels to Casablanca and then here. I’m going back through Amsterdam on my way home…” She hesitated. Her eyes lifted to his. Suddenly the thought of home was unpleasant. “Well, not now, of course,” she added slowly. “I’ll be going to Qawi instead.” She looked down at her neatly folded pink napkin. “Philippe, I don’t suppose you ever get to Qawi?”

“In fact,” he said slowly, “I spend a great deal of time in Qawi. I do business with the ruling sheikh. Quite a lot of business.”

Her eyes lifted and dreams danced in them. It really was like a fantasy, as if she’d given up ordinary surroundings and had been caught up in mystery and joy. It was all there, in her face, the delight she felt.

He smiled at her, his black eyes searching her excited expression. “And now, Qawi seems less frightening to you, does it not?” he asked softly. “As you see, we won’t say adieu when you leave Tangier. We will say au revoir.”

“I’m glad.”

His long fingers touched the back of hers where her hand lay on the table beside her glass. “So am I. Although,” he added broodingly, “I am not doing you a favor to let you go there.”

“Why not?”

“You may discover that appearances can be very deceptive.”

Her eyes sparkled. “Don’t tell me. You’re really an international jewel thief or a spy on holiday.”

He burst out laughing. “No,” he said. “I can assure you that isn’t the case.”

She studied his hand. It was his left one, and there were scars on the back of it, white lines against his olive complexion. She touched them lightly. “From the accident?”

His whole body clenched at the memory of the injuries. “Yes,” he said reluctantly, withdrawing his hand.

“That was clumsy,” she said, grimacing. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”

He stared at her with conflicting emotions. “You will have to know before you leave Tangier,” he said quite calmly. “But I prefer to put it off for a few days. Honesty can be a brutal thing.”

“Then you’re an ax murderer,” she said thoughtfully, nodding. “I understand. You don’t want to shatter my illusions of you as some elegant scoundrel.”

He laughed again, caught off guard. “You remind me of her, so much,” he said without thinking. “The first thing that attracted me to her was a sense of humor that made me laugh at myself, something I was never able to do before.”

“She?”

He shifted, as if he hadn’t meant to say that. “A woman I knew,” he hedged. “A blonde, like you, with a very open personality. I thought she was one of a kind. I am delighted to find that the earth contains another woman similar to her.”

“Maggie thinks I’m a certifiable lunatic.”

“You’re refreshing,” he said, leaning back in his chair to study her. “You might be surprised at how many people say only what is expected of them, out of fear of giving offense. I abhor being toadied to,” he added quite fiercely, and his eyes blazed for an instant.

He must be, Gretchen decided, someone very important. She wanted to ask him about his life, his background, his work. She was curious about him. But he seemed not to like discussing his past.

She glanced at her menu and grimaced. “French. Everywhere we go, everything’s written in French,” she moaned.

He laughed softly. “I must make it my business to teach you to read a menu. Here.” He shared his menu with her, pronounced each entry and made her pronounce it after him, and then explained what it was. She started with an appetizer of prosciutto and melon, followed by a main dish of lamb done in a Moroccan sauce. He ordered fish and a bottle of white wine.

“I’ve never had wine before,” she said, watching his eyebrows go up.

“Would you prefer something else?”

She lifted a shoulder. “I suppose I should know something about wines. If the sheikh isn’t Muslim, he probably has a wine cellar and will expect me to know all sorts of things about wines.”

He pursed his lips. “Probably,” he murmured. “But one can rarely go wrong with a good white wine, like a Riesling or a Chardonnay. Although I prefer an Alsace wine, like a Gewürtztraminer. It is an acquired taste.”

She shook her head. “I’ll never learn.”

“Of course you will. Each night, we’ll sample a different wine from the list. By the time you leave Morocco, you’ll be knowledgeable.”

She smiled. “You’re very sophisticated.”

“I was educated in Europe,” he told her. “One matures rapidly in a sophisticated environment.” His black eyes narrowed. “But I wasn’t born to wealth, and I never forget my beginnings. Poverty is the true plague of the twenty-first century, Gretchen. And greed is its blood brother.”

“Do you feel that way, too?” she asked softly.

He chuckled as the waiter returned and took their order. When the wine came, he taught her how to taste and savor it. “This is a Riesling,” he said. “Not too heavy, not too light.”

“Just right,” she mused, and liked the way it tasted. “We had a little grapevine, but the foreman ran over it with a tractor.”

“Barbarian,” he said.

She chuckled. “That’s what I used to call him,” she murmured. “Conner the Barbarian. Not one flower in the yard was safe if he ever got on the tractor. He’s a great horseman, but he has a knack for running lawnmowers over flower beds and into trees.”

He chuckled, too, at the imagery. “And this is the man you trust to keep the ranch for you?”

“Oh, but he’s great with horses and cattle,” she told him defensively.

“And I suppose you adore him?”

“I had a terrific crush on him in my teens,” she agreed. “But I grew out of it.”

His eyes narrowed. He didn’t speak again until their salads were delivered, along with coffee for Gretchen and sparkling water for her companion.

“You like flowers, then,” he continued.

“I love them,” she said dreamily. “I grow prize tea roses and an assortment of flowering shrubs.”

He toyed with his salad. “My father has a mania for orchids,” he told her. “He calls them his ‘grandchildren’ and gives them all names.” He smiled affectionately, lost in thought. “When I was a child, I was jealous of them. He actually had a servant taken to jail for forgetting to water a sick one, which later died. A very vindictive man, my father.”

She chuckled. “I can imagine how he felt. I have a special fondness for sick roses. I seem to have the touch for making them bloom again.”

He studied her intently. “Some sicknesses, alas, cannot be cured by even the most loving of hands,” he said absently, and bitterness made harsh lines in his face.

He was a man of many contrasts. She watched his long-fingered hands move and was fascinated by their dexterity and grace.

He caught her scrutiny and tensed. “You find the scars distasteful.”

She looked up at once. “Good Lord, no,” she said at once, and with obvious sincerity. “I was watching how you use your hands. Everyone in this part of the world seems to move gracefully, especially the men. It isn’t like that back home.”

He relaxed and finished his salad. It was his own guilt at deceiving her, he thought, that was bringing on these bad moods. He had to stop it. What was, was. Nothing in the world could ever change it.

“We move as we live, unhurriedly,” he said simply.

“I’ll bet you don’t have half the rate of vascular problems that we have in the States,” she remarked.

“That is most likely true.” He finished a last bite of salad and pushed the bowl from him. His dark eyes searched hers. “You go to a country vastly different from your own, much less sophisticated than Morocco. Many modern conveniences do not exist there, and even electricity is a recent addition. The people of Qawi were largely nomadic until the early part of this century. When it was parceled out among the Europeans, the people resisted and many families were decimated. It will require a great deal of tolerance for you to adjust to such archaic surroundings.”

She put down her own fork. “Do you think I should go home?” she asked bluntly.

He wanted to say yes. He wanted to tell her to run, now, while she still could. But he looked into her eyes and felt as if part of him were sitting across the table. He couldn’t make the words come out.

“I know it’s a risk,” she said, glad that he hadn’t said anything immediately. “But I already love Morocco. I think I’m going to be very much at home in Qawi, if the sheikh is patient with my ignorance about local customs.”

His dark eyes narrowed. “I think you will find him patient, in all things.”

“I hope so,” she added fervently. “It’s like a leap of faith,” she added slowly. “A step into the unknown. Maggie said that I was vegetating in Texas, and I think she was right. I’ve never been anywhere or done anything adventurous in my life. I never realized the world was so big and its people so diverse. I’ll never forget any of this, whatever happens.”

“Nor will I,” he said quietly, and it sounded as if the words were torn from him. He was holding his wineglass so tightly that Gretchen wondered if the stem was going to snap. She wondered what was making him so broody, if it was his usual manner.





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