Desert King, Doctor Daddy Read online

  ‘Or so they say, when, in fact, I think they do it to annoy me,’ a deep voice said, and Yusef Akkedi appeared, clad now in less formal slacks, but still in a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, offering her a smile that confirmed all her feelings of apprehension. The man was downright dangerous. ‘James has provided you with a drink?’

  ‘We were just getting to that,’ Gemma said quickly. Mountains of Dawn might sound like a heavenly place but there was a steely resolve to Yusef Akeddi that suggested his minions had better not let him down. She smiled at James. ‘Lemon, lime and bitters, please,’ she told him.

  ‘You will sit inside or perhaps you would prefer the balcony?’ Yusef said as James moved to a cabinet against a side wall and opened a door to reveal a well-stocked bar and small refrigerator.

  ‘Inside is fine,’ Gemma replied, still taking in the beauty of the furnishings into which her host fitted so well.

  He waved a hand towards one of the chocolate-coloured couches and she sat, sinking into the softness of it then immediately wondering if she’d ever be able to get up again.

  ‘They are a mistake and will be replaced tomorrow. Far too soft,’ Yusef said, and although Gemma was slightly put out that he’d read her mind so easily, she also wondered if all mistakes that occurred in his life would be replaced as summarily. Humans who erred?

  ‘You have read the information?’

  Although she knew that was why she was here, the question was so far from Gemma’s thoughts she was glad James handed her the drink, giving her time to consider what she could or couldn’t say.

  And if she came up with a flat-out no, would the drink be lifted from her hand, her elbow taken and she be escorted out the door—business done and possibly funding withdrawn from the centre?

  That had never been said, or even implied, yet it was a niggling consideration. There must be hundreds of thousands of organisations throughout the world as worthy and as needing of funds as the centres.

  ‘It’s very tempting,’ she said, ‘and the women’s clinic that’s already established at the hospital could become a more general centre—somewhere women could go for information and help as well as purely medical assistance.’ She hesitated then voiced an idea she’d had as she’d read through the information a third and fourth time, excitement at the opportunity vying with her fear of flying. ‘But I wondered if perhaps I couldn’t help you from here in Australia? If I couldn’t work out some future guidelines for running the centre?’

  Yusef studied her. She had a soothing voice, this Gemma Murray, while her presence, in her elegant black dress that set off the vibrant hair, barely tamed in the severe style she seemed to favour, was relaxing. An image of the hair unbound, springing around her head like a vivid aura, flashed through his mind.

  Was he thinking these things to stop considering why she seemed so against coming to his country?

  ‘Do you honestly believe it would be the same? Can you tell me you would make plans for a facility without meeting the people who would use it?’

  She didn’t answer, sipping at her drink, a look of—could it be sadness?—on her face. Then the pale eyes slid to meet his.

  ‘No, I couldn’t do it,’ she admitted. ‘But to tell you the truth, I don’t travel.’

  Yusef knew he was frowning at her but he couldn’t help it.

  ‘But you are a nation of travellers,’ he protested. ‘Everywhere I go in the world I meet Australians. Intrepid travellers, most of them, always to be found helping out in crises, I have noticed that.’

  His guest looked uncomfortable, shrugging her slim shoulders, the simple movement drawing his attention to the swell of her breast beneath the black dress.

  ‘I just didn’t get the bug,’ she said, although the flush in her cheeks told him it was an evasion.

  Why not just tell him the truth? Gemma railed at herself. Just tell him you can’t get on a plane!

  But to admit such a ridiculous weakness to as strong a man as Yusef Akkedi appeared to be, was, impossible. She just couldn’t do it!

  ‘Then it is time for us to persuade you to change your mind,’ he was saying smoothly when she dragged her mind from the coiling fear in her stomach that just thinking about a plane trip caused and tried to rejoin the conversation.

  ‘Perhaps a sample of our food will help. You are ready for dinner?’

  He clapped his hands and another black-clad staff person appeared, pushing a cart laden with silver dishes, the domed covers concealing the contents but not the tantalising aromas of spices she could not name but none the less found mouth-wateringly enticing.

  ‘These are traditional dishes of my country,’ Yusef told her, leading her to a highly polished teak table set in an alcove off the big room. ‘I thought you might like to try them but if you would prefer some other cuisine, French, Italian, Australian, the kitchen will provide whatever you wish.’

  As the man who’d wheeled in the trolley was now setting an array of dishes on the table, and Gemma was fascinated by the variety of them, she shook her head.

  ‘I would love to try this food,’ she said, moving closer so she could examine the different dishes. Thick meaty stews, vegetables bathed in what looked like yoghurt, golden piles of rice impregnated with raisins and pistachio nuts, platters of tiny meatballs, bowls of pulses like chickpeas mixed with green leaves like baby spinach, baskets of flat bread—such a variety of treats spread before her, Gemma wondered if she might have let out an involuntary moan of anticipatory delight.

  The staff person pulled out a chair and although he’d clearly intended his boss to sit in it, Yusef took Gemma’s elbow and guided her into his place, taking a chair—which he pulled out for himself—across the corner from her.

  He then picked up a plate and served a selection of food onto it, keeping the small portions separate.

  ‘That will give you a taste of what we have on offer, but you do not have to eat it all. Just try what you wish to try—you may like more of one thing and less of another.’

  It was too intimate. The food looked and smelled delicious but to have this man serving her—to have him sitting so close—was so disconcerting that Gemma, who’d been salivating only moments earlier, now hesitated. For some reason, the memory of his lips brushing across her fingers returned, and heat burned in her body.

  ‘It is spicy but none of it is very hot,’ he assured her, hopefully mistaking her hesitation, not picking up on the very different heat. ‘We have few dishes that would burn your mouth and bring tears to your eyes, and certainly none we would serve a guest on first acquaintance.’

  She glanced at him and found those coal-dark eyes studying her intently. Watching for her reaction to the food? Of course he would be, so why did his regard unsettle her? Because she kept thinking of him as a man—and not just any man but one to whom she was attracted, and if there was one lesson she had learnt from her ex-fiancé, Paul, it was that attraction was dangerous, the kind of dangerous that led to disaster.

  She lifted her fork and speared one of the tiny meatballs, finding to her surprise, when she bit into it, that it wasn’t meat but a grain of some kind, so delicately flavoured she finished it and wished she had more of them.

  ‘Delicious,’ she said, pleased she could be honest about it, and without being asked, the staff person slipped a few more onto her plate.

  She turned to thank him but he had moved back behind Yusef’s chair and his attention was entirely on his master, who was now serving himself a plate of the meat stew, adding rice to one side and some of the vegetables as well. He then took up a piece of bread and deftly used it as a spoon to scoop food into his mouth.

  ‘As with chopsticks when you eat Chinese food, you do not need to use them to get the flavour, but in our country we use bread as a utensil, bread or our fingers.’

  He balled some rice with the long slim fingers of his right hand and held the walnut-sized offering towards her lips. An apprehension she had never felt before flared through Gemma’s body y
et she opened her mouth and took the offering, hiding the flutters she didn’t understand behind a nod of thanks.

  This was taking the intimacy she’d felt far too far, yet she was probably turning a quaint Fajabalian custom of feeding people into something more than it was. There was a servant standing behind Yusef’s chair so how could it be anything other than customary?

  ‘That’s delicious,’ she managed, hoping she sounded far more together than she felt, because the faintest of touches of his fingers on her lips still lingered. ‘Tell me about the dishes.’

  His eyes scanned her face again, disconcerting her with their open appraisal. She scooped some vegetables onto her fork and concentrated on eating.

  Why had he fed her the rice? Yusef studied her, wondering why his normal instinctive behaviour with women—to remain slightly aloof, to distance himself—had deserted him. He did business with other women, it was the way of the West and his country needed to learn enough of their ways to progress. Now he had business to do with this woman, yet his impulse to feed her was nothing to do with business, and as her pearly pale lips had opened to the invitation of his fingers, business had been the last thing on his mind.

  ‘This, for instance,’ she said, raising her fork above her plate. She’d asked him something earlier, but it had slipped past him as he’d contemplated some shift inside his body that was as unwelcome as it was unusual.

  Attraction!

  ‘The name of the dish?’ she prodded, probably deciding he’d been struck dumb.

  Ah! So she wanted to talk food. He could do that. He pointed out the different dishes, explaining not only how they were prepared but also the history of them.

  ‘Mostly our meat dishes traditionally were camel or goat but these days lamb is a great favourite in our country. The pulses and grains are the staples in a desert land for they hold their nutritional value when they are dried, so can be kept for a long time.’

  ‘I’ve seen photos of ancient grain stores.’

  Ah—an opening this time.

  ‘Then you must come to Fajabal with me and see the real things. We have many still standing from ancient times. The desert is unforgiving in many ways, but its preservative properties are incredible. They stand like this.’

  He pulled his pen from his shirt pocket and drew quickly on the linen napkin, sketching the old beehive shape of the grains stores, before pushing it across to her.

  ‘Of course, being on the Gulf, the tribes who called Fajabal home were fortunate for there was fish and seafood in abundance so the necessity for grain storage wasn’t so acute.’

  Behind him the servant spoke in the musical cadence of their language, and Yusef turned to thank him before explaining to his guest.

  ‘Abed has reminded me that the grain stores were necessary as grain was used as a tribute payment to whatever marauding hordes happened to be occupying our lands at the time.’

  Gemma nodded, her finger tracing the structure he had sketched on the napkin. You must come to see them, he’d said, and excitement had surged through her as she’d thought of the mystery of lands she’d never thought to see.

  But how could she?

  Dare she?

  Of course not, and remember that this man was using his charm—his attraction—to lure her to his country just as Paul had used attraction to lure her into marriage—or nearly into marriage.

  Forget the past and keep up your end of the conversation.

  ‘I must admit history was never my best subject but it seems to me there were always armies sweeping across the desert lands, Ghengis Khan, the Romans…’

  Would he tell her more?

  She found herself hoping he would, if only to keep her mind off her stupid fears, but the conversation returned to food, Yusef now describing the different desserts he could offer her once she’d had her fill of the meat and grain dishes.

  ‘Are you bribing me with food?’ she asked, trying to lighten an atmosphere, which was growing more tense by the minute, though maybe that was her imagination, and the man who was the centre’s benefactor was feeling totally relaxed.

  ‘Bribing you?’

  His voice gave more away than his face, the words sounding slightly startled.

  ‘To come to Fajabal.’

  The slight smile she’d suspected she’d seen earlier reappeared, although this time it widened into something that transformed his rather sombre face into…

  She couldn’t describe it but her physical reaction to that smile was even more startling than the transformation.

  He’s charming you, she reminded herself, clamping down on the reaction, dousing it with common sense. And he’ll have a reason, so be on your guard.

  ‘But I don’t have to bribe you,’ he said, still smiling. ‘Surely you must know what you can offer to my people? And understand the challenge that lies ahead of us in expanding the medical services? Would not the challenge be enough to overcome your dislike of travelling? Look, let me show you someone.’

  He turned and spoke to the man behind him, who disappeared, reappearing seconds later with a laptop.

  Yusef opened it, and a screensaver came to life, a picture of the most beautiful little girl Gemma had ever seen.

  ‘This is Fajella,’ he said, his voice husky with emotion. ‘She has no mother because her mother died in childbirth.’

  He looked up from the screen, directly at Gemma, his eyes burning with a passionate determination she had never seen before in anyone, yet she recognised it immediately as the determination she had felt herself when she’d set up the women’s centre.

  ‘Would you have this go on? Yes, we have hospitals where this woman could have been saved, but with new settlers coming all the time, the facilities are overstretched to help everyone, and this leads to a distrust of the medical system and reluctance on the part of the new settlers to use it. It is to save the lives of women like Fajella’s mother that I want you to come with me, to work with me planning and establishing a better way to provide services for all the women of my country, the settled inhabitants and the tribal people. For me, the driving force is for the good of my country, but for you? Is not this motherless child enough of a reason for you to at least consider the position?’

  He turned the image of the little girl back towards Gemma and she knew she couldn’t let something as pathetic as a fear of flying prevent her at least trying to do something for women like Fajella’s mother—and perhaps Fajella herself in the future.

  She knew she would say yes.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  BEFORE she could put her decision into words, Abed had reappeared with a laden dessert trolley and Yusef was pointing out the different dishes, repeating what he’d told her earlier about the preparation and ingredients. Dates figured largely, as did yoghurt made from goat’s milk, but as Gemma tried a little of this and a spoonful of that, she realised how clever the desert people had been in combining the few ingredients they had into delicious dishes.

  ‘There is a flavour running through some of them that I can’t identify,’ she said, pointing to a pale pink milky-looking pudding that was strongly flavoured by the mystery ingredient.

  ‘It is rosewater,’ Abed told her, inclining his body slightly in her direction as he spoke. ‘We have many uses for it. Roses have been cultivated in our country for thousands of years.’

  ‘That seems amazing, although I imagine there is so much to learn about your people it would take a lifetime.’

  ‘Several lifetimes,’ Abed told her, while Yusef peeled a peach from a platter of fruit, divided it into sections then offered one to her. Remembering the brush of his fingers on her lips, and her reaction to it, Gemma took it in her hand but the slippery quarter slid out of her fingers and landed on the bodice of her dress before she had a chance to catch it and return it to her plate.

  Muttering an apology, Yusef snatched up a napkin and dabbed at the stain, his head bent close to hers, the napkin brushing at the material covering her breast.

  D
id her breathing falter at his closeness that he stopped what he was doing, turning his head and looking into her eyes, awareness Gemma had never felt before flaring between them? Well, she imagined it was flaring between them for it certainly felt too strong to be coming just from her.

  Then he straightened up and it was as if the moment had never been.

  ‘You must allow me to pay to have your garment cleaned,’ he said. ‘They will clean it here at the hotel almost instantly if you wish to wear a bathrobe while you wait.’

  Take off my dress and sit around in this man’s company in a bathrobe? Mindboggling to say the least, so why wasn’t she saying something?

  Because she was tempted?

  Impossible!

  ‘Nonsense,’ she managed, echoing his earlier protest. ‘It’s nothing that won’t come out in the wash. And in any case, I dropped the peach, not you.’

  He didn’t argue but something had shifted in the atmosphere in the room, though whether for better or worse Gemma couldn’t tell.

  What devil had prompted him to attempt to clean the mark? Yusef wondered. Prompted him to put his fingers near her breasts? This red-haired woman was already disturbing his customary control, making him think things he shouldn’t think about an employee. So why make it more difficult by touching her?

  She was washing her fingers in the finger-bowl Abed had offered her, now touching one fingertip to the rose petals floating on the top of it. The backs of her fingers too had a sprinkling of the golden freckles he’d first noticed on her face, and he was fascinated by the glow the gold lent to her skin.

  Fascinated by her?

  He hoped not. He was far too busy to be considering an affair and though he needed a wife—definitely needed a wife because he was determined Fajella would not grow up motherless as he had—he doubted this woman would fit the role of consort to a Bedouin prince. His father’s wives were not submissive women but quiet, authoritative figures who ran the household from the shadows. Not women like this one who was all light and sunshine—a woman who would be visible in the deepest of shadows—shining…