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And made intoxicating love to her for the first time in that small sailing yacht at the height of a storm. Noor had been a virgin, but that moment had answered all her dreams. Oh, it had been worth waiting for!
“Of course you will marry me,” he told Noor, his voice harsh with passion. “We will make our life and raise our children in Bagestan.”
It was far too soon; of course it was. Her cousin Jalia said it, and Jalia was right. But Noor’s head was whirling. Everything on her personal horizon seemed to have changed in one heartbeat. In the sea of confusion that had surrounded her since her father’s announcement, she had one spar—that Bari wanted her. That Bari was sure, and knew what he was doing.
She had flown home only to make her arrangements and return to Bagestan for the huge wedding, organized with breathtaking speed, that practically all of Barakati and Bagestani society would be attending.
And then, with the ceremony only minutes away, her one spar had been torn from her. She had learned what a fool she was, what a fool he was making of her.
Bari knew what he was doing, all right, but he didn’t love her. He wasn’t marrying her for love. He didn’t even want to marry her.
The islands! her brain suddenly shouted at her. There are islands out here! How could she have forgotten that? She had flown over the scattered group of islands with Bari. Al Jeza’ir al Khaleej, he had called them. The Gulf Islands.
“They have been uninhabited since the forced evacuation,” he had told her. “Except the biggest, which has a luxury hotel complex. The Gulf Eden was one of the ways Ghasib drew foreign currency into his coffers. Built by a huge international hotel chain to cater to very wealthy foreigners.”
His tone had been filled with contempt, and Noor had dropped her eyes and omitted to mention that she had almost gone there herself once. Only her father’s absolute diktat had stopped her.
This looks like my chance at last, she told herself dryly. But where were the islands? How far away? Her eyes dropped to the chart again, searching. Please, God, show me a way out of this.
Two
Sheikh Bari al Khalid lifted his head and watched his runaway bride over the back of the passenger seat separating the cockpit from the luggage space where he was hidden.
How dared she abandon their wedding in such a way? How dared she run away from him like this? Without a word—no announcement, no explanation, not even so much as a blink of apology!
What sort of man did she think he was, to put up with such insult?
The heady mix of fury, shock and disbelief—if that were all!—that had driven his actions was now, however, tinged with grim amusement. So the airport was clouded over. That was a dangerous situation: his bashful bride couldn’t fly in cloud, and she couldn’t land on water.
How richly she deserved this dilemma!
She was a fool to have chosen this method of escape. The weather had been volatile and unpredictable ever since the ending of the drought a few weeks ago, a fact she knew well. As an inexperienced pilot she should never have risked coming up alone.
A sardonic smile stretched his mouth, making him aware of how his jaw was clenched. He would like to leave her longer in this predicament, teach her a sharp lesson. Hell, he’d like to hide here till she was on her last gallon of fuel and begging fate for release. How he would enjoy seeing her desperate with regret and remorse!
But he couldn’t risk it. Her calm might give way to panic without warning. And a few seconds of that would be enough to kill them.
No, Noor clearly couldn’t be trusted to keep her head in the face of adversity.
Her head? She couldn’t even be trusted to keep her word!
Well, she would be made to keep it. Of that he was determined. She would not escape. She had promised herself to him, and she would keep her promise.
He stood up and moved forward between the rear seats. “Caught in your own trap,” he snarled when he was behind her. “What did you expect?”
“Bari?!” Noor’s gasp sounded like tearing silk against the hum of the engine. Her head snapped up and she blankly took in the glaring black eyes, the darkly handsome face, the imposing figure magnificently sheathed in purple silk and draped with pearls. His dress sword hung from his hip.
She frowned. “Damn! I’m hallucinating!”
“I wish you were!” he said between his teeth. “I wish we were both hallucinating! Insanity would be preferable to learning what kind of woman you are!”
He lifted the bundle of her veil that nestled in the right-hand seat and tossed it onto the floor behind her with fierce contempt, as if this symbol of their wedding made his stomach heave. Noor felt its drag against the headdress of fresh white roses still pinned to her hair.
Then, expertly manoeuvring the jewel-encrusted scabbard, he edged into the space and sat. With a deliberation that somehow infuriated her, he buckled himself into the harness.
“I have control,” he announced formally and, with unhurried grace, his actions completely distanced from his vengeful mood, he engaged the secondary controls. The plane responded to its master’s touch with a purr.
“Are you real?” Noor asked, wondering, Am I totally crazy? She had resigned control to what might be only a phantom. Was this why planes fell from the sky without explanation? Because the man flying it existed only in someone’s desperate imagination?
“You will see how real I am,” Bari growled. She had never seen that generous, sensuous mouth so narrowed. He must be real. Why would her mind trouble to conjure up a vision that only terrified her further?
“I guess you’re the answer to my prayer!” she realized with a jerky laugh. “Some sense of humour God has!”
“Do you call this scenario God’s doing? You are fool enough to think that, in acting like a barbarian, you carry out God’s will?”
His tone was scathing, and her flesh shivered as the first delicate tendrils of shame reached through her blind panic to touch Noor’s soul.
Bari’s eyes moved to the instrument panel. Since she was in the pilot’s seat, he had to crane. She felt the plane alter course in a broad arc, out over the sparkling sea. There was no cloud in this direction, but even if it caught up with them, she knew Bari was fully rated on instruments.
“How did you get here? You just materialized?”
His voice whipped her. “Do you imagine it was difficult to trail a white limousine with a bridal veil streaming from the sunroof through the streets? Nor was it difficult to guess that you planned to take the plane.”
He was wrong there. She hadn’t planned it. She had driven to the plane only when she realized that in her panicked flight she had taken nothing with her, neither her handbag nor a change of clothes. She had to have cash, but she didn’t dare go to the palace—it would be the first place they looked for her. And if they found her, they’d take her back to the wedding.
The thought of returning back among the wedding guests, having to explain herself when no explanation would be good enough, had appalled her. Then she had remembered that Bari kept emergency fuel money in a secret compartment in the plane. In the swamp into which she had cast herself, she had grabbed at that one frail straw.
She had discovered the plane fuelled and ready for their honeymoon journey. Only then had the thought of flying away from the impossible problems she’d created suddenly and crazily occurred to her.
“Only the why of such barbarian, uncivilized behaviour escaped me.” The words came at her in sharp, broken shards, as if he chewed up glass as he spoke. “Even a child raised in the streets would hesitate to act as you have done!”
His contempt came out through lips that had practically disappeared. Noor flinched. She had never seen such an expression on his face before. She had never seen anyone so angry, and she had to admit he had some cause. But she couldn’t accept such wholesale criticism, such overwhelming blame.
“You got to the plane ahead of me, and instead of talking to me you hid, and you’re calling me childish?” she snapped.
“No doubt you would have relished a public confrontation, Noor, but I did not. We will return to the house and you will marry me without comment, or any public airing of your unforgivable actions.”
“Return to the house?” Her voice climbed in startled objection as she suddenly realized he had been altering course to fly back to Bagestan. She straightened with a jerk. “What are you doing? Where are you going?”
“We will land at the dock and walk up to the house and apologize to our guests for the delay. Then we will take our vows,” he said with the clarity that only the coldest fury can impart. “A little late. But the bride is allowed that, I believe.”
She stared at him. What arrogance! Noor’s doubts about her behaviour were conveniently swamped in outrage. “Maybe you didn’t notice that the bride changed her mind, Bari! I’m not going to marry you!”
“You did not change your mind,” he informed her contemptuously. “You would not be acting like this if you had ever intended to marry me, of course. But you chose the wrong man. I do not play these Western games, Noor. You said you would marry me. You will do so.”
“It’s no game! Turn this plane around!” she screeched. How dare he brush her off when he must know her reasons for what she did? At the very least, he suspected! Who did he think he was?
“Who do you think—”
“It will not take long. You may pass the time by telling me what it is, if not a game. And I will have the truth.”
“The truth! Oh, that’s good, that is! I’m not the one who’s been lying from beginning to end of this whole affair! I’m not the one with zero conscience! Suppose you begin by telling—”
“Do you talk to me about conscience?” he shouted, as if suddenly losing his grip on a fierce control. Her heart gave a nervous kick; his temper was at white heat. “What has been your motive in pretending to agree to marry me and then playing such a terrible trick? Hundreds of people have come—”
“You must have a very good guess as to what motivated me! Your lies! You must have known I’d find out the truth soon—”
“—from all over the world to celebrate not just our wedding but their hopes for the rebirth of our country!”
“—er or later! I guess you were counting on later! Too bad!”
“Do you know you nearly ran into the Sultan’s motorcade as you drove out the gates? He and the Sultana—”
“The Bagestani flags on the fenders gave me a hint,” Noor admitted. “He hires good outriders, your boss. They nearly drove me off the road.”
He turned on her a gaze so black with threat she cowered. “Do not speak slightingly to me of a man of whose courage and strength you are ignorant.”
The plane had turned 130 degrees, and the expanse of cloud covering the mainland suddenly came into view again out the window behind her head.
Bari’s eyes widened, and then narrowed. How had he let his anger suck him into argument when he should have been watching the sky?
Noor turned to follow the direction of his gaze and let out a breath of stunned surprise. Bari had made his appearance not a minute too soon. The cloud had built fast and was rushing towards them.
If I were alone now, I’d be saying my last prayers.
“Cumulonimbus,” the dark-eyed Sheikh murmured softly. “I am a thousand fools.”
She gasped hoarsely, her hand lifting to press against the window in protest as she stared out at the sinister mass that approached.
But Bari was right.
“The airport said nimbostratus!” she cried.
He made no reply, except to the threat they faced. He was throttling back.
Cumulonimbus clouds were dangerous even to the most experienced instrument-trained pilot. They could carry severe turbulence. Turbulence might easily cause the plane to break up.
The plane began to lose height, and she felt it alter course again, away from the coastline. Of course he would try to get under the cloud, Noor realized. If only he could…
“Not even the sense to remove your lace finery before taking off into cloud!” he said harshly, his eyes on the instrument panel. The acres of silk and tulle surrounding his ex-bride didn’t make his task any easier. “In the water, it would drag you down to certain death. Get rid of it.”
His air of cold command was completely new. Noor gnawed her lip at that in the water, for it seemed to make the danger real. While he tried fruitlessly to raise air traffic control, she lifted her hands and frantically began to pull out the first of dozens of pins fixing the wreath of white roses in her hair, though if the plane broke up in the air it wouldn’t be her bride’s finery that killed her.
Abruptly, sea and sky and sun disappeared, and the little plane entered a world all grey. Noor heard a strange, quiet shushing. Droplets of water appeared on the glass.
Her fingers trembled and hesitated, then went on with their task. What else was there to do? Bari was in command of the situation as far as that was possible, and to offer resistance—or even help—now would be ridiculous.
Bari leaned over to peer at an instrument, and she distantly noted how a dark curl gleamed in the reflected glow from the panel. What a powerfully handsome man he was! Noor thought involuntarily. Not conventional, Hollywood handsome—he wasn’t even at handshaking distance with the bland, polished looks that passed for masculinity on a movie screen. No, Bari was one of Saladin’s warriors. Fierce nobility was what shaped his jaw, not pineapple facials and a perfectly judged beard shadow. If only…
But now was not the moment for such thoughts.
At last the flowers and tulle began to come loose, and Noor ignored the remaining pins and dragged at the headdress, wincing at the pain as hair came away with it. She tossed it over her shoulder onto the floor behind, where it sank into the nest of itself.
A faint, delicate perfume floated to her nostrils from the bruised roses. Her senses, it seemed, were heightened. Her fingers unconsciously massaging her protesting scalp, Noor picked out the pins that were still caught, combing through her hair, trying not to remember the excited, happy moment when the hairdresser had set the wreath on her head.
Without warning, a fierce gust of wind smacked them. The plane rocked, and so did her heart.
“Ya Allah!” Bari exclaimed, and the grey all around them abruptly turned dark. Another sharp slap of wind.
Then, much more ominously, a low rumble.
Horror shivered down her spine. Noor’s heart lurched in frantic denial and her mouth was suddenly dry as the desert. It wasn’t possible! Please, God, let it not…
Another crack of thunder cut her off. A thunderstorm. And they were in it.
Three
There are few things more dangerous than a thunderstorm embedded in cloud, and Noor knew it. It is the pilot’s nightmare.
She might have chosen death not only for herself, but for Bari. Her heart thudded with useless regret.
“Are you strapped in tight?”
His voice was so calm it shocked her, an incongruity her mind couldn’t cope with. It had the effect of setting her building panic at bay.
“No. My dress—”
“Damn your dress.” She could feel that the plane was still descending, but there seemed no bottom to the cloud. “Get your harness on. Fast.”
Though a stubborn part of her resented his autocratic tone, she knew it would be insane to resist. Noor twisted in her seat, groping underneath the swathes of silk for the webbing of her harness.
The plane was still losing altitude.
“Are we landing?”
“We’ll see,” Bari said dryly as another crack of noise drowned him out. She thought she sensed him adjust his heading again, but how he had any idea where they were, she couldn’t imagine.
She had never seen Bari operating under pressure before. It surprised her that such a passionate, hot-tempered man could be so cool under fire. For a brief moment the thought of her only experience of his—of any man’s—passion flicked across her mind. He hadn’t been cool then…or had he? That must have been faked, too.
Her fingers quickly found one buckle, but the other eluded her. Noor half stood in the confined space and groped the seat behind her.
Bari reached across and fielded the buckle of her harness, holding it for her in one strong, well-formed hand. Well, at least I won’t die a virgin! The thought rose unbidden, and a breath of laughter—and something else—escaped her. Her eyes brushed up to his as she took the harness from him with a murmur of thanks, but the look she met was hard and ungiving, and the only passion was rejection.
“Even in the lion’s mouth,” he mocked her.
A jolt of turbulence wiped any retort from her mind. She tumbled back into her seat to the sound of tearing. Her arm hit painfully on something, but Noor suppressed the automatic grunt that rose in her throat and buckled herself in. The webbing abraded the delicate white silk across her breast, tearing the clustered pearl embroidery.
She was sorry about that—it was a beautiful creation.
