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A woman was beside him—a woman in big glasses and flaming red hair she hid in a plait, but nice skin—creamy skin, skin you’d like to touch but preferably when she wasn’t going on and on at him. Fareed closed his eyes and tried to clear his head.
She was holding his hand.
He must know her.
She looked angry, but, then, he knew any number of angry women, though none he could remember with plaited hair. Her glasses magnified pale green eyes. Beautiful eyes, he rather thought—even angry, they were special. But the glasses were appalling, although the frames were the same colour as the little freckles sprinkled over her nose.
He was reasonably sure he didn’t know any woman with freckles on her nose—well, not freckles that she left on show for everyone to see.
Men’s voices and a door opening somewhere near his feet brought memory of what had happened rushing back. He tried again to feel his throat but the woman stopped him.
‘You’re at the hospital now. You’ll be okay, you’ll be fine. They’ll want to keep you overnight, to check you haven’t had a reaction to the drug, and they’ll stitch up the hole I made in your neck, and—’
He freed his hand and put it up to touch her lips, to quiet her, then he smiled to show her he’d understood.
She looked so surprised—by his smile?—his next smile became a genuine one.
After all, she had saved his life!
Kate alighted from the ambulance, shaken by what was nothing more than a stranger’s casual finger touching her lips. Before she could analyse the reaction, she realised that Ibrahim and his entourage were already there. The older man was watching anxiously as the ambulance men rolled the stretcher out, set it on its legs and began to wheel it away.
He walked beside it, talking to Fareed, obviously concerned about his health, asking questions of the nurse who appeared, giving orders to his men—a caring man.
A sultan?
The word was redolent of fairy stories from Kate’s youth—men with golden turbans and casks of glowing jewellery. Did the world still have sultans?
Although it wasn’t stature but money that had everyone running around after him, she decided less than an hour later when a specialist ear, nose and throat surgeon arrived from Sydney, helicoptered in to the helipad behind the hospital.
‘I’m under orders to stay until the tube comes out and I’m sure he’s breathing safely without it—which is now—and then to fix the hole you made,’ the man said to Kate after he’d seen the patient. ‘My mother could have fixed the hole with one of her embroidery needles. Who is this bloke?’
Kate shrugged.
‘He came with Sultan Ibrahim to see one of my mother’s horses, that’s all I know. They must have got on to someone at their consulate and arranged to have you flown here.’
She hesitated, not sure whether to tell the surgeon about the gun. Decided not to. He’d see it for himself if he displeased the entourage in any way.
‘Well, now you’re here I’ll leave him in your expert hands and go home,’ she said, then smiled. ‘A top ENT man sitting in a country hospital watching a patient recover from anaphylactic shock—that must be a change for you!’
He smiled back.
‘Actually, it’s all in a good cause. They bribed me with the offer of a very handsome donation to my favourite research programme.’
‘Fair enough,’ Kate said, aware the man had expected her to ask what it was and to stay for a chat, but she was suddenly overwhelmingly tired and had yet to work out how she was going to get home.
One of the sultan’s men sorted that problem, emerging from one of the limos as she came down the hospital steps and opening the rear door for her to get in.
He’s either going to kidnap me or take me home, and right now I’m too tired to care, she thought as she climbed into the luxury vehicle and sank back into the soft leather seat.
‘Thank you,’ she said, as the limo pulled away from the hospital, then the build-up of stress she’d been feeling all day—apprehension about the important man’s visit, worry over Billy should Tippy be sold, the medical drama and the strangely attractive disdainful man—seeped silently out of her body, and she rested her head back and closed her eyes.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_9f382209-7315-59a8-add9-cf55f72dbfdc)
KATE AND BILLY were clearing fallen branches from the top paddocks when the fleet of cars rolled back down the drive the next morning—three limos this time, not four.
Wet and filthy, Kate pushed her straggling hair back off her face and scowled as they passed.
‘Mum’s down in the bottom paddock,’ Billy said, and Kate’s scowl deepened.
Filthy or not, she’d have to greet the visitors.
Leaving Billy to finish the work, she climbed the fence and hurried down the drive behind the cars, arriving as Ibrahim’s guard, as she thought of them now, formed around him.
‘Sorry I’m such a mess—we had quite a storm last night—and Mum’s down in the bottom paddock,’ she said, aware she didn’t sound the least bit sorry. ‘If you want to wait inside I’ll get her for you.’
Ibrahim waved away her apology and her offer.
‘It is you I have come to see.’ He spoke so formally Kate felt a whisper of apprehension slither down her spine. Studying him more closely, it seemed he’d aged since the previous day—grown weaker in some way. Shock over the bee-sting incident, or was the man not well? Could she enquire about his health, or would that be breaking some protocol she didn’t understand?
‘Let’s sit on the deck,’ she suggested, deciding to keep an eye on him as they spoke. Maybe an opening would arise when she could ask him if he was all right.
Having decided this, she led him around the side of the house to the wide, paved deck that looked down towards the river. ‘These chairs are used to work clothes.’
To Kate’s surprise, only Ibrahim followed her; the other men remained by the cars, although the one who’d attended her father’s funeral had peeled off from the group and was heading for the stables.
‘Why—?’ she began.
‘He will find your mother and talk with her,’ Ibrahim said, his smile allaying a little of her tension. ‘You must not be alarmed.’
Kate found herself smiling right back. There was something about this man—the mix of old-world charm and courtly manners—that made her feel safe.
Safe from what?
She had no idea.
She led him up onto the terrace and waved him into a chair, then wondered about the propriety of offering a wet chair to a sultan.
‘I think they’re all dry but you’d better check,’ she said. ‘Sometimes a storm blows rain in under the roof.’
Ibrahim obediently felt his chair before sitting down, but now, seated herself, the safe feeling had gone and Kate was feeling more than a whisper of apprehension.
Had he decided it was easier to tell her rather than her mother that he wasn’t buying Tippy?
What else could it be?
She was about to offer tea or coffee so she could get away for a few minutes and calm herself when he spoke.
‘Firstly, I wish to thank you for what you did. Dr McLean tells me you saved Fareed’s life and I am grateful, as would be my family and all my people for he is greatly loved. So here is where we are. I will buy your mother’s horse, not out of gratitude but because I agree with my stud master that Dancing Tiptoe is a magnificent animal and will hopefully become a great racehorse.’
Kate’s heart sank.
Stupid, really, when the sale meant her mother’s breeding business would survive, and no doubt prosper, once word got around. But it was the training that her mother loved and to lose a horse with Tippy’s potential …
Was she thinking this to stop herself thinking about Billy?
About what losing Tippy would do to Billy’s fragile health?
His happiness?
Tippy was his life!
Ibrahim was still talking—she had to listen. Later she’d worry about Billy. He was saying …
Saying he’d leave the horse with her mother?
‘You’d let her train him? Not take him away? Oh, thank you, Ibrahim, you have no idea how much that would mean to her.’
‘And to your brother?’
Kate nodded.
‘Yes, Billy and Tippy have been inseparable since Tippy was a foal. Billy has some kind of special bond with all the horses, but with Tippy it is so much more—as if he’s found a soul mate.’
‘I guessed as much,’ Ibrahim said quietly, ‘but, as I said earlier, there is a bargain attached. We love bargaining, we of ancient desert blood.’
Ah, the catch, Kate thought, tension building within her as she waited for the axe to drop on this dream result.
‘I know our ways are different but they have proved successful over thousands of years. For a long time now I have been looking for a wife for my nephew, and in you I believe I have found a person of strength and character who would be a perfect match for him.’
‘I’m sorry? You want me to marry a total stranger because you think we’d be a perfect match? Ibrahim, I don’t want to be rude, but that’s ridiculous!’
Far from being offended, Ibrahim smiled calmly and continued as if she’d never spoken.
‘I would not hold you to the marriage if, after a certain time, you both felt it was untenable, but I would like you to give it time, say a year. I realise this must seem strange to you—’
‘Strange? It’s beyond strange. Bizarre might come near but—’
She wasn’t allowed to finish—not that she could think past the ‘but’.
‘To us it is a normal arrangement,’ her guest said. ‘You will have much in common, for you are both doctors and I believe your recent work has been in Emergency, which is where my nephew works in a new hospital purpose-built for such things. So you could work together, although, of course, you would not have to work unless you wished to.’
He had it all planned out, and he spoke as if this was a rational, reasonable conversation.
Which, of course, it wasn’t! Not rational or reasonable at all! Totally unreasonable. Ridiculous, in fact! Although somewhere in the chaos in her head she remembered where this conversation had begun.
It was a bargain.
If she did this, he would not only buy Tippy but would allow her mother to train him.
Here, at the stud …
With Billy …
‘And your nephew, what does he have to say to this?’ she asked, squelching the questions that she really wanted answers to—why couldn’t he find his own wife? Was he a five-foot-two moron with bad skin and a stutter?
Not that a five-foot-two moron with bad skin and a stutter couldn’t be a wonderful man and a great husband, but—
‘Fareed will accept I am acting in his best interests.’
‘Fareed?’ The name came out in a disbelieving squeak. ‘The man whose throat I cut? That’s the man you want me to marry?’
Settle down, Kate, breathe—but before she could obey this sensible order, another thought struck her.
‘This isn’t like some old Chinese proverb where, if you save a person’s life you’re responsible for them for ever, is it? I’m a doctor, it’s my job—and think of all the doctors in the world who’d be burdened down with all those responsibilities. No, Ibrahim, it’s impossible.’
Ibrahim regarded her, his face grave.
‘I would not put responsibility for a life on anyone,’ he said. ‘In my position, I am only too aware of the burden of responsibility. I understand, as a doctor, you did what you had to do and as a result Fareed is alive. But this is a separate issue.’
He paused, looking out over the home paddock to the river, his face troubled by thoughts Kate couldn’t guess at.
Not that she wanted to guess at anything—she was too busy trying to order her own thoughts.
Marry a man to save her family?
It was medieval!
But if she did it …
Ibrahim was talking again, and she forced herself to listen.
‘I have been seeking a suitable wife for him for some time,’ he said. ‘He is thirty-seven and it is time he was married. It struck me yesterday that you would be a perfect match for him. You are strong, and resourceful, and caring of your family—this last is important to me because family is who we are.’
‘But that’s just it—family! My family!’ Kate pointed out. ‘I’ve come home to help Mum here at the stud, I can’t go off and leave her now. She’ll have more work than ever.’
Besides which she’d kill me if she thought I’d agree to such a stupid bargain for her sake.
Or Billy’s …?
Ibrahim was talking again and Kate tried to concentrate, although the confusion in her mind was making it near impossible.
‘I will provide the best available help for your mother,’ he said firmly. ‘An overseer, stable hands, new vehicles, whatever she will need.’
No confusion now! Kate closed her eyes and saw exactly how the stables could be—the way her mother had always dreamed they’d be, although somehow her father had always managed to lose whatever money they’d had before the dream could be realised.
Her mother would be in heaven.
And Billy would have Tippy.
