Engaged to the Doctor Sheikh
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Meredith Webber
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Chapter One
LILA SAT IN the huge jet, surrounded by strangers, all intent on their own lives. Did they all know where they’re going or, like her, were they travelling into the unknown?
A shiver started in her stomach at the thought of just how unfamiliar her destination might be, and to divert her mind before she became terrified of what lay ahead, she thought of the family, her family, all gathered at the airport to wish her well.
Hallie and Pop, her foster parents, and the gaggle of loved ones she’d grown up with, bonded into sisters and brothers by the love of two wonderful people. There were in-laws now, and nieces and nephews...
True family.
The next plane was smaller, though more luxurious, but it wasn’t until she boarded the third flight of what was beginning to seem like a never-ending journey that she met real luxury. Not a big plane by any means, but beautifully appointed, with armchair-like seats, and attentive stewards offering tasty delicacies and tantalising sweets.
The novelty of it kept her going until one of the attendants leant over her to point out the window.
‘We are coming in to land at Karuba Airport now and as we circle you will see the rugged mountains, the dunes on the desert plains, and the pink flamingos on the lake. You will see how beautiful our country is, and it will welcome you like a lover.’
The seriousness in the man’s eyes—the obvious love of his country shining through the words—told Lila he meant nothing personal in the words.
But a country that would welcome her like a lover?
Poetic, that’s what it was!
And poetic was how it looked. Great slabs of rock, thrown by giants, built up into mesas and pyramids, smooth and brown, with glowing green foliage showing in the deep valleys—were they oases? But the flamingo lake eluded her, and the sand she saw was golden brown, not pink.
No, the pink had to be a confused memory—a pink toy on beach sand—it had to be.
The plane kissed the runway, settled, and taxied to a pristine white building, with many domes and minarets, their spires tipped with gold.
A fairy-tale palace for an air terminal?
The passengers disembarked smoothly, moving through a tunnel into the cool air-conditioned building, the usual immigration and customs checks lying ahead.
From her place in the queue, Lila studied her fellow travellers. Some were locals returning home, the women in burkas with bright flashes of pretty clothing visible beneath them. A number of the men wore robes, black decorated with intricate gold embroidery, while others wore beautifully cut and fitted business suits.
A cosmopolitan place, Karuba?
It was her turn at the immigration counter. She handed over her Australian passport with the completed immigration form and waited while it was examined—and examined again—just as she was examined, the man behind the counter looking from her picture to her face as if somehow she’d changed her appearance on the journey.
He studied the immigration document she’d filled in before disembarking, while the people behind her shuffled uneasily in the line, and concern began to bloom in her chest.
Had the official pressed a bell of some kind on his desk, alerting the second man that appeared? Clad in an immaculate dark suit, pristine white shirt and bright red tie, he smiled at her through the window.
Not an especially welcoming smile, but a smile nonetheless.
Not that it eased the concern...
‘Dr Halliday, we must speak to you,’ he said smoothly—too smoothly? ‘If you would like to come this way?’
Should she ask why?
Refuse?
She’d just landed in a foreign country and who knew what might be happening?
‘Do you need help?’ the passenger behind her asked.
‘I don’t think so. I’m here to work at the hospital. It might be that someone on the staff is waiting to meet me,’ she told him. ‘But thank you.’
Lila gathered up her carry-on luggage and prepared to follow the man who’d summoned her, he behind the wall of immigration windows, she in front of it.
It’s just the hospital doing a special welcome thing, she told herself, but the fingers of her right hand went to the locket she wore around her neck and she twiddled with it as she always did when nervous or uncertain.
‘Just through this way,’ he said when they came together at the door into a long passage. ‘We will not detain you long.’
Detain?
Detain was not a nice word—it had bad connotations—detainees were prisoners, weren’t they?
She was shown into a comfortable enough room, and the well-dressed official offered her a chair and sat opposite her.
‘You have been to our country before?’ he asked, so carefully polite Lila felt a chill of fear feather down her spine.
‘Never,’ she said. ‘I have come to work in the hospital, in the paediatric section. That’s my specialty, you see.’
Perhaps she should have added that she thought her parents might have come from Karuba, but as everyone at home had told her it was a long shot—all she’d seen was a vaguely familiar box—she decided not to mention it.
The man seemed to be studying her—discreetly enough—but the attention was making her more and more uneasy.
‘I have the details of the doctor at the hospital who employed me,’ she said. ‘Perhaps you would be good enough to contact him for me.’
She dug in her handbag for the email she’d received from the man, confirming her appointment, and as her fingers touched the piece of paper, she remembered just what a presence he had had, even on a fuzzy computer screen.
Tariq al Askeba—either the head of the hospital or head of Paediatrics, she hadn’t quite managed to get that straight.
She handed the email to the official, and was surprised to see the frown that immediately gathered his eyebrows.
‘You are to work with Sheikh al Askeba?’ he demanded.
‘Yes, I am,’ Lila responded firmly. ‘And I’d like you to contact him as soon as possible so he can sort out whatever is going on here.’
The man looked even more upset.
‘But he is on his way now,’ he said. ‘You are perhaps a friend of his?’
‘I am about to be his employee,’ Lila countered.
‘Then he will be able to sort it out,’ the man assured her, although his increasing nervousness was now making her very worried indeed.
Fortunately, the worry was diverted when the door to the room opened silently and a tall, regal figure in a snowy white gown, and a black circlet of braid holding an equally white headdress in place, strode in.
An eagle was Lila’s first thought. Were there white eagles?
But the deep-set eyes, the slightly hooked nose, the sensuous lips emphasised by the closest of beards told her exactly who it was.
Even on a fuzzy video image, Dr—or Sheikh?—al Askeba had radiated power, but in full regalia he was beyond intimidating—he was magnificent...
Magnificent and, if the lines of fatigue around his eyes and bracketing his mouth were anything to go by, exhausted.
She stood, held out her hand and introduced herself. Long, slim fingers touched hers—the lightest of clasps—more from manners than in welcome.
Neither was there welcome in the dark eyes that seemed to see right through her, eyes set beneath arched black brows. Or in the sensuous mouth, more emphasised than hidden by the dark stubble of moustache and chin.
‘Dr Halliday, forgive me. I am Tariq al Askeba. I am sorry you have been inconvenienced. I had intended being here to meet you but—well, it’s been a long night.’
The words were right—the apology seemed genuine—but the man was studying her closely, confusion now adding to the exhaustion she could read in his face.
He turned to the first man and spoke quickly, musically almost, the notes of the words echoing way back in Lila’s memory and bringing unexpected tears to her eyes.
‘We have upset you,’ he said—demanded?—turning back to her and obviously noticing her distress.
She waved away his protest.
‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘I’d just like to know what’s going on. What am I doing here in this room? Why was I separated from the other travellers?’
She was trying to sound strong and composed but knew her fingers, toying nervously with her pendant, were a dead giveaway.
‘If I may,’ he said, coming closer to her, all but overwhelming her with a sense of presence she’d never felt before.
Power?
Why would it be?
He was just a man...
But he reached out his hand, calmed her fidgeting fingers, and lifted the pendant onto his long slim fingers so he could examine it.
She should have wrenched it away from him, or at least objected to him touching it, but he was too close—paralysingly close—and she could feel the warmth from his hand against the skin on her chest.
She tried to breathe deeply, to banish the uneasiness she was feeling, but her breaths were more like pants, so much was he affecting her.
‘This is yours?’ he asked at last.
‘Of course,’ she said, and cursed herself for sounding so feeble. ‘My mother gave it to me when I was small.’
He straightened, looking down at her, dark eyes searching her face—intent.
Intense!
Bewildered?
‘Your mother?’
Once again she, not the pendant, was the focus of his attention, his gaze searing into her, his eyes seeing everything.
And when he spoke, the word—one word—was so softly said she barely heard it.
‘Nalini?’
And somewhere through the mists of time, and hurt, and sorrow, the name echoed in her head.
‘What did you say?’ she whispered, shaking now, totally bewildered by what was going on, terrified that ghosts she’d thought long dead had returned to haunt her.
‘Nalini,’ he repeated, and she closed her eyes and shook her head.
But closed eyes and a headshake didn’t make him go away.
‘You know the name,’ he insisted, and she lifted her head. Looked into eyes as dark as her own, set in a face that seemed carved from the same rock as the mountains she’d seen from the plane.
Had he hypnotised her so that she answered?
Hesitantly—the words limping out—thick with emotion...
‘It might have been my mother’s name. It might have been! The police asked again and again, after the accident in Australia, but I didn’t know it. I was too young.’
Her body felt as if it was breaking into pieces, but as clear as the voices of the two men present she could hear another man’s voice calling, ‘Come, my lovely Nalini, come.’
They were at a beach, she could see it clearly, her father paddling in the waves, calling to Nalini...
Her father’s voice?
It was her mother’s name!
Had her interrogator sensed her despair, that he released the pendant and rested his hand on her shoulder? Heat radiated from the light touch of his palm.
‘Your mother is dead?’
The question was asked softly, gently, but he’d gone too far.
She’d been so excited when she’d finally found the name of the country she believed to be her mother’s that she’d pushed madly on with her quest, getting a job and making arrangements to go there. Travelling outside Australia for the first time in her life, to a place she’d only recently heard of, and might yet prove wrong. But to be treated like this, with—yes—suspicion of some kind on her arrival, with no explanation or excuse, it was just too much.
‘Look,’ she said, standing up to give herself more presence, although at five feet five that didn’t amount to much, ‘I have come here as a guest worker in your country with all the proper documentation and I have no idea why I’m being held here. I want to know what’s going on and I’d like to see my consul, please, and you might ask him to bring a lawyer.’
The Sheikh stepped back but she knew he wasn’t giving way to her—he was far too authoritative, too controlled.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘please, sit down again. I can explain, but perhaps some refreshments... You would like tea, coffee, a cool drink?’
Without waiting for a reply, he waved the other man from the room, giving an almost inaudible command that obviously would produce a variety of refreshment.
‘It is the locket, you see,’ he said, sitting opposite her as she sank into the chair, knees weakened by her momentary rebellion. ‘The immigration official recognised it. I would need to examine it to be sure, but it is very like a piece of jewellery that, among other pieces, went missing from the palace many years ago.’
Lila’s fingers felt for it again, remembering the familiar shape—the comforting shape—of it.
But his words were playing on a loop in her head. His words, and a hint of...menace, surely not—in his voice.
‘Missing?’ she queried, and he paused, then was saved from answering by the first man reappearing, followed by two women bearing trays, one with a coffee pot, teapot, cups and saucers, and a selection of cold drinks on it, while the other carried a tray with an array of food from tiny sandwiches to olives and cheeses and fruit.
‘Please,’ her new boss said, waving his hand at the trays on the table. ‘Help yourself.’
Does he really expect me to eat? Lila wondered.
Has he no idea just how knotted my stomach is?
How terrified I am?
‘I would rather finish whatever is going on here,’ she said, hoping she sounded firmer than she felt. ‘You are making me feel like a criminal when I have done nothing wrong.’
Okay, so the last words had come out a little wobbly and she’d had to swallow hard before she could get them said at all, but behind the polite façade of the two men in the room she could sense a tension—a danger?—she couldn’t fathom.
‘May I see the locket again?’
He reached his hand towards her, non-threatening words but a command in his tone.
‘I don’t take it off,’ she said, unwilling to be pushed further.
Stubborn now!
‘It was my mother’s last gift to me. About the only thing I remember from that day—the day my parents died—was my mother fastening it around my neck, telling me it was mine now, telling me it would protect me—my Ta’-wiz.’
Her fingers clung to it, hiding it from the stranger’s curious eyes.
‘They both died?’
Dr—Sheikh?—al Askeba’s words were gentle but Lila refused to let them sneak under her defences. She’d told the story before and she could tell it again—dry eyed, the anguish that had never left her hidden behind the mask of time.
‘In a car accident. The car caught fire, a truck driver who saw it happen pulled me from my seat in the back before the car exploded.’
‘And you were how old?’
Lila shook her head.
‘We guessed four—my new family and I—but we never knew for certain.’
‘And your mother’s name was Nalini?’
More worried now the conversation had turned so personal, Lila could only nod, although she did add, ‘I think so, but I had forgotten.’
The words caught at her and she raised despairing eyes to the stranger.
‘How could I have forgotten my own mother’s name? How could I not have remembered? Yet when you said it I saw her in my mind’s eye.’
She closed her eyes, more to catch wayward tears than to keep the image there.
Then cool fingers touched hers, easing them just slightly from the locket. She felt it lifted from where it lay against her skin, heard his small gasp of surprise.
‘You were burned?’
‘The car caught fire.’
‘And the locket burnt your skin—some protection!’
‘No, I survived!’ Lila reminded him, angered by his closeness—his intrusion into her life. ‘It did protect me.’
But now he’d grasped her fingers, turning them to see the faint scars at the tips there as well.
‘You kept hold of it?’
The words were barely spoken, more a murmur to himself, then he squeezed her fingers and released them, stepped back, apologising again for the inconvenience, adding, ‘I had rooms arranged for you at the hospital, a small serviced apartment close to a restaurant on the ground floor, but I think for now you should stay at the palace. You will be safe there, and maybe you can help us solve an old mystery.’
‘Palace?’ Lila whispered. ‘No, I’ll be very happy in an apartment at the hospital. The sooner I get settled the sooner I can make it a home. I’m sorry, I have no idea what’s going on but whatever it is I don’t like it, not one little bit.’
He smiled at her then, the exhausted stranger with the even stranger ways.
‘Perhaps you are home, Nalini’s daughter, perhaps you are home.’
* * *
Tariq knew he was staring. Not openly, he hoped, but darting glances at the young woman who was so like the one he’d loved as a child.
He’d been eight, and Nalini had been beautiful, brought into the household because she was Second Mother’s sister, to be company for her, someone familiar.
But very quickly she’d become everyone’s favourite. Back then she’d been like the Pied Piper from the old European fairy tale and all the children in the palace had followed where she led, laughing with her, playing silly games, being children, really, in a place that had, until then, been rather staid and stolid.
Tariq was pouring coffee as the memories flashed past, handing a cup to their guest, explaining they would be leaving as soon as her luggage had been collected.
She took the cup he offered her and looked up into his face, her almond-shaped brown eyes meeting his, anger flickering in them now.
‘And if I don’t want to live in the palace?’ she asked, steel in her voice as if the tiredness of the long journey and the stresses of her arrival had been put aside and she was ready to fight.
‘It need only be temporary but if you are Nalini’s daughter then you are family and as family you must stay in our home.’
How could he tell her that things had not gone well for the family since Nalini’s—and the locket’s—departure and things were getting worse. He was a modern man, yet it seemed imperative that the locket return to the palace where its power might reignite hope and harmony.
Not that she could read his thoughts, for she was still fighting him about his decision.
‘Because I’m family? Or because you think my mother stole the locket?’ she challenged, setting the tiny cup back on the table. ‘What makes you think it was her? For all you know she could have seen it somewhere and bought it! Maybe she was from Karuba—was the same Nalini you knew—and it reminded her of her home. But stealing from a palace—how could anyone do that?’
Al’ama, she was beautiful, sitting there with anger sparking in her eyes! The simple cream tunic and flowing trousers—loose clothing the hospital advised visiting staff to wear—emphasised rather than hid a shapely body, the colour enhancing the classic purity of her features and lending warmth to the honey-coloured skin.
Not that he could afford to be distracted...
‘Nalini lived at the palace because she was family, as you will, if you are family,’ he said firmly, as the door opened and a nod from the man beyond it told him they were ready to leave. ‘Come, there are more comfortable places where we can discuss this, and probably a better time. You must be weary after your journey, and should rest. Later, we will talk.’
He put out his hand to help her up from the low seat, but she refused it, standing up herself, very straight—defiant...
Tariq cursed himself. He’d handled this badly from the beginning. A long night searching bone-marrow donor registers had led to nothing, then the call from the airport, when what he’d really needed was a few hours’ sleep.
So, tired as he was, seeing the woman—a woman called Halliday who looked so like Nalini—had thrown him completely. He’d been thrust into the past and a time of tension, bitterness and even hatred in the palace.
Added to which, she was wearing the Ta’wiz, the most sacred of the objects that had gone missing at the time of Nalini’s disappearance. Customs and immigration officials had been on the lookout for all the jewellery for decades but the Ta’-wiz was the one they all knew best, for the hollowed-out crystal with the elaborate gold-and-silver casing around it was believed to carry the spirit of the people’s ancestor.
The immigration officer would not have needed to look closely at it, for he would have felt its power, as Tariq had the moment he’d entered the room, for this simple piece of jewellery was believed to have spiritual qualities—and the strongest of these was protection.
He waved her towards the door, and followed her, looming over her slight form like an evil jinn.
Lila, her name was Lila, he remembered, and right now he wanted to go back in time, to have been at the airport when the plane landed, not finishing a despairing computer search for the magic formula that might save his brother.
He could have greeted her properly, taken her to the hospital, maybe not even noticed the locket around her neck.
The scars on her fingertips told him she’d clung to it as her mother—as both her parents—had died in a flaming inferno. Apart from it being a last gift from her mother, it had protected her, of course she didn’t want to take it off.
Neither could he take it from her...
But perhaps with it safely back in the palace—even in the country—some of the uncertainties and ill-fortune of the last decades would diminish and peace could be restored.
He shook away such thoughts. His country had grown from a collection of nomadic villages to a world presence in a matter of decades and his concern was that it had happened too quickly for many people to adjust and the happiness everyone had expected to come with wealth had somehow eluded them.
* * *
Swept along in this surreal dream, Lila followed the man who had first taken her to the small room down more corridors and finally out onto a covered parking area.
A driver in striped trousers and a long striped tunic leapt from the only car parked there, a huge black vehicle, to open the back door, the tail of his turban dropping forward over his shoulder as he bowed towards her.
Uncertainty made Lila look back, but the large man—her new boss—was right behind her, sober-faced but nodding as if her getting into the car was the right thing to do.
Not that she had a choice unless she decided to run straight out into the blinding sunlight and just keep running.
To where?
Home and family, and the only safety she knew, were all a long way off. Besides, she’d come here to find out about her birth family—her parents—about their country! So she’d put up with the tall man’s bossy ways and just go with the flow.
For the moment!
She tightened her lips then smiled to herself as she imagined her sister Izzy’s reaction to such lip-tightening.
‘Beware, the quiet one is ready to erupt,’ Izzy would have said, and usually laughter would have followed, because Lila wouldn’t have erupted.
But Izzy wasn’t here to laugh her out of it. Izzy was thousands of miles away with a new husband and a new father for her daughter...
And she, Lila, was on her own.
Her fingers crept up to touch the locket, shaking it as if she might be able to hear the tiny grains of sand the kind young woman at the University International Day had put into it for her.
Though not pink sand...
She knew there’d been pink sand once...
The man, Dr—Sheikh—al Askeba, was in the vehicle with her now, not close, for the seat was wide enough for four people, but she could feel his presence as a vibrant energy in the air.
‘How did you know to come here? To Karuba? Had your parents told you of it?’ he asked, and Lila turned to stare at him—or at his strong profile for he looked not at her but straight ahead, as if someone else might have spoken.
She shook her head.
‘I just kept looking,’ she said quietly, remembering the dozens of times when something that had seemed like a lead had turned to nothing.
‘But with your parents dead how did you know what to look for?’
Now he turned to her, and she saw the question echoed in his eyes. Not an idle question then, not small talk. This man wanted to know, and she guessed that when he wanted something he usually got it.
‘I didn’t, not really, but sometimes I would hear a note or phrase of music and it would hurt me here.’ She pressed her fist against her chest. ‘Or I would see something, a design, a colour, that brought my mother’s face to mind. I grew up in a small country town so I had to wait until I went to the city to go to university before I could really start looking. But then, with studies and exams...’
‘So, it’s only recently you discovered something about Karuba?’
Lila smiled.
‘You could say that,’ she told him, remembering the joy of that particular day. ‘From time to time I gave up, then something would remind me and I’d be off again. Two days before I emailed to apply for a job at the hospital here, I heard about an International Student Day at a nearby university.’
‘And you went along, listening for a scrap of music, seeking a design, a pattern?’
‘You make it sound like a plan,’ she said, suddenly wanting him to understand. ‘But it was never that, just a—a search, I suppose, a first clue that might lead somewhere else. You see, when the accident happened, the police tried for many months to identify my parents—to find out who they were and where they were from, looking for family for me, I suppose. But all they found were dead ends.’
He nodded as if he understood, but all doctors could do the understanding nod so she didn’t put much stock in it.
But when he asked, ‘And this last time you looked?’ his voice was deepened by emotion, as if he actually understood.
Lila smiled with the sheer joy of remembering.
‘There were stalls everywhere, but I could hear the music and I followed it. And at one stall, beneath a big tree, I saw a small wooden box with a patterned silver inlay.’
She paused, emotion catching at her throat again.
‘Something in the pattern...I mean, I’d seen many boxes over the years but this one took me straight back to my mother, to the little box she had always kept close. Her sand box, she called it. I touched it and the girl—the student—handed it to me.’
‘So you asked where it was from?’
Lila nodded.
‘At first I couldn’t speak, I just held it, felt its warmth, felt my mother’s hand on it, my hand on hers. But then I realised that I had the name of the country where my mother might have been born. I had my first real clue.’
