My Desert Rose (20 page)

"She's safe,"
he whispered, as he broke the contact between their lips.

All the tension
left her and her whole body sagged against him. "Please, take me
home," she said wearily against his neck as she curled up against
him. Without another word he picked her up and made his way to the
door.

Chapter
Fourteen

Tariq stared
out of his office window at the expanse of the blue ocean,
observing the movements of a bird as it swooped into the swells for
food. It had been a week since the rooftop incident and Katie was
still refusing to see him. When he'd carried her from the roof and
onto Saud's boat, she'd refused to move from her curled up position
against his chest. On the journey back to Socotra, she'd remained
in his arms and slept like a baby, but the second they'd docked and
his mother had hugged her, she'd broke down again. It hadn't been a
pretty sight as she'd sobbed loudly and pitifully while his mother
soothed her. Any attempt he'd made to touch her had been met with a
rebuff, and that had hurt.

At the house,
the doctor had given her a mild sedative to ease the shock. When
she'd finally come around and regained her faculties, he'd received
a message to say that she'd prefer it if he stayed away for a
while. It was killing him. On top of that, she'd cancelled the
wedding with no reason as to why. Okay, so now the job was done and
they didn't have to go through with it, but he'd held onto a tiny
piece of hope that she wanted to build a proper marriage as much as
he did. The fact that she was the first woman, outside of his
relationship with his mother and sister, whom he'd declared his
love to, was enough proof to him in how he felt about her.
Obviously, he'd miscalculated everything.

The adjoining
door to their suite, which he wasn't allowed to enter, opened and
Miriam came in.

"How is she
today?" he asked her, as he moved to half sit on the edge of his
desk.

Miriam
nervously bit her lip. "Well, the bruising is much better, but
she's so sad Tariq. She just cries all the time."

"Why won't she
let me see her? I can help her?" Pain laced his voice.

Miriam shook
her head. "She says you'll only confuse her mind and she needs to
work it out on her own."

Tariq sighed in
resignation. If he could just hold her and talk to her, maybe he
could get her to see that they had a future together. "Did you tell
her about her father?" The one thing he could give her was due to
arrive in ten minutes. Maybe if she could connect with something
she thought she'd lost, it would ease her heart.

Miriam nodded.
"But it's as though she doesn't believe it."

The door opened
again and this time his mother joined them. Ashen-faced and
exhausted, she was still in trauma over Hassan and Amira's
involvement. In all of his thirty-five years, he'd never seen his
mother get angry. Fiery yes, but not angry. When he'd met her on
the docks a week ago he saw how anger had entered in with the
realisation that she could've lost all of her children. It was a
difficult pill to swallow and Hassan was yet to receive his
mother's wrath. Maybe once she'd said all that was brewing inside
of her to Hassan, she would find some peace.

Selina spoke
softly, "She's resting now in the lounge waiting for Sheikh Turan
to arrive." They stood in silence for a moment before she
continued, "Tariq, why didn't you tell us that you'd kidnapped
Katie, forced her to marry you under the guise of helping you and
then put her in a life and death situation?"

Tariq ran a
hand through his hair. That sounded really bad. Katie must have
told them the truth. "At first it was to do with catching Hassan,
and then..." He really didn't know what to say. If the truth was
known, he'd just wanted her, so he took her without even
considering her needs or even stopping to look at what she'd
painstakingly built in her life.

"And then
what?" his mother asked him sharply.

"And then, oh,
I don't know, and then she came to mean more to me than
anything."

His mother's
face softened slightly and then the hardness returned with a
vengeance as she looked straight at him. "Do you love her?"

"Yes, but I
don't know how to make it right." This is what kept him awake at
night. How do you start again? How do you go back to the beginning
and build trust without getting caught up in all the past
history?

"You let her
go," was his mother's soft reply.

Panic so great
inside of him caused his heart to palpitate, "What do you mean by
let her go?"

His mother
reached out and put her hand to his cheek, searching deeply into
his eyes. "Let me ask you something, Tariq, my first-born son. Do
you consider what you did as theft?"

"Theft?" he
echoed.

She patted his
cheek affectionately. "Yes, theft. Perhaps not on the same level as
Hassan, but theft nonetheless. Hassan can't bring back the people
he's had murdered under our family name, but you can give Katie her
life back."

Mortification
so deep plagued his heart. Had he stolen her life? Yes he had. On
that jet he'd basically forced her to go through with the marriage
under the guise of, 'You help me and I'll reward you by giving you
your father'. How could he have done that? How could he have held
back information about her father in order to get what he wanted?
That wasn't love, that was manipulation, and yes, it was theft. If
he'd had a heart, he would've given the information about her
father freely and he would've taken great joy in them being
reunited. Instead, he'd used that information for power. "I don't
think she'll ever forgive me and if she does, I don't know if
she'll trust me to never manipulate her again."

Selina nodded
her head. "On that note, I'm going to leave you with the reality of
what you've done. Under Sharia law, the marriage will be annulled
under the principle of it not being consummated. The papers will be
delivered to you today. These papers are proof that you have
released each other from any agreement that you may have had. I
will personally see to it that Katie never again wants for anything
material in her life. She will never have to stoop so low into
thinking that she has no power over her choices."

His mother left
with Miriam following her, but before closing the door, Miriam
looked over her shoulder at him and stuck out her tongue.

The shock of
what he'd done was finally sinking in. Not only had he manipulated
her, he'd put her life in danger. Do you do that to the person you
love? After the incident, he was hoping that they would build a
proper relationship, but he realised that you can't build something
with manipulation as its foundation. So, what now? How do you let
someone go? How do you let your heart walk out of the door? How do
you shut down the flow of love from your soul and slam it back into
a tiny box? Putting his fingers to the bridge of his nose, he
squeezed his eyes shut to prevent tears from seeping out of the
corners. Taking a piece of paper, he decided to write her a
letter.

Some minutes
later, a gentle knock came at his door. "Enter," he called, as he
sealed the letter in an envelope and put it in his desk drawer.

Thebes entered
first. "Sheikh Allah Turan, Sayyid."

From behind
Thebes came a tall thin man with silver hair and a trim white
beard. There was a slightly haunted look about him, but his hazel
eyes were twinkling with excitement. Tariq stood up, came around
the desk and kissed each cheek of his current father-in-law.
"Assalamu alaykum," he said in Muslim greeting.

"Wa alaykum us
salaam," replied Allah Turan in a firm voice.

Although Allah
was past his physical prime, there was also a quiet power about
him. "I'm so glad you came."

Allah looked
around the office. "Where is she?"

Tariq noted his
eagerness. "She's through that door, but before you go in there,
there's something you should know."

"I know all
about what you've done." A storm of emotion crossed over Allah's
face, then as quick as it arrived, it disappeared. "But I too am
not without sins. If I'd not met you in Turkey when you came
looking for me and felt your genuine care for her, I would now be
considering how to punish you. I nearly lost her before I'd found
her again. As it is, there's too much suffering in the world, so
just take me to her."

Tariq sighed,
resigning himself to the fact that he really hadn't been in
anyone's good books lately. Knowing that she didn't want to see
him, Tariq gestured to the door and watched as Sheikh Allah Turan
walked through it.

****

Katie was
resting her head against the back of the sofa watching the blue
skyline outside the patio window. A week ago today, she'd been
running through corridors and watching a man fall to his death from
a roof. She was glad Cecil was dead. Did that make her a bad
person? Probably, but she strongly felt that the world was a better
place without him. Since arriving back, she'd gathered more details
on Cecil from the police. Apparently, Cecil was the ring leader of
many pirate ships and was wanted in connection with several murders
and rapings. Most of his recruits were petty thieves and criminals.
They'd spent five years terrorising boats off the coast of Africa.
Over the course of the last few days, the detective in charge had
told her that many of Cecil's men had confessed about Hassan and
Amira's involvement. Katie had asked for information about the
young man on the bridge, but so far she'd heard nothing.

It had taken
her a while to sift through all the shock and assimilate the
reality of how she could've been shot, raped and even murdered.
Miriam had prevented so much of that from happening with her
reactions and ability to think quickly. It should've been her
protecting Miriam. Somehow, she felt as though she'd let her
down.

Tears began to
fall freely down her face again. No matter how hard she tried, she
couldn't stop them from forming. Logic told her that they'd got out
unscathed and everything was okay now, but the whole thing seemed
to have knocked a twenty-two year old lump of grief loose. Even
though it was painful, she could also feel something inside
shifting. The black hole of yearning that had followed her
everywhere seemed to be abating. By facing Cecil and not backing
down, it had somehow given her some sort of closure. These were
goodbye tears. It was bizarre, but that's how she felt.

Contemplating
closures also brought her back to the problem of Tariq. When he'd
shown up on that roof, she'd nearly collapsed with relief. Once he
had taken her in his arms, she'd wanted to dive into him and stay
there for the rest of her life. The confirmation of that need came
when he'd told her he loved her. Right there and then she would
have given him the world, yet something had still not settled
inside of her. There was an inner restlessness, as though she felt
trapped somehow. His parents and Miriam had been huge pillars of
support, allowing her to stay here and heal, even though they knew
the truth about their marriage.

One of the main
reasons for not seeing Tariq was because she didn't want him to
confuse her mind. She knew he wanted to make a go of this marriage.
It would be easy for her to fall into his ideas of what their life
should be like, where they should live and how they would live, but
she had some requirements of her own. There were things about her
life in England that she loved and she didn't want to lose her
identity again in someone else's world. The thought of not going
back there really bothered her. Even her aunt and uncle hadn't
known what had been going on. She'd finally spoken to them after
everything had happened. They'd been in shock and wanted to fly out
to see her, but she just needed this time to herself. Today, she
was supposedly meeting her father for the first time since she was
six. It felt like the old adage, 'You have to see it to believe
it'. Once this was over, she would be flying home.

The door to
Tariq's office opened. Turning to face the door, she could see
Tariq in the background leaning on his desk. Sadness was seeping
out of him and her heart jolted. Quickly, she looked away before
the urge to run to him overthrew all of her logical thoughts from
the last week. It wasn't until a man spoke that she actually
realised someone had entered the room.

"Merciful
Allah," a pained voice whispered from across the room.

Katie whipped
her head around to look at the tall thin man. The tone and its
softness drew forth something familiar from the deep recesses of
her mind. She'd know that voice anywhere. A feeling of utter joy
threatened to choke her. "Papa?" It was just too much to hope that
Tariq had been telling her the truth, that her father had survived
that day.

"You look just
like your mother."

His voice was
shaky and he was holding onto the back of a dining chair for
support, but it was his eyes that had captured her attention. The
same hazel ones that had looked at her countless times as a child,
and now they were shining with unshed tears. "It's not possible,"
she breathed. A wave of feeling so deep rose into her chest and
expanded it. It was too much to take in all at once. Rising from
the sofa she took a step forward. "Is it really you?" she whispered
past the growing lump in her throat.

"I'm so sorry,"
was all he said, as he too took a step forward.

Reaching out,
she tentatively touched his hand and lifted it from his side to
look at the back of it, and there it was, a freckle in the shape of
a heart. A sob broke from somewhere deep down inside of her and
then she was touching his face, his hair, as he was doing to her.
This was her papa, they hadn't taken his life.