forced her gaze not to linger on his back, but she couldn’t help wondering what that back would look like naked. Tanned and strong. When had she ever, ever fantasized about running light fingers down a man’s spine? Or sprawling naked upon one?
This place was supernatural, casting a spell of some kind over her.
Distressed, she forced her attention to the children. They showed her where to find boiled water for drinking and pointed out the latrine and gave her a short broom to use to sweep out scorpions—really?—if they wandered into her tent. Then they left her to unpack as they scampered off in search of wild dates.
Fern entered the privacy of her tent and let out a long, anxious breath. Amineh had talked about the oasis like it was a place of freedom, but Fern had a sense of being kidnapped—into luxury, sure. The tent was bigger than the tiny bedroom she’d grown up in. The bedding and pillows the children had brought her were silky and colorful, while the pallet Zafir had unrolled was wide enough for two.
Stop it.
How had she even wound up here at the end of the earth? She’d grown up expecting she would take a position in a village day school, perhaps going home to a tidy flat where she’d have a cat named Fabio. Her only aspiration had been to provide the same ray of hope Miss Ivy had instilled in her—to help withdrawn, unhappy students discover their own hidden potential.
Hers had apparently been the ability to become an international teacher.
She hadn’t even considered an overseas position while her mother had been alive, but after her mother had passed away, Fern had needed a fresh start. On a whim, she’d applied to a placement agency and expected to wind up in a missionary school, but had found herself in the running for this job.
It still felt like a miracle that she’d won it, but her quiet nature seemed to fit with a culture that valued modesty. She and Amineh had got on immediately, which surprised Fern. At first she had thought it was only because Amineh appreciated Fern’s genuine affection for the girls and her earnest desire to act in their best interests. Now she knew Amineh better, she recognized a like soul in the sense that they’d both struggled to find their place in the jungle of female cliques during their school years.
Amineh and Zafir, Fern had learned, were the product of a rather notorious affair between an Arab sheikh and an English duke’s daughter. They’d ping-ponged back and forth between their parents, not quite fitting fully into either culture. Amineh had found stability by marrying her brother’s best friend, Ra’id, and living permanently in his country.
Zafir still fought for the right to rule their father’s homeland, Q’Amara. He’d married the daughter of a sheikh, trying to ease resistance at having a man with such heavy Western influences governing their country.
Somehow she couldn’t picture him wearing the same sad frown Amineh wore when she talked about their difficult early years. He seemed too fiercely proud to allow prejudice to reach his heart. It was hard to imagine a man that dynamic and confident struggling with anything.
Peeking out of her tent, she saw him down at the water, shin-deep in the spring where the children had told her bathing was allowed. He stood with his sharp profile angled upward to the top of the worn canyon on the far side of the water. Then he crouched, not taking any heed that his robe was soaked through. He scooped his hands into the water and splashed his face, then lifted his gutra to wet the back of his neck.
She swallowed, going weak as she watched him. He was so comfortable in his skin, so self-assured and compelling.
It dawned on her that this was a crush. She was suffering a full-blown case of unfounded infatuation, behaving exactly like her adolescent schoolmates used to. She stood here spying on a boy, acting geeky and awkward and keyed up, entertaining uncharacteristic fantasies of kissing the back of his neck. How puerile. If only his wife was alive to deter her.
Look away, she told herself, but she couldn’t make herself do it. Why did he have to be out there acting all brooding and sexy anyway?
He stood and turned to stare directly at her tent. His shoulders were set at what seemed a tense angle, his demeanor projecting dissatisfaction.
She couldn’t tell if he saw her, but she retreated to the back wall.
This was going to be an interminable two weeks.
FERN USED THE excuse of ferreting out her supplies and setting up her mock classroom to avoid everyone for the rest of the day. She usually ate alone so when she smelled the evening meal, she found Nudara, who fetched her a bowl of spicy stew and flatbread with some kind of yogurt dolloped on top.
Taking it back to her tent, Fern told herself the peacefulness was nice. The bustle of the camp settled as everyone sat to eat. The children’s laughter rang out often, along with Amineh’s and the occasional rich male chuckle—one of which made Fern listen harder and feel...
She sighed and shook her head at herself. The light breeze whispered through the palm leaves above her, snickering. An unknown bird tittered at her.
It grew dark quickly, but the nearly full moon rose shortly after. The trip had been organized around the fattest moon as that was the likeliest time for the Bedouins to visit the oasis. The waxing orb’s glow turned the landscape a pale blue and a velvety breeze caressed her cheek as she walked her dishes back to the outdoor kitchen.
Later, after she had brushed her teeth, she put herself to bed early. She’d had a long, active couple of days, she told herself, even though she could hear the children laughing over music from a stringed instrument. No one else was turning in yet. They were visiting and having fun.
Sociology classes had taught her this sort of camp built the relationships between members of a tribe. The servants were certainly in good spirits, teasing one another and making jokes. Zafir’s coming together with his neighbor, Ra’id, had strengthened relations between their two countries in ancient ways, even if they only traded gossip. Corporations called something like this a “team-building exercise” and paid small fortunes for their employees to attend.
Fern was the luckiest person in the world to be able to experience this.
She told herself.
As she held her eyes closed against an inexplicable sting.
She had absolutely no reason to feel lonely in this wide bed. Miss Ivy would enjoy hearing about all of this when Fern had an online connection again.
Make some notes, she cajoled herself, but didn’t move. Instead she mentally wrote something entirely different, something that belonged in an erotic novel. It was a scene where Zafir came to her tent and touched a lot more than her cheek.
* * *
It was the worst night of her life. She tossed and turned, unable to shut off her mind from conjuring fantasies of making love with Zafir.
She didn’t even know how it was properly done! Obviously she knew the mechanics, but she’d been firmly sheltered from any sort of expressions of sexual passion. Her mother hadn’t allowed her to go to sexy movies or watch any of those daytime serials on television. The romance novels at the library had been read from an angle under the desk. Guilt always assailed her for enjoying those stories and more than one academic friend
