Was she nervous that her conversation sounded like anxious chatter? Yusef found himself wishing he knew her better so he could judge this reaction.
‘The house is a twin of the one next door?’ He was looking around a black and white tiled foyer, a wooden staircase curving up on the right, doors opening off the passageway on the left. He hung his discarded clothing on the banister again.
‘Exactly the same, except that I’ve only one consulting and treatment room downstairs, and upstairs I’ve converted all the space into a small flat. Come on up.’
Gemma felt a shiver start at the top of her spine and travel down to her toes as she uttered the invitation. But why? She’d been attracted to men before, not often, admittedly, but it had happened. And there’d been handsome men, and wealthy men, and very ordinary men that had stirred something in her—but attraction had never felt like this. Never so instant, so physical, so—hot?
She unlocked the door into her flat, mentally chiding herself for not accepting the man’s invitation to go out somewhere for lunch. Once he’d been into the flat, his image, she guessed, would haunt it.
Shaking her head at such fanciful thoughts, she waved him into the big room that was divided into functions by its furniture—living room, dining room and at the far end a small kitchen.
‘Compact and functional,’ he said, looking around but not taking an armchair in the living area, moving instead to the kitchen bench where he pulled out a stool and settled on it. ‘And a coffee machine! Thank heavens. Do you do a strong espresso?’
Gemma turned the machine on and programmed it, setting a small cup under the spout. She felt uncomfortable now that she had such a luxury in her own home yet the kitchen-cum-tearoom in the centre was so poorly furnished. Embarrassment curled her toes.
‘It was a present from a cousin,’ she said. ‘I could hardly give it away to the centre.’
Sheikh Yusef Akkedi, the highness, smiled at her.
‘So defensive,’ he teased, making the toe-curl far worse than it had been. ‘Believe me, in my tent in Mogadishu, I treasured little comforts myself. Not a coffee machine but a small coffee pot I could put over a flame, and coffee grounds I hoarded like a miser.’
Gemma turned from where she was digging lettuce and tomatoes out of her refrigerator and stared at him.
‘You mentioned Africa before, and I know of the wonderful work medical organisations do in such places, but—’
‘But me?’ he said, smiling again, although this time the sadness was back in his eyes. ‘You hear Sahra use the “highness” word and wonder what such a person is doing working with refugees?’
‘Well, yes,’ Gemma admitted, taking the little cup of espresso from the machine and passing it to him, being careful to set it down in front of him so their fingers didn’t touch. It was bad enough having him close, but touching him? ‘Even being a doctor,’ she added, pulling herself together.
‘The “highness” part is very recent,’ her visitor replied, unaware of the confusion he was causing in her body. ‘And totally unexpected. My oldest brother inherited the title from my father, but there are no strict guidelines of succession in my country. The current ruler chooses his successor, choosing someone he believes will follow in the way he has ruled. He might choose a brother or a cousin, although my father chose his eldest son. Unfortunately my brother didn’t want the task. He is an aesthete and prefers to spend his life in spiritual learning and contemplation. He could not tell our father this for it would have disappointed him, but when my father died my brother relinquished the crown.’
‘Passing it to you,’ Gemma put in, wondering if there was an actual crown or if it was a figure of speech. She wondered about the country her visitor now ruled. There’d been no mention of it, but she knew it would be a long way off—way beyond her hope of ever reaching.
And that couldn’t possibly be regret she was feeling…
Yusef moved his head, just slightly, indicating she’d guessed incorrectly. Was she interested or just making conversation? With women he could never tell, a gap in his education he put down to not having known his mother, although there’d been women aplenty in his life. Transient women, he considered them, there for a while but moving on, perhaps being forced to move on by his lack of commitment to them—his detachment—
‘My brother intended passing the title to his next brother, the one above me, because that is how it would most easily have been done,’ Yusef explained. ‘But even before my father died that brother was working with foreign companies, bringing them in to search for oil, making treaties that would allow them access to whatever they discovered in return for favours for the country.’
The woman frowned at him.
‘You sound as if you disapprove, but isn’t that how the countries around yours have been able to go ahead? And hasn’t oil made the people of those lands wealthy?’
‘Of course it has, and what my business brother does is good—essential—and that is his life—his love,’ Yusef told her, a little curtly, though why her pointing out the obvious about their wealth should worry him he didn’t know. Maybe it was because her frown had disturbed him. ‘But you must know that wealth is not everything. Wealth, as I said earlier, attracts more people to the country. My brother sees this as a good thing. He does not see the overcrowded schools and hospitals and clinics, the sick children and mothers who have suffered in childbirth.’
‘But with money surely all of this can be altered,’ Gemma pointed out. ‘More hospitals built, more medical care, more schools.’
‘More schools so more diseases can spread,’ he muttered, and heard the bitterness in his voice. ‘Physically things can be fixed in time,’ he admitted, ‘but the values of my people from the early tribal days have been sharing and caring—looking after each other. I want to find a way to keep these values while at the same time bringing my country into the twenty-first century.’
Now the woman smiled at him, and her smile caused more disturbance than her frown.
‘I think I can see why your oldest brother chose you, not the one above you to be the highness,’ she said, and he realised she was teasing him—gently, but still teasing.
‘You keep mentioning the highness word, but that is all it is, a word.’
‘A word with power,’ she said, still smiling slightly. ‘So, what about your profession? Will you still have time to practise? What hospital facilities do you have? And universities? Do you train your own doctors?’
She sounded genuinely interested so he set aside his strange reaction to the teasing to respond.
‘We have a beautiful new hospital with accommodation for staff beside it, and a university that is still in its infancy, although our first locally trained doctors will graduate this year.’
‘Men and women?’
‘Of course, although it is harder to persuade women to continue their studies to university. That is one of the tasks ahead of me, the—I suppose you would say emancipation of the women of my country, so women can find a place and are represented in all areas of life. This is very difficult when traditionally business and professions were considered the domain of men.’
‘In
