other places. But you talk of your country—’ Gemma sliced tomatoes and cucumber as she spoke ‘—and I don’t even know its name. Is it an African country that you were working there?’
She glanced up at him and saw his face change—well, not change so much but relax just slightly as if an image of his country or one small part of it had flashed across his mind.
‘Not in Africa but on the Gulf—a country called Fajabal.’ He spoke softly, yet so confidently Gemma wondered if she should have heard of it. She ran the names of Gulf countries she did know through her head but no Fajabal came up.
‘Fajabal?’ she repeated, thinking how musical the name was.
‘It is a contraction of two words, fajr, meaning dawn, and jabal, meaning mountain,’ his deep voice continued.
‘Dawn mountain,’ she said, feeling again the familiar tug of distant lands—lands she’d never see except in pictures. But it was better to be thinking about the lands she’d never see than the way this man, sitting so close, was affecting her.
‘Mountains of dawn is how we think of it,’ he corrected, offering her a smile that confirmed all her feelings of apprehension. The man was downright dangerous.
‘That’s a beautiful name—poetic and evocative.’
‘It is a beautiful country, small, but varied in its geography as we have the red-gold desert sands, craggy black mountains and the clear turquoise sea.’
Gemma finished the sandwiches. Maybe one day she’d get over her fear of flying and actually go somewhere like Fajabal. Though maybe not to Fajabal if all the men were as dangerously attractive as this one.
She put the sandwiches on plates, found some paper napkins and pushed a plate towards her guest.
‘You are going to sit down?’ he said, and knowing if she remained standing in the kitchen while she ate it would look peculiar, she walked around the bench, grabbed the stool beside the one Yusef was using, and returned with it to the kitchen.
‘Easier to talk if we’re facing each other,’ she muttered by way of explanation, while, in fact, she knew it would be easier for her to eat not sitting next to him where bits of his body might accidentally brush against hers, and cause more of the uneasiness it had been generating since his arrival.
‘I am pleased, no, more than pleased, totally impressed by the centre and by the work you and your staff do there,’ he began, then he took a bite of his sandwich and chewed on it, leaving Gemma with the distinct impression there was a ‘but’ hanging silently on the end of the sentence.
‘I will definitely increase my contribution to it, and I would like to fund your second house, but I wish for something in return.’
Ha, here comes the but. But how big a but could it be? What strings could he possibly want to attach that they couldn’t accommodate?
Gemma chewed her own sandwich and waited.
Dark eyes studied her intently and he put down his sandwich, wiped his hands then said quietly, ‘I want you to come to Fajabal.’
Chapter Three
GEMMA stared at the once again impassive face, disbelief making thought impossible. She’d half suspected, from the time she’d heard from his secretary that the Mystery Benefactor wanted this meeting, that he might want something more than to check out the centre. But never in her wildest dreams could she have imagined this.
‘You want me to come to Fajabal?’ she said, thinking maybe her ears were playing up and he hadn’t said that at all.
‘You could leave tomorrow and both centres would keep running smoothly, you said so,’ he reminded her. ‘In fact, you have leave due and a replacement starting tomorrow.’
‘How do you know that?’ She snapped the demand at him but it was better to be thinking about his seeming omniscience than thinking about a place called Fajabal, red desert sands and all.
‘Should I not read the reports you so dutifully send? Would you not expect that of me?’ The words were cool and crisp and he seemed to sit a little taller—every inch the sheikh highness for all he was sitting at her small breakfast bar, eating a salad sandwich.
Gemma was reminded of her grandfather and had to fight the instant reactive cringe.
And fight back!
‘I would have thought you had minions who did that for you—draw your bath, read your reports. You probably even have someone who could have checked out the centre for you, rather than having to come yourself.’
‘Ah, but I came for you,’ he replied, the dark eyes fixing on hers so it seemed like some other kind of message—one that sent fire racing through her veins and what could only be desire pooling in her belly.
Could he turn on that kind of magnetic attraction? Had he done it to divert her anger, however feeble it had been?
Impossible! She was reading things that weren’t there into his words.
‘So, Fajabal?’ The deep voice lingered on the name, turning it into musical notes.
Longing replaced desire—if that’s what it had been—a longing so deep and strong she doubted she could fight it. To go to Fajabal? To actually travel to a foreign land? To a land with the magical, mystical name of Mountains of the Dawn?
If only…
‘Perhaps if I tell you of my plan you will understand,’ Yusef said. He’d watched so many expressions flash across his companion’s face he had no idea how to sort them out. There’d been wonder, and excitement, certainly, but fear, he thought, as well. Was she less confident than she appeared, this woman who had achieved so much?
She nodded in response but seemed to have retreated from him, something that caused a momentary pang, for he felt their emergency work as colleagues had forged the beginnings of a bond between them. While the attraction—but it was better not to consider that, although it was definitely there, as strong as he had ever felt for any woman.
‘I spoke of education for the women of my country, and while many women have been attending schools and colleges and even universities for many years, there are women who are still outside the mainstream of modernisation. These are tribal women, from the nomadic tribes who have roamed all the desert lands of the Middle East right through the centuries, but in recent times more and more of these tribes have made their homes in Fajabal, escaping war and oppression in other countries.’
‘People like those I spoke of, but instead of washing up on your shores, they have come across the deserts to your land,’ she said, smiling at him so his determination to ignore the attraction weakened once again.
But he’d caught her attention—now all he had to do was keep it.
‘You are right. However, settling into life in one place is not easy for these people and unless I can make it work, tribal divisions I have seen in other countries could arise, tribal divisions that lead to the horrors of civil war. If I can help these new settlers feel at home, all will be well, but right now, with overcrowded facilities, with children picking up contagious
