she try an immediate landing? It would mean a lot of empty sea for someone to search when she needed rescue afterwards. Should she risk flying closer to land—closer to the cloud bank—before landing? What if the cloud suddenly swept out and grabbed her while she was putting down?
There was another problem: Noor was used to landing only where she had good visual conditions. She would become disoriented with nothing but the altimeter to tell her how close the surface was.
The sea was so deceptive. She might hit the water when she thought she was a hundred feet up. Or the reverse—what she thought was a ripple on the surface might be a ten-foot swell.
Like Bari al Khalid, she thought. I thought I was close to him, but all the time he was miles away.
The Cup Companion was introduced to his lord’s cousin as a matter of protocol. He bowed formally, one hand a fist at his breast, but his expression was anything but formal. The arrogant sexual confidence in his black eyes melted her where she stood.
“Come,” Sheikh al Khalid had ordered, in fine autocratic command, as if she could have no wishes different from his own. “I will show you the gardens. You will admire the fountains.”
Noor had never been swept off her feet before. And she knew it could never happen again with such thrilling panache, such heady excitement. During the weeks she stayed in Bagestan, discovering the homeland of her parents, Bari monopolized her time, and never before in her largely fun-filled life had she had so much fun.
Bari was expert at everything. He played demon tennis, his dark body so lithe and muscled she was watching him when she should have kept her eyes on the ball, took her sailing on the most beautiful and perfectly seaworthy little yacht she’d ever seen, allowed her to pilot his private plane, escorted her to fabulous parties with the rich and famous that until now had been out of her reach, kept her constantly laughing….
And made intoxicating love to her for the first time in that small sailing yacht at the height of a storm. Noor had been a virgin, but that moment had answered all her dreams. Oh, it had been worth waiting for!
“Of course you will marry me,” he told Noor, his voice harsh with passion. “We will make our life and raise our children in Bagestan.”
It was far too soon; of course it was. Her cousin Jalia said it, and Jalia was right. But Noor’s head was whirling. Everything on her personal horizon seemed to have changed in one heartbeat. In the sea of confusion that had surrounded her since her father’s announcement, she had one spar—that Bari wanted her. That Bari was sure, and knew what he was doing.
She had flown home only to make her arrangements and return to Bagestan for the huge wedding, organized with breathtaking speed, that practically all of Barakati and Bagestani society would be attending.
And then, with the ceremony only minutes away, her one spar had been torn from her. She had learned what a fool she was, what a fool he was making of her.
Bari knew what he was doing, all right, but he didn’t love her. He wasn’t marrying her for love. He didn’t even want to marry her.
The islands! her brain suddenly shouted at her. There are islands out here! How could she have forgotten that? She had flown over the scattered group of islands with Bari. Al Jeza’ir al Khaleej, he had called them. The Gulf Islands.
“They have been uninhabited since the forced evacuation,” he had told her. “Except the biggest, which has a luxury hotel complex. The Gulf Eden was one of the ways Ghasib drew foreign currency into his coffers. Built by a huge international hotel chain to cater to very wealthy foreigners.”
His tone had been filled with contempt, and Noor had dropped her eyes and omitted to mention that she had almost gone there herself once. Only her father’s absolute diktat had stopped her.
This looks like my chance at last, she told herself dryly. But where were the islands? How far away? Her eyes dropped to the chart again, searching. Please, God, show me a way out of this.
Two
Sheikh Bari al Khalid lifted his head and watched his runaway bride over the back of the passenger seat separating the cockpit from the luggage space where he was hidden.
How dared she abandon their wedding in such a way? How dared she run away from him like this? Without a word—no announcement, no explanation, not even so much as a blink of apology!
What sort of man did she think he was, to put up with such insult?
The heady mix of fury, shock and disbelief—if that were all!—that had driven his actions was now, however, tinged with grim amusement. So the airport was clouded over. That was a dangerous situation: his bashful bride couldn’t fly in cloud, and she couldn’t land on water.
How richly she deserved this dilemma!
She was a fool to have chosen this method of escape. The weather had been volatile and unpredictable ever since the ending of the drought a few weeks ago, a fact she knew well. As an inexperienced pilot she should never have risked coming up alone.
A sardonic smile stretched his mouth, making him aware of how his jaw was clenched. He would like to leave her longer in this predicament, teach her a sharp lesson. Hell, he’d like to hide here till she was on her last gallon of fuel and begging fate for release. How he would enjoy seeing her desperate with regret and remorse!
But he couldn’t risk it. Her calm might give way to panic without warning. And a few seconds of that would be enough to kill them.
No, Noor clearly couldn’t be trusted to keep her head in the face of adversity.
Her head? She couldn’t even be trusted to keep her word!
Well, she would be made to keep it. Of that he was determined. She would not escape. She had promised herself to him, and she would keep her promise.
He stood up and moved forward between the rear seats. “Caught in your own trap,” he snarled when he was behind her. “What did you expect?”
“Bari?!” Noor’s gasp sounded like tearing silk against the hum of the engine. Her head snapped up and she blankly took in the glaring black eyes, the darkly handsome face, the imposing figure magnificently sheathed in purple silk and draped with pearls. His dress sword hung from his hip.
She frowned. “Damn! I’m hallucinating!”
“I wish you were!” he said between his teeth. “I wish we were both hallucinating! Insanity would be preferable to learning what kind of woman you are!”
He lifted the bundle of her veil that nestled in the right-hand seat and tossed it onto the floor behind her with fierce contempt, as if this symbol of their wedding made his stomach heave. Noor felt its drag against the headdress of fresh white roses still pinned to her hair.
Then, expertly manoeuvring the jewel-encrusted scabbard, he edged into the space and sat. With a deliberation that somehow infuriated her, he buckled himself into the harness.
“I have control,” he announced formally and, with unhurried grace, his actions completely distanced from his vengeful mood, he engaged the secondary controls. The plane responded to its master’s touch with a purr.
“Are
