The Sheikh's Disobedient Bride. Jane Porter
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It keeps me, and my people, alive.”
A voice spoke from outside and then the tent flap was pushed aside and the elderly man from last night appeared with a large breakfast tray heaped with fresh and dried fruits, a mound of round, flat flour-dusted breads, and steaming cups of mint tea. The man disappeared as soon as he placed the tray on the carpet in front of the bed.
Her captor motioned to the carpet. “You’ll join me,” he said, and it wasn’t a question or invitation but an order.
“I’m not hungry.” She was still seething over the loss of all her photos. So much work. It was a loss of devastating proportions.
“You need to eat,” he answered with a snap of his fingers. He jabbed downward to the ground, pointing at the carpet.
“I’ve never met a ruder Berber man,” she muttered under her breath but she knew he heard—and understood—from the look he gave her.
He took one of the small flat breads. “There are worse.”
She watched him eat, eyes burning, head throbbing. She did need to eat, as well as drink, but she was afraid of getting sick, and at the moment her nervous system felt as though it were in overdrive. “What do I have to do to get my pictures back?”
“I don’t wish to discuss this topic anymore.”
“It’s important—”
“Not anymore. You’re not taking pictures here.”
“So what will I do while I’m here?”
He looked at her for a long, tense moment, his expression blank, dark eyes guarded, shadowed. “Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
His broad shoulders shifted carelessly. “I’m not going to make you do anything. I’m perfectly content now that I have your film to wait.”
“Wait for what?”
“The truth. It will emerge. It always does.”
“Maybe, but it could take a long time.”
“Indeed. And if that is the case, you’ll get to enjoy desert life for an indefinite period of time.”
“Indefinite.”
“Unless you care to tell me the truth now, Woman?”
“I’ve told you the truth and my name isn’t Woman, it’s Tally.”
“I’ve never heard the name Tally before. That’s not a name.” A glint of light touched his dark eyes, something secret and perverse and then the corner of his mouth nearly lifted, the closest thing she’d seen to a smile yet. “I shall call you Woman.”
She didn’t know if it was his words, his tone or that perverse light in his eyes but it annoyed her almost beyond reason. “I won’t answer to it.”
“You will.”
“I won’t.”
“You will.” And more fire flashed in his eyes. “Even if it takes days. Weeks.” He hesitated, and his dark gaze slid over her, the first openly assessing look he’d given her, one that examined, weighed, understood. “Years.”
Heat stormed her cheeks. The same heat that flooded her veins. “Not years.”
“You will answer to me one day, Woman. You might not like the idea, but it’s true. The sooner you accept it, the sooner life will become easier for you.”
She wanted to throw something at him, anything. The cups of tea. The tray. A pillow. He was so damn smug. So horribly arrogant. “I take it then I call you Man?”
His faint smile faded. “You are very impertinent for a woman.” Silent, he regarded her. “You may call me Tair,” he said after a moment.
“Why do you get a name and I get Woman?”
“Because I brought you here, which makes you my responsibility, and therefore my woman.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“It does to me and that’s all that matters since this is my tribe and you are mine.”
“Will you please stop calling me your woman? I’m not your woman. I’m no one’s woman, and I wasn’t spying on you or whatever you think I was doing in El Saroush’s medina,” she said, referring to the border town’s old square where he’d kidnapped her. “Why would I spy on you? I don’t even know who you are, and what point would there be spying on a group of bedraggled men riding through town on horseback? I may be an American,” and she drawled the word for his benefit, “but I do have standards.”
He nearly hissed. “Bedraggled men?”
She crossed her arms, chin titled rebelliously. “Even your horses are bedraggled.”
“They’re not,” he contradicted, incensed. “Our horses are some of the finest Arabians in North Africa. We breed them ourselves.”
“They’re dirty. You’re all dirty—”
“You should see yourself.”
“I’d bathe if you let me! I’d love some clean clothes, too, but somehow I don’t think you kidnapped a change of clothes for me.”
“I’ll get a knife,” he muttered, “get rid of your damn tongue now.”
She should be afraid, she should, but somehow she wasn’t. He might be huge, and fierce and intimidating but he didn’t seem cruel, or like a man who impulsively cut out tongues. “The point is that I didn’t even notice you in town. I was interested only in the children playing. And all I want to do is be allowed to continue on to Casablanca.”
“Why Casablanca?”
“It’s the next stop on my itinerary.”
His expression turned speculative. “You’ve friends there?”
“No. I’m on my own.”
“Casablanca’s a rebel stronghold.”
Tally sighed. “You’re rather obsessive about this whole terrorist thing, aren’t you?”
He studied her for a long moment before leaning forward to take her face in his hand. He lifted her chin this way and then that. “You are what, thirty years old? Older?”
She tried to pull away but couldn’t. Her pulse jumped, skin burning. She didn’t like him touching her. He made her feel odd, prickly things. Things she had no business feeling. “I just turned thirty,” she answered faintly.
“You wear no ring,” he said, still examining her face. “Did your husband die?”
“I’ve never been married.”
“Never?”
“I don’t want a husband.”
He let her go then and his dense black lashes dropped, concealing his expression. He was silent, assessing her, and the situation. “You’re not a virgin, are you?”
His tone had changed and she didn’t know if it was shock, or respect but either way it irritated her. Her life, her past, her relationships, and most of all, her sexuality were her business and no one else’s. Least of all a barbaric desert tribesman. “I’m thirty, not thirteen. Of course I’ve had relationships—and experience—but I choose to remain single. I prefer being single. This way I can travel. Explore. Do what I want to do.”
Tair continued to study her as though she were alien and fascinating in a strange sort of way.
Tally wasn’t sure she liked the look on his face. His expression made her nervous. Made her feel painfully vulnerable.
“Your parents—they’re still alive?” he asked.
She