The Desert Princes. Jackie Braun
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creature on earth. It struck him like a knife in his heart when he saw the tears in her eyes. If he should lose her—
‘I just thought we’d forgotten the small things that matter.’ Mashing her lips together with embarrassment, she made a small, self-deprecating sound accompanied by an even smaller gesture. ‘The little things that make life…’
‘Fun?’ he supplied as Casey’s voice tailed away. Had he forgotten those things too?
She swallowed as their gazes held. ‘There should be fun…’
She made it sound like a question and he could understand why. Beyond lust and business there hadn’t been too much time for fun, and he remembered now with a wistfulness that was new to him their impulsive dance with the children in the desert.
‘Yes, there should be fun,’ he assured her. She always put others first, but who made time for Casey?
The flight Casey was supposed to be taking home to the UK had experienced an unexpected delay. Once it was clear there would be no further flights that day, and he had changed into jeans and a casual top, he persuaded Casey she might as well hitch a lift with him to the Bedouin encampment. He wanted to make sure she had the pleasure of distributing the gifts herself. He wanted her.
She was so excited. Seated next to him in the cockpit of the helicopter, he could sense her pleasure and impatience to return to the desert. It had completely obliterated her reluctance to have anything more to do with him.
He couldn’t believe he had almost lost her. He couldn’t believe she had been slipping through his fingers like sand while he had been obsessed by duty. It had taken Casey to prove to him that duty went far beyond the chequebook and must have a heart. She was that heart. In a few, short intense days she had broken through his emotional guard with her innocence and her goodness and integrity. She had shown him that money could never be the answer to a country’s problems.
He glanced across to find her staring intently through the Plexiglass viewing panel at their feet. Children were already gathering on the ground and waving up at them.
‘Be careful, Raffa.’
Her exclamation came through his headphones as he brought the helicopter down in a slow, controlled descent. ‘Don’t worry—the adults have seen us too.’
And the women. He’d wired ahead to warn them they were coming, and also to ask a favour.
Casey forgot all her concerns in the sheer pleasure of being back amongst the people she already felt so close to. She had never felt this much at home, she realised, watching the Bedouin teacher surrounded by her pupils. She had just handed over the art supplies, and now the teacher was deciding with the children on what should be their first project.
The children looked shyly at Casey as she left the mobile schoolroom in front of Raffa. They had stood up respectfully when he said goodbye, reminding Casey that for all his darkly glittering glamour and sex appeal Raffa was their king. And she was…
She was going home.
‘That was a heavy sigh,’ Raffa commented as he closed the door behind them.
‘I’ll miss them,’ Casey admitted. ‘I can’t believe how much.’
‘You don’t have to go.’
‘I think we both know I do.’ She stared at him for a brief moment, wishing that life could be different sometimes—easier.
‘There is no easy answer,’ Raffa agreed, as if reading her mind. ‘And what I’m about to suggest has never been easy for you.’
She followed his gaze down the dusty path. ‘Oh, no…’ She pulled a face. Raad, Raffa’s stallion, and the smaller dapple grey she had ridden before were tethered in the shade beneath a thatched awning. ‘You’re kidding me.’
‘You think?’
‘Raffa…’ Her heart turned over. She knew that look of his so well—though she had always seen it before in a very different context. She lifted her chin. ‘Humour now?’ If he was mocking her—
‘Humour always.’
There were no followers, no bodyguards, no people clustered around them. They had walked away from the small group of school buildings and were hidden from sight.
‘No, Raffa.’ She turned her face away, but he backed her towards the nearest palm.
‘Yes,’ he growled, low and husky, pinning her there.
‘No…’
He teased her with almost-kisses all the way down her neck, around her ear, her cheek, and finally, somehow, her mouth. She must have turned to tell him to stop, Casey reasoned, managing to hold out for around a nano-second before she was lost. Was she supposed to resist something she wanted so badly?
‘Do you forgive me?’ Raffa murmured, continuing to tease her.
‘Do I forgive you for making me want you so badly? No.’
‘Will you stay in A’Qaban?’
‘Blackmail?’ she suggested when he stopped kissing her.
He gave her a look, but didn’t deny it.
‘Subtlety never was your strong point,’ Casey observed, fighting hard not to look at Raffa’s lips.
‘Try this,’ he said. ‘You have to stay.’
‘I don’t have to do anything.’
‘May I finish?’
Casey signalled her assent, but remained tensely aware of Raffa’s body heat and sexual charisma; all the things she had sworn off for life, she remembered.
‘A’Qaban needs you—and my people need you—here, with them—not delivering disembodied instructions from afar. Didn’t you see those children’s faces when you arrived?’
‘Oh, that really isn’t fair,’ Casey protested.
‘So now I’ve touched you?’ Raffa remarked dryly.
‘Only because you play dirty.’
‘I play to win.’
‘I don’t know how I could stay.’
‘You’d move in with me?’ he suggested casually.
‘You’re short of a room-mate?’ Casey said cynically.
‘No, I’m short of a wife.’
‘A WIFE?’ Casey looked at Raffa for a moment, and then burst out laughing. At least it had relieved the tension, she reasoned. Raffa always had had a keen sense of humour. ‘Yeah, right,’ she intoned dryly. ‘Queen Casey. Like that’s ever going to happen.’
‘What’s wrong with your name?’ Raffa asked, apparently deciding to play it straight for a change. ‘Though in A’Qaban you would be known by an A’Qabani name, of course. You would be free to choose something you like—something you think reflects who you are as a person…’ He narrowed his eyes in thought for a moment. ‘Atija, for instance.’
‘Does that mean stubborn too?’ Casey said wryly, remembering the shawl Raffa had referred to as his atija.
‘You might find out one day…if the conditions are propitious.’
‘Propitious?’ Casey scoffed, shaking her head. ‘I can’t believe you’re interested in progressing this fantasy. Aren’t I supposed to be the fantasist and you the realist?’
When Raffa shrugged and raised his brows in infuriating challenge, Casey knew she had to stop this before it got out of hand and she started believing