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A tiny lift at the corner of Asad’s lips could have been a smile of amusement, but he was such a serious man now. She could not be sure.
“The way of life among my people is thousands of years old. Some things are considered absolute.”
“Like hospitality,” she guessed.
“Yes.”
“But your home is not as traditional as it appears.”
“No.”
“You are not afraid of change.”
“I am not, though I do not seek it for its own sake.”
“You want to keep the Bedouin way of life viable coming into the next generations.”
“You understand me well.” His hand tightened on hers. “You always did.”
“No.” If she’d really understood him six years ago, she never would have deceived herself into believing what they had was permanent.
“Perhaps you understood me better than I did myself.”
“Oh, no. We are not going there.” She tried to yank her hand away again.
But he held on. “Be at peace, aziz. We will shelve the discussion of our past friendship for now.”
If only he was simply talking about friendship. She’d become friends with Russell since he started his internship, but Iris was under no illusions. When he returned to university, if they never spoke again, she would not be devastated.
Not like after she’d lost Asad.
When she’d believed they were far more than friends who had sex. “No. Don’t. You don’t mean that word. Don’t ever use it with me again. I don’t care if you see it as a casual endearment, I do not…I didn’t back then and it hurt more than you’ll ever understand to learn it meant less than nothing to you.”
“What?” He’d stopped with her, his tone filled with genuine incomprehension. “What has you so agitated?”
He really didn’t know and that said it all, didn’t it?
“Aziz. You will not call me that. Do you understand me? If you do it again, I will leave…I promise you.” She knew she didn’t sound superbly rational, or even altogether coherent, but she wasn’t backing down on this.
Shock and disbelief crossed his face before the sheikh mask fell again. “You would compromise your career over a single word?”
“Yes.” And she meant it. She’d tolerate a lot, but not that.
Not ever again. That single word embodied every aspect of pain that had shredded her heart six years ago. It meant beloved, but he didn’t mean it that way. He’d never once told her he loved her, but every time he called her aziz, she’d believed that was his way of doing so.
She’d been so incredibly wrong, but darn it—the word had only one translation that she knew of. Only Asad used the word as flippantly empty as a rapper calling his female flavor of the week “baby.”
Iris and Asad stood in the middle of a walkway between tents, others walking by them, but no one stopped to converse with their sheikh. It was as if they could sense the monumental emotional explosion pressing against the surface of normality she’d been striving for since seeing him at the bottom of the stairs the night before.
“You do not wish me to call you aziz, but surely—”
“No. Promise me, or I’m going to pack my things up right now.”
“Your company would not be pleased.”
“They’ll probably fire me.”
“And yet, you would leave Kadar anyway.” The confusion in his tone hurt as much as his casual use of the word a moment before.
“Yes.” She didn’t care if he understood; she only wanted his compliance. “Are we in agreement?”
After several seconds of charged silence he said, “I will not use the endearment unless you give me leave to do so.”
“It will never happen.” That was one thing she was sure of.
“We shall see.”
“Asad—”
“No. We have had enough emotional turmoil this day. I will show you my desert home and you will fall in love with the Sha’b Al’najid just as so many have before you.”
And then leaving them would break her heart, but that seemed par for the course with this man for her.
She could do nothing but nod. “All right.”
He showed her the communal tent he was so proud of. Even in the middle of the day, it was busy with people, some watching a tennis match on the large projector screen while others occupied themselves more traditionally with a game as old as their lifestyle played with pebbles or seeds.
“So, this is where the tourists congregate?” she asked, doing her best to ignore the effect his nearness had on her body.
After six years and a broken heart, no less. It wasn’t fair. Not one little bit. But he was right; they’d had enough emotional upheaval today and she wasn’t going to invite more by letting herself get lost in her reaction to him.
“Usually, but we have no guests at present.”
“Why not?”
“The most recent group left and the next does not arrive for a few days.”
“You timed it, didn’t you?” She didn’t know why or even how he could have maneuvered her arrival to fit his liking, but she knew he had.
He didn’t even bother to shrug, just gave her a look that she had no hope of reading and wasn’t sure she’d want to if she could.
CHAPTER FIVE
BY THE time they had seen a good deal of the encampment, Iris’s head was spinning with images and thoughts.
She’d met women who spent their days weaving amazing rugs and fabrics, others who beaded jewelry, and some even making the soap Genevieve preferred. A much smellier occupation than the fragrant bar Iris had sniffed earlier might have implied.
She saw much she expected to, traditional Bedouins doing traditional things and she really loved it. Few experiences could live up to imagination, but life here among the Sha’b Al’najid? It absolutely did.
“But where are the herds?” she asked, as they approached a tent that stood off by itself.
It was near his home and where they had started and she knew they were close to the end of the tour. Inexplicably, she was not ready for her time with him to be over. She tried to convince herself that was because she wanted to know more about the Bedouin, but she’d never been very good at lying to her
self.
Sheikh Asad bin Hanif Al’najid was every bit as fascinating to her as he had been when he was simply Asad Hanif. If she were honest with herself, he was even more so. She needed to get to work quickly and get her mind occupied elsewhere.
“Herds?” he asked, his tone curiously flat after the animation with which he’d described his home over the past two hours.
“The goats and things. I’d always read that Bedouins kept flocks.” Only the encampment had been surprisingly bereft of animals, except, surprisingly, some peacocks and peahens wandering between the tents, which she assumed they kept as a curiosity for the tourists.
From what she could tell, the birds had free rein of the encampment and were quite friendly. However, they’d been the only evidence of animals she’d seen. Unless others were kept in the courtyards, but there hadn’t been any in the one behind his tent.
“And you thought all Bedouins were goatherds?” he asked with a stark tension she did not understand.
“Don’t be ridiculous—no more than I think everyone living in the Midwest is a farmer, but isn’t herding part of the traditional Bedouin way of life?” Not only would it not make sense for the Sha’b Al’najid to get their meat and fleece elsewhere, considering how independent a people she’d already witnessed they were, but wouldn’t the tourists expect it?
“We do keep herds, rather a lot of them in fact, but they are grazed in the foothills. If they were not, the stench might be too much for our guests.”
“That makes sense.” Though somehow, she wasn’t sure how she felt about them pushing a traditional part of their lifestyle into the outskirts.
He lifted a sardonic brow. “I’m glad you think so.”
“I didn’t mean to offend you.” Wasn’t even sure how she had done so.
Asad shook his head. “You did not. It was an old argument I had with Badra. That is all.”
Surprised again by his candid comment about his deceased wife, Iris nevertheless asked, “Did she think it wrong to cater so carefully to the tourist’s preferences?”
Asad’s laughter sounded more like glass breaking. “Not at all. Quite the opposite, in fact. She could not stand the smell and would have preferred we got rid of the herds altogether.”
