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He looked down at her. She was naked, and beautiful, and unafraid. He said in a low voice, “I had a dream that you left me.”
Her eyes went wide. She sat up, shaking her head. “No.” Reaching for him, she pulled him back into the soft comfort of her arms. “That will never happen. Never.”
Reaching out, he twined his fingers in her hair. “My parents loved each other once,” he said. “They wanted a child. They built a home. Then they grew apart, twisted by secrets and lies. My mother met a new man, and my father was destroyed by it. Everything ended.”
Callie took both his hands in her own. “That won’t happen to us.”
Blinking fast, he looked out at the gray dawn. “I had a dream.”
Callie stared at him, suddenly frowning.
“But you don’t sleep,” she said slowly. “You don’t dream.”
Eduardo turned to her. She was so beautiful, his wife. So gentle and kind. She believed the best of everyone, even when they didn’t deserve it. He took a deep, shuddering breath.
“I do now,” he whispered.
CHAPTER NINE
CALLIE’S hands and feet bounced rhythmically against the interior of their four-wheel drive as they drove from the Marrakech airport. Eduardo, who was driving beside her, reached out and stilled her knee with his hand.
“Sorry.” She looked up at him with an apologetic smile. “I’m excited.”
“Yes.” He smiled back at her, his dark eyes warm. “I know.” Then a troubled shadow crossed his expression, and he turned away to focus on the road, gripping the wheel.
Business negotiations usually didn’t faze Eduardo. Callie wondered why he seemed so tense. He generally relished a good fight. Shrugging it off, she cooed at their baby in her car seat behind them. Through the back window she saw the other vehicle following with their staff and bodyguards as they drove past the twelfth-century ramparts of the medina to the vast sprawling palm desert beyond. The sky was blue above the distant, snowcapped Atlas Mountains.
She turned back to her dark, impossibly handsome husband beside her. He was wearing a business suit, but his dark coloring and black hair made him look like a sheikh. In her own long purple caftan, with the window rolled down and the warm Moroccan wind blowing through her hair, she felt like a cosseted Arabian princess at his side.
It was officially the happiest day of her life. After today, she’d have no reason to ever be sad again.
“Thank you,” she said for the millionth time.
Eduardo gave her a sideways glance. “Stop.”
“You don’t know what this means to me—”
“I mean it.” His jaw was tight as he turned off the main road to a guardhouse. Pulling up to a heavily scrolled metal gate, Eduardo spoke in French to a security guard, who with a very deep bow, swung open the gate. Eduardo drove up a long sweeping driveway with the other car behind them.
Callie looked up through the front windshield, her eyes wide when she saw the enormous Moroccan riad, two stories tall and surrounded by gardens. Willowy palm trees graced the edges of large swimming pool that sparkled a brilliant blue in the sun. The grand house itself was the combination of traditional Moroccan architecture and old French glamour. Craning her head, Callie looked up with awe at the home’s soaring curves and the exquisitely detailed scrollwork. “What is this place?”
“In the 1920s it was a hotel. Now it belongs to Kasimir Xendzov, who loaned it for our visit.”
“He’s not staying here?”
“No.”
She turned to Eduardo in shock. “Why would he leave a place like this?”
He shook his head. “He is in the city as little as possible. He prefers to live like a nomad in the desert.” His lips curved. “Like those sheikhs, in the romance novels you love.”
“But he’s Russian?”
“The local people call him the Tsar of the Desert.”
“Oh.” The romantic phrase made her shiver. “What’s he like?”
“Kasimir? As cold and heartless as his brother. You remember Vladimir Xendzov?”
