Kept for the Sheikh's Pleasure by LYNN RAYE HARRIS

Author:LYNN RAYE HARRIS [Raye Harris, Lynn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781488086120
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2010-02-15T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE Temples of Al-Shahar were millennia old. The foundations were ancient, though the temples in their current form were only about a thousand years old. The one temple still standing bore the soaring arches and mosaic work typical of the early Islamic period. The others were in various states of ruin, but they were all an archaeologist’s dream. At the very least her team would be busy here for months. In truth, they could stay for years.

Genie walked through the structure, hands in pockets, her mind not quite as engaged as it should be for something so exciting.

Zafir was somewhere behind her, his footfalls distinct in the shadowy interior. His ever-present bodyguards had fanned out to guard the perimeter while they came inside alone. It seemed to her he’d gathered more security since yesterday. She’d asked about it, but he had shrugged the question off.

They’d hardly spoken since lunch. What was there to say?

She’d told him one of the darkest, most painful secrets of her life, and now she regretted it. Because he felt sorry for her. In Bah’shar, it seemed as if a man could have more than one family and no one thought anything of it. Not the women, not the children, and certainly not the men.

But her father had mostly ignored her existence, except for the occasional inquiry into her grades, or the awkward acceptance of a childish drawing that she’d used to believe he took home and put on the refrigerator. Now she realized he must have thrown them all out. His wife wouldn’t have wanted to know anything about the woman and child he kept across town.

One day he’d finally walked out for good. She’d never known why.

Zafir passed her line of sight and she studied him from beneath the brim of her hat. She should be studying the temple, but she couldn’t stop thinking about their lives together before. She replayed the kisses, the caresses, the early-morning walks, the late-night lovemaking, the look in his eyes when they’d been together—everything she could think of. How had she not realized it was only temporary?

Because it had felt like so much more. She wasn’t wrong about that. She couldn’t be.

But was that what her mother had thought too? Was that what had made her stay with a man who could never be hers, who’d kept her in a cage and expected her to be available whenever he wanted her?

She’d done this before, after they’d broken it off, and she was angry that she was suddenly being forced to reexamine the past after all this time. He’d accused her of needing her work more than she needed him, but it was so much more than that. Perhaps he finally realized it too.

Zafir was standing in the middle of a room, gazing down at the ruins of a mosaic on the floor. “There is much to be done here, yes?” he said, looking up and catching her staring at him.

Genie refused to look away. To do so would be to admit she’d been thinking of him and not of her work.

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