But her grandfather was gone, like her dad. Her lips tightened as grief hollowed her chest.
She didn’t need taking care of. Instead she had plans to see the world she’d only heard about. The places her father and his friends had spoken of. To build her own life.
‘My mother died when I was young. But I’m not alone.’ She smiled ruefully as she ladled their food. ‘I have aunts and uncles, cousins and their children.’ She was a cuckoo in her mother’s family, never quite fitting in.
‘Thank you.’ Tahir took a plate from her hands and sat with easy grace beside her. ‘So how did a doctor called Hansen come to be in Qusay? It’s not a local name.’
‘It’s Danish.’ Annalisa sat on the matting, overly conscious of the big man so near. ‘My father was half-Danish, half-English. He came here years ago to look at the stars. He loved the place and decided to stay.’
She didn’t add the old family story about him taking one look at Annalisa’s mother and falling in love on the spot. How she’d loved him at first sight too and they’d waited years for family approval before marrying.
‘So you’re carrying on a family tradition with your stargazing?’ She caught his bright stare and felt absurdly as if she were falling. It unnerved her.
‘Sort of. My father believed he’d found a comet. He and various friends around the world hoped to prove its existence.’ She dragged in an uneven breath, remembering the promise she’d given to her father. ‘I’m hoping to see it. The Asiya Comet.’
‘Nice name.’
She nodded, swallowing hard. Her mother’s name. She barely remembered her mother. It was her father’s grief she recalled, and his love, steady after all those years. He’d fought debilitating illness to live long enough to prove the comet existed and name it. His body had failed before he’d got to see it himself.
Annalisa blinked to clear her vision. ‘I promised I’d be here to see it.’ One last pilgrimage before she left.
Scientists around the globe were looking out for the comet this week. She’d be here in Qusay, her mother’s home, to watch it for her father.
‘Tonight?’ At her startled look he gestured to the meal she’d prepared. ‘We’re eating earlier than usual.’
Annalisa nodded abruptly, reminded again of how much this man of few words noticed.
Had he also noticed the way her gaze followed him? Hastily she looked away, unnerved by the bewildering feelings that plagued her.
‘All being well, yes.’ She breathed deep.
‘Then what will you do?’ His voice was soft, like silk brushing her skin. ‘Once you’ve seen your comet?’
Annalisa pushed aside her nervousness at what came next. It was what she wanted, what she’d always planned.
‘Then I leave Qusay.’ Even saying the words it didn’t seem real. After years of wanting to see the wider world, suddenly the time was here. ‘I’m going to travel, for a few months at least. Meet the scientists my father and I have corresponded with for so long. Play tourist.’ She smiled as she imagined herself in Copenhagen, Rome, Paris. ‘Then I’m going to university.’
‘Medicine or astronomy?’
‘Neither. This time I’m following my own star. I’m going to be a teacher.’
Tahir paced, so restless tonight he couldn’t settle. His skin was too tight, his senses on edge, his head throbbing. He told himself it was impatience with his slow recovery, with his scattered memory.
But he knew the cause lay elsewhere. With Annalisa.
He’d kept to himself as much as he could. But thrown together as they were in one campsite, one tent, distance didn’t account for much. Especially when he only had to close his eyes to see the sweet curve of her lips, the delicious bounty of her breasts and hips.
The scent of her skin, sweet as honey, wafted on the very air. The sound of her voice, soft and throaty, made him aware of her femininity and his own masculine need for her.
Yet it wasn’t her exquisite body alone that made his blood hum. There was some indefinable quality that tugged at him. Her calm, capable demeanour, so at odds with that seductress’s mouth. Her gentle touch. Her quick mind. And the intensity of her pleasure: when she’d laughed at the antics of the unkempt goat that still hung around the campsite, or tonight when she’d spoken of travelling. Her whole heart shone in her smile and Tahir basked in its radiance. More than anything he wanted her to turn that smile on him.
He picked up his pace, plunging into the darkness at the far end of the oasis where the shrubs grew thick.
Too late he realised his mistake, as his eyes widened and his libido roared into unfettered overdrive.