And under the robe? Would she still be as perfect as he remembered? Would she still feel as satin-skinned in his hands? Would she still melt into his touch as if she was part of him?
He took another step closer before he heard the car, before the sound filtered into his brain and he realised what he was doing. He looked back at the source of his confusion. What the hell was wrong with him? The sun must be getting to him.
But Sera had heard the sound too, her head swinging around, but her dark eyes’ mission forgotten when they found him watching her. She swallowed. He followed the upward movement of her chin, followed the movement in her throat, knew the instant she’d taken her next breath.
Even across the space between them he was aware of every tiny movement, every minute change in her eyes, in the flare of her nostrils. And as he watched her, and as she watched him, the dry air crackled between them like fireworks.
Until above it all he heard voices and the sounds of an engine, brakes squealing in protest, and he spun away, his mind and his senses in disarray.
It was a relief to see that some things still made sense. A four-wheel drive had pulled up at the oasis in a cloud of sand. A distraction. Thank God.
The driver emerged, cursing and gesticulating wildly, while a woman climbed wearily out of the other side, reaching into the passenger seat behind and removing first two dark-haired toddlers and then a tiny baby from their seats in the back. She herded the small children before her towards the pond, her voice a slice of calm over motherly panic as she clutched the baby, even as the man opened the hood and let loose with a new string of invective.
Steam poured up from the engine. The man flapped his hands uselessly, then clutched at the side of his white robe with one hand and simultaneously reached for the radiator cap.
It was Rafiq who stopped him, Sera saw. Rafiq who was there first, stopping his hand, urging him to wait. Their drivers followed, reiterating his advice, and she looked back as the woman neared, her toddlers stumbling before her, the crying baby clutched tight in her arms.
‘Be careful!’ the mother called out, following as fast as she could. ‘Stop before you reach the water.’
Sera was only too happy to assist, stretching out her arms to form a barrier that the twin girls collapsed into at the last moment, laughing and shrieking, thinking it was a game. The mother breathed a sigh and thanked her, before settling with her brood at the water’s edge, taking the time to make the traditional greetings even as she settled her baby to feed now that she knew her other children were safe.
Sera smiled, her spirits lifting at meeting Aamina and her children. A visitor was a welcome distraction—especially a young mother with such a young and energetic family. The woman had a beautiful round face, and a generous smile that persisted patiently, even when the children got too excited and jostled the feeding infant impatiently in her arms. Only the shadows under her eyes betrayed how much she yearned for sleep. Sera was plagued with shadows under her eyes too, she knew, but she could only wish they were for the same reason. But this woman was so young, and yet already with three children…
That could have been her, she thought, in a sudden and selfish moment of madness that had no place or no relevance in her real world, and yet which still refused to give way to sanity.
That could have been her if she’d followed her heart and not her head.
If she’d ignored her family’s demands and the threats made against them.
That could have been her if she’d married Rafiq.
Sera clamped down on the unwelcome thoughts. Because that was all in the past, and marrying Rafiq had never been an option, not really, no matter how much she had wanted it, and she couldn’t blame her family alone.
It was pointless even thinking about it, no matter how much Rafiq’s return to Qusay had made her wonder how things might have been if she’d made a different decision all those years ago.
Instead she tried to focus on the young woman’s story, and why she was here now, travelling across the desert with such a tiny infant. It was not ideal, the woman acknowledged, but necessary, as her husband’s mother was seriously ill in hospital in Shafar, and they had promised to take their new baby, named Maisha in her honour, to meet her. But her husband was impatient, and had been pushing their aging vehicle too hard. It was lucky they had made it as far as the oasis before the radiator had blown completely.
The toddlers, no more than eighteen months old, had been content to wait at their mother’s side while she fed the baby, but now demanded more of their mother’s attention. They wanted to paddle in the shallows, and they wanted their mother to take them. Both of them.
Their mother looked lost, though the babe at her breast had thankfully finished feeding and was now sleeping, and Sera could see the woman was trying to work out how to juggle them all.