Strangers in the Desert Read Online Free PDF Page A

she needed to get there as soon as possible.
    “I thought you might like to see these,” he said, holding out the papers.
    She took them cautiously, not really certain she did want to see them, but knowing she had no choice but to look. For herself. For her sanity. Not because he was forcing her to, but because she needed to know.
    Her heart began to thrum.
    She looked at the first sheet. It was an article from
Al-Arab Jahfar.
    Prince Weds Daughter of Prominent Businessman.
    There was a photo of her and Adan. He was so handsome in his traditional clothing, with a ceremonial dagger at his waist. He looked solemn, as if he were performing a duty.
    Which he no doubt had been.
We met a week before the wedding …
    She was smiling, but she didn’t look happy. Her dress was a beaded silk
abaya
in a deep saffron color. She wore the sheerest
hijab,
the fabric filmy and beautiful where it skimmed her hair.
    She glanced up, saw Adan watching her closely. He was sprawled in his chair like a potentate, one elbow propped on the armrest, his index finger sliding absently back and forth over his bottom lip. His dark eyes gave nothing away.
    Isabella slid the article to the bottom of the pile. The next one sent her heart into her throat.
    It was a birth announcement. Rafiq ibn Adan Al Dhakir, born April fourth.
    Tears pressed against the backs of her eyes. She wanted to sob. She bit her lip, hard, to stop the tears from coming. She wanted to shove the papers at him and tell him to take them away, but gritted her teeth and told herself she would do this. She would look at them and she would survive it.
    Because everything she’d known, everything she’d believed—about herself, about her parents—was shattered and lying broken at her feet. She wasn’t who she thought she was.
    She was this woman, this Princess Isabella Al Dhakir, who had a baby and a husband. Who should have had a perfect life, but who was sitting here broken and alone.
    She uncovered the next article with trembling fingers.
    This one proclaimed her missing. From her father’s house, where she’d gone to visit after the birth of her child. Evidence suggested she’d walked into the desert. A sandstorm had stopped the rescue effort for three days. When it resumed, there was no trace of her.
    She thought of her father’s house at the edge of the wilds of Jahfar. He loved to tame nature. He had a pool, fountains and grass on the edge of the hottest, starkest land imaginable.
    And she had willingly walked alone into that desert?
    The fourth article made the numbness creep over her again. It was small, a quarter sheet, the words stark against the white background.
    Dead …
    She quickly flipped to the next page. A marriagecontract, spelling out everything her father and Adan had agreed to. She didn’t read it. She didn’t need to.
    She closed her eyes and dropped the papers on the table between them, then clasped her hands in her lap so he wouldn’t see them shaking. She was his wife. The mother of his child.
    And she couldn’t remember any of it. Isabella tried so hard to conjure up an image of a baby in her arms, but she couldn’t do it.
    What was wrong with her? How could a mother forget her own baby? She turned her head away on the seat back and dug her fingernails into her palms. She would not cry. She could not cry in front of him. She couldn’t be weak.
    “Do you still wish to deny the truth?” Adan asked.
    She shook her head, unable to speak for fear she would lose control.
    “Why did you do it, Isabella? Why did you leave your baby son? Did you not think of him even once?”
    It took her several moments to answer.
    “I don’t remember doing it,” she forced out, her voice barely more than a whisper. “I don’t remember anything about that … that night. In the newspaper.”
    She thought he wouldn’t believe her, that he would demand to know the truth, demand she stop lying. But he blew out a breath and looked away before turning to pierce her