Page 12 of Sheikh's Unexpected Triplet Babies

Chapter Five

Muneazil shared borders with the other emirates of the UAE, but unlike its desert neighbors, Muneazil also boasted a deep mountain range along one edge. Where some of the emirate was given over to golden sands, Muneazil also had dark mountains, and after a long and bumpy bus ride out from the capital, Bedelia found herself high in the mountains, looking around in awe at the town she had come to.

While the capital of Muneazil was impressive, the town of Cechon was amazing. It had been carved directly into the rock, an existence scraped out of stone over the course of five centuries. She had read that the first settlers had come there and found enough scraps of greenery to make them think they could live. As it turned out, they could, but that living had been perilous until the twentieth century brought improved farming techniques and better building abilities.

You can feel the history everywhere, Bedelia though wryly, dodging a pair of teens who were too busy looking at their smartphones to note where they were going. That was the sort of detail that she’d once thought Miller would like, but time after time, he had disregarded it, asking for the “real” stuff instead. She thought she was now getting closer to what he meant, at least, which was a good thing.

The town was bustling with the festival that she had come to see. According to the guide books, the festival celebrated a defeat by Rada Abdul Kattan over his enemies, and it had been celebrated for more than three hundred years. It seemed at first glance like a setting an action novelist could use in his work at any rate, and it was about as far removed from the horse fair and from the capital as she could get.

She had finally found some bobby pins, so at least her headscarf stayed in place. However, she still felt achingly out of place among the women of the town, who all seemed to have their own work and their own business to attend to. The festivities were due to start that night, and until then, she decided to get set up at the small hostel.

It was comfortable enough, with just a few international students who seemed pleasant, but for some reason, Bedelia couldn't relax. The wise thing to do would have been to nap so that she was awake for the festivities that started after dark, but instead, she secured her valuables in the communal safe then walked out on the streets.

She found her thoughts drifting back to Jahin as they had with almost alarming frequency for the past week and a half. It had been some nine days since she had left Masir, and for some reason, she couldn't get him out of her head. Perhaps it was because she had never met anyone like him before, or perhaps it was because he was so handsome. But the more it happened, the more it felt as if she had simply left a part of herself with him.

How strange would it be, she thought wryly, to go up to him at a press conference or something and say, “Excuse me, I think you have a bit of my heart. Care to give it back to me?”

She still generally thought that she had acted correctly at their last meeting, but there was a small part of her that demurred. She was without him right now, and she would have been no matter what she did. However, the choice she’d made left her thinking about him at odd moments. The other choice would have told her how those beautiful hands would have felt against her skin, how his mouth would have tasted if she had kissed him again, and she couldn't quite bring herself to completely believe that she had made the right choice.

Well, maybe if I ever see him again, I'll make a different one, she thought half-flippantly. It was a safe bet, because she was likely never going to see him again, but right then, she heard something that made her heart beat faster.

“I told you, I'll be back in a few days. I understand it is urgent, and to that end, I have left instructions explaining what is to be done in my absence. A member of my family has opened this festival every year for the past few centuries, and short of actual war or pandemic, I am not going to be the one to break that tradition...”

She would have told herself that she was mistaken, but Jahin had made enough of an impression on her that there was no way she would mistake his voice for anyone else's. Feeling a little like a sitting duck, she glanced around the corner, and there he was, as handsome as ever. This time, instead of the traditional clothes of a Muneazil rider, he was wearing a thoroughly modern Western business suit in charcoal, his white shirt almost blinding in how crisp and clean it was in this nearly medieval mountain town hewn from rock. There were two men in dark clothing standing respectfully next to him, and she wondered if they were guards or assistants.

Jahin looked irritated, talking with people on the phone who apparently wanted him to return to the capital, and finally he simply hung up, shaking his head.

“Fools and worse than fools,” she heard him growl. “They seem to think that the only people I rule over are the ones who live in the cities.”

The man standing to his right said something that made Jahin bark a quick laugh, and he looked like he was on the verge of replying when suddenly he froze. Copper eyes met green eyes, and she saw him shape her name with his lips, lips that she could still not think of without a shudder of pleasure.

It was exactly what she wanted. It was too much, it was far too much.

Without thinking of what she was doing in the least, Bedelia spun around on her heel and darted through the crowd. It was the only thing she could think of to do, and even as she dodged past people carrying things around for the celebration, chatting and laughing with one another, she wondered why she was doing it.

The reasonable thing, the adult thing, would have been to wave to him and then move on. If he wanted to talk with her, she could have been cool and calm and rational. She would have been polite, and she wouldn't have said anything about their last interaction if he didn't.

Instead, she darted behind a stand that was so covered with flowers that it was impossible to see the wood or the canopy, and as a confused teenaged vendor looked at her in surprise, Bedelia peeked behind her. She was half-convinced that she would see a bustling street full of people wondering why a woman had just raced past them pursued by nothing at all. She was well-prepared to feel foolish because at the end of the day, Jahin simply didn't care about someone like her at all.

Then she saw him standing in the middle of the square, looking around slightly wild eyed, and she realized her mistake. Just as she was coming to this realization, his eyes met hers, and suddenly they were off again, her dodging through the stalls and the workmen, and him shouting after her.

Bedelia might have been curvy and short, but she had also run track when she was a teenager. While she was no sprinter, she was someone who had plenty of endurance, and she used that to her advantage now, dashing through alleys and sprinting around people who swore at her for nearly upsetting their bundles. She figured that if she could just make it worth it for Jahin to quit, he would... But he didn't.

Every time she glanced over her shoulder at him, he was gaining on her, and now that he had a solid visual lock on her, he wasn't wavering at all.

Bedelia finally ran out of breath and out of will to keep on running when she turned down an alley that had been open just two hours ago and discovered the way was now being blocked by a large truck. The alleys of the town were made for horses, not trucks, and there was not even a space where she could have slipped through. She was seriously contemplating trying to slide under the truck when a hard hand clamped around her upper arm, holding her as still as if she had been stuck in cement.

For a long moment, they simply stood and breathed hard at each other. Even if she could run like that, it didn't mean that she was used to it, and though Jahin was in good shape, it didn't mean that he was prepared to do it on a moment's notice.

“So,” Bedelia said brightly when she had finally gotten her breath back. “What brings you here?”

For a moment, Jahin simply glared at her in disbelief, and then an unwilling smile broke across his face as he shook his head.

“I cannot believe you,” he said. “I can't.”

“Oh? Am I that hard to believe?”

“You slap me, and then when against all the odds we meet again, you run from me, making me chase you across all of creation. What the hell, Bedelia?”

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