Sheikh's Guarded Heart

LUCY FORRESTER wasn't fooled for a minute. The in-substantial shimmer of green was a mirage. She'd read everything she could about Ramal Hamrah, the desert. Mirages, she'd learned, were not the illusions of thirst-maddened travellers, but occurred when refracted light mirrored distant images--oil tankers, cities, trees--making them appear where they had no business to be, only for them to evaporate as the earth revolved and the angle of the sun changed. It happened now, the momentary vision of eye-soothing green vanishing before her eyes. But even a mirage was enough to distract her from her unthinking rush to confront the man who'd betrayed her. Just because there was no traffic--no road--didn't mean that there were no hazards. She checked the satellite navigation system, adjusted her direction slightly, then forced herself to relax her white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel a little. Look around, take her bearings. Not that there was much to see apart from the mountains--clearer, sharper now that she was on higher ground away from the coast. There was nothing green here, only the occasional scrubby, dust-covered bush in an otherwise dry and empty landscape. Her eyes, seared and aching from a sun that mocked her delicately tinted sunglasses, felt as if they were filled with sand and she would have welcomed another glimpse of the cooling green. Even an illusion would do. Dehydrated, hungry, she should have realized that she'd need more than rage to sustain her, but her bottle of water had long been empty. And, shaken to bits by her charge across the corrugated surface of the open desert, her entire body felt as if it had been beaten black and blue. She didn't understand it. According to the map, it was no more than a hundred and fifty miles to Steve's campsite. Three hours, four at the most. She should have been there long before now. She closed her eyes momentarily, in an attempt to relieve them. It was a mistake. Without warning the 4x4 tipped forward, throwing her against the seat-belt as the ground fell sharply away in front of her, wrenching the wheel from her hands. Before she could react, regain control, the front offside wheel hit something hard, riding up so that the vehicle slewed sideways, tipped drunkenly, and after a seemingly endless moment when it might, just, have fallen back four-square on the ground, the rear wheel clipped the same unseen rock and the world tipped upside down. Only the bruising jolt of the seat-belt against her breastbone, shoulder, hip, stopped her from being tumbled around the interior like washing in a drier as the vehicle began to roll. It didn't stop her arms from flailing uncontrollably, bouncing against the wheel, the roof, the gear stick. Didn't stop her legs from being pounded against the angles of a vehicle built for function, rather than comfort. Didn't stop everything loose from flying around, battering her head and neck. It seemed an eternity before the world finally stopped turning and everything came to a halt. For a while that was enough. When, finally, she managed to focus on her surroundings, the world was at an odd angle, but the silence, the lack of any kind of movement, was deeply restful and Lucy, glad enough to rest quietly in the safety cage of her seat-belt, felt no urgent need to move. At least the green was back, she thought. Closer now. She tried to make sense of it through the crazing of the safety glass. Trees of some kind, she decided, after a while. It was the fact that they were upside down that had confused her. That they were below, rather than above a high wall. Had she stumbled across the Hanging Gardens of Babylon? No, that couldn't be right. Babylon wasn't in Ramal Hamrah. It was... Somewhere else. Maybe she was dead, she thought dispassionately. Heaven would be green. And quiet. Although the gate she could see set into the wall was not of the pearly varFielding, Liz is the author of 'Sheikh's Guarded Heart', published 2006 under ISBN 9780373182602 and ISBN 0373182600.