“Oh, I did.”
He chuckled before gentle seriousness descended over his face. “Were their deaths recent?”
“It feels like yesterday. And like a few lifetimes ago.”
“I know what you mean.”
Her heart kicked. “You’ve lost loved ones, too?”
He shook his head, his gaze heating. “I meant knowing you. It’s so vivid it feels perpetually new, yet so powerful it feels as if you have been there all my life, a part of my being.” Now what could she say to something so—indescribable? And worse, that sounded so spontaneous and sincere? Good thing he didn’t let her struggle for a comment, but went on. “But I don’t have a comparable experience when it comes to losing someone that dear. My mother died when I was five, so I hardly remember her. So tell me, ya talyeti, talk to me about your loved ones.”
“I feel I lost them simultaneously, even though they died seven years apart. Okay, let me start at the beginning.” She let out a shuddering exhalation, let him draw her closer into him, then began. “I never knew my biological father. I knew of him, but he didn’t want a wife and a kid, let alone two. We had our mother’s family name until she married the man I consider my father when Todd and I were two. As I grew up and learned the whole story, I thought my mother the luckiest woman on earth and my father—the man whose name I carry now—the best man in existence. I never saw anyone more in love or right for each other than they were.
“The only problem was, my father was almost thirty years older than my mom. He’d never been married before, always said he’d been waiting for her. For all of us. When I was in my second year in med school, right before his eightieth birthday, he passed away in his sleep, beside my mom. She never recovered. Seven years later, she overdosed on a concoction of the prescription meds I’d been begging her for years not to take. I could have saved her if I was there, but only Todd was home. By the time the ambulance arrived, it was too late.”
For long moments after she fell silent, Harres said nothing. Then they entered their cottage, and he pulled her into his embrace, pressed her head against his endless chest.
They stood like that, sharing, savoring, her body throbbing to the tempo of the powerful heart beating below her ear.
Then he kissed the top of her head. “Ana aassef, ya nadda jannati. I’m sorry.”
He said nothing more. Then they went about their bedtime routine. Once in bed, hearing him moving in the other room, she had a sudden realization. Why she’d always given up on any attempt at a relationship so early, so easily.
With her parents’ example, she’d set her own bar high. Every connection she’d attempted had fallen miles below it. She’d soon given up on trying, had been resigned that she’d never have anything like they’d had, and that if she couldn’t, she’d rather be alone. She’d become content with a life full of activity and purpose.
Now there was Harres.
“It’s…huge.”
At Talia’s exclamation, Harres pressed his hard body to her back, murmured in her ear, “Yes, it is.”
She nestled back against him, cast her gaze over the depression of el waha—the oasis that sprawled below them.
It had taken the past four days to cover the place on horse back. Now, on top of Reeh—or Wind, the white horse Harres had ridden on his charge back to save her—she had the best vantage point yet to appreciate it all from.
It seemed the explosion of life among the barrenness of the desert fed the conditions that fueled its proliferation in an endless cycle of balance and symbiosis. Date palms and olive trees numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Wildflowers and cacti were impossible in beauty and abundance. Farmed fruits and vegetables, especially figs, apricots, berries and corn, were astounding in size and taste. And besides horses, camels, sheep, goats, cats and dogs, there were innumerable representatives of the animal kingdom, all like the residents, unstressed and unthreatened. Deer and foxes let her walk up to them, a few let her pet them. Even reptiles and birds humored her when she cooed to them and presumed to offer them food and seek their acquaintance.
She sighed her pleasure again. “Scratch huge. It’s endless. It goes on forever.”
Harres chuckled as he unwrapped her from his arms, jumped off the horse and reached up to carry her down. His effortless strength and the cherishing in his glance and touch as she slid down his body sent a current through her heart.
“We can see about three miles to the horizon if we’re on the ground, farther the higher up we go. Since we’re three hundred feet up, we can see for about twenty miles. And since the oasis measures more than that on its narrowest side, you can’t see its end from any point, making it look endless.”
She whooped, loving his explanations. “You should consider a career as a tour guide, if ever princes are no longer in demand….” She bit her tongue. Not something to joke about with a dethroning conspiracy going on in his kingdom. He only grinned at her, showing her he knew she’d meant nothing, enjoyed her joke. Grinning back in relief, she said, “I can now see how this place earned its mystical reputation.”
“So it’s worth the ordeal I put you through coming here, eh?”
“I would have welcomed a trash dump if it had water and shelter. But it isn’t because this place meant life to us that I find it amazing. It is a paradise, like you said. Mostly because of its inhabitants. Everyone is so kind and bright and wise.”
She left out the main reason why she found this place enchanting. The present company.
For minutes, as sunset expanded its dominion over the oasis, boosting the beauty to its most mind-boggling, he guided her to a spring of crystalline water enclosed within a canopy of palms. The air was laden with sweet plant scents and heady earth aromas, its temperature seeming to be calibrated for perfect comfort, all year round as he’d told her.
As they stopped by the spring, she said, “It would be so easy to live here forever.”
If Todd was with her, she amended inwardly, or at least out of prison.
Harres spread a rug at her feet, looked up. “Wouldn’t you go out of your mind without modern conveniences?”
She sank down on the rug, reached for their food basket. “Sure, I’d miss a few things. Hot showers for one. And the internet. Uh…I’m sure there’s more I’d miss, but I’m drawing a blank right now.”
He got out glasses. “How about medicine?”