Desert Hearts. Sandra Marton

was the awful truth.

      He was every miserable thing a man could be. Too rich, too good-looking, too egotistical to tolerate. Dammit, he was a man, and that was enough.

      Until he’d kissed her and her brain had turned to mush.

      How could such a thing have happened?

      Yes, he was good-looking. Hell, what he was, was sexy.

      But she wasn’t into sexy.

      She wasn’t into sex.

      She wasn’t into anything that might interfere with the life she wanted, the life she’d been planning ever since she woke up in a lumpy bed in a cheap room in Pocatello, Idaho, the morning of her seventeenth birthday. Sixteen-year-old Suki had been asleep next to her, mouth hanging open, each exhalation stinking of beer.

      “Mama?” Rachel remembered saying, with a kind of awful premonition.

      She’d sat up, pushed away the thin blanket—and had seen the birthday card propped on the table near the bed. A big, garish thing with purple and yellow balloons drawn all over it.

      Happy Birthday! it said.

      Inside were two crisp twenty dollar bills. And a note.

       Gone for a little vacation with Lou! You girls be good until I send for you!

       Luv you!

      Lou had been Mama’s latest “beau.” That was what she always called her men-friends. She’d gone on “little vacations” before. A weekend. A few days. One scary time, when Rachel was ten and Suki was nine, she’d gone off for an entire week.

      That morning in Pocatello Rachel had told herself that Mama would be back.

      It never happened.

      After three weeks she’d found a night job at Walmart but it hadn’t been enough to pay for their miserable room and put food in their bellies.

      So she’d quit school.

      One more year until she’d have had her diploma. It had killed her to walk away, but what choice had there been? She’d had to work to support herself and her sister.

      “You stay in school, Suki,” she’d told her. “You hear me? One of us in going to graduate!”

      In August, Rachel had moved the two of them to a bigger furnished room in a safer neighborhood. She’d used her Walmart discount for Suki’s school supplies and bought their clothes at Goodwill.

      Suki wouldn’t wear them.

      “Holy crap, how can you wear somebody’s old stuff?” she’d demanded. “And you’re wasting your money, buying me school stuff. I’m not going to go no more.”

      When the first snow fell they got a card from Mama. She was in Hollywood. She knew someone who knew someone who was making a movie. She was going to get a part in it.

       And then I’ll send for my girls!

      More exclamation marks. More lies. They’d never heard from her again.

      Or maybe they had. There was no way to know because by January Idaho was nothing but a memory.

      Suki had taken off. No goodbyes, no explanations. Just a note.

      See you, it said.

      Just like Mama, except Mama had left those twenties. Suki had emptied the sugar bowl of the fifty bucks Rachel had kept in it.

      Rachel moved to Bismarck, North Dakota. Took a job as a waitress. Moved to Minneapolis. Took another job wait-ressing. A couple more stops and she’d ended up in a Little Rock, Arkansas, diner.

      Bad food, grungy customers, lousy tips.

      “There’s got to be somewhere better than this,” she’d muttered one night, after a guy walked out without paying his bill, much less leaving a tip.

      “Dallas is lots better,” the other girl working the night shift had said.

      Right, Rachel thought now, swallowing a bitter laugh. And after Dallas came Albuquerque, and after that Phoenix.

      Rachel had seen more than her share of the West.

      Then Suki had called. Told her about Las Vegas.

      In some ways Vegas had been an improvement. When customers were happy because they’d won at the slots they left decent tips. And once she’d swallowed her pride and taken the job she had now the tips had got even better.

      She’d started taking classes at the university, planned a better life for herself, and then for herself and Ethan …

      What time was it, anyway?

      She wasn’t sure what time they’d left Las Vegas. Ten, eleven o’clock—something around there. They were moving fast but there was no feeling of motion, no sense that they were miles above the earth, going from one time zone to another.

      Could that be disorienting? Could it explain …

      No. There’d been no plane, no soaring through the sky that first time the Sheikh had kissed her.

      Nothing but the man himself. The taste of him. The feel of him. The heat and hardness of his body.

      It didn’t make sense. She wasn’t like that. She wasn’t into what Suki called “hooking up.”

      It drove Suki crazy

      “My sister, the saint,” she’d sneered when Rachel had caught her drinking Southern Comfort after she knew she was pregnant. “Such a good girl. Always flosses. Always eats her veggies. Never gets laid.”

      Rachel had snatched the bottle from Suki’s hand and dumped the whiskey into the sink.

      “A little screwing would make you more human,” Suki had yelled after her.

      No, Rachel had thought, it wouldn’t. It would just mark her as her mother’s daughter.

      Sex had been her mother’s addiction. Her sister’s.

      Not hers.

      Sex was a trap. It robbed you of common sense, and for what? A few minutes of pleasure, or so she’d heard women say. She had no idea if that was true or not. She’d tried being with a man once or twice and all she’d ended up feeling was even more alone.

      She didn’t need men, didn’t need sex, didn’t need anything or anyone. Well, except for Ethan. Other than the baby, she was content to be alone.

      She was a cool-headed woman who thought things through. A pragmatist. A survivor.

      And that was why she’d defeat the Sheikh at this game.

      She was not handing control of her life to him.

      She was not giving up her baby.

      Rachel rose to her feet.

      Half a dozen steps took her to the alcove where Ethan slept in his carrier. The flight attendant was sleeping, too; she sensed Rachel’s presence and jerked awake.

      “What can I get you, miss?” she said quickly. “Something to eat, perhaps? There are sandwiches, fruit, coffee—”

      “Nothing, thank you. I just wanted to see how my baby’s doing.”

      “Oh. He’s fine. I changed him a while ago, fed him—”

      “Yes. That’s great. I’m just going to take him back to my seat with me.”

      Rachel picked up the carrier, took it down the aisle. It was impossible not to see Karim but her gaze swept over him without their eyes making contact.

      He didn’t even know she was there.

      He was talking on his cell phone. She heard a couple of words. “Suite.” “Accommodations for an infant.” Nothing more than that.