“I get my hands dirty,” Samir said, his voice going low. A shiver of desire moved through Clementine like warm wind through her dress.

  “I see that now.” One of his hands was still on the small of her back, though they’d stopped walking a while ago. They were staring at the greenhouse. There was nowhere for him to lead her, but Clem didn’t want to step away. She’d enjoy it however long it lasted.

  That’s how she should approach the rest of her stay in Omirabad. It had been an odd change, going from wanting an annulment to wanting Samir’s acceptance as his wife, but it was fine to be complicated. Especially if there was some tent where they could be alone…

  No. She straightened up. It wasn’t as if he could take her behind one of the trees and press her up against the bark, kissing her like he regretted even the idea of her returning to the States.

  “Selling the flowers,” she said suddenly. “You want to sell the whole flower.”

  “Right.” Samir drew out the word. “If we can provide importers with the plants and flowers as well as the spice, it will expand the economy and bring more stability to the tribes.”

  “Do they want that? Stability?”

  “They’re stable in their own way,” Samir answered, his tone thoughtful. “They move through the desert in an ancient rotation with the changing of the seasons. A more robust business for the crocuses will help weather the harder times.”

  “I’m sorry.” Guilt washed over Clem and bled into the ground beneath her feet. “I shouldn’t have interfered in your deal with Howard.”

  He rubbed her back, and she wasn’t sure if he was aware he was doing it. “I’ll find another way. We have enough local contracts that the future didn’t depend on Howard, but…”

  “But?”

  “But I would like to move quickly on forming some partnerships in new places. Japan has been an excellent customer, but Europe and the Americas would open many doors. Howard had those kinds of connections already, as part of his distribution network.”

  “I could help with that,” said Clem. Her pulse fluttered in her neck. “I’m not kidding, Samir.”

  “How?” He sounded genuinely curious. “Forgive me. I might have overlooked some of the details when it comes to your business.”

  “Increasing sustainability is a passion of mine, which is…well, it’s why I didn’t want you to sign a deal with Howard.”

  Samir was quiet.

  “Enough about Howard.” Clem forged ahead. “I’m focused on sustainability, but I’m in the business of making connections between companies. Distributors. Sellers. Importers. Exporters. I find companies with similar values. If you’re interested in distributing the whole flowers throughout different markets, then I can do that.” It had been harder, in the last couple of years, to connect the companies she worked with—a lot of her clients based in New York City had only been interested in her sustainability consultations. They hadn’t wanted to set up any transfers of products, because there weren’t many products. Tech companies. So many tech companies. Now, out here in the desert, the possibilities were literally growing in front of her. Right there, in that greenhouse.

  “Is there anything you can’t do?”

  Clem let out an excited laugh. “I mean it. I’m working with a startup company that could do that for you. I know they have a distribution arm in Europe, and I’m working with them right now on more sustainable processes, like…like…” All the ideas flooded into her mind at once. “Newer planes, with better fuel efficiency. And you won’t run into any issues like you might have with Howard. They won’t fly under false flags.”

  Samir frowned. “That’s something I hadn’t encountered in my background checks.”

  “Yes, well, he has his ways of hiding things,” Clem said briskly. “Some of the vacations he took us on made me wonder. And the more I learned about the laws, the more—” She took a tiny step closer to Samir. “I don’t want to talk about Howard. Howard is in the past. Hopefully your past, too.”

  “Oh, I’d say so,” agreed Samir with a wry smile. “I don’t think he’d be interested in doing business with me after the way we parted in Las Vegas.”

  Clem knew better. Howard was the kind of man who would find a way to use the argument to his advantage rather than lose money by not signing a deal, even if his pride was wounded.

  “That’s probably for the best,” she hedged. “I wouldn’t want to see your reputation dragged down in any way. You know. In the future, if—” She shook her head. “If something went wrong.” Clem took a deep breath. “I’d be happy to take you on as a client.”

  The greenhouse stood before them, and Clem realized that she could hear water running nearby. A stream? A creek?

  “I shouldn’t be surprised,” she said. “Water in the desert.” She turned her head toward a copse of trees and caught Samir looking at her. “What?”

  “I’m impressed,” he said. A beat went by. “I’d be happy to talk with you about…what we’ve discussed.”

  This was what it had to feel like to win the lottery. “As soon as we’re back at the palace,” Clem said. “I’ve got plenty of things to show you on my laptop. I can draw up something more specific to the Omirabad crocuses, too.” She was getting ahead of herself, but why not show him that she was in this for the win? “What’s next on our tour? Are you going to show me the river?”

  Samir laughed. “It’s not just a river. There’s a waterfall.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “You’ll have to.”

  She stepped in the direction of the water, and for the first time since they’d left the village center, his hand fell away from her skin. Samir stepped around her, leading the way.

  Clem picked up the pace. Maybe it was forward. Maybe it was stupid, in light of everything that had happened between them. But she took his hand lightly in hers as if she needed his touch to show her the way. “Don’t leave me behind.”

  13

  Samir took Clem back to the palace after the presentation feast. The presentation itself had been more moving than he expected, done by firelight and with a short speech by Chief Jazir. He spoke about the importance of tradition and following through and had congratulated Samir on upholding one of the most important traditions of all. Clem looked down at her feet at those words. Samir was torn. On the one hand, he had been looking forward to this moment since he was a young man. It was the moment he would step fully into his role as liaison, and he’d always taken it seriously, knowing that one day he would need to fill Rashid’s shoes.

  On the other hand…

  His moment of welcome—of becoming official—was, like his marriage, only temporary. The word beat like a drum in his ears back at the palace. It was the background to everything that Clem told him about. Her contact with the new distribution company was solid, and he let her set up a few phone conferences with members of Samir’s staff. They reported back on everything they learned.

  But after a couple weeks of business dealings in the palace, Samir was anxious to get back to the desert. It wasn’t enough to ride out there once a month and walk through the camps. Most of them clustered around the oasis, and it would take three weeks to work through all of the people he needed to see and things they needed to do.

  The villagers nearby cheered when Clem climbed out of the SUV behind him, her blonde hair in a neat bun. She blushed and waved and soon set about doing the work of the sheikh’s wife.

  The only problem?

  She was terrible at it.

  There were some bright spots, of course. Maryum had taken Clem under her wing and was slowly teaching her basic Arabic. Samir could see that the new language wasn’t easy for Clementine to use around the village by the set of her shoulders and the pink in her cheeks, but she did it anyway.

  As for the rest, there was no kind way to put it. Clem was terrible with plants.

  Samir had assumed that because of her interest in sustainability and all things environmentally friendly that she’d have some affinity or talent for working with them. It couldn’t have been farther from the truth, and every time a new disaster happened, Samir was taken aback all over again. He’d spent so many years in the village and the greenhouse that tending the plants was second nature to him, surprising as it might be to outsiders. But Clem seemed to have no experience with a garden of any kind.

  She’d destroyed several trays of corms in an incident that Maryum couldn’t quite describe through her own disbelief. And on top of that, she’d contaminated several thousand stigmas.

  “How?” he’d asked her after the news reached him about the stigmas. “How could you be so careless?”

  Clementine’s eyes had shone brightly with tears. “I don’t know, Samir. I was doing the best I could.”

  “It takes…Clementine, it takes seventy-five thousand stigmas to make a pound of saffron. We—the tribes—can’t afford to lose them to accidents.”

  Maryum and Chief Jazir had come over at that point, pulled away from the greenhouse by the tension in his voice, perhaps. A tear slipped down Clementine’s cheek.

  “I am so sorry,” she said, hands over her heart. “I obviously take full responsibility, and I’ll do whatever it takes to make things up.”

  Chief Jazir wasn’t a harsh man, but his mouth was pressed into a thin line. “I accept your apology, and I can tell that it’s sincere. But from now on, perhaps we’ll find you a different avenue to offer your assistance.”

  “Any avenue.” Clem’s voice was choked with tears. Samir caught himself staring. After their first family lunch in Omirabad, he’d thought she was close to crying, but she hadn’t actually let the tears fall. Now the sobs that she tried to stifle shook her shoulders. “I’ll help however I can, I—I swear.”

  “Somewhere away from the greenhouses,” Jazir said, and Maryum put her arm around Clem’s shoulders. Samir was on the verge of insisting that he take Clementine back to the tent they shared in the village—a small but sumptuously decorated tent that was reserved for the liaison, but she’d wiped her eyes and gone with Maryum.

  Which brought them to laundry day.

  It was the safest option for Clem, they’d decided among themselves. It was laundry. So when Clem burst into the tent, her face pale, he assumed something much worse than a laundry incident had happened. His heart dropped into his shoes.

  “Are you all right?” He rose from his chair where he’d been sitting to write an email to Rashid. “You’re white as a sheet.”

  “I—” Clem put her hands over her mouth and sucked in a breath through her nose. “I ruined the laundry.”

  “You ruined the laundry?” Samir went over the laundry process out in the desert in his mind. The tribe traveled with a small generator, and there was at least one machine. They split the loads between hand washing and the portable machine, then hung the clothes to dry. That was it. There was no way for Clementine to have any negative effect.

  “The clothesline—it fell. I guess I didn’t secure it, and all the clothes fell into the sand. They’re starting all over.”

  Samir laughed, relieved. “That’s at least a step up from destroying the crocuses. You could’ve done worse.”

  Clementine looked at him, eyes wide, and burst into tears.

  She turned and rushed out of the tent.

  What was wrong with her? Laundry falling into the sand wasn’t nearly the worst thing that could happen out in the desert. It would take more time and more water, yes, but they hadn’t lost anything of value. The sand would come out of the clothes.

  He found Clementine standing just outside the tent, her face buried in her hands and her shoulders trembling. A couple of women walking by carrying a large pot between them glared at him. Samir shrugged, giving them a series of hand gestures that turned out to be utterly meaningless. Then he went to Clem and put his arm around her, drawing her gently back to the tent.

  “That was mean,” she wailed. “That was so mean. I can’t believe you said that to me. I came back here to confide in you because I’m so embarrassed. Nothing is going right here. I’m completely mortified, and everyone in the village is going to think I’m some stupid American who can’t do anything. Why did you even bring me out here? You didn’t have to do that. You shouldn’t have, since this is just some stupid—”

  Samir couldn’t bear to hear the end of that sentence. He leaned down and kissed her, tasting the salt from her tears on her lips. God, they felt good under his own lips. Why did they have to feel so good when she was so wrong for the situation they found themselves in?

  “Don’t do that,” Clementine said miserably. “It’s not fair.” She tilted her face toward his and sniffed.

  “I won’t kiss you if you don’t want me to.” He drew back a little. “You know that. I only thought it might make you feel better.” And stop you from saying those words. Why it mattered to him now, he couldn’t say.

  “It does,” she said. She leaned in another inch. “It’s not fair, and I want more of it…”

  He couldn’t resist the breathy voice or the shape of her underneath the dress she wore, and this time he closed the gap between their lips, covering her mouth with his. Clem groaned, the sound soft and sweet, and he danced his tongue along her lips until she opened her mouth and let him in.

  “Why are you so good at that?” she pleaded, putting her arms around his neck.

  “Why are you?” Hands on her ass, he lifted her into place, letting her wrap her legs around his waist. This close, he could feel the way she trembled, her hips rocking.

  It was an animal transformation. One moment, he was a man of caution. The next he was digging his fingers into her flesh as she bit his lip, tiny pinpricks of pain and pleasure mixing together. He put her on the bed, the dress coming away beneath his hands, and Samir didn’t care that it was the middle of the day. He didn’t care that there were people coming and going outside the tent. All he wanted was Clementine, and Clementine—tears dried on her face—locked her eyes on his and dragged him down toward her with her fingernails in his flesh.

  Slow down. He had to slow down. He dragged his lips down the center of her chest, between her breasts, and lingered on each nipple. She arched her back beneath him, gasping, and he couldn’t help but marvel at that. Her breasts had never been this sensitive before, had they? It didn’t matter. She planted the soles of her feet on the bed, her knees spread around him, and arched higher, giving him all the access that he ever could have wanted.

  He reduced her to a shuddering, pink-faced mess in minutes, his hands playing over her hips and his mouth on her skin.

  “Samir. Please.” It was music to his ears.

  “Please what?”

  “Please take me. Take me…” It was something he might have laughed at in any other circumstance. In any other lifetime. But out here, in their tent in the desert, he let out a fierce growl and lined himself up with her entrance. She was slick and hot, waiting, panting—but she put a hand on his chest.

  “Your hand…I want it here.” She moved his hand to where her ass curved into her hip. He held her tight while he thrust inside. Clem buried her face in his shoulder, nipping at him with her teeth, rocking her hips.

  There was no way it could go on for long, with both of them ready to combust, and Clementine was on the edge before he knew it. She exploded, wrapping her legs tightly around his hips, and he had nowhere to go but inside, deeper, harder. He followed her into his own release. When it was over he buried his face in her shoulder, breathing her in.

  After a long few minutes he broke away, taking care of the condom before he returned to the bed. Clementine had turned on her side. Her breathing was even.

  A midday nap.

  He had plenty to do, but Samir climbed into the bed next to her and pulled the sheet over both of them.

  It was what the tribe expected. They’d had to sleep together while they were out in the desert. The tribe couldn’t know that the marriage was not a real one.

  But was it only pretend? His heart beat fast against his ribs, refusing to calm down. He had feelings for her.

  They were feelings he would have to stifle. He loved her company. She was smart and sincere and sexy, and she had a good heart.

  That wouldn’t matter in the end.

  In the end, they wouldn’t work out.

  She had a life to get back to in New York, and he…he needed to find someone who was a better fit.

  Right?

  14

  Clementine had never been so tired.

  It felt like being underwater at the pool as a child. It took so much work to stay above the surface at first. Her favorite thing had been sinking down to the bottom and walking up the gentle slope toward the shallow end, feeling the weight of the water on her shoulders slowly decrease until at last her head broke the surface and she could let her legs float up from beneath her.

  Only right now, the fatigue never seemed to decrease no matter how much she slept.

  She’d had a long nap yesterday after she and Samir had tumbled into bed together, and her memories of dinner that night were slightly blurred and surreal. It was totally possible that she hadn’t quite woken up and hadn’t lasted long into the evening, either.

  Now she turned and stretched, trying to force her eyes open and failing. There was light in the tent—some light, at least—and she reached behind her to feel for Samir.

  His side of the bed was empty.

  That was no surprise.

  He tended to wake up early out in the desert. The first few nights here, Clementine had followed suit, but as the weeks went on it got harder and harder until she’d reached this point.

  She rolled over onto her back and took a deep breath.

  They needed to have a discussion.

  Was the marriage really going to end in less than two months? If it was, they needed to stop wanting each other so badly. Or Clem needed to stop wanting Samir. It was going to be a tough sell, because every time she looked at him, all she could see were the things that drove her wild about him. Those perfect lips. The dark eyes filled with heat. That body…