Free Sheikh's Castaway by Alexandra Sellers Page A

particular island should be mocked, rather than taken into rational consideration, because it disagrees with your all-seeing, all-knowing decision on the matter! What makes you such a bloody expert on shipwreck? Ever done it before? Neither have I! That makes us equals in this situation, I think. Except that I need your agreement to go on sailing, and you don’t need mine to land. Or should I push you overboard and steer the thing myself?”
    â€œBy all means, if you think you can.”
    â€œSo here we are back at brains and brawn again. See?” Noor held up her hands and smiled, as if a slow pupil had finally been led to the light. Her smile was bright and mocking, and she could see it got under his skin in spite of his intentions.
    She tried not to feel that she was lighting a fuse on an unknown quantity of explosive.
    â€œDon’t be so quick to assign yourself all the brains. I’ve told you before that these islands are now uninhabited. Except for the Gulf Eden Resort. Even a woman, I think, should have doubts about her ability to find one particular island when she doesn’t know its position or her own.”
    Noor gritted her teeth. “No wonder men are turning the world into such a hell!” she said feebly. It was the only riposte she could think of.
    â€œAnd when women ruled the world, everyone lived in paradise?”
    â€œYou don’t find any city walls in the ancient matriarchal societies, do you?” Noor pointed out. “Sumer—”
    â€œI suppose you learned this nonsense in Feminist Perspectives on History for Beginners!” Bari interrupted with harsh irony. “You don’t find any city walls around Persepolis, either. The capital of the Persian Empire, which was ruled by the Achaemenid kings. It spread to become the greatest empire in antiquity. Are you suggesting it was not militaristic?”
    â€œTell me, is it nonsense because it’s feminist, or because the ideas expressed are not your own?” Noor asked sweetly.
    But the mocking tone didn’t disguise her real feelings from herself. She glared down into his face, and noted helplessly how the sinking sun melted in his dark eyes, glowed on the black curls that clustered over his head.
    The sea, too, was glittering with its rich golden light. The sapphire and amethyst of the deeper sea had given way now to turquoise and emerald, with flashes of white gold. It was as if some celestial painter had brushed diamonds on the crest of every ripple of the sea, as on each coal-black curl, underlining Bari’s vital connection with the rest of creation, and reminding her of that other time they had drifted on the waves as the sun set. Then his hand had never been far from her skin, stroking her in tender possession in the aftermath of their lovemaking—her breast, her arm, her flank.
    Her heart beat hard. So he was handsome, so what? So he had made the kind of love to her you read about in books! How could she be so weak as to find him attractive now that she knew what she knew?
    And he was perfectly right: she didn’t love him, and never had.
    Meanwhile, Bari damped down his anger, though it cost him a struggle. He knew it would be dangerous to allow anger—or any emotion—to overwhelm him in these circumstances.
    â€œIt is because such ideas are based on nothing,” he replied levelly. “We can scarcely hope to understand our neighbours today. How do we dream that we know anything of how societies operated thousands of years ago?”
    Under the water now a floor of white sand appeared, across which their shadow rose and fell with the waves. Noor watched a school of delicate, sinuous, silver-and-turquoise fish flee from the threatening shape as the raft approached.
    Suddenly Bari’s fishing line jerked tight, and their conversation, such as it was, dissolved. Bari picked up the bailer and thrust it at Noor with a brief “Hold that and try to get it under