Sheikh Protector
Sheikh Protector
Dana Marton
Sheikh Protector
Dana Marton
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Table of Contents
Cover (#ue4b11b1e-c3dc-5b6e-82fb-badcc8289ca3)
Title Page (#u52c5ac33-b45b-5022-8257-d317dfbf51db)
About the Author (#ueb27cca1-5b2a-5a30-a8ca-a9321bf4c575)
Dedication (#u01174e98-6f72-5bdd-a753-2398510258a8)
Chapter One (#u1f31f234-f6be-5a78-bc1f-922abf31125b)
Chapter Two (#ubfd705ce-57af-56bd-9aca-451f4c695e79)
Chapter Three (#u3c45f934-8fbb-5371-bde9-ee9363499a10)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Dana Marton is the author of over a dozen fast-paced, action-adventure romantic suspense novels and a winner of the Daphne du Maurier Award of Excellence. She loves writing books of international intrigue, filled with dangerous plots that try her tough-as-nails heroes and the special women they fall in love with. Her books have been published in seven languages in eleven countries around the world. When not writing or reading, she loves to browse antique shops and enjoys working in her sizable flower garden where she searches for “bad” bugs with the skills of a superspy and vanquishes them with the agility of a commando soldier. Every day in her garden is a thriller. To find more information on her books, please visit www.danamarton.com. She would love to hear from her readers and can be reached via e-mail at DanaMarton@DanaMarton.com.
With many thanks to Denise Zaza, Allison Lyons,
Maggie Scillia and Cindy Whitesel.
Chapter One
“Car’s rigged,” Karim said to the empty passenger seat next to him. His gaze darted around as he considered his options for escape, trying to determine the location of the bomb.
He wished he could see under his seat. He wished he hadn’t just tossed his briefcase, which held his cell phone, to the back, now out of reach. But most of all, he wished he hadn’t gotten into the damned car.
Unfortunately, he had no magic lamp and no genie to grant his three wishes.
He sat completely still, sweat beading on his forehead. The first step was to figure out the trigger. Would the charge blow if he turned the key in the ignition, or if he got out and lifted his weight off the driver’s seat? Maybe the trigger was in the door. He hadn’t closed it behind him yet. Or could be he had no control at all. Maybe whoever wanted him dead was watching from one of the hundred windows that overlooked the executive parking lot. Watching with the remote in hand.
“I was getting too close to the truth.” He glanced up at those windows, but couldn’t see much from his position and he didn’t dare shift his weight.
Anger flared. If he had to die, so be it—Insha’Allah. But by all that was holy, he wanted to bring his twin brother’s murderer to justice first.
“I’m sorry, Aziz.”
If he couldn’t find the killer, nobody would. His other brother, Tariq, thought that Aziz’s presence at the well at the time of the explosion had been a coincidence. Tariq was predisposed to see the world as a better place than it really was—he hadn’t seen as much of the dark side as Karim—and was currently too busy being crazy in love with his new wife.
Which one of them was crazier remained to be seen. Karim’s thoughts turned grim. He wasn’t exactly a pillar of sanity, either. He regularly talked to his dead twin brother. For the last month, from time to time, he felt Aziz’s presence so strongly, he not only talked to him, but also half expected an answer.
Aziz was gone. Killed. In some regard, losing his twin was like losing half his sight two decades ago, but much, much worse. With Aziz, he had lost half of his soul. And he knew he wasn’t going to find that, even if he found the killer or killers—he wasn’t going to bring Aziz back. Still, he could not let the bastards go free, not even if tracking them down cost him his own life.
A bomb.
“Should have seen it coming.” Except that his mind had been on the restitutions he was making to the families of the men who’d died at the well along with his brother.
If he hadn’t been so preoccupied when he’d walked out of MMPOIL’s headquarters in Tihrin—Beharrain’s quickly growing capital—he would have noted that the security guard wasn’t at his post. He hadn’t been aware of danger until he’d gotten into the car and spotted the millimeter-size chunk of blue plastic wire coating on the mat.
Another person might not have realized the significance. But people had been trying to kill him from the moment he’d been born, nearly succeeding on a number of occasions. He’d developed a keen sense for detecting death’s approaching footsteps.
He glanced out at the street, at the cars passing no more than a hundred feet from him. Nobody was turning to enter the company gate where the other security guard sat in his booth, his back to Karim.
He had to do something now, while he was alone in the parking lot. He didn’t want to take anyone out with him.
“Here we go.” His mind sharply focused, he reached down to feel around the seat, aware that he could accidentally move a wire and set off the charge if it was there.
He felt nothing out of place as far as he could reach, but he couldn’t stretch all the way. Next item. He leaned forward carefully, and spent precious seconds inspecting the bottom of the dashboard.
“Mr. Abdullah?” The voice was richly melodic and completely feminine, utterly out of place in the charged tension of the moment. “Excuse me, Mr. Abdullah—”
He drew his attention from what he was doing to watch, with dismay, the foreign beauty who strode toward him, full of purpose.
Since she’d spoken English, he responded in the same language. “Go back inside.”
“They told me I could find you here.” She flashed a nervous smile and proceeded without pause, although the blood did drain from her face as she came closer and got a better look at him. “Look, I’ve come a long way. You wouldn’t believe the plane ride. Forget the plane. You wouldn’t believe the food,” she babbled on. “I know you must be busy, but—”
“Get out of here.” He didn’t bother with the half turn to hide his scar, but looked her full in the face. That ought to scare her off.
“Listen, I—” Her voice wavered.
“You listen.” He wiped the sweat from his forehead. The air was well over a hundred degrees outside, and even warmer in the car. He had run up to his office for only a few minutes to grab some papers before he headed off to the camel races, so he hadn’t bothered to pull in to the climate-controlled underground parking garage. He let loose the frustration and anger that churned inside him. “Get the hell out of here. Now.”
The woman stopped, but only momentarily. Her wide brown eyes flashed with determination, and her deep auburn hair swirled around her face in the dry breeze that’d been blowing from the desert all day. Hair that flowed in soft waves well below her elbows. Her soft linen skirt fluttered around her ankles, the light color matching her modest top—clothes that accentuated her tall, slim figure. She looked as beautiful as an angel and as determined as Satan’s handmaiden.
Few men would have remained standing there when he had that glare on his face and that edge in his voice. But incomprehensibly, instead of running the other way, her delicate chin came up. She was maybe four feet from him and not budging.
“All I want—”
Oh, hell. “There’s a bomb—” Karim saw movement in one of the windows behind her, and acted on instinct.
He vaulted out of the car and flew across the space between them, crashing her to the hard pavement, doing his best to break her fall. He didn’t stop, but rolled and rolled.
She screamed the whole time and beat on his shoulders, resisted with all the power in her slim frame, her long hair entangling them. Then the car finally blew, shaking the parking lot.
Heat.
Smoke.
Fear.
She screamed even louder, but it barely registered now over the ringing in his ears.
Head down. He kept her covered as best he could, protected her from the burning debris that flew across the air like projectile missiles. As strong and determined as she had looked a moment ago, she seemed scared and fragile as she clung to him now.
“Don’t move,” he said near her ear, unable to hear his own voice, half-deaf from the explosion. “It’s okay.” He made an attempt to reassure her anyway. They would assess their injuries and face reality in a moment. For now, he was still trying to catch his breath.
The air swirled blazing hot around them. But even the acrid smell of smoke couldn’t completely drown out the scent of the woman in his arms: jasmine and vanilla.
In his peripheral vision, he registered security personnel running from the building.
“Ambulance. Now! Cover his position.”
“Secure the grounds! Secure the grounds!”
“Are you all right, sir? Sheik?”
Karim let the woman go and nodded, the ringing in his ears diminishing with each passing second. She looked wide-eyed with shock, staring at the car a few short yards from them. Her fair skin was now positively white, to the point of being translucent, save a few smudges of dirt.
“What happened?” She pressed a hand to her abdomen, breathing in quick gasps.
He’d probably knocked the air out of her.
After checking her over for visible injuries and not finding any, he followed her gaze, clenching his teeth at the sight of the twisted metal behind him. That had been close. Too close. Aziz’s death still filled his mind, dulling his attention to other things. He had to separate himself from the grief, had to block the memories of the burning well—a fire a thousand times larger than what burned in the parking lot now. He couldn’t get distracted and be taken out. He had to find who killed Aziz.
The company’s private ambulance was racing through the parking lot toward them. For him.
“I’m fine. You take her.” Whatever she wanted from him, he had no time to deal with her now.
He’d spoken in Arabic, but she must have understood his body language, because she began to protest.
“No, I’m fine. Really. I don’t need to see a doctor.” She was rattled and scared, more than a little bewildered, fighting to hide it. Her chin came up, trembling slightly and smudged with dirt from the pavement. “I can’t go.” She backed away a few steps. “I’m not going.”
The woman showed a deep-seated aversion to do as she was told. Even if it was for her own good.
He wasn’t in the mood just now to humor her. “Get in.”
Even his own security stilled at the growl in his voice.
“No,” she said, oblivious to danger once again.
His eyes narrowed. Did she just stomp her feet or had she been flexing her knees?
He had been careful with her when he’d taken her down. She didn’t look hurt. She was breathing normally now. Her clothes were barely rumpled and only slightly stained. Her hair looked the worst, tangled and with a fair amount of sand in it. The desert winds had been blowing for days, dusting the parking lot and everything else in the city.
His security force closed in a circle around them and awaited his orders. They would remove her forcefully; all he had to do was give the word. He should. He had a million things to do at the moment and no time for the distraction of a stubborn woman.
“Fine. No hospital,” he said instead. “Just get in. Whoever did this could be still out here.”
She paled even more, if that was possible, and stepped up into the back of the ambulance. He went after her, on second thought, not because he was scared for his life, but because if whoever was out there decided to shoot at him, the bastard might hit one of his men instead. Better to remove himself from sight.
“We can drop you off at your hotel. Please, sit.” He gestured to the gurney. He remained standing, holding on to one of the restraints as the vehicle moved out. He nodded toward the lone paramedic’s cell phone with a questioning look.
He handed it over immediately. “Of course, sir.”
Karim’s chief of security came on the line after the first ring.
“How did they get in? I want a report the second you find something,” he told the man in Arabic. “I want the whole building in lockdown until everyone inside is verified. And I want a digital copy of the security tapes e-mailed to me immediately.”
“Yes, sir.”
He handed the phone back and focused on the foreign woman who was watching him with morbid fascination. She looked even more impossibly beautiful than his first impression had been—high cheekbones, delicate features, eyes the golden brown color of a perfectly ripe, sweet fig. Eyes that held wariness and secrets, and a certain amount of plucky determination.
Then it clicked.
Media.
A less disciplined man would have groaned. She probably wanted an interview for some foreign paper. Sheer bad luck that she had caught him at a moment like this. There’d be no way now to keep the attack out of the papers. She’d be impossible to shake off. But he had other things to do, which meant he had to get her—and the distractions she brought—out of his life as fast as possible.
“At which hotel are you staying?”
She drew a deep breath and pulled her spine straight. “I need to talk to you first. I’m looking for Aziz.”
His fists clenched. He made a point to relax them. Not a reporter then. Aziz. Of course. He should have known.
Aziz had always been the lucky one between the two of them, the ladies’ man, or as some Western tabloids had once called him, the Playboy Sheik. Aziz had been in his element at the high-society events of Cannes and Monaco, and had kept a party house—with Hollywood celebrity neighbors—in Miami on Star Island. He’d lived the high life and pursued a wide range of interests, had dabbled in everything from yacht racing to desert archaeology.
“And who are you?” he asked.
“Julia Gardner.” She extended her hand. Some of her color had come back. Her skin was now the palest of pinks. A tangle of bead bracelets encircled her slim wrist.
He didn’t move.
She pulled back immediately. “I didn’t mean to offend you. Sorry. Force of habit. I have trouble remembering all these strange rules.” She snapped her full mouth shut. That lasted only a second. “Not that I think your country is strange. Just strange to me. New. New to me. I—”
“No offense taken.”
“You look just like your brother.” The words spurted from her before she pressed her full lips together once again.
His mood darkened. Maybe at one point Aziz and he had looked alike—they were identical twins. But nobody had dared compare them for a long time now, not since a childhood accident had taken the sight of Karim’s right eye, leaving a hideous scar on his face. “You knew Aziz well?”
She glanced away.
So, Julia Gardner, too, had some trouble looking at his face, despite her earlier bravado. He resisted the impulse to shift into his usual half turn.
“We met when he was in Baltimore a couple of months ago,” she was saying. “I haven’t been able to reach him and I came here and—Look, I just want to talk to him. The man at the front desk told me I should ask you.” She kept her hands clasped together tightly in her lap, but her shoulders were drawn straight and tall.
“Aziz is gone.” The muscles in his jaw pulled tight. The pictures that flashed into his mind brought raw pain every time. He’d been closer to his twin brother than to anyone else in the world. The hot rage over the unfairness of Aziz’s death hadn’t diminished any in the month since his funeral. Nor had Karim’s desire to seek revenge.
The corners of her eyes crinkled with worry, which she tried to mask with a nonchalant smile. “When is he coming back?”
He forced air into his constricting lungs. “We had a well explosion last month.”
He could see when she understood finally. Shock and pain flashed through her eyes. She stood, agitated, a hand pressed to her stomach, then opened her full, lush mouth, but no words came out. Color drained from her face all over again. She swayed.
He caught her and helped her fold to the gurney.
“She fainted, sir.” The paramedic who sat in the corner, trying his best to remain invisible and give them privacy, moved forward and managed to clip a monitor on her index finger without actually touching her. Her vital signs showed on the small screen behind him.
Fainted. Karim blinked and let her go, stepped away from her. He didn’t have time for this. He didn’t have time for her. Period.
He would absolutely not allow her to sully Aziz’s memory with scandal. He was fairly certain about why she was here. She wasn’t the first. Others had come looking for Aziz after his international trips. They wanted to keep the party going, have access to Aziz’s wealth and a shot at becoming one of oil-rich Beharrain’s latest princesses.
She was too late. He watched her. Miss Gardner might not know it yet, but she was leaving on the next plane out of the country.
It seemed perversely insane that he was actually looking forward to going a few rounds with her before her stubborn nature would accept that decision.
He was ready to give her his ultimatum, but she still didn’t stir.
His annoyance with her switched to concern. She did look vulnerable, her skin losing color again, all that hair tangled around her. She looked like an angel, injured after falling to earth. “What’s wrong with her?”
He preferred that stubborn chin of hers thrust forward, as she faced him down, even if she were here to cause trouble.
He wouldn’t let her.
“Could be from the stress or heat exhaustion. She’s probably not used to our climate.” The paramedic was administering an IV, again with the absolute minimum of touching. Then he drew blood into several vials. “If we went to the hospital, they could do tests as soon as we got there.”
Karim rested his gaze on her face. She hadn’t wanted to go to the hospital, had been pretty adamant about it. And he’d told her he wouldn’t take her there. “Call ahead and have Dr. Jinan meet us at my house. You can take the blood to the hospital and call over when the results are ready.”
He was about to take the troublesome angel home. He ignored the voice in his head that said he would probably live to regret his decision.
JULIA WOKE IN a strange bed in a strange and ridiculously opulent room, with a strange woman peering over her. An IV bag was attached to her arm. She panicked for a second, her gaze darting around. Her hand slid to her abdomen under the cover. No pain there. “What happened to me?”
“Hi, I’m Dr. Jinan.” The woman smiled. She wore a gold-threaded, deep blue abaya, no veil. Her startlingly sharp eyes, which were lined with kohl, fixed on Julia. “You were near an explosion and fainted afterward.”
Disjointed memories rushed her, and Julia pulled the silk cover higher on her body. The dark red fabric was as resplendent as the rest of her accommodations. “Where am I?”
“You are a guest of Sheik Karim Abdullah in his Tihrin palace. You’re fine. You have a good, strong pulse. Once this IV runs out, we can remove the needle. Feeling better?”
“Thank you. Yes.” She sat up to prove it. She didn’t like the idea of some strange doctor examining her while she’d been unconscious. She didn’t want anyone to know her secret.
“Did you have enough to eat and drink today?” the doctor asked.
Julia noticed the platter of food on a low, round table behind the woman—fresh fruits and other bite-size nourishment that looked exotically unidentifiable, but not the least bit appetizing at the moment. These days she was alternating between ravenous and nauseous, and was currently feeling the latter.
“Yes, thank you.” She drew a deep breath to dispel the queasiness around her middle.
“Please do remember plenty of fluids. Our summers are mercilessly hot. I hope this little incident won’t ruin your enjoyment of our beautiful country.” The doctor smiled, all mothering warmth. “Looks like the IV is done. Let me take care of that.” She removed the needle without causing any pain, stuck a cotton ball over the puncture wound. “Bend your elbow and hold this here for a few minutes.”
She stood and began placing everything into her old-fashioned, black leather doctor’s bag. “I’ll be back to check on you tomorrow. Try to get as much rest as possible until then.”
“Thank you, but that won’t be necessary.” With Aziz gone, she had no reason to stay in the country. “I will be leaving here.”
Dr. Jinan gave her a smile one would give a petulant child. She was poised and self-assured, obviously a woman secure in her own power, challenging Julia’s preconception of the women of Beharrain. Every rule had a few exceptions, she supposed.
Not that she had time to ponder the doctor. Karim Abdullah walked in immediately, as if he’d been waiting outside. He paused at the door and exchanged a few words with Dr. Jinan.
Julia searched their faces, unable to figure out anything. They spoke in Arabic. Did they know? They couldn’t. Nobody could tell just by looking at her that she was pregnant, not even a doctor, she was pretty sure of that.
She would have told Aziz her secret. Probably. That was why she had come here. He was the father and he deserved to know, even though he had cut off communications with her. Or so she had thought. Now she knew the truth about why he hadn’t returned her calls. The shock was still as fresh as it had been when she’d first heard the news.
Pain filled her chest and squeezed her lungs. Aziz was gone. It seemed impossible. She had never known anyone as filled with life and wide-open to the world, as charming.
He’d charmed a great many people; she had found that out when she ran a search on him on the Internet after he’d returned to his home, and she’d seriously considered taking him up on his invitation to visit him. The celebrity reports were full of his pictures, labeling him the Playboy Sheik. That had been a disappointment, not that he had promised her anything. The information had been enough to make her realize the brief affair for what it was: a few days of fun with an exotic stranger. She’d succeeded in putting Aziz out of her mind until those two pink lines appeared on a white plastic stick.
She took a few days to digest the news. Then called him without success. If she’d checked the Internet again, she would have found out about his death…wouldn’t have come here…to his daunting brother.
A few of those news reports she’d read mentioned Aziz’s twin. They had called him the Dark Sheik, without explanation, making her wonder. And now she was in the Dark Sheik’s house. She looked around. Scratch that. The Dark Sheik’s palace. God, it sounded like a gothic novel.
She had figured she would come here, would see how Aziz felt about the possibility of a baby. She wasn’t going to tell him until she got a better idea of what kind of man he really was. Their time in Baltimore had been way too short. They had had some whirlwind dates and one night of passion, the day before he left. She had thought herself to be half in love with him and had been sure he felt the same. She was pretty certain now that he hadn’t, but still, he was the father, and she had wanted to give it another go, if for no other reason than so she could tell her child later in life that she had tried. Her own parents had been all messed up. If she could help it, she wanted something better for her baby.
She was going to come here and see how Aziz was in his own environment. When and if she felt comfortable with it, she would have told him her news. Not a moment before that. Whatever happened, she was going to protect her baby. She was never going to let her or him go.
“Doctor Jinan tells me you are well.” Karim came over once the woman left. He was not handsome, not with that scar. But he had a strong, masculine presence that drew her full attention to him. He stopped at a respectable distance from the bed, looking larger and harder than Aziz, infinitely more dangerous. Where Aziz’s face had reflected humor, mischief and a sexy sort of cockiness about life, Karim’s was bathed in darkness. And she didn’t think all of that came from his scar.
He was wearing a fresh, crisp suit, his hair neatly combed. She felt dirty and sweaty and rumpled in comparison, but wouldn’t let that stop her.
“Thank you for your hospitality, Mr. Abdullah.” Grateful that nobody had undressed her, she pushed off the cover and swung her legs over the side of the bed, glancing around for her shoes. There. She slipped into them. “I’m sorry for all the inconvenience I caused.”
With Aziz gone, she had no intention of staying here a day longer, no intention of letting Aziz’s family know about the baby. Maybe it wasn’t the right thing to do, but she was leery of the culture and felt none too trusting toward Aziz’s twin brother. He looked as if he could—and would—take the law into his own hands if he felt the need. And he was a sheik, son of a king, as Aziz had been. He probably had a fair amount of power.
When her child was eighteen, she would reveal the truth and leave the decision up to her or him.
“Would it be possible to call a taxi?” She flashed Karim her most polite smile, refusing to be intimidated by him.
Given her social and economic background, she’d spent half her life being intimidated by the wealthy and powerful, by people in charge. But she’d had to get over that in a hurry when she had joined a nonprofit organization and had to interact daily with the elite. And over time, she’d learned that they were just like everybody else, with the same joys and fears and virtues and weaknesses.
Not that she could see Karim having a whole lot of fears or weaknesses. He had faced that car bomb down, cool as anything, and the memory of the incident was still making her heart beat faster.
“May I ask what your plans are?” He had his hands in his pockets as he rested his dark gaze on her. He might as well have been carved of solid rock, he looked that unmovable. But he was quick—she remembered him diving for her from his car. He loomed larger than life.
Exactly the kind of man she needed to avoid at all cost. She swallowed to wet her mouth.
“I’m going back to the hotel and probably flying out tonight if I can change my flight. I’m truly sorry about your brother.” She was, and she needed time to deal with the sudden news. But she needed to get away from Karim Abdullah’s searching gaze first.
“Perhaps you could tell me why you were looking for him?” His voice was even and low, with the sort of tone that made it clear he wasn’t a man to mess with.
She’d gotten that message already.
“We were friends. I thought I’d stop by to see him. You know, long time no see. A chance to catch up. That sort of thing.” She flashed him another winning smile.
He watched her as if he could see right through her, and she didn’t appreciate how nervous he made her. It had nothing to do with the four-inch scar that made him look like a desert warrior despite his elegant suit. The overwhelming sense of power that emanated from him was what she was leery of.
“Thank you for your hospitality.” She got to her feet and stepped around him, half expecting him to stop her.
He didn’t. “Were you going to tell Aziz that you are carrying his child?”
She was halfway across the room, but the words stopped her more effectively than anything else could have. She was too scared to turn around and look at him, afraid of what he might read in her face.
“I’m not—”
“The paramedic took your blood in the ambulance. The hospital called with the results,” he said in an icy tone. “You’re not the first woman to come looking for him after one of his foreign escapades. I assume you’re here for money?”
She winced, because that came uncomfortably close to the truth. “It’s not Aziz’s child,” she lied. She would manage on her own somehow. She didn’t want this dark sheik to have any kind of hold on her.
“My thoughts precisely, but I’d just as soon be sure. I want the case closed once and for all. I hope you won’t mind a DNA test when the child is born.”
She’d be long back in the U.S. by then, protected by U.S. law. They couldn’t take her baby away at that point, even if they could find her, which she would make sure they couldn’t.
“No, of course not.” She schooled her face and chanced a look at him.
His expression remained unreadable, only his eyes darkened further, if that was possible. “Good. I hope you’ll like your rooms. I’ll introduce you to the staff this afternoon. You can pick your personal maid then.”
The air got stuck in her lungs as she stared at him, startled. Was he completely nuts? “I’m not staying.” She wanted to be very clear on that.
He paused for a moment. “That’s a good strategy. Reverse psychology.” He inclined his head with a small smile. “I give you this, you seem smarter than the others. But whether you prefer to stay or go has no bearing on anything. Your child might be the grandson of a king, and as such, one of the heirs to the Beharrainian throne.” He watched her closely.
She felt the blood drain from her face. She’d known that Aziz was one of the king’s cousins. But she knew they hadn’t had a close relationship. And the king had a son. She hadn’t taken succession into account. It wasn’t something someone in her life and position thought much about.
“I’m sure you already considered that,” he went on. “I hope you won’t be disappointed to hear that a child, even if proven to be Aziz’s son, would not be at the front of the line of succession. But in the line nevertheless. You must understand that I cannot allow you to leave the country until the bloodline is determined. Our very law would forbid it, except with the permission of the father. Aziz is gone. As his brother, I’m responsible for you and your baby.”
If ever a sentence had the power to stop her heart, this was it. She was getting sucked in, losing control, the very thing she’d been most afraid of. She shouldn’t have come here.
“This is insane. I have nothing to do with you. You can’t keep me here. I’m an American citizen.” She backed toward the door, relaxing marginally when he stayed where he was.
“You will find that in Beharrain, Beharrainian laws are given a priority over ideals of foreign countries thousands of miles away.”
Was there a hint of threat in his steely voice?
She kept moving, but he still didn’t follow. Not even when she reached the hallway and ran to the left, not knowing which way the exit was, but wanting to get away from him and the nightmare this trip was turning into.
Before long she’d reached a palatial marble foyer. The front door was open, but there were armed guards at the wrought-iron gate that led to the street.
“Excuse me,” she said when they wouldn’t move out of her way. Maybe they didn’t speak English.
Step aside. Please, step aside. She wanted to get out before Karim decided to come after her. She didn’t think he would let her go this easily. She glanced behind her, then back at the men who looked as unmovable as the seven-foot-tall brick walls that surrounded the property.
“I need to leave,” she said slower and louder, knowing that was unlikely to make a difference. “Please.” She pointed toward the gate. They had to know what she wanted.
“You are to leave the palace only in the company of Sheik Abdullah,” one of them said after a moment, without looking at her.
So the language barrier wasn’t an issue.
Her breath caught. Desperation rose inside her—desperation, fear and anger. She shouldn’t have come. She had thought she would be able to keep her child safe while giving her or him the kind of large family she never had. But she understood now that wasn’t possible. To keep her baby safe and with her meant that she had to escape far, far away from here. She would never give up control of her baby.
There had to be a way. She refused to accept that she, along with her unborn child, was a prisoner in a foreign land, held at the will of the Dark Sheik.
Chapter Two
She was fighting a losing battle. Sheik Karim Abullah’s palace was better guarded than the Pentagon. But Julia wasn’t the type to give up.
Since she had resigned herself to the fact that she wouldn’t be able to escape on the ground level, she went up, sneaking through the night. She wasn’t sure what she was hoping for, perhaps a large tree that came near one of the balconies. Trying something—anything—had to be better than sitting in her gilded prison of a room and crying her eyes out like she had done for the first half of the night.
She hated how weepy her overactive mommy hormones made her. This was not the time to give in to weakness. But she was emotionally exhausted and ravenously hungry. Hungry to the point that she was afraid her growling stomach would be heard.
She stole down the second-floor hallway, pausing in front of the first door. She pushed it open a fraction of an inch at a time and glanced around the lavishly appointed living room she discovered. Some sort of a suite. Other doors opened from here. The furniture was exquisitely made—all ornately carved wood—and was breathtaking even without her being able to make out the true colors of the luxurious fabrics in the moonlight.
Her gaze settled on a phone on a small, octagonal table. Her U.S. cell phone didn’t work here and there wasn’t a phone in her room. She wished she knew the number of the U.S. embassy by heart, and dialed zero, hoping to get directory assistance. Nothing happened.
She tried zero-zero, her stomach continuing to growl. No ringing on the other end. Zero-one. Just one. One-one. A disembodied voice said something in Arabic then the line went dead again. She gritted her teeth with frustration and took a banana from the fruit bowl next to the phone. An apple’s crunching might give her away. She peeled it then bit in, and nearly moaned at the soft sweetness that diffused on her tongue. Heaven.
Her food tray had been removed that afternoon on her request when the smell of food had made her nauseous. She had refused dinner on principle—not the smartest thing, in hindsight.
She grabbed another banana and was stuffing it down the front of her shirt when a small noise came from behind one of the doors opposite her. She froze, nearly ran, but stopped herself. She needed to find a balcony, a way out.
She picked a door that was half-open, figuring she would make the least noise that way, and found herself in a large bedroom. The space was dominated by a sprawling bed, draped in black sheets, that didn’t look slept in. A handful of papers lay tossed on the nightstand, next to a book.
Then her gaze was drawn to the source of the noise she’d heard before. A bathroom off the bedroom, lights on, the water running. She was facing a full-size, gilded mirror on the bathroom wall that was angled away from her. The picture it presented made her mouth go dry and her feet freeze to the tile floor. She swallowed the chunk of fruit in her mouth with some trouble.
Karim stood in an open shower with black mosaic tile and one of those drenching, foot-wide showerheads, water sluicing down his tanned skin. He stood with his back to her, so she had an unobstructed view of the scars that ran down his back, breaking up the otherwise perfect lines of the most incredible male body she had ever seen. He had his hands up, bracing himself on the wall, his head hanging as if deep in thought, tension evident in his corded muscles.
Shadows stretched across his back. She couldn’t tell from this distance whether they were scars or some sort of tribal markings.
Another person might have looked vulnerable naked, but not the Dark Sheik. Strength radiated off him, and danger.
He reached to the side and turned off the water with one sinuous movement.
Okay, so Mr. I’m-Lord-of-All-I-Survey was sexy. Very.
She couldn’t care less. She was leaving. Now.
He wrapped a black towel around his waist then turned, his dark gaze finding hers unerringly in the mirror. He didn’t show surprise. Somehow he’d known she’d be there, staring.
How humiliating.
“Is there anything you wanted from me, Julia?” His voice was low and measured, full of innuendo and contempt.
She wanted to turn and run, but his gaze wouldn’t release her. When he strode closer, she backed away without looking where she was going, hoping she was backing out the door. Instead, in a few steps, her back bumped against the wall.
He was a short foot from her, looming dangerous in the semidarkness of the room, his wide shoulders outlined in the light that came from the bathroom. Drops of water glistened on his dark skin. He smelled like soap and sandalwood. He was the most erotic and intimidating sight she’d ever seen.
“Looking for a substitute sheik for your plan?” He put his right hand to the wall next to her head. His hand being higher than his shoulder, droplets of water ran backward, along his carved granite biceps.
Her heart jumped to her throat. He thought she’d come here to seduce him. She moved the other way, but that arm came down, too, and boxed her in. She didn’t feel panicked as much as mesmerized. Blinked her eyes. Snap out of it. How dare he?
“Don’t touch me.” She shoved with her free hand, indignation giving her strength. She tried not to notice the hard muscles of his warm—and still wet—chest under her fingers. Her limbs were shaky. From exhaustion, no doubt. She was likely still jet-lagged, too.
He didn’t budge a millimeter, but a dark eyebrow slid up his forehead. “Changed your mind? Scare you, do I?”
Maybe. Okay, more so with every passing moment. He was large and powerful and utterly overwhelming after a hellish day. She was well aware that he could kill her, and with his title and station in the country, there probably wouldn’t even be a questioning.
Tears threatened to fill her eyes. She gritted her teeth and held them back. This was not the time for a hormonal moment. “Go to hell.” She lifted her head and stuck her chin out. “You want to intimidate me? Congratulations, you succeeded. That’s what turns people like you on, isn’t it? Scared women.”
A muscle jumped in his face, just beneath the four-inch scar on the right side that started above the eye socket and ran straight down. And then she realized the eye didn’t move along with the other one. He was blind on that side. Not that his left eye wasn’t lethal enough on its own.
He took his time to look her over from her bare feet to the top of her head, returning to linger on her breasts, which had grown already during the pregnancy and were stupidly sensitive to smoldering looks from half-naked men. More misery to blame on hormones.
“The same things turn me on as any other healthy man, I suppose,” he said, his voice a notch lower than before.
The space between them was insanely small. Without warning, the adrenaline that had been pumping through her already was metamorphosing into primal heat, making her fingertips tingle.
He had masculine lips, what some old-fashioned novels might have defined as cruel. Heathcliff lips. Incredibly sexy. She got a little woozy from looking at them this close.
The sharp sense of desire was insane, but perhaps understandable, considering that her body was hormonally unbalanced and out of her control.
His voice was a soft whisper when he spoke. “Why are you here, Julia? Why are you in my bedroom in the middle of the night?” He lowered his head as if wanting to carefully listen to her response.
If he came any closer, he was going to feel the banana she’d hid down the front of her shirt.
Her pulse sped, and not just from the danger of being discovered as a fruit thief. “Looking for a glass of water,” she croaked out with effort. Her mouth did feel extraordinarily dry. She looked into his good eye.
His Heathcliff mouth tightened, but he didn’t back away an inch. “Excuses?” He examined her. “Interesting. You’re bold enough to come to me like this, yet you feel the need to come up with a pretext for seeking my bed.”
Outrage quickly overcame awakening desire. Of all the conceited—“You know what I’m doing?” she asked sharply, and ducked to the right from the circle of his arms. “I was trying to get out of this stupid place. You have no right to keep me here. This is kidnapping.” She darted toward the door.
If she thought the lack of sight in the right eye was a weakness, she was quickly disabused of the notion. He caught her easily.
“You will stay for as long as I see necessary,” he said. “If I catch you trying to run—I’ve given you some freedom, Julia. Freedom that can be taken away.”
What freedom? Her room? Meaning he could be keeping her closer to him? How close? His bed sprawled imposingly in her peripheral vision. She didn’t want to know. Or maybe he’d meant he had some dungeons in the basement. That would be more likely. Nothing would have surprised her at this point.
Fear spiked her pulse. “I was wrong,” she told him with all the contempt she felt. “You are nothing like your brother.”
“And what do you know about Aziz?” His gaze slid to her abdomen. “My brother wasn’t an irresponsible man.”
A moment passed before she understood what he meant.
“He wasn’t.” And that was all she was prepared to say on the subject of birth control, which obviously was not as reliable as she’d thought.
His gaze journeyed back up, slowly, to her face.
The warning system in her brain was screaming that she should run for her life. “This baby has nothing to do with you and your family.” She was desperate to escape his palace.
He didn’t respond.
“You don’t believe me.”
More silence, just his dark gaze searching her face.
“And if I said the child was Aziz’s? Would you believe that?” she said, testing him.
“No.”
“So you’re determined to think me a liar.” Which, God help her, she was quickly becoming. But yes, she would do even that. She would lie, cheat and very possibly kill for her unborn child.
The question was, how far was Karim Abdullah willing to go for his niece or nephew?
“I’m just questioning your motives,” he said.
“Is that what you call it?” She braved a sneer. “In my country this would be called kidnapping.”
His masculine lips pressed into a tight line.
Her heart drummed against her rib cage. She tugged her arm. “You have to let me go.”
And this time, he released her at last. “Get some sleep. I made an appointment for you for tomorrow morning. You’ll get the full workup. You had a fall today. I arranged for an ultrasound.”
Not one for minding his own business, was he?
Her initial instinct was to protest, but she hadn’t had an ultrasound yet. Her first was scheduled for the week after her planned return to the States. She desperately wanted to see her baby. And she was no longer sure when exactly she would be back in Baltimore. Or if she could afford even the most basic medical care.
She did have that fall. And despite feeling fine, she did worry. And it wasn’t as if he was going to give her a choice about going. “Fine. But don’t think you’re coming with me. Absolutely not.”
“And I looked into testing,” he said. “There’s something called amniocentesis that can be done during pregnancy. They can obtain DNA and determine paternity.”
She didn’t know how she felt about that. The test would prove that the father was Aziz. That would bind her even tighter to Karim, an outcome she wanted to avoid at all cost. Could she refuse? What would that gain her? Time.
She turned from him and marched out with the half-eaten banana in her hand, calling a “Go to hell” over her shoulder on principle.
As she sped her steps, the banana under her top dislodged and fell to the floor. She picked it up, glad he didn’t see her. But a glance back at his bedroom door revealed that, in fact, he had.
He’d come after her and was leaning against the door frame, watching her with a superior smirk on his face. “You may take the whole fruit bowl if you’d like.”
THE RADIOLOGIST asked him no questions, one of the privileges of being sheik. Karim stared at the staticky-looking black-and-white screen, at the blurry outline of what seemed like a head and part of the abdomen. He kept his gaze studiously on the screen, ignoring the creamy expanse of skin in his peripheral vision.
He had come in with her because despite the blood test, he still half believed there might not even be a baby. Tests could be wrong. Tests could be altered for the right amount of money. She could have had it all set up at the hospital.
And if she were pregnant, he had half hoped that the ultrasound would reveal that she was lying about the child being Aziz’s. The time of conception could have been wrong. Or the kid could have had stark red hair and looked obviously Irish, or whatever. What did he know? He’d never seen an ultrasound before.
But the date of conception was right on the money, during the time that Aziz had been in Baltimore. And, although the gray blob on the screen bore no resemblance to Aziz, Karim could hardly hold that against it. It barely looked human.
But here was the funny part, the thing he hadn’t seen coming: the longer he looked at the kid, the more he wanted to believe the woman who lay on the hospital bed with her eyes glued to the screen and tears misting her fine eyes.
“Nice, strong heartbeat. See that?” the radiologist asked him.
And he could. The heart pulsed rapidly in the middle of the screen. The image was mesmerizing. He didn’t like the softening it brought out in him.
Most likely, the woman was a money-hungry scammer.
The report he had received on her last night certainly pointed in that direction. Her family had been anything but upstanding and responsible. Her father left early on. Her mother dumped her and her siblings into the foster-care system. Julia floundered around for a while after that, then went to college on some sort of government program. Ended up with a nonprofit organization where she seemed tolerably successful.
He considered her alluring beauty, the crown of hair that to his disappointment she wore up today, that light in her eyes as she stared at the screen.
Hell, who wouldn’t have fallen for that? Maybe she’d done so well because she could flirt successful businessmen into large donations. But her track record hadn’t been enough. Her organization was downsizing and she was let go a month ago.
Pregnant and without any income. That had to be the definition of desperate for a woman.
Last night when he’d gotten the report, he’d been certain she was lying about the baby belonging to Aziz and was impatient for that DNA test. He wanted her to be gone.
Then she had come to his room, and in a moment of insanity, he just plain wanted her. He had wanted her to offer herself to him, and not only to prove him right about her character.
But now, looking at the child, the rapidly beating heart on the screen, suddenly he wanted there to be a baby from Aziz, someone left behind by his brother. He wanted the feisty, auburn-haired beauty to be true and not a conscienceless liar. He wanted her and her baby to belong to him.
Because of Aziz. He would take care of them for Aziz. There was so infuriatingly little he could do for his dead brother otherwise. Finding his killer was about it, which he would do even if he had to put his own life at risk in the process.
“Looks like you are just entering the second trimester. Everything looks well,” the radiologist said. She was a petite, modest woman who wore a veil that covered most of her head and a large part of her hospital uniform. “The baby seems healthy.”
“I called Dr. Jinan last night. She said something about the possibility of an amniocentesis,” he said.
“That would be done sometime between week sixteen and week twenty of the pregnancy. Is there a concern about genetic problems?” The technician looked up.
“An issue with paternity,” Karim growled, trying not to care that Julia flushed red with embarrassment.
“We don’t normally do it for that purpose.” The woman bowed her head.
“But it could provide confirmation?”
She nodded. “There are risks.”
“What risks?” Julia asked.
“In a small percentage of the cases, the procedure can cause miscarriage. But if you absolutely have to—”
“No,” he said at the same time as Julia, and hated the surprised look she gave him. Did it really stun her that much that he wouldn’t put the baby’s life at risk? “The procedure is not that necessary.”
She would just have to stay around until the baby was born and they could do a no-risk DNA test. He would have to find a way to get her to agree. Despite his threats, he couldn’t really hold her that long against her will, not in the current political climate. The country was trying hard to build strong diplomatic relations with the West, to prove that the place was safe for tourists and the culture prosperous and civilized. A rogue sheik kidnapping an American woman would definitely create damaging publicity.
She had come for money, he was pretty sure about that. All he needed was to figure out the price of her cooperation. They would discuss it over dinner tonight. He wasn’t buying her burning need to leave, anyhow. Could be she was just being coy.
The prospect of her prolonged stay and the continued annoyance it was sure to bring should have bothered him but, oddly, it didn’t. “So the child is healthy?”
“All looks as it should.”
Dr. Jinan walked in and greeted them warmly, looked at the screen over the technician’s head. “Everything is in order?”
“Perfect.”
“Since you did have a fall, I’d recommend another day of rest. No work, no exercise, no sexual relations,” Dr. Jinan was saying to Julia. “But if you continue to feel fine, you can resume all normal activity the day after tomorrow. If you have any problems, please don’t hesitate to call.” She gave Julia an encouraging smile.
Karim felt his shoulders relax, then tense again when his cell phone beeped. His chief of security. He turned off the ringer. He’d call the man back later. He didn’t want to miss anything.
Never in a million years would he have expected to find himself in a place like this. He was resigned not to marry and have children of his own. He’d tried back in his early twenties. But he’d seen the look in the girls’ eyes at the introductory meetings. The fathers were all willing. But he scared the women. And he didn’t want to take a wife who would be repulsed by the sight of him, would cringe every time she looked at him for the rest of their lives.
Julia Gardner was scared of him, which didn’t keep her from standing up to him, but she never once cringed.
“Can you tell if it’s a boy or a girl?” The question was barely audible, her voice filled with wonder. Her face was radiant. A deep joy shone through her skin, joy that could not be faked.
He could not remember when he’d felt such unrestrained, undiminished happiness, if ever. She was about glowing with it, her beauty intensified until he could barely look away from her. Maybe a veil for her, too, wouldn’t be a bad idea while she was in this country, although he didn’t plan on letting her wander around without him being close behind.
“Not yet.” The radiologist smiled. “Maybe in another month or so.”
“Oh.”
The child moved, looked like it was waving. Cute little bugger. Karim couldn’t help a smile, but schooled his features back into place before Julia could notice.
If she realized that he was softening, who knew what outrageous demands she could make. If the child was Aziz’s, Karim would take care of it, no question. If it wasn’t… He looked at the woman who was still staring at the screen, teary-eyed. Something flipped over in his chest at the sight.
She was in a desperate situation. Had to be, to go into a far-flung scheme like this and try to pass her child off on a man who wasn’t the father. He glanced at the screen again. If the DNA test came back proving Aziz had nothing to do with this, he could still see that she was able to raise the baby. Hell, he could afford it.
“Would you like some pictures?” the radiologist asked.
“I’m not sure.” She glanced down. “I can’t really pay for this.”
“We’ll take the pictures,” Karim said.
“We can also make a copy of the video—”
“Send it to my palace.”
She wouldn’t look at him as the radiologist wiped off her flat belly, which he’d been trying to avoid taking notice of. Sure didn’t look like new life was growing there. Maybe she wasn’t eating enough. Something he would have to pay extra attention to.
She didn’t talk to him until they were out of the examination room and going down the stairs. “Thank you. I don’t have to thank you, because you kidnapped me and bullied me into this whole visit, but it was a moment, and…otherwise I would have been alone. Which probably would have been a step up from going with a kidnapper. But if I consider that you’ll be my baby’s uncle—”
“You’re welcome.” Did she always babble on when she was emotional?
She gave him a dirty look. “One more thing.”
He drew up an eyebrow. Here we go. She was about to make her first demand.
“Please don’t humiliate me in front of people like that again.” Her words were issued softly.
Damned if he knew why he was feeling like a heartless bastard all of a sudden. His jaw muscles pulled tight. “Sorry.” He didn’t know which one of them was more surprised when the word was out.
“Wow, that sounded like it hurt. Was it your first time?” She grinned.
He glared back.
“You could just let me go,” she said when they were in the car, the air conditioner going.
“Too cold?” he asked as he pulled into traffic.
“Are you kidding? I have a furnace inside. I could be standing on the snowfields of Siberia and be hot. Pregnant bodies produce lots of energy.”
He hadn’t considered that. “I can’t let you go.” He turned down the boulevard.
“You’re a sheik. You can do anything you want.”
She had an answer for everything, didn’t she? Fine.
“I don’t want to let you go,” he said.
“Don’t you ever watch international TV? Your views on life and responsibility are pretty archaic. You don’t have to take care of me. I don’t belong to you.” As she said the last sentence, she enunciated each world deliberately.
“I don’t have time for TV.” He didn’t bother addressing her wild notion of her not belonging to him. “I want you to write me a list of what you need. Both for you and the baby. And you need to eat more,” he said just as a dark sedan cut off the car following them to get directly behind him. “I can bring a nutritionist on staff while you’re with us.”
He kept his attention on the sedan, his warning senses perking up. The car was moving with too much purpose, the driver unnecessarily aggressive.
“I don’t need a nutritionist. I eat healthy and I eat as much as I need. I won’t be staying that long anyway.”
She clearly resented his interference. And right now wasn’t the time to discuss just how far he was willing to go to make sure her pregnancy went as smoothly as possible.
He looked at the rearview mirror again. “Listen, we might—” Too late, he saw the gun. He swerved. “Watch out!” He pushed her down just as the rear window exploded.
He heard the shards hit leather, but his seat and headrest protected him. A glance confirmed the same for Julia. He stepped on the gas and the car lurched around the minivan in front of them. But his attackers—two men, their faces obstructed by tribal-style headdresses—followed.
He swore under his breath. Should have brought his security along. But he didn’t want anyone in his family or at the company to know about Julia Gardner and her claims yet. Didn’t want to deal with the questions about him going to a women’s clinic. If her story were untrue, he didn’t want to unnecessarily tarnish Aziz’s memory and bring his honor into question.
The car in front of him was slower than slow. For a moment, he swerved into upcoming traffic to get ahead, expecting Julia to scream at him. She didn’t, but horns beeped all around them. He chanced a glance at her when he’d returned to the right side. She sat pale-faced, hanging on to her seat with a white-knuckled grip.
He snapped his attention back to the road in front of him. “We can handle them.”
“We can’t handle them. Oh, my God. Call the police!” She squeaked the last word.
“I’m a little busy.” He growled under his breath, not at her, but at the men. By the time the police found them, this could be long over. Either he shook their attackers, and shook them fast, or one of their bullets would find its aim and end the chase.
He swore under his breath again. More stress was the last thing Julia needed in her condition. Not that he knew anything about her condition. But he would learn. For Aziz’s child. If—Damn, but the uncertainty drove him crazy. He wasn’t a patient man on his best day.
When they got out of here, he was going to get her to agree to stay in the country, then lock her up safely in his palace and not let her go until the baby was born. Maybe he would move to Aziz’s place for the next six months. Living under the same roof with Julia might be more than he could handle. Especially if she kept sneaking into his bedroom. He was concerned about that as much as he wished for it.
“Hang on.”
He was a good driver and put all his skills to use. For a moment or two, it seemed he might be able to put enough distance between his car and the assassins behind them.
Then a bicyclist, of all things, pulled in front of him, oblivious to danger. And he swerved, running the car up the cement rails of the shoulder, the right two tires leaving the ground. If they were to flip… He grabbed the steering wheel and maneuvered as best he could. He had to get the car back on the road. After an endless moment, he did manage.
“Are you all right?” He didn’t dare take his eye off the road to look at Julia.
“I’m not all right. People are trying to kill me!” She sounded shaken. “What is it with everyone? Is everybody completely nuts around here? What are they thinking? Just go!”
He did, and for a moment was sure that they would make it. But the second bullet was more accurate than the first. The force of it slamming into his flesh smacked him against the steering wheel.
They were out in the open. The bullets kept coming. He had a woman and an unborn child to protect. Pain spread through him. He’d been hit. He couldn’t tell how badly, and it was information he needed. All their lives depended on it.
Chapter Three
All his life he wanted to be a holy man. He had even changed his name to Mustafa, which meant chosen. And he indeed knew that Allah had chosen him when the only god trusted this most important task to him.
Old evil had returned into this world—old evil that offended the faith of his people and threatened their souls. He had sworn to destroy it and all who had come in contact with it, all who had been contaminated.
And the One God had been gracious and had given him followers, a tight sect of righteousness and light. They were all happy to die for the cause.
But so far, their work had been blessed and it had been Aziz Abdullah who had died. Mustafa smiled as he looked out over his garden. That first task had been done right. But they had much longer to go it seemed.
The evil objects had not been recovered. The world and his faith had not yet been saved. The idols had been passed on and contaminated yet another man: Karim Abdullah. But Karim, perhaps in his ignorance or already too tight in the grasp of the evil, did not realize that he needed to be purified.
It couldn’t be helped. Mustafa stroked his beard and closed his eyes against the strengthening sun. His free hand held his cell phone. The call would come soon. Karim, the guardian of evil, would be dead.
Then, without a powerful guardian, the idols would be found. Yes. He smiled into the sun. He and his faithful followers would most certainly triumph.
“HOLD ON TO THE steering wheel,” Karim said, pressing a hand to his wound, then pulling it away and looking at it, probably checking how badly he was bleeding.
Pretty badly. Then again, when it came to gunshot wounds, she wasn’t sure there was such a thing as “good.”
“The steering wheel,” he said more urgently.
Julia stared at him. Was he crazy? Apparently, because he was letting go already, just expecting her to grab on as he pulled a gun—a gun—from under his suit jacket with his still-functioning right hand.
She had no idea that he’d been armed. She hadn’t run around with armed men all that much before, smart girl that she’d been. Past tense, definitely. Everything that had been normal in her life had changed the second she’d set foot in Beharrain, and she was losing hope of being able to reclaim her old, sane life anytime soon.
First step was to stay alive.
She grabbed for the steering wheel as Karim twisted in his seat and returned fire.
Wow. Okay, guns were deafeningly loud when going off next to one’s ear. You learned new things every day, she thought. Except all this, including how to evade armed pursuit, was stuff she didn’t want to learn.
Insane. She really, really shouldn’t have come here. This was another world. She didn’t belong. She might not even survive it. Anger welled inside her, at her own stupidity for having come, and at the man next to her who could have let her go the night before, but hadn’t. She could be back in Baltimore by now. At that moment, she hated Karim with the same fierceness that she hated the situation she was in.
“You know, if you didn’t go around kidnapping people and bullying them into doing whatever you want, maybe everyone wouldn’t be trying to kill you!” She might have been yelling a little. She was a smidgen on the stressed side.
He squeezed off another shot. “Everyone isn’t trying to kill me. These are probably the same people who put the bomb in the car yesterday.”
“That’s comforting. I take it all back then,” she snapped. “Could you please turn back to the road?”
She glanced nervously at the stick shift. As long as he kept the speed steady, they were fine. But if they had to slow for anything, she had no idea what to do with it.
Not that slowing seemed to be in his immediate plans. He was pushing the gas pedal nearly to the bottom, making maneuvering difficult to the extreme. He’d almost flipped them a few minutes ago, and she had a feeling he might succeed yet. Another experience she would have preferred to leave out if it was all the same to the gun-happy sheik next to her.
He shot another round, then—miracle of miracles—did as she asked and took back the wheel. He floored the gas and was able to gain a little more distance between them and the car that followed.
“You could drop me off here. Anywhere.”
He didn’t bother with a response.
They zoomed by the entrance of the boulevard that his palace was on.
“Obviously, you have some problem areas in your life.” She looked behind them pointedly. The attackers were now three cars behind. “Maybe if you dealt with those, you’d have less time to meddle in the lives of others.”
“I don’t meddle. Stop nagging.” He executed another maneuver.
“I don’t nag. Where are we going?”
He frowned as if he hadn’t considered that. Okay, to be fair, he’d been kept pretty busy with getting shot and all.
“They’ll expect me to go back home and might head us off,” he said.
“MMPOIL?” There was security at the company. She’d seen a number of guards while asking around for Aziz.
“I don’t want to bring this fight to a building full of my employees. They—” he jerked his head to indicate the men who followed them “—might expect that, too. They’ve probably been following me long enough to know any place I could go. Wherever I go, someone might be there waiting.”
Death was waiting for them all around. Not a happy thought. Don’t panic. Breathe.
Her gaze fell on her purse in her lap, settling on the magnetic room cards visible in the front pocket. “We could go to my hotel.” An idea was forming slowly in her mind. She needed to get away, and not just from the men who were shooting at them, but away from it all. Her brain worked furiously at one possible solution.
He seemed to be considering her suggestion, looking in the rearview mirror. “The Hilton downtown.” He nodded.
So he knew where she’d been staying. Obviously, he had checked her out. What else had he found? It didn’t matter. The important thing was that he was going along with her idea.
He took the next exit and was there in minutes. They had been closer than she’d thought, not knowing the city. The sparkling high-rises, all glass and steel, were testaments to modern architecture, mixed in with ancient mosques and minarets. The sight was breathtaking but foreign, and she got disoriented too easily. The day before, after careful instruction from the concierge, she’d only been able to find MMPOIL after three tries, going around in circles for over half an hour.
In hindsight, it would have been better if she hadn’t found the place and Sheik Karim Abdullah at all.
“Do you have a card for the underground parking?” He cast a sideways glance at her as he pulled up to the gate.
She fished out her parking pass and handed it over to him. The gate opened. They were in. Her plan might work yet. Her number-one objective was to keep her baby safe. To achieve that, she would do whatever was necessary. And since being around Karim was the opposite of safe, what she needed was to get away from him.
Keep cool. Keep thinking. Give nothing away.
He glanced into the rearview mirror one more time before shutting off the motor and tugging off his blood-soaked jacket. His tie came next. He tried to wrap it around the wound. She got out and walked around to help him, doing her best not to look at all the blood as she pulled the silk tight.
Another scar, she thought, and was beginning to wonder just exactly what sort of life the Dark Sheik lived. She had a feeling she didn’t want to know. Had Aziz been like this when he was at home? Somehow she couldn’t picture it. She tied off the length of silk.
Karim didn’t wince. “Thank you.”
She stepped back. “It doesn’t mean I forgive you. I just don’t want to have to explain to my baby later why I let his uncle bleed to death.” He was lucky that family was so important to her.
The corner of his mouth twitched, which annoyed her. She hadn’t been trying to be funny. She meant every word she’d said.
He pulled the jacket back on, its dark fabric hiding most of the bloodstains. Not that it mattered in the end. They were lucky enough to make it to her room without running in to anyone, although the elevator ride was a tad tense on the way up.
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Dana Marton
Sheikh Protector
Dana Marton
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Table of Contents
Cover (#ue4b11b1e-c3dc-5b6e-82fb-badcc8289ca3)
Title Page (#u52c5ac33-b45b-5022-8257-d317dfbf51db)
About the Author (#ueb27cca1-5b2a-5a30-a8ca-a9321bf4c575)
Dedication (#u01174e98-6f72-5bdd-a753-2398510258a8)
Chapter One (#u1f31f234-f6be-5a78-bc1f-922abf31125b)
Chapter Two (#ubfd705ce-57af-56bd-9aca-451f4c695e79)
Chapter Three (#u3c45f934-8fbb-5371-bde9-ee9363499a10)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Dana Marton is the author of over a dozen fast-paced, action-adventure romantic suspense novels and a winner of the Daphne du Maurier Award of Excellence. She loves writing books of international intrigue, filled with dangerous plots that try her tough-as-nails heroes and the special women they fall in love with. Her books have been published in seven languages in eleven countries around the world. When not writing or reading, she loves to browse antique shops and enjoys working in her sizable flower garden where she searches for “bad” bugs with the skills of a superspy and vanquishes them with the agility of a commando soldier. Every day in her garden is a thriller. To find more information on her books, please visit www.danamarton.com. She would love to hear from her readers and can be reached via e-mail at DanaMarton@DanaMarton.com.
With many thanks to Denise Zaza, Allison Lyons,
Maggie Scillia and Cindy Whitesel.
Chapter One
“Car’s rigged,” Karim said to the empty passenger seat next to him. His gaze darted around as he considered his options for escape, trying to determine the location of the bomb.
He wished he could see under his seat. He wished he hadn’t just tossed his briefcase, which held his cell phone, to the back, now out of reach. But most of all, he wished he hadn’t gotten into the damned car.
Unfortunately, he had no magic lamp and no genie to grant his three wishes.
He sat completely still, sweat beading on his forehead. The first step was to figure out the trigger. Would the charge blow if he turned the key in the ignition, or if he got out and lifted his weight off the driver’s seat? Maybe the trigger was in the door. He hadn’t closed it behind him yet. Or could be he had no control at all. Maybe whoever wanted him dead was watching from one of the hundred windows that overlooked the executive parking lot. Watching with the remote in hand.
“I was getting too close to the truth.” He glanced up at those windows, but couldn’t see much from his position and he didn’t dare shift his weight.
Anger flared. If he had to die, so be it—Insha’Allah. But by all that was holy, he wanted to bring his twin brother’s murderer to justice first.
“I’m sorry, Aziz.”
If he couldn’t find the killer, nobody would. His other brother, Tariq, thought that Aziz’s presence at the well at the time of the explosion had been a coincidence. Tariq was predisposed to see the world as a better place than it really was—he hadn’t seen as much of the dark side as Karim—and was currently too busy being crazy in love with his new wife.
Which one of them was crazier remained to be seen. Karim’s thoughts turned grim. He wasn’t exactly a pillar of sanity, either. He regularly talked to his dead twin brother. For the last month, from time to time, he felt Aziz’s presence so strongly, he not only talked to him, but also half expected an answer.
Aziz was gone. Killed. In some regard, losing his twin was like losing half his sight two decades ago, but much, much worse. With Aziz, he had lost half of his soul. And he knew he wasn’t going to find that, even if he found the killer or killers—he wasn’t going to bring Aziz back. Still, he could not let the bastards go free, not even if tracking them down cost him his own life.
A bomb.
“Should have seen it coming.” Except that his mind had been on the restitutions he was making to the families of the men who’d died at the well along with his brother.
If he hadn’t been so preoccupied when he’d walked out of MMPOIL’s headquarters in Tihrin—Beharrain’s quickly growing capital—he would have noted that the security guard wasn’t at his post. He hadn’t been aware of danger until he’d gotten into the car and spotted the millimeter-size chunk of blue plastic wire coating on the mat.
Another person might not have realized the significance. But people had been trying to kill him from the moment he’d been born, nearly succeeding on a number of occasions. He’d developed a keen sense for detecting death’s approaching footsteps.
He glanced out at the street, at the cars passing no more than a hundred feet from him. Nobody was turning to enter the company gate where the other security guard sat in his booth, his back to Karim.
He had to do something now, while he was alone in the parking lot. He didn’t want to take anyone out with him.
“Here we go.” His mind sharply focused, he reached down to feel around the seat, aware that he could accidentally move a wire and set off the charge if it was there.
He felt nothing out of place as far as he could reach, but he couldn’t stretch all the way. Next item. He leaned forward carefully, and spent precious seconds inspecting the bottom of the dashboard.
“Mr. Abdullah?” The voice was richly melodic and completely feminine, utterly out of place in the charged tension of the moment. “Excuse me, Mr. Abdullah—”
He drew his attention from what he was doing to watch, with dismay, the foreign beauty who strode toward him, full of purpose.
Since she’d spoken English, he responded in the same language. “Go back inside.”
“They told me I could find you here.” She flashed a nervous smile and proceeded without pause, although the blood did drain from her face as she came closer and got a better look at him. “Look, I’ve come a long way. You wouldn’t believe the plane ride. Forget the plane. You wouldn’t believe the food,” she babbled on. “I know you must be busy, but—”
“Get out of here.” He didn’t bother with the half turn to hide his scar, but looked her full in the face. That ought to scare her off.
“Listen, I—” Her voice wavered.
“You listen.” He wiped the sweat from his forehead. The air was well over a hundred degrees outside, and even warmer in the car. He had run up to his office for only a few minutes to grab some papers before he headed off to the camel races, so he hadn’t bothered to pull in to the climate-controlled underground parking garage. He let loose the frustration and anger that churned inside him. “Get the hell out of here. Now.”
The woman stopped, but only momentarily. Her wide brown eyes flashed with determination, and her deep auburn hair swirled around her face in the dry breeze that’d been blowing from the desert all day. Hair that flowed in soft waves well below her elbows. Her soft linen skirt fluttered around her ankles, the light color matching her modest top—clothes that accentuated her tall, slim figure. She looked as beautiful as an angel and as determined as Satan’s handmaiden.
Few men would have remained standing there when he had that glare on his face and that edge in his voice. But incomprehensibly, instead of running the other way, her delicate chin came up. She was maybe four feet from him and not budging.
“All I want—”
Oh, hell. “There’s a bomb—” Karim saw movement in one of the windows behind her, and acted on instinct.
He vaulted out of the car and flew across the space between them, crashing her to the hard pavement, doing his best to break her fall. He didn’t stop, but rolled and rolled.
She screamed the whole time and beat on his shoulders, resisted with all the power in her slim frame, her long hair entangling them. Then the car finally blew, shaking the parking lot.
Heat.
Smoke.
Fear.
She screamed even louder, but it barely registered now over the ringing in his ears.
Head down. He kept her covered as best he could, protected her from the burning debris that flew across the air like projectile missiles. As strong and determined as she had looked a moment ago, she seemed scared and fragile as she clung to him now.
“Don’t move,” he said near her ear, unable to hear his own voice, half-deaf from the explosion. “It’s okay.” He made an attempt to reassure her anyway. They would assess their injuries and face reality in a moment. For now, he was still trying to catch his breath.
The air swirled blazing hot around them. But even the acrid smell of smoke couldn’t completely drown out the scent of the woman in his arms: jasmine and vanilla.
In his peripheral vision, he registered security personnel running from the building.
“Ambulance. Now! Cover his position.”
“Secure the grounds! Secure the grounds!”
“Are you all right, sir? Sheik?”
Karim let the woman go and nodded, the ringing in his ears diminishing with each passing second. She looked wide-eyed with shock, staring at the car a few short yards from them. Her fair skin was now positively white, to the point of being translucent, save a few smudges of dirt.
“What happened?” She pressed a hand to her abdomen, breathing in quick gasps.
He’d probably knocked the air out of her.
After checking her over for visible injuries and not finding any, he followed her gaze, clenching his teeth at the sight of the twisted metal behind him. That had been close. Too close. Aziz’s death still filled his mind, dulling his attention to other things. He had to separate himself from the grief, had to block the memories of the burning well—a fire a thousand times larger than what burned in the parking lot now. He couldn’t get distracted and be taken out. He had to find who killed Aziz.
The company’s private ambulance was racing through the parking lot toward them. For him.
“I’m fine. You take her.” Whatever she wanted from him, he had no time to deal with her now.
He’d spoken in Arabic, but she must have understood his body language, because she began to protest.
“No, I’m fine. Really. I don’t need to see a doctor.” She was rattled and scared, more than a little bewildered, fighting to hide it. Her chin came up, trembling slightly and smudged with dirt from the pavement. “I can’t go.” She backed away a few steps. “I’m not going.”
The woman showed a deep-seated aversion to do as she was told. Even if it was for her own good.
He wasn’t in the mood just now to humor her. “Get in.”
Even his own security stilled at the growl in his voice.
“No,” she said, oblivious to danger once again.
His eyes narrowed. Did she just stomp her feet or had she been flexing her knees?
He had been careful with her when he’d taken her down. She didn’t look hurt. She was breathing normally now. Her clothes were barely rumpled and only slightly stained. Her hair looked the worst, tangled and with a fair amount of sand in it. The desert winds had been blowing for days, dusting the parking lot and everything else in the city.
His security force closed in a circle around them and awaited his orders. They would remove her forcefully; all he had to do was give the word. He should. He had a million things to do at the moment and no time for the distraction of a stubborn woman.
“Fine. No hospital,” he said instead. “Just get in. Whoever did this could be still out here.”
She paled even more, if that was possible, and stepped up into the back of the ambulance. He went after her, on second thought, not because he was scared for his life, but because if whoever was out there decided to shoot at him, the bastard might hit one of his men instead. Better to remove himself from sight.
“We can drop you off at your hotel. Please, sit.” He gestured to the gurney. He remained standing, holding on to one of the restraints as the vehicle moved out. He nodded toward the lone paramedic’s cell phone with a questioning look.
He handed it over immediately. “Of course, sir.”
Karim’s chief of security came on the line after the first ring.
“How did they get in? I want a report the second you find something,” he told the man in Arabic. “I want the whole building in lockdown until everyone inside is verified. And I want a digital copy of the security tapes e-mailed to me immediately.”
“Yes, sir.”
He handed the phone back and focused on the foreign woman who was watching him with morbid fascination. She looked even more impossibly beautiful than his first impression had been—high cheekbones, delicate features, eyes the golden brown color of a perfectly ripe, sweet fig. Eyes that held wariness and secrets, and a certain amount of plucky determination.
Then it clicked.
Media.
A less disciplined man would have groaned. She probably wanted an interview for some foreign paper. Sheer bad luck that she had caught him at a moment like this. There’d be no way now to keep the attack out of the papers. She’d be impossible to shake off. But he had other things to do, which meant he had to get her—and the distractions she brought—out of his life as fast as possible.
“At which hotel are you staying?”
She drew a deep breath and pulled her spine straight. “I need to talk to you first. I’m looking for Aziz.”
His fists clenched. He made a point to relax them. Not a reporter then. Aziz. Of course. He should have known.
Aziz had always been the lucky one between the two of them, the ladies’ man, or as some Western tabloids had once called him, the Playboy Sheik. Aziz had been in his element at the high-society events of Cannes and Monaco, and had kept a party house—with Hollywood celebrity neighbors—in Miami on Star Island. He’d lived the high life and pursued a wide range of interests, had dabbled in everything from yacht racing to desert archaeology.
“And who are you?” he asked.
“Julia Gardner.” She extended her hand. Some of her color had come back. Her skin was now the palest of pinks. A tangle of bead bracelets encircled her slim wrist.
He didn’t move.
She pulled back immediately. “I didn’t mean to offend you. Sorry. Force of habit. I have trouble remembering all these strange rules.” She snapped her full mouth shut. That lasted only a second. “Not that I think your country is strange. Just strange to me. New. New to me. I—”
“No offense taken.”
“You look just like your brother.” The words spurted from her before she pressed her full lips together once again.
His mood darkened. Maybe at one point Aziz and he had looked alike—they were identical twins. But nobody had dared compare them for a long time now, not since a childhood accident had taken the sight of Karim’s right eye, leaving a hideous scar on his face. “You knew Aziz well?”
She glanced away.
So, Julia Gardner, too, had some trouble looking at his face, despite her earlier bravado. He resisted the impulse to shift into his usual half turn.
“We met when he was in Baltimore a couple of months ago,” she was saying. “I haven’t been able to reach him and I came here and—Look, I just want to talk to him. The man at the front desk told me I should ask you.” She kept her hands clasped together tightly in her lap, but her shoulders were drawn straight and tall.
“Aziz is gone.” The muscles in his jaw pulled tight. The pictures that flashed into his mind brought raw pain every time. He’d been closer to his twin brother than to anyone else in the world. The hot rage over the unfairness of Aziz’s death hadn’t diminished any in the month since his funeral. Nor had Karim’s desire to seek revenge.
The corners of her eyes crinkled with worry, which she tried to mask with a nonchalant smile. “When is he coming back?”
He forced air into his constricting lungs. “We had a well explosion last month.”
He could see when she understood finally. Shock and pain flashed through her eyes. She stood, agitated, a hand pressed to her stomach, then opened her full, lush mouth, but no words came out. Color drained from her face all over again. She swayed.
He caught her and helped her fold to the gurney.
“She fainted, sir.” The paramedic who sat in the corner, trying his best to remain invisible and give them privacy, moved forward and managed to clip a monitor on her index finger without actually touching her. Her vital signs showed on the small screen behind him.
Fainted. Karim blinked and let her go, stepped away from her. He didn’t have time for this. He didn’t have time for her. Period.
He would absolutely not allow her to sully Aziz’s memory with scandal. He was fairly certain about why she was here. She wasn’t the first. Others had come looking for Aziz after his international trips. They wanted to keep the party going, have access to Aziz’s wealth and a shot at becoming one of oil-rich Beharrain’s latest princesses.
She was too late. He watched her. Miss Gardner might not know it yet, but she was leaving on the next plane out of the country.
It seemed perversely insane that he was actually looking forward to going a few rounds with her before her stubborn nature would accept that decision.
He was ready to give her his ultimatum, but she still didn’t stir.
His annoyance with her switched to concern. She did look vulnerable, her skin losing color again, all that hair tangled around her. She looked like an angel, injured after falling to earth. “What’s wrong with her?”
He preferred that stubborn chin of hers thrust forward, as she faced him down, even if she were here to cause trouble.
He wouldn’t let her.
“Could be from the stress or heat exhaustion. She’s probably not used to our climate.” The paramedic was administering an IV, again with the absolute minimum of touching. Then he drew blood into several vials. “If we went to the hospital, they could do tests as soon as we got there.”
Karim rested his gaze on her face. She hadn’t wanted to go to the hospital, had been pretty adamant about it. And he’d told her he wouldn’t take her there. “Call ahead and have Dr. Jinan meet us at my house. You can take the blood to the hospital and call over when the results are ready.”
He was about to take the troublesome angel home. He ignored the voice in his head that said he would probably live to regret his decision.
JULIA WOKE IN a strange bed in a strange and ridiculously opulent room, with a strange woman peering over her. An IV bag was attached to her arm. She panicked for a second, her gaze darting around. Her hand slid to her abdomen under the cover. No pain there. “What happened to me?”
“Hi, I’m Dr. Jinan.” The woman smiled. She wore a gold-threaded, deep blue abaya, no veil. Her startlingly sharp eyes, which were lined with kohl, fixed on Julia. “You were near an explosion and fainted afterward.”
Disjointed memories rushed her, and Julia pulled the silk cover higher on her body. The dark red fabric was as resplendent as the rest of her accommodations. “Where am I?”
“You are a guest of Sheik Karim Abdullah in his Tihrin palace. You’re fine. You have a good, strong pulse. Once this IV runs out, we can remove the needle. Feeling better?”
“Thank you. Yes.” She sat up to prove it. She didn’t like the idea of some strange doctor examining her while she’d been unconscious. She didn’t want anyone to know her secret.
“Did you have enough to eat and drink today?” the doctor asked.
Julia noticed the platter of food on a low, round table behind the woman—fresh fruits and other bite-size nourishment that looked exotically unidentifiable, but not the least bit appetizing at the moment. These days she was alternating between ravenous and nauseous, and was currently feeling the latter.
“Yes, thank you.” She drew a deep breath to dispel the queasiness around her middle.
“Please do remember plenty of fluids. Our summers are mercilessly hot. I hope this little incident won’t ruin your enjoyment of our beautiful country.” The doctor smiled, all mothering warmth. “Looks like the IV is done. Let me take care of that.” She removed the needle without causing any pain, stuck a cotton ball over the puncture wound. “Bend your elbow and hold this here for a few minutes.”
She stood and began placing everything into her old-fashioned, black leather doctor’s bag. “I’ll be back to check on you tomorrow. Try to get as much rest as possible until then.”
“Thank you, but that won’t be necessary.” With Aziz gone, she had no reason to stay in the country. “I will be leaving here.”
Dr. Jinan gave her a smile one would give a petulant child. She was poised and self-assured, obviously a woman secure in her own power, challenging Julia’s preconception of the women of Beharrain. Every rule had a few exceptions, she supposed.
Not that she had time to ponder the doctor. Karim Abdullah walked in immediately, as if he’d been waiting outside. He paused at the door and exchanged a few words with Dr. Jinan.
Julia searched their faces, unable to figure out anything. They spoke in Arabic. Did they know? They couldn’t. Nobody could tell just by looking at her that she was pregnant, not even a doctor, she was pretty sure of that.
She would have told Aziz her secret. Probably. That was why she had come here. He was the father and he deserved to know, even though he had cut off communications with her. Or so she had thought. Now she knew the truth about why he hadn’t returned her calls. The shock was still as fresh as it had been when she’d first heard the news.
Pain filled her chest and squeezed her lungs. Aziz was gone. It seemed impossible. She had never known anyone as filled with life and wide-open to the world, as charming.
He’d charmed a great many people; she had found that out when she ran a search on him on the Internet after he’d returned to his home, and she’d seriously considered taking him up on his invitation to visit him. The celebrity reports were full of his pictures, labeling him the Playboy Sheik. That had been a disappointment, not that he had promised her anything. The information had been enough to make her realize the brief affair for what it was: a few days of fun with an exotic stranger. She’d succeeded in putting Aziz out of her mind until those two pink lines appeared on a white plastic stick.
She took a few days to digest the news. Then called him without success. If she’d checked the Internet again, she would have found out about his death…wouldn’t have come here…to his daunting brother.
A few of those news reports she’d read mentioned Aziz’s twin. They had called him the Dark Sheik, without explanation, making her wonder. And now she was in the Dark Sheik’s house. She looked around. Scratch that. The Dark Sheik’s palace. God, it sounded like a gothic novel.
She had figured she would come here, would see how Aziz felt about the possibility of a baby. She wasn’t going to tell him until she got a better idea of what kind of man he really was. Their time in Baltimore had been way too short. They had had some whirlwind dates and one night of passion, the day before he left. She had thought herself to be half in love with him and had been sure he felt the same. She was pretty certain now that he hadn’t, but still, he was the father, and she had wanted to give it another go, if for no other reason than so she could tell her child later in life that she had tried. Her own parents had been all messed up. If she could help it, she wanted something better for her baby.
She was going to come here and see how Aziz was in his own environment. When and if she felt comfortable with it, she would have told him her news. Not a moment before that. Whatever happened, she was going to protect her baby. She was never going to let her or him go.
“Doctor Jinan tells me you are well.” Karim came over once the woman left. He was not handsome, not with that scar. But he had a strong, masculine presence that drew her full attention to him. He stopped at a respectable distance from the bed, looking larger and harder than Aziz, infinitely more dangerous. Where Aziz’s face had reflected humor, mischief and a sexy sort of cockiness about life, Karim’s was bathed in darkness. And she didn’t think all of that came from his scar.
He was wearing a fresh, crisp suit, his hair neatly combed. She felt dirty and sweaty and rumpled in comparison, but wouldn’t let that stop her.
“Thank you for your hospitality, Mr. Abdullah.” Grateful that nobody had undressed her, she pushed off the cover and swung her legs over the side of the bed, glancing around for her shoes. There. She slipped into them. “I’m sorry for all the inconvenience I caused.”
With Aziz gone, she had no intention of staying here a day longer, no intention of letting Aziz’s family know about the baby. Maybe it wasn’t the right thing to do, but she was leery of the culture and felt none too trusting toward Aziz’s twin brother. He looked as if he could—and would—take the law into his own hands if he felt the need. And he was a sheik, son of a king, as Aziz had been. He probably had a fair amount of power.
When her child was eighteen, she would reveal the truth and leave the decision up to her or him.
“Would it be possible to call a taxi?” She flashed Karim her most polite smile, refusing to be intimidated by him.
Given her social and economic background, she’d spent half her life being intimidated by the wealthy and powerful, by people in charge. But she’d had to get over that in a hurry when she had joined a nonprofit organization and had to interact daily with the elite. And over time, she’d learned that they were just like everybody else, with the same joys and fears and virtues and weaknesses.
Not that she could see Karim having a whole lot of fears or weaknesses. He had faced that car bomb down, cool as anything, and the memory of the incident was still making her heart beat faster.
“May I ask what your plans are?” He had his hands in his pockets as he rested his dark gaze on her. He might as well have been carved of solid rock, he looked that unmovable. But he was quick—she remembered him diving for her from his car. He loomed larger than life.
Exactly the kind of man she needed to avoid at all cost. She swallowed to wet her mouth.
“I’m going back to the hotel and probably flying out tonight if I can change my flight. I’m truly sorry about your brother.” She was, and she needed time to deal with the sudden news. But she needed to get away from Karim Abdullah’s searching gaze first.
“Perhaps you could tell me why you were looking for him?” His voice was even and low, with the sort of tone that made it clear he wasn’t a man to mess with.
She’d gotten that message already.
“We were friends. I thought I’d stop by to see him. You know, long time no see. A chance to catch up. That sort of thing.” She flashed him another winning smile.
He watched her as if he could see right through her, and she didn’t appreciate how nervous he made her. It had nothing to do with the four-inch scar that made him look like a desert warrior despite his elegant suit. The overwhelming sense of power that emanated from him was what she was leery of.
“Thank you for your hospitality.” She got to her feet and stepped around him, half expecting him to stop her.
He didn’t. “Were you going to tell Aziz that you are carrying his child?”
She was halfway across the room, but the words stopped her more effectively than anything else could have. She was too scared to turn around and look at him, afraid of what he might read in her face.
“I’m not—”
“The paramedic took your blood in the ambulance. The hospital called with the results,” he said in an icy tone. “You’re not the first woman to come looking for him after one of his foreign escapades. I assume you’re here for money?”
She winced, because that came uncomfortably close to the truth. “It’s not Aziz’s child,” she lied. She would manage on her own somehow. She didn’t want this dark sheik to have any kind of hold on her.
“My thoughts precisely, but I’d just as soon be sure. I want the case closed once and for all. I hope you won’t mind a DNA test when the child is born.”
She’d be long back in the U.S. by then, protected by U.S. law. They couldn’t take her baby away at that point, even if they could find her, which she would make sure they couldn’t.
“No, of course not.” She schooled her face and chanced a look at him.
His expression remained unreadable, only his eyes darkened further, if that was possible. “Good. I hope you’ll like your rooms. I’ll introduce you to the staff this afternoon. You can pick your personal maid then.”
The air got stuck in her lungs as she stared at him, startled. Was he completely nuts? “I’m not staying.” She wanted to be very clear on that.
He paused for a moment. “That’s a good strategy. Reverse psychology.” He inclined his head with a small smile. “I give you this, you seem smarter than the others. But whether you prefer to stay or go has no bearing on anything. Your child might be the grandson of a king, and as such, one of the heirs to the Beharrainian throne.” He watched her closely.
She felt the blood drain from her face. She’d known that Aziz was one of the king’s cousins. But she knew they hadn’t had a close relationship. And the king had a son. She hadn’t taken succession into account. It wasn’t something someone in her life and position thought much about.
“I’m sure you already considered that,” he went on. “I hope you won’t be disappointed to hear that a child, even if proven to be Aziz’s son, would not be at the front of the line of succession. But in the line nevertheless. You must understand that I cannot allow you to leave the country until the bloodline is determined. Our very law would forbid it, except with the permission of the father. Aziz is gone. As his brother, I’m responsible for you and your baby.”
If ever a sentence had the power to stop her heart, this was it. She was getting sucked in, losing control, the very thing she’d been most afraid of. She shouldn’t have come here.
“This is insane. I have nothing to do with you. You can’t keep me here. I’m an American citizen.” She backed toward the door, relaxing marginally when he stayed where he was.
“You will find that in Beharrain, Beharrainian laws are given a priority over ideals of foreign countries thousands of miles away.”
Was there a hint of threat in his steely voice?
She kept moving, but he still didn’t follow. Not even when she reached the hallway and ran to the left, not knowing which way the exit was, but wanting to get away from him and the nightmare this trip was turning into.
Before long she’d reached a palatial marble foyer. The front door was open, but there were armed guards at the wrought-iron gate that led to the street.
“Excuse me,” she said when they wouldn’t move out of her way. Maybe they didn’t speak English.
Step aside. Please, step aside. She wanted to get out before Karim decided to come after her. She didn’t think he would let her go this easily. She glanced behind her, then back at the men who looked as unmovable as the seven-foot-tall brick walls that surrounded the property.
“I need to leave,” she said slower and louder, knowing that was unlikely to make a difference. “Please.” She pointed toward the gate. They had to know what she wanted.
“You are to leave the palace only in the company of Sheik Abdullah,” one of them said after a moment, without looking at her.
So the language barrier wasn’t an issue.
Her breath caught. Desperation rose inside her—desperation, fear and anger. She shouldn’t have come. She had thought she would be able to keep her child safe while giving her or him the kind of large family she never had. But she understood now that wasn’t possible. To keep her baby safe and with her meant that she had to escape far, far away from here. She would never give up control of her baby.
There had to be a way. She refused to accept that she, along with her unborn child, was a prisoner in a foreign land, held at the will of the Dark Sheik.
Chapter Two
She was fighting a losing battle. Sheik Karim Abullah’s palace was better guarded than the Pentagon. But Julia wasn’t the type to give up.
Since she had resigned herself to the fact that she wouldn’t be able to escape on the ground level, she went up, sneaking through the night. She wasn’t sure what she was hoping for, perhaps a large tree that came near one of the balconies. Trying something—anything—had to be better than sitting in her gilded prison of a room and crying her eyes out like she had done for the first half of the night.
She hated how weepy her overactive mommy hormones made her. This was not the time to give in to weakness. But she was emotionally exhausted and ravenously hungry. Hungry to the point that she was afraid her growling stomach would be heard.
She stole down the second-floor hallway, pausing in front of the first door. She pushed it open a fraction of an inch at a time and glanced around the lavishly appointed living room she discovered. Some sort of a suite. Other doors opened from here. The furniture was exquisitely made—all ornately carved wood—and was breathtaking even without her being able to make out the true colors of the luxurious fabrics in the moonlight.
Her gaze settled on a phone on a small, octagonal table. Her U.S. cell phone didn’t work here and there wasn’t a phone in her room. She wished she knew the number of the U.S. embassy by heart, and dialed zero, hoping to get directory assistance. Nothing happened.
She tried zero-zero, her stomach continuing to growl. No ringing on the other end. Zero-one. Just one. One-one. A disembodied voice said something in Arabic then the line went dead again. She gritted her teeth with frustration and took a banana from the fruit bowl next to the phone. An apple’s crunching might give her away. She peeled it then bit in, and nearly moaned at the soft sweetness that diffused on her tongue. Heaven.
Her food tray had been removed that afternoon on her request when the smell of food had made her nauseous. She had refused dinner on principle—not the smartest thing, in hindsight.
She grabbed another banana and was stuffing it down the front of her shirt when a small noise came from behind one of the doors opposite her. She froze, nearly ran, but stopped herself. She needed to find a balcony, a way out.
She picked a door that was half-open, figuring she would make the least noise that way, and found herself in a large bedroom. The space was dominated by a sprawling bed, draped in black sheets, that didn’t look slept in. A handful of papers lay tossed on the nightstand, next to a book.
Then her gaze was drawn to the source of the noise she’d heard before. A bathroom off the bedroom, lights on, the water running. She was facing a full-size, gilded mirror on the bathroom wall that was angled away from her. The picture it presented made her mouth go dry and her feet freeze to the tile floor. She swallowed the chunk of fruit in her mouth with some trouble.
Karim stood in an open shower with black mosaic tile and one of those drenching, foot-wide showerheads, water sluicing down his tanned skin. He stood with his back to her, so she had an unobstructed view of the scars that ran down his back, breaking up the otherwise perfect lines of the most incredible male body she had ever seen. He had his hands up, bracing himself on the wall, his head hanging as if deep in thought, tension evident in his corded muscles.
Shadows stretched across his back. She couldn’t tell from this distance whether they were scars or some sort of tribal markings.
Another person might have looked vulnerable naked, but not the Dark Sheik. Strength radiated off him, and danger.
He reached to the side and turned off the water with one sinuous movement.
Okay, so Mr. I’m-Lord-of-All-I-Survey was sexy. Very.
She couldn’t care less. She was leaving. Now.
He wrapped a black towel around his waist then turned, his dark gaze finding hers unerringly in the mirror. He didn’t show surprise. Somehow he’d known she’d be there, staring.
How humiliating.
“Is there anything you wanted from me, Julia?” His voice was low and measured, full of innuendo and contempt.
She wanted to turn and run, but his gaze wouldn’t release her. When he strode closer, she backed away without looking where she was going, hoping she was backing out the door. Instead, in a few steps, her back bumped against the wall.
He was a short foot from her, looming dangerous in the semidarkness of the room, his wide shoulders outlined in the light that came from the bathroom. Drops of water glistened on his dark skin. He smelled like soap and sandalwood. He was the most erotic and intimidating sight she’d ever seen.
“Looking for a substitute sheik for your plan?” He put his right hand to the wall next to her head. His hand being higher than his shoulder, droplets of water ran backward, along his carved granite biceps.
Her heart jumped to her throat. He thought she’d come here to seduce him. She moved the other way, but that arm came down, too, and boxed her in. She didn’t feel panicked as much as mesmerized. Blinked her eyes. Snap out of it. How dare he?
“Don’t touch me.” She shoved with her free hand, indignation giving her strength. She tried not to notice the hard muscles of his warm—and still wet—chest under her fingers. Her limbs were shaky. From exhaustion, no doubt. She was likely still jet-lagged, too.
He didn’t budge a millimeter, but a dark eyebrow slid up his forehead. “Changed your mind? Scare you, do I?”
Maybe. Okay, more so with every passing moment. He was large and powerful and utterly overwhelming after a hellish day. She was well aware that he could kill her, and with his title and station in the country, there probably wouldn’t even be a questioning.
Tears threatened to fill her eyes. She gritted her teeth and held them back. This was not the time for a hormonal moment. “Go to hell.” She lifted her head and stuck her chin out. “You want to intimidate me? Congratulations, you succeeded. That’s what turns people like you on, isn’t it? Scared women.”
A muscle jumped in his face, just beneath the four-inch scar on the right side that started above the eye socket and ran straight down. And then she realized the eye didn’t move along with the other one. He was blind on that side. Not that his left eye wasn’t lethal enough on its own.
He took his time to look her over from her bare feet to the top of her head, returning to linger on her breasts, which had grown already during the pregnancy and were stupidly sensitive to smoldering looks from half-naked men. More misery to blame on hormones.
“The same things turn me on as any other healthy man, I suppose,” he said, his voice a notch lower than before.
The space between them was insanely small. Without warning, the adrenaline that had been pumping through her already was metamorphosing into primal heat, making her fingertips tingle.
He had masculine lips, what some old-fashioned novels might have defined as cruel. Heathcliff lips. Incredibly sexy. She got a little woozy from looking at them this close.
The sharp sense of desire was insane, but perhaps understandable, considering that her body was hormonally unbalanced and out of her control.
His voice was a soft whisper when he spoke. “Why are you here, Julia? Why are you in my bedroom in the middle of the night?” He lowered his head as if wanting to carefully listen to her response.
If he came any closer, he was going to feel the banana she’d hid down the front of her shirt.
Her pulse sped, and not just from the danger of being discovered as a fruit thief. “Looking for a glass of water,” she croaked out with effort. Her mouth did feel extraordinarily dry. She looked into his good eye.
His Heathcliff mouth tightened, but he didn’t back away an inch. “Excuses?” He examined her. “Interesting. You’re bold enough to come to me like this, yet you feel the need to come up with a pretext for seeking my bed.”
Outrage quickly overcame awakening desire. Of all the conceited—“You know what I’m doing?” she asked sharply, and ducked to the right from the circle of his arms. “I was trying to get out of this stupid place. You have no right to keep me here. This is kidnapping.” She darted toward the door.
If she thought the lack of sight in the right eye was a weakness, she was quickly disabused of the notion. He caught her easily.
“You will stay for as long as I see necessary,” he said. “If I catch you trying to run—I’ve given you some freedom, Julia. Freedom that can be taken away.”
What freedom? Her room? Meaning he could be keeping her closer to him? How close? His bed sprawled imposingly in her peripheral vision. She didn’t want to know. Or maybe he’d meant he had some dungeons in the basement. That would be more likely. Nothing would have surprised her at this point.
Fear spiked her pulse. “I was wrong,” she told him with all the contempt she felt. “You are nothing like your brother.”
“And what do you know about Aziz?” His gaze slid to her abdomen. “My brother wasn’t an irresponsible man.”
A moment passed before she understood what he meant.
“He wasn’t.” And that was all she was prepared to say on the subject of birth control, which obviously was not as reliable as she’d thought.
His gaze journeyed back up, slowly, to her face.
The warning system in her brain was screaming that she should run for her life. “This baby has nothing to do with you and your family.” She was desperate to escape his palace.
He didn’t respond.
“You don’t believe me.”
More silence, just his dark gaze searching her face.
“And if I said the child was Aziz’s? Would you believe that?” she said, testing him.
“No.”
“So you’re determined to think me a liar.” Which, God help her, she was quickly becoming. But yes, she would do even that. She would lie, cheat and very possibly kill for her unborn child.
The question was, how far was Karim Abdullah willing to go for his niece or nephew?
“I’m just questioning your motives,” he said.
“Is that what you call it?” She braved a sneer. “In my country this would be called kidnapping.”
His masculine lips pressed into a tight line.
Her heart drummed against her rib cage. She tugged her arm. “You have to let me go.”
And this time, he released her at last. “Get some sleep. I made an appointment for you for tomorrow morning. You’ll get the full workup. You had a fall today. I arranged for an ultrasound.”
Not one for minding his own business, was he?
Her initial instinct was to protest, but she hadn’t had an ultrasound yet. Her first was scheduled for the week after her planned return to the States. She desperately wanted to see her baby. And she was no longer sure when exactly she would be back in Baltimore. Or if she could afford even the most basic medical care.
She did have that fall. And despite feeling fine, she did worry. And it wasn’t as if he was going to give her a choice about going. “Fine. But don’t think you’re coming with me. Absolutely not.”
“And I looked into testing,” he said. “There’s something called amniocentesis that can be done during pregnancy. They can obtain DNA and determine paternity.”
She didn’t know how she felt about that. The test would prove that the father was Aziz. That would bind her even tighter to Karim, an outcome she wanted to avoid at all cost. Could she refuse? What would that gain her? Time.
She turned from him and marched out with the half-eaten banana in her hand, calling a “Go to hell” over her shoulder on principle.
As she sped her steps, the banana under her top dislodged and fell to the floor. She picked it up, glad he didn’t see her. But a glance back at his bedroom door revealed that, in fact, he had.
He’d come after her and was leaning against the door frame, watching her with a superior smirk on his face. “You may take the whole fruit bowl if you’d like.”
THE RADIOLOGIST asked him no questions, one of the privileges of being sheik. Karim stared at the staticky-looking black-and-white screen, at the blurry outline of what seemed like a head and part of the abdomen. He kept his gaze studiously on the screen, ignoring the creamy expanse of skin in his peripheral vision.
He had come in with her because despite the blood test, he still half believed there might not even be a baby. Tests could be wrong. Tests could be altered for the right amount of money. She could have had it all set up at the hospital.
And if she were pregnant, he had half hoped that the ultrasound would reveal that she was lying about the child being Aziz’s. The time of conception could have been wrong. Or the kid could have had stark red hair and looked obviously Irish, or whatever. What did he know? He’d never seen an ultrasound before.
But the date of conception was right on the money, during the time that Aziz had been in Baltimore. And, although the gray blob on the screen bore no resemblance to Aziz, Karim could hardly hold that against it. It barely looked human.
But here was the funny part, the thing he hadn’t seen coming: the longer he looked at the kid, the more he wanted to believe the woman who lay on the hospital bed with her eyes glued to the screen and tears misting her fine eyes.
“Nice, strong heartbeat. See that?” the radiologist asked him.
And he could. The heart pulsed rapidly in the middle of the screen. The image was mesmerizing. He didn’t like the softening it brought out in him.
Most likely, the woman was a money-hungry scammer.
The report he had received on her last night certainly pointed in that direction. Her family had been anything but upstanding and responsible. Her father left early on. Her mother dumped her and her siblings into the foster-care system. Julia floundered around for a while after that, then went to college on some sort of government program. Ended up with a nonprofit organization where she seemed tolerably successful.
He considered her alluring beauty, the crown of hair that to his disappointment she wore up today, that light in her eyes as she stared at the screen.
Hell, who wouldn’t have fallen for that? Maybe she’d done so well because she could flirt successful businessmen into large donations. But her track record hadn’t been enough. Her organization was downsizing and she was let go a month ago.
Pregnant and without any income. That had to be the definition of desperate for a woman.
Last night when he’d gotten the report, he’d been certain she was lying about the baby belonging to Aziz and was impatient for that DNA test. He wanted her to be gone.
Then she had come to his room, and in a moment of insanity, he just plain wanted her. He had wanted her to offer herself to him, and not only to prove him right about her character.
But now, looking at the child, the rapidly beating heart on the screen, suddenly he wanted there to be a baby from Aziz, someone left behind by his brother. He wanted the feisty, auburn-haired beauty to be true and not a conscienceless liar. He wanted her and her baby to belong to him.
Because of Aziz. He would take care of them for Aziz. There was so infuriatingly little he could do for his dead brother otherwise. Finding his killer was about it, which he would do even if he had to put his own life at risk in the process.
“Looks like you are just entering the second trimester. Everything looks well,” the radiologist said. She was a petite, modest woman who wore a veil that covered most of her head and a large part of her hospital uniform. “The baby seems healthy.”
“I called Dr. Jinan last night. She said something about the possibility of an amniocentesis,” he said.
“That would be done sometime between week sixteen and week twenty of the pregnancy. Is there a concern about genetic problems?” The technician looked up.
“An issue with paternity,” Karim growled, trying not to care that Julia flushed red with embarrassment.
“We don’t normally do it for that purpose.” The woman bowed her head.
“But it could provide confirmation?”
She nodded. “There are risks.”
“What risks?” Julia asked.
“In a small percentage of the cases, the procedure can cause miscarriage. But if you absolutely have to—”
“No,” he said at the same time as Julia, and hated the surprised look she gave him. Did it really stun her that much that he wouldn’t put the baby’s life at risk? “The procedure is not that necessary.”
She would just have to stay around until the baby was born and they could do a no-risk DNA test. He would have to find a way to get her to agree. Despite his threats, he couldn’t really hold her that long against her will, not in the current political climate. The country was trying hard to build strong diplomatic relations with the West, to prove that the place was safe for tourists and the culture prosperous and civilized. A rogue sheik kidnapping an American woman would definitely create damaging publicity.
She had come for money, he was pretty sure about that. All he needed was to figure out the price of her cooperation. They would discuss it over dinner tonight. He wasn’t buying her burning need to leave, anyhow. Could be she was just being coy.
The prospect of her prolonged stay and the continued annoyance it was sure to bring should have bothered him but, oddly, it didn’t. “So the child is healthy?”
“All looks as it should.”
Dr. Jinan walked in and greeted them warmly, looked at the screen over the technician’s head. “Everything is in order?”
“Perfect.”
“Since you did have a fall, I’d recommend another day of rest. No work, no exercise, no sexual relations,” Dr. Jinan was saying to Julia. “But if you continue to feel fine, you can resume all normal activity the day after tomorrow. If you have any problems, please don’t hesitate to call.” She gave Julia an encouraging smile.
Karim felt his shoulders relax, then tense again when his cell phone beeped. His chief of security. He turned off the ringer. He’d call the man back later. He didn’t want to miss anything.
Never in a million years would he have expected to find himself in a place like this. He was resigned not to marry and have children of his own. He’d tried back in his early twenties. But he’d seen the look in the girls’ eyes at the introductory meetings. The fathers were all willing. But he scared the women. And he didn’t want to take a wife who would be repulsed by the sight of him, would cringe every time she looked at him for the rest of their lives.
Julia Gardner was scared of him, which didn’t keep her from standing up to him, but she never once cringed.
“Can you tell if it’s a boy or a girl?” The question was barely audible, her voice filled with wonder. Her face was radiant. A deep joy shone through her skin, joy that could not be faked.
He could not remember when he’d felt such unrestrained, undiminished happiness, if ever. She was about glowing with it, her beauty intensified until he could barely look away from her. Maybe a veil for her, too, wouldn’t be a bad idea while she was in this country, although he didn’t plan on letting her wander around without him being close behind.
“Not yet.” The radiologist smiled. “Maybe in another month or so.”
“Oh.”
The child moved, looked like it was waving. Cute little bugger. Karim couldn’t help a smile, but schooled his features back into place before Julia could notice.
If she realized that he was softening, who knew what outrageous demands she could make. If the child was Aziz’s, Karim would take care of it, no question. If it wasn’t… He looked at the woman who was still staring at the screen, teary-eyed. Something flipped over in his chest at the sight.
She was in a desperate situation. Had to be, to go into a far-flung scheme like this and try to pass her child off on a man who wasn’t the father. He glanced at the screen again. If the DNA test came back proving Aziz had nothing to do with this, he could still see that she was able to raise the baby. Hell, he could afford it.
“Would you like some pictures?” the radiologist asked.
“I’m not sure.” She glanced down. “I can’t really pay for this.”
“We’ll take the pictures,” Karim said.
“We can also make a copy of the video—”
“Send it to my palace.”
She wouldn’t look at him as the radiologist wiped off her flat belly, which he’d been trying to avoid taking notice of. Sure didn’t look like new life was growing there. Maybe she wasn’t eating enough. Something he would have to pay extra attention to.
She didn’t talk to him until they were out of the examination room and going down the stairs. “Thank you. I don’t have to thank you, because you kidnapped me and bullied me into this whole visit, but it was a moment, and…otherwise I would have been alone. Which probably would have been a step up from going with a kidnapper. But if I consider that you’ll be my baby’s uncle—”
“You’re welcome.” Did she always babble on when she was emotional?
She gave him a dirty look. “One more thing.”
He drew up an eyebrow. Here we go. She was about to make her first demand.
“Please don’t humiliate me in front of people like that again.” Her words were issued softly.
Damned if he knew why he was feeling like a heartless bastard all of a sudden. His jaw muscles pulled tight. “Sorry.” He didn’t know which one of them was more surprised when the word was out.
“Wow, that sounded like it hurt. Was it your first time?” She grinned.
He glared back.
“You could just let me go,” she said when they were in the car, the air conditioner going.
“Too cold?” he asked as he pulled into traffic.
“Are you kidding? I have a furnace inside. I could be standing on the snowfields of Siberia and be hot. Pregnant bodies produce lots of energy.”
He hadn’t considered that. “I can’t let you go.” He turned down the boulevard.
“You’re a sheik. You can do anything you want.”
She had an answer for everything, didn’t she? Fine.
“I don’t want to let you go,” he said.
“Don’t you ever watch international TV? Your views on life and responsibility are pretty archaic. You don’t have to take care of me. I don’t belong to you.” As she said the last sentence, she enunciated each world deliberately.
“I don’t have time for TV.” He didn’t bother addressing her wild notion of her not belonging to him. “I want you to write me a list of what you need. Both for you and the baby. And you need to eat more,” he said just as a dark sedan cut off the car following them to get directly behind him. “I can bring a nutritionist on staff while you’re with us.”
He kept his attention on the sedan, his warning senses perking up. The car was moving with too much purpose, the driver unnecessarily aggressive.
“I don’t need a nutritionist. I eat healthy and I eat as much as I need. I won’t be staying that long anyway.”
She clearly resented his interference. And right now wasn’t the time to discuss just how far he was willing to go to make sure her pregnancy went as smoothly as possible.
He looked at the rearview mirror again. “Listen, we might—” Too late, he saw the gun. He swerved. “Watch out!” He pushed her down just as the rear window exploded.
He heard the shards hit leather, but his seat and headrest protected him. A glance confirmed the same for Julia. He stepped on the gas and the car lurched around the minivan in front of them. But his attackers—two men, their faces obstructed by tribal-style headdresses—followed.
He swore under his breath. Should have brought his security along. But he didn’t want anyone in his family or at the company to know about Julia Gardner and her claims yet. Didn’t want to deal with the questions about him going to a women’s clinic. If her story were untrue, he didn’t want to unnecessarily tarnish Aziz’s memory and bring his honor into question.
The car in front of him was slower than slow. For a moment, he swerved into upcoming traffic to get ahead, expecting Julia to scream at him. She didn’t, but horns beeped all around them. He chanced a glance at her when he’d returned to the right side. She sat pale-faced, hanging on to her seat with a white-knuckled grip.
He snapped his attention back to the road in front of him. “We can handle them.”
“We can’t handle them. Oh, my God. Call the police!” She squeaked the last word.
“I’m a little busy.” He growled under his breath, not at her, but at the men. By the time the police found them, this could be long over. Either he shook their attackers, and shook them fast, or one of their bullets would find its aim and end the chase.
He swore under his breath again. More stress was the last thing Julia needed in her condition. Not that he knew anything about her condition. But he would learn. For Aziz’s child. If—Damn, but the uncertainty drove him crazy. He wasn’t a patient man on his best day.
When they got out of here, he was going to get her to agree to stay in the country, then lock her up safely in his palace and not let her go until the baby was born. Maybe he would move to Aziz’s place for the next six months. Living under the same roof with Julia might be more than he could handle. Especially if she kept sneaking into his bedroom. He was concerned about that as much as he wished for it.
“Hang on.”
He was a good driver and put all his skills to use. For a moment or two, it seemed he might be able to put enough distance between his car and the assassins behind them.
Then a bicyclist, of all things, pulled in front of him, oblivious to danger. And he swerved, running the car up the cement rails of the shoulder, the right two tires leaving the ground. If they were to flip… He grabbed the steering wheel and maneuvered as best he could. He had to get the car back on the road. After an endless moment, he did manage.
“Are you all right?” He didn’t dare take his eye off the road to look at Julia.
“I’m not all right. People are trying to kill me!” She sounded shaken. “What is it with everyone? Is everybody completely nuts around here? What are they thinking? Just go!”
He did, and for a moment was sure that they would make it. But the second bullet was more accurate than the first. The force of it slamming into his flesh smacked him against the steering wheel.
They were out in the open. The bullets kept coming. He had a woman and an unborn child to protect. Pain spread through him. He’d been hit. He couldn’t tell how badly, and it was information he needed. All their lives depended on it.
Chapter Three
All his life he wanted to be a holy man. He had even changed his name to Mustafa, which meant chosen. And he indeed knew that Allah had chosen him when the only god trusted this most important task to him.
Old evil had returned into this world—old evil that offended the faith of his people and threatened their souls. He had sworn to destroy it and all who had come in contact with it, all who had been contaminated.
And the One God had been gracious and had given him followers, a tight sect of righteousness and light. They were all happy to die for the cause.
But so far, their work had been blessed and it had been Aziz Abdullah who had died. Mustafa smiled as he looked out over his garden. That first task had been done right. But they had much longer to go it seemed.
The evil objects had not been recovered. The world and his faith had not yet been saved. The idols had been passed on and contaminated yet another man: Karim Abdullah. But Karim, perhaps in his ignorance or already too tight in the grasp of the evil, did not realize that he needed to be purified.
It couldn’t be helped. Mustafa stroked his beard and closed his eyes against the strengthening sun. His free hand held his cell phone. The call would come soon. Karim, the guardian of evil, would be dead.
Then, without a powerful guardian, the idols would be found. Yes. He smiled into the sun. He and his faithful followers would most certainly triumph.
“HOLD ON TO THE steering wheel,” Karim said, pressing a hand to his wound, then pulling it away and looking at it, probably checking how badly he was bleeding.
Pretty badly. Then again, when it came to gunshot wounds, she wasn’t sure there was such a thing as “good.”
“The steering wheel,” he said more urgently.
Julia stared at him. Was he crazy? Apparently, because he was letting go already, just expecting her to grab on as he pulled a gun—a gun—from under his suit jacket with his still-functioning right hand.
She had no idea that he’d been armed. She hadn’t run around with armed men all that much before, smart girl that she’d been. Past tense, definitely. Everything that had been normal in her life had changed the second she’d set foot in Beharrain, and she was losing hope of being able to reclaim her old, sane life anytime soon.
First step was to stay alive.
She grabbed for the steering wheel as Karim twisted in his seat and returned fire.
Wow. Okay, guns were deafeningly loud when going off next to one’s ear. You learned new things every day, she thought. Except all this, including how to evade armed pursuit, was stuff she didn’t want to learn.
Insane. She really, really shouldn’t have come here. This was another world. She didn’t belong. She might not even survive it. Anger welled inside her, at her own stupidity for having come, and at the man next to her who could have let her go the night before, but hadn’t. She could be back in Baltimore by now. At that moment, she hated Karim with the same fierceness that she hated the situation she was in.
“You know, if you didn’t go around kidnapping people and bullying them into doing whatever you want, maybe everyone wouldn’t be trying to kill you!” She might have been yelling a little. She was a smidgen on the stressed side.
He squeezed off another shot. “Everyone isn’t trying to kill me. These are probably the same people who put the bomb in the car yesterday.”
“That’s comforting. I take it all back then,” she snapped. “Could you please turn back to the road?”
She glanced nervously at the stick shift. As long as he kept the speed steady, they were fine. But if they had to slow for anything, she had no idea what to do with it.
Not that slowing seemed to be in his immediate plans. He was pushing the gas pedal nearly to the bottom, making maneuvering difficult to the extreme. He’d almost flipped them a few minutes ago, and she had a feeling he might succeed yet. Another experience she would have preferred to leave out if it was all the same to the gun-happy sheik next to her.
He shot another round, then—miracle of miracles—did as she asked and took back the wheel. He floored the gas and was able to gain a little more distance between them and the car that followed.
“You could drop me off here. Anywhere.”
He didn’t bother with a response.
They zoomed by the entrance of the boulevard that his palace was on.
“Obviously, you have some problem areas in your life.” She looked behind them pointedly. The attackers were now three cars behind. “Maybe if you dealt with those, you’d have less time to meddle in the lives of others.”
“I don’t meddle. Stop nagging.” He executed another maneuver.
“I don’t nag. Where are we going?”
He frowned as if he hadn’t considered that. Okay, to be fair, he’d been kept pretty busy with getting shot and all.
“They’ll expect me to go back home and might head us off,” he said.
“MMPOIL?” There was security at the company. She’d seen a number of guards while asking around for Aziz.
“I don’t want to bring this fight to a building full of my employees. They—” he jerked his head to indicate the men who followed them “—might expect that, too. They’ve probably been following me long enough to know any place I could go. Wherever I go, someone might be there waiting.”
Death was waiting for them all around. Not a happy thought. Don’t panic. Breathe.
Her gaze fell on her purse in her lap, settling on the magnetic room cards visible in the front pocket. “We could go to my hotel.” An idea was forming slowly in her mind. She needed to get away, and not just from the men who were shooting at them, but away from it all. Her brain worked furiously at one possible solution.
He seemed to be considering her suggestion, looking in the rearview mirror. “The Hilton downtown.” He nodded.
So he knew where she’d been staying. Obviously, he had checked her out. What else had he found? It didn’t matter. The important thing was that he was going along with her idea.
He took the next exit and was there in minutes. They had been closer than she’d thought, not knowing the city. The sparkling high-rises, all glass and steel, were testaments to modern architecture, mixed in with ancient mosques and minarets. The sight was breathtaking but foreign, and she got disoriented too easily. The day before, after careful instruction from the concierge, she’d only been able to find MMPOIL after three tries, going around in circles for over half an hour.
In hindsight, it would have been better if she hadn’t found the place and Sheik Karim Abdullah at all.
“Do you have a card for the underground parking?” He cast a sideways glance at her as he pulled up to the gate.
She fished out her parking pass and handed it over to him. The gate opened. They were in. Her plan might work yet. Her number-one objective was to keep her baby safe. To achieve that, she would do whatever was necessary. And since being around Karim was the opposite of safe, what she needed was to get away from him.
Keep cool. Keep thinking. Give nothing away.
He glanced into the rearview mirror one more time before shutting off the motor and tugging off his blood-soaked jacket. His tie came next. He tried to wrap it around the wound. She got out and walked around to help him, doing her best not to look at all the blood as she pulled the silk tight.
Another scar, she thought, and was beginning to wonder just exactly what sort of life the Dark Sheik lived. She had a feeling she didn’t want to know. Had Aziz been like this when he was at home? Somehow she couldn’t picture it. She tied off the length of silk.
Karim didn’t wince. “Thank you.”
She stepped back. “It doesn’t mean I forgive you. I just don’t want to have to explain to my baby later why I let his uncle bleed to death.” He was lucky that family was so important to her.
The corner of his mouth twitched, which annoyed her. She hadn’t been trying to be funny. She meant every word she’d said.
He pulled the jacket back on, its dark fabric hiding most of the bloodstains. Not that it mattered in the end. They were lucky enough to make it to her room without running in to anyone, although the elevator ride was a tad tense on the way up.
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Dana Marton
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Sheikh Protector, электронная книга автора Dana Marton на английском языке, в жанре современная зарубежная литература