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When she stepped through the outer door, a sharp breeze tugged at her veil. With her bouquet tucked in the crook of her arm and Ben in the other, she didn’t have a hand free to steady the veil.
She forgot about the wind, however, when the baby gurgled happily. Holly beamed down at his small pink face.
A scuffing noise, very close, startled her into looking up. It was the dark-haired man. Right there, towering over her, so close she could see the hard purpose in his face.
“Wh-what do you want?” The words came out in a whisper.
She hadn’t realized anyone else was present until, from the other side, a pair of hands seized Ben. The second attacker frightened her even more. His marked face and cold expression were terrifying.
Things were happening too fast. It took forever to reach out for little Ben, and when she did, he had already been snatched out of reach. She tried to scream for help, but her throat clamped down.
Where was everybody? Why didn’t Trevor come? What did these men want with her baby?
They turned to flee. With a sob, Holly leaped after them.
Chapter Two
The sheikh had thought himself prepared for any development. But he had not anticipated that this woman would throw herself into the car through its half-open rear door when it was already beginning to move.
“Push her out!” cried Zahad, who had thrust the baby into a basket on the floor, and was stepping on the gas. “Close the door!”
The veil and attached circlet of flowers fell to the pavement as the woman clutched at Sharif. “Give me my baby! Give him back!”
“We will not harm him!” Didn’t she realize who they must be? “Zahad, stop and let me remove her.”
“No!” The woman held fast to Sharif’s arm. “I won’t leave him!”
“You must close the door!” said his aide. “We are attracting attention, and I cannot drive properly.”
As a veteran of many battles, the sheikh would not hesitate to attack a foe. He saw no justification, however, for shoving Holly Rivers from a moving car.
Instead, he yanked her onto the seat beside him, reached past her and slammed the door. Immediately, his cousin whipped onto a street to their right. He swerved again, setting a complicated course in case of pursuit.
As the woman beside him straightened herself, Sharif got a better look at her face. The amber eyes were wide with alarm, and the dishevelled red hair tumbled around her shoulders as if she had newly arisen from bed.
A stunning woman. In spite of himself, he could not help wishing she were his.
Perhaps he had been unfair. In his anger, Sharif realized, he had not considered how strong the surrogate’s attachment to the infant might be. Under other circumstances, such mother love would be admirable.
“We do not intend to harm you,” he said. “We can release you here if you like.”
The woman ignored the offer. “What do you want, a ransom?” Her voice trembled. “I don’t have any money but my fiancé does.”
“You think we are kidnappers?” She had no sense at all. “You insult us!”
“In a sense, you must admit, we are kidnappers,” Zahad said with his usual maddening exactitude.
“You exaggerate!” Sharif returned.
“It is a point of fact,” his cousin replied, and snapped the sedan around another corner so abruptly that the surrogate fell onto the sheikh’s lap.
It had been a long time since Sharif held a woman in his arms. Perhaps this long abstinence explained why he found himself so keenly aware of every soft curve pressed against his body. Of the pulse of Holly’s throat, and the sound of her breathing, and the light sweet scent of her.
He reminded himself that this woman had cheated him and still posed a threat to his people’s future. And to his right to share his son’s life.
“Let me go!” she gasped.
“I am not restraining you,” Sharif replied.
Scrambling onto the seat, she said, “Of course you’re restraining me! You’re holding my child hostage!”
“Hostage?” He raised an eyebrow. “You should not be surprised that I expect you to make good on your bargain.”
“What bargain?” She scooted as far from him as the space allowed. “No bargain gives you the right to assault me at my wedding and snatch Ben! Where have you put him?”
“The baby is in a basket on the floor beside me,” Zahad said. “He is smiling. I think he will like to drive fast when he grows up.”
“He should be in a car seat!” Holly said. “It’s the law!”
Her outrage startled a chuckle from Sharif. The woman certainly had spirit! “And you have observed that we are great devotees of the law?”
From her tightened fists, he got the impression she would like to teach him respect, for the law and for a few other things as well. What a splendid bride she would make for a desert warrior! But not for him.
As Zahad slowed, the sheikh saw that they had reached a broad thoroughfare. Without stopping for the red light, he turned right and accelerated ahead of a bus.
Holly flinched. “You’re going to get us killed! There’s a reason why you’re supposed to stop for red lights, even if you don’t care about the law!”
“As a point of fact, we do care about the law,” said Sharif. “And about civil contracts. It is unfortunate your concern does not extend to those.”
“Contracts?” She blinked at him. “What are you talking about?” Some of the fight evaporated from her bunched muscles. “Does Jazz owe you money?”
“Who is Jazz?” he asked.
“My sister.”
He remembered the stocky woman at the church. “I know nothing of your sister.”
The woman swallowed. “You haven’t hurt her?”
This conversation made no sense. The sister had not even come outside, so how could he have hurt her? “Of course not.”
“Then—then you’re not in any real trouble yet. Just give me the baby and let us go.” Tears glittered in Holly’s eyes. With her full lips parted, she looked vulnerable and very desirable.
She was a fool if she believed he would part with his son because of a woman’s tears. “You are wasting your breath.”
“Get down!” shouted Zahad, and the car veered. Without waiting for an explanation, the sheikh grabbed Holly and flattened them both on the seat.
The left-hand passenger window exploded. Bits of glass sprayed across the exposed skin of Sharif’s neck.
“The boy?” he demanded. “Is he hurt?”
“He is fine,” his cousin said.
“Someone’s shooting at us?” Judging by the pitch of her voice, Holly Rivers teetered on the edge of hysteria.
He doubted the police would be so reckless, with a woman and child in the car. “Perhaps this is how your groom thinks to reclaim you.”
“Trevor wouldn’t do that!”
“I agree, it is not him.” Zahad sped through traffic. “The attorney drives a new Cadillac. We are being chased by an old sedan with dark windows.”
“It seems my enemies have tracked us,” Sharif muttered.
“What enemies?” Holly was shaking. “Who are you guys, anyway?”
It was an odd question for a woman who had agreed of her own free will to bear his child. “We will discuss that later,” said Sharif. “By then, I think the answer will come to you.”
A series of furious zigzags climaxed in a swift ascent and rapid acceleration. They had entered the freeway.
Zahad checked his rearview mirror. “Our pursuers are dropping back. There is a highway patrol car… They have turned back.”
Cautiously, Sharif helped Holly sit up. “How is the baby now?”
“Sleeping,” said his cousin.
A moment later, he discovered that he should not have taken his attention from the woman. The combination of a shattered window and an approaching highway patrol car proved irresistible.
“Help!” she screamed, leaning out. “I’ve been kidnapped!”
The wind tore away her words. From his pocket, Sharif pulled a dampened cloth that Zahad had provided for such an emergency.
Clamping it over the woman’s face, he hauled her back into the car. She struggled briefly, then sagged.
When he was certain she slept, Sharif removed the cloth. Although his cousin had promised the dose was not harmful, he was relieved to hear her steady if shallow breathing. A check of the patrol car showed that it had surged ahead in the fast lane, paying them no attention.
“I will pull over at the next exit,” Zahad said. “We must leave her.”
“Lying by the road, unconscious?” The sheikh shook his head. “Not unless we can find a hospital.”
“So you will walk in there and say, ‘Excuse me, please take this woman, goodbye?”’ His cousin grimaced in the rearview mirror. “We have problems, my friend, and we do not need to add to them.”
“We have no problems that will not be solved by flying home,” Sharif said.
His cousin passed a slow-moving panel truck. “Think, my friend. Maimun’s surviving zealots are not stupid. They found us near the church. That means perhaps they can find us again.”
Reluctantly, Sharif conceded the point. “They must have learned of Ms. Rivers’s marriage, as we did. So they know about her, and therefore about my son.”
“Someone has been tracking our comings and goings,” his aide said. “Possibly an employee of the airlines or the airport in Alqedar. They must have tracked me on my last visit here.”
“Then they also know of our return reservations.” Sharif shook his head, impatient with these obstacles. “So we simply take a circuitous route. Fly from Los Angeles to, say, London. Then to Riyadh…”
Zahad grimaced. “I advise that we do our homework first. We have no idea how many of them there are, or how well-placed. We need more information before we dare to appear in public.”
Sharif started to argue. But he knew his cousin was right. They were stuck here, at least for a while.
Another thought hit him. “Then we must keep Ms. Rivers in our custody until we leave. Otherwise, she would give the police too much information.”
“Unfortunately, you are right.” Zahad punched the radio controls. “Let us see if we have yet made the news reports.”
As they listened to sports headlines, Holly snuggled against Sharif’s shoulder. The scent of flowers clung to her, along with a trace of baby powder. She seemed less a woman than a nymph, dozing in a cloud of red hair.
A newscaster’s voice broke through the sheikh’s thoughts. “Police in Harbor View say a bride has been kidnapped moments before her wedding. This happened less than fifteen minutes ago outside the First Community Harbor View Church.”
“They are quick with their news,” Zahad observed.
“The police no doubt want the public to watch for us,” Sharif said.
“The woman, whose identity is being withheld, has collar-length auburn hair and is wearing an ivory wedding gown,” said the announcer. “A witness reported seeing her forced into a tan car driven by two men with dark hair and short beards. We’ll keep you posted as this story develops.”
When a commercial came on, Zahad smacked the steering wheel. “What witness? I saw no one! Americans are too nosy.”
“We made a spectacle of ourselves, as I recall,” the sheikh said. “Well, we will need to change our appearance as soon as we reach the safe house.”
“That is so.” Zahad drove for a time in silence.
Sharif wondered if, once Holly awoke, he could persuade her to admit that he was entitled to his son. Perhaps, in exchange for her immediate release, she would help them settle the matter with the police.
Then he could focus on the would-be assassins. And on forgetting a clear-eyed woman with fiery hair and flower-scented skin.
On the radio, the announcer returned. “Here’s an update on that kidnapping of a bride in Harbor View. Apparently her three-month-old nephew was also abducted. Police are already investigating the earlier disappearance of the child’s mother.”
A cold chill swept over Sharif. Holly Jeannette Rivers wasn’t the mother of his child. He had taken the wrong woman.
HOLLY’S HEAD felt as if someone had stuffed it with wool, and her wrists chafed. Through the thin mattress, springs and crossbars dug into her back.
She struggled to connect the scattered images in her brain. Alice and the flowers. Trevor, giving her that familiar lopsided grin. The church courtyard, with clouds gathering overhead.
A man stood in the alley, his hands thrust in pockets set into the front of his sweatshirt. Despite his jeans and baseball cap, his beard and his intensity made him seem foreign.
And then—a madly swerving car. And the man, holding her.
The hardness of his body had imprinted itself on her memory. In his grip, she’d felt a reluctant stirring of something she didn’t want to name. Something she’d never felt for Trevor.
Then had come the shock of being yanked onto the seat. Had she hit her head? Had she been shot? Anguished, she tried to force herself awake, but her eyelids stuck.
She felt the bite of winter air, tinged with waves of warmth and laced with the aroma of burning wood. Not far off, a low voice murmured in a language she didn’t understand.
Then something erased all other perceptions. It was the sound of Ben gurgling and cooing.
