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Frustrated, Holly tried to sit up, and discovered that her hands and feet were tied. When she managed to open her eyes, moisture blurred her vision until she blinked twice to clear it.
Her first impression was of a rustic cabin. She lay on a fold-out couch in an alcove, beyond which she could see a wood-paneled room with blinds on the windows. A table lamp was augmented by the flickering of an unseen fire.
She inched along the mattress until a large stone fireplace came into view. On a small table nearby, a blanket had been spread. Atop it lay the tiny figure of Ben, his arms waving.
One glimpse of the man towering over him made Holly go rigid.
Although the beard and mustache were gone, the piercing gaze belonged unmistakably to the man who had attacked her in the churchyard. Instead of jeans, he wore a white headdress and robe that made him look utterly alien.
Her first, confused reaction was that a sheikh had ridden out of some old movie. Reality was much more terrifying. The man who had her and Ben at his mercy must be some kind of delusional maniac.
She prayed that he wouldn’t notice she was awake. Surely she could find a way to untie her hands and rescue her nephew.
Holly studied the cord binding her. There was no slack, and no apparent weakness in the rope, either.
Cautiously, she twisted her wrists. The cord bit harder. Holly pressed her lips together to keep from crying out.
Her captor paid her no attention. But he must be doing something that Ben didn’t like, because the baby began squalling.
“Don’t hurt him!” she called. “If you have to torture someone, do it to me!”
The dark man looked up, and she noticed a white object in his hand. A diaper. For heaven’s sake, he was trying to change the baby!
If Holly hadn’t been so frightened, she might have found his expression comical. It was the kind of befuddled expression Trevor had worn once when she thrust Ben into his arms so she could answer a phone call.
“So, you are awake,” he said. “I am sorry I was forced to drug you. Do you have any pain?”
“I’m just…sleepy.” Her voice sounded hollow. “What time is it?”
“A little past seven.”
Holly groaned. Her wedding was ruined. The guests, Trevor, Alice. What must they think?
“Believe me, I have no intention of torturing anyone.” Her captor indicated her ties. “The sooner I can return you to your bridegroom, the better, but in the meantime certain precautions were regrettably necessary.”
Holly had to admit that, clean-shaven, his face was handsome in a thoroughly masculine way, and his expression not unkind. But what about the outlandish costume?
“Why are you wearing that?” she asked.
He smoothed down his robe. “I would not go outside dressed this way, not in your country. But I wanted my son to see me as I really am.”
“Your—?” She didn’t need to finish the question. Not when she’d finally realized why those penetrating eyes looked so familiar.
They were Ben’s eyes.
“You’re his father,” she whispered. “Oh, Lord.” Through the lingering effects of medication, her brain churned over this disturbing discovery. She’d found Jazz’s secret lover, or, rather, he’d found her and Ben. “What have you done with my sister?”
The man returned his attention to the baby. “Nothing. I thought you were her.”
“What?” Holly made the mistake of trying to push herself up. The cords tightened again, making her wince. “How could you?”
“I know her only from a photograph. It was arranged through a clinic. She did not tell you?” He put one hand beneath the baby’s backside and tried to raise his bottom while sliding the diaper beneath it.
Free-spirited Jazz would never have agreed to bear this child for pay! “I don’t believe you. Why would my sister want to be a surrogate mother?”
“I was told she wanted money to make a demonstration recording.” He broke off as Ben kicked lustily, flinging one of his booties into a corner and dislodging the diaper from the man’s grip.
“You’re doing that wrong!”
“Evidently.” Keeping one hand on the baby, the man leaned back and squinted at the child. “It appears to be a problem of structural engineering.”
“You’re an engineer?” Holly needed to make sense of this situation, and to learn anything she could.
“I am many things,” the man replied enigmatically. “But I am not an abuser of women. I will release you from your bonds if you will care for my son. As you have pointed out, I don’t seem to be doing very well at it.”
His accent sounded Middle Eastern. “Where are you from?”
“Your sister told you nothing of me?” Wrapping the fussing baby in the blanket, he carried him, along with the diaper, to Holly.
“Nothing at all. And believe me, I tried to find out who the father was.” She started to reach for Ben, and stopped with a gasp.
The man set the baby on the center of the bed. “My cousin Zahad must have tied the rope too tightly. He was in a hurry.”
At close range, she could see small cuts on the man’s neck from where shards of glass had hit him. Other than that, his skin had a smooth olive cast, with some roughness where he’d recently shaved.
The man smelled of shampoo, and his thick hair, what she could see of it, was damp, so he must have showered since they arrived. Yet there was an under-current of wild musk about him that no soap could wash away.
From inside the robe flashed a knife. Holly scarcely had time to register the danger before the man sliced the cord between her wrists, then the one at her ankles. The knife disappeared into the folds of cloth.
Prickles of agonizing sensation shot through her hands and feet. “Your cousin—that would be the driver? Is he here?”
“He thought it best to stay in a different place.” The bed dipped as the man sat beside her. With a shiver, Holly saw the smoldering fire in his gaze as he watched her. “Although this canyon is remote, if he and I were seen together, it might draw suspicion.”
“You mean from the police?” Although her captor spoke calmly, she reminded herself that law-abiding men didn’t go around snatching brides and babies.
“Yes. Among others.” Before she could query further, the man said, “I don’t think it is good for the boy to lie here in only his little shirt. Do you know how to put on a diaper?”
“I should hope so.” She flexed her stinging limbs. “But it might take me a minute to get full sensation back in my hands. Thanks to your overeager cousin.”
“He takes pride in his thoroughness,” the man said.
“He should take a little more pride in showing consideration for others!” she flared.
Her captor smiled. Pure white teeth gleamed against his tanned skin. “You sound like my cousin Amy. She finds fault with Zahad also.”
The prickly sensations eased. Skillfully, Holly caught the baby’s ankles in her left hand, hoisted up his bottom and slid the diaper into place. Ben chuckled and reached for her.
“Amazing,” said the man in the sheikh’s robe. “You do that with such ease. And he is clearly attached to you.”
“He knows I love him.” Holly cradled the baby in her arms.
The man watched them, his expression unreadable. “I, too, love him.”
“How can you, when you don’t even know him?”
“And you think you do?” The man unfolded himself from the bed and began to pace, his restless energy filling the room. “What do you know of this boy’s history? Of his heritage or his future? To you, he is a tiny baby, but someday he will be a great man!”
“He’ll be whatever he wants to be. You can’t force a child to meet someone else’s expectations.” Holly held Ben close. There no longer seemed to be any point in safeguarding her wedding dress, which was thoroughly rumpled and flecked with blood from Sharif’s injuries.
“Your sister understood my son’s importance, according to the clinic’s director,” said her companion.
“The clinic,” she repeated. “This is so unlike Jazz.”
“Jazz?”
“My sister. It’s short for Hannah Jasmine,” she said. “We’ve called her that since she was a kid. She hated going to the doctor. And she wasn’t even close to what you might call maternal.”
Outside, something thwacked against a window. Holly’s heart skittered into her throat.
Moving quickly and silently, her captor switched off the lamp. As its circular glow faded, scarlet fire-light crept eerily across the walls.
“Lie down!” the man whispered as he edged toward the window.
Holly obeyed, shielding Ben with her body. Had the people who’d fired at their car found the cabin as well? Or could it be the police?
The scraping noise returned, following by a pattering on the roof. Her captor lifted a slat of blinds and peered into the night.
Finally, he turned the lamp back on. “It was a branch in the wind. The rain has started, as you can hear. It should be quite a storm.”
Holly swallowed her disappointment. She had hoped it was the police coming to rescue her and Ben. But at least it wasn’t armed assailants, either.
“Who shot at us earlier?” she asked. “And who are you? I don’t even know your name.”
The man drew himself up proudly. Somehow his confident air made his robe and headdress appear less outlandish. In fact, Holly could have sworn they suited him better than the jeans and sweatshirt he’d worn that afternoon.
“I am Sheikh Sharif Al-Khalil of Alqedar.” He delivered this bizarre information without a trace of self-consciousness. “That is a small nation in south-central Arabia, in case you do not know. Although my son has been born in America, I have every right to take him home.”
The words “sheikh” and “Arabia” seemed like phrases from a fairy tale. “Who are you really?”
An eyebrow lifted, and then he laughed. “You do not believe me? I’m not surprised. But it is true.”
She tried a different tack. “Ben was born here. That makes him a U.S. citizen. You can’t just whisk him off, not if his mother opposes it.”
The man shrugged. “It seems that his mother has found better ways to occupy her time.”
“I’m his next closest relative!”
“And you would have married yourself a lawyer to defend your so-called rights,” he observed with a trace of sarcasm. “How very American of you.”
Although the implication infuriated Holly, she wouldn’t stoop to debate it. “What’s between Trevor and me is none of your business. And even if you are a sheikh and Ben really is your son, nothing gives you the right to hold me prisoner!”
“You chose to jump in the car with us. That was your decision.” The man regarded her with what might have been sympathy, or merely irony. “I am afraid I cannot let you go yet, Ms. Rivers, even though it was to be your wedding night. Perhaps I can make it up to you.”
Her throat tightened.
He regarded her with amusement. “I did not mean that literally, but it could be arranged.”
He was a sheikh, but more importantly, he was a leader from a foreign country. If he possessed diplomatic immunity, Holly thought in a burst of fear, he could do anything he wanted, and get away with it.
Chapter Three
Sharif did not understand why, after all these years, he was suddenly seized with the desire to possess a woman. Why at this perilous time, when he needed to stay alert, and why this defiant woman?
From the moment he’d held her in the car, Holly had aroused a response like no woman since Yona. And now, in the rise and fall of her breasts as she stared at him, he read a rising passion that matched his own.
She was fighting her desire in vain. He knew from his younger days what it took to seduce a woman, and this one lay within his power. All it would take was the touch of his lips against her face and throat, and the hard commanding movements of his body, and he could bring them both to ecstasy.
Holly’s eyes widened. With fear or longing, or both? “Don’t,” she whispered. “Please.”
She was, the sheikh reminded himself sharply, another man’s bride. She was also a threat to his ability to take his son back to Alqedar.
Stiffly, he drew back. “You have nothing to fear. I told you, I am not an abuser of women.”
“And you really don’t know what’s happened to my sister?” Even at this tense moment, Holly Rivers was more concerned for the missing woman than for herself, he saw with reluctant admiration.
“I wish I did.” Sharif bent and ran one finger along his son’s cheek. “It would be easier to straighten out this mess if she were here. Unless she intended, as I feared, to seek custody.”
“I don’t know what she intended.” The young woman brushed back a wave of red hair that had fallen across her temple. “I haven’t seen her in three months, since before Ben was born.”
“Then how did you get him?”
“A friend of hers brought him, a musician named Griff Goldbar. He said she would come back in a few days. That was over a month ago.”
About that time, the clinic owner had stopped taking Zahad’s calls. Such a coincidence must be meaningful. “Do you know a woman named Noreen Wheaton?”
“No, why?”
“She’s the head of the clinic that hired your sister,” he said. “If you’ve been searching for Jasmine, surely you found some record of the surrogacy arrangement.”
Holly’s expression grew troubled. “Jazz must have taken her contract with her. I cleaned out her room, but there weren’t any papers from a clinic.” The baby began to squirm. “I think he’s hungry.”
“I’ll get the formula.” Sharif went to fetch the bag that Aunt Selima had packed.
As he crossed the cabin, he wondered why the clinic director had been reluctant to talk to Zahad. Had there been threats against the clinic and, if so, from whom? With the police after him, Sharif could hardly contact Mrs. Wheaton to ask her directly.
Or perhaps he was looking in the wrong direction. The woman, Jasmine, might have enemies of her own. Her disappearance might bear no relationship to Sharif or to the clinic.
On his way back to the alcove, he tuned the television set to an all-news station, grateful that, in California, even remote cabins came equipped with TV service. At the moment, however, the report concerned local politics.
