Sheikh Protector

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“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.