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“No time to set up the satellite before the storm.” Locating the two-hundred-pound piece of equipment then dragging it back onto the roof would take considerable effort. He glanced at Sara and found her squaring her slim shoulders.
“I still think you should call Sheik Abdullah as soon as we can. He should be able to protect us.” She seemed confident of that, coming back to it once again.
Everyone always thought that the sheik could do everything. But he hadn’t been able to protect his family, he hadn’t been able to protect his people, and there was a good chance he wouldn’t be able to protect her.
And that he regretted profoundly.
“I am the sheik,” he said.
Chapter Four
“What sheik?” She stared at him dumbfounded. He didn’t look like a sheik. The first time she’d seen him—that morning in his Western-cut suit, with his unaccented English—she’d thought he might be American.
“Tariq Abdullah.”
Sheik Abdullah! Oh, God. “But—If you’re the sheik, why didn’t they take you to be ransomed? Why take Husam?”
He shrugged. “They had no way of knowing I would be coming along. Could be they didn’t recognize me in the heat of the battle. They had a goal and they were focused on that.” He glanced toward the main entrance. “I’m going to make sure you get on a flight out of here as soon as possible.”
Outside, the wind was swirling the sand.
“The bandits took my passport,” she said, dazed. In novels, sheiks usually carried the soon-to-be-ravished heroines to their royal tent. Here she was, at a grim construction site, sitting on a blanket made in China.
“Then you will be taken to the U.S. embassy. They’ll handle everything.” He looked out over the desert where the wind was picking up.
Sheik Abdullah. She took a deep breath and blew it out, wondering feverishly if she’d said anything to offend him so far. If she messed up the deal she’d come here for … She was thinking for a moment as if everything was business as usual. Then pain hit her in the solar plexus as she remembered Jeff, whom some protective instinct had pushed out of her mind, so she could function. Images flooded her brain—of blood-soaked sand—and the job and the contract became insignificant.
Jeff was gone. She was alive only because of Tariq. Sheik Tariq.
“Thank you for saving my life,” she said. “Sheik.”
He turned back to her, crooked his head and actually smiled. Not the full-blown thing—heaven knew they had little to smile about—but a self-deprecating stretch of masculine lips over gleaming white teeth. Her breath got stuck under her breastbone.
“I think, all things considered, calling me Tariq would be fine. I hope I haven’t hurt you much while trying to help.”
“Good choice, considering the alternative.” She could barely feel the bump at the back of her head. She didn’t want to think about what would have become of her by now if the bandits had taken her.
Sheik Tariq Abdullah. She was going to need a few seconds to process that.
“You didn’t tell me.”
“At first I wasn’t sure I could trust you.”
“Understandable.”
He was nothing like she had expected. She’d been resigned to not meeting Sheik Abdullah at all. He was famous for being reclusive, an astute businessman who managed his tribe’s assets with little personal publicity. Supposedly, a person could be in a business relationship with one of his companies for years and never once see him.
As a man, Tariq went beyond a woman’s wildest fantasies. He was perhaps the most physically appealing male she had ever met, although he was not handsome in a conventional way. She found the energy that radiated from him mesmerizing. His movements betrayed strength and confidence. But the whole sheik business … She had a hard time picturing that. Where were his camels and his flowing robes, his tents and his Bedouin tribesmen?
“Why didn’t we go to your tribe’s camp instead of here?” She would have felt safer with people around them, especially the sheik’s desert warriors.
The look on his face was one of faint amusement. “Except for a few small groups, my tribe rarely camps anymore, unless on a hunting trip for sport. They live in towns and villages south of Tihrin.”
A day ago, hearing that would have been a major disappointment to her romantic soul. At the moment, however, she had bigger things to worry about. Still, she couldn’t let it go without a question. “There are no more Bedouin?” But she’d seen pictures in the tourist guides.
“Bedu. We call ourselves Bedu. Foreigners call us Bedouin. Some tribes still have nomadic groups. I don’t know any tribes that live fully in the desert anymore. Mostly, they come and go.” He watched her, raising a dark eyebrow. “This saddens you?”
Was she that transparent? “I suppose. Doesn’t it sadden you?”
He shrugged. “I grew up in a palace in Tihrin, then was sent abroad. I never lived in the desert.”
So much for her sheik-flying-over-the-sand-dunes-on-the-back-of-his-black-Arabian-stallion fantasies. But one word caught her attention. “Palace?”
The expression on his face hardened as he walked away from the window. “My father was the king. And after him, my half brother,” he said. “We’d better secure this place before the storm hits. We don’t have long. See what you can do in here. I’ll search outside for anything we might be able to use for protection.”
Tariq was royalty? Sara knew that the term sheik meant prince or king, but also knew that it wasn’t strictly that way in real life. The guy who sold carpets in a small store across from her hotel called himself Sheik Jumah. She’d figured Sheik Abdullah was a tribal chief. She had no idea he was the son of a king.
She was staring at Tariq, slack-jawed.
“Sara?”
“Yes?”
“You know, I was really starting to like you. Don’t go all weird on me now.”
He was starting to like her! She resisted some deeply buried teenage instinct to ask, In what way? “No problem.”
He was starting to like her. Yeah, that went a long way toward settling her down. Not.
Maybe she could gather her thoughts and act nonchalant by the time he returned. He seemed to be aiming for the door, picking up the tire iron on his way.
“You must be related to the current king then,” she said without meaning to, her thoughts rambling.
“The king is my cousin. My grandfather was a powerful king and he had many sons.”
“What happened to your father and your half brother?” Did kings retire? She’d read up on the country’s economics with a special eye toward the petroleum industry, but hadn’t spent time on its history.
He stopped on the threshold, and she watched his face darken, his jaw tightening. “They were killed. Bad luck seems to be the only dependable companion for the men in my family. You could say we’re cursed with it.”
HE CAUGHT SIGHT of a shadowy, moving shape between buildings to his left as he stepped outside their shelter. Too small to be a man. Tariq squinted against the sun as he gripped the tire iron and moved closer, keeping undercover, ready to fight.
A hyena.
The animal watched him instead of running away, simply skirted him when he got closer. Tariq shouted and clapped. It growled at him, ribs sticking out under the shaggy fur. Could be trouble yet. They would definitely need that fire during the night. The villa didn’t have a door, nothing to keep uninvited visitors out. And the hyena might not be their biggest problem. Tariq thought of the tire tracks in the sand as he moved on.
The mangy beast followed.
If there was to be a fight, he hoped to regain his full strength before it happened. He hadn’t lost a dangerous amount of blood, but enough to slow him down. He didn’t like the feeling.
He shook the tire iron at the animal and considered throwing the heavy weapon, then thought better of it as the hyena snapped its powerful jaws at him. Leaving himself unarmed didn’t seem smart.
Those jaws could crush his bones with laughable ease. They went along with the beast’s superacidic stomach, which could digest his whole prey—fur, flesh, bones, down to the last split hoof. If hyenas had a life philosophy, it had to be along the lines of “waste not, want not.”
Sara would have to be told to stay inside.
Sara Reeves.
Tariq had had lovers—both innocent and worldly-wise. But he’d never experienced the instant connection and overpowering attraction he felt for her. From the first moment in that elevator …
He’d known who she was. He kept a close eye on what business was being conducted at MMPOIL each day. He hadn’t meant to meet her—that had been fate. But once he did, he’d had to join her on the trip to the wells, had to be near her again. He’d been thinking about asking her and Jeff Myers to dinner that evening, just so he could spend time in her company.
He had her company now. But he regretted the circumstances, and wished more than anything to keep her safe. It would be best for her if she left the country. Which she was eager to do, no doubt.
First he would get her to the embassy, then mount an investigation. He would find Husam and learn what was going on. He would bring the murderers to justice. But when he was done with that, he would go and find Sara Reeves again.
He went back to the workers’ trailers and broke open a few more locks, got all the blankets he could find, grabbing a box of nails, too. When he returned to Sara, she was standing at the window as if mesmerized by the darkening horizon to the east.
“Storm’s almost here.” He dropped his load onto the floor. “See if you can seal up the windows.” He went to the area that would be the bathroom and started shoveling sand out of the sunken tub, got it empty in only a few minutes.
“What are you doing?” She pulled a blanket from the pile.
“We’ll be stuck here for a while. And we could both use a bath.” The pool-like tub was four times the size of an ordinary bathtub, designed to be luxurious. It would take him a number of trips, carrying water, but he should be able to fill it at least partially. Cleaning up would give them something to do while they waited out the storm. Her clothes were covered in dry blood, and his wound needed tending.
“Stay inside and keep this close.” He carried the tire iron to her. “You can use this as a hammer. Or a weapon. There’s a hyena somewhere outside.”
Her eyes went wide.
“If it tries to come in, just give me a shout.”
“Would it attack?”
“Probably not yet. Assessing us for now. It’s a night hunter, and more likely to make a move then. I’ll get the fire going as soon as I’m done with this.”
He dumped whatever water was left in the pot into the pool, then went to get more. As he did, he heard the sound of hammering—Sara nailing blankets over the window holes in the walls. She was making good progress. He hoped to do the same. He figured they had fifteen minutes at most before the storm hit.
THE WIND HOWLED like a wild animal, trying to get into their firelit shelter. The doorway was blanketed off, the fire a safe distance inside, an opening in the ceiling for the not-yet-built staircase providing a way for the smoke to get out.
Tariq sat on the opposite side of the dividing wall from Sara and the bath. His back flat against the concrete, he stared ahead into the semidarkness.
The sandstorm had considerably dimmed the sun. Whatever light got through the swirling sands was blocked by the blankets over the windows, and the planks of wood he’d nailed up on the windward side so the blankets wouldn’t be blown off. On the other sides, the nails were sufficient to hold the fabric, which kept the fine sand out.
“Why were you going to the well?” she asked, hidden from sight by the wall. The sounds of water splashing made his imagination run wild.
“My youngest brother, Aziz, called. He said he had something important he wanted to talk to me about.” And he hadn’t been willing to say it over the phone. Did he know about the bandits? “I wanted to hear what he had to say,” he said, telling Sara the partial truth. He had gone because of Aziz’s call, but he could have gone in a separate car under separate guard. He hadn’t. He had wanted to see more of the beautiful woman he’d met in the elevator.
“How many brothers do you have?”
“Just two. Twins. Five years younger.”
“I thought a sheik would have his own private chopper.”
“Aziz took it to the new well this morning.” Tariq had been planning on using the other one. Whoever else needed it would have been simply delayed an hour while the helicopter flew him out, then came back in for another turn. But the corporate chopper had been out of commission, and he’d met Sara in the elevator and been told shortly after about the two Hummers going out. And so, drawn by her, he’d come along for the ride.
Not the only last-minute addition to the convoy, it seemed.
He thought about Husam, going over each and every time he’d seen the man the last few months, every word they had exchanged, every project Husam had been involved in. Had he ever mentioned enemies? Had Omar? Tariq couldn’t recall any such instance, so he thought harder. But he still couldn’t completely block out the sounds of water splashing on the other side of the wall.
It’d been a long while since he’d had time to think about a woman. And the customs of his country made things difficult in the extreme, anyway. Had he spent any time in the company of an unattached Beharrainian of the opposite sex, he would have been expected to marry her. He was sheik, his every movement closely watched.
He had considered marriage for the sake of his tribe. He was willing to make any sacrifice for his people, even that. Holding an elaborate wedding, experiencing the blessing of children … Would it have been enough to forge them together again, to make them accept him, think of him as one of their own at last?
Trouble was, he wasn’t thinking of himself as one of them—not always. His mother’s choice to send him out of the country and save his life had also cut him off from his roots, a decision that had been made for him and later proved to be as much a curse as a blessing.
“I really needed this,” Sara was saying from the other side of the wall.
Even over the wind’s howling, he could hear when she stood and stepped out of the pool, the water splashing onto the tiles. His groin tightened and he cursed his body’s inconvenient awareness of her. He drew a slow, controlled breath, then let it out.
“Okay. Your turn,” she called out after a minute.
He pushed himself to his feet and tried to clear his head as he came around the wall. At the sight of her, he felt as if he’d been thrown from a camel, a blow he had experienced only once, as a child, but still vividly remembered. There was no air in his lungs, none in the room, it seemed.
She stood by her soiled, discarded clothes, facing away from him, wrapped in nothing but a blanket. And still she looked as regal as an Egyptian queen, her wet hair tumbling down her shoulders to the middle of her back. The luxurious amount of it took him by surprise; she’d kept it hidden in a simple chignon before.
The light of the flames danced along her skin, playing on the drops of water on her shoulders.
She turned and caught his gaze, sensed his dangerous mood it seemed, because she stilled for a moment. The air thickened, as if the energy of the sandstorm that raged around them had filtered through the walls and filled the room.
Then she broke away and hurried around him to the other side of the wall, giving him a wide berth.
For a few seconds, Tariq simply stood there, breathing hard. Then he stripped off his clothes, wincing as he pulled at his shirt. The blood had dried, the silk stuck to the wound.
He hadn’t realized how tired he was until he slid into the water, sinking in up to his neck.
The water that had been clear after her bath was now a murky red. He washed the wound first, then held that arm out as he cleaned the rest of his body.
They’d shared a bath. The intimacy of that didn’t escape him.
When he was done, he pulled the plug and stood. Reaching for the five-gallon pot of water he had left for her, which she hadn’t used, he dumped most of it over his head, rinsing away the last of the blood and dirt before he stepped out.
His clothes were too filthy to put back on, as were hers. When the storm abated he would bring more water, so the garments could be washed. He picked up a blanket from the floor and ripped it in half, wrapping one piece around his waist.
“You may come back.”
She didn’t do so immediately, and when she did, she looked nervous, tucking her blanket tightly. Did she think the scrap of fabric would keep him from her if he … Tariq shook off the thought, turned away. He wasn’t a sheik of old who would throw a woman onto the back of his camel, then ride off into the desert and ravish her as he pleased. More’s the pity. His heritage had never seemed as appealing as it did at this moment.
“How long is the storm going to last?” she asked.
“Hard to say.” He turned back and drank in her beauty. “It could blow for a couple of hours or a couple of days.” And he would be content to stare at her for as long or longer.
