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Once seated in the car, their driver sped on and off highways and Liv marveled at the way Sheikh Fehr traveled.
She’d never met anyone who owned his own jet and employed his own pilot and flight crew. Even though she worked in the travel industry, she thought of flying as booking a ticket on a commercial airline, then going to a crowded airport for an endless wait in a long security line. Maybe it was just the U.S., but modern travel meant canceled flights, missed connections, lost luggage, no meal service and irritated flight attendants. In short, flying was far from luxurious, and definitely not glamorous. But Sheikh Fehr’s jet was sumptuous, as was his fleet of cars.
The fact that he had access to a fleet of cars in different countries, never mind the security, made her wonder about him, and his power.
What kind of man could accomplish the things he did?
What kind of man risked life and limb for a stranger?
Unless he did it for money.
Hiding her worry, she shot another glance his way. Could he be a mercenary of sorts?
The thought made her skin crawl, nearly as much as her disgusting black prison-issued robe and lank headscarf did.
Self-consciously she reached up and touched the headscarf she still wore. The flight attendant hadn’t worn one and Liv wondered now if it was still necessary. “Can I take this off?” she asked.
“Please. In Jabal we didn’t have a choice, but here in Egypt, and my country of Sarq, it’s optional.”
“Some women want to wear the veil?”
“They view it as protection, shielding them from leering eyes and inappropriate advances.” His gaze swept over her. “You will need something else to wear though. That’s obviously a prison-issued robe.”
Liv plucked at her robe’s stiff, coarse fabric. “I can’t stand this thing,” she confessed, her voice dropping. “It’s all I’ve worn since they arrested me and I hate it. I never want to put it on again.”
“You won’t have to. And once we’re at the hotel, I’ll make sure the robe’s properly disposed of.”
“Thank you.” Tears inexplicably burned the backs of her eyes and she had to squeeze her eyes shut to hold the emotion in. She was just tired. Overwhelmed by the day. There was no reason to cry. She’d be home soon. If not tonight, then tomorrow. And everything would be all right. She just needed to call her mom, or Jake. Once she heard their voices she knew she’d be okay.
“So we are staying in Cairo overnight?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
He shifted, shoulders shrugging impatiently. “My pilot was concerned about the plane. He was afraid there was a fuel leak and wanted it checked out before we flew again.”
“Sensible.”
“Yes.”
But from his tone, she knew the sheikh didn’t agree and she was hit with another wave of homesickness. She was tired of strangers, tired of short-tempered men and women. She just wanted to go home. Back to the people who knew her and loved her, and back to people she loved.
“Can I call my brother now?” she asked, her voice wobbly with the threat of tears.
“Maybe we should wait a little longer, until you’ve seen the doctor.”
His words were a one-two punch and Liv stiffened. “A doctor? Why?”
“It’s routine. Standard practice whenever someone’s been released—”
“How often do you do this?” she interrupted.
“Often enough to know that you need to be checked out and cleared for travel.”
“But I’m fine,” she insisted. She didn’t want anyone touching her, didn’t want anyone looking at her or poking at her or coming near her. She’d had enough of that at Ozr. “I’m fine.”
His dark gaze pierced her. “It’s not an option, Miss Morse.” His tone hardened. “You have to. I can’t take any chances. You’ve been in Ozr for weeks. The place is a breeding ground for all sorts of diseases.”
“I doubt I’ve caught anything and if I have, I’ll deal with it at home.” With my doctor, she silently, furiously added.
Sheikh Fehr might have rescued her from Ozr, but she couldn’t completely trust him. She didn’t trust anyone here anymore. These countries and cultures were far too different from hers.
Her longing for home had become an endless ache inside her. She missed her mom and brother. She wanted her mother’s delicious Sunday pot roast, and her melt-in-your-mouth mashed potatoes and the best brown gravy in the world.
She wanted Pierceville with its sleepy Main Street and big oak trees and the old Fox theater where they still showed movies. She missed Main Street’s angled parking and the drugstore on the corner and the two bakeries with their cake displays in the window.
“You won’t be given permission to leave the country if you’re not cleared for travel.” He spoke slowly to make sure he was heard. “And if you’re not cleared for travel, you don’t go home.”
Home.
That word she understood, that word cut through her fog of misery.
Turning away to hide the shimmer of tears, Liv stared out the car window, the stream of traffic outside a blur.
“Whose rule is that?” she asked thickly. “Yours, or the government’s?”
“Both.”
Biting her lip, it crossed her mind that maybe, just maybe, she’d jumped from the frying pan into the fire.
Khalid Fehr watched Olivia turn her face away from him. She was upset but that was her choice. He had to be careful. He took tremendous risks in helping people. At the end of the day, once someone was safe and en route to their home, he wanted to go home himself, back to his beloved desert.
The desert was where he belonged.
The desert was where he found peace.
“The doctor’s a personal friend,” he said quietly, only able to see the back of her head, and then when the sun struck the outside of the window, it turned the glass into a mirror, giving him an almost perfect reflection of her pale, set face.
She looked lost, he thought. Gone. Like a ghost of a woman.
Her fear ate at him all over again, stirring the fury in him, the fury that was only soothed, calmed, by acts of valor.
It was ridiculous, really, this need of his to save others, this need to unite families torn apart, to return missing loved ones to those who waited, grieved.
He wasn’t a hero, didn’t want to be a hero, and this wasn’t the life he’d ever wanted for himself. He’d loved his studies, had enjoyed his career, but that all ended when his sisters died.
Thinking of his sisters reminded him of Olivia and her brother Jake and all her family had gone through in the past five or six weeks since she disappeared. “I’m trying to help you,” he said quietly.
“Then send me home,” she answered, her voice breaking.
His jaw jutted. She wasn’t the only one who couldn’t go home yet. He couldn’t, either, and he wasn’t much happier about it than she was.
Anytime he took these human rights cases on, he moved swiftly, moved a person in and out in a day. These rescues always took place within twenty-four hours and then he was home again, back in his quiet world of sky and sand. Back in anonymity.
Today was different. Everything about today’s rescue was different. And that didn’t bode well for any of them.
CHAPTER THREE
A HALF hour later they reached the famous Mena House Hotel, a historic hotel on the outskirts of Cairo.
Liv leaned forward to get a glimpse of the historic property but saw little of the hotel’s entrance with the dozen black cars lining the drive and virtually blocking the front door.
“It looks like the President of the United States has arrived,” she said, staring at all the cars and security detail. “I wonder who it’s for?”
“Us,” he answered cryptically, as security moved toward their car, flanking the front and back.
She jerked around to look at him. “Why?”
He shrugged as the door opened.
“Your Highness,” one of the men said, bowing deeply. “Welcome. The hotel is secure.”
Liv didn’t move. She couldn’t. Her body had gone nerveless. “Who are you?”
“I’m Sheikh Khalid Fehr. Prince of the Great Sarq Desert.”
And then it came together, all the missing pieces, all the little things that hadn’t added up. Sarq. Fehr. The family name, Fehr. “Your brother is King Fehr,” she whispered.
“Yes.”
“You’re … royalty.”
His broad shoulders shifted. “I didn’t ask for the job. I inherited it.” And then he climbed out of the car.
They were escorted through the opulent, gilded lobby to a private elevator that glided soundlessly up to the royal suite, which occupied the entire penthouse floor.
Their suite consisted of two enormous bedrooms and ensuite baths opening off a central living area. The suite was dark, the windows curtained, but then the butler drew the curtains back and the suite was flooded with late-afternoon sunlight, and the most astonishing view of the Great Pyramid.
“Incredible,” Liv murmured, standing at the window, hands pressed to the glass.
“There’s a balcony in each of the bedrooms,” the butler offered. “Very nice for a morning coffee or evening nightcap.”
She could only nod. She didn’t want to move, or be distracted. She just wanted to stand here and feast on the most amazing thing she’d ever seen.
The golden stone pyramid soared … gigantic, mythic, spectacular.
This is why she’d traveled so far from home. This is what she’d wanted to see. Ancient wonders. Relics of a glorious past.
But then Khalid Fehr spoke. “The doctor is here, Olivia.”
Her insides did a quick freeze and she slowly, reluctantly turned from the window. A woman in a dark slack suit and wearing a dark scarf around her shoulders stood next to Khalid.
“I’m Dr. Nenet Hassan,” the woman said briskly. “I’m a friend of Sheikh Fehr’s from university. The exam won’t hurt, and it won’t take long, either. We’ll just step into your room and get it over, shall we?”
Liv wouldn’t even look at Khalid as she headed for her bedroom with Dr. Hassan close behind. She didn’t want the exam, didn’t need a checkup, but no one seemed to be listening.
Fortunately, the exam was as quick as Dr. Hassan had said and in less than ten minutes the physician was putting her instruments away. “You’re healthy,” Dr. Hassan said. “And I know you’re dying for a bath so go ahead, enjoy. I’ll have a word with Sheikh Fehr and see myself out.”
Khalid was waiting for Nenet as she emerged from Liv’s room. “Well?” he demanded.
“She has some bruises but they’re not specific to any injury.”
“She hasn’t been beaten?” Khalid asked bluntly.
“She does have marks and the odd bruise or cut, but that’s to be expected. It’s a well-known fact that the female guards are far harder on the female prisoners than the male guards are on the men. They’re just more aggressive, although the abuse leans toward the mental instead of the physical.”
“What about drug use?” he asked.
Nenet lifted her head, and her somber brown gaze searched his. “You suspect her of using?”
“No. But you never know.”
The doctor’s expression remained speculative. “I didn’t see needle marks, or anything else indicative of drug abuse.”
“Good,” he answered, turning away to look out the same window that had so completely captured Liv’s imagination earlier.
“Do you really intend to marry her?” Nenet asked, catching Khalid off guard. “Or is it just another baseless rumor?”
His forehead creased and he turned from the window to look at the doctor over his shoulder. “How did you hear?”
“How did I hear? Khalid, it’s all over the news! A highranking Jabal official announced that you’d visited his country today to bring your betrothed home.” Nenet swallowed hard. “And this … this … American … she’s your betrothed?”
None of this was supposed to be happening, Khalid thought. He was supposed to have freed Olivia from prison, zipped to Baraka in his jet, had her cleared by a doctor and then hurried onto a waiting jet provided by Kalen Nuri, and then she’d fly home and he’d fly back to the Sarq desert in his jet and it’d be finished. No naming of names, no police chases, no publicity.
“I don’t know that this is an appropriate conversation for us to be having,” he said flatly.
He’d once dated Nenet Hassan during his second year of graduate school, but the pressures on both of them had been intense, and then when his sisters had died, he’d broken the relationship off. Nenet had written long letters to him, saying she’d wait for him, promising he could take all the time he needed to heal, but Khalid hadn’t wanted time to heal. He hadn’t wanted to heal. He just wanted out. Away. Gone from the life he’d lived and the people he’d known.
“Forgive me, Khalid. Please don’t be angry. I know it’s not my place,” Nenet added quickly, trying to ease the tension and awkward silence, “but I can’t ignore what you’re doing. It wouldn’t be right.”
“And what am I doing?” he asked even more gruffly.
“You know what you’re doing. I know what you’re doing. But stop. Don’t. Don’t sacrifice yourself for her.” Grief darkened her eyes. “You aren’t merely a good man, Khalid, you are a great man, and a man that has suffered enough. You owe her nothing, especially not your future, or your freedom.”
In the bathroom, Liv stood in the middle of the marble tiled floor for what seemed like forever.
The bathroom was beyond decadent. The decor was reminiscent of the Great Pyramid outside, with pale ivory and gold limestone pavers on the floor and more buttery-colored limestone surrounding the deep bathtub.
