The Sheik's Safety

by Dana Marton

  She got a tire just as Saeed got the driver. The pickup came to a halt but the men in the back were still firing.

  “Get down,” Saeed yelled and slid lower in his own seat, focusing on getting them out of firing range as fast as possible.

  She did as he asked, pulled the belt off the man next to her, grabbed her veil from the front seat and made a tourniquet for her arm. Any blood loss had a way of weakening the body, and she couldn’t afford to be held back now.

  Saeed was watching her in the rearview mirror. “I’m going to take a look at you.” He slowed the car.

  “Don’t even think about it. Whatever happens, do not stop.” She climbed to the front, held her arm out so he could see with his own eyes that there was nothing to worry about.

  “Is it broken?” He didn’t look any less worried.

  She shook her head. “I’m fine.”

  He stepped on the gas again, his voice clipped when he spoke. “You should not be here. I shouldn’t have brought you.”

  She wasn’t in the mood for any chauvinistic garbage. “Because women are weak?” she challenged him.

  He looked at her for a long moment. “Women should be cherished.”

  She stared back, unsure what to say to that.

  Her father used to say women had to be toughened up to be fit for the military. He hadn’t meant it disparagingly. He merely saw the difference between the sexes as a weakness. He was forever frustrated with her mother’s inability to hold up under pressure, suck it up and stick it out.

  She glanced at Saeed. Cherished. It fell so far outside the realm of her experience, she couldn’t even picture it. Was he for real?

  They drove on in silence for a while, Saeed focusing on the road while she mulled over the attack.

  “How did they know we were coming?”

  He shrugged. “They were probably watching the camp.”

  “You could have sent men out to take care of that.” His carelessness surprised her.

  “I wanted them to know I was leaving.” His voice was low and rough.

  “To keep them away from your son?”

  “From all my people.” He shook his head. “I thought I could protect you.”

  “You did.”

  “I expected a sole assassin. Or at worst, two or three working together.” His mouth was set in a thin line, his expression dark. “I was ill-prepared and my guards have died for it. Only by the grace of Allah you’re alive.”

  She would have liked to think her shooting skills had something to do with that, too, but it didn’t seem like the right time to argue with him. He looked to be in a bad enough mood already.

  “If you agreed to work together with the U.S. government, your difficulties could be solved twice as fast and you could be back with Salah,” she said.

  He turned his intense blue eyes to her. “Do not,” he said, his voice cold now, “use my son to try to manipulate me.”

  “I’m sorry.” And she was. He obviously cared deeply for the boy.

  “He’ll be safe with Nasir,” he said, but she could hear the worry in his voice.

  “I’m sure the tribe would give their lives for him.”

  He nodded. “They would.”

  “He looks a lot like you.”

  He took a slow breath and his shoulders relaxed a little. “He’s a brave little man. He learned to ride a camel when he was three.”

  His deep fatherly love and pride, evident on his face and in his words, tugged at her heart. Snap out of it. She turned from him to scan the desert. She was here to guard the sheik, not to fall under his charm.

  “IS ANYTHING WRONG?”

  “I didn’t expect a palace.” Dara eyed the marble floor and the priceless artwork on the walls, as Saeed gave orders to the servants.

  “My father was once king,” he said to her when he was done with them.

  “He sure was.” She stared at an ornately decorated golden bowl, the size of her kitchen sink back home, displayed on a carved pedestal.

  And all of a sudden she felt a wide schism open between them. In the car, during the gunfight, for a few brief moments they were partners, teammates. There was nothing like walking into his palace to drive home the point that someday very soon he would be king. And she’d be… She’d be on the first flight to wherever the Colonel was sending her next.

  “This way.” He showed her down the hall, walking tall and comfortable, barely sparing a glance for their surroundings while she gawked. He belonged here.

  “The doctor will arrive shortly. The servants will help you clean up.” He stopped and waited for her to catch up with him.

  Naturally. The servants. Who else? She wondered what “help you clean up” meant. Was somebody going to come to wash behind her ears? That’d be interesting.

  She was used to lack of privacy in her line of work. It was a fact of life for women in the military—her shyness had worn off long ago. Whatever they would dish out for her she could take it. She was determined to follow the customs and blend in. She had to gain not only his cooperation but the entire household’s if she was to guard him successfully.

  They passed through a gorgeous gilded archway, more artwork gracing the hall on the other side. The palace was a far cry from the military housing where she had grown up. Where the hell was he taking her anyway? And then it occurred to her. She stopped. She was willing to follow his country’s customs, but only to a point.

  “To do my job effectively I need to be near you. I’m not going to…” She hesitated to say the word.

  He raised a black eyebrow and waited.

  “I will not be stashed away in some harem,” she said with righteous indignation. “This is the twenty-first century, for heaven’s sake.”

  A slow grin split his face, his blue eyes sparkling with mirth.

  “Would that be a general dislike of harems or just mine?” His voice was way too smooth.

  He was toying with her. She threw him a look that would have made veteran commando fighters back down.

  It didn’t faze him at all. “I don’t suppose I could change your mind?”

  Oh yeah, he probably thought he was good at the harem thing. She looked away. He probably was.

  “Go pester your wives,” she said. “I’m here to do a job.”

  “My wife has been dead for five years.” The smile slid off his face. “I never really had a harem. Sorry to disappoint.”

  God, she was an idiot. Of course, he didn’t have a wife. That’s why his sisters were taking care of his son. She thought of her own childhood for a moment, her mother coming and going then leaving for good when she was twelve. She was glad Salah had his aunts.

  “I’m sorry.”

  His gaze was steady on her face. “Your apology is not necessary.”

  But the light mood disappeared from between them. She wanted to say something to make up for her ill-spoken words, but for once, couldn’t come up with anything. What did she know about loving and losing? Nothing. She had never allowed herself to risk falling in love.

  When he moved forward, she followed him to a door made of hammered copper, bit her lip to keep from gasping when he opened it.

  If it wasn’t a harem, she didn’t know what was.

  The room had the look of a luxury spa, unreal in its sumptuousness like a movie set. Her two-bedroom condo in Baltimore, the place she called home in between assignments, was at least a couple of hundred square feet smaller.

  Tiled columns reached to the fifteen-foot or so tall ceiling that was painted with a small geometric pattern in teal and gold. She gaped at the two separate sitting areas, one with an entertainment center, one surrounded by books—a corner library.

  The canopy bed in the back was freckled with jewel-toned pillows, the carpet it stood on having the look of a priceless antique. Enough open space stretched between the sleeping and living areas to hold a dance party. Through an archway she could see into a smaller room, every surface tiled, a round pool sunk into the floor, a good ten
feet in diameter.

  The place was overwhelming. She lifted a hand to rub her temple, then winced at the pain in her arm. Fresh blood stained her sleeve.

  She heard his sharp intake of breath. The next thing she knew, she was in his arms and they were on their way to the bed.

  “You said it was a minor injury,” he said in a tight voice as he laid her gently on the brocade cover, a thunderstorm brewing in his eyes.

  “It is, I’ve—”

  He hooked two long fingers into the hole the bullet had ripped and tore the material open. Her breath caught in her throat.

  Somebody was knocking on the door. When Saeed called out, two women came in. He sent them away.

  “Lie down,” he said, his face hard set.

  “There’s nothing wrong with me.”

  She wasn’t used to seeing him off balance. He had kept his cool during the fight, both at the oasis and in the wadi, fought off the assassin in the tent without breaking a sweat. She was starting to get the idea that he’d had considerable practice at skirmishes.

  And yet, the sight of a single injured woman rattled him. Not that strange, she thought after a moment. In his culture, men were supposed to keep women protected.

  “I’m okay. It wasn’t your fault,” she said.

  “Fine. At least don’t move.” He went off to the bathroom and came back with a wet towel, dabbed off the dried blood from her skin.

  The wound wasn’t terribly bad, barely oozing now. She didn’t see what the big deal was. “I thought the servants were going to help me clean up.”

  “I changed my mind. You’re not well enough to clean up. We wait for the doctor.”

  Too bad. Her gaze skipped to the bathroom and she nearly moaned aloud at the thought of sinking chin deep into bubbles. She’d had few luxuries in her life. The tub in the other room was calling her name.

  “When I ask you a question, I expect you to tell me the truth.” He was still looking at the torn flesh, his eyes dark with disapproval.

  “I did. It’s nothing. Believe me, I’ve been in worse shape.” And that was the truth.

  His hand moved higher on her arm, his thumb skimming over an old bullet wound two to three inches below her shoulder. Pleasure skittered across her skin and she bit her lower lip to make it go away. It didn’t quite work. He hesitated on the spot, making a circle around it before running his fingers back to her current injury.

  “It’s a hell of a lot more than nothing.”

  She stared at him surprised. First time she had heard him swear. So far he had been cool and collected and regal and all that. And to be truthful, she found it appealing in a strange kind of way. Maybe because he was so different from her. She’d grown up around military men, talking trash, wearing bravado as a uniform, everybody vying for the position of biggest badass on the team.

  She found Saeed’s elegant restraint attractive. More so because she knew from experience the wall of strength behind it.

  He drew a thumb over the bump in her skin below the old scar. “What’s this?”

  She looked away, hesitated. “Birth-control implant.” Not that it was any of his business. She’d thought of having it removed—heaven knew she hadn’t needed it in a long time—but never got around to it.

  He opened his mouth to say something, but was interrupted by a knock on the door that brought a short gentleman in his fifties, fashionably graying at the temples. The doctor. The man wore a three-piece suit as if he were going to a formal reception. After greeting Saeed, he sat on the bed next to Dara and took her pulse while he looked at the wound, then he pulled a handful of supplies from his bag, all sealed in white paper.

  “Don’t you have something else to do?” she asked Saeed.

  He threw her a hard look, but did not reply.

  She didn’t know what to make of him. She didn’t expect him to be this upset over her injury. Hell, she wasn’t. Nobody ever had been. Her mother had always been too seeped in her own misery to notice if anything was wrong with her daughter, and then she had left. Her father’s standard response to blood, even when she was a child, had been “Shrug it off, soldier.”

  The doctor unwrapped a syringe, filled it up and numbed the skin around the wound, before getting out his suturing tools.

  Saeed sat on the bed next to her, leaving a proper distance between them. “I’m sorry. You are my guest. As your host I am responsible for your safety.”

  She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. She was doing her job. Injuries were par for the course. She was his bodyguard. He still didn’t get that at all. She shook her head.

  Long learning curve ahead.

  SHE WAS HURT. The idea pained him. Saeed tapped his fingers on his desk, distracted from the calls he had to make. He found it hard to concentrate with the foreign woman in the house. And he had never needed a clear head more than at the moment. His life depended on it.

  He picked up the receiver. The minister of agriculture, he decided. He had already set up a meeting for the next day with the minister of trade. A safe bet, he hoped. He was one of the old guard. Saeed hoped Jumaa hadn’t found a way to get to the man yet. If the minister of trade had turned, he could be walking into a trap.

  He was dialing the last number when he saw one of his servants approach.

  “Yes?” He listened to the phone ring on the other side.

  “She is awake, sir.”

  He nodded his thanks and dismissal as he set down the phone.

  The smartest thing he could do would be to stay away from her. It angered him that he couldn’t. He wasn’t some overeager schoolboy. He was a man with a man’s control. Except when it came to her.

  He’d been lost from the moment he’d kissed her. No, he corrected after a moment of reflection. He’d been lost since long before that—since he’d first looked into her gold-speckled ebony eyes.

  He wanted her. He wanted her despite her stubbornness, despite her unreasonable nature, despite the fact that they were as unsuitable for each other as two people ever could be. He wanted to write the attraction down to the fact that she was different, a novelty. But he’d seen plenty and even dated some Western women. He’d spent three years in college at Cambridge, and now traveled the world on business frequently.

  He walked out of his office, down the halls, then hesitated at her door before opening it. His eyes locked onto her immediately, registering in his peripheral vision one of the maids who was clearing away a tray. He had ordered her dinner to be served in here.

  “Almost ready,” she said, sitting on the bed, braiding her hair, her slim fingers slipping through the silky strands gracefully, with practiced ease.

  He wanted to see it down, to run his own fingers through it. He frowned, not liking the train of thought, then his gaze fell on the camouflage uniform she had put back on.

  “It is our custom for women to wear dresses.”

  She gave him a polite smile, which drew his attention to her full lips. They were pomegranate-red. From the moment he’d seen them, he had thirsted for them.

  “Maybe I’ll change when we go out,” she said, securing the end of her braid with a band.

  He was used to having his words taken as direct order and followed. She alone resisted him. He wanted her all the more for it.

  “I’m more comfortable in these and there’s no one to worry about here in the house. I assume your staff won’t report me to the religious police for breaking some code and corrupting morals. They can be trusted?”

  “Naturally.” He didn’t worry about his staff. The only one he didn’t trust around her was himself.

  “Did you sleep well?” The blood loss and the painkillers the doctor had given her had made her sleepy. It had taken all his powers of persuasion to convince her to take a brief rest. She did so only when he had promised under no circumstances to leave his office while she was not there to protect him.

  She nodded as she stood. “Okay, let’s go. We can’t afford to waste any more time.”

&
nbsp; He had never known anyone like her. Her single-mindedness was extraordinary. “Where would you like to go?”

  “I want to inspect the premises. I have to ascertain they are as secure as they can be made.”

  He watched her face, marveled at the businesslike tone of her voice. She was still under the illusion that she was his bodyguard.

  “My security is excellent, but if you’d like I would be happy to show you around.” He was more than willing to spend time in her company.

  She passed by him as she stepped out the door, and he let his gaze glide over her—the way the uniform stretched across her breasts, her derriere and slender legs. The belt brought his gaze to the gentle movement of her hips. He swallowed, feeling like a pervert. If he was, she brought it out in him. She made him feel things he hadn’t felt since he was a teenager.

  He made a point of walking next to her, showed her the living quarters first, then the garden, the roses that had been his father’s pride, but it wasn’t enough. She wanted to see everything: the kitchen, servants’ quarters, the garages. Night had fallen by the time they were done. He ended the tour at the door of his private suite.

  “What’s this?”

  “My rooms.”

  “I need to see everything.”

  Naturally. He opened the double doors for her, aware that the only woman to have ever walked through them with him before had been his wife.

  She checked his sitting room with military thoroughness, and his office, but hesitated when she stepped into his bedroom, then got over whatever was holding her back and went to it.

  “Satisfied?” He stood in the doorway watching her, an unbidden sensation stirring then settling into his guts at the sight of her standing next to his bed.

  “Mmm,” she responded, distracted.

  She was plotting to save him. He could see the wheels turning in her head, and couldn’t help a smile at the thought. “Let me escort you back to your room. If you need anything you need only to ask the servants.”

  He wouldn’t have minded spending time with her, a lot more time, but she needed rest. He had found her in the desert near death, only two days before. Food and water had done wonders, but her body had not yet fully recovered. He worried that her new injury might set her back, although the doctor had assured him the wound was superficial.