Surgeon Sheik's Rescue

by Loreth Anne White

  Bella took a step closer. “You’re self-indulgent, you know that? Full of self-pity. You’re the one who just pointed out to me that you were broken, that you would never operate again. But you can still use your medical skills for other things. You’re alive, Tahar. You didn’t die in that accident!”

  His fists clenched.

  “Everything I care about did,” Tariq said quietly. Then he made briskly for the door, calling out over his shoulder as he went, “You want to see dungeons, I’ll show you dungeons.”

  Anger pounded through his chest as he reached the door. She didn’t know the half of his accident.

  And her words stung like all hell.

  Because he saw the truth in them. And in this moment he hated her for that truth. He wanted this tour over, wanted her gone, now. But as he stepped through the pool room door, his butler appeared with his sat phone in hand.

  “You have a call, sir.”

  Tariq reached for the phone, checked the incoming number. Omair.

  “I’ll take this in my study,” he said to his butler in French. Then he turned to Bella. “I need to take a call. Wait here.”

  “I… Sure.”

  Tariq entered his office and shut the heavy wooden door firmly behind him. Once he’d spoken to Omair, once his brother’s people started digging, he’d know everything he needed to know about Amelie Chenard. And if she was toying with him, she was going to regret it.

  “Omair,” he said into the phone. “How are you—how is Faith, the baby?” Then before Omair could answer, Tariq said, “Is that him I can hear crying?”

  “It is,” said Omair with a laugh, the sound so deep and rich Tariq was instantly overwhelmed by emotion. There was nothing in the world quite like the sound of a newborn baby’s cry. He was silent for a moment, his throat tight as he clutched the phone. He missed his brother suddenly, his family. He should be there—he should meet his new nephew. His isolation felt wrong.

  He needed to find a way to come back to life and rejoin them.

  Amelie had done this to him. As much as he resented her presence, as much as he was fighting his physical attraction to her, she’d made him reach out to his brother, his family. For their help.

  “He’s a little terror,” Omair said. “He’s been giving Faith and me a run for our money, far worse than any mission either of us has been on.”

  Tariq felt himself smile, the movement foreign and pulling against his scars. “Bring the phone closer to him, Omair,” he said. “I want to listen to him.”

  Tariq listened to the sound of his brother’s newborn son crying. It sent chills through his body. His thoughts turned to Zakir, to Nikki, and their seven-month-old twins. Tariq swallowed against the ball of emotion swelling bigger in his throat.

  “Did you hear?” Omair said. “His name is Adam, Tariq. You should use his name.”

  “Adam,” he said quietly. He knew what Omair was doing—making him real for Tariq, trying to make him feel things, to bring him to life again. His family had been so worried about him, and Amelie was right—he’d been self-absorbed, selfish in his grief.

  “I did hear him. He sounds like he will be trouble, like his father. Is Faith getting much sleep?”

  “Sleep is a long-lost friend,” Omair said, “for both of us. But Dalilah will be arriving next week. She’s coming to help out, give Faith a chance to rest while I get back to some work.” He chuckled again.

  “Dalilah is coming?”

  “Couldn’t keep her away.” Omair paused, his voice changing. “It’s safer that she doesn’t return to New York right now. At least until we know who and what we’re up against. The F.D.S. will be flying her in from Al Na’Jar.”

  Thoughts of his colorful, exotically beautiful sister filled Tariq’s mind. He hadn’t been truly thinking of her safety. Remorse was bitter in his mouth, self-recrimination burned.

  Amelie was wrong.

  He did want to get better.

  He just didn’t know how, because he was not the same man and never would be. His neurosurgery skills had come to define him. Medicine—healing—was his passion. That had been taken from him. And his dream of having his own family with Julie been dashed like the waves that crashed onto rocks at the base of the cliffs on this island.

  Tariq reminded himself he was still a prince. He still had two of his brothers and his sister. They still had their kingdom. The Moor had not taken those things from them—not yet.

  And now, there were the new nieces and a nephew, Al Arif blood in their veins.

  Tariq’s hand tightened around the phone, and he squared his shoulders. For these things he would fight. He would protect.

  “And how are you, brother?” Omair was saying.

  “I’m fine. I’ve got more mobility—been using the pool. Might try the gym next. But another issue has come up and I need your help.” Tariq went to his desk and clicked his computer to life as he spoke.

  “There’s a woman on the island, an American, who has a very keen interest in the abbey. She also tried to take photos of me out on the heath, and she ambushed me in a restaurant. She claims she’s doing research for a novel that she wants to set on the island, and she’s asked for a tour of the place. I don’t trust her. I need you to get your people to run a deep background check.”

  Omair was quiet for a moment, and when he spoke again, Tariq heard the shift in his tone.

  “What information can you give me?”

  *

  Bella went to the big windows that yawned from floor to ceiling, and she watched the dark fog wall swallowing the landscape, wisps of mist fingering up the cliff, crawling over the pearly black water outside, closing a fist around the monastery walls. She rubbed her arms, a strange shiver chasing over her skin. Then she heard a yip and jerked around, startled.

  The pool room door from which Tariq had exited was partially ajar, and Kiki was scratching at it, trying to widen the gap. Bella cursed—she’d all but forgotten the dog.

  “No, Kiki,” she called. “Over here!”

  But Kiki wiggled through the gap, pushing the door open wide with her body. She sniffed the stone tiles where Tariq had stood. And like a shot she was off after him, tracking him down the passage.

  “Kiki, get back here, now!” Bella ran after the dog.

  The little animal vanished around a corner at the end of the dim passage. “Kiki!” Bella called, hustling round the corner just in time to see Kiki disappearing into the library.

  She cursed again, and ran lightly down the passage to the library. Edging the heavy wood door open she saw the room was empty. Again, a fire crackled in the hearth, filling the room with a warmth and ambience absent in the rest of the abbey. Persian rugs felt plush underfoot. Kiki was on the far end of the room snuffling under the closed door to Tariq’s study.

  “Come here, you little terror,” she whispered as she hurriedly crossed the soft carpets. She bent down to pick up the dog, and stilled as she heard the sonorous tone of Tariq’s voice behind the door. His voice rose suddenly in what sounded like anger, and she realized with a jolt he was speaking Arabic.

  Slowly, she stood up, dog in one arm. On the table, right beside the study door, where his jacket hung over the back of a chair, was his wallet.

  Bella shot a quick glance toward the door that opened out into the passage, then she inched over to the table. Heart in throat, she reached out, flipped open the book wallet. She threw another glance at the door, then returned her attention to the wallet, looking for ID, anything that might add proof and weight to her story even if he chose not to comment. Because that was beginning to look slim right now.

  There was cash inside. But no credit cards or driver’s license. She flipped to the next compartment. Two photographs were tucked behind plastic. One was of Julie Belard, elegant, polished, groomed. Even her smile was sophisticated—a woman fit to marry an oil-rich sheik, to become a royal princess. Unlike Bella DiCaprio from Chicago, no real job, no idea where she really came from.

 
; On the opposite side of the wallet was a photo of the royal family. Bella’s gaze shot back to his office door. Tariq was still talking. Kiki squirmed under her arm as she edged the wallet closer. She bent over to scrutinize the image of King Zakir, Tariq, Omair, their sister Dalilah and—Bella’s breath caught in her throat—Queen Nikki Al Arif without her veil.

  The queen had never been photographed or seen in public without a veil. Her pulse raced as she studied the image of the mysterious woman said to hail from Norway. She truly was beautiful: classic features, wide eyes, full mouth, thick honey-blond hair. Something began to buzz inside Bella’s head. The queen looked disturbingly familiar—Bella could swear she’d seen a picture of this woman before, and recently. But where?

  *

  Tariq stilled, his hand tightening on the phone as he thought he heard a sound outside his door.

  “Hold on,” he quietly told Omair. He listened intently, but there was nothing more. Reaching for his mouse, he copied the links to Amelie’s website and social media page into an email. He added Omair’s address, clicked Send.

  “I’m forwarding you some links with photographs and other information. Her name is Amelie Chenard, speaks excellent French. She has a website and some social media presence. It all looks fairly recent, but that could be because of previous ghostwriting contractual obligations to secrecy.”

  “You think she could be connected to MagMo?” Omair said.

  “If she came here to kill me she would have done so already. She had a perfect opportunity out on the heath, just before dark. And if she was a reporter looking to find me alive, she would have run a story already—she took photographs of my face, used a big telephoto lens. But I’ve scoured the internet and nothing has come up.”

  “Do you have the photos she took?”

  “They’ve been deleted,” Tariq said. “My men are searching her room and computer as we speak to ensure there’s nothing that could be used.” Tariq ran his hand over his hair. “She might be exactly who she claims, Omair, but we need to be sure.”

  A beat of silence, then Omair said, “We?”

  Tariq huffed.

  Omair chuckled dryly. “She might be dangerous, brother, but clearly she’s got the old fire burning in you again. I’ll get my men on this. Meanwhile, keep her close—I can’t stress this enough. Watch her carefully until we’ve done the full background check.”

  *

  A movement sounded behind the study door. Tariq’s voice rose again—he was signing off. Bella’s heart jumped into her throat. Hurriedly, she removed the photograph from the plastic and slipped it into the back pocket of her jeans. She flipped the wallet closed and started to tiptoe rapidly across the carpet, but she heard the door handle behind her creak.

  She wasn’t going to make it!

  Bella veered sharply to her right, heading for the bookshelves. Just as the door opened, she bent down as if examining titles on a lower shelf, the dog clutched too tightly in her arm.

  “Oh, hi,” she said, straightening up, perspiration pricking her body. “Kiki trailed you from the pool room. I had to run after her, and then I got distracted by your books.”

  A strange look crossed his face. He glanced back into his study, and she could see him wondering if she’d heard him on the phone.

  Bella tried to swallow against the dryness in her mouth. “Is everything okay? Did you get bad news?”

  “I’ll know soon enough whether the news is bad,” he said darkly.

  Bella turned her face away from him, worried he could read guilt in her features. She trailed her fingers over the spines of his books, moving down the row of shelves as she pretended to casually peruse titles, her heart thumping.

  If he saw the photo was missing from his wallet he’d know right away it was her. She shouldn’t have taken it, but she was convinced she’d seen the queen’s face somewhere, and recently. Her impulse had been to snatch it so she could look again, closely. Now she was stuck.

  Bella could feel his gaze boring into her and his silence was heavy. Her body began to get hot. Why wasn’t he speaking? Did he know something? Was he testing her?

  She tried to focus on the titles. “You’ve got a whole shelf here devoted to absurdist and existentialist philosophers and novelists,” she said, angling her head to read the authors’ names, Kiki squirming in her arm. “Jean-Paul Sartre, Søren Kierkegaard, Franz Kafka, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Jean Améry.” She stopped at the Améry title, removed the book from the shelf: On Suicide: A Discourse on Voluntary Death.

  She glanced up at him and tension balled in her stomach at the look on his face.

  “Améry survived Auschwitz and Buchenwald,” she said quietly, but she was shaking inside. “And after all that, he killed himself in ’78. He used pills.”

  “You know your Améry.”

  She was silent for a beat. “I studied literature, remember? Philosophy, too.”

  He came closer, the energy rolling off him dark, crackling. “Améry saw the ability to take his own life as the ultimate freedom from humanity,” he said.

  “Should it be one’s goal, to be free of one’s humanity?”

  “Have you never wished—” he replied, voice low, sensual, a little threatening “—to escape the absurdity of life?”

  She laughed lightly, but it sounded hollow even to her own ears. “God, no.”

  The image of him in his cloak on the cliff edge swirled like cool mist into her mind. She wondered if he had some kind of post-traumatic stress from the bombing, if his family knew this, or even if he recognized it in himself. And just didn’t care.

  Bella’s attention went to the book beside his chair, a bookmark poking out of it. He’d been reading Camus’s La Mort Heureuse. A Happy Death.

  He really was struggling to live.

  Perhaps it wasn’t just P.T.S.D. Brain injuries could also induce depression, change personality.

  She might be the only one who could really see what was happening to him, who knew what he’d been before, and could see now how very close to the edge he was walking. The responsibility suddenly weighed heavy on Bella’s shoulders. Lying to him, exposing him felt wrong. Stealing his photo was wrong.

  But she also had an obligation to follow her story to the end—it could be in national interests. She couldn’t forget Althea Winston, who’d died to tip her off. And Bella had a duty to herself, too. She had to earn a living. No one else was going to look after her.

  Conflict tightened in her chest.

  “Did your accident happen in France?” she said quietly, the Améry book still in her hand, Kiki squirming under her other arm.

  His brow lowered. “Why?”

  Bella replaced the book on the shelf. “Just wondering—you seem foreign.” Her eyes trailed to the higher shelves. “And you have some Arabic titles up there.”

  “I read many languages.”

  Slowly she turned to face him. “Tahar, maybe you shouldn’t…” She trailed off, suddenly unable to hold his burning gaze. Instead she set Kiki back onto the floor. The little dog squiggled excitedly at his feet, but he ignored the animal, kept his eye on her.

  “Shouldn’t what?” he said.

  “I was going to say maybe you shouldn’t be so alone. Maybe you need friends, family. Do you have family?”

  Suspicion coiled in Tariq’s gut and it swirled with desire he couldn’t shake when he was this close to her. And that made him angry—the fact he wasn’t in control, that she had this power over him. The temptation to throw her out at once thrummed through his body, the fire inside him building to almost irrational proportions. His chest began to burn, the beat of his blood loud against his eardrums, the whole library blurring in the periphery of his mind as he focused on her. He could hear Omair’s words.

  Keep her close. Watch her carefully until we’ve done the full background check.

  “I know I’m making you angry,” Amelie said quietly, her cheeks flushed. “But I suspect that’s because anger is the easiest emotion for you—i
t’s the only emotion you will allow yourself because it helps block out the pain.”

  She was right. It was easier than feeling pain. Or lust. Holding on to rage was a way of holding on to the past, the memory of Julie, of not having to face a new future and properly deal with his disabilities. His anger began to vibrate inside.

  “Let’s get the tour over with,” he said brusquely, brushing past her and making swiftly for the door.

  But as he stalked into the cold stone corridor all he could think about was crushing her in his arms, feeling her lips under his as he kissed her angrily, passionately, fiercely. If she didn’t leave soon, something inside him was going to blow.

  Chapter 6

  Bella followed Tariq as he stalked down the passage, Kiki’s tiny nails clicking on stone behind her. She wished she’d brought a leash.

  “The abbey renovations stopped here,” Tariq said as they entered a wide walkway spaced with tall gothic arches that opened to a courtyard of grass gone long and shrubs gone wild. The air out here was cool, damp, with mist blowing in through the stone openings.

  “This walkway connects the other wings of the abbey. The east wing, over there, includes what were once sleeping quarters for the monastic inhabitants. Across the courtyard over there—” He pointed. “You can see the ruins of the chapel, and beside it, the old cemetery.” His voice was deadpan, but his neck muscles were corded with tension, and a dark kinetic energy emanated from him in waves. He met her gaze for a moment, held.

  Bella swallowed at what she saw there.

  She averted her eyes, and busied herself clicking several photos through one of the arches, focusing first on the crumbling spire of the chapel, then the crucifix on top, the tumbling walls being devoured by creepers.

  “The dungeons are this way.” He began walking.

  Bella called Kiki and hurried to catch up with him. At the dungeon entrance, one of Tariq’s bodyguards waited with flashlights in hand.

  “Why did you stop the refurbishing?” she asked as they approached the guard.