The fact that she responded to him like she had—it ignited a fire in him that would not be quelled.
He’d tried to tell himself, somewhere in the distance of his lust-thickened brain, that it was just sex. Just physical. It was no betrayal of Julie’s memory. That it didn’t have to mean anything.
But it did. She really had made him feel whole, and he didn’t want to stop here.
He leaned back against the pool wall, Amelie in his arms. The music had died. Wind rattled and the waves boomed louder.
Rain squiggled down the panes. Steam rose softly around them.
He’d fallen, hard and fast, for this unusual, vital young woman who’d inserted herself into his life. And she’d given him a gift—she’d come into his cold, dark, walled-off world of self-absorbed loss and grief, and she’d reached out a hand, a bridge, showing him a way back from the cliff edge.
Yet a distant caution whispered inside Tariq. He still had to hear from Omair. It would be morning in the States now. Maybe word had already come. Maybe Omair was trying to call him right now. But as he held her, he felt she was true. Real. He’d felt the care in her touch, seen it in her eyes. These things weren’t lies.
“Amelie?”
She looked up at him.
He wanted to say thank you, but couldn’t seem to articulate it in a way that didn’t seem trite. She had no idea what she’d done for him. His eye filled with emotion.
“You only cry with one eye,” she said, reaching up to wipe a tear that had escaped down his right cheek. His chest clutched. He felt exposed, then slowly he smiled.
“Yeah,” he said. “The tear ducts were damaged on the other side.”
She returned his smile and his heart almost hurt with the sight of it. “Why are you upset?”
“I’m not. You’ve made me exquisitely happy. I’ve been known to tear up at the sound of an exquisite cello composition—it’s a release.”
A strange look crossed her features. She hooked her bare leg over his, leaned her head against his chest. Then she said, “I’ve never been with a man who’ll admit something like that. Especially such a powerful man.”
Tariq inhaled deeply. He needed to come clean with her—wanted to. Now. But he had to speak to Omair first, and Zakir. His secret was theirs, too. His coming out would require new strategy in regards to the throne. And The Moor.
“Will you get a glass one?”
Her question distracted him.
“A glass what?” he said.
“Eye.”
“Should I?”
“I don’t know—I like the patch. It gives you a dangerous air.” She laughed, and his smile deepened, pulling stiffly into the left side of his face, farther than it had gone before. And it felt good.
“I also like that you smile with one half of your face.”
“My brothers say I should’ve had plastic surgery.”
“Yet you didn’t.”
“No,” he said thoughtfully. “I didn’t care.” He looked down into her eyes. “Until now.”
She swallowed, a current of something moving behind her eyes. His gaze lowered to her full, creamy breasts, buoyant in the water.
“You’re beautiful, Amelie.” He touched her cheek. “In so many ways. You’ve reminded me what’s important.” Duty, family. An ancient code of desert justice. The need to find The Moor and fight back, not be beaten down by him. “Thank you,” he whispered.
She took his crippled hand in hers, lacing her fingers through his. And in that moment Tariq loved her. Wholly, if that was possible. Perhaps it was just the lust talking, the afterglow of good sex.
His gaze went to their entwined hands underwater. And he noticed a tiny medallion glimmering like a golden sun against the black-pearl surface of the pool.
He reached in, picked it up, held it out on his palm.
She made a soft sound, her hand going to her neck. “My chain! It must’ve broken.”
But Tariq’s attention was transfixed by the medallion resting against his hand. The gold had been fashioned into the image of the sun and it was superimposed by a jambiya—a traditional, curved Arabic dagger. Ice hardened around his heart.
He looked slowly up into her eyes. She was watching him, a strange look in her features. And Tariq’s entire world tilted. Even the light in the pool room seemed to change as the wind suddenly screamed shrill and high in the turrets and rain lashed with renewed force against the abbey windows.
All the warmth, affection, desire—every good thing he’d felt about this naked woman in front of him turned sour, dark. Cold. Sharp.
“Who are you?” His words came out hoarse.
Blood drained from her face. Her mouth went slack for a moment.
“What…do you mean?”
“I said, who are you?”
Confusion twisted through her face, her eyes beginning to gleam, her nose going pink at the tip.
“I…I was going to tell you, Tariq. I—”
“Tariq!” A black rage rose inside him. “You knew all along who I was!”
A wild desperation entered her big eyes. “Please, hear me out. I came here tonight to tell you that I—”
The rage exploded like shrapnel through his chest. “Tell me what? That you’re my enemy, that you work for a terrorist organization? That you’ve come to finish off what your people started on the tarmac at JFK? Just when were you going to tell me this?” he demanded. “After you made me dinner? After you seduced and screwed me?”
He surged up out of the water, stood naked and dripping over her.
“Was that what this was?” He waved his hand between their bodies. “Were you sent to sleep with me, to get something out of me?”
She went sheet white. Emotion pooled into her eyes. His rage festered, curdling with the bitterness of betrayal.
He grabbed a towel, threw it at her.
“Get out.”
“Tariq, please, listen to me, that’s not—”
“I said, get out.”
He went to a console on the wall, pressed the intercom button, his gaze not leaving her for an instant. “I want two men standing guard outside the pool room door,” he ordered into the intercom. “Make sure they’re armed.”
She stood slowly up as he spoke, a naked Venus rising from his whirlpool, water sliding luminous down creamy skin, her curls slicked back from her face, her lips swollen from his kisses. Breasts high and rounded, nipples dusky against pale flesh, the delta of hair between her thighs dark, wet. A spy—a traitor. Who’d made him feel, helped him come back to life, then dashed it all like waves on the rocks below.
All lies.
“Cover yourself,” he barked. The sight of her nakedness, her beauty, was fuelling a dangerous feeling of violence in him. He wanted to lash out at her, physically hurt her for not being the woman she’d claimed to be.
She bent down, picked up the towel, wrapped it around her torso, her knuckles white. She shot a glance at the door.
“Don’t even think about leaving here,” he growled at her.
The wind screamed, like the sound of a dying woman, a ghost in pain.
She came toward him.
“Don’t.” He pointed his clawed fingers at her. “Do not come near me. Do not—” Emotion rode rough through his chest, strangling the words in his throat. Goddamn it, he’d fallen hard for her. He wanted her to be Amelie, to be real, true.
He fisted his good hand around the medallion, then threw it at her bare feet. “What did you think—that I wouldn’t see this?”
“Tariq, please, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Did he send you himself, or are you working under orders from one of his cells?”
A raw fear entered her face now. “Who? What cells?”
He jerked his chin to the gold medallion. “You wear the mark of the Sun Clan.”
She looked confused.
“The mark of The Moor,” he said, his blood pounding. “The symbol of MagMo.”
Her jaw dr
opped in shock.
A tiny lick of disquiet flicked through him at the sight of the surprise on her face.
“You’re actually trying to tell me you don’t know what this symbol stands for, where it comes from?” he said.
“I don’t.”
“That image of a sun and jambiya was once tattooed onto the lower backs of the princes of the Sun Clan, an ancient Saharan tribe that went to battle with the Al Arif bedouins thousands of years ago, a battle that was said to have resulted in the creation of the Kingdom of Al Na’Jar. And that image—” he pointed at it “—is now worn in medallion form by MagMo operatives, terrorists who’ve sworn allegiance to a man known only as The Moor, a man using ancient desert history to create war in my country. He wants to take over our kingdom for himself. He wants our oil. And he wants power.”
“The medallion is not mine,” she snapped, an anger building in her.
He barked a harsh laugh.
“My name is Bella DiCaprio,” she said. “That’s what I was going to tell you.”
Something inside him stilled at her words. Yet Bella could see muscles bulging at his neck and his hooked, dark features were etched with rage. He stood in front of her, looking more powerful naked than clothed. And the violence that seemed to be simmering just under his skin terrified her.
“I’m a journalist from Washington, D.C.,” she said, words coming quickly now, before he erupted. “I came to the island for a story. I believed you were alive, living here in the abbey, that the palace lied about your death. And I—”
“A story!” He spat the words out as if they were foul in his mouth.
Bella closed her eyes, digging for strength. There was no right way—no easy way—to say this anymore. “Not just a story,” she said. “This is not just about you anymore. It’s bigger. It’s…”
She heard men outside the door, their voices loud. The door was flung open. One entered, but Tariq didn’t bother to look at him. His attention remained solely on Bella as he issued a curt command to his man in Arabic.
The man retreated, closing the door behind him. She heard the lock turn.
And she knew she was trapped. In a cold haunted abbey on a cliff, armed men outside the door. And only Hurley, Scoob and Agnes knew where she was.
“I used to work for the Washington Daily,” she said, her voice quivering, and she hated herself for showing fear. “I covered stories on you, Tariq, after the bombing at JFK.”
Hatred flashed in his eye and his fist balled as if he was struggling to hold his rage in. This was not the broken specter of a man she’d first glimpsed in the mist along the cliff edge. She didn’t know this person in front of her at all. This was a new Tariq, a savage side to him she’d not glimpsed in her research.
Cold fear crawled deeper into her.
“I was there, at the airport with a photographer when the blast occurred. We were covering a separate story when it happened. The photographer was Derek Jones. My boyfriend. I… “ She broke his gaze, unable to hold the intensity. She looked instead at the medallion in a puddle of water near her feet. “That part was all true. Everything I told you about my boyfriend, my family, that was all me. The real me.” She looked up, steeled her jaw at the expression on his face.
“We covered the bombing from an eyewitness perspective, and then the Daily let me run with the story as things continued to develop over the following months. I covered your life, your history, your background, Tariq. I felt like I knew you, I—”
“You do not know me! You know nothing about my family, or what we are capable of in the face of deception.”
She inhaled, shaky.
I fell in love with you before I even came here…
She wanted to tell him that. She wanted to make him understand that she cared for him with a passion even she didn’t fully comprehend. That he’d become an obsession, dominated her life. That she’d put everything on the line to come here and find him, to tell his story.
It sunk in now, as she faced him. It was just that—an obsession. And she felt suddenly like a little girl who’d worshiped her hero, a sheik, a dark prince, from afar, imagining things that were not possible. She felt like little orphan Bella again. A cast-off who couldn’t make it in the big time.
She swallowed hard against the ball of failure and reality ballooning in her throat.
He started to speak.
“No, please, Tariq, let me just finish.” But her voice came out thin now. “The Daily laid me off a few months ago. Budget cuts. Derek escaped the ax because he was sleeping with the boss’s daughter. I found this out the very same day my position was terminated—that was all true.” She spoke as fast as she could, fighting the emotion that threatened to engulf her voice, fighting time to get her message across before he did something rash.
“I ended up writing a blog for a website called Watchdog. In my various posts I took Senator Sam Etherington to task as I followed his presidential campaign—something I’d also been doing for the Daily. At the same time, while your family claimed you were dead, I just couldn’t drop the story on you. It didn’t feel finished. The tiny news release from the palace felt wrong, false. So did the private funeral. I mean, you’d been engaged for two years and were about to be married and none of your fiancée’s family were even there. So I…I called Julie Belard’s father.”
“You did what?” His face twisted at mention of Julie’s name, as if she was fouling something sacred.
“I did what journalists do, Tariq. I started digging. Ambassador Belard told me about Julie’s love of this island and the abbey, how you used to come here with her for the opera festival. Then with help from a computer expert I learned your family corporation had actually bought the abbey.”
Sweat beaded along Bella’s lip. She clutched her towel tighter across her chest. “From D.C. I called the travel agent here on the Ile-en-Mer, and he told me the owner, an injured foreigner, moved into the abbey in August, the same month the palace said you’d died. The travel agent said you were living as a recluse, and had closed off the abbey to the public. The timing, everything about your injuries… I believed it had to be you.
“My colleagues helped me create an alias, and I spent part of my severance package to come here. That’s why I was taking photos of you on the cliff.”
She stood, shaking, edgy, feeling as if bared for judgment now that she’d spoken her truth.
He took a slow step toward her. She flinched inside, fighting the urge to step back.
“You came all this way, went to all this trouble, to expose me?” Disdain, disgust, entered his features. “You came to wreck my life, profit from of my loss, my grief. You stood there listening to me talking about my fiancée and my accident all the while knowing everything about me.”
She lifted her chin. “It’s not just about you. I found a photo of you online, posing with Dr. Alexis Etherington at a medical convention in Chicago years ago.”
Blood drained under his dark complexion.
“I posted it on my blog.”
“Why?” A muscle pulsed fast at his neck. She swallowed, nervous about venturing into more dangerous territory, of including others in his family.
“Partly an attempt to solicit information,” she said quietly. “It worked. I got an anonymous tip.” She hesitated. “The tip came from Althea Winston, the wife of a man named Travis Johnson who was shot and killed in an underground parking lot in D.C. a few months ago. He worked for a company called Strategic Alliances. A man named Benjamin Raber was his boss.”
Recognition flickered in his eyes.
“Do you know any of this?”
“Go on.” His order was curt.
She cleared her throat. “Althea Winston implied Strategic Alliances was a front for a U.S. black ops hit unit called STRIKE, and that her husband had been ordered by Raber to have your brother, Omair, assassinated.”
His face changed. He reached quickly for a towel, tying it around his waist.
“Continue.”
/> “It appears presidential candidate Senator Sam Etherington might have blackmailed Raber to make this happen. We’ve been gathering proof.”
“What proof?”
She was silent.
“Amelie—”
“Bella,” she reminded him.
He inhaled sharply.
But before he could speak again, she said, “After Althea Winston tipped me off, she was run off a bridge. She and her daughter were killed. My own apartment was ransacked, and I was attacked in an alley by three men wearing balaclavas. Two of the men, at least, spoke Arabic. In defending myself, I ripped that medallion from one of the men’s necks.” She pointed at the piece of gold on the floor.
He angled his head. Disbelief in his face. “You didn’t give it to the police? You just decided to wear it yourself, like some trophy?”
“I didn’t trust anyone. Do you honestly think I’d have worn that in front of you if I knew what it was? I didn’t know my attackers were MagMo operatives. I initially thought they were Sam’s people, trying to keep the existence of STRIKE hidden, trying to hide the fact he attempted to assassinate a royal from what’s supposed to be an allied country. I also thought they could even be your people.”
“My people?”
“I didn’t know why you were hiding, or what lengths your family would go to keep a secret. Or what really went down with Omair, or if he was even still alive.”
“They’re working together,” he said, very quietly. “MagMo and STRIKE. At least as far as Omair was concerned. The Moor wants us all dead. STRIKE appears to be attempting to fulfill his wish.”
Adrenaline exploded in her veins.
“You know this—for certain?” she said.
“We know Johnson was ordered to have Omair assassinated, and we know that whoever gave Johnson the order was working in alliance with MagMo in North Africa. We didn’t know the order could have come from Sam Etherington.”
“Even though the queen of Al Na’Jar is Sam’s ex?”
He went dead still. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Tariq,” she said quietly, “in my bag in the kitchen is a family photograph I took from your wallet. I recognized Nikki as Alexis from that old Chicago medical convention photo taken with you, the one I posted on my blog. To be certain, I had the image run through sophisticated biometrics software. I know your brother’s wife is Sam’s ex.”
Surgeon Sheik's Rescue Page 14
