The Desert Rogues Part 1

by Susan Mallery

  Khalil, Jamal’s younger brother, looked up and grinned. “It’s true. Jamal lives for the arts. He’s so fond of them, sometimes we even call him Art. As a nickname.”

  Dora, sitting across from her husband, touched her napkin to her mouth. “Ignore them both,” she said. “Khalil has a wicked sense of humor, which is currently operating at your expense. I will discuss it with him later and make sure the torment of this evening is not repeated.”

  Khalil, sitting on Heidi’s left, didn’t look the least bit concerned. “Are you threatening me, wife?”

  Dora, a pretty brunette with warm, friendly eyes, smiled. “Absolutely. Heidi is a guest here. Be kind to her.”

  “You’re not lecturing the king,” her husband said.

  “I’m not married to the king.” Dora turned her attention to Heidi. “I suggest you don’t pay any attention to them. The men in this family mean well, but they can be a trial.”

  Heidi smiled weakly at the gesture of friendship. She hadn’t met Dora before, but she thought she might like Khalil’s wife. At least Dora seemed to be the sensible type.

  “I’m not a trial,” the king insisted.

  “Yes, you are,” Fatima and Dora said at once.

  There was a moment of silence, then everyone laughed. Heidi tried to join in, but her heart had nestled firmly in her throat. It made it difficult to breathe, let alone laugh. She found it easier to simply be quiet and hope the conversation returned to a more normal topic.

  To distract herself, she studied the room in which they were dining. The family dining room was an open area tucked into an alcove by the main garden. One wall was glass, opening out onto a fountain and the blooming flowers beyond. Extra chairs lined the back wall. Flowers decorated the white tablecloth. Silver gleamed, and crystal reflected the light of the brilliant chandelier overhead.

  She wanted to say this was one of her favorite places in the palace, but the truth was, she enjoyed the entire structure. There was so much beauty here…so much history. Parts of the palace predated the Crusades. There were entire rooms filled with antique weapons, and the library contained dozens of books written and illustrated by hand.

  “What are you thinking?” Jamal asked.

  She looked up and found the prince’s dark eyes focused on her face. His attention made her nervous. She pushed her glasses into place and cleared her throat.

  “Just that the palace is a very beautiful place. I’m pleased to be back. Did I mention that I was interested in restoring the ancient texts?”

  “Jamal is interested in history,” the king said, interrupting. “He reads about it all the time.”

  Jamal’s well-shaped mouth tightened in annoyance. “I live for history,” he said. “They call me History. It’s a nickname.” He tossed his napkin onto the table. “Come on, Heidi. I think you and I should leave these good people to finish their dinner.”

  She rose gratefully to her feet. While she wasn’t all that excited about being alone with Jamal, she didn’t want to stay here and be tortured, either.

  “Where are you going?” the king asked. “Into town? You could take her to a club. Or dancing. Dancing is nice.” He smiled at Heidi. “Don’t you like to dance?”

  “Or a walk in the garden,” Fatima added quickly. “It’s very beautiful out tonight.”

  “Hey, we could clear the table, and you two could get to it right—” Khalil stopped abruptly.

  “You kicked me,” he accused, glaring at Dora. “What did I say?”

  Dora ignored him. “Go,” she told Heidi. “I’ll hold them back while you two make your escape.”

  Jamal held out his hand. Heidi took it and allowed him to lead her from the room. They raced to the end of the hallway, then made a series of quick turns, finally ending up in an alcove that led to one of the small gardens on the side of the palace.

  Jamal leaned against the wall and dropped his chin to his chest. “That was horrible.”

  “I tried to warn you,” Heidi told him. “But you wouldn’t listen.” She shuddered. “Dancing is nice. I can’t believe the king said that.”

  Jamal looked at her. “You missed your line on that one.”

  She thought for a minute, then laughed. “You’re right.” She pressed her free hand to her chest. “I live to dance. They call me Dan.”

  Jamal chuckled, then jerked his head toward the glass doors. “If I promise not to discuss anything of significance, do you want to take a walk for a couple of minutes? Just until it’s safe to go our separate ways.”

  “Sure.”

  He pulled open one of the glass doors, and they stepped out into the night.

  Heidi inhaled the scent of oranges and plants and turned earth and even the sweetness left by the lingering heat. She closed her eyes and sighed. “This is El Bahar,” she breathed. “I always try to remember how it smells in the gardens, but no matter how I promise myself I’ll remember, I always seem to forget. After a couple of months I can’t recall the exact sweetness, or the way the earth adds a darker tone to the fragrance. I lose the sounds of the night here. The chirpings and stirrings. The gentle splash of the fountains.”

  “You love it here, don’t you?”

  Heidi opened her eyes and found Jamal staring at her. She started to take a step back from him, only to discover that they still held hands. She looked at their entwined fingers in amazement. How had that happened?

  “I, um…” She gave him a quick smile, then freed herself. “I’ve waited my whole life to live here. This is the only place I’ve felt at home.” She motioned to the garden. “I love the combination of old and new. We’re in the middle of the desert, and it’s June. The daytime temperature is among the hottest in the world. Yet this is lovely.”

  Jamal shrugged out of his suit jacket and placed it on a bench next to them. “That’s because there are discreet air-conditioning vents and fans around here. It keeps the temperature down.”

  “I don’t care. It’s magic, and that’s all that matters to me.”

  He stared at her for a long time, then shoved his hands into his slacks pockets and asked, “Is that why you came back?”

  They stood on a stone-paved path. There was a fountain to her left and a lattice covered in vines to her right. She traced one of the leaves.

  “I didn’t come for the magic, if that’s what you’re asking. I told you, I want to work. Time and the elements are destroying hundreds of ancient texts each year. I want to preserve history so it isn’t lost.”

  “What about your boyfriend? Wasn’t there someone special you left behind?”

  He was kidding, right? Boyfriend? Her? She’d been groped a couple of times, but that hardly counted as a meaningful relationship. “Not exactly.”

  “Then what…exactly?”

  Was it her imagination, or had Jamal moved closer to her? She looked at him. “Let me be completely clear on the subject. I don’t want to get married.”

  He was looming, she thought in some distress. Somehow he’d gotten taller, and he now loomed. A dark warrior prince in the night.

  “To respond with like clearness,” he said seriously, although she would have sworn she saw a smile lurking at the corners of his mouth, “I don’t recall proposing.”

  What was it with the heat on her face? “Yes, well, you might. And I don’t want you to.”

  “Because you can’t say no?”

  She pressed her fingers to her cheeks. “Exactly. I promise you that King Givon and Fatima are experts at pushing my buttons. They’ve done it before. When I graduated from college, all I wanted was to come here and work.”

  “Isn’t that what happened?”

  “No. Somehow they talked me into attending finishing school.” She sighed in disgust. “Do you know what year it is? Young women should not be attending finishing school in this day and age. It’s horrible.”

  “But you went.”

  “Exactly.” She looked at him. “Don’t ask me how it happened. One minute I was telling them I wasn’
t interested in the idea and the next I was boarding a plane.” She paused, remembering those conversations two years ago. “I think of myself as a strong person, but maybe I don’t have any backbone. Maybe…”

  She pressed her lips together as a sudden and unpleasant thought occurred to her. Fatima and the king had been very insistent about her going to finishing school. Before that, they’d both encouraged her to study Middle Eastern politics and history with an emphasis on El Bahar. Her education didn’t exactly prepare her to make her way in the world…unless they’d had a very specific job in mind.

  She sucked in a breath. “Oh, no! They’ve been planning this for years.”

  “Who’s been planning what?”

  She clasped her hands together in front of her chest. “Jamal, you have to believe me. The king and your grandmother want us to marry. I just realized they’ve been preparing me for the role of your wife.” She thought about the exclusive all-girls boarding school she’d attended before her women’s college. Had they influenced her grandfather to arrange that? “Maybe for longer than I thought.”

  She was so damn earnest, Jamal thought with amusement. Heidi looked up at him with her big eyes and her trembling mouth, acting as if her revelation was going to change the course of history.

  “You’re saying they sent you to the closest equivalent of Princess School?”

  Her nose got scrunchy. “You’re mocking me, but this is serious. I do not want to marry you.”

  “You’ve got to stop flattering me, Heidi. It goes to my head.”

  “Oh, don’t be such a man. I’m not being insulting. I can’t imagine you want to marry me, either. In fact this isn’t about you.”

  “If we’re discussing marriage between the two of us, then it is about me.”

  She dropped her hands to her sides and turned away. “You’re being deliberately obtuse.”

  She was so frustrated by the situation. Her feelings about avoiding any kind of permanent entanglement were genuine enough to charm him. After spending his entire adult life avoiding women who wanted something from him, how was he supposed to resist a woman who couldn’t care less about his title, his money or his heritage?

  He had a feeling that Heidi was right—that Fatima and his father had been preparing her to be his bride for some time. He’d made it clear he was in no hurry to marry again, so they wouldn’t have been concerned he would run off and fall in love. Been there, done that, he thought grimly. With disastrous results. He wasn’t anxious to repeat the experience.

  But he would have to marry. For the sake of the kingdom and because he wanted children. So far Heidi was the front-runner. He held back a grin. He could only imagine how thrilled she would be to hear the news.

  “What if I said I wouldn’t mind marrying you,” he said as much to tease her as to test the waters.

  She spun back to face him. “Are you insane?” she demanded. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. We have nothing in common.”

  “On the contrary. We have several things in common. We care about El Bahar, both past and present. I’m very interested in preserving our heritage. You know the customs, you enjoy living in the palace. You’re intelligent enough to be able to handle the complexities of living a royal life. I suspect you think I’m handsome, and I find you quite attractive.”

  The last bit was a stretch, but he’d told worse lies in his time. After all, it was for a good cause. In truth, she wasn’t unattractive, she just needed a little help.

  She opened her mouth and closed it several times. No sound emerged. He watched the color climb her cheeks.

  “You’re blushing,” he observed.

  “No, I’m not. I don’t blush. Never. I don’t live an embarrassing life, so why would I blush?” Even so, she ducked her head and pressed the back of her hand against her cheek.

  “Would it be so very terrible?” he asked.

  “Yes!” She glared at him. “Why are you doing this? Why aren’t you running screaming in the opposite direction? I’ve just told you that your father wants you to marry a stranger, and you don’t seem to care.”

  “I care. I just don’t think it’s the end of the world. There are worse fates.”

  “Like what? Being buried alive? Being eaten by bloodsucking bats?”

  He winced. “You’re right, Heidi. You don’t cater to the male ego. As my wife, you’d have to work on that.”

  She stomped her foot. “Read my lips, Prince Jamal Khan of El Bahar. I am never, ever going to marry you. Not in this life, not in the next life, not even for a day. No. Not me. And that’s final.”

  “Want to bet?”

  Jamal grinned, then stepped close to her. He slipped one arm around her waist and slid the other around her shoulders. Instantly her body went stiff, and her mouth dropped open with shock.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” she asked as she pressed her hands flat against his chest.

  “Finding out if that mouth of yours is good for anything but tossing around insults.”

  Her hazel eyes flashed with fire. He was afraid the heat just might melt the frames of her glasses.

  “Don’t even think about it,” she told him. “I’m not interested in you in that way. I don’t enjoy physical contact. I will only ask this once, sir. Unhand me.”

  “If you’re only going to ask once, then I’ll only have to answer once. No.”

  Chapter Three

  This was not happening, Heidi thought in amazement. She and Jamal were in the middle of a serious conversation about why they could not possibly marry. He wasn’t actually going to stop talking to kiss her, was he?

  She swallowed as she realized he very well was. The man was looming again. Apparently he lived to loom. Then there was the matter of her being in his arms. No mistaking that one. She was pressed right up against his rather impressive body.

  She wanted to complain. She wanted to say that it was unpleasant or icky or that she really wanted him to stop. The problem was, it wasn’t unpleasant. For one thing, heat seemed to flow from him to her, settling in rather unusual places. Her stomach was not as calm as it could be, and where her breasts accidentally brushed against his chest…well, they were extremely hot and sensitive in the most peculiar way. She wasn’t even going to think about how her legs suddenly felt weak.

  She stood with her hands at her sides, but she had the strongest urge to raise her arms until she could touch his shoulders or maybe even his hair. But she didn’t. For one thing, she wasn’t interested in kissing or anything remotely physical. For another, she didn’t know what to do. Kissing had not been a big part of her life.

  “Relax,” Jamal told her, his voice filled with laughter. “I’m not going to eat you.”

  “I’m relaxed.”

  “Heidi, if you were any stiffer, we could iron clothes on your back.” He shook her gently. “Deep breaths.”

  “I do not need instructions from you, thank you very much. I know exactly what I’m doing.”

  “Liar. You need instructions from someone, and I’m the only one here.”

  Was her inexperience that obvious? More heat flared on her cheeks. Fine, so maybe she was blushing. But it wasn’t her fault. The situation was entirely intolerable. “If you would just release me, we could continue our conversation.”

  “I don’t want to talk. I want to kiss you. Now say my name.”

  She blinked. He’d said it. He’d actually said the “K” word. Kiss! She hadn’t misread the situation. And just a minute before, Jamal had said he found her attractive. No man ever had before. She knew she wasn’t really the attractive type. She didn’t know how to be. It was her clothes, her hair, or maybe her glasses. She looked at the magazines and wanted to make a change, but she didn’t know how to translate what they were doing on the page to something she would be comfortable in. It had always been easier not to try.

  The same with men. She’d held herself back because she’d felt so awkward. Now she was sorry she didn’t have more experi
ence.

  “What are you thinking?” Jamal asked.

  Heidi looked at him. “Nothing.”

  “You’re lying again. I wonder if the king knows about this character flaw.”

  “Jamal! You’re not helping the situation.”

  “Actually, I am.” He drew her even closer, which she hadn’t thought possible. “Now say my name again.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I like how it sounds.”

  She glared at him, trying to ignore the way his dark eyes seemed to reflect lights of the stars overhead. Or maybe it was the lamps lining the path.

  “Why does everything have to be about you?”

  He grinned, his white teeth flashing in contrast to the shadows on his face. “Because it’s more fun that way.”

  “I don’t want to do this with you.”

  “How do you know until you’ve tried it? I happen to be a spectacular kisser.”

  “I wouldn’t know about that, but I do know you’re a legend in your own mind.”

  “Don’t be critical until you’ve sampled my charms.”

  Her heart seemed to be tap dancing inside her chest. She was having trouble breathing. “I’m not interested in your charms.”

  Instead of responding, he touched her mouth with his thumb and forefinger. “Relax,” he told her. “Let these muscles go. Now say my name.”

  “Jamal.” She clipped the word at the end, making a tight, very unrelaxed sort of sound.

  “No. Slowly. Draw it out.”

  The man was insane. She was insane. She was also starting to enjoy being this close to him. He was strong and broad, and oddly enough, he actually made her feel safe.

  “Jamal,” she repeated, closing her eyes and speaking as he’d requested.

  She waited. But instead of hearing how she’d done, there was the lightest, sweetest pressure against her mouth.

  He was kissing her. Kissing her!

  Heidi’s eyes popped open. She couldn’t believe it. She’d never really had a kiss before. Not from an eligible man. Certainly never by someone with Jamal’s reputation. If the tabloids could be believed, he’d made love to more women than James Bond, and then some.