by Olivia Gates
His every word expanded in her heart like a compulsion trying to spread out and take hold of her. She resisted his influence, slammed him with her frustration. “I told you not to call me that. But since you’re breath-depleting and you can talk me under the sand, just call me T.J. if you must call me at all. Everyone does.”
This time he let that smile spread on his lips again. “Then something’s wrong with everyone you know, if they can look on your beauty and think something as sexless and characterless as T.J., let alone articulate it. I’m calling you nothing but Talia. Or nadda jannati. It’s impossible for me not to. Deal with it.”
She gave a smothered screech. “For Pete’s sake, turn off your female-enthrallment software. It won’t work anymore. It’s making me so sick that I’d rather you use your fists like my captors did.”
It was as if she’d hit a button, fast-forwarding his face from teasing to ominous. He rasped, “They hit you?”
She instinctively rubbed the lingering ache in her gut, which had been swamped by far more pressing urgencies. “Oh, a couple did, just for laughs. It wasn’t part of the interrogation, since those jerks weren’t cleared to engage in that, and I bet their orders were not to damage me. But they couldn’t resist bullying the smaller man they thought I was. One made it sound as if it’s some duty a true Zohaydan owes any foreigner messing in the kingdom’s business.”
His teeth made a bone-scraping sound. “I wish I had used something other than tranq darts to knock them out. Something that would have caused permanent damage”
She gave an impressive snort. “Stop pretending to care.”
“I can’t stop something I’m not pretending. And I would have cared had you been a man, even the spy with the multiple agenda I thought you to be. Nothing is more despicable or worthy of punishment than abusing the helpless. Under any pretext. Those men aren’t patriots as they pretended, they’re vicious, cowardly lowlifes who can’t pass up a chance to take their deficiencies out on those who can’t retaliate.”
“Right. Like you’re the defender of the weak and the champion of the oppressed.”
He gave a solemn nod. Then, as if he was renewing a blood oath, he said, “I am.”
And she couldn’t hold back, blurted it all out. “Like you defended my brother? Like you championed him against the bullies in your family who abused their power and threw him in jail?”
Four
Harres had thought he’d been ready for anything.
He had made peace with the fact that he would never know what to expect next from Talia Jasmine Burke.
But this was beyond unexpected. And he wasn’t ready for it.
He stared into her eyes. They were flaying him with rage. But now anxiety muddied their luminous depths. It fit what he knew of her, that his first sighting of the debilitating emotion there wouldn’t be on her own account, but on a loved one’s.
Her brother.
So that was it. Why she was here.
He knew she’d been determined not to tell him, hated that she had, was madder than ever, at herself. But it was out.
At least, the first clue was. He realized she was talking about the same T. J. Burke he’d investigated. There couldn’t be another one who happened to be in jail, too.
That still didn’t tell him why she’d implicated his family in her brother’s imprisonment. And it was clear he had another fight on his hands until she gave him anything more.
After a long moment of refusing to give an inch, her whole body started shaking from escalating tension, her eyes growing brighter as pain welled in them. His insides itched with the need to defuse her agitation. But he was the enemy to her now. She wouldn’t let him console her while she considered him—however indirectly—the cause of her brother’s suffering.
Struggling not to override her resistance and to hell with the consequences, maybe even letting her vent her surplus of anguish by lashing out at him, he let out a ragged exhalation. “You’ve come this far. Tell me the rest.”
She glared defiance at him then echoed his exhalation. “Why? So you can tell me I got it all wrong again? You’ve said that a few times already. I’ll cut and paste on my own.”
“Oqssem b’Ellahi, I swear to God, Talia, if you don’t start talking, I’ll kiss you again.”
Outrage flared in her eyes. And, he was certain, unwilling remembrance and involuntary temptation, too. That only seemed to pour fuel on her indignation. He would have been thrilled that her attraction was so fierce it defied even her hostility. If the grimness of the situation wasn’t mounting by the second. Then she thrilled him anyway.
She hissed, “My earlier ‘feminine’ threat of chomping a part of you off stands. It’ll just be your lips instead of your hand.”
He inclined his head at her, suppressing the smile spreading inside him. He couldn’t exhibit any levity. She’d only put the worst possible interpretation to it. “Why bother when you’d only end up fixing it? Talk, Talia. If I’m to be punished for it, at least face me with the details of my charge.”
Her scowl darkened. “I again remind you I’m not the police. I don’t owe you a reading of the charges against you. I’m the family of the victim, and you’re the family of the criminals.”
“So what did my family of criminals do?” he prodded. “Don’t leave me in suspense any longer.”
She huffed some curses about his being a persistent pain in the posterior under her breath, then finally said, “My brother—my twin—” she paused to skewer him with a glare of pure loathing “—was working in Azmahar two years ago. He’s an IT whiz, and international companies have been stealing him from each other since he turned eighteen. He met a woman and they fell in love. He asked her to marry him and she agreed. But her family didn’t.”
So a woman was involved. Figured. Not that he’d expected it.
“The woman’s name is Ghada Aal Maleki.” She watched him as she pronounced the foreign-to-her name in perfect precision, her eyes probing, shrewd. Then she smirked. “Do turn down the volume of the bells ringing in your head. Very jarring now that the desert seems to have turned in for the night.”
He contemplated the implications of the new information even as his lips twitched at her latest bit of lambasting. “Excuse the racket. Bells did go off quite loudly. The woman in question belongs to the royal family of Azmahar. I know she’s long been betrothed. But what caused the jangling is to whom. Mohab Aal Shalaan, my second cousin and one of the three men on my retrieval team tonight.”
Her mouth dropped open. Then she threw her hands in the air, looked around as if seeking support from an invisible audience as she protested the unfairness of this last revelation. “Oh, great. Just super dandy. So now I’m supposed to owe him my life, too?”
He shook his head, adamant. “You don’t owe anyone anything. We were doing our duty. As for Mohab and Ghada’s betrothal, it was family-arranged, but I have a feeling both have been working together to sabotage their families’ intentions. She first insisted on obtaining her bachelor’s degree, then she wanted to finish her postgraduate studies and he gladly agreed, granting her year after year of postponement. I think both want to escape marriage altogether and are using each other as an alibi for as long as they can put off their families. As of hours ago, there’s been no sign of a wedding date being set.”
She digested this then raised her chin, trying to seem uninterested. “Well, maybe your second cousin doesn’t want to marry Ghada, but your family wants him to, at any cost. Must have some huge vested interest in the marriage so they’ll do anything to see it comes to pass. When Ghada told them she was breaking it off with your cousin and marrying my brother, they drove him away from Azmahar. But when Ghada said she’d join him in the States, they decided to get rid of him altogether.
“They fabricated a detailed hacking-and-embezzlement history implicating him in major cyber raids. They somehow got the States to arraign him and put him on trial. He was found guilty in less than two months and sentenced to
five years. After the first couple of weeks there, they even arranged for him to be attacked. When he defended himself, he became ineligible for good behavior. So now he’ll serve the full sentence without possibility of parole. In a maximum-security prison.”
Silence detonated after the last tear-clogged syllable tumbled from her lips. Only the harsh unevenness of her breathing broke the expanding stillness as her eyes brimmed then overflowed with resurrected anguish, outrage and futility.
And she was waiting for him to make a comment. He had none.
She on the other hand, had plenty more. “T.J.—yeah, that’s his name, too, Todd Jonas—looks like me, Prince Harres. I’m tall for a woman, but imagine a five-foot-eight man who doesn’t have much on me in breadth and who’s got my coloring and the eternally boyish version of my features. Do you have any idea what prison is like for him? I die each day thinking what his life is like on the inside. He’s got four years and seven months more to serve. All thanks to your family.”
He could only stare at her. He knew in gruesome detail what she was talking about. A prison full of the lowlifes he’d just described, preying on the weakest of the herd. With her brother as an easy, eye-catching target.
She went on, a fusion of terrible emotions vibrating in her voice. “But no thanks to all of you, he’s safe. For now. I…buy his safety. I probably won’t be able to afford it for long, as the premium keeps going up. In the past three months it has already tripled.”
This time when she fell silent, he knew she’d said all she was going to say.
It was endless minutes before he could bring himself to talk. “Nothing I say could express my regret at your brother’s situation. If it’s true any member of my family was responsible—”
“If?” Her sharp interjection cut him off. “Oh, it is true, Prince Harres. And I’ve been given the chance to prove it. And to do something about it.”
He couldn’t help coming closer with the urgency her fiery conviction sparked in him. “What exactly? And given? By whom?”
She looked at him as if he’d told her to jump out of a plane without a parachute and he’d catch her. “As if I’d tell you.”
“It’s vital that you tell me, Talia,” he persisted. “If I know all the details, I can help. I will.”
“Sure you will. You’ll help prove your own family guilty of fraud, send those involved to jail instead of my brother.”
“I can’t say what will happen, since I don’t know the specifics, but if there’s anything I can do to help your brother, I will do it.”
She smirked at him. “That’s more like it. Be inconclusive, make insubstantial promises. Until the silly goose gives you what you bothered to come after her for.”
He leveled his gaze on her, tried to convey all the sincerity he harbored in this specific situation and the rules he lived by. “I again say I don’t know the specifics. But I will. And when I do, I will act. And I can and do promise you this. I deal with my family members the same way I do strangers when it comes to guilt. If they’re guilty, they will pay the price.”
“Oh, give me a break.”
“You think I can keep the peace in a kingdom like Zohayd by playing favorites? I am where I am, as effective as I am, because everyone knows my code and believes beyond a shadow of doubt that I would never compromise it. And I never do.”
Her eyes flickered before they hardened again. “Good for you. But I’m not telling you anything more. What will you do? Force it out of me like those thugs intended to?”
He ached with the need to erase that doubt, that fear, once and forever. He couldn’t bear that she could be uncertain of her fate with him. “I again swear that you are safe with me, in every way, no matter what.”
His gaze bored into hers, as if he’d drive the conviction inside her mind with the force of his, until she gave an uncomfortable shrug.
He knew that was all the concession he’d get now.
He exhaled. “With that settled, let’s get to other vital points. Now that I know you’re not the reporter you were…reported to be, and not the spy I suspected you to be, I am wondering if all this isn’t a case of catastrophic misinformation on all sides, if you weren’t kidnapped for the wrong reasons.”
She gave him an exasperated look. “Is that your roundabout way to get to the reason I was taken, the same reason you came to extract me? Okay, let’s get this out of the way. I came here following a lead that can prove my brother’s innocence. And I stumbled on information terminally damaging to the Aal Shalaans. I have no idea how your rival tribe, or you for that matter, got wind of that, and so quickly. Maybe when I emailed my brother’s attorney with the developments. So yes, I know why I was kidnapped. Your rival tribe wants the information I have to destroy you. You want it to avoid being destroyed.”
And though she was looking at him as if she’d like nothing more than to see him and his family “destroyed,” another wave of admiration surged inside him for this golden lioness who was here risking everything for her twin.
He at last sighed. “At least one thing turned out as I believed. But you said you were ‘given’ the chance to prove your brother’s innocence and refused to tell me who gave it to you. Don’t you realize that someone is orchestrating all this?”
A considering look came into her eyes. “Sure. Your point?”
“My point is, that someone cares nothing about you or your brother, you’re just one of the instruments they’re using to their end of causing the most chaos and destruction.”
She gave a slow nod. “I never thought they were doing this out of the kindness of their hearts.”
“Did they give you anything that might exonerate your brother yet?” She glared at him, then gave a grudging headshake. “Don’t you find it suspicious they only gave you information that will hurt the Aal Shalaans?”
Her eyes spat blue fire. “According to them, it will end your reign.”
He gritted his teeth at the very real danger of that coming to pass. “Didn’t you ask yourself how they intend you to use that information? How using it will help your brother?”
She shrugged again, her eyes losing their hard gleam, the first flicker of uncertainty creeping there. “I didn’t have time to think. I just got the info this morning, and within a couple of hours I was snatched. But I came to one decision. I wouldn’t give my kidnappers anything. For every reason there is. I knew I wasn’t walking out of that hole. So not only wasn’t I about to be party to your tribal feud, I sure wasn’t helping my abusers become the rulers of Zohayd and the abusers of millions.”
He stared at her. There really was no end to her surprises. Almost anyone in her place would have said and given anything for a chance to walk away from the situation. But he’d pegged her right in those first moments. She would rather die in defiance, for a cause, than beg for her life from someone she despised and have her survival mean untold misery to others.
He fought the need to pull her into his arms, chide her for being such an obstinate hero. The one thing that stopped him, besides the settling weariness of the whole thing, was that he knew she’d resist. Spontaneous expression of emotion was something he’d have to work on re-earning.
He at last said, “You seem to realize the gravity of the information you have and what having it fall into the hands of the wrong people can mean. Have you decided what you’ll do with it?”
Her shoulders drooped. “If I get out of this in one piece, you mean? I’ll solidify my facts first. Then I’ll think long and hard how best to use it.” She shot him a sullen glance. “I may announce it to the world, maybe paving the way for Zohayd to become a democracy at last.”
He raised both eyebrows, answering her surliness with sarcasm. “Like one of the so-called democracies in the region? That is the epitome of peace and prosperity, in your opinion? You want to save Zohayd from its current wealth and stability, from the hands of a royal family who have ruled it wisely and fairly for five hundred years and place it into the hands of hungry
upstarts and militia warlords? And that’s only Zohayd. Do you have the first inkling what the sprouting of such a ‘democracy’ among the neighboring monarchies would do? The unending repercussions it would send throughout the whole region?” He waited until he again found evidence of his points sinking home, in the darkness of grim realization in her eyes, the tremor of ominous possibilities in her lips. Then he went on, “Even if we’re deposed tomorrow, and that doesn’t plunge the region into chaos, it still doesn’t help your brother. Or would you settle for avenging him, seeing his abusers punished, and leave him in prison for the rest of his sentence?”
“I don’t know, okay?” she cried out, her eyes flaring her confusion and antipathy. “I told you, I had no time to think. And it’s pointless to start right now. I’m in the middle of nowhere where I’m neither help nor threat to anyone. Ask me again, if I get out of this mess in any condition to be either.”
Before he could assert that he would do anything to see her to safety, she winced, almost doubled over.
His heart folded in on itself, mimicking her contortion.
Before he could move, she keened, lurched back, and a ball of panic burst in his gut.
He’d taken her word that she was fine. What if he’d left an injury she’d sustained unseen to that long?
He pounced on her, disregarding the pain the careless move shot through his side. He raised her face to his, feverishly examining its locked-in-pain features.
It was only when she tried to escape his solicitous hands that he could rasp, “Talia, stop being stubborn, not about this. Are you injured?”
“No.” He firmed his hold on her shoulder, on her head, detaining her with support and solicitude, demanding a confession. She groaned, relented. “It’s those punches. Guess I was too distracted to focus on anything my body was feeling till now. But suddenly it…cramps with every breath. You know, like being cripplingly sore the morning after too many sit-ups.” Something feral rolled out of his gut. Her eyes shot wider. Then she gave a huff that segued into a moan as her eyes slid down his body to his abdomen then back to his eyes. “What am I saying? It’s sit-ups that are probably sore after a stint with your six-pack.”
