Dan tried to smile again, but he couldn’t, and this time it wasn’t the chilly mountain air. This time it was a reminder that Irene had rescued him in a way, that he had stayed with her because she’d given him hope that he wasn’t all bad, all dark, all shadow. She’d given him something that he carried with him, inside him. It was like she’d given him a piece of her light, her purity, her sweet innocence. And he knew he needed to give her something in return, give her the only thing she’d ever asked of him.
“Just one,” Irene had said the week before he’d left on this Pakistani job. “That’s all I want. Just one. Give me that, Dan. One’s all I want. That’s the only thing I ask of you.”
It had shaken him to hear her ask him that so explicitly, and it was the only sign a woman like Irene would ever give that she was losing her patience, perhaps losing her faith . . . her faith in him. And shit, that had shaken him in a way he didn’t think was possible. Only then had he realized how important she was to him, how her light somehow gave meaning to the darkness of his world, the darkness of his soul. He’d never be a good man, he knew—hell, the CIA didn’t recruit “good” men for this kind of work—but he was a better man because of her.
Now all Dan wanted to do was get home, to Irene. All he wanted was to give her the one thing she wanted. The urge came on so suddenly he almost choked up, tears coming to his eyes as he tried to blink them away.
“Daniel,” the Sheikh called from behind him. “Slow down, brother. It has been warm the past few days, and the top layer of snow has melted and then frozen overnight into a thin sheet of ice. There may be—”
Dan turned his head halfway and snorted as he marched on. “The desert king is teaching me about snow and mountains? You do remember that I’m from Wyoming, buddy. I’m a goddamn snow-cowboy! Yee-haw!”
“Yee-haw all you want,” said the Sheikh, who was moving carefully and deliberately and had fallen a bit behind the galloping cowboy as the chilly wind blew hard down the mountain peaks. “But I am stating a fact. And speaking of facts, Cowboy Dan, I am quite certain that I am a better equestrian than you.”
“A better what?” said Dan, half-turning again, his bearded face twisted in a frozen grin. “Oh, you goddamn over-educated, pompous—”
And then it happened with a crack, and Dan’s heavy right foot went through the thin top layer of new ice and into a small mountain stream that had eked out a shallow gully that was quietly hiding beneath the surface. Dan cursed as his foot crashed into the little channel, and then he screamed as his left foot slid on the ice, forcing all his weight onto his right knee. The knee twisted before he could engage his muscles fully, and as he went down he immediately knew he’d torn a ligament.
“Fuck!” he howled, more in anger than pain, though it hurt like a bitch. He furiously rubbed his knee through his snow pants, wincing and cursing again as Bilaal hurried over and knelt by his friend’s side.
“How bad?” asked the Sheikh in that calm voice.
“I can walk,” said Dan through a grimace. “Gimme a hand up, and—”
But Bilaal suddenly went rigid, and Dan knew the man well enough to respect his almost preternatural ability to sense danger. Like a goddamn animal, Dan thought sometimes, though he never said it out loud—mostly because the Sheikh’s “animal” instincts had saved their asses more than once.
“What?” said Dan in a whisper, trying to listen. But the wind was wailing and the blood was pounding in his ears from the shock of his injury, and Dan couldn’t hear jack.
The Sheikh was looking out over the mountains, his eyes almost glazed over. Then he grunted softly and looked down at Dan, forcing a smile that told Dan something didn’t smell right.
“I can walk,” Dan said again, grabbing the Sheikh’s strong arm and waiting for his help.
“Perhaps. But I do not think you can run. And we need to run.”
A chill passed through Dan when he saw the seriousness in Bilaal’s cool green eyes. And now Dan heard the voices: Four, maybe five men. Two sounded younger—perhaps the teenagers they’d seen? The other voices were deeper, more confident, older . . . and colder.
“You must stand,” said Bilaal quietly. “I will help you. Come.”
Dan bit his lip so hard he could taste the blood as he rose with the Sheikh’s help. His right knee was completely unstable, the combination of the external cold and the internal inflammation rendering the leg almost useless. He sure as hell couldn’t walk very fast, but he could stand. Stand and fight.
“Give me your gun and extra magazines,” said the Sheikh quietly as he unzipped his own jacket and pulled out the black Glock .17 he’d been carrying along with two spare clips.
“What?” said Dan. “Hell, I can’t move much, but I can still shoot straight.”
“There will be no shooting,” said the Sheikh. “There are five of them, and at least two are just boys.”
“Boys with guns,” muttered Dan, grimacing as he reached for his gun beneath his jacket.”
“All the more reason not to start a gunfight,” the Sheikh said, smoothly taking Dan’s gun from him. “This is not the OK Corral, American Cowboy.”
“Says the Arabian psycho I’ve watched kill over a dozen men in the most creative of ways,” said Dan as he handed over his spare magazines as well. “So you’re going to talk our way out of this, great Sheikh? Good luck. And when we’re on our knees getting our heads sawed off, my last words are gonna be ‘I told you so’!”
The Sheikh flashed a sparkling grin of perfectly aligned white teeth as the Urdu-speaking voices drew nearer. Quickly the Sheikh stepped off the path and buried their weapons in a pure white snow bank, patting down the snow and then heaping fresh powder until it looked pristine again. “We? My brother, if things go bad I will simply say I am your prisoner!” The grin faded, signaling that the time for jokes had passed. “This is our only chance and you know it. We let them search us, and when they see we are unarmed, they will be more likely to believe that I am simply here with an old college friend on a low-key macho vacation. If we start shooting, yes, we might kill all five of them without being injured. But then what? Gunshots will carry, and soon there could be a hundred more men on our tails. You cannot run, and perhaps you cannot even walk. I can carry you, but . . .”
Dan snorted and nodded, knowing the Sheikh was right. They might win a battle against five people, but they’d never outrun the next wave, not with a gimpy knee. He took a breath as he felt the tension electrify the cold dry air around the two of them, and now the five men were visible about forty yards away. Two of the teenagers from the village, and three older men with heavy beards, purple and black flowing pathani robes half-covered with well-worn down jackets and a miscellany of scarves and shawls. No AK-47s, but . . . wait, were those . . . swords?! Who the hell carried long, curved swords all sheathed in leather?
“Ya Allah, these are bandits, not terrorists. And perhaps more dangerous,” muttered the Sheikh under his breath, and for the first time in as long as he’d know him, Dan saw this unflappable king of the desert actually shaken. “This will be tricky. Just stay calm and let me do the talking.”
“Who the fuck are these clowns,” whispered Dan as he tried to stay unmoved.
“Allah taetini alqua,” said the Sheikh, almost to himself as he took a step forward. Dan could see how narrow Bilaal’s eyes were now, and he could tell there was something about these men that unsettled the mighty king. Maybe the swords. Maybe the purpose in their eyes. Either way, it looked like they had put things together already and guessed that the Sheikh was not here sightseeing. “Taetini alqua.”
“Sheikh Bilaal Al-Khiyani,” one of the bearded men called out as they approached. He smiled through his gray-flecked beard, his dark eyes riveted on Bilaal. He barked out an order in Urdu, and immediately the two teenagers took off like mountain goats back down the path towards the village. “Samiet alshshayieat,
” the man said, his gaze never leaving the Sheikh, his hand resting on the hilt of a sword that—from the scabbard at least—looked like it had been well used. These men had killed before. Dan knew it in the way any killer knows another. The Sheikh had to know it too.
“I think perhaps the O.K. Corral gives us a better chance,” Dan grunted, feeling himself lose his nerve as he looked over at where Bilaal had hidden their guns. He took an uncertain step towards it, testing his knee as his mind raced. He’d never be able to run there, bend down, and straighten back up firing before the men got to him with their ridiculous but ominous-looking curved swords. But Bilaal could get there. Bilaal could yank out the guns, toss Dan’s over to him, and get this showdown started. Yee haw, right?
“Do not even think about it,” said Bilaal without turning to him. Clearly the Sheikh had noticed Dan staring down that spot in the snow. “Look straight ahead and—”
But Dan’s head was buzzing with pain and adrenaline, and all he could think of was that warm gun in his hands, the power of the kick when he pulled the trigger, the relief that would wash over him when he put down those Arab dogs like the animals they were.
“Fuck it,” Dan muttered, and he took one step and dived into the snow just as his knee buckled. He crawled desperately towards the freshly heaped snow, getting there even as he heard the men shout out, heard the sound of steel sliding across leather as they drew their swords, heard the Sheikh shout something in Urdu . . .
Now he had his gun, and with a yell Dan turned onto his side and fired. He heard Bilaal shout in surprise, and Dan fired again even as the horror sunk in that his first shot had struck the Sheikh in the left shoulder, sending a spray of the man’s royal blood into the clean snow!
“Ya Allah!” shouted the Sheikh, and Dan watched as Bilaal hurled himself at the onrushing men, swinging his right arm and connecting with one of the men’s jaw in a crushing blow that Dan could tell had cracked a jawbone.
The man was unconscious before he hit the ground, and Bilaal, his left arm soaked in his own blood, grabbed the fallen man’s sword with his right arm and dropped into a crouch, spinning and slicing with the curved steel, taking out another man’s leg clean above the knee with the strike.
Dan watched in shock as the second man crumpled into the snow, a grotesque stump where his right leg had been, his eyes rolling up in his head as he passed out from shock. He pulled the trigger again, no longer sure what he was even shooting at. The teenagers were long gone, and there was one attacker left, the man with the dark eyes and the gray-flecked beard, the one who had called the Sheikh by name. But where was he, Dan wondered in a haze as he blinked away the frosty tears from his eyes and looked around. The man Bilaal had knocked out was coming around, broken jaw and all, and Dan watched as the Sheikh kicked him in the face, shattering his nose and probably his cheekbones. The legless man had come to as well, but he was writhing and screaming, grabbing his thigh and staring at his bleeding stump that ended just above the knee.
Damn, those swords are sharp, came the strange thought as Dan watched the Sheikh turn wide-eyed toward him and break into a run. But before the Sheikh could get to him, Dan felt the movement of air, the swish of steel, the sharpness of the strike. It was the third man, the older one, and he’d somehow circled around Dan and had brought his sword down swift and clean.
Dan heard himself scream as he saw his own gun suddenly in the snow, his hand still clutching it, his fingers still coiled around it. He blinked in shock as he tried to understand how his hand could be all the way over there in the snow when he was over here. He looked at his right arm and felt himself choking when he saw the bleeding stump. Then he felt the air move again, and he saw the bearded man slice down across his belly, opening up a long gash down Dan’s midriff, splitting him wide open.
Dan was already coughing up blood when he saw the Sheikh, himself bleeding, step in with a roar and take off the third man’s head with a powerful sword-strike that must have surely used up the last of Bilaal’s energy. Sure enough, the Sheikh dropped to his knees even as the third man’s head hit the snow, those dark eyes still open.
“Come,” gasped the Sheikh as he reached for Dan’s arm. “I will carry you. We will make it.”
Dan just grinned as he felt the warm blood pour from what seemed like everywhere. Things seemed so clear now. He felt warm and relaxed as he felt life slip away from him as his blood turned the snow into red ice. It looks like a gas-station Icee, he thought as he felt a peace he’d never known, a sense of love for everyone and everything. He looked at Bilaal and spat out some blood so he could talk.
“I think I shot you,” he gurgled.
“It is just a scratch,” said the Sheikh, grinning even though Dan could see that Bilaal knew it was over, that Dan wasn’t going anywhere, that perhaps the Sheikh himself wasn’t going to make it out of these mountains.
And then Dan felt a surge of desperation, a feeling that the Sheikh had to make it out of these mountains! An image floated to him with the cold air, and Dan could see Irene now, standing there plain as day, her face full and flush, her brown eyes wide with expectation, her belly round and expecting . . .
“My wife,” Dan rasped, the words coming from he knew not where. “Bilaal, you need to make sure she . . . she . . .”
“Do not try to speak, my friend,” said Bilaal, looking down at Dan’s ravaged stomach and then quickly looking back up into his eyes. “I will use my jacket to stop your bleeding, and then you—”
“Don’t make me waste my last breath arguing,” gasped Dan. “I’m not going anywhere, and we both know it. So just fucking listen. You need to do something for me. Just one thing. My wife, she . . .”
“Of course,” said the Sheikh. “Your wife and family will never want for anything. I give you my word. I—”
“I don’t want your word. I want your . . . I mean, she wants . . . she needs your . . .” Dan blinked away the tears of confusion as he saw that image of Irene again, glowing and pregnant, pregnant with a child that he’d sent to her . . .
And then it made perfect sense. Of course it did. The failed pregnancies, her yearning for a child, his own lack of desire for her . . . and her strange, almost out of character request just before he’d left on this job. He’d never believed in fate or destiny, but it seemed so obvious now. She’d always been too good for him, and he’d proved it by fucking every whore he could find. Irene was too good to carry his child. She was royalty, wasn’t she?
“A child,” he whispered as the Sheikh’s face grew hazy and began to swirl as Dan felt himself slip away. “Give her a child, Bilaal. Give my wife a child.”
3
ONE YEAR LATER
So am I no longer a wife, Irene wondered as she pulled into the parking lot of the liquor store just within the city limits of Cody, Wyoming. She’d stopped buying whiskey from the place closest to her ranch because she didn’t want everyone else knowing what she didn’t want to admit: that she was now an alcoholic—or pretty darned close.
“Hey, Irene,” came a voice from behind her as she slammed the door of her Ford pickup and was hurrying toward the liquor store.
She stopped in her tracks and almost cringed as she tightened her buttcheeks and turned. She recognized the voice, and she was already bright red by the time she forced herself to turn. “Hey, Carl,” she said awkwardly. “What’re you doing all the way up here?”
Carl grinned, showing tobacco-stained teeth that were yellower than her horse’s. Carl owned the liquor store closest to Irene . . . you know, the one Irene had stopped patronizing out of concern for what the locals might think.
“My supplier messed up this week and came up short on some stuff,” said Carl, still grinning, like he was thrilled that he’d “caught” Irene. Yup, this pretty much confirmed that she was an alcoholic, Irene thought. “But the more in’eresting question is why in hell is you all the way here? My whi
skey ain’t good enough for you no more?”
Irene smiled, crossing her arms over her breasts when she noticed how Carl was staring right at them. She’d put on more weight over the past year, and even the looser blouses were now tight on her. She didn’t fit into her jeans no more, and had taken to wearing the same long wraparound denim skirt over and over again because it was the only thing that seemed to contain her curves these days. Of course, she could simply make the switch to sweatpants, but she didn’t want to take that step yet.
“Your whiskey is plenty good, Carl,” she said sweetly. “But lately I’ve developed a taste for white wine, and I don’t think you carry my brand.”
“Hell, I’ll carry any brand if someone’s buyin’ it,” said Carl. “Come on, you just show me what you’re sweet on, and I’ll make sure you’re always set. Tell ya what, lemme buy a case or two of it right now, since I’m up here. That way you don’t need to drive all the way to town the rest of this week. Come on, Cowgirl.”
He stepped up and grabbed her arm, and Irene recoiled at his touch. But she was too polite to push him away, and so she walked into the liquor store along with him. She remembered Carl from middle school—he was a pig and a bully then, and he was a pig and a bully now. She hadn’t been the only girl who’d been relieved when Carl had dropped out because his mom died and his dad needed help at the liquor store.
“I ain’t seen you out riding much these days,” Carl said as she led him towards the wine section, trying not to look longingly at the whiskey she knew she couldn’t buy now that she’d made herself out to be a wine connoisseur. “What gives? You still torn up about Dan? Real tragic. Everyone feels for you. But life goes on, honey. Life sucks sometimes, but it goes on. Hell, my ma, she died when I was thirteen, and I ain’t never complained. I just handled it like a real man.”
You’re the furthest thing from a real man, Irene wanted to say. She remembered that thirteen-year-old Carl and his asshole friends. Thanks to the liquor store, Carl always had cigarettes and booze on him, and that made him top dog with his crew. They’d smoke in the bathroom, sneak whiskey at their lockers, and slap girls’ asses anytime they damn well wanted. Back then in Wyoming the words sexual harassment didn’t even fit together in a sentence, and Irene still remembered how her female teacher had smiled and shrugged when Irene complained that Carl had pinched her ass so hard there was a bruise.
Shelter for the Sheikh: A Royal Billionaire Romance Novel (Curves for Sheikhs Series Book 9) Page 2
