by Gail Dayton
With a sigh, Rudi rose from the sofa where he'd been sitting, elbows propped on his knees, and threw the folds of his kaffiyeh back from his face. "I was working. You took me away from it."
"Tchah! You were playing with the woman."
"I. Was. Working." Rudi made each word a complete sentence, knowing even so that his brother would pay no attention.
"Digging holes in the ground is not the work of a prince of Qarif." Ibrahim opened the door and waited for Rudi to go through. "You are a child playing with mud pies. Rashid, you are twenty-eight years old. It is time you stopped playing in the dirt and did the work of a man."
"Digging holes in the ground brought you all of that money you love so much," Rudi said, his anger ready to explode.
"We hired other people to do it. We pay them to get their hands dirty."
"Because none of us know how to do it. Now we know. I know. And I am very good at it."
"You?" Ibrahim's face showed the same affectionate contempt as always. He laughed, cuffing Rudi on the shoulder as he shoved him into the elevator.
The bodyguards followed. Rudi was certain he felt the elevator groan from the weight of muscle and weapons.
"You are good at causing your father's gray hairs and your mother's tears," Ibrahim said, almost sadly. "And at causing a great deal of trouble for me. We should never have allowed you to go to that ridiculous university in Texas. What was it? Texas Engineering—"
"Texas Tech University," Rudi corrected automatically. On the west Texas plains, it had reminded him a little of Qarif's open spaces. Those had been the happiest years of his adult life, because he had been free to study whatever interested him and to make friends of whomever he chose. Those friends had given him his nickname, calling him Rudolph Valentino when they learned his father was a sheikh. It had quickly been shortened to Rudi. He preferred the nickname, because he knew that those who used it saw the man that he was, rather than the man they wished him to be.
As they got into the car, Ibrahim began talking numbers. Rudi understood numbers, but he understood them when related to things like pressure, or the tensile strength of a certain thickness of steel. He had no interest in high finance or manipulating money that existed only in theory. Money was to spend in building things. Or in buying gifts for beautiful women.
Why had Ellen left the boots? In the uproar surrounding the installation of Ibrahim's family in the ranch house, and the flight back to New York, Rudi had had no time to think about what it might mean. But now he had more than enough time.
The instant Rudi had seen his brother's family invading what had been his private sanctuary, the one place where he could have peace from his family's demands, he had known that Ellen had discovered his prevarications. Call it by its true name. You lied to her. Ibrahim's presence was her return volley in this game they had played.
He understood Ellen's anger upon discovering that neither his family nor her employer had known where they had gone. Her move had been quite clever. Diabolical. His secret hideaway was secret no longer. When he had learned the reasons behind the children and Kalila coming to the ranch, he had no more objections. They would indeed be far safer in the mountains.
So why had she left the boots? Surely she did not think he had offered them as payment for the gift of her body. Had he not shown her how he treasured her? Did not his care for her pleasure before his own tell her how very precious she was to him?
The surprised delight on her face as he introduced her to the wonders of her senses should have told him of her inexperience, but he had been so overwhelmed himself. He found it difficult to believe of a woman in her culture with her beauty, but now, thinking back, he knew it was so.
What if that inexperience had led her to believe that the whole of his intent in bringing her to his home had been seduction? Could she think he cared nothing more for her than that, think he had no more use for her, now he had made love to her? Did she think everything that had happened was merely part of the game?
It was time for the game to end. Everything had suddenly become all too real.
"Stop the car." Rudi reached forward and rapped on the glass separating them from the driver.
"Don't be ridiculous," Ibrahim said as the glass descended and the car slowed. "Drive on."
"I said, stop the car," Rudi repeated. He reached for the door and opened it while the car was still moving.
"Stop the car!" Ibrahim grabbed for him, but Rudi was already out of the car and striding down the street.
When he looked back, Rudi saw Frank and Omar trotting after him. He sighed, then slowed to wait for them.
"Have you come to take me back?"
"No." Frank was panting. "Just stay with you, is all he said."
"Good." Rudi turned, his robes swirling about him, and walked on.
Ellen stared at the paperwork on her desk, trying to make sense of what she saw, but it was no good. She'd left her mind at home in bed. Or maybe she'd left it in New Mexico. On second thought, that had to be the answer. Because while in New Mexico, she had certainly lost her mind.
She could think of no other reason for doing the things she'd done. She had simply lost her mind. And when it had gone missing, her body had needed very little convincing to believe that Rudi was different, when he was just the same as all the other men in the world.
The intercom buzzed at the same time her office door flew open. Rudi strode through it, looking like something out of Lawrence of Arabia, with Jan the receptionist and two bodyguards on his heels. Dear Lord, she was not ready for this.
"I'm sorry—" Jan said.
"Leave us." Rudi cut her off, his peremptory tone and the brusque wave of his hand setting Ellen's teeth on edge.
She'd known all along this was the man he was. Why did it bother her now?
Omar backed out of the room, but Frank and Jan hovered.
"Ellen?" Jan said. "I couldn't stop him. I tried…"
Rudi turned and glared, but they held their ground, waiting for Ellen's decision. She took a deep breath. She didn't want this confrontation, but one thing she had learned about Rudi: The man was as stubborn as a rock. If she didn't talk to him now, he'd probably kidnap her again.
"It's all right," she said. "I'll talk to him."
The minute the door closed, leaving the entourage on the far side, Rudi's expression changed. Gone was the imperious autocrat, and in its place Ellen saw the tender lover of her nightmares.
"Why did you leave so precipitously?" He crossed the room toward her.
Ellen held her position, telling herself that she was not using her desk as a barricade to hide behind. Good thing, because it made a lousy barricade. Rudi walked around it and dropped to one knee beside her chair.
"We could have traveled together," he said.
Ellen shrugged, trying to shrug off the pain with an air of unconcern. "I thought it was better that way. I figured you'd had all the togetherness you wanted."
The puzzled crease between his eyebrows made her want to touch it, to caress it away. She made her hands into fists and pushed her chair back, hoping it would help her resist the impulse.
"How can you say that, zahra?" he said. "You know—"
"Stop calling me that!" She cut off his speech, springing out of the chair in her agitation. "I don't own you, okay? I never did."
Rudi frowned up at her, still down on one knee. "What do you think zahra means?"
"I don't know." Ellen glanced at Rudi as he rose to his feet. Maybe if he turned that headdress around so it covered his face she might be able to think straight.
"No, you do not. But what do you believe that it means?"
"Owner. Mistress. Slave driver. Simon Legree." She threw her hands up and retreated to the opposite side of her small office. "I have no idea."
"Zahra means flower." He came around to the front of the desk, following her.
"I'm not a stupid flower. I don't wilt in the sun." She moved toward the slice of window she shared with the office n
ext door and stared out at the pigeons. "Stop following me."
"Stop running away." Rudi halted in the middle of the room. "The flowers in Qarif do not wilt in the sun, either. They turn their faces to it, welcoming the light. They bloom from strength, with deep roots and proud branches."
Ellen took a deep breath, trying to steel herself against his seductive lies. He had charm by the bucketful, but that's all it was, charm that evaporated when you looked closely.
"Look, Rudi." She turned back to face him and forgot what she was going to say. Why did he have to look at her like that?
"Yes, Ellen?" he prompted.
She took a deep breath and huffed it out. This was going to be hard. "Look. Either tell me why you came here this morning, or let me get back to work."
"I came to see you. To learn why—" He broke off and looked down at his feet. "Actually, I do understand that you were angry because I allowed you to believe the trip had been cleared by your employer. I came…" He looked up at her then, his eyes locked onto hers. "I came to ask your forgiveness."
Ellen blinked. Damn him. She could not let him do this to her again. "Okay. You're forgiven. Anything else?" She stepped toward her desk and picked up a piece of paper, hoping she was holding it right side up, because she couldn't read a thing on it.
"No, that is not all." He plucked the paper from her fingers and laid it on her desk. "Have dinner with me tonight. Have lunch with me now. Have breakfast with me tomorrow morning."
Pain dug spiky fingers into her heart. Why did it still hurt her? "No," she said.
Rudi's hand froze in midair, stopped as he reached for her hand. "No?"
"You heard me the first time." She eased another step away from him.
"But… why?"
Ellen busied herself, straightening papers into semineat stacks. "We had a great time in New Mexico, Rudi. But it's over. We're back in New York, and it's time to move on."
"I do not wish to move on." He caught her arm and turned her toward him. "It is not over. I want to be with you, Ellen. When I am alone, I am half a man. I did not know it until I met you."
She laughed, forcing the sound past the threatening tears. "Do they teach 'How To Use Words for Seduction' in school where you come from? That's a real pretty speech. How many times have you used it?"
"Never. Not before this moment. It is true. It is how I feel. Marry me, Ellen. I cannot bear to be without you."
Shock raced through her, staggered her. Ellen braced a hand against her desk. When she looked at Rudi, she saw the same stunned expression she knew had to be on her own face. He had not expected the words, either.
"You don't mean that," she said.
"I do. Marry me." He said it again. He caught her hand before she could pull it back and held on tight, carrying it to his lips, where he pressed a kiss to the back. "Marry me."
Gathering all her strength, both physical and emotional, she yanked her hand from his grasp. "Rudi, be reasonable. We both know you don't want to marry me."
"Stop saying that. You do not know what I want."
"Do you?"
"Who better? Of course I know."
Ellen circled to the front of her desk again, seeking room to pace. "I don't think so. You don't have a clue who I am. How long have we known each other, when you add it all up? Three days?"
"It seems I have always known you."
"I'm not sure it's even three days. Rudi, you just want what you see." She waved her hand along her body. "But this isn't me."
"It is you," he said. "But only a tiny part."
"It's not me at all. But it's all you see. I won't be your trophy, Rudi. I am not some rich man's toy."
"Is that what you think I want?" Rudi snatched off his headdress and shook it in her face, the gold cords rattling faintly. "This is all that you see when you look at me, is it not? Do not accuse me of your own faults."
He threw the cloth across the room, then ripped off the robe he wore and sent it sailing after the headdress, standing before her wearing an open-necked white dress shirt and gray slacks. "I am only a man who has done nothing more than ask a woman to marry him."
Taken aback by all the flying fabric, Ellen had to pause to marshal her thoughts. "Why?" she said.
Rudi frowned. "What?"
"It's a simple question. Just one word. You want a couple more words? Fine. Why do you want to marry me? And don't say because you love me, because I won't believe it. People don't fall in love overnight. They fall in lust. That's all this is."
"It is not." He spaced the words out, his hands clenching again and again, as if he fought violent passions.
"I think it is. We had us one fine case of lust."
"You are wrong, Ellen. What we had was far more than mere lust."
Why did he have to keep insisting? "Well, I think I'm right." She rubbed her temples, a headache beginning to throb behind her eyes. She had to end this, get her life back.
"Look, Rudi, I'm not going to marry you." She retreated behind her desk. "I suggest that you sit down and think real hard about your life. You decide what it is you really want, and why you want it."
She paused, but she couldn't stop there. Maybe she was the world's biggest idiot for wanting to believe that at least some of what Rudi said might possibly be true, but she couldn't help it.
"And when you get it all straight in your head," she said, somehow forcing the tears back, "if you still have a place for me in that life you decide you want, come back and see me, and tell me why you want me there. And maybe I'll have a different answer."
Rudi took a deep breath. He rubbed a hand over his mouth before looking up at her. "You will not marry me." It wasn't a question.
"No." She just couldn't take the risk. Not now.
He walked across the room and stared at his robes. "Who was the man who hurt you so badly? The man who wanted to own you for his plaything?"
Cold chills shivered down her back. Who had told him? "What makes you think there was a man?"
"Tell me his name, Ellen." Fire flashed from his eyes as he glared at her.
"Davis Lowe. Wh-why? Why do you want to know?"
"So I can know it, while I decide whether I will kill him."
He hesitated a moment, then crossed the room in two steps and caught her by both arms. Before she could even gasp, he kissed her, not with fierce passion as she might have expected, but deep, slow, wet, and so tender she could have wept with his sweetness.
When he ended the kiss she had not made up her mind whether to push him away or pull him closer.
"And that," he said, "is so that you will know what it is you have discarded." With that, he threw his robes over his arm and strode from her office. Frank and Omar trotted after him.
When the coast was clear, Jan scurried back and peeped through the still-open door to Ellen's office. "Are you okay? What did he want?"
Would Rudi really kill Davis? Maybe she ought to call and warn him. Or maybe not. If any man deserved killing…
Oh, good grief. Davis hadn't done anything worth killing him over, nothing any other man didn't do every day of his life. Of course Rudi wasn't going to kill Davis.
"Ellen?" Jan rapped her knuckles on the door.
"Hmm?" Ellen shook her head, trying to unscramble her brain.
"So what did he want? The cute sheikh."
"Oh." Ellen sank slowly into her chair. "Nothing really. He asked me to marry him. I said no."
"You turned him down?" Jan's squeal of shock reached dog-whistle pitch.
"That's what I said. You want to go after him? Be my guest."
Ellen picked up a notebook full of notes about concert security and leafed through it. She heard the door shut when Jan finally left, and still she couldn't decipher the meaning of anything she'd written. Even though her life was now officially back to normal, with no sheikhs wreaking havoc in it, she couldn't shake the feeling that something had just gone very wrong.
The rest of the day Rudi walked the streets of New York. Omar
and Frank walked a few paces behind him, Omar carrying the clothing Rudi had discarded.
Rudi thought as he walked. He thought about the things Ellen had said to him. He thought about the quarrel with Ibrahim that morning, and about all the other quarrels on all the other mornings. He thought about what he wanted for his life.
He had not gone to Ellen intending to ask for marriage. He had wanted only dinner, time spent together, the pleasure of her company. But when she talked of moving on, of ending things, sudden desperation had overtaken him. He could not imagine life without Ellen in it. Sheer panic had brought on his proposal.
Did he love her? Rudi had no idea. He had never thought much about love. He did not know whether he knew what love was, not love between a man and a woman. But the things he had told Ellen were true, and he had not told her half of what he felt.
Without her, he felt hollow. As if he had lost a part of himself. He needed her beside him, the way flowers needed rain and sun and earth to hold their roots. If that was love, Rudi did not like it much.
But perhaps Ellen was right. This feeling might be mere infatuation. If he did not see her, it might go away. The hollow inside him might fill itself, and he would again be whole without her.
How could it fill itself when he hadn't known he was half-empty until he met Ellen? How could he be whole when he lived a life he hated, when he hated the man he was while living that life? He could not ask any woman to share such a life, with such a man. Rudi walked, and he thought. Until the streetlights went on. Until Frank made a cell phone call, huffing and hobbling several paces behind Omar. Until the car pulled up at the curb and Rudi got in, his decision made.
Two days passed in Ellen's new Rudi-free life. The problem was that, although Rudi's physical presence was conspicuously missing, his mental presence refused to leave her alone. She missed him with a bone-deep ache that worried her.
On the third day Jan buzzed on the intercom and announced that "a Mr. Eben Socker is here to see you," giving Rudi's family name her own unique pronunciation.
Ellen couldn't repress the thrill that ran through her. Rudi had come back. But the thrill turned to depression when she went to her door and saw Ibrahim ibn Saqr striding down the corridor.
