by Fiona Brand
He clambered into the car, which jolted into motion with a squeal of tires.
Gabe released his grip on her hand. “Are you okay?”
Sarah replaced her car keys in her bag. She was cold and her fingers were shaking, but she barely noticed because she was so focused on the fact that Gabe had come after her. She didn’t know how he had located her in the dark, or why he had walked out into the rain to find her, just that he had. “I am now, thank you.”
“Problem with your car?”
She blinked at the shift of topic. His gaze was still fixed on the taillights of the retreating car. The steely remoteness of his expression sent a chill down her spine. He looked more than capable of backing his flatly delivered challenge with physical force.
A fierce, oddly primitive sense of satisfaction curled through her. Gabe had not only come to her aid, but he had been prepared to physically fight for her.
When he repeated the question about the car, she realized he was deliberately distracting her from the nastiness of the encounter. Suppressing a shiver, she replaced her umbrella in her bag. “I think the electronics got wet.”
Gabe, who had walked around to the front of her car, took a sleek phone out of his pocket and stabbed a short dial. “Is there still a charge in the battery?”
“I stopped before it went flat.”
“Good.” Gabe spoke quietly into his phone in the same liquid Zahiri she had heard him use before then slipped the cell back in his jacket pocket. “Xavier will have a look at the car. He’s not a mechanic, but he spends a lot of his spare time tinkering with cars.”
She hooked the strap of her bag more securely over her shoulder. It was an odd moment to register that the wind had dropped, leaving an eerie calm after the storm. With mist rising off the wet concrete, wreathing the cars and forming a halo around the street lamps, the night now seemed peaceful.
With a reflexive shiver she rubbed at her chilled arms and tried not to let her teeth chatter. Now that she was no longer buzzing with adrenaline the cold seemed to be seeping into her bones. “I suppose Xavier is one of the sheikh’s bodyguards.” The remark was shamelessly probing but she didn’t care. She suddenly needed to know more about Gabe, what he did for a living, how long he would be in Wellington, when or if he was coming back—
His gaze glittered over her, making her aware of the soaked red dress clinging to her skin, her hair trailing wetly around her cheeks. “Only when the sheikh leaves Zahir.”
The answer was confusing, as if the sheikh was still in Zahir when Sarah knew him to be here, in Wellington. But with Gabe walking toward her, dark trousers clinging low on narrow hips, his jacket damply molded to broad shoulders, white shirt plastered to his chest so that the bronze of his skin glowed through, it was hard to concentrate on unraveling subtleties.
He frowned. “You’re cold. Have you got a coat in the car?”
“No c-coat. Someone at the consulate took mine by mistake.”
A moment later, his jacket dropped around her shoulders, swamping her with warmth and filling her nostrils with the scent of clean male and an enticing hint of sandalwood. An electrifying thrill shot through her, reminding her of the sharp, visceral jolt she had felt when Gabe had said she was his.
He was briefly close enough that she felt the heat radiating off his body, and she had to resist the urge to sway a few inches closer to that delicious warmth. Her fingers closed on the fine weave of the jacket lapels, hugging the fabric closer. Despite everything, all of the warnings she was giving herself, she couldn’t help loving that she was wearing his jacket, which was so large the sleeves dropped almost to her knees. After the nasty scenes with Graham and the leather-clad thugs, Gabe’s chivalry—his consideration, as if she truly mattered to him—was a soothing balm.
Gabe checked his watch. “Xavier’s on his way. If you’ll give me your car keys, he’ll take a look. In the meantime I suggest you come with me back to the consulate. There’s a guest suite there, so you can dry off while you wait.”
A vivid flash of the young woman flinging her arms around him made Sarah stiffen. “Won’t your...girlfriend mind?’
His expression registered his surprise at the question. “I don’t have a girlfriend. If you’re referring to the young woman who came into the lecture, she was a cousin I haven’t seen in years. She dropped in because she knew I was leaving in the morning.”
The relief that the pretty girl wasn’t a love interest was almost instantly replaced by the depressing confirmation that Gabe was leaving in a matter of hours.
His hand briefly cupped her elbow as he helped her step up onto the higher level of the consulate parking lot. “Is she the reason you left the lecture?”
Her mouth went dry at the bluntness of the question but after everything that had happened, somehow it didn’t seem as intrusive as it should have been. It would have been easy to say she’d had a fight with Graham and was upset, but the truth was, whatever she had felt for Graham had been utterly overshadowed by her response to Gabe.
He was leaving in just a few hours.
Lifting her chin, she met his gaze. There was no point trying to hide what was already clear to him. She had been hurt and disappointed when she had thought he was committed to another woman. “Yes.”
There was a moment of vibrating silence, filled by the muted sound of their footfalls on wet pavement, the distant wash of the sea and the slow drip of water splashing off a gutter. Sarah’s stomach tightened as Gabe directed her to a door at the side of the consulate building and held it for her. Somehow, in the space of a little over an hour they had achieved a level of intimacy that made her stomach tighten and her pulse pound. But her time alone with him was almost up. Soon they would be joined by other people and a conversation that had become unexpectedly important would be over.
As if to underscore her thoughts, the plump administrative official, Tarik, strode down the corridor toward them, disapproval pulling his brows into a dark line. She drew a breath, but it was already too late to ask Gabe the question that was burning inside her.
He knew she was strongly attracted to him and that was why she had left the consulate so quickly. But was attraction the reason he had come looking for her?
* * *
Gabe left Sarah freshening up in the guest room that opened onto his study and strode along the hall to his suite. The moment he had seen the thug lay hands on her replayed through his mind, making him tense. When he had registered the danger, the half-formed desires and intentions that had driven him out into the stormy night had coalesced into one burning reality.
He wanted Sarah Duval.
He hadn’t liked the fact that she’d had a date. He had liked it even less that the drunk thought he could simply reach out and touch her. Crazily, because Gabe barely knew her and had no interest in emotional attachments, his attraction to Sarah had coalesced into the kind of knee-jerk possessiveness he could not afford on the eve of his engagement. But, as hard as he tried to shake it, he couldn’t—for one simple reason. In his mind he had already claimed her.
As he unlocked the door, Xavier stepped out of the elevator and followed Gabe into the suite. Gabe grabbed a towel from the bathroom and began blotting his hair and face. “What’s the verdict on the car?”
Xavier shrugged. “We could have it going in half an hour if we put it in the consulate garage, but to get it there we’ll need to tow it and none of the hire vehicles have tow bars. The best-case scenario is that I call her a taxi.”
“No.” Gabe unknotted his tie and peeled out of his wet shirt and tossed both in the laundry basket.
The sensible thing was to do what Xavier suggested. The last thing he needed was a complication that would make the commitment he had to make in the morning even more difficult. But ever since Sarah had walked into the reception room, glowing like a fiery beacon in red, her
dark hair a sexy tousled mass, the obligation and duty of his impending marriage had seemed secondary. When she had disobeyed all instructions and laid her hand on his ancestor’s sword, he had been entranced.
Somehow, the fact that she had knocked the sword, which was practically a sacred object on Zahir, off its bracket had only made her more interesting.
She was a history teacher. Against all odds, he found himself grinning.
Like no history teacher he’d ever seen.
Gabe strolled into his bedroom to find a clean shirt. In the past hour something curious had happened. He felt lighter and more carefree, as if a weight had lifted off him.
Because for the first time in years when he had looked at another woman, he hadn’t been haunted by thoughts of Jasmine.
He guessed the fact that Sarah was literally Jasmine’s polar opposite—tall and curvy with a steady, resolute gaze and hints of a fiery temper, instead of tiny and fragile and sweetly feminine—had helped. When Sarah had toppled Kadin’s sword, in some odd way the separation from his past had seemed complete. Jasmine had hated all of the old Templar relics and the violent history that went with them. Sarah had seemed fascinated. From the way she had wielded her umbrella in the parking lot, he was willing to bet she would not be averse to holding a sword.
He stared at his crisply starched shirts in the closet, looking for something that didn’t belong in a boardroom. Clothing that might indicate that he had a life. “I’m taking her home.”
Xavier muttered something soft and short. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. Neither will your father.”
Gabe shrugged into a dark shirt and buttoned it. The searing attraction that had sent him walking out into the night to find Sarah settled into grim determination. Xavier’s unease mirrored his own because it was a fact that Gabe didn’t want to just spend time with Sarah—he wanted her. Period. But just hours out from signing his life away, he was in no mood to deny a response he thought he would never feel again. “Right now a whole lot of things are happening that are not exactly good ideas.”
An outmoded financial system that did not allow for the foreign investment Gabe had been advocating for years, and the marriage that was Zahir’s financial rescue plan.
“The marriage is just an arrangement, you could have an—”
“No.” Zahir was Western, but it was also extremely conservative. And Gabe was clear on one fact: once he was married he would not dishonor his vows or his family’s integrity.
Xavier looked uncomfortable. “Sometimes I forget the pressure you’re under. But what do you know about this woman? She could be some hard-nosed journalist angling for a story.”
“Sarah’s not a journalist.” Gabe shrugged into a soft black leather jacket. “And she won’t go to the press.”
“You can’t know that. You’ve only just met her. You have no idea what she’ll do.”
Gabe went still inside as a memory flickered. Cold rain scything, a dark-haired woman, head down against the weather, stepping around a corner. As his hands had shot out to stop her caroming into him he had noticed that her hair had been scraped back and her face had been almost bare of makeup. She had looked like a history teacher. But it had been Sarah, her eyes that deep, pure blue, the faintly imperious nose and exquisite cheekbones, the soft, generous mouth.
Instead of tempering his attraction, the recollection had the disconcerting effect of deepening it. In that moment, Gabe recognized the quality that drew him to Sarah most of all—the fact that in the midst of all the superficiality of the social world he usually moved in she was exactly what she seemed, a refreshingly direct woman unafraid to reach out and take what she wanted. “I met her yesterday.”
Xavier’s brows jerked together. “That makes it even worse.”
Everything Xavier was saying was true. Normally he didn’t pursue women he had only just met. Because of his position, he accepted that security checks on the women he dated were a fact of life. But ever since he had woken up that morning he had been restless and in no mood to be controlled. “Relax. She doesn’t know who I am.”
“How is that possible?”
“I think she expected my father to be here.” Gabe walked through to the sitting room and pointedly held the door for Xavier. “I don’t need an escort. As of now you’re off duty. Take the rest of the night off.”
Gabe waited until Xavier disappeared into the elevator before walking down the corridor to check on Sarah’s progress in the guest suite. He could hear the sound of the hair dryer in the bathroom, so he returned to his suite to check his laptop. There was a message from his father and one from their lawyer, Hadad. Both messages, naturally, were centered on the contract Xavier had delivered.
He replied briefly to both then, jaw set, sat down to examine the list of marriage candidates that was clipped to the back of the contract. The candidate his parents preferred was at the top of the list.
He studied the color photo of Nadia Fortier. She was slim and beautifully dressed, with long dark hair. She had to be all of eighteen.
He checked the basic information that had been provided. He saw he had been wrong about Nadia’s age; she was twenty, a whole two years older than he had thought. And a good ten years his junior.
He flipped through the rest of the candidates. There were four in all. Extremely wealthy and young, all from good families, most of them with either noble or royal connections. Girls straight from exclusive finishing schools, groomed to make very good marriages as their designated career paths.
His gaze snagged on another notation: “guaranteed pure.”
His jaw tensed. He realized that the situation was probably even more stressful for the girls, but he was beginning to feel like a prize stallion being led to stud. Broodingly, he wondered what kind of description of him they had received.
Tossing the document down on the coffee table, he strolled to one of the tall sash windows that looked out over the city streets. On a personal level he would not have dated any one of those candidates purely on the grounds that they were too young. He doubted they had any interests in common on which to build a marriage. The notation about purity explained the emphasis on youth, but as perfect and beautiful as each one was, none of them inspired even the remotest flicker of desire.
Unlike Sarah.
In that moment, the urge to do the unthinkable, to bail out of the arranged marriage and immerse himself in a tangled, messy, flamboyant affair with the very interesting Ms. Duval was irresistibly, powerfully appealing.
Massaging the taut muscles at his nape, he strode into his bedroom and found the keys to the Jeep that had been rented for him while he was in New Zealand. As he did so, his gaze snagged on the portrait of Kadin and Camille. Camille was dressed in flamboyant red, her dark gaze composed and direct, and for a split second he had an inkling of the fascination that had dominated his ancestor’s life. The thought was like a dash of cold water. It was an obsession Gabe was determined would not dominate him.
He had already had a taste of the manipulation that went hand in hand with emotional excess. As tempting as it would be to toss tradition and his country’s need and do exactly what he wanted, he could not walk away from his responsibilities.
Exiting the suite, he walked back to the guest room, his mood once again remote. He could understand Xavier’s anxiety, because Gabe’s behavior was distinctly out of character. Normally he took responsibility and did the right thing, and tomorrow he would choose which candidate he would marry. He had given his word.
But right now, tonight, he didn’t want to think about the future. He was determined to accept the invitation he had seen in Sarah’s eyes.
He was going to spend his last few hours of freedom with his quirky, fascinating lady in red.
* * *
Sarah finished blow-drying her hair and stared at the result in the gilt
-framed mirror that dominated the ivory marble bathroom. With its gold taps and step-down bath, the room was utterly decadent. Her makeup was gone, washed off in the rain, and her hair had lost all of its curl. It fell in a shiny but depressingly straight waterfall to her waist. Her dress was still damp and clinging to her skin, but thankfully the silk seemed to be drying fast.
With all the glamor and magic of the makeover gone, there was no getting past the fact that, like Cinderella at the stroke of midnight, she was once again plain-Jane Sarah Duval. Although, she no longer felt like a plain-Jane. Her cheeks were softly flushed, and her eyes had a depth and sparkle she had never noticed.
Maybe that was because, just when she had thought there was no chance with Gabe, he had walked out of the night and rescued her. Now, she had been admitted to the hushed elegance of one of the sheikh’s private apartments and suddenly the scenario she had planned seemed terrifyingly possible.
Placing the fluffy oversize towel she’d used in a laundry hamper, she checked that she hadn’t left anything behind, hooked the strap of her bag over her shoulder and walked out into the luxuriously furnished bedroom, which opened onto a study.
Her heart slammed hard in her chest when she spotted Gabe standing at one of the tall sash windows in the study, watching the rain, which was once again pounding down. As he turned, she caught the flare of appreciation in his gaze and at the same time noticed that he had changed into dry clothes. If he’d looked formidable and just a little remote in a suit, the dark, soft shirt and black leather jacket, narrow trousers and black boots achieved the exact opposite, making him look younger and infinitely more approachable.
He indicated the rain streaming down the window. “With this weather, there’s nothing we can do about the car tonight. If you want a lift home I can drop you. Or if you’d prefer I’ll call a taxi.”
