King's Ransom

by Diana Palmer

  "Ahmed, nurses can't cure a coma," Lang said. "You know that."

  "They might spare her," he returned, nodding toward Brianna.

  "Do you really think she'd stop going to see him, even if you could put round-the-clock doctors in there with the boy?" Lang mused.

  "No. You are right, of course, I was not thinking." His eyes lingered on the young woman. "She is fragile to look at. But underneath, there is great strength." He turned his attention to Lang. "Do you know something of how that came about?" he added, indicating Tad.

  "There was a wreck," Lang said. "They were going on vacation. A speeding car took a curve too fast and hit them head-on. The car rolled. Brianna's father and the driver of the other car were killed instantly. Brianna's brother was knocked unconscious. Her mother was..." He hesitated. "Her mother was fatally injured," he said, sparing the other man the details. "She lived until the next morning. She died just before help came. If anyone had spotted the car even an hour sooner, she might have lived, but it went down an embankment and was hidden from the highway."

  Ahmed moved closer. "Brianna was in the car all night?"

  "Yes. Trapped. She had two cracked ribs and a broken hip. You may have noticed that at times she moves a little awkwardly."

  "No. I had not."

  "She was in terrible pain, and she'd lost some blood. But Tad was the worst. It took Brianna over a year, and therapy, to get past the nightmares."

  Ahmed studied her in silence. "She has great courage."

  "Yes. She's an extraordinary young lady."

  "How old?" He stared at Lang. "How old is she?"

  "She's twenty-two, I think." His eyes narrowed. "If you seduce her," he warned quietly, "I'll come after you. I don't give a damn about your status or company orders, I'll make you pay if you hurt her in any way."

  Ahmed's eyebrows lifted. "You are smitten with her?"

  "I am protective of her," Lang corrected. "She's my friend."

  Ahmed smiled quietly. "She is a rosebud, waiting for the sun. I would be a frost to deny her the hope of blossoming," he said. "I am much more aware than you think of the consequences. I have no evil intentions toward her. In between battles, I find her charming company." He glowered at Lang. "You will not tell her this, of course. One cannot afford to parade one's weaknesses before an enemy."

  Lang's rigid stance relaxed. He even smiled. "No, one can't."

  Ahmed clapped Lang on the back. "Despite her enmity toward me, did you see how quickly she jumped to my aid when she thought you were an assassin?" he mused. "She delights me."

  "As if that tin can would have stopped a bullet from even a small-caliber weapon." Lang chuckled.

  "She knows nothing of guns or wars or assassinations," Ahmed said. "Nor shall she. I must make certain that she takes no chances on my behalf again. There could have been tragic consequences had it been a true attempt on my life."

  The other man sounded resigned and somehow sad. Lang found his response to Brianna curious. Ahmed was a rake, in his own fashion, although he was curiously protective of Brianna.

  "We're keeping a close eye on both of you," Lang assured him. "She'll come to no harm."

  "She had better not," Ahmed returned grimly, and his dark eyes made a threat of their own as they sought Lang's. "I consider her welfare no less important than my own. You understand?"

  "I do," Lang said with a slow smile. "But I wonder if you do?"

  Ahmed scowled with curiosity, but before he could take Lang up on the odd statement, Brianna came out of the ICU, had a brief word with the nurse and joined the men at the door. "Any change?" Lang asked.

  She only shook her head, her eyes lowered. "Can we go?" she asked dully. "I'm very tired."

  Chapter Five

  Brianna didn't sleep well that night. The black limo, the hopelessness of Tad's condition, the arguments with Ahmed were all combining to make her emotions a wreck.

  At least the nightmares hadn't come back. She got up the next morning feeling drained. For once, Ahmed was awake. She found him in the kitchen in that long, foreign-looking caftan he lounged in, trying to discover how her coffeepot worked.

  "I'll do that," she said, and moved uncomfortably when his dark eyes slid over her slender figure in her nightgown and pink robe. She was perfectly decent, except for her bare feet. She wondered why he should be staring at her so.

  "You should dress first," he told her quietly. "It is unseemly for a maiden to appear before a man in her night clothing."

  "Oh, I can't do it, but it' s all right for you?" she challenged, indicating his caftan.

  He smiled slowly. "Yes."

  "I can wear my nightclothes in my own apartment if I want to," she informed him.

  He moved closer. It was a sort of movement that Brianna had never experienced before, sensual and predatory and faintly threatening. His eyes didn't move from her face, didn't blink, and all the expression left his features. The only thing alive there was the growing dark glitter of his eyes.

  "I'll, uh, just get dressed, why don't I?" she stammered, and ran for it.

  When she came back, he was dressed, too. She made breakfast and he ate it without complaint. He gave no indication that anything out of the ordinary had happened. But Brianna tingled all day remembering the look in his eyes.

  When she came home that afternoon, it was to find Ahmed sitting on the top step in her apartment house. He was playing with a Slinky, a small, dark-haired little boy sitting beside him.

  "Again," the child pleaded.

  "Oh, my aching back," Ahmed groaned comically. "You mean I must do it still again and chase this coil of wire down the steps?"

  "Yes!" The child laughed.

  Ahmed chuckled. "Very well, then. But this is the last time.'" "Okay."

  The Slinky came slowly down the steps, picked up speed and toppled right at Brianna's feet.

  Ahmed came down behind it, spotted her and smiled as he retrieved it. "We were having a bit of fun," he explained.

  "So I see. Lang won't like it."

  "What he doesn't know won't bother him," Ahmed informed her. He handed her the Slinky. "My friend Nick will let you play, if you like. Won't you, Nick?" he asked the little boy.

  "Sure!"

  Brianna smiled at the child. "And you know I'd love to. But I have to feed my cousin."

  "Aww, Pedro isn't hungry, are you, Pedro?"

  "Pedro" grimaced. "Well, my boy, actually I am, a bit.' Do you mind? We can do this again sometime."

  "No, we can't," Nick wailed. "I have to go stay with my grandma for a week. We're leaving as soon as my dad gets home."

  "I am truly sorry," Ahmed told him. "I have enjoyed our games."

  "Me, too. Will you come back and see me again sometime?" Nick asked, his big eyes pleading.

  Ahmed smiled, smoothing over the dark hair. "Sometime," he agreed.

  "Okay, then." He ran back up the stairs, making plenty of noise.

  Ahmed led the way up the stairs to Brianna's apartment and held the door open for her.

  "You like children," he observed.

  "Very much."

  "You should marry, and have some of your own," he told her.

  "I have Tad to look after," she said evasively. "I need to change."

  He stopped her, without touching her at all, just standing in front of her so that she couldn't get past him. "There is something more, something deep," he said, searching her evasive eyes. "You have no desire to marry. I can see it in your face."

  "We're not all cut out for marriage." Her face was flushed. "Please. I have to change."

  His lean hands gently closed on her thin shoulders. "Tell me."

  She closed her eyes. He was impossible this way, so lender and compassionate that he seemed almost another man entirely. "I can't," she whispered. Her big blue eyes opened straight up into his. "Please let me go!"

  He accommodated her, standing back. "As you wish," he said quietly.

  She went quickly into the bedroom and closed the door. S
he leaned back against it, her face twisted in anguish, her lip very nearly bitten through. Why did he have to ask questions that hurt her? she wondered. Why couldn't he just mind his own business!

  She started to go into the kitchen, as she did every day, when he stopped her.

  "Lang has reconnected the telephone," he murmured dryly. "And I have taken advantage of the situation. Wait."

  "You haven't ordered out again?" she said nervously. "It's taking too big a chance, even I can see that!"

  "My own men are attending to my needs," he said simply. "There is no risk of infiltrators."

  "The neighbors here are not blind," she said, exasperated. "How is a poor Mexican laborer affording all that expensive food? People will wonder!"

  He scowled. "Poor Mexican laborer?" He echoed her words.

  "You!"

  He shifted, as if he found the description distasteful. "I cannot live on hot dogs," he said curtly. "I did enjoy the meat loaf and vegetables, but I am accustomed to richer fare."

  "You'll die of high cholesterol and gout," she accused.

  His eyebrows arched. "This from a woman who It contemplating a meal of hot dogs, which ooze chaolesterol?"

  "I like hot dogs!"

  "And I like quenelles of sole and sautéed asparagus with crepes flambé for dessert," he replied.

  "Your poor starving people," she muttered. "Do they know that you're eating like a king while they chew on cold mutton in their desert tents?"

  He pursed his lips. "Most of them eat couscous and lamb curry," he replied. "And semolina. Cold mutton is hardly appealing."

  "I was making a point."

  The knock at the door spared him an answer. He let his men enter the apartment, laden as they were with cardboard boxes of uncertain origin.

  None of that looked like expensive food. It looked like the contents of a yard sale.

  Ahmed grinned at her. "Disguised cuisine," he said. "Don't you approve?" He threw orders at the Arabs, who dispersed the contents of the boxes onto the table and left the apartment minutes later.

  "Lobster tails," Ahmed indicated. He obtained a fork, speared a morsel and held it to Brianna's startled lips. "Taste," he said gently.

  She took the bit of lobster into her mouth, disconcerted by the way Ahmed's attention suddenly fell on her lips as she savored it.

  "It's.. .very nice," she said uncertainly.

  "You have a flake of it on your chin. Be still." He took it on the tip of his finger and offered it at her lips. Holding her eyes, he eased it onto her bottom lip, but the movement of his fingertip was suddenly very sensual. He nudged it past her teeth and into her mouth and watched with pleasure the way her cheeks flushed and her breathing changed.

  The tip of her tongue encountered his finger. She jerked buck, and she saw the expression in his eyes darken and threaten. With her last instinct for self-preservation, she stepped away from him, shaken.

  "Thank you for the taste," she whispered. "But I think I still prefer hot dogs."

  "As you wish."

  He was finding it hard to breathe and act normally. He should not have touched her. It would make things worse.

  She fixed herself a hot dog and opened a small bag of potato chips.

  "Even more cholesterol," he said, pointing at the potato chips with a forkful of chive-and-butter-and-sour-cream-choked potato.

  "Look who's talking," she returned.

  He chuckled. "You have spirit."

  "Around you, I need to have it," she muttered.

  He finished the potato and pushed the plate containing it and the remains of his lobster away. He retrieved the crepe with its exquisite fruit filling and nibbled at it. "Would you care to sample this?" he asked.

  She flushed, remembering her earlier weakness. "I don't like sweets, thanks," she lied.

  He didn't reply. She was suddenly very transparent and he felt a weakening in himself that he didn't like. Lang was right. Involvement with Brianna would be tragic.

  The nightmare she'd staved off for two days came that night. She hadn't gone to see Tad, because there was such a terrible rainstorm. The thunder and lightning frightened her, but she pulled the covers over her head and tried not to notice them. Clad in her silky green gown,, became; it was an unusually warm night for autumn, she lay stiffly until the worst of the lightning abated and she fell into an uneasy sleep.

  But the nightmare came to replace the storm. She was trapped in the car. Her father was dead. She could see his face. Her mother's pain was vocal, almost visible. She begged Tad to wake up and talk to her. She begged Brianna not to let him die, not to let them kill him. Her voice went on and on, while Brianna struggled with pain that racked her in agony. She had to get out, to save her mother. She had to get out, but her mother cried out and the light went out of her eyes.... "No!" she screamed, fighting the hands that were trying to lift her, to save her. "No, no, no! I won't let her die...!"

  "Brianna!"

  She felt the whiplike movement of steely hands on her upper arms and her eyes opened by reflex. Ahmed was sitting on her bed, his face solemn in the light of the lamp by the bed.

  He was wearing some sort of silky dark pajama bottoms, but his broad, hair-covered chest was bare. He looked out of place in her frilly bedroom.

  "Brianna, talk to me," he said, unconvinced that she was completely awake even now.

  "I'm...all right. It was the nightmare," she whispered, shivering.

  "You screamed. I thought the nightmares were a thing of the past," he added.

  She didn't know that Lang had told him about the wreck. She sought his dark eyes. "They were," she said dully.

  His gaze drifted over her face and down to the deep Cleft of her breasts under the opaque lacy bodice of her gown. She hadn't realized before that the lace left her dark nipples quite visible. But then, nobody had ever seen her in the gown before.

  Her hands began to lift, because his rapt gaze was disturbing. Her nipples went suddenly hard, tingling with unknown sensations, and she blushed at the blatant evidence that would tell him how much he affected her.

  "Beautiful," he said gently, watching them change. "They are as the blush of dusk on the rose."

  Her hands paused in midair. She watched him, puzzled, curious.

  He looked into her soft, puzzled eyes. "Has no man ever described your body to you before?" he asked quietly.

  "No one... has seen it," she began huskily.

  His brows jerked. His eyes went over her again, appreciating the creamy satin of her skin above the gown, at the pulse in her throat, at the soft swell of her lips. He hadn't touched her. He only looked.

  That was enough. He made her afraid. She didn't understand the feelings he engendered. She wasn't sure that she liked them.

  "You must go," she whispered shakily.

  "In a moment," he agreed. "First, though, chérie, I want to be certain that the nightmares are gone."

  "They are...."

  "Let us make sure of it." He looked somber, very adult and mature. "The best way to stem a nightmare is to create an experience to supplant it. Do you not agree?"

  "That depends... on the experience... you have in mind," she managed breathlessly.

  "Something very innocent. Like you, ma chérie," he added with a tender smile. "There is nothing to be afraid of, only a contact which will prove to you that innocence can be as arid as my desert."

  As he spoke, he lifted her from the pillow and smoothed the spaghetti straps of her gown down her arms.

  "You mustn't!" she protested when she realized what he meant to do.

  But he pulled her face into his throat and continued, pushing the gown to her waist. Then he slid his lean, warm hands around her bare back and began to move her bare, hard-tipped breasts against his hair-roughened chest. She gasped. The sensation was beyond her understanding. It made her breasts swell, her body swell. There was a sudden uncomfortable tautness in her lower body, a rush of heat. Her hands stiffened where they rested on his bare shoulders, feeling h
is strength.

  "Relax", he whispered at her ear, his voice lazily sensual, amused. She was like a tightly coiled spring, but her breasts were exquisite. He liked their softness, their hard little points digging into his muscles as he teased her body with his. "Do you like it?" he breathed, letting his hands slide under her arms now, to brush her from side to side with damning sensuality.

  Her nails were biting into him unconsciously. "You must.. .stop," she stammered, shivering as his thumbs worked onto the soft swell of her breasts and began to caress them.

  "Only this, I promise," he whispered. His teeth nibbled gently at her earlobe. "Nothing to compromise you, nothing to shame you. Let me touch you, Brianna."

  Her voice broke. His touch was maddening. He made her want shameful things. She shivered, and despite her reluctant mind, her body drew away to give him complete access to her breasts, while her face burrowed, ashamed, closer against his warm throat.

  "No, no," he coaxed, lowering his mouth to her tightly closed eyes. "Do not be ashamed to enjoy what I can give you. I mean you no harm." His mouth pressed hungrily at her temple while his fingers trespassed onto the fullness of her breasts and traced patterns that made her writhe before they came to rest over the hard tips of her breasts.

  She clung to him, biting her lower lip almost through, letting his hands caress her while his thumbs and forefingers molded her nipples until her whole body ached.

  "You delight me," he whispered roughly. He moved, sliding his exploring hands up and down her silky back in lazy sweeps while he held her nakedness against him once more. She could feel the thunder of his heartbeat shaking them both, and she hadn't the will to ask him to stop. She wanted it to go on and on, to never end. She hadn't known that there could be such joy in a man's touch.

  She didn't know that her hands were in his hair until she felt him gently remove them. He lifted her away from him and laid her down against the pillow firmly, his hands on her wrists while his glittering eyes dropped to her bare breasts.

  The next step, she knew, would be to let him peel the rest of the gown away. She would feel his eyes on her, and then his hands, and...