He was profoundly attractive, powerful, but he was also an enemy. Not on her team. She had to be careful, guarded. Her life depended on it. She knew this somehow. But how did she know all this? Why? A wild terror scrambled through her brain. What did she know?
Her eyes flicked nervously around the room. It was lit by lamplight, a kerosene lamp. That’s what the smell was. That’s what made shadows flicker on the whitewashed walls. A wooden fan turned slowly up on an exceptionally high ceiling. The room was furnished with artistic, antique-looking pieces of dark burnished wood. She noted the ornate arch over the heavy wooden door at the end of the room. The whole effect was high-end North African…or perhaps Moorish. Her heart stuttered into a crazy panicked beat. She didn’t recognize a thing. She had absolutely no idea where she was. She tried to sit up.
He restrained her instantly, placing a hand firmly against her shoulder. “It’s okay, relax, take it one step at a time,” he said.
She stilled at the deep gravel tone of his voice. He had a British accent, yet it was underlaid with the low and sensual gutturalness of Arabic. His hand was warm on the bare skin of her shoulder, and his palm rough. She realized then that she was covered by only a white cotton sheet. Under it she was utterly naked. Alarm mounted, swamping any attempt at rational thought.
“Don’t touch me.” She warned, her voice coming out in a raw croak.
He withdrew his hand instantly. “As you wish. But take it easy. You’ve been unconscious.”
“Where…where am I?”
“You’re in my home on Shendi Island.”
“Where’s that?”
“The Red Sea, off the coast of Sudan. Shendi is a private island. I own it. My name is David Rashid.”
“The Red Sea?” Her words came out in a panicked and painful rasp. Why was she anywhere near the Red Sea? The wind was making a terrible howling sound outside. She could hear it banging, tearing against shutters. It muddled her mind. She couldn’t think.
Concern shifted into his eyes as he stared down at her. And that distressed her. If he was worried, she too had reason to be.
She held his gaze, fighting her fear, determined to show some strength. “Why am I here?” she demanded.
“You took a bad knock on the head. We found you unconscious on the beach. You’re very lucky you didn’t drown.”
Drown? Knock on the head? She reached up, tentatively felt her brow where it throbbed dully. Her fingers detected a neat line of stitches along her temple just below her hairline. Alarmed, she fingered the length of what must have been a nasty gash.
“You have more cuts,” he offered. “Down your left side, and along your arm.”
Her eyes shot down to her forearm. More rows of tiny black stitches. Swelling. Blue-black bruising beginning to show. “What happened to me?”
“You washed up on the beach in the storm. We need to know if you were on a boat, if there were others with you. We have a search party out but have found nothing so far.”
Confusion shrouded her brain. She tried to marshal her thoughts but couldn’t. Her head hurt terribly. “I…I don’t know…”
“That’s okay.” He lifted his hand to touch her shoulder again, thought better of it. “Give it time. It’s probably the concussion. Let’s start with your name.”
She opened her mouth to say it, but she couldn’t. It wouldn’t come. Terror ran hot through her veins. Frantically she searched her brain, but she couldn’t locate it. She couldn’t remember her own name. She couldn’t seem to recall anything. How she got onto the island. Where she’d been. Or why. The storm. Others on a boat.
Absolutely nothing.
His eyes sharpened again, cutting into her with laser intent as he waited for her to speak. Her mouth went dry. She clutched the sheet tight around her chest as if it would somehow shield her from the sheer horror at her predicament. The wind rose to an awful howl. Shutters crashed somewhere.
He was still watching, still waiting. But something else was shifting into his features. Pity. He felt sorry for her. And that made her feel infinitely worse. It also made her angry. She hated pity.
“If you tell me your name,” he said, “once we get our communication system up and running again, we can let someone know that you’re all right.”
She remained silent. She had absolutely no idea who might be looking for her.
“I’m sure there are people worried about you.”
She drew in a shaky breath, said nothing.
A crease deepened across the smooth skin of his brow. He studied her face, his blue eyes analyzing, stripping her down to her mental core, making her feel more naked than she already was under the crisp sheets.
“You don’t know your name, do you?”
“Of course I do.”
He arched a brow, waited.
“I…my name is…it’s…” It still wouldn’t come. She couldn’t find it. She felt it was inside her head somewhere, lurking in a file folder in her brain. She just couldn’t find the tab that identified the folder so that so she could grasp it, pull it out.
He touched her arm again.
She jerked back reflexively.
But this time his hand remained on her arm. “It’s all right,” he said, his voice suddenly incredibly gentle. His hand was warm. The roughness of his palm against her skin spoke of a man who spent a great deal of time outdoors. For some reason this grounded her. This time she found some small comfort in his touch. This time she didn’t pull away.
“Just relax, I’ll get Dr. Watson.”
“Doctor?”
“He tended to you most of the night.” He smiled into her eyes. “I took the graveyard shift so he could get some rest. I’ll send for him.”
Panic swamped reason. “No.” She jerked away, fresh energy and determination surging through her system. She struggled into a sitting position. She clutched the sheet around her torso and swung her legs over the side of the bed. “I don’t need a doctor. I’m fine.”
She would be fine. As soon as she got moving. As soon as she got blood flowing back into her brain. Then it would all come back. Her name, everything. She was sure of it. “Where are my clothes?” she demanded.
He angled his head, tilted his dark brow, a hint of amusement lighting his intelligent eyes. “You haven’t got any.”
“What?”
A smile ghosted his lips. “You washed up on the shore as naked as the day you were born…apart from some torn green fabric wrapped around your legs.”
She stared at him, mortified. “Who brought me up from the beach?”
“I did.”
“How?”
“On my horse.”
Oh, Lord. She closed her eyes, tried to find a center in the gray swirling blankness of her brain. She had to get moving. It was the only way. She was sure of it. Once she moved she’d be fine. She forced herself off the bed and onto her feet, clutching the sheet tightly around her body. Her legs felt like lead, her feet were as heavy and about as cooperative as dead stumps.
She took a step, and the world spun wildly. She wobbled, grabbed the edge of the bed, steadied herself.
He grasped her elbow. “You shouldn’t move so quickly.”
She jerked away from him. “I said don’t touch me.” She took a determined step toward the thick-looking bedroom door. Then another. But her body wouldn’t behave. Her steps turned into a wild, flailing stumble, and the whole room spun. She swayed as a dizzying kaleidoscope of black and bright closed around her. She felt her legs collapse under her. Everything moved in slow motion as she sank to the floor, the sheet pooling embarrassingly at her feet as she went down.
He moved quickly, catching her head an instant before it thudded onto the cool tiles. She was vaguely aware of his callused hands against her bare torso, the brush of his forearm over her naked breast as he lifted her from the ground.
Then everything went black.
David yanked on a thick, tasseled bell cord. His housekeeper appeared almost immediately.
Fayha’ dipped her head in silent acquiescence, closed the door gently behind her. David turned to the mysterious woman lying in his bed, all the while listening for the approach of Watson’s heavy footsteps in the stone corridor.
She looked like a wax sculpture in the golden glow of the kerosene lamp, a surreal angel. She was in her late twenties, he guessed, possessing an unconventional and exotic beauty, with high defined cheekbones, elegant arched brows and almond-shaped eyes fringed with thick amber lashes. She was tall, her muscles long and lean. But above all, it was those eyes that had undone him. They were closed now. And that made him feel a little safer.
But when they’d flared open he’d been stunned by the hugeness of them, the deep emerald green. And when she’d found focus and stared up into his own eyes, he’d been rocked by the depth he’d seen in them.
A man could drown in eyes like that. Eyes the color of the ocean.
Then a thought slammed him up the side of the head so hard and sudden he sucked in his breath. Aisha had drowned in an ocean that color. While he was diving, taking personal pleasure in the beauty and depths of a coral reef. He’d left her and Kamilah alone, up in the boat.
David swallowed against the hard knot of pain, of love and loss and irrational guilt. That was almost two years ago. The memories should be a little easier now. But they weren’t. A part of him didn’t even want them to be. A part of him relished the sharpness of the pain they brought him, as if hanging on to the hurt would preserve his love for his dead wife, as if it might absolve his guilt in some way.
He didn’t deserve easy memories as long as Kamilah still suffered. And he didn’t deserve to dive in waters like that, ever again. Which is why he hadn’t. Not once since Aisha’s death.
The woman in his bed moaned softly, jerking David’s attention back to the present. He felt himself bracing for the incredible green of her huge eyes.
But she didn’t wake. Her breathing settled back into a soft and regular rhythm, her chest rising and falling under the Egyptian cotton sheet he’d placed over her. Her hair was dry now, full of wave and curl. It fanned out about her face over the white pillows, the fiery color of a Saharan sunrise.
Her neck was sleek, elegant in the way it curved down to her collarbone. His eyes followed the lines of her body down to where the sheet rose gently over the swell of her pointed breasts. He thought of the soft and heavy weight of those breasts, naked against the palm of his hand, against his bare chest. He thought of the dusky coral nipples. David’s mouth went dry. Unbidden heat spilled low into the pit of his stomach.
He wiped the back of his hand hard across his mouth in shock. This was sick, to be aroused by an injured and barely conscious woman. A woman who couldn’t be more vulnerable if she tried. But by God she was desirable, in an unattainable and otherworldly kind of way.
Kamilah was right. If he’d had to conjure up the image of a mermaid in his dreams, this would be it.
A smiled tugged at his lips. Maybe he had more in common with his daughter than he dared admit. His smile deepened as he allowed his thoughts to go. Because in his dream the mermaid too would be naked with perfect coral-tipped breasts, waist-length amber hair, bewitching green eyes and an emerald-green tail.
He mentally shook his head. This was ludicrous. His thoughts and emotions were bouncing all over the place. This woman was real. A normal human being. And what might have passed for a tail was a swath of tangled green fabric. Still, he couldn’t shed the deepening sense of unreality.
He reached out, tentatively touched her cheek, almost to prove to himself she was not a figment of his imagination.
She murmured again.
He jerked his hand back. His breath snared in his throat. His heart rapped a light and steady beat against his ribs. The lamplight quivered, teased by invisible fingers of warm wind that had found their way through cracks in the shutters.
He felt edgy. Finding this woman on his beach had totally unstrung him.
She groaned suddenly, wrenching her head from side to side, wincing from the obvious pain and discomfort the movement caused her. Instinctively he reached out and smoothed her hair back from her forehead. “Shh, it’s okay,” he soothed. “You’ll be all right. You’re safe here. There’s nothing to hurt you here.”
She stilled, as if listening for his voice.
“You’re safe,” he whispered again.
Her eyelids stopped flickering. The tension in her features eased. He’d managed to quell her angst, and that satisfied something primal within him. He began to move his hand away but was arrested by the silkiness of her hair against his skin. It was impossibly soft.
He lifted a long strand, let the curl twist around his fingers. And inside he felt a sudden, aching, vast and indefinable emptiness. His eyes flicked down to her left hand. There was definitely no sign of a ring, no tan line, nothing to indicate a ring that may have been lost to the storm. A hot thrill of promise speared through his chest and into his belly.
He jerked back, startled by the sheer power of his own physical reaction. He sucked in a deep breath, dragged both hands forcefully through his hair and told himself in no uncertain terms that he was only looking for clues to her identity.
But even so, he couldn’t deny the spark of interest that had flared deep within. Even as he tried to quash it, he could feel the small, hot, ulcerous burn of it. He had a sinking sense it wasn’t going to heal anytime soon.
The thought made his mouth dry, his head hurt. It was as if the freak storm had invaded his very brain, whipped up his normally razor-sharp and logical mind, clogging it with the rain-soaked sand.
The door banged open behind him. David just about jumped out of his skin. He swiveled around. Dr. James Watson stood there, medical bag in hand, his gray hair still slightly disheveled from sleep.
“I didn’t hear you coming,” he growled, furious at having been caught unawares. David Rashid was never caught off guard.
The doctor’s wise gray eyes studied him silently, knowingly, irritatingly. “Sorry, David. Didn’t mean to scare you.” Watson jerked his chin toward the door. “Wind just grabbed it from my hand. Fayha’ must have a door open somewhere. There’s a bloody gale blowing down the corridors.”
Watson closed the heavy door carefully behind him and ambled into the room with his customary air of casual authority. “So she woke up, did she?” he asked as he set his big black medical bag down on the nightstand and opened it. “How was she?”
David gave himself a mental shake, banishing unbidden images of mermaids and wedding bands to the farthest reaches of his mind. “She seemed fine. Apart from the fact she has absolutely no idea who she is, what happened to her, or how she got here,” he told Watson. “Doesn’t even know her name. She got up, tried to walk and went out like a light.”
The doctor nodded, feeling for her pulse. He timed it, his face furrowed in thought as he focused on his watch.
David paced the room. Through the slats in the louvered shutters he could see the sky beginning to brighten. He glanced at the clock on the bedside table in surprise. It was almost 5:30 a.m. He hadn’t slept a wink since he’d tucked Kamilah into bed.
Watson rested the woman’s wrist back on the covers and joined David near the window. He kept his voice low. “Her breathing and heart rate are back in regular range. So far everything is looking normal.”
“What about the amnesia?”
“It’s not uncommon to experience some memory loss after a blow to the head. It may last seconds, days, months. It could even last years.”
“Could it be permanent?”
“Possibly. She might never remember the accident that brought her here.”
David studied the doctor’s face. “But there’s something else worrying you.”
Watson pursed his lips. He glanced at the woman then back at David.
“What is it Watson?”
he pressed.
“The retrograde amnesia, that’s consistent with head trauma, with organic damage.” The doctor chewed on the inside of his cheek, a furrow deepening along his forehead. “But the loss of sense of self…” He shook his head. “We really should get her to a hospital for a CAT scan. Maybe fly her into Nairobi, or north to Cairo. In the meantime, she’ll need to stay under constant observation. And—”
But before the doctor could complete his sentence, their patient groaned. They both spun around.
Her lashes flickered against her cheeks.
David tensed, once again anticipating those incredible eyes.
Outside the wind was suddenly silent. The storm had finally died. Only surf boomed over distant coral reefs. Yellow dawn sun seeped through the louvered shutters, throwing patterns on the tiled floor as the sun peeked over the distant horizon.
Then her eyes flared open. She stared straight at David and blinked like a confused and trapped animal. Something snagged so sharply in his chest it clean stole his breath.
She looked so lost. So vulnerable.
She was straining to pull her whole world back into focus.
Lancaster’s hulking frame filled the doorway of the Khartoum hotel room.
O’Reilly glanced up from his laptop. He stilled instantly at the somber expression on the big man’s face. “Bad news?”
“Still no sign of her.” Lancaster dragged his powerful hand over his brush cut and stepped into the room, momentarily blotting the early-morning sunlight from the window.
“And Gibbs?”
“Got picked up by a Sudanese fishing vessel last night. He’s pretty bashed up. Damn lucky to be alive. He says he saw her go under, says there’s no way she could have come out of that alive.”
O’Reilly swore bitterly under his breath. “What the hell do we do now?”
The Sheik Who Loved Me Page 2
