by Dana Marton
He actually checked under the seat.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake. You know, all Americans are not gun crazy.”
“You had a gun.”
“My father had a gun. And I don’t think he ever shot anything.”
She reached the main road at last and pulled onto it, seeing only one other car way far ahead, and one way far behind them. “Hang on.”
She floored the gas and the SUV shot forward at an even greater speed. She didn’t much care about the speed limit. The cops pulling her over would be a good thing right now. Of course, the cops were never around when you needed them.
“Do you have the phone?”
“I left it at the cabin. Dead battery.” He shoved his long fingers through his jet-black hair.
She really needed a new battery for that phone. This one was getting worse and worse at holding a charge. Of course, she might not live long enough to have to worry about that again. She gripped the wheel tight and passed a beaten-up pickup that was towing a horse trailer.
“I should be driving.” Frustration and disapproval sat clear on Amir’s face. “We should switch.”
“Because I look ready to perform acrobatics in tight places?”
“You don’t like doing what I tell you,” he observed with obvious displeasure. “Tough chickpeas.”
“What’s that?”
“Something my father used to say. Sit back and hang on until we lose these idiots. I’m going to have to handle this, because there’s no other way.” He really had been a lot more agreeable when he’d been in a coma. They’d had a couple of really good talks. She’d talked. He listened very sweetly, even when she’d berated him for having concealed his true identity. She’d also run some ideas by him about the future and her plans to raise her son. His silent support had been much appreciated.
At the moment, he was eyeing the steering wheel as if he were considering grabbing it.
“Don’t make me go for the eject button,” she warned.
He folded his arms in front of him, the tight look on his face betraying just how little he appreciated her sense of humor. Odd how for the last nine months, she’d been thinking about him as a dashing foreigner who’d been all fun and games. Better put that down to hormonal brain damage.
“If you want to do something, put some clothes on. I have a bag of my father’s old things in the back.” She’d planned to drop it off at the Salvation Army on her way to her doctor’s appointment today.
He reached back and pulled the bag forward, selected a dark shirt and a pair of jeans, then shoved the rest back.
“The jeans will probably be too big in the waist. There are a couple of belts in the bottom of the bag.” She kept her gaze straight ahead as he dressed—jeans on bare bottom. Completely straight ahead. As if her life depended on it. Which it did.
The temperature in the car rose a few degrees. She cursed her peripheral vision. She so didn’t need any more tantalizing images of Amir in her brain. At the speed she was driving, it simply wasn’t safe.
He turned fully toward her when he was done, bracing himself on the dashboard with his right hand. “I’m going to ask you some questions. Do not be offended.”
She let out a slow breath. “That’s not a good start, is it?”
He scowled some more. Where did he get that? She didn’t remember him scowling once during the two days they’d spent together in the Emerald Suite. He’d been fun-loving, curious and imaginative. Very imaginative.
“Did you have anything to do with that limousine exploding?”
Her hands tightened on the steering wheel. “No.”
“Did you know who I was back when we first met?”
“No. And I wish I still didn’t know.” His royal background only complicated things.
He paused before his next question. “Do you want me dead?”
Oh, for heaven’s sake. “I spent the last month of my life taking care of you.” She glared at him for a second. She couldn’t afford to take her eyes off the road longer than that. “Do I want you back in Jamala? Oh, yes. Dead? No. And that’s an insult, by the way.” She glanced into the rearview mirror. Their pursuers were even closer now than the last time she’d checked.
“I need to know without a doubt—”
“Could you not accuse me of attempted murder in the middle of a high-speed, armed chase? It’s the first time I’m doing something like this.”
He muttered something under his breath. Sounded like he was once again lamenting the fact that he wasn’t sitting behind the wheel.
And she didn’t say anything back. She was a doctor. She was used to dealing with the U.S. health-care system. She was used to disrespect. She was used to frustration. She was just going to treat him as a difficult patient or a snotty health-insurance representative. She was going to take the high road if it killed her.
She kept her focus on the road as miles whizzed by. Her game was to put as many cars between her SUV and the black van as possible. All the hand-eye coordination and quick reflexes she’d gained practicing general surgery now came in pretty handy.
“I’m going to trust you,” he said out of the blue, just as she passed a tractor-trailer.
“Whoopee.”
“Do you mock me?” He sounded startled.
She wanted to beat her head against the steering wheel. “I wouldn’t dare.” First he asked her to marry him; then he decided to trust her? She almost pointed out the insanity of that, before she realized that he hadn’t actually asked her to marry him. He’d told her.
She gritted her teeth, while he seemed to have fallen into regal, disdainful silence. The black van was still following them, but at least their pursuers were no longer shooting. A definite improvement.
“Why did they find me now?” he asked after a while. “Why not before? They had four weeks to track me down.”
She hadn’t had time to think about that yet. She considered his question as she took the next exit, heading for Dumont, hoping to lose her pursuers in a maze of narrow streets and alleys.
“I made some calls yesterday,” she confessed. It was the only possible link she could come up with. “This baby could come any minute. You couldn’t be left alone at the cabin while I went into the hospital to give birth. You needed someone to run the medical equipment.”
He thought that over. “How did you get all that equipment together with short notice?”
“My father recently passed away from cancer. He wanted to die at the cabin, so I had everything set up for him.” Including two generators, plus the sun panels on the roof. “He had a twenty-four-hour nurse, and I went out there every day after my shift ended.” Her father had desperately tried to hang on long enough to meet his grandson.
Moisture gathered in her eyes. She blinked it away. “With the funeral and all, I hadn’t had a chance to call for pickup yet when you showed up.” It hadn’t been an easy summer.
“I’m sorry about your father.” His tone was subdued.
She nodded, driving as fast as she could while still keeping control of the vehicle.
“You made sure your father was taken care of. Then you cared for me. You are an extraordinary woman.”
Probably trying to butter her up for something. But when she glanced over, she saw only surprise on his face. Which irked her. “Did you think I would abandon my father at the end of his life? Or that I would leave the father of my child bleeding on the road?”
“I was giving you a compliment. We didn’t have sufficient time to fully discover each other before. Many things about you are new to me. I’m looking forward to getting to know you better.” He looked surprised at that, too, as if the words coming out of his mouth were a revelation to him.
They were finally in Dumont and she took the first bigger road to the left, heading for a more densely populated area where enough smaller streets crisscrossed each other for a car to disappear.
“You can be part of your son’s life without us having anything to do with eac
h other.” She didn’t like the idea of sharing her baby—it hadn’t been the way she’d planned things—but, fine, he had the right, and her child would want to know his father. She could be flexible. To a point. “Once he’s old enough to be in school, he could go to Jamala for a week each summer.”
“My son will not grow up in a broken home,” he said in a tone he must have used for royal decrees, authoritative and final.
How did they get back to the subject of marriage again? “Let’s talk about something else before my blood pressure sends us hurtling into a phone pole, okay?”
“Do you have problems with your blood pressure? You said the pregnancy was going well,” he accused her.
“No problems whatsoever before you woke up.” She gritted her teeth. He got to her like no other, pushing all the wrong buttons.
Funny how nine months ago he’d been pushing all the right ones. And then some. She bit her lip. She so needed to stop thinking about those insane two days.
She glanced at the rearview mirror. No black van in sight. She careened into a back alley and slowed, surveyed the row of back doors, which she knew led to kitchens and laundry rooms, swerved to avoid the garbage cans lined up by the road. Not a person in sight, only a cat sauntering in front of her.
She brought the SUV to a complete stop. “Do we try to find a phone and call the police?”
He shook his head.
“Who then? FBI? CIA? Department of Defense?”
“No.”
“Of course not.” Because that would have been easy. “Then what?”
He looked darkly ahead.
“Did you talk to anyone on the phone before the battery went dead?”
He nodded.
“Bad news?”
He nodded again.
“Can I just remind you that you recently decided to trust me? Some information would be nice. We’re in this together.”
His face darkened further. “I apologize for that.”
She didn’t want apologies. She wanted a plan. “Why can’t we call the police?”
“Efraim said… The phone gave out before he could explain. No police.”
“Fine. Then we find a phone and you can call this Efraim again.”
“Yes. That would be best. My friends will send a team for us. We’ll be safe at the resort. Once the royal physician arrives, he’ll take you to Jamala under guard. I might have to stay here for a day or two. There are international relations to consider. I might have duties left still with things we came here to accomplish.”
She wasn’t thrilled at the idea of his security staff arriving and taking control of her. “Or, how about this? Why wait for anyone? With armed madmen looking for us out there, I’m thinking time is of the essence. I can take you to Wind River and your friends. Then we part ways. I’ll drop you off at the gate.”
“We must not fight about this. Stress is not good for you or my son. You should be reasonable.” He had the gall to reproach her.
Enough steam gathered in her head to fill the steam bath at the resort’s fancy spa. She gave Amir her sweetest smile. “If you don’t like my plan, you can always get out of the car right here.”
He didn’t have the chance to respond. The black van appeared at the other end of the alley, flying toward them, motor roaring.
No room to turn the SUV around.
No time to inch out of the narrow alley backward, slowly.
They were trapped.
BEFORE ANY BULLETS could fly, Amir bolted from the car, Isabella right next to him. He hated, absolutely hated, that he’d brought danger to her. He couldn’t believe she had the wherewithal to grab her purse first, but she had it with her as they busted in through the back door of the nearest house. They ran through a small, empty kitchen, then a living room, a half-dozen cats scattering from their path and giving them dirty looks.
“Is that you, Brian?” a woman called from upstairs, hardwood floor creaking as she moved around. “Where have you been?”
They burst through the front door without answering, then scrambled across the road, into a crowded bar that smelled like smoke and beer, the Jukebox blaring a country song he wasn’t familiar with. They slowed to make their way to the back without drawing too much attention. In seconds they were in another alley. His muscles were shaking; his breathing was heavy. He cursed his weak legs, which slowed them both.
“You made it this far. You can do it.” Isabelle took him by the hand to pull him after her.
Male pride said he should pull away and make his way unaided. But her small hands felt incredible around his fingers, the feel of her warm skin giving him a jolt, bringing back memories. He left his hand in hers and ignored his screaming muscles.
The faces of their pursuers danced in his mind. This time, he’d made a point of taking a good look. He didn’t recognize any of them. They didn’t look Jamalan. They looked American.
Yet his secretary had said that Fahad had worked for the enemy. Did some xenophobic American group pay Fahad to sabotage the summit?
Isabelle pulled him forward relentlessly. He kept looking back, but the men must have gotten hung up somewhere, because they weren’t following. Maybe they were still searching the bar.
“Where are we going?” Again, it galled him that she would have to save him and take the lead. But it was obvious that she was familiar with this place as she made her way to a specific back door.
She had her key ring in her hand, picked a key and shoved it into the old lock, opened the door, pulled him in, then locked the door behind them. They were in a narrow white hallway, breathing hard.
He was tense and not sure if they could relax yet, if the building was safe. “What is this place?”
“My father practiced family medicine here before he retired. Hasn’t been rented out since. I keep forgetting to give back my duplicate key.”
She led the way and they reached a waiting room that was lit by the last of the setting sun. There were upholstered chairs stacked on top of each other, dust everywhere. The door to one of the exam rooms was open. He spotted a phone on the wall and went for it. He needed to reach Efraim, needed immediate backup.
No dial tone.
Just when he would have banged the receiver against the wall, Isabelle took it gently away from him. “I’m sure they canceled phone service when they closed the office. Would you sit down, please?”
That he needed to sit and rest annoyed him. In fact, annoyance and frustration seemed to be the main theme of the hours since he’d awakened. “How long before I’m back like I was before?”
“At least a couple of weeks. You’re doing amazingly well, all things considered. One might almost think you’re too stubborn to be sick.”
He couldn’t help a small grin. “Stubborn?” Yes, he’d probably been that way with her and worse. Not that she wasn’t impossibly stubborn herself, but he was going to be a gentleman and not mention that again. “You are not seeing me at my best,” he allowed.
She outright laughed at him. “Really?”
The sweet sound of her laughter had a way of sneaking straight into the middle of his chest. Her face lit up. Her silky hair had fallen across her forehead in their mad dash, but now she brushed the dark strands out of her face. Her blue eyes shone in the dim light of dusk.
“You’re beautiful.” The words just slipped out.
She raised an eyebrow. “I’m still not entering into some arranged marriage.”
“Nobody arranged anything for us. This is not something set up by our parents. We should both choose this marriage because it’s the right thing to do. It is the only honorable course of action. My country and my people expect no less from me.”
“Marrying for protocol’s sake? Living some happy royal farce for the media?”
He rose and strode to her, turned her to face him. Her amazing eyes were wary; her bottom lip was bruised from biting. Her face had been on his mind every day since she’d left him. Her body—sans clothes—had been a major player in
his dreams.
“If I married for protocol, according to the wishes of the Council, I would marry for alliance. I would marry a princess for her father’s wealth and influence,” he informed her.
Nothing wrong with that. Last he heard, his friend Prince Stefan had been considering just such a marriage to Princess Daria. Alliances were important. Yet, he couldn’t say he was upset by the turn of events that would make Isabelle his bride. He could see them being happy. He could see them doing a great many things. A number of them involved being naked.
“Sounds good to me. You should try and keep this Council happy. They sound important.”
“They’ll be happy that I finally secured an heir.” They’d been bugging him about that from the moment he’d taken the throne. “This might not be the marriage they had in mind, but they won’t protest it.”
“I protest it. I’m not entering into a fake marriage so you can parade my son around as your heir.”
“Nothing about our marriage would be fake, I promise you that, Isabelle,” he told her before he kissed her.
Chapter Four
His lips were firm on hers and warm, coaxing. If the kiss had been the claiming sort, him trying to prove that she would belong to him, she could have resisted. But Amir’s tender seduction had Isabelle’s head spinning.
His hands came to her nonexistent waist. Probably felt like he was hugging a whale. She shied away, but he pulled her right back, one hand moving to rest on her belly. The baby kicked against his palm. For a second he stilled; then he deepened the kiss with a surge of new emotion.
Her knees were as shaky as his had to be. She shouldn’t be doing this. Her giving in was bound to give him ideas that she was agreeing to his insane plans about them getting married. It gave the wrong impression altogether, not to mention that it was medically irresponsible. She was his doctor for the time being. He needed rest. Lots of it.
She pulled back once again, although with a reluctance that she couldn’t hide from him. “You should lie down.”
