by Dana Marton
Probably the faster to escape after the bastard killed them.
ISABELLE PEERED INTO the hidden, nearly pitch-dark space below the floorboards. She could barely make out Amir.
“Why didn’t he kill us right here and now?”
“You don’t take the bait out of the trap until you’ve trapped whatever you are hunting. His plan could still go wrong. But as long as he has us, he knows my friends will come to him eventually.”
Glass shattered as he broke a bottle against a wall. “I’ll see if I can loosen a few rocks. There might be a tunnel behind this wall.”
“I wish I could help.”
“Rest.”
The air coming up from the hole was chilly and musty. She could hear a mouse or some other rodent scurry across the packed-dirt floor down there.
“Is it working?” She tried to see better.
“Not fast enough.” He grunted with effort.
“How about the screwdriver?” She bent with effort and extended the tool down into the hole. The tips of her fingers touched Amir’s as he reached up. Heat suffused her body. She snatched her hand away. “Do you think this will work?”
He moved back to the wall where he’d been working. “Darek said he’s calling a meeting for the morning. We have the rest of the day and all night. There’s either a tunnel behind this wall or there isn’t. We have to at least try. It’s the best chance we have.”
“Don’t hurt your shoulder.”
“Is that doctor’s orders?” he teased, injecting a moment of humor into the tense situation.
“Don’t make me come down there.”
“You can’t yet. But we’ll widen the opening in the floor if the tunnel down here works out.”
Yet another obstacle. But she refused to become discouraged. She wasn’t just fighting for herself here. She was fighting for Amir and her baby. “I’ll stand by the window and let you know if anyone’s coming.”
She grabbed the neck of the bottle Amir had given her earlier and felt better for having taken some measure of control back. The next person who came through that door and threatened them was going to regret it.
“Don’t push yourself too hard. You don’t need to be standing,” Amir called up to Isabelle as he wedged the screwdriver under the smallest of the rocks and pressed down hard on the handle. The busted bottle he’d first tried had been little help, but the screwdriver seemed to be doing the trick. The rock moved a little.
“This is going to work,” he told her, trying to sound reassuring while knowing there were at least a dozen things that could go wrong, knowing that their chances for failure were a hundred times greater than their chances for escape.
He refused to accept it.
He did make progress, but much slower than he had anticipated. Minutes passed as he worked on the rocks as quietly as he could so the people outside wouldn’t suspect anything. “Why don’t you try to get some sleep? You will need your strength later.”
“I’m too nervous to sleep. I’m a great sleeper usually. I can sleep in the on-call room in between surgeries like nobody’s business.”
He pressed his lips together. It shouldn’t be like this. His future wife should be comfortably resting at the palace, surrounded by help who cared for her and spoiled her. She should most certainly not be in any sort of discomfort or danger.
But the best he could do right now was to take her mind off the men outside the shack.
“When you’re not taking care of someone at your father’s cabin, where do you live?”
“I have a small condo near the hospital. Actually, it overlooks the ambulance bay. Some of the neighbors complain sometimes, but it doesn’t bother me. I can sleep right through ambulance sirens.”
“Wish you could sleep now.”
“Not even drowsy. I miss my place,” she added after a minute. “I haven’t had a chance to stop in lately. I’m sure the lemon tree the nurses gave me for my birthday is dead.”
“The royal palace of Jamala is surrounded by lemon trees. It’s on the highest point of the island. The windows of our private quarters look to the east. French doors lead to a covered terrace.” He felt a pang of homesickness just talking about it. “We’ll have some of our meals served there. From that spot, you can see forever, the Mediterranean Sea stretching to the horizon. You will like that.”
“I might come and see it someday,” she allowed.
He grinned in the darkness. “The pink marble bathtub is sunk in the floor and is bigger than this shack.” Was that a sigh he heard from up there?
He kept on working, but he kept up with telling her about the country he was willing to die or kill for. “It’s a small country. Trade and tourism are big things for us. The people are very friendly, still live at a slower pace than people of the industrialized West. Honor and faith have meaning.”
“They have meaning in Wyoming, too.”
“I know.” He didn’t mean to offend her. “I can’t help being biased. I love my country.” And Darek wasn’t going to get it. Not now, not ever. “My son will inherit the throne,” he said with force.
“We’ll see,” was the response from above.
She wasn’t exactly jumping up and down with excitement at the prospect, but she wasn’t as vehement as before about rejecting everything he had to offer. Maybe they were finally making progress.
“You will like my sister, Saida. She’s thoroughly Americanized. I let her attend university here, and now it seems she’s engaged to some Wyoming lawman. Jake Wolf. I’m not sure what to think of it,” he admitted.
He had always thought Saida would marry a prince, had even hoped it might be one of his friends. But since he was marrying Isabelle, and knew now how important that was to him even if honor and his heir were taken out of the equation, he couldn’t exactly tell Saida to marry for the sake of an alliance.
“Let her have her happiness. Jake is a good man. And good-looking,” was the answer from above.
“You know him?” Out of the blue, jealousy hit him square in the chest.
“Not well. But I know his reputation. He’s an honest man.”
Amir relaxed. Then something else occurred to him. “So you really didn’t see anyone else all this time that I was gone?” At the time, those months had seemed short, his schedule filled with back-to-back trips and meetings. But in hindsight, nine months was a very long stretch of time to leave a woman as beautiful as Isabelle.
“Between work and caring for my dying father, I didn’t have much energy for dating.”
Amazing how good that made him feel, even while regretting all the hardship she had to face. “There can be no other. Ever.”
“Right, Mr. Throwback-to-the-Middle-Ages.” He could practically see her roll her blue eyes up there. “And how about your harem?”
Did she sound jealous? Another ping of hope came to life inside him. “What about it?”
Her squeak was very unlike the serious-doctor demeanor she usually projected. “You have a harem?”
“Well, technically…” He tried to keep laughter out of his voice.
“You have a harem? I can’t believe this! How could you? Are you kidding? Oh, God—”
“If you would let me finish, I could tell you that there’s a centuries-old harem attached to the palace that was left behind after the Ottoman invasion. It’s currently used as a museum.” He paused. “I only want one woman.” Her.
No response came to that.
“No one in my family had multiple wives for as far back as I can remember,” he said, trying to reassure her further. He wanted her to be comfortable with him, with his culture. It all might seem strange to her, but it was his heritage and he was proud of it. “You’ll be my one and only.”
Again, she stayed silent.
He didn’t like that. At the very least, they needed to keep the conversation open on the issue. They had a difference of opinion about their future together, a difference of opinion based on some misunderstandings that they had to wor
k out. They were two intelligent people; they should be able to come up with a reasonable solution between them. All he needed was for her to give their marriage a chance.
He understood why she might have misgivings, but he was unwilling to let her slip through his fingers. Maybe she just needed a reminder. “Last year, at that masquerade ball, you wanted me.”
“Yes,” was the small response.
And he appreciated that she was the kind of woman who wouldn’t deny that, wouldn’t pretend that she didn’t know what he was talking about. “Couldn’t things be like that between us again?”
“Everything is different now.”
“How?”
“You’re a sheik. I’m pregnant.”
“It’s still just you and me. One man and one woman who are attracted to each other, who are going to have a child together.”
“What you want is… It’s not how I planned my life. My life is at Dumont General. That is my hospital. This is my country. My home is Wyoming.”
Sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” and all that, he thought, frustrated but at the same time understanding her point. He couldn’t not admire her patriotism. “I’m not asking you to give up everything. We’ll visit as often as you’d like. Is there no room in your plans for happy accidents?”
He held his breath for the answer but kept digging. He couldn’t afford to stop, not for a second. It could all come down to the wire. When Darek came for them in the morning, he didn’t plan on still being here.
“You’re so not a happy accident,” she countered from above. “You’re too much. Larger-than-life. Overwhelming. A little scary. Very pushy. To the point of arrogant.”
“Right. You might have mentioned that already. But we worked once.”
Silence.
He needed to press his point, but pressed his lips together instead. He didn’t want to badger her. She had enough stress on her shoulders at the moment. They would survive this, and he would have more time, other opportunities to convince her that he was the only man for her.
“Please rest,” he told her again. “At least lie down on the bed and take the weight off your feet. Maybe you’ll fall asleep.”
“I doubt that.” Her voice sounded strained when she responded after a second. “I’m having more cramps.”
His muscles clenched. He dug faster. “Practice contractions again?”
She stayed silent.
He did stop then and stepped over so he was under the hole that led up to the shack, but he couldn’t see her. She was probably on the bed. “Isabelle?”
“I think I’m having the baby.”
Chapter Eleven
“Do you need me to come up?” Adrenaline rushed through Amir’s veins. He wouldn’t allow fear. He’d been trained to keep his head under pressure, an attribute drilled into him at an early age, part of his education as the future leader of his country.
“I’m fine. Just hurry so you can get us out of here,” Isabelle told him.
He blinked against the dust that hung in the air, spit the taste of dirt from his mouth, but didn’t stop working. He dug like he’d never dug before, which wasn’t saying much, since, as a prince, he hadn’t done all that much digging.
Except that time when he’d attempted to climb Mount Everest with a group of daredevil friends of his. An avalanche buried them, and he’d been one of the lucky ones, reaching the surface first. He and a friend had dug like fiends to get to the rest of the team. Everyone made it out alive without serious injury, save for a broken collarbone and a broken leg.
Now it was Isabelle who was in trouble, and he found that he was a hundred times as willing to fight for her. He ignored the pain in his shoulder. He slammed the screwdriver into the hardened soil, loosened a chunk, then removed it, moving on to the next, then the next.
Before he’d come back to Wyoming, he’d thought his wild adventure days were over. But with Isabelle and his son depending on him, the stakes were higher than ever. All he wanted now was to see them safe. Adventure was way overrated. He would never again miss the bulls in Spain.
Minutes ticked by and turned into hours. As best he could tell. He could only guess at the passage of time down there in the darkness.
“How do you feel now?” he called up, pausing only for a second to wipe the sweat from his forehead, then going back to the work.
“Contractions are still almost twenty minutes or so apart. Stop asking. I’ll let you know when there’s something for you to be nervous about.”
Sheiks didn’t get nervous, he scoffed. He was…justifiably concerned. His princess was having a baby. In America. In a shed. Without the royal physician, without any of the royal court attending. They were breaking so many protocols, but he couldn’t even think of that. She was in pain. Not all the time, but periodically. He could hear it in her voice. According to her, the contractions were twenty minutes apart. Whatever that meant.
He needed to get her out of here. First, he needed to find the end of this tunnel and clear the exit, then he needed to widen the hole in the floor so she would fit through it.
He worked as hard as he could, stopped to check on her, then went back to work again. The night moved along, time running out.
Then half the wall that blocked the tunnel came down at last, not enough for him to crawl through yet, but enough to see all that dark, promising space behind it. He grabbed the screwdriver and went back to work. “Are you still all right?”
“Are you digging or worrying?”
“I’m not worried. I just don’t want you to worry,” he told her, worried through and through that she’d been right and he couldn’t protect her, after all.
“Oh, God.”
“What? What is it?” He was ready to climb up to her.
“I just realized that even if we get out, we’ll have to walk miles and miles to civilization.”
“I’ll come up with something.” There was an SUV out there, plus the black van. His muscles clenched when he heard the hiss of her breathing.
“Okay. I’m going to trust you on this,” she said after a long moment.
Trust. “Why now?”
“Because I don’t have any other choice. Because I can’t do this alone.” She groaned.
“Are you in pain?”
“I’m good,” she told him.
He didn’t believe her for a second.
SHE WAS HEALTHY. The baby was healthy. The ob-gyn had predicted a normal, uneventful labor. Isabelle hoped Dr. Szunoman was right, because as of now, it sure didn’t look like they were going to make it to the hospital.
Night had fallen. Hours had passed.
Her contractions were ten minutes apart.
Her labor wasn’t exactly progressing with the speed of light. At the hospital they might have tried to hurry it along chemically, but under the circumstances she was more than grateful for her tardy baby.
Amir came up from the hidey-hole, covered in dust. “The way is clear all the way to the end. The tunnel goes on for about fifty feet, but the exit is sealed. How do you feel?” He brushed off his hair and shirt.
“Like a woman in labor.” She was lying on her side, rubbing her lower back to ease her muscles. When she’d first seen the bed, she wouldn’t have touched it with a ten-foot pole. She wasn’t so picky now. She was just glad it held her weight.
Amir dusted himself off one more time, stomping his feet quietly to get the dirt off his shoes. “May I?”
He lay silently next to her so they were facing each other and pressed his hands next to hers, searching out the stiffest muscles. His long fingers worked miracles. When the next contraction came, it passed a lot more smoothly.
He kissed her forehead. “How much time do we have?”
“I would guess several hours. But it’s not an exact science.”
She let her body relax against his. True, they hadn’t known each other long, but he’d never felt like a stranger to her, not even at the beginning. From the first look that passed between them, the
connection had been undeniable.
She moved closer and placed her head on his shoulder. They lay there, side by side, their heartbeats synchronizing. Then he pressed another kiss on top of her head. “I should go back to work.”
“You need to rest. If you overtax your system, you can fall right back into a coma. That happens more than you think.” In fact, he was putting his health at serious risk with all this exertion. “How is the bullet hole?”
“Nothing to worry about.”
“You’re taking this too lightly.”
“I hate being this weak. It’s going infuriatingly slow down there. I push as hard as I can, but the progress is not as rapid as it should be.” His voice was tight, frustration clearly taking its toll on him.
“I suppose that conflicts with your macho sheik self-image. You don’t have to be as strong as a comic-book hero, you know. It’s already a miracle that you’re still standing.”
A brooding look came into his dark eyes. “I have to be…everything. I’m the leader of my country. People look to me for leadership and security.” He said the words with a heavy heart, not in a way a power-hungry man who reveled in his position would have. There was a marked difference between him and Darek, whose only motivation seemed to be greed.
Amir was a man of honor, but a man of contradictions, too. He was exotic, powerful, even in recovery, since his power did not come only from muscles. He had strength of character…. Isabelle cut that train of thought off, recognizing the slippery slope ahead of her. Admire him too much, desire him too much, and the next thing she knew, she would be falling in love with him. Not if she could help it. She looked away.
“You shouldn’t fight this,” he said, as if reading her mind.
She didn’t have a chance to disagree with him. Her muscles clenched. The next contraction was starting. Oh, man. This was so not how she had planned this. She wanted one of those comfortable hospital beds. She wanted nurses. She wanted ice chips, for heaven’s sake.
Then Amir took her hand, and she found that all she really needed was him.
