by Sara Fawkes
Rashid appeared through the crowd of people and shouted orders in Arabic to the men who had been about to grab Jeremiah. They subsided and instead hauled up the man on the floor; Jeremiah stepped back to allow them access. I breathed a sigh of relief when he was hauled away, but still cast a quick glance back toward the shopping area. Two more had gotten away, and I wasn’t happy about that.
Amyrah launched herself at her brother, who enveloped her into his wide embrace. The girl sobbed against him, hiding her face in his shoulder, and Rashid himself struggled not to be overcome himself. He faced Jeremiah, who stared back stoically. “I thank you,” he murmured, laying a hand on his sister’s head.
Jeremiah shook his head. “I wasn’t the one who saved her,” he murmured, moving in behind me.
The Arab man finally looked at me, really saw me, and gave a jerky nod. “Anything,” he told me, then paused as Amyrah tightened her hold. The depth of his love for the sister in his arms shone through his eyes. “Anything you need that I may provide, it is yours.”
I nodded back, unable to speak. Jeremiah’s hands crept to my shoulders and without thinking about the possible consequences I leaned back against him. The adrenaline was still coursing through my veins, making my heart race. My heart sped up yet again however when the billionaire wrapped his arms around me, holding me close to his body. The inexplicable urge to cry came over me; oh, how I’d missed this!
As the throng of security thinned, I watched as Lucas pushed his way toward us. He took one look at me, his gaze flickering to Jeremiah, and a rueful smile tilted his lips. “Looks like I missed out on all the fun.”
I wasn’t allowed to leave immediately. In fact, I had nearly another two hours of questioning before I was finally free to go back up to my room for the night. Amyrah had disappeared, likely under her brother’s lock and key after the kidnapping attempt. Security and what I assumed was Rashid’s own team questioned me relentlessly about what had happened. I repeated my answers over and over again, growing more agitated with each passing minute, until finally Jeremiah ended the interrogation for me. He appeared halfway through my questioning and stayed, but finally he had swept me into his arms and stormed from the room. They let him go, either done with me or not wanting to get in front of the raging bull.
I managed to learn that, right about the time I was heading downstairs to meet Amyrah, her brother had received word of the imminent kidnapping. He’d immediately set out to find her, but the kidnappers had done so first. A van outside one of the catering entrances was spotted on surveillance video leaving with the other two alleged kidnappers. If I hadn’t freed her from the man who’d snatched her, Amyrah would have been inside that van and headed only God knew where before her brother could lock down the building.
The timing seemed too coincidental, and that probably accounted for the length of my questioning. Nobody ran after us or tried to arrest me however, and I laid my head on Jeremiah’s shoulder, exhausted by the whole ordeal. He didn’t release me until we got to the door of my suite, and only then so I could pull out my key card.
All I wanted was to collapse into the bed and not have to think any more about the day so far, but Jeremiah had other ideas. “What kind of self-defense do you know?”
I sagged, groaning, but shook my head in response. He took my hand, flattened my fingers, then pulled it toward his neck. “If you ever get in close quarters, there are several weak areas. The side of the neck is one.” He pulled my hand around so the heel was just touching the tip of his nose. “Hitting the nose like this can incapacitate an attacker long enough for you to get away.”
“Jeremiah...”
Ignoring my plea, he twisted around me, angling one booted foot over my knee. “If you can strike anywhere at the knees, take the shot. Anything to hinder them from running after you.”
“Why are you telling me this now?” I moaned, looking back toward my bedroom.
“I don’t like seeing you helpless.”
That statement got my attention. Jeremiah was staring down at me as passive as ever, but within that stillness I saw the predator struggling to get free. I also became aware of our nearness, how close we were to one another. I stared up into those green eyes and my heart stopped at the depth of emotion I saw there.
He stepped in close so that we were almost touching. I didn’t move, breathing in his exquisite and unique scent. A hand smoothed my hair behind my ear, fingertips running down the side of my neck. I couldn’t drop my gaze; his eyes held me in their power. Reaching up, I traced the lines of his face and my heart skipped as he leaned into my palm.
“Let me stay tonight.” His voice was rough with need, but his touch remained gentle, almost featherlike.
I took a deep breath and let my eyelids fall closed. Blindness didn’t remove him from my senses; I could feel him standing close, his scent and presence enough to make my heart want to beat out of my chest. But it gave me the strength to say three of the most difficult words of my life.
“Good night, Jeremiah.”
The hand caressing my face stopped, then fell away. Everything inside me strained to follow, to reach out again for his touch. I opened my eyes and looked up to see him still watching me, a thoughtful look on his face. Then, to my astonishment, a smile creased his lips. My mouth dropped, the expression so foreign to me coming from his face as to make me speechless.
“I didn’t know what I had until it was too late,” he murmured before stepping away. “Good night, Lucy Delacourt. Our conversation is not over.”
My breathing came in little gasps as he let himself out. I stood still for several minutes, afraid that if I moved, it would be to run after him.
Would that be so bad?
I didn’t know any more.
Part of me wasn’t sure whether my defiance was a result of self-preservation, or a way to punish him. Except, now I didn’t know whom I was punishing more, Jeremiah...or myself. I craved his touch, needed him with every breath in my body. Being around him brought out the best and worst in me; as much as I wanted him, I feared what would happen if I gave in. All I knew was that, this time, I wouldn’t survive it if he rejected me.
The last time I’d bared my feelings, he’d walked away, leaving a crack on my heart that I still had no idea how to fix. How could I even consider trusting him with that power again?
And would he even want me when he learned my secret?
I staggered zombie-like to my bedroom, pulling the covers up and sliding beneath them without even taking off my clothes. Curling into a small ball, I stared out into the darkness, my mind a black wall of pure emotion, until finally at some point I fell into a fitful slumber.
CHAPTER 8
I wasn’t sure how I’d come to be riding a four-wheeler through the Arabian Desert sands, but I was having too much fun to care.
We’d left the city far behind us, invisible to the naked eye from the roll of dunes. Even from my current vantage point I saw no sign of the tall buildings anywhere along the horizon. Below the dune, others moved along like ants towards our destination, a Bedouin encampment in the middle of the desert. I’d grown tired of playing follow the leader and, in a spontaneous moment, had scaled a nearby sand dune. It had been steeper than I first thought, but not so bad that I was afraid.
The desert sun shone directly into my eyes as I crested the dune, and I stopped atop the sandy ridge. The ATV rumbled beneath me as I surveyed the landscape stretching out to the horizon. Never before had I seen anything like it; the hills of sand, contrasted by the blue skies above, took my breath away.
My wakeup call that morning had been quite the surprise. Given what had occurred the previous day, I would have thought we’d be under lock and key, or at least confined to the hotel. So it had been surprising when Lucas showed up at my door, inviting me with a big grin on his face to have a desert safari.
There was no way I was saying no to a once-in-a-lifetime experience!
We’d gotten a late start, thanks in part to the
security detail that was coming with us. Rashid seemed excited to give us this gift, but I could tell the men guarding him had their doubts. Amyrah was nowhere to be found; I hadn’t heard from the girl since the previous night. My guess was that her overprotective brother had her under constant guard, locked away in his ivory tower.
It would have been nice to have her here with me. I wonder if you ever get used to these kinds of views?
Twin rumbles came from the hill behind me, and I turned just as Jeremiah and Lucas rode up and stopped on either side of me. I rolled my eyes, remembering I had my own overprotective goon squad.
“You shouldn’t leave the group,” Jeremiah said. “We may not be safe out here.”
“Oh, lighten up little brother.” Lucas grinned out from beneath a ratty ball cap at Jeremiah’s answering scowl. “Admit it; you just don’t like having fun.”
Being between the two men was like wrangling a pair of kids. Lucas seemed determined to goad his brother, and wasn’t above using me as bait. At the hotel, I’d been hustled to the car by Lucas before Jeremiah even appeared, and had watched through the window as the two men bickered. I wasn’t sure who the victor was but both men entered the car, sitting on either side of me. Any attempts on my part to lighten the mood through conversation didn’t work, so I stayed silent as we drove out of the city.
Nobody had told me what to expect, so when we pulled off the road onto a side road, I was confused. Our cars bumped along a road that was little more than a trail between dunes, usually with large sand drifts that lifted one side of the car higher as we rolled over them. I was jostled between the two men, which didn’t help my mood any, and was relieved when we finally stopped near the small fleet of ATVs and camels.
I’d then been given the task of choosing which mode of transportation we’d take to our next destination. The camels didn’t look all that appealing up close, so I’d opted for the machines instead.
“You’ve done this before, haven’t you?”
I grinned at Lucas, feeling a little self-satisfied. “What, afraid a girl’s going to beat you at manly sports?”
The scarred man laughed. “I’ll race you then,” he taunted, “first person back to the group.” Without waiting for my reply, Lucas gunned the engine and turned his ATV around in record time. He took off down the hill, the paddle tires spraying us with sand.
I revved my engine, then paused when I saw Jeremiah’s face. He was scowling at the horizon, and after a moment looked over at me. His gaze softened, but his mouth and jaw remained tight.
“You didn’t want to come, did you?”
My statement was pure conjecture, but he nodded. “We aren’t safe out here,” he said over the rumble of the motors. “I don’t know why Rashid or Lucas would agree on an outing like this.”
The exact same thought had been bouncing around my head all day. We were isolated out here, caught in the middle of nowhere. "Lucas said the trip had been given as a gift, and we'd be rude to say no."
"That's what he told me, too." Jeremiah scowled at the sandy view. He looked uncomfortable, which was something I didn't equate with the big man. I knew it wasn't our impromptu mode of transportation; he rode the quad easily, even through the more technical areas I'd gone around. He was always in control, keeping an iron fist on his life, but the last few days had stripped him of that.
"So why did you come?" I asked, genuinely curious.
For a moment I wasn't sure he was going to answer me. His gaze didn't waver from the horizon where the sun was closing in on twilight. Finally he spoke. "Right now, Rashid controls everything. Because Lucas took all of my equipment, I don't have any access to my own network so can't do my own research on our host, my brother's "friend". I don’t know how to feel about accepting his help when I don’t know anything about the man.”
“Lucas seems to trust him.”
“Yes, another fact stacked against the man.”
I blew out a breath, silently commiserating. For someone so used to controlling every aspect of his life, this had to be a major blow.
Finally Jeremiah turned to me. “What happened when he took you?”
My heart froze. I swallowed hard, staring at the horizon. “I translated for one of Lucas’ deals. Got Shanghaied, almost killed by a deranged saboteur.” I shrugged, although my heart wasn’t in it. “You know, the usual.”
“That son of a bitch.” I felt Jeremiah’s eyes on me. “I should never have left you alone in that house like I did.”
My chest hurt, the desire to tell him everything strong enough to bring tears to my eyes. Oh God, what have I done?
“You guys coming or what?”
Lucas’ voice drifted up the dune, snapping us both from our thoughts. Jeremiah glared down the hill as I looked away, blinking back tears. Without looking at the man beside me, I turned the quad around atop the dune and headed slowly down the sandy surface.
“What took you so long?” Lucas asked as I reached the bottom. When I didn’t answer, his grin turned brittle along the edges. “Did my brother say something to you?”
I shook my head and, thankfully, the gunrunner backed off that line of questioning. “Where did you learn how to ride these things so well?”
“My great-aunt had some land up in Quebec when I was growing up,” I replied, glad for the subject change. Jeremiah pulled beside me as I continued. “We used to race snowmobiles around her property in the winter.” I didn’t tell them that it had been over a decade, and I’d never driven one by myself. I was having fun with the quad anyway and doing well enough on my own.
Lucas laughed. “Sounds like fun.”
“I thought you didn’t have any family left.”
I shrugged at Jeremiah’s question. “When my parents moved to New York, we fell out of touch. I don’t know them except for a few childhood memories. So when my parents died, asking them for help seemed like asking for charity.”
“Pride cometh before the fall,” Lucas quipped, and I flinched. The smile slipped from his face. “I’m sorry, that was insensitive.”
I maneuvered the quad back and around both of the other vehicles. Right at that moment I didn’t want to talk to either man about my family or the choices I’d made in life. My secret gnawed at my soul; being with both men only made my guilt that much sharper. Flying down the tall dune, I followed after the main group that was waiting for us. We were the only ones riding on the quads, Rashid and his men preferring the relative safety of the SUV.
The shadows cast by the sandy hills were growing larger by the minute as the sun set along the distant horizon. The wind on my face helped clear the twin tears sliding down my cheeks. By the time the two Hamilton men had caught up with me, the dry desert air had already soaked up the moisture on my face.
When we reached the encampment, the sun had already disappeared below the horizon, leaving the last tendrils of twilight to guide our way. The camp however was difficult to miss; it glowed like a fiery brand against the fading light, an oasis of light in the growing night.
The entire encampment had a wall surrounding it made up of reeds or some kind of vegetation. As we came inside, I saw that the area was lit with a combination of fire and electricity. I neither saw nor heard any generators running, and although I saw no panels, I wagered a silent guess that the Bedouin camp used solar energy. Perfect for a desert people, if not quite as rustic as one might imagine.
We parked the vehicles near the entrance, and I winced as I swung my leg from the ATV. Much of the afternoon had been spent on the four wheelers, and I walked bow-legged for a moment before my muscles stopped cramping. Away from where the vehicles were parked, large rugs lay on the sand around the areas where people could walk. The wind had picked up, swirling little eddies of sand around the SUV.
“Lucy!”
At the familiar voice, I turned to see Amyrah walking toward me. A big grin split my face as we embraced. “I thought your brother wouldn’t let you out of the hotel,” I said incredulously.
&n
bsp; “Oh, he almost wouldn’t. I had to plead and beg to come see you again.” She tugged at my arm. “Come, we have food and entertainment waiting.”
“Entertainment?”
I had no idea what kind of extravaganza we’d be in for at the desert camp.
While we ate, Amyrah introduced me to several of the women in the group. Several of them were dancers, the thin veils they covered themselves with barely hiding the curves of skin and gilded outfits. They were all beautiful, and Amyrah seemed to be friends with many of them. I got the impression the young girl desperately wanted to be amongst their ranks, be allowed to wear the sparkling, skimpy outfits and dance on stage.
The furtive looks over her shoulder toward her brother, and the constant guard detail she had flanking her, told me Amyrah’s struggle in that respect would be long.
The entertainment began before everyone had finished eating. The belly dancers started the show, and I was mesmerized by how their bodies moved to the beat of the nearby drums. The wind blew their veils all around but the dancers moved with it, allowing the currents to only add to the dance. I watched, fascinated, by the movements of the women; they were so much more sexual than I would have thought from the Arabic country.
When my wood plate skidded across the table with the wind and people began milling about in the background, I realized something was amiss. The dancer on stage finished her routine, the veils whipping around her, then as she exited the platform Rashid stepped toward us. “We will be staying here tonight,” he said, directing his words at Jeremiah and Lucas who flanked me. He beckoned Amyrah to him, then gestured to one of the male dancers. “Hassan will show you where you will spend the night.”
The wind was howling now, sand pelting my exposed skin. Jeremiah tucked me in to his side, shielding me with his jacket as we followed the dancer toward a row of tents at the far end of the complex. Around us, lights were going out one by one, plunging our path into near darkness. Fortunately, Hassan had a flashlight which, if we stayed close to him, was still visible through the sandy air.
