Stolen by the Desert King

by Clare Connelly

  Phoebe’s eyes sparked with a silent challenge. One look at his harshly set face, however, instantly quashed her desire to argue. She lowered her eyes, pretending fascination with a patch of clover that was springing stoically through the herringbone pavers. Etienne would have had a fit, if she’d picked a fight with the marvelous Hakim. He would have had a fit, that was, if his bad heart hadn’t already ended his despicable life. Out of nowhere, a mad desire to laugh coursed through her body. Phoebe would have given into it, if she’d been alone, but she couldn’t now. Not whilst in Hakim’s imposing presence.

  “I don’t wish to take up a single moment more of your time,” she finally replied, her words slightly too sweet to be credible.

  Hakim’s eyes narrowed. “I am your guardian, Phoebe, which means I am in charge of your life. For the next few years at least.”

  Her eyes flew to his face. “You can’t seriously wish to take me on?”

  “No,” he responded with passionate frustration. “I do not. Were it simply a matter of you and me, I would walk away now without a second thought. I believe you are selfish and spoiled.” He sighed heavily. “But I respected Etienne, very much. There isn’t a thing I wouldn’t do for him. Even providing counsel and guidance to his over-indulged princess of a step-daughter.”

  “You’re one to talk,” she responded mutinously, her voice so quiet he almost didn’t catch her caustic remark.

  Yes, she was antagonistic, self-important, and clearly thought the world of her own opinions. Etienne’s attempts to correct her naturally bad tendencies had not worked quite as planned. “It is clear we do not like each other,” he answered, finally, his dark eyes flecked with amber as he briefly wondered why the knowledge sat uncomfortably on his shoulders. “And this does not matter. I will act as your legal guardian, and you shall become my ward. We should discuss your relocation to Switzerland as soon as may be arranged. This is not a good time, of course.” His mouth was grim. “You are, after all, a grieving daughter.”

  “Step-daughter,” she challenged. “Did you say… Switzerland?”

  “Of course. The Academy is the best private school in the world. It is appropriate that you attend it.”

  “But…” she stammered, reaching behind her for the wrought iron bench seat. She collapsed into it heavily, not caring that it was slightly damp from a light rain shower earlier in the day. “I already have a school.”

  “Yes, I am aware of that, but it does not suit me that you continue there.”

  Phoebe blinked, her blue eyes clear and enormous in her face. “I want to stay at my school,” she responded, her voice threaded with concrete determination. She knew, though, that tears were not far away.

  Hakim examined her thoughtfully. Finally, in an uncharacteristic moment of reconciliation, he crouched down on his haunches, so that they were at eye level. “Why?”

  “I have friends there. I like it. It’s close to my home.” Though Ivy Lane Estate no longer felt like her home. When her mother had died, seven years earlier, Phoebe had still felt a connection to the stunning, ancient country home. With each year that had passed, those sentiments had eroded and dissolved, until now, it was just a vague idea of home that remained.

  Hakim let out an angry sigh. “I do not wish to argue with you, Phoebe. I valued your stepfather a great deal, and I do not know how to diplomatically tell you this. When he asked me to assume the role as your legal guardian, he assured me I would have carte blanche with you. Believe me, he left me in little doubt that you would require a firm hand.” Phoebe began to shake. It was a familiar reaction to her. Fear and adrenalin formed a taste of iron in her mouth. She dug her fingernails into her palms, until the pain became so intense that the shaking stopped. She lifted her eyes to Hakim’s, forcing an expression of idle boredom onto her face. “In short, whatever I decide, you must do. At least, until you are twenty one.”

  The freedom Phoebe had felt, upon learning of Etienne’s death, all but evaporated. She had simply lost one dictatorial bastard, only to have him usurped by another.

  “Eighteen,” she said automatically.

  “Eighteen is when you come of age, Phoebe, but your fortune is not to be released to you until I feel you are ready for it.”

  She opened her mouth, anger and surprise making speech difficult.

  “Were you not aware? It was your mother’s wish, as well as your father’s.”

  “Step-father,” she grunted harshly, leaning her head forward.

  “Etienne did not want generations of wealth to be squandered by a young woman with a predilection for fashion and expensive friends.”

  How Phoebe hated this man! To hear him spouting words she had heard Etienne himself say so many times was despicable. She picked an invisible piece of lint from her pants. “My friends are nice people.”

  Hakim let out a short laugh, without humor. “I care not for your friends, Phoebe. I do not need to know details of your life. Do not misunderstand my reason for taking this on. It is for Etienne alone that I have agreed to this.”

  Phoebe understood. She was alone. Thoroughly alone in the world. Her father, she had never known. Her mother had died many years earlier. And now even the horrid Etienne was gone. Soon, she would be removed from her friends and her home, too. “I understand,” she said, so quietly he had to strain to hear.

  “You will do as I say, without arguing. Provided you do not give me any trouble, and can prove that you have turned into a respectable woman, your fortune will be signed over to you. In the mean time, the best of everything will be provided for you. As it always has been.”

  She wanted to say something horrible to him. She wanted to rant and rave at the inequity of life, to scream that she was always a good little girl, and it had only ever earned her beatings and abuse. But she didn’t. She couldn’t. Silence was a long ingrained habit; one of life preservation. Her policy with Etienne had been simple, and carved out after many years of terror and withheld love. She knew the best way to survive a dictator’s rule was to fall in with his plans, or appear to, at least.

  While fantasies of slapping that sardonic grimace off his handsome face ran through her mind, she nodded, her hair moving like a wave down her back. “Fine,” she responded. After all, at sixteen, what else could she do? “I’ll go wherever, and whenever you want me to. But please, let me be now.”

  “I’m sorry?” He asked, uncertain suddenly at her acquiescence.

  “I said,” she was yelling at him, and she didn’t care, “that’s fine! If that’s what you want, I’ll bloody move to Switzerland.” She stood up and stalked away from him, towards the grand house that was home to so many memories, most of them painful.

  Hakim watched her go.

  She had proved true everything he’d thought about her.

  She was spoiled. She was unable to control herself. She was a wild, moody, angry teenager. And though he had taken on the role of her legal guardian, he swore to himself then and there that he would see very little of the girl again, between that moment and her twenty first birthday. He could pay people to educate her; he did not need to be personally involved. No matter how he cared for Etienne, putting up with a brat like Phoebe Douglas-Cauve was not in his future.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Present day.

  She had heard many stories of Mehran, but nothing had prepared Phoebe for the reality of the country. Its beauty, and it was beautiful, was nothing compared to its spice-scented heat. She fanned her face with her hand, absentmindedly noting that one of her nails had lost a chip of color somewhere on the flight over. She made a mental note to book an appointment with her manicurist upon her return to London.

  Three months, she had agreed to spend in Mehran.

  She grimaced, leaning forward and peering out of the heavily tinted windows. The sleek limousine bearing the crest of the ruling Sheikh moved slowly through downtown Karut, the capital of Mehran. There were shanty markets stalls erected from each building, and children ran from one to the oth
er. Shabbily dressed children, and women clutching young babies to their chest.

  Phoebe knew Mehran was a large, wealthy country; it was a surprise to be confronted with such evidence of poverty, only minutes from the shiny, clean airport. Then again, it seemed to support the image she’d developed of the man who ran the country.

  Her face flickered briefly with a surge of emotions. She concealed them immediately.

  Sheikh Hakim Al Meshuda had terrified her into compliance. She had done everything he’d asked of her, starting with her relocation to the painfully exclusive boarding school in Switzerland. She’d mentally armored herself at all times, in preparation for the fact he might arrive unexpectedly, to check on her progress. But he had not. She’d graduated school and been accepted into university, and still, no word from the man who had become her legal guardian.

  Oh, she’d become technically unshackled from him on her eighteenth birthday, but still, he controlled her fortune. At twenty one, she would finally, once and for all, be free from all men. Free to live her life as she saw fit, not needing to meet the approval of anyone in order to receive her trust fund.

  She expelled a sigh of relief. This was the last hoop she needed to jump through, and then, she could run away from it all.

  Phoebe’s eyes followed a young child, a girl, with spiked black hair and eyes that were so dark in her face they were like pools of oil. She was slim. So slim Phoebe knew she mustn’t have eaten a proper meal for days.

  “Stop, please,” she spoke to her driver. When he didn’t obey, she leaned forward and said, in her most authoritative voice, “I said stop. This instant.”

  To her surprise, with a low whistle of annoyance, he did. She threw him a thin smile then opened her door. She had changed some of her money into Mehran dollars, and she reached for them now, holding them out to the young girl. Her eyes lit up and she said something in Mehranese. Before Phoebe knew it, there was a swarm of poor children with sad eyes staring up at her, holding their hands out, touching her, begging for money.

  Terrified, she looked around, to see that her driver was watching with an ‘I told you so’ expression clear on his chubby features.

  Phoebe calmed instantly. She would not give him the satisfaction of thinking she couldn’t control the situation. “Children!” She spoke loudly and clearly, and clapped her hands above her head to gain their attention. There were not so many of them after all, she realized, as the adrenalin subsided a little. “Stand back.”

  They didn’t move, but at least they’d stopped reaching out to her.

  She pointed towards a wall, waving her hand from left to right. The first child, the girl, walked to the wall and stood against it. One by one, the others followed suit.

  Phoebe had the pleasure of seeing surprise in her driver’s face. To her chagrin, her fingers were shaking slightly. She clutched the strap of her handbag to disguise it while she walked behind them. Slowly, she took her purse from her bag and, keeping her eyes on the children, she removed ten crisp notes. One by one, she handed them to each child.

  The girl, who had first caught her attention, smiled up at her, and it was a smile of such gratitude that Phoebe felt emotion catch in her throat. “Go,” she said, waving her hands in the direction of the alley many had emerged from. They scattered instantly, perhaps terrified that the beautiful western woman in the Sheikh’s car might change her mind and demand their loot back.

  The driver stood, holding her door for her. “You should not encourage them to beg,” he criticized, as she slid into the luxurious vehicle.

  Phoebe ignored him. Men like him were the problem with the world. Or, one of the problems. Men who saw and did nothing. Men who had blinkered vision and could easily drive past such suffering and poverty.

  Several streets further, the signs of comfort increased, and bit by bit, the slums were left behind them. The highways were wide here, with several lanes apiece. The sun was high in the sky, and it made the thick, lush grass in the median strip appear to shimmer and shine in the haze created by its heat.

  Bright flowers, Gaillardia perhaps, ran the length of the highway, on both sides. In the distance, enormous sand-covered mountains rose, as if out of nowhere, and kissed the sky. They glowed with the warmth of the day, some red, some brown, some gold like her hair. A country of contrasts, she thought, for its desert stretched for miles in one direction, and in the other, there was a water-logged community that thrived on the canals that had been created many centuries earlier, for the purpose of trade with the West.

  Etienne had spoken often of the wonders of Mehran.

  She shivered as she thought of her step-father. A man who she had tried her hardest to cut from her mind, he had been reappearing more often of late. Since she had agreed to the Sheikh’s request to visit Mehran, memories of Etienne had begun to reassert themselves. It was as if the acceptance of the Sheikh’s invitation had opened the floodgates to emotions she had left buried in the distant past.

  It had not always been dreadful, with Etienne, though. When her mother had first married him, Phoebe had been seven. She had still held the vestiges of a magical childhood, and she saw the world through eyes all too willing to sparkle with wonderment.

  In those days, his stories of the faraway Mehran, had entranced her immediately. He’d told her tale after tale of spice-trading pirates; and the mines to the west that were rich with gemstones, pocked by rivers of gold; and the oil that ran as veins beneath the surface skin of the sandy desert; and the Bedouin who lived in keeping with their heritage, travelling from area to area, with nothing but camels and their brightly colored canvas tents to support them. She had loved the country then, just as she’d loved everything that came out of Etienne’s mouth.

  How quickly it had all changed.

  She shook her head, pushing the thoughts away with a conscious effort.

  He was gone. Long gone. And though she knew Sheikh Hakim Al Meshuda thought her step-father had been a saint, that mattered little to Phoebe Douglas. She did not need Hakim to know the truth. She didn’t even need him to like her. She simply needed to fulfill his last requirement so that she could grab her fortune with both hands. She had big plans for her money, and they all involved making Etienne roll over in his long-ago-dug grave.

  A sad smile touched her lips as the car continued its stately progress along the highways. Several minutes later, she saw it. Surely, it had to be the palace, for it was a building more grand than she had ever seen in her life. In fact, it was a building more grand than she had known could possibly exist.

  Phoebe gasped audibly as she took in the details of the royal residence of the Sheikh of Mehran. Strangely, there was no security fence, but spaced evenly along the wall, there were security guards with guns almost as long as their legs. She gulped. She abhorred violence, and was particularly opposed to guns.

  The structure appeared to be made purely from marble, but surely that was not possible? She thought of the Taj Mahal, and realized that here, in Mehran, was a palace to rival it in terms of beauty and grandeur. A stately line of palm trees ran along the road to the palace, and the domed top seemed to loom larger and larger as they approached it.

  Almost at the front of the palace, the driver took a sharp left, and nudged the car down a steep ramp, into what she saw was a secure underground parking facility.

  “The Sheikh’s cars?” She asked, unable to keep the note of condemnation from her voice.

  The driver did not answer.

  Phoebe struggled to reconcile the image of a benevolent, caring King with the idea of a man who would have a palace sitting on millions of pounds worth of luxury vehicles, while beyond the palace, children struggled for food.

  He cut the engine and moved, as swiftly as his portly figure would allow, to her door. “Come.” His tone was a command. She did not appreciate it, but she knew to refuse would be pure churlishness. Besides, she was simply transferring her dislike of Sheikh Hakim Al Meshuda onto his hapless servant; that was not fair. />
  A wave of tiredness hit Phoebe as she fell into step behind the man. She had been travelling for over twelve hours, so it was little wonder that she was beginning to show the signs of weariness. Even the luxury of the Sheikh’s private jet hadn’t eased her weariness, for hers was a tiredness of the mind. Since agreeing to journey to Mehran, she’d been filled with anxiety. It was an inexplicable, free-floating anxiety, almost impossible to pinpoint a reason for.

  As they moved through the palace, Phoebe noticed several things. The incredible grandeur of her surroundings made her gasp in awe. Marble, highly polished, on the floors, walls with enormous hanging carpets – Persian in style – and gold gilt paint. There were flower arrangements everywhere, but not serene and calming like she enjoyed. These golden vases were filled with exotic, spiked flowers, each more colorful and oddly shaped than the next. There was a beautiful fragrance in the palace; a mix of spices and sweetness. The sweetness she attributed to the flowers. If her guide had not been walking at such a clipped pace, she might have indulged her desire and moved to a vase to breathe the scent more closely.

  What she noticed most, though, was the way people stared at her. She bit down on her lower-lip, self-consciously, as those milling in the palace corridors stopped what they were doing to blatantly watch her arrival.

  She had dressed modestly, aware that Mehran was a conservative principality. In the decade since Hakim had become Sheikh, she knew that it had moved towards a reputation as a progressive country, and its peacefulness was admired in the region. But the conservative roots ran deep.