Читать книгу Desert Hearts: Sheikh Without a Heart / Heart of the Desert / The Sheikh's Destiny - Carol Marinelli, Carol Marinelli - Страница 7

IT WAS the kind of night that made a man long to ride his favorite stallion across a sea of desert sand.

Black silk sky. Stars as brilliant as bonfires. An ivory moon that cast a milky glow over the endless sea of sand.

But there was no horse beneath Sheikh Karim al Safir. Not on this night. His Royal Highness the Prince of Alcantar, heir to its Ancient and Honorable throne, was twenty-five thousand feet above the desert, soaring through the darkness in the cabin of his private jet. A rapidly-cooling cup of coffee stood on a small glass-topped table beside him; his leather attaché case lay open on the next seat.

Minutes ago he’d started to go through its contents until he’d suddenly thought, what the hell was the point?

He knew what was in the case.

He’d gone through the contents endlessly during the last two weeks and then again tonight, flying from the British West Indies toward his final destination, as if doing so would somehow make more sense of things when he knew damned well that was not going to happen.

Karim reached for the cup of coffee and brought it to his lips. The black liquid had gone from cool to chilly.

He drank it anyway.

He needed it. The bitterness, the punch of caffeine. He needed something, God knew, to keep him going. He was exhausted. In body. In mind.

In spirit.

If only he could walk to the cockpit, tell his pilot to put the plane down. Here. Right now. On the desert below.

Crazy, of course.

It was just that he ached for the few moments of tranquility he might find if he could take only one long, deep breath of desert air.

Karim snorted. His head was full of crazy thoughts tonight.

For all he knew, there would never be a sense of peace to be drawn from this land.

This was not the desert of his childhood. Alcantar was thousands of miles away and its endless miles of gently undulating sand ended at the turquoise waters of the Persian Sea.

The desert over which his plane was flying ended at the eye-popping neon lights of Las Vegas.

Karim drank more cold coffee.

Las Vegas.

He had been there once. An acquaintance had tried to convince him to invest in a hotel being built there. He’d flown to McCarran field early in the morning—

And flown back to New York that same night.

He had not put his money into the hotel—or, rather, his fund’s money. And he’d never returned to Vegas.

He’d found the city tawdry. Seedy. Even its much-hyped glamour had struck him as false, like a whore trying to pass herself off as a courtesan by applying garish layers of make-up.

So, no. Las Vegas was not a city for him—but it had been one for his brother.

Rami had spent almost three months there, longer than he’d spent anywhere else the past few years. He’d have been drawn to it like a moth to flame.

Karim sat back in his leather seat.

Knowing all he now knew about his brother, that came as no surprise.

He’d finally had to face the truth about him. Tying up the loose ends of his dead brother’s life had torn away the final illusions.

Tying up loose ends, Karim thought.

His mouth twisted.

That was his father’s phrase. What he was really doing was cleaning up the messes Rami had left behind, but then, his father didn’t know about those. The King believed his younger son had simply been unable or unwilling to settle down, that he’d traveled from place to place in an endless search to find himself.

The first time his father had said those words Karim had almost pointed out that finding oneself was a luxury denied princes. They had duties to assume, obligations to keep from childhood on.

Except Rami had been exempted from such things. He’d always had a wild streak, always found ways to evade responsibility.

“You’re the heir, brother,” he used to tell Karim, a grin on his handsome face. “I’m only the spare.”

Perhaps adherence to a code of duty and honor would have kept Rami from such an early and ugly death, but it was too late for speculation. He was gone, his throat slit on a frigid Moscow street.

When the news had come, Karim had felt an almost unbearable grief. He’d hoped that “tying up the loose ends” of his brother’s life would provide some kind of meaning to it and, thus, closure.

He drew a long breath, then let it out.

Now, the best he could do was hope that he had somehow removed the stain from his brother’s name, that those Rami had cheated would no longer speak that name with disgust …

Cheated?

Karim almost laughed.

His brother had gambled. Whored. He’d ingested a pharmacopoeia’s worth of illicit drugs. He’d borrowed money and never repaid it. He’d given chits to casinos around the world, walked out on huge hotel bills.

The bottom line was that he’d left behind staggering debts in half a dozen cities. Singapore. Moscow. Paris. Rio. Jamaica. Las Vegas.

All those debts had to be settled—if not for legal reasons then for moral ones.

Duty. Obligation. Responsibility.

All the things Rami had scoffed at were now Karim’s burden.

So he had embarked on a pilgrimage, if you could use such a word to describe this unholy journey. He had handed over checks to bankers, to casino managers, to boutique owners. He’d paid out obscene amounts of cash to oily men in grimy rooms. He’d heard things about his brother, seen things that he suspected he would never forget, no matter how he tried.

Now, with most of the “loose ends” gone, his ugly journey through Rami’s life was almost over.

Two days in Vegas. Three at the most. It was why he was flying in at night. Why waste part of tomorrow on travel when he could, instead, spend it doing the remaining cleanup chores?

After that he would return to Alcantar, assure his father that Rami’s affairs were all in order without ever divulging the details. Then, at last, he could go back to his own life, to New York, to his responsibilities as head of the Alcantar Foundation.

He could put all this behind him, the reminders of a brother he’d once loved, a brother who’d lost his way—

“Your Highness?”

Karim bit back a groan. His flight crew was small and efficient. Two pilots, one flight attendant—but this attendant was new and still visibly thrilled to be on the royal staff.

She knew only what everyone else knew: that the duty of settling his brother’s affairs had fallen to him. He assumed she misread his tight-lipped silence for grief when the truth was that his pain warred with rage.

It was difficult to know which emotion had the upper hand.

“Sir?”

As if all that weren’t enough, she couldn’t seem to absorb the fact that he hated being hovered over.

“Yes, Miss Sterling?”

“It’s Moira, sir, and we’ll be landing within the hour.”

“Thank you,” he said politely.

“Is there anything I can do for you before then?”

Could she turn back the calendar and return his brother to life so he could shake some sense into him?

Better still, could she bring back the carefree, laughing Rami from their childhood?

“Thank you, I’m fine.”

“Yes, Your Highness—but if you should change your mind—”

“I’ll ring.”

The girl did a little knee-bob that was not quite the curtsy he was sure his chief of staff had warned her against.

“Most certainly, Your Highness.”

Another dip of the knee and then, mercifully, she walked back up the aisle and disappeared into the galley.

He’d have to remember to have his chief of staff remind her that the world was long past the time when people bowed to royalty.

Hell.

Karim laid his head back against the head-rest.

The girl was only doing what she saw as her duty. He, better than anyone, understood that.

He had been raised to honor his obligations. His father and mother had instilled that in him from childhood on.

His father had been and still was a stern man, a king first and a father second.

His mother had been a sometime movie-star-cum-Boston-debutante with great beauty, impeccable manners and, ultimately, a burning need to spend her life as far from her husband and sons as possible.

She’d hated Alcantar. The hot days, the cool nights, the wind that could whip the sea of sand into a blinding froth …

She’d despised it all.

In some of his earliest memories of her he stood clutching a nanny’s hand, holding back tears because a prince was not permitted to cry, watching as his beautiful mother drove off in a limousine.

Rami had looked just like her. Tall. Fair-haired. Intense blue eyes.

Karim, on the other hand, was an amalgam of both his parents.

In him, his mother’s blue eyes and his father’s brown ones had somehow morphed into ice-gray. He had her high cheekbones and firmly-sculpted mouth, but his build—broad shoulders, long legs, hard, leanly muscled body—he owed to his father.

Rami had favored her in other ways. He hadn’t hated Alcantar but he’d always preferred places of sybaritic comfort.

Karim, on the other hand, could not remember a time he had not loved his desert homeland.

He’d grown up in his father’s palace, built on a huge oasis at the foot of the Great Wilderness Mountains. His companions were Rami and the sons of his father’s ministers and advisors.

By the age of seven he’d been able to ride a horse bareback, start a fire with kindling and flint, sleep as contentedly under the cold fire of the stars as if he were in the elaborate palace nursery.

Even then, twenty-six years ago, only a handful of Alcantaran tribesmen had still lived that kind of life, but the King had deemed it vital to understand and respect it.

“One day,” he would say to Karim, “you will rule our people and they must know that you understand the old ways.” Always there would be a pause, and then he would look at Rami and say, not unkindly, “You must respect the people and the old ways as well, my son, even though you will not sit on the throne.”

Had that been the turning point for his brother? Karim wondered. Or had it come when their mother died and their father, mourning her even though she had spent most of her time far from him and her children, had thrown himself ever deeper into the business of governance and sent his sons away?

He sent them to the United States, to be educated, he said, as their mother would have wished.

With terrifying suddenness the brothers had found themselves in what seemed an alien culture. They’d both been brutally homesick, though for different reasons.

Rami had longed for the luxuries of the palace.

Karim had longed for the endless sky of the desert.

Rami had coped by cutting classes and taking up with a bunch of kids who went from one scrape to another. He’d barely made it through prep school and had been admitted to a small college in California where he’d majored in women and cards, and in promises that he never kept.

Karin had coped by burying himself in his studies. He’d finished preparatory school with honors and had been admitted to Yale, where he’d majored in finance and law. At twenty-six he’d created a private investment fund for the benefit of his people and managed it himself instead of turning it over to a slick-talking Wall Street wizard.

Rami had taken a job in Hollywood. Assistant to a B-list producer, assistant to this and assistant that—all of it dependent upon his looks, his glib line of patter and his title.

At thirty, when he’d come into a trust left him by their mother, he’d given up any pretense at work and instead had done what she had done.

He’d traveled the world.

Karim had tried to talk to him. Not once. Not twice. Many, many times. He’d spoken of responsibility. Of duty. Of honor.

Rami’s reply had always been the same, and always delivered with a grin.

“Not me,” he’d say. “I’m just the spare, not the heir.”

After a while they hadn’t seen much of each other. And now—

Now Rami was dead.

Dead, Karim thought.

His belly knotted.

His brother’s body had been flown home from Moscow and laid to rest with all the panoply befitting a prince.

Their father had stood stiffly at his grave.

“How did he die?” he’d asked Karim.

And Karim, seeing how fragile the older man had become, had lied.

“An automobile accident,” he’d told him.

It was almost true.

All he’d left out was that Rami had evidently met with his cocaine dealer, something had gone wrong, the man had slit his throat and a dying Rami had wandered into the path of an oncoming car.

And why go over it again? The death was old news. Soon “tying up loose ends” would be old news, too.

One last stop. A handful of things to sort out—

A dull rumble vibrated through the plane. The landing gear was being deployed. As if on signal, the flight attendant materialized at the front of the cabin.

Karim waved her off. He wasn’t in the mood for her misplaced look of compassion. All he wanted was to put this mess behind him.

Moments later, they landed.

He rose to his feet and reached for his attaché case. Inside it was what he thought of as the final folder. It held letters from three hotels, expressing sympathy on Rami’s death and reminders that he had run up considerable bills in their casinos and shops.

There was also a small envelope that contained a key and a slip of paper with an address scrawled on it in Rami’s hand.

Had he considered putting down some kind of roots here?

Not that it mattered, Karim thought grimly. It was too late for roots or anything else that might have resembled a normal life.

He’d get an early start tomorrow, pay his brother’s bills, then locate the place that went with the key, pay whatever was due—because surely the rent was in arrears despite the lack of a dunning letter.

And then all this would be behind him.

His chief of staff had arranged for a rental car and for a suite at one of the city’s big hotels.

The car had a GPS; Karim selected the name of the hotel from a long list and drove toward the city.

It was close to one in the morning, but when he reached the Las Vegas Strip it blazed with light. Shops were open; people were everywhere. There was a frenzy to the place, a kind of circus atmosphere of gaiety Karim didn’t quite buy into.

At the hotel, a valet took his car. Karim handed the kid a twenty-dollar bill, said he was fine with carrying his own things, and headed into the lobby.

The metallic sounds of slot machines assaulted his ears.

He made his way to the reception desk through a crowd of shrieking and laughing revelers. The clerk who greeted him was pleasant and efficient, and soon Karim was in an elevator, on his way to the tenth floor along with two women and a man. The man stood with an arm around each of the women; one had her hand on his chest, the other had her tongue in his ear.

The elevator doors whisked open. Karim stepped out.

The sooner he finished his business here, the better.

His suite, at least, was big and surprisingly attractive.

Within minutes he’d stripped off his clothes and stepped into the shower. He let the hot water beat down on his neck and shoulders, hoping that would drive away some of the weariness.

It didn’t.

Okay. What he needed was sleep.

But sleep didn’t come. No surprise. After two weeks of coming into cities he knew would hold yet additional ugly truths about his brother, sleep had become more and more elusive.

After a while, he gave up.

He had to do something. Take a walk. A drive. Check out the hotels where Rami had run up enormous bills—this place, he had made certain, was not one of them. Maybe he’d drive by the flat his brother had leased. He could even stop, go inside, take a quick look around.

Not that he expected to find anything worth keeping, but if there was something personal, a memento that said something good about Rami’s wasted life, their father might want it.

Karim put on jeans, a black T-shirt, sneakers and a soft black leather bomber jacket. Deserts were cold at night, even ones that arrowed into the heart of a city whose glow could be seen for miles.

He opened his attaché case, grabbed the key and noted the scribbled address. A tag that read “4B” hung from the key itself. An apartment number, obviously.

The valet brought him his car. Karim handed him another twenty. Then he entered the address into the GPS and followed its directions.

Fifteen minutes later, he reached his destination.

It was a nondescript building in a part of the city that was as different from the Las Vegas he’d so far seen as night from day.

The area was bleak and shabby, as was the building itself …

Karim frowned. He’d connected to global positioning satellites often enough to know that when they worked they were great and when they didn’t you could end up in the middle of nowhere.

Yes, but this was the correct address.

Had Rami run out of the ability to talk himself into the best hotels at some point during his time here?

There was only one way to find out.

Karim got out of the car, locked it, and headed toward the building.

The outside door was unlocked. The vestibule stank. The stairs creaked; he stepped in something sticky and tried not to think about what it might be.

One flight. Two. Three, and there it was, straight ahead. Apartment 4B, even though the “4” hung drunkenly to the side and the “B” was upside down.

Karim hesitated.

Did he really want to do this tonight? Was he up to what was surely going to be a dirty hovel? He remembered the time he’d flown out to the coast to visit Rami when he was in school. Dirty dishes in the sink and all over the counters. Spoiled food in the refrigerator. Clothes spilling out of the hamper.

“Goddammit,” he said, under his breath.

The truth was, he didn’t give a crap about the apartment being dirty. What mattered was that it would be filled with Rami’s things. The hotel rooms had not been; the hotels had all removed his brother’s clothes, his toiletries, and put them in storage.

This would be different.

And he was a coward.

“A damned coward,” he said, and he stepped purposefully forward, stabbed the key into the lock, turned it—

The door swung open.

The first thing he noticed was the smell—not of dirt but of something pleasant. Sugar? Cookies?

Milk?

The second thing was that he wasn’t alone. There was someone standing maybe ten feet away …

Not someone.

A woman. She stood with her back to him, tall and slender and—

And naked.

His eyes swept over her. Her hair was a spill of pale gold down her shoulders; her spine was long and graceful. She had a narrow waist that emphasized the curve of her hips and incredibly long legs.

Legs as long as sin.

Hell. Wrong building. Wrong apartment. Wrong—

The woman spun around. She wasn’t naked. She wore a thing that was barely a bra, covered in spangles. And a thong—a tiny triangle of glittery silver.

It was a cheap outfit that made the most of a beautiful body, though her face was even more beautiful …

And what did that matter at moment like this, when he had obviously wandered into the wrong place … and, dammit, her eyes were wide with terror?

Karim held up his hands.

“It’s all right,” he said quickly. “I made a mistake. I thought—”

“I know precisely what you thought, you—you pervert,” the woman said, and before he could react she flew at him, a blur of motion with something in her hand.

It was a shoe. A shoe with a heel as long and sharp as a stiletto.

“Hey!” Karim danced back. “Listen to me. I’m trying to tell you some—”

She slammed the shoe against him, aiming for his face, but he moved fast; the blow caught him in the shoulder. He grabbed her wrist and dragged her hand to her side.

“Will you wait a minute? Just one damned minute—”

“Wait?” Rachel Donnelly said. “Wait?” The perv from the lounge wanted her to wait? Wait so he could rape her? “The hell I will,” she snarled, and she wrenched her hand free of his, swung hard …

This time, the heel of the shoe flashed by his face.

That was the good news.

The bad was that he muttered something and now he wasn’t defending himself; he was coming straight for her.

Panting, she reacted with all her strength, but he was too big, too strong, too determined. A second later he had both her wrists in his hands and she was pinned against the wall.

“Dammit, woman! Will you listen to me?”

“There’s nothing to listen to. I know what you want. You were in the lounge tonight. I brought you drink after drink and I knew you were going to be trouble and I was right, here you are, and—and—”

Her breath caught.

Wrong.

This wasn’t the guy who’d undressed her with his eyes.

That perv had been bald with squinty eyes behind Coke-bottle lenses.

This guy had a full head of dark hair and eyes the cool gray of winter ice.

Not that it mattered. He’d broken into her apartment. He was male. She was female. After three years in Vegas she knew what that—

“You’re wrong.”

She blinked. Either she’d spoken aloud or he was a mind-reader.

“I’m not here to hurt you.”

“Then turn around and go away. Right now. I won’t scream, I won’t call the cops—”

“Will you listen? One of us is in the wrong apartment.”

Despite everything, she choked out a laugh. The man scowled and tightened his hold on her wrists.

“What I’m trying to tell you is that I didn’t expect anyone to be here. I thought this was my brother’s apartment.”

“Well, it isn’t. This apartment is—is—” She stared at him. “What brother?”

“My brother. Rami.”

The floor seemed to shift under Rachel’s feet. She felt the blood drain from her face. The man saw it; those cold gray eyes narrowed.

“You know of him?”

She knew. Of course she knew. And if this was Rami’s brother—if this was Karim of Alcantar, the all-powerful, stone-hearted, ruthless prince …

“I’m going to let go of you,” he said. “If you scream, you will regret it. Is that clear?”

Rachel swallowed hard. “Yes.”

Slowly, carefully, his eyes locked to hers, he took his hands from her.

“Obviously,” he said, “I was correct. This place is my brother’s.”

“I—I—”

“You—you, what?” he growled with imperial impatience. “What are you doing here? This apartment belongs to Rami.”

It didn’t. It never had. It was hers and always had been—though that hadn’t stopped first Suki and then Suki’s lover from moving in.

Now, thank goodness, they were both gone. She lived alone …

Oh, God!

Her heart, already racing, went into overdrive.

She didn’t. She didn’t live here alone—

“Who are you?” the man growled.

Who, indeed? Her head was spinning. She should have known this would happen, that, sooner or later someone would come.

His hand shot out and manacled her wrist.

“Answer the question! Who are you? What are you doing here?”

“I—I’m a friend,” Rachel said. And then, because she had no idea what this man knew or didn’t know or, most of all, what he wanted, she said, “I’m Rami’s friend. His very good friend.”