Читать книгу Sheikh Protector - Dana Marton - Страница 7

Chapter Two

She was fighting a losing battle. Sheik Karim Abullah’s palace was better guarded than the Pentagon. But Julia wasn’t the type to give up.

Since she had resigned herself to the fact that she wouldn’t be able to escape on the ground level, she went up, sneaking through the night. She wasn’t sure what she was hoping for, perhaps a large tree that came near one of the balconies. Trying something—anything—had to be better than sitting in her gilded prison of a room and crying her eyes out like she had done for the first half of the night.

She hated how weepy her overactive mommy hormones made her. This was not the time to give in to weakness. But she was emotionally exhausted and ravenously hungry. Hungry to the point that she was afraid her growling stomach would be heard.

She stole down the second-floor hallway, pausing in front of the first door. She pushed it open a fraction of an inch at a time and glanced around the lavishly appointed living room she discovered. Some sort of a suite. Other doors opened from here. The furniture was exquisitely made—all ornately carved wood—and was breathtaking even without her being able to make out the true colors of the luxurious fabrics in the moonlight.

Her gaze settled on a phone on a small, octagonal table. Her U.S. cell phone didn’t work here and there wasn’t a phone in her room. She wished she knew the number of the U.S. embassy by heart, and dialed zero, hoping to get directory assistance. Nothing happened.

She tried zero-zero, her stomach continuing to growl. No ringing on the other end. Zero-one. Just one. One-one. A disembodied voice said something in Arabic then the line went dead again. She gritted her teeth with frustration and took a banana from the fruit bowl next to the phone. An apple’s crunching might give her away. She peeled it then bit in, and nearly moaned at the soft sweetness that diffused on her tongue. Heaven.

Her food tray had been removed that afternoon on her request when the smell of food had made her nauseous. She had refused dinner on principle—not the smartest thing, in hindsight.

She grabbed another banana and was stuffing it down the front of her shirt when a small noise came from behind one of the doors opposite her. She froze, nearly ran, but stopped herself. She needed to find a balcony, a way out.

She picked a door that was half-open, figuring she would make the least noise that way, and found herself in a large bedroom. The space was dominated by a sprawling bed, draped in black sheets, that didn’t look slept in. A handful of papers lay tossed on the nightstand, next to a book.

Then her gaze was drawn to the source of the noise she’d heard before. A bathroom off the bedroom, lights on, the water running. She was facing a full-size, gilded mirror on the bathroom wall that was angled away from her. The picture it presented made her mouth go dry and her feet freeze to the tile floor. She swallowed the chunk of fruit in her mouth with some trouble.

Karim stood in an open shower with black mosaic tile and one of those drenching, foot-wide showerheads, water sluicing down his tanned skin. He stood with his back to her, so she had an unobstructed view of the scars that ran down his back, breaking up the otherwise perfect lines of the most incredible male body she had ever seen. He had his hands up, bracing himself on the wall, his head hanging as if deep in thought, tension evident in his corded muscles.

Shadows stretched across his back. She couldn’t tell from this distance whether they were scars or some sort of tribal markings.

Another person might have looked vulnerable naked, but not the Dark Sheik. Strength radiated off him, and danger.

He reached to the side and turned off the water with one sinuous movement.

Okay, so Mr. I’m-Lord-of-All-I-Survey was sexy. Very.

She couldn’t care less. She was leaving. Now.

He wrapped a black towel around his waist then turned, his dark gaze finding hers unerringly in the mirror. He didn’t show surprise. Somehow he’d known she’d be there, staring.

How humiliating.

“Is there anything you wanted from me, Julia?” His voice was low and measured, full of innuendo and contempt.

She wanted to turn and run, but his gaze wouldn’t release her. When he strode closer, she backed away without looking where she was going, hoping she was backing out the door. Instead, in a few steps, her back bumped against the wall.

He was a short foot from her, looming dangerous in the semidarkness of the room, his wide shoulders outlined in the light that came from the bathroom. Drops of water glistened on his dark skin. He smelled like soap and sandalwood. He was the most erotic and intimidating sight she’d ever seen.

“Looking for a substitute sheik for your plan?” He put his right hand to the wall next to her head. His hand being higher than his shoulder, droplets of water ran backward, along his carved granite biceps.

Her heart jumped to her throat. He thought she’d come here to seduce him. She moved the other way, but that arm came down, too, and boxed her in. She didn’t feel panicked as much as mesmerized. Blinked her eyes. Snap out of it. How dare he?

“Don’t touch me.” She shoved with her free hand, indignation giving her strength. She tried not to notice the hard muscles of his warm—and still wet—chest under her fingers. Her limbs were shaky. From exhaustion, no doubt. She was likely still jet-lagged, too.

He didn’t budge a millimeter, but a dark eyebrow slid up his forehead. “Changed your mind? Scare you, do I?”

Maybe. Okay, more so with every passing moment. He was large and powerful and utterly overwhelming after a hellish day. She was well aware that he could kill her, and with his title and station in the country, there probably wouldn’t even be a questioning.

Tears threatened to fill her eyes. She gritted her teeth and held them back. This was not the time for a hormonal moment. “Go to hell.” She lifted her head and stuck her chin out. “You want to intimidate me? Congratulations, you succeeded. That’s what turns people like you on, isn’t it? Scared women.”

A muscle jumped in his face, just beneath the four-inch scar on the right side that started above the eye socket and ran straight down. And then she realized the eye didn’t move along with the other one. He was blind on that side. Not that his left eye wasn’t lethal enough on its own.

He took his time to look her over from her bare feet to the top of her head, returning to linger on her breasts, which had grown already during the pregnancy and were stupidly sensitive to smoldering looks from half-naked men. More misery to blame on hormones.

“The same things turn me on as any other healthy man, I suppose,” he said, his voice a notch lower than before.

The space between them was insanely small. Without warning, the adrenaline that had been pumping through her already was metamorphosing into primal heat, making her fingertips tingle.

He had masculine lips, what some old-fashioned novels might have defined as cruel. Heathcliff lips. Incredibly sexy. She got a little woozy from looking at them this close.

The sharp sense of desire was insane, but perhaps understandable, considering that her body was hormonally unbalanced and out of her control.

His voice was a soft whisper when he spoke. “Why are you here, Julia? Why are you in my bedroom in the middle of the night?” He lowered his head as if wanting to carefully listen to her response.

If he came any closer, he was going to feel the banana she’d hid down the front of her shirt.

Her pulse sped, and not just from the danger of being discovered as a fruit thief. “Looking for a glass of water,” she croaked out with effort. Her mouth did feel extraordinarily dry. She looked into his good eye.

His Heathcliff mouth tightened, but he didn’t back away an inch. “Excuses?” He examined her. “Interesting. You’re bold enough to come to me like this, yet you feel the need to come up with a pretext for seeking my bed.”

Outrage quickly overcame awakening desire. Of all the conceited—“You know what I’m doing?” she asked sharply, and ducked to the right from the circle of his arms. “I was trying to get out of this stupid place. You have no right to keep me here. This is kidnapping.” She darted toward the door.

If she thought the lack of sight in the right eye was a weakness, she was quickly disabused of the notion. He caught her easily.

“You will stay for as long as I see necessary,” he said. “If I catch you trying to run—I’ve given you some freedom, Julia. Freedom that can be taken away.”

What freedom? Her room? Meaning he could be keeping her closer to him? How close? His bed sprawled imposingly in her peripheral vision. She didn’t want to know. Or maybe he’d meant he had some dungeons in the basement. That would be more likely. Nothing would have surprised her at this point.

Fear spiked her pulse. “I was wrong,” she told him with all the contempt she felt. “You are nothing like your brother.”

“And what do you know about Aziz?” His gaze slid to her abdomen. “My brother wasn’t an irresponsible man.”

A moment passed before she understood what he meant.

“He wasn’t.” And that was all she was prepared to say on the subject of birth control, which obviously was not as reliable as she’d thought.

His gaze journeyed back up, slowly, to her face.

The warning system in her brain was screaming that she should run for her life. “This baby has nothing to do with you and your family.” She was desperate to escape his palace.

He didn’t respond.

“You don’t believe me.”

More silence, just his dark gaze searching her face.

“And if I said the child was Aziz’s? Would you believe that?” she said, testing him.

“No.”

“So you’re determined to think me a liar.” Which, God help her, she was quickly becoming. But yes, she would do even that. She would lie, cheat and very possibly kill for her unborn child.

The question was, how far was Karim Abdullah willing to go for his niece or nephew?

“I’m just questioning your motives,” he said.

“Is that what you call it?” She braved a sneer. “In my country this would be called kidnapping.”

His masculine lips pressed into a tight line.

Her heart drummed against her rib cage. She tugged her arm. “You have to let me go.”

And this time, he released her at last. “Get some sleep. I made an appointment for you for tomorrow morning. You’ll get the full workup. You had a fall today. I arranged for an ultrasound.”

Not one for minding his own business, was he?

Her initial instinct was to protest, but she hadn’t had an ultrasound yet. Her first was scheduled for the week after her planned return to the States. She desperately wanted to see her baby. And she was no longer sure when exactly she would be back in Baltimore. Or if she could afford even the most basic medical care.

She did have that fall. And despite feeling fine, she did worry. And it wasn’t as if he was going to give her a choice about going. “Fine. But don’t think you’re coming with me. Absolutely not.”

“And I looked into testing,” he said. “There’s something called amniocentesis that can be done during pregnancy. They can obtain DNA and determine paternity.”

She didn’t know how she felt about that. The test would prove that the father was Aziz. That would bind her even tighter to Karim, an outcome she wanted to avoid at all cost. Could she refuse? What would that gain her? Time.

She turned from him and marched out with the half-eaten banana in her hand, calling a “Go to hell” over her shoulder on principle.

As she sped her steps, the banana under her top dislodged and fell to the floor. She picked it up, glad he didn’t see her. But a glance back at his bedroom door revealed that, in fact, he had.

He’d come after her and was leaning against the door frame, watching her with a superior smirk on his face. “You may take the whole fruit bowl if you’d like.”

THE RADIOLOGIST asked him no questions, one of the privileges of being sheik. Karim stared at the staticky-looking black-and-white screen, at the blurry outline of what seemed like a head and part of the abdomen. He kept his gaze studiously on the screen, ignoring the creamy expanse of skin in his peripheral vision.

He had come in with her because despite the blood test, he still half believed there might not even be a baby. Tests could be wrong. Tests could be altered for the right amount of money. She could have had it all set up at the hospital.

And if she were pregnant, he had half hoped that the ultrasound would reveal that she was lying about the child being Aziz’s. The time of conception could have been wrong. Or the kid could have had stark red hair and looked obviously Irish, or whatever. What did he know? He’d never seen an ultrasound before.

But the date of conception was right on the money, during the time that Aziz had been in Baltimore. And, although the gray blob on the screen bore no resemblance to Aziz, Karim could hardly hold that against it. It barely looked human.

But here was the funny part, the thing he hadn’t seen coming: the longer he looked at the kid, the more he wanted to believe the woman who lay on the hospital bed with her eyes glued to the screen and tears misting her fine eyes.

“Nice, strong heartbeat. See that?” the radiologist asked him.

And he could. The heart pulsed rapidly in the middle of the screen. The image was mesmerizing. He didn’t like the softening it brought out in him.

Most likely, the woman was a money-hungry scammer.

The report he had received on her last night certainly pointed in that direction. Her family had been anything but upstanding and responsible. Her father left early on. Her mother dumped her and her siblings into the foster-care system. Julia floundered around for a while after that, then went to college on some sort of government program. Ended up with a nonprofit organization where she seemed tolerably successful.

He considered her alluring beauty, the crown of hair that to his disappointment she wore up today, that light in her eyes as she stared at the screen.

Hell, who wouldn’t have fallen for that? Maybe she’d done so well because she could flirt successful businessmen into large donations. But her track record hadn’t been enough. Her organization was downsizing and she was let go a month ago.

Pregnant and without any income. That had to be the definition of desperate for a woman.

Last night when he’d gotten the report, he’d been certain she was lying about the baby belonging to Aziz and was impatient for that DNA test. He wanted her to be gone.

Then she had come to his room, and in a moment of insanity, he just plain wanted her. He had wanted her to offer herself to him, and not only to prove him right about her character.

But now, looking at the child, the rapidly beating heart on the screen, suddenly he wanted there to be a baby from Aziz, someone left behind by his brother. He wanted the feisty, auburn-haired beauty to be true and not a conscienceless liar. He wanted her and her baby to belong to him.

Because of Aziz. He would take care of them for Aziz. There was so infuriatingly little he could do for his dead brother otherwise. Finding his killer was about it, which he would do even if he had to put his own life at risk in the process.

“Looks like you are just entering the second trimester. Everything looks well,” the radiologist said. She was a petite, modest woman who wore a veil that covered most of her head and a large part of her hospital uniform. “The baby seems healthy.”

“I called Dr. Jinan last night. She said something about the possibility of an amniocentesis,” he said.

“That would be done sometime between week sixteen and week twenty of the pregnancy. Is there a concern about genetic problems?” The technician looked up.

“An issue with paternity,” Karim growled, trying not to care that Julia flushed red with embarrassment.

“We don’t normally do it for that purpose.” The woman bowed her head.

“But it could provide confirmation?”

She nodded. “There are risks.”

“What risks?” Julia asked.

“In a small percentage of the cases, the procedure can cause miscarriage. But if you absolutely have to—”

“No,” he said at the same time as Julia, and hated the surprised look she gave him. Did it really stun her that much that he wouldn’t put the baby’s life at risk? “The procedure is not that necessary.”

She would just have to stay around until the baby was born and they could do a no-risk DNA test. He would have to find a way to get her to agree. Despite his threats, he couldn’t really hold her that long against her will, not in the current political climate. The country was trying hard to build strong diplomatic relations with the West, to prove that the place was safe for tourists and the culture prosperous and civilized. A rogue sheik kidnapping an American woman would definitely create damaging publicity.

She had come for money, he was pretty sure about that. All he needed was to figure out the price of her cooperation. They would discuss it over dinner tonight. He wasn’t buying her burning need to leave, anyhow. Could be she was just being coy.

The prospect of her prolonged stay and the continued annoyance it was sure to bring should have bothered him but, oddly, it didn’t. “So the child is healthy?”

“All looks as it should.”

Dr. Jinan walked in and greeted them warmly, looked at the screen over the technician’s head. “Everything is in order?”

“Perfect.”

“Since you did have a fall, I’d recommend another day of rest. No work, no exercise, no sexual relations,” Dr. Jinan was saying to Julia. “But if you continue to feel fine, you can resume all normal activity the day after tomorrow. If you have any problems, please don’t hesitate to call.” She gave Julia an encouraging smile.

Karim felt his shoulders relax, then tense again when his cell phone beeped. His chief of security. He turned off the ringer. He’d call the man back later. He didn’t want to miss anything.

Never in a million years would he have expected to find himself in a place like this. He was resigned not to marry and have children of his own. He’d tried back in his early twenties. But he’d seen the look in the girls’ eyes at the introductory meetings. The fathers were all willing. But he scared the women. And he didn’t want to take a wife who would be repulsed by the sight of him, would cringe every time she looked at him for the rest of their lives.

Julia Gardner was scared of him, which didn’t keep her from standing up to him, but she never once cringed.

“Can you tell if it’s a boy or a girl?” The question was barely audible, her voice filled with wonder. Her face was radiant. A deep joy shone through her skin, joy that could not be faked.

He could not remember when he’d felt such unrestrained, undiminished happiness, if ever. She was about glowing with it, her beauty intensified until he could barely look away from her. Maybe a veil for her, too, wouldn’t be a bad idea while she was in this country, although he didn’t plan on letting her wander around without him being close behind.

“Not yet.” The radiologist smiled. “Maybe in another month or so.”

“Oh.”

The child moved, looked like it was waving. Cute little bugger. Karim couldn’t help a smile, but schooled his features back into place before Julia could notice.

If she realized that he was softening, who knew what outrageous demands she could make. If the child was Aziz’s, Karim would take care of it, no question. If it wasn’t… He looked at the woman who was still staring at the screen, teary-eyed. Something flipped over in his chest at the sight.

She was in a desperate situation. Had to be, to go into a far-flung scheme like this and try to pass her child off on a man who wasn’t the father. He glanced at the screen again. If the DNA test came back proving Aziz had nothing to do with this, he could still see that she was able to raise the baby. Hell, he could afford it.

“Would you like some pictures?” the radiologist asked.

“I’m not sure.” She glanced down. “I can’t really pay for this.”

“We’ll take the pictures,” Karim said.

“We can also make a copy of the video—”

“Send it to my palace.”

She wouldn’t look at him as the radiologist wiped off her flat belly, which he’d been trying to avoid taking notice of. Sure didn’t look like new life was growing there. Maybe she wasn’t eating enough. Something he would have to pay extra attention to.

She didn’t talk to him until they were out of the examination room and going down the stairs. “Thank you. I don’t have to thank you, because you kidnapped me and bullied me into this whole visit, but it was a moment, and…otherwise I would have been alone. Which probably would have been a step up from going with a kidnapper. But if I consider that you’ll be my baby’s uncle—”

“You’re welcome.” Did she always babble on when she was emotional?

She gave him a dirty look. “One more thing.”

He drew up an eyebrow. Here we go. She was about to make her first demand.

“Please don’t humiliate me in front of people like that again.” Her words were issued softly.

Damned if he knew why he was feeling like a heartless bastard all of a sudden. His jaw muscles pulled tight. “Sorry.” He didn’t know which one of them was more surprised when the word was out.

“Wow, that sounded like it hurt. Was it your first time?” She grinned.

He glared back.

“You could just let me go,” she said when they were in the car, the air conditioner going.

“Too cold?” he asked as he pulled into traffic.

“Are you kidding? I have a furnace inside. I could be standing on the snowfields of Siberia and be hot. Pregnant bodies produce lots of energy.”

He hadn’t considered that. “I can’t let you go.” He turned down the boulevard.

“You’re a sheik. You can do anything you want.”

She had an answer for everything, didn’t she? Fine.

“I don’t want to let you go,” he said.

“Don’t you ever watch international TV? Your views on life and responsibility are pretty archaic. You don’t have to take care of me. I don’t belong to you.” As she said the last sentence, she enunciated each world deliberately.

“I don’t have time for TV.” He didn’t bother addressing her wild notion of her not belonging to him. “I want you to write me a list of what you need. Both for you and the baby. And you need to eat more,” he said just as a dark sedan cut off the car following them to get directly behind him. “I can bring a nutritionist on staff while you’re with us.”

He kept his attention on the sedan, his warning senses perking up. The car was moving with too much purpose, the driver unnecessarily aggressive.

“I don’t need a nutritionist. I eat healthy and I eat as much as I need. I won’t be staying that long anyway.”

She clearly resented his interference. And right now wasn’t the time to discuss just how far he was willing to go to make sure her pregnancy went as smoothly as possible.

He looked at the rearview mirror again. “Listen, we might—” Too late, he saw the gun. He swerved. “Watch out!” He pushed her down just as the rear window exploded.

He heard the shards hit leather, but his seat and headrest protected him. A glance confirmed the same for Julia. He stepped on the gas and the car lurched around the minivan in front of them. But his attackers—two men, their faces obstructed by tribal-style headdresses—followed.

He swore under his breath. Should have brought his security along. But he didn’t want anyone in his family or at the company to know about Julia Gardner and her claims yet. Didn’t want to deal with the questions about him going to a women’s clinic. If her story were untrue, he didn’t want to unnecessarily tarnish Aziz’s memory and bring his honor into question.

The car in front of him was slower than slow. For a moment, he swerved into upcoming traffic to get ahead, expecting Julia to scream at him. She didn’t, but horns beeped all around them. He chanced a glance at her when he’d returned to the right side. She sat pale-faced, hanging on to her seat with a white-knuckled grip.

He snapped his attention back to the road in front of him. “We can handle them.”

“We can’t handle them. Oh, my God. Call the police!” She squeaked the last word.

“I’m a little busy.” He growled under his breath, not at her, but at the men. By the time the police found them, this could be long over. Either he shook their attackers, and shook them fast, or one of their bullets would find its aim and end the chase.

He swore under his breath again. More stress was the last thing Julia needed in her condition. Not that he knew anything about her condition. But he would learn. For Aziz’s child. If—Damn, but the uncertainty drove him crazy. He wasn’t a patient man on his best day.

When they got out of here, he was going to get her to agree to stay in the country, then lock her up safely in his palace and not let her go until the baby was born. Maybe he would move to Aziz’s place for the next six months. Living under the same roof with Julia might be more than he could handle. Especially if she kept sneaking into his bedroom. He was concerned about that as much as he wished for it.

“Hang on.”

He was a good driver and put all his skills to use. For a moment or two, it seemed he might be able to put enough distance between his car and the assassins behind them.

Then a bicyclist, of all things, pulled in front of him, oblivious to danger. And he swerved, running the car up the cement rails of the shoulder, the right two tires leaving the ground. If they were to flip… He grabbed the steering wheel and maneuvered as best he could. He had to get the car back on the road. After an endless moment, he did manage.

“Are you all right?” He didn’t dare take his eye off the road to look at Julia.

“I’m not all right. People are trying to kill me!” She sounded shaken. “What is it with everyone? Is everybody completely nuts around here? What are they thinking? Just go!”

He did, and for a moment was sure that they would make it. But the second bullet was more accurate than the first. The force of it slamming into his flesh smacked him against the steering wheel.

They were out in the open. The bullets kept coming. He had a woman and an unborn child to protect. Pain spread through him. He’d been hit. He couldn’t tell how badly, and it was information he needed. All their lives depended on it.