Читать книгу To Touch a Sheikh - Olivia Gates - Страница 9

How do you kidnap the willing?

The answer: Easily.

Or that should be the answer.

It remained to be seen how this kidnapping would turn out.

Amjad brooded after Maram’s lithe figure, his mind racing to adjust his original plan.

Her father had said he’d come early, after Amjad had hinted he was willing to negotiate the terms for the dealership he’d been coveting. That Yusuf had agreed to come at all had made Amjad certain he had no idea the Aal Shalaan brothers had discovered his leading role in stealing and counterfeiting the Pride of Zohayd jewels.

Due to an inane tribal law, the jewels were necessary for the Aal Shalaans to remain rulers of Zohayd. The law sprouted from equally lame legends that said that King Ezzat—Amjad’s ancestor and supposed doppelganger, or as the harebrained public liked to tell it, Amjad was Ezzat reincarnated—had united the tribes under his rule and founded Zohayd through their power.

The dimwitted story became more established the more the world around them advanced. It didn’t matter to Zohaydans that the Aal Shalaans had made their country one of the most prosperous nations in the world. All they cared about was that the royal family make good treasure keepers. The kingdom’s most important event was Exhibition Day, when imbecile representatives of the moronic public came to ascertain the jewels’ safety. The legends claimed the demon-spawn jewelry wouldn’t remain in the hands of anyone who no longer deserved the throne.

Yusuf Aal Waaked and his cohorts were using that entrenched superstition, biding their time until Exhibition Day to expose the jewels currently in the Aal Shalaans’ possession as fakes. When Yusuf produced the real ones, no one in the brainless herd would accuse him of theft but would hail him as the new ruler the jewels had “chosen.”

Idiots. All of them. Including his own family.

He was tempted to leave the whole region to muck around in its Dark Ages rot. His father could be better off retiring, and he would prefer to never again have to endure being around some of the world’s sleaziest creatures—without ripping them apart—to serve trivial things like world peace.

He’d always found this royalty gig a pain anyway. Sure, he did his job because he did nothing if not to the best of his abilities, and his father needed him more since his heart attack. But being first in line to the throne was synonymous with being the same in front of a stampeding herd or a firing squad. He’d gotten nothing for it but slaughter attempts in the boardroom and murder schemes in the bedroom, interspersed with persistent conspiracies to trap, bankrupt or implicate him in crimes he’d never be stupid enough to contemplate. Not to mention the infringing fascination of the public.

But he and his brothers had made their fortunes unaided by their status. None of them would lose anything but boatloads of burdens if they woke up tomorrow a royal family no more. And it would serve the ingrate nation right if, after all the royal family had done for the kingdom, they chose criminals over the Aal Shalaans because of some trinkets.

But—and it was a gigantic but—it wasn’t as simple as that.

Even if the people were stupid enough to bow to the rule of legend, they wouldn’t find an outside force easy to accept. Yusuf, a man who ruled only a tiny emirate, couldn’t hope to control a kingdom of Zohayd’s size and complexity. He’d be overthrown, and the true catastrophe would begin.

None of the tribes had enough clout to claim the throne alone. They could all get a piece of the action only through a democracy. He needed no foresight to know how that would turn out. A look at the so-called democracies in the region said it all.

So, like it or not, the Pride of Zohayd jewels were vital, making his mission unavoidable. He had to get them back.

He’d intended to make Yusuf ransom himself with them.

But the weasel had sent his daughter in his stead.

Yusuf didn’t suspect exposure, or he wouldn’t have sent his only offspring, the daughter he called “the heart outside my body.” But Amjad knew why he had.

Yusuf knew Amjad opposed a union between Maram and Haidar. Yusuf must think Maram could sway Amjad if she got him alone, facilitating her acquisition of Haidar while having him eating out of her hand, too, hitting two princes with one seduction spell.

She was no innocent. Even had she been, children often paid for their parents’ sins. It was her father who’d conspired against his family, then dared to stay home sick.

Yusuf had better not surprise him again. He wouldn’t appreciate finding out that Yusuf didn’t value his daughter enough to ransom her with the jewels that could secure him a throne ten times the size of his current one.

“So where are you keeping the food?”

Maram swirled back to him, her ponytail swishing like that of a spirited mare.

Amjad gritted his teeth at the jolt of hated response that lashed through him, spread his lips in a smile he knew mirrored his vicious thoughts. “Something finally defeated Your Nosiness?”

Her smile was one of elation. She was invulnerable to his put-downs, wasn’t she? She truly did thrive on them. If he wanted to thwart her, he should deprive her of them.

“Since you must be keeping it in airtight containers, I doubt a hound dog could smell it out.” She stopped before him again, deluging his lungs with the uniqueness of her scent, a distillation of desire and delicacy, of freshness, femininity and fragrant flesh. Her. Her eyes gleamed up at him. “I’ll settle for coffee. Just set me on the trail and I’ll fix myself a cup. I’ll fix you one, too, if you’re … not too nasty.”

It was no use. He was incapable of thwarting her. “Guess you’ll never fix me one, then.”

She let out one of those laughs that tinkled through his nerves with harmonies of sensation and vitality. He had to exert extra effort not to groan, not to crowd her and hiss for her to stop trying to ensnare him.

“Nah, I’ll fix you one. Bad boys are just misunderstood and shouldn’t be left out.”

Merriment radiated from her, tugged on his own humor.

This Maram was dangerous in ways no one had ever been.

She evidently thought his considering look meant that he was trying to make up his mind whether to let her drag him through the camaraderie of coffee making. He was actually thinking he should get her something to eat and drink. Before the ordeal.

He took out his phone, called Ameen, murmured for him to bring in refreshments.

He paused mid-order, looked at Maram. “Which side of your heritage do you drink? Arabian or American?”

She twinkled up at him. “Both, of course.”

Aih. That was her M.O.

“Why choose when you can have it all, eh?” He completed his instructions, almost drove his finger through the screen turning off the phone.

In minutes, his men had spread a table with cheeses, breads, chilled fruits and cold and hot drinks. He’d planned for this gathering to look on the up and up so that Yusuf and his men would relax, giving Amjad a chance to kidnap him without any trouble for either side.

Maram rushed to the table and turned to him, pointing to the coffeemaker and then the carafe filled with Arabian cardamom coffee. He flicked a finger at the first.

She busied herself brewing. In minutes, she brought back a mug. She licked her lips as she handed it to him, the look in her eyes saying it was his own lips she was imagining under her glistening tongue. He congratulated himself on his choice of pants today. No space in them to betray any hormone-driven stupidity.

“Black and bitter.” Her voice was velvet fire along each nerve she managed to expose just standing near. “Just like you … like it.”

“You remembered.” He gave her a mock touched look, even as he wondered how she knew. He never accepted food or drink anywhere where his trusted people weren’t in charge. Aih, he was paranoid that way. He had eaten in her presence, but she couldn’t have observed this particular preference.

She answered his unspoken curiosity. “I asked Aliyah. In fact, I gave her an extensive questionnaire about you.”

“And she filled it in.” He shook his head. “I always said having a family is like living your life surrounded by a bunch of busybodies and blabbermouths. I wouldn’t be surprised if she and Laylah are tweeting and updating their Facebook statuses with anecdotes about my paranoid preferences.”

Her eyes told him his every word tickled her that mouthwatering peach color. “I assure you, they aren’t spreading your specs to the world. Aliyah was just delighted with my interest because she despaired of any female being ‘foolhardy’ enough to even admit being curious about you. She also thought if her Kamal could be approached, then approaching you—whom she admits are an even more … advanced case—might not be in the realm of the impossible.”

“Kamal hasn’t been ‘approached,’ he’s been breached, poor sap. I almost feel sorry for him. But he certainly deserves what he got—Aliyah, my questionnaire-completing half sister. But how fanciful of you both to lump me in the same species as him. Even if you placed me far higher on its evolutionary scale.”

She made a cartoonish expression of soothing seriousness. “Don’t worry. To me, you’re a species of one.”

The contrast between her overpowering beauty and that ridiculous look was so funny that he almost laughed.

He pressed down hard on the urge, smirked. “How reassuring. Here’s hoping Aliyah isn’t dispensing more completed forms to ‘interested’ females. I already had one use knowledge of my specs to systematically eliminate me.”

“Yeah, Aliyah told me you came to hate the color green after … after …”

He huffed his disbelief that she seemed so moved, recalling what had been done to him. “After it became associated with arsenic and an excruciating near-death in my mind? Nah, I always did. My mother dressed me in nothing but green till I was six, to go with my damn eyes. The moment she died I swore to never let that hue near me again. Then my loving ex-wannabe murderess started showering me with items in shades of it, looking as if she’d die if I didn’t accept them. Little knowing that my life was the one in danger, I swallowed my aversion, along with the poison.”

Seemingly over her poignancy, she was back in teasing mode. “Great to know aversion is no longer a thing you swallow.”

He gave her a scathing look, what she’d seen freezing heads of state. “Aih, I prefer to swallow my opposition and chew out anyone foolhardy enough to approach me.”

“Oh, chew away.” She sighed as if he’d whispered some over-the-top endearment. “And speaking of chewing …” She twirled around, filled herself a plate of sliced fruits. “In case you’re wondering how I got Aliyah to disclose your classified info, we go way back, from the time when we both lived in the States. It was inevitable that we became best buddies, with both of us being half-Arabian, half-American and belonging to royal families in neighboring kingdoms.”

“Your country isn’t a kingdom. It’s a speck of an emirate with delusions of grandeur.”

She hooted. “My father would have a fit if he heard his beloved Ossaylan described like that. But compared to the kingdoms surrounding it, that is what it is.” She bit into a plum slice, transmitting the mental image into his brain. Of her biting into his lips. Of his teeth sinking into her ripe ones. “I love how you smack out painful truths. So refreshing after the stifling decorum and protocol I have to bate my breath through.”

“So glad I’m acting as your social inhaler and royal oxygen mask.” He was rewarded—or rather, from the twisting ache in his gut, punished—by that melodic laugh of hers. “You don’t consider it your ‘beloved Ossaylan’?”

“With myself and my life divided between the U.S. and Ossaylan, I never attained the unbridled allegiance of a pure native of either. I do love a lot about Ossaylan, but I dislike a lot, too. It’s hard to know what to feel about the place that has seen your best and worst days.”

“The latter being your married days, of course.”

She sighed, still smiling, but as if through—if it could be believed, and it sure couldn’t be—a mist of melancholy. “If you promise not to interrupt with alternate versions in which I’m a succubus, I’ll tell you the whole story.”

“I’ll pass. I’m not into reruns. I know the whole story.”

“Trust me, about this particular story, you know zip.”

“Trust you? Farther than I can throw you, you mean?”

“That would be farther than I hoped because with muscles like those—” her gaze melted gold-hot appreciation down his arms and chest, stopping short of where he was resigned he’d be perpetually distorted in her presence, traveled lazily back up to his eyes “—I bet you could throw me quite far.”

He drank a mouthful of coffee, hoping to scald himself out of his idiocy. His eyebrows rose as the taste hit his tongue. The exact strength he preferred. Which he got only when he brewed his own.

“You like?”

The hesitancy in her soft question baffled him more.

Since he’d stopped being a bleeding heart, no one had come close to fooling him. But even knowing all about her, and setting his renowned duplicity-detection powers to maximum, he couldn’t detect any falseness. How was she doing it?

Not that it mattered. He had to get his plan under way. If he was going to go ahead with it.

Which he had to.

He raised his mug to her. While he hated with a passion having no choice but to proceed with his plan, he did like her offering. “Don’t tell me Aliyah gave you the exact titration of what constitutes perfect coffee for me.”

A flush spread across her sculpted cheekbones. Of pleasure over doing something that had pleased him?

No way. That woman must have the ability to blush on command among her arsenal of seduction weapons.

For good measure, breathlessness entered her voice. “It’s how I like it. I hoped we’d have this in common, too.”

And she’d said he was good? She was superlative. “You mean, before this momentous discovery of our identical taste in coffee strength, we had something else in common? Beside being bipeds?”

She spluttered in laughter. “Ah, I knew it!”

He cocked his head at her. “It’s comforting to know you agree on the bipedal commonality. The world insists I’m octopoid.”

“Would that be four more legs, or two more of each set of limbs?” She started to choke, put her plate down, turned back with mischievousness lighting up her beauty. “I knew if I could just get you talking, you’d be a delight to spar with.”

“Aih, I’m a laugh a second.”

“You certainly are.”

“God forbid I be the source of such entertainment to you. I’ll stop.”

Her crestfallen pout made her a disappointed little girl and an irresistible siren. “Don’t! We were just getting warmed up!”

“Just step outside to get as warm as you can handle.”

“Inside here with you is just fine with me. You can’t beat the combo of cool surroundings and red-hot debate.”

“Since you’re so fond of said combo, I’ll leave you to cool your heels and send one of my men to debate with. You can red-hot his ears off while I go scout the location for the spectator and banquet tents.”

He turned, counting down … three, two, one …

Right on cue, she grabbed his arm. “You wait right here.” She hurriedly unzipped her bag, produced an SPF 50 sunscreen and applied it liberally to her face, neck and hands then smiled up at him triumphantly. “My dermally deficient self can now go ten rounds with Your Hereditarily Impervious Highness.”

He sighed. “On one condition.”

She didn’t hesitate. “Anything!”

At the look of absolute trust in her eyes, a heavy sensation spread through his gut.

What, now he believed what he was seeing in her? Trust didn’t factor into this situation, in her reaction. She must think going with him was a perfectly safe opportunity to work on him some more.

But … there had been that incident when she’d risked her life to help him, to be there for others. An instance that contradicted all his understanding of her, that proved she was no self-preserving coward, was capable of stunning courage.

That didn’t mean she wasn’t also a man-eater. Which made her an even more dangerous one for being impossible to categorize, to predict, to despise.

He huffed his disgust with himself. “Anything? And you’re supposedly a phenomenal political and financial law consultant. I thought when your father stopped making the dimwitted state and financial decisions he was famous for and started making choices far above his minuscule IQ, that you were behind it. Now I have to revise that belief, if you, too, go around giving carte blanche to conditions you haven’t heard yet.”

“Anything for you,” she amended indulgently, not bothering to counter his assessment, as only someone secure in her abilities wouldn’t. “I know you won’t make it anything bad.”

“And you know that because I’m the Gandhi of the region? Are you already suffering from sunstroke? Your judgment is evidently impaired.”

She made a hurry-up gesture with those elegant, trim-nailed hands. “Spit out your condition, and let’s be on our way.”

He sighed again. “No complaints. If I hear one, you’re back here.”

She fluttered those thick-enough-to-sleep-on lashes, gave him a mock salute. “Yes, sir.”

He almost groaned. She was making kidnapping her too easy. Anything that started out that way invariably ended in catastrophe. What would that entail in this situation?

He had no choice but to find out.

He looked down at her, exhaled, nodded. To himself. To committing to this path. Wherever it took him.

He only hoped that when catastrophe struck, he’d at least have accomplished his mission.

Maram looked down into those eyes Amjad had damned earlier.

And damn summed them up all right.

She’d had a good-to-great life on the whole. But it was only when she looked into his eyes that she felt aware of every spark of her being, every iota of her potential.

And that was before he’d taken her riding on his horse.

She’d expected him to ride a black stallion. Or a white one. She’d been delighted to find his favorite was a glorious light chestnut mare. Dahabeyah, literally “golden,” would be her twin if she were a horse. She’d held her ponytail next to the mare’s and exclaimed how they were almost the same color. She’d asked if he’d chosen the mare for the animal’s similarity to her, knowing he’d never admit it even at gunpoint.

His answer had been a mere snort before he turned to tacking up the mare, then donned a billowy white abaya and traditional head cover.

Then he’d mounted the mare in a demonstration of power and grace and all she could think of was him mounting her, riding her …

She’d been combusting even before he’d pulled her up behind him. She’d declined to ride a horse of her own, wasn’t such an assured horsewoman that she’d risk it in this terrain. His eyes had said she just wanted to be as close to him as possible. She hadn’t denied the accusation. The truth consisted of both his version and hers.

They’d ridden uphill for twenty minutes at a trot. Every second brought a new level of awareness of the hot, living rock she enveloped, the powerful heart that boomed beneath her ear, the scent that induced a hormonal surge with each inhalation.

By the time they’d reached their destination, she thought she’d melted around him, could never be extricated from his flesh again.

He swung down, leaving her jangling from the loss of him. She wondered if he’d help her down—but he’d already given her too many concessions. He wasn’t about to act the gallant knight.

She didn’t want him to. Not out of, gasp, gentlemanliness. In time, she’d make him wish to offer those gestures out of the consideration he’d come to feel for her.

She was getting down from the horse when she saw his eyes flood with a somberness she’d never seen there before.

It shook her to see into the depths she knew he kept hidden beneath his irreverence and indifference.

Before she could probe, he turned away, went to the edge of the towering dune overlooking the whole area.

She followed him on shaky legs, every wobbling step melting the fraught moment away. The view mesmerized her, a landscape that had been molded by the elements in the crucible of time, powdering mountains into frozen-in-turbulence oceans of gold dust.

“Wow,” she breathed in wonder. “I’ve seen almost nothing but desert vistas since coming to the region. But this beats them all hands down. How did you discover this place?”

“It’s called exploring.”

She smiled at his chiseled profile. “What a novel concept! Would you take me next time you’re scouting new territories?”

He turned his eyes sideways to her, looked down the ten inches between them, his lips twisting. “I don’t do luxury tours. What you see today is for swooning princes’ benefit. When I go out on my own, I don’t lug mock palaces with me.”

“You’re talking to the girl who spent her first twelve years camping in temperatures in the minus, who picked her own food and washed her one change of clothes in freezing streams. I lived out of a backpack for months when I went back to the States, too.”

Another enigmatic layer painted his eyes before he shrugged. “We’ll see how you fare on this mini-excursion before we talk big treks.”

Her heart pirouetted in her chest.

He was not turning her down flat.

Next moment, her heart slowed its spin, wobbled as a sound she’d never heard … felt before, yawned from nonexistence into her ears, through her marrow.

She swung around … and her heart crashed.

On the horizon, a … a … a mountain was charging their way.

It looked like what she imagined a nuclear shockwave would look like. A tidal wave of roiling, pulverized earth.

At the rate it was advancing, it would reach them—bury them—in minutes.