“To a man like your father you are merely an object, a possession to be used, bartered, traded.”

Each word was worse. Each word bit and stung. “But you’re the same, aren’t you, Sheikh Nuri?” Keira’s throat was swelling closed and she had to force each syllable and sound out. “You’re using me, too. You’re using me to get back at my father. At least be man enough to admit it.”

She heard his soft hiss at her insult. His touch changed, shifted, fingers extending from her chin to her jaw, his fingers briefly caressing the width of her jawbone.

“You lack a Barakan woman’s good sense and quiet tongue. Yet I’m beginning to think you deserve a Barakan husband. One who would teach you humility and a modicum of self-control.”

She ground her teeth, temper flashing in her eyes. “Hate to disappoint you, Sheikh Nuri, but some things can’t be taught.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, laeela. Anything can be taught. It just takes the right teacher.” A flicker of dark emotion shone in his eyes. “And you would need not just a good teacher, but a patient teacher.”

The Sheikh’s Virgin
Jane Porter

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For my posse, the great girls who got me through it all—Kelly, Lori, Lisa, Kristiina, Cheryl, Sinclair, Joan, Janie & Jamette. I love you.

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

PROLOGUE

FORCE a girl to marry?

Take her from her home? Carry her hostage across the Atlantic Ocean? Isolate her from family and friends until she finally caved, acquiescing to her father’s desire that she marry…even if the man were twenty years older?

Sheikh Kalen Tarq Nuri had heard worse.

Draining his martini, he pushed the empty glass away, black eyebrows flattening over narrowed eyes.

He was in New York having closed a big deal and was now out to dinner celebrating the acquisition with his top brass, those who’d executed the nasty buyout. The other company hadn’t wanted to be bought. Sheikh Nuri had wanted the purchase.

Sheikh Nuri got what he wanted. Always.

Tapping the rim of his empty martini glass, Kalen Nuri felt a surge of desire, the desire of a hunter, the desire of a predator. Like the hawks he used to own in Baraka, the beautiful fierce falcons, Kalen was ready to hunt.

To give chase.

To pounce.

There were worse things than forcing a young woman to marry against her will.

There was betrayal. Attempted murder. And the revelation of a plot to assassinate not just the Sultan of Baraka, but the Sultan’s young sons. Kalen’s nephews.

Sheikh Kalen Nuri’s jaw hardened, eyes narrowing to slits of masked rage. No one touched his family. No one would be allowed to hurt Malik or the children. No one. Not even Omar al-Issidri, his brother’s chief cabinet member. Secret agitator.

Kalen had learned that Omar had plans, big plans, plans to consolidate his power in Baraka by marrying his daughter to Ahmed Abizhaid, a radical fundamentalist. A man that also happened to be the Sultan’s harshest critic.

Omar was dangerous because he was weak. Ahmed was dangerous because he was violent. The two together could destroy the Nuris. But Malik, honest, honorable, noble Malik, refused to believe that Omar was anything less than a dedicated public servant.

Kalen’s fingers tightened around the stem of the martini glass. The marriage between twenty-three-year-old Keira al-Issidri and Ahmed Abizhaid couldn’t take place. It was a dangerous relationship, an alliance that would give Ahmed respectability and access to the palace. As well as proximity to the Sultan and his children.

Which is why Kalen hadn’t wanted the marriage to take place.

And then someone made a mistake. Botched the job. Someone had let him down.

It infuriated Kalen. If the situation had been handled correctly, everything would have been sorted, settled, the problem contained.

Instead Keira al-Issidri would be flying back to Baraka tomorrow night and into her new bridegroom’s bed.

Unless Kalen did something about it immediately. Which was why Kalen had to make arrangements to ensure the marriage didn’t take place. Personally. And given the circumstances, it was exactly what Kalen intended to do.

CHAPTER ONE

SHE’D like to start it all over if she could.

She’d like to rewind the tape to the place where it all went wrong. That night. The party. The week she’d turned sixteen.

If she’d never disobeyed her father…

If she’d never snuck out to attend something forbidden…

If she’d never gone where good Barakan girls shouldn’t go…

But that was all years ago and this was now and Keira Gordon’s fingers felt nerveless as they wrapped tightly around the telephone. “I’m not marrying him. I can’t marry him, Father. It’s impossible.”

Omar al-Issidri drew a short, impatient breath. “The only thing impossible is that you’re twenty-three and still single! You’re shaming our family, you’re shaming our name.”

Keira knew in Baraka young women married early to protect their reputations, but Keira wasn’t Barakan. She’d never been Barakan. But she wasn’t English, either, despite having spent the majority of her life in Manchester with her liberal, intellectual mother.

“He’s a prominent man, Keira. Connected, powerful, influential—”

“I don’t care.”

Silence stretched across the phone line. “You must understand, Keira, that this is important. It’s important for all of us. You need to marry. Sidi Abizhaid has chosen you. You should be flattered by his interest.”

Her father wasn’t listening to a thing she said. But according to her mother, her father never did listen to anyone, at least not to any woman, which was only one of the reasons her mother had left him all those years ago.

Keira rubbed her forehead. She cared about her father, she did, but her father had no idea how Western she was, how removed she’d become from the veiled life of Baraka, a North African kingdom filled with rose tinted mountains, golden sand dunes and beautiful port cities more European than Middle Eastern. “I live in Dallas, Father. I have a job here. I have wonderful friends here, people who really care about me—”

“But no husband.”

“I don’t want a husband.” Exasperation sharpened her voice. “I’ve barely finished school, haven’t even begun to establish myself in my career.”

“Career?”

“Yes. I want a career. I’ve a good brain—”

“This is your mother’s doing. I should have never allowed her to take you out of the country. I should have kept you here, with me. She wasn’t fit to be a parent.”

Overwhelmed by a rush of anger, Keira bit her tongue. Both of her parents had played games, both had used her in a vicious tug-of-war between them.

“Marriage is an honor,” her father added now. “And a good marriage would bring honor to all of us.”

Not to me, she answered silently, savagely, feeling a rise of fierce emotion, the emotion tied to memories so old it was as if they’d been with her always. “I’ve no desire to marry,” she repeated, voice strangled. “It’s not something I’ve ever wished for myself.”

“But it’s something I’ve wished for you. You are my only child. You are my future.”

“No.”

He made a rough sound, part irritation part anger. “Don’t shame me, Keira al-Issidri. Do not shame the family.” The warning was clear and while she felt her father’s frustration, there was nothing she could do about it. She could never be what he wanted her to be.

She could only be herself. And what she was, who she’d become, was unacceptable in Baraka.

But her father didn’t know… Her father would never know.

With a glance at her wristwatch, she noted the late hour, felt a twinge of panic at the thought of the traffic if she didn’t leave immediately. “I have to go. I can’t be late for work.”

“Work? What work do you do on a Sunday morning?”

One more thing her father didn’t know about her. It seemed her father knew nothing about who she really was. “I dance.”

Critical silence stretched across the phone line. Her father had never approved of her ballet training but his opposition had grown worse as she hit adolescence. When she turned twelve he wanted the classes to stop but she wouldn’t. And then a year later when he discovered she didn’t just take lessons with boys at the Royal Ballet School, but performed on stage as Clara in a Christmas production of the Nutcracker, he’d threatened to return her to Baraka. Immediately. Permanently.

No daughter of his would wear a leotard and tights in public.

No daughter of his would be touched—even if partnered in a pas de deux—by a member of the opposite sex.

And her mother, always defiant, never intimidated, had crumbled.

It was her mother, her fierce rebel radical mother, who made Keira stop dancing. You don’t want to antagonize your father. He isn’t like us. He could do anything if provoked…

After eight years of daily lessons at the school, after years of loving, living, breathing ballet, after eight years where the smooth hardwood floors, the smell of rosin, the slippery satin of her pale pink pointe shoe ribbons, the intense discipline of barre work before floor work were more familiar than her own home, she’d dropped her lessons. Like that.

“I thought you gave up your dancing,” her father said now.

“I did,” Keira answered softly. And it had killed her. Broken her heart. But her mother wouldn’t relent and her father had been pleased and it was just another example of the way her parents had warred. What she wanted, needed, hadn’t ever figured in the equation. Her parents’ fights and decisions were based on their personal agendas. Their own ambition. And both had been hugely, voraciously ambitious.

“I do have to go,” she added, knowing that nothing her father could say would change her mind. In America she’d finally found peace—acceptance—and there was no way in hell she’d ever return to Baraka.

It wasn’t that Baraka wasn’t beautiful, or the mix of cultures—Berber, Bedouin, Arab and European—hadn’t created a fascinating landscape of language and customs. But in Baraka, women were still protected, sheltered, segregated, and she’d spent too many years in England and America to ever live that way again.

“Keira, you cannot ignore your responsibility.”

She felt a weight settle on her, felt the cultural differences between them stretch, vast, unapproachable, endless. “I’m sorry, but I don’t believe in arranged marriages. I don’t find it acceptable, even if most Barakan girls do.”

Heavy silence stretched between them. At last Omar al-Issidri spoke. “Twenty-four hours, Keira. That’s all I give you.”

“No.”

“I’m not asking. I’m telling you. You will return within twenty-four hours or I will have you returned to me.” And he hung up.

For a moment Keira could only stare at the phone before slowly hanging up. Her father couldn’t be serious. He couldn’t intend to drag her forcibly home…

Numbly she gathered her duffel bag and purse and headed for her car. Her hands shook on the steering wheel as she drove to the football stadium in thick game day traffic. Marry someone she didn’t know? Marry a Barakan leader just because her father said so?

With one eye on traffic and the other on her mobile phone’s keypad, she punched in her father’s phone number.

“I can’t believe you’re serious,” she said as soon as her father answered. “I can’t believe you’d threaten me with such a thing. I’ve never lived in Baraka. I haven’t visited in seven years—”

“Yet you are Barakan whether you admit it or not. And I’ve been patient with you. I’ve allowed you to conclude your studies in the States, but you’ve finished your coursework, it’s time you came home.”

“Baraka isn’t my home!” She quickly shifted down the gears, coming to a stop as the heavy traffic ground to a standstill turning the four-lane highway into a sea of red brake lights.

“You were born in Atiq. You spent your childhood here.”

“Until I was four.” And yes, she might have been born in the coastal city of Atiq, the sprawling capital of Baraka, where the buildings were all whitewashed, and the streets narrow and winding, but she was English, not Barakan. And her memories of Baraka were the memories of a visitor, a guest, memories generated from her annual visit to her father’s home.

Growing up, Keira had dreaded the trip to her father’s each summer. The annual visit became increasingly fraught with tension as she went from childhood to adolescence. Every year meant fewer freedoms, less opportunity to socialize, to be herself. Instead her father was determined to mold her into the perfect Barakan woman—beautiful, skilled, silent.

“I will never return,” she said now, speaking slowly in English, and then switching to Arabic for her father’s benefit. “I would rather die than return.”

For a long moment her father said nothing and then his voice came across the phone, his voice hard and cold like the thick sheets of ice that covered the lakes in the North. “Be careful what you wish for.” And he hung up.

Again.

Omar al-Issidri would not be happy to know how his daughter spent her free time.

Sheikh Kalen Nuri watched the queue of beautiful young women rush through the dark stadium tunnel out onto the sunny field for the half-time show.

Music blared from stadium loud speakers and Kalen Nuri watched the beautiful girls, all sleek arms and legs, skin enticingly revealed, tight tops that jutted perfect breasts, tiny white short shorts, knee high white boots, dance in formation. High kicks. Thrusting hips. Shoulders shifting, breasts jiggling.

Kalen’s gaze swept the rows of young women, bypassing the many honey-blondes for the brunette in the back row, her seductively long hair the color of obsidian and reaching the small of her back. Keira al-Issidri. Omar’s daughter.

Kalen’s lips compressed. Keira al-Issidri must have a death wish. Omar had been livid when his only daughter left the United Kingdom four years ago to study in the States. England was bad. America far worse.

What would Omar do if he knew his daughter was shaking more than just her blue, white and silver pom poms before sixty thousand people?

Keira al-Issidri was in serious trouble. In more ways than one.

It might be late September, Keira thought out on the playing field, but it felt like the hottest day of summer.

In the middle of the grass, beneath the blinding hot Texas sun, Keira’s head spun as she kicked and twirled and shimmied, her short shorts riding high on her thighs, her white boots clinging to her calves as she kicked her leg up over her head.

She was going to be ill.

But it wasn’t the hot sun making Keira her sick. It was the realization that she didn’t know her father, she’d never known her father, and that if her father was determined to do as he’d vowed, there was nowhere she could go to hide from him, no way to escape.

Her father had too much money. Too many connections. Her father, the Sultan’s right-hand man, had all of Baraka’s resources at his disposal. If he wanted her home. He’d get her home.

Chest tightening, air bottled inside her lungs, Keira tried to force herself to concentrate on the dance routine but she couldn’t escape her father’s voice, or the memory of his threat, and as the sun beat onto her skull like a hammer on a drum, she felt a strange disconnection with the rest of her body. Her legs were lifting, kicking, her arms moving, her body spinning, bending.

Lifting her face to the sun, Keira let the hot golden rays cover her and tried to block the sickening knowledge that pounded in her brain.

Things were about to get ugly.

Very, very ugly.

Hours after the game ended Keira leaned on the railing of a penthouse balcony holding a glass of wine she wasn’t drinking.

She hadn’t wanted to come to the party tonight, hadn’t been in the mood to socialize with a bunch of people she didn’t know, but one of the owners of the team had invited her, told her he had an important guest in town, and he hoped Keira would attend the party he was giving for his guest.

The team owner—who was also the man who wrote her paychecks—rarely asked anything of her and Keira reluctantly showered, dressed and headed to the party.

Now she stood on the balcony, which was blessedly dark, fixed her gaze on the lights of downtown Dallas, and tried to relax. But her father’s threat usurped every other thought. He’d vowed to drag her home. Vowed to force her into this marriage.

What was she going to do? Where could she go? For that matter, who could she go to?

Her father had served the Sultan of Baraka for fourteen years—nearly all of the Sultan’s reign. Her father had power, connections, wealth. He inspired fear in those who crossed him.

Who would help her, knowing her father was Omar al-Issidri? Who would take such a risk with his or her life?

She frowned faintly, rubbed at her temple. It hurt to think. It’d been such an ungodly long day and now she was here, trapped on the balcony, assaulted by the rock music pulsing from speakers inside the apartment and the raucous laughter of rich men seducing beautiful women.

She shouldn’t have come. The music was too hard, too loud. The people too different. The night too hot and humid.

She was tired. Overwhelmed. Panic set in. This was not a good place to be, not safe for her, not safe in any way. Clutching her wineglass, she drew a deep breath, and then another. Calm, think calm. Nothing bad is going to happen. Everything’s fine.

It had been years and she still hated parties. All these years and the heat, the noise, the liquor-fueled gaiety of parties still unnerved her. You could run from the past, she thought wearily, but the past eventually caught up.

“Don’t jump.” A male voice, cool and mocking, spoke behind her. His accent was different—British, cultured, and yet exotic.

Keira felt the strangest prickle at the back of her neck, but she didn’t turn around. “I’ve no intention of jumping,” she answered equally coolly, lifting her wineglass and taking a sip while keeping her gaze fixed on the skyline.

“Even though you’re hopelessly trapped?”

She beat back the flicker of alarm. Ignored the silver slide of adrenaline. “A bit presumptuous, don’t you think?”

“Not if you know as much about someone as I know about you.”

She didn’t like his tone, or his cocky attitude. Arrogant men turned her off. And while her survival instinct told her to race back to the penthouse, she wasn’t about to give the man the pleasure of watching her run like a timid jackrabbit.

“I could call your bluff,” she said, giving her glass a swirl, “but I don’t care enough to continue this conversation.”

“Then I shall call your bluff, Lalla Keira al-Issidri.”

Arabic. And not just Arabic, but Barakan Arabic.

He knew her father. He had to know her father. He’d called her Keira al-Issidri.

Slowly, painfully, she forced herself to turn to face him but the shadows darkened the balcony just like the shadows filling her head. “Who are you?”

“A family friend.”

Her lashes closed, her breath failing. It had happened already. Her father had sent someone for her. Her father hadn’t waited twenty-four hours. He hadn’t even waited eight hours.

She opened her eyes, drew a deep breath to settle her nerves. “What do you want?”

“To give you options.”

She trusted no man, least of all a Barakan male. “I don’t understand you.”

“I think you do.”

There was something in his tone that made her nerves scream, a familiarity that didn’t sit right at all with her. “Step into the light,” she said crisply, investing as much authority into her voice as she could manage. “I want to see you.”

“Why?”

“I want to see the cowardly man that enjoys intimidating a woman.”

“In that case.” He moved from the shadows, toward the yellow light pouring through the open glass door.

“Better?” he drawled, hands shoved in his trouser pockets. “Can you see the cowardly man now?”

She inhaled sharply, eyes widening in shock. She shied away from who—what—she saw.

“Perhaps the shadows are better,” he said, moving away from the doorway again, slowly walking toward her.

“Yes. That way you can do whatever it is you want to do.”

“And what do I want to do?” he sounded mildly intrigued.

“Drag me back to Baraka.”

“Ah.”

That one sound was strangely beautiful, seductive, conjuring a sailing ship carrying precious cargo of gold and spices from faraway places.

He stopped not far from her, took a position at the balcony railing, leaned against the smooth polished steel.

In the dark with the help of the faraway moon, she tried to make out his face and shape. In the reflection of ghostly white light she saw straight black eyebrows, the high hard edge of cheekbone, a strong uncompromising jaw.

The line of cheekbone and jaw was familiar. Too familiar although it’d been years since she saw the one, the dream…the one, true fantasy…

She closed her eyes, not wanting to remember, the association too tangled with heartbreak and pain. No dream should be so abruptly broken, not the way she’d been broken.

Keira drew another breath, opened her eyes, and yet without looking at him, she was uncomfortably aware of him, aware of his size, his height, the length of his long legs. “My father didn’t even wait twenty-four hours.” It was impossible to hide her bitterness. “He’d said he’d give me twenty-four hours. He lied.”

There was a moment’s silence. She could have sworn he smiled and then he said, “I’m not your father’s emissary.”

She could barely breathe. Her head felt even woozier than before. It was a strange terror filling her. “Then who the hell are you?”

“You don’t remember me?”

He asked the question so softly that it did something terrible to her. Took her heart, her chest, her lungs and mashed them into a bitter ball.

She knew who he was, she’d known from the moment he spoke but she hadn’t wanted to believe it, couldn’t believe it. Not after all these years.

“I’m certain you remember me,” he added.

Ice filled her veins, blocks of ice that clashed wildly with the rush of blood to her face. “Go back to the light.”

“You’re being silly.”

And then he struck a match, and in the small bright yellow flame, she saw him. Clearly. And she stared hard at the face opposite her, stared directly, determined to see what she wouldn’t let herself see before.

Not just straight black eyebrows, and high hard cheekbones, but black fringed eyes that shone amber-gold.

The match burned out. Keira looked away, flattened. She wanted to shake her head, shake away the vision that burned her eyes, her mind, burned into her all of the time.

She might be able to forget his brow, his cheekbone, his jaw, but she’d never forget his eyes. Amber-gold eyes.

Amber-gold eyes surrounded by long dense black lashes. Eyes that didn’t smile. Eyes that just stared through one, all the way to the heart, all the way to the soul.

No one had eyes like that. No one had ever looked at her the way he did. No one but Kalen Nuri.

Her own childish desert fantasy.

Inexplicable tears scalded the back of her eyes and she gripped her wineglass tightly. How terribly infatuated she used to be…

What a silly crush it’d been…

“Sheikh Nuri,” she breathed his name, unable to look at him.

His dark head inclined, his expression blank. “S-salamu alikum.”

The traditional Barakan greeting, Peace on you.

The wrong answer from what had once been the right man.

Her lips parted, air slipped out. Kalen Nuri was here. Stood just a foot away. The shock returned, hit her hard, a blow to the breastbone, a fierce punch that knocked the air from her, making her head light, nerves taut, everything too wobbly.

It had been years since she last saw him…and now he was here but he wasn’t her friend. Of that much she was certain.

“You can’t tell me that my father didn’t send you.” Her words were terse, anger pitching her voice low. “You can’t lie to me, too.”

He shrugged. “I can tell you the truth. But it’s your choice whether to listen. Your choice what to believe.”

“I want the truth.”

“I know what your father intends for you.”

He wasted no time, said it so bluntly that she couldn’t look away, and as she stared at him the craziest things happened inside her—inarticulate words like you’re here, you’re really here—even as her rational mind told her that he was more dangerous than anything her father had arranged for her. “My father works for your brother.”

Kalen made a dismissive gesture. “Your father works for himself.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You don’t trust my father.”

“No.” The sheikh studied her just as intently as she had examined him. “Do you trust your father?”

“He’s my father.”

“Youthful naiveté.”

“Naiveté?”

“It’s a kinder word than stupidity.”

Her surge of temper didn’t help the pounding that had begun at the top of her skull. “What do you want?”

“As I said, to give you options.”

She said nothing, just stared at him.

Sheikh Nuri’s mouth curved but the shape wasn’t kind. “You don’t have to marry Mr. Abizhaid.”

Something inside her twisted up tight. No, she thought silently mocking herself. I used to want to marry you. “Really? And what’s wrong with Ahmed Abizhaid?”

“He’s old, he’s hairy, he’s heavyset.”

“So?”

“He has children from his first marriage older than you.”

She said nothing.

“He’s notorious for his fanaticism.”

Keira grit her teeth together, refusing to speak. She sensed that Sheikh Nuri was enjoying himself at her expense.

“And he has questionable political ambitions.” The sheikh lifted his hands, an expressive gesture of laying the facts out for her. “But if this is appealing…”

His voice drifted off and she looked away, saw the lights of the city flicker, the distant white and red streams of light indicating the freeway traffic. “It’s not appealing, and you know it.”

“You need my help.”

“I don’t want your help.” She didn’t want anything from any man. Once she’d been trusting, once, yes, she’d been naive, but she wasn’t the foolish girl of the past.

“So you’ll cut off your nose to spite your face?”

“You know nothing about my nose, or my face, Sheikh Nuri.”

“I know that lovely face will be veiled and hidden if you don’t allow me to help.”

She couldn’t answer. Terror filled her. She knew the life Sheikh Nuri described, knew of the women’s quarters, the secret women’s world and she didn’t want it. Couldn’t bear it. She’d never been Barakan. She’d finished university with honors, had been hired as a communications director for Sanford Oil and Gas, an international firm based in Dallas, and she traveled, worked, succeeded. Succeeded beyond her wildest expectations.

How could she have her freedom stripped? How could she go back to what she’d escaped?

No. No. She wouldn’t be segregated. Wouldn’t be veiled. Would never allow herself to be hidden as though she were something to be ashamed of. “I haven’t lived in Baraka since I was four,” she said.

“Your father has already sent people for you.”

Keira went hot, then cold.

“There are three men waiting at your house this very moment.” He paused, let his words sink in. “They’re not going away without you.”

“I won’t go home then.”

“Your father has infinite resources. He’ll find you wherever you go. And there his men will be. Waiting.”

“No.”

“Yes. And you know it’s true.”

She closed her eyes, hating him, hating the words he said. He was right. She knew he was right. Her father got what he wanted. Her father always did.

“Face the truth, Miss al-Issidri. It’s me. Or them. Pick your poison.”

CHAPTER TWO

PICK her poison?

Her father, or him? Disgusted, she groaned inwardly, her body seething with tension. “I’m not playing this game, Sheikh Nuri.”

“Maybe you aren’t, but your father is. Three men are waiting at your house now. They’ve a car, a plane, a flight plan. You go home and you become theirs.”

Her disgust intensified, as did her fear. Thoroughly chilled, she craved a wrap to keep her warm. “Why should I believe you?”

“Why should I lie to you?”

He sounded so perfectly reasonable and yet none of this made sense. She hadn’t lived in Baraka for years. She’d had little contact with her father these past seven years. Why would he force her into an arranged marriage now?

And what about her father’s plans would bring Sheikh Nuri to her doorstep?

This was about business or economics, she thought, and she wanted no part in either.

“You’ve ulterior reasons for being here,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at the party still in full swing. Sheikh Nuri was one of the richest, most powerful men in the world. He was the special guest. He was the reason her boss wanted her here tonight.

“Yes.”

“You wanted me here tonight, didn’t you?”

“You’re the only reason I’m here.” He extended an arm in her direction. “Shall we go and take care of business?”

She looked at him, the dim moonlight playing across the hard features of his face, and suddenly she felt sixteen again. Head over heels in love with a man easily ten years her senior and she knew their lives were so different but she wanted part of his world anyway.

“Business?” she repeated numbly, and for a moment she was that sixteen-year-old, the one who felt so painfully alienated in school, so dark and foreign compared to the beautiful English roses, the one that missed her ballet classes, the intensely disciplined world of dance, the one who never shared what she felt with anyone but kept all her secrets buried deep in her heart.

“The men invading your home.”

Sheikh Nuri had a car waiting. The interior of the car was dark, the tinted windows allowing little exterior light to penetrate.

She practically hugged the corner of her seat, her hand wrapped convulsively around the door handle.

Small spaces, dark spaces made her skin crawl and it took all of her concentration to keep from breaking into a cold sweat.

Nothing bad is going to happen…

You’re just getting a ride home…

But she shouldn’t have left her car at the stadium. If she hadn’t left her car she’d be driving herself home. She’d be feeling safer. More secure. She wouldn’t be sitting so close to a man she didn’t know anymore…not that she ever really knew him. But she’d imagined.

Those fantasies.

They rode in silence and then Kalen rolled the window down. “We’re almost to your neighborhood, aren’t we?”

In the dark Keira could see flashes of her neighborhood, a suburb of tidy blocks with neat little houses and groomed little gardens. In the front yards of each house pink and white and purple crepe myrtles still bloomed and the first of the Japanese maple had started to turn red.

Indian summer.

Her favorite time of year.

“Yes.” With one finger tip she traced the glass. She loved her little house, loved the hammock slung up in the backyard, loved the idea of owning something of her own, something that no one could take away.

And like that, they were there, reaching her quiet street with the dogwoods and Japanese maples and crepe myrtles she so loved.

“Your house,” he said, slowing the car, drawing to a stop in front of her house.

“Yes.” Heartbreak wrapped around her chest, tight, vise-like. Was her freedom over? Slowly she turned her head, looked at Kalen Nuri intently. “Tell me again, tell me you’re not an emissary for my father.”

“I’m not an emissary for your father.”

She didn’t miss the faint mocking note in his voice, nor the strength he exuded just sitting there. There was nothing rough or rustic about Kalen Nuri, just a strength she couldn’t place and the sense of power, unlimited power…

He could have been the Sultan. He could have worn the crown easily. If it weren’t for the fact that his brother Malik was first born, Kalen Nuri could have been king. He was certainly proud enough. Confident enough.

“But you’ve spoken to my father?” she persisted, dazzled by the gold in his eyes, seeing the gilded grains of desert sand beneath the blaze of North African sun.

“No.” The corners of his eyes creased. “There’s little love lost between your father and me. He’s forced to tolerate me because I am Malik’s brother, but I dislike him intensely. And he knows it.” A deep groove formed next to Kalen’s mouth. “And I am here because he would not like it.”

His words were met by silence, but there was nothing quiet between them, nothing still about the night. The night crackled with tension, electricity, like a dark sky before a storm but tonight the sky was clear. Just moon, and stars and beneath the moon and stars the tension grew.

Being near him like this, talking so, made her head spin, her body hum. She fought to clear her mind now. “You said I had to pick my poison.”

“Yes.”

“You, or them, you said.”

“I did.”

“Why are those my only two options?”

For a moment he didn’t speak and then his broad shoulders shifted, a careless shrug. “Because who else will take on your father? Who else will turn his world inside out to prevent this marriage from taking place?”

She was missing something, there was a piece to this puzzle she didn’t see, didn’t understand, and she desperately wanted to understand. “I don’t want a man,” she said after a moment. “I do not need a man.”

“Want and need are two different things. You might not want me, Miss al-Issidri, but you need me.” He paused for emphasis. “There are worse things than accepting my protection.”

“You mean like being forced home to marry Mr. Abizhaid?” Hot brittle laughter formed in her chest. “I think I’d rather handle this my way,” she said, reaching for the door handle. “Unlock the car. I’m getting out.”

She heard the doors unlock. “And you do know you have visitors in the house?” he answered calmly.

Three, he’d said and she glanced at the house but saw nothing amiss, just the light left on in the entry hall that she always left burning when she knew she’d return late. “I see no one.”

“They’re not going to hang a Welcome Home sign, laeela.”

Laeela. Darling, love. An Arabic endearment that was like the kiss of the silken Saharan sands. No one had ever called her laeela before.

“I’ll keep that in mind.” She swung the door open, stepped out, slammed the door shut. “Thanks for the lift, Sheikh Nuri.”

The sedan’s door opened again just as quickly as Keira shut it. “You need my help.”

“No,” she said, backing away, “I need my car. If you really want to help me, help me get my car back from the stadium parking lot. That way I can get to work in the morning.”

He laughed softly, approached her even as she continued backing away. “You really think you’re going to work tomorrow?”

There was danger in his voice, a soft warning she couldn’t ignore and she stopped moving long enough to meet his gaze, hold it.

There was nothing threatening in his expression but there was something else.

Knowledge.

Cynicism.

Mistrust.

Despite his dark tailored coat and the expensive leather shoes on his feet, he was a man with the sun and the wind and the desert in his eyes. More Berber than Western. Sheikh not European.

He was everything she didn’t know, everything she’d never understood. Keira turned, took a panicked step toward her house, and then another, and another until she was running up the porch to the front door. Her front door swung open so abruptly that Keira barely had time to register the man standing in the doorway—her doorway—before he opened his arms and grabbed her, thick arms enfolding her.

It happened so fast she didn’t even scream. One minute she was running for shelter and the next she was imprisoned and her mind went dark, blank, the blank from years past when terror was too great, when physical pain overrode mental pain and everything went quiet. Still.

Helplessly she turned her head, looked toward the brick walkway and Sheikh Nuri was there. Watching.

If only someone had been able to help her. If only someone had done something. If only someone…

You’re not sixteen. You’re a woman. Fight, Keira, fight.

And finally her vocal cords opened and she screamed. She wouldn’t die, wouldn’t fade to nothing this time. She wasn’t going to disappear, wouldn’t become air and light, wouldn’t lose herself again.

Thrashing now, her fear turned her into a demon horse, all thunder and hooves. Then panic gave way to rage. She wasn’t going to be hurt again. She’d never let herself be hurt again and her body came to life, elbows jabbing at ribs, feet kicking, aiming for knees.

“Put me down,” she demanded, “put me down now. I won’t go.”

And still she kicked and jabbed and she knew she got her assailant at least once good and hard as she heard a soft oath from behind her, a hiss of air between clenched teeth. “I won’t go,” she repeated, swinging her legs wildly, trying to connect with his groin, or a knee.

Desperation laced her brain. Sheikh Nuri could stop this. He could help her. He’d said he would.

But he said nothing, he simply stood there and all she knew was that she wouldn’t go back to Baraka, she wouldn’t be returned to her father’s house against her will.

Her desperate gaze found Sheikh Nuri’s and she hated him and yet needed him and she sobbed his name. “Kalen. Kalen, help me.”

It was enough. It was all he needed.

“Put her down.” Kalen Nuri’s coldly furious voice sliced through the air.

The man holding Keira froze. “Your Excellency.”

“Put her down,” Sheikh Nuri repeated, speaking Barakan, and it was a direct command from a member of the royal Nuri family. His authority was unmistakable.

“But, Your Excellency, we have been sent to bring her home.”

Kalen Nuri was walking now, climbing the front steps with a grace that masked his strength. “You dare to take my woman from me?”

Deafening silence descended. All motion ceased, all talk stopped, even Keira went weak.

“Your woman?” The man holding Keira repeated.

“My woman.” Kalen’s voice thundered low and menacing like a roll of heavy thunder across the heavens.

The arms holding Keira loosened. She felt herself lowered, placed back on her feet. The moment the arms eased from around her Keira moved to Sheikh Nuri’s side.

Kalen extended an arm, but didn’t touch her. “Lalla al-Issidri is in my protection.”

“But we have been sent for her.” A different man spoke, the second one to appear from the house. Somewhere was a third. “Sidi al-Issidri was very clear.”

“Let me be just as clear,” the sheikh answered with mock civility. “She is mine.”

Kalen glanced at Keira and Keira felt his gaze, felt a peculiar current curl in her, heat and fear, dread and anticipation. And looking at her, his amber gaze glowing hot, possessive, he added, “Keira al-Issidri is my woman. She belongs to me.”

And then the three men were gone.

Magic, Keira thought, as the men climbed into the car and drove away. Kalen might as well have been a magician like Merlin from the days of King Arthur’s court.

But it wasn’t magic, it was power. And he had far too much of it.

Keira faced Kalen on the front steps as the car disappeared down the street. For a moment neither spoke. Keira stared blindly past Kalen and he made no effort to start a conversation. And yet his silence wasn’t easy. She felt his anger.

“So it’s begun,” Sheikh Nuri said, eventually breaking the silence.

She wished she could say she didn’t know what he meant. She wished she were as naive as he’d accused her of being but Keira knew exactly what Kalen meant.

What had just happened on the front porch of her house was huge.

Sheikh Nuri had just publicly challenged her father. Sheikh Nuri had usurped her father’s authority. And Sheikh Nuri could, because he was third in line for the throne behind his brother and his two nephews.

Her father would be livid. Livid and humiliated.

Keira pressed a hand to her brow, pressing against the ache that had taken up residence there. She’d rejected her father. Accepted Kalen Nuri’s protection. In minutes she’d turned all their lives upside down.

“I should call my father,” she said, voice husky, goose bumps covering her arms.

“I’m certain he’s already heard.”

She gave her head a faint shake. “I should at least try to talk to him.”

Kalen Nuri took a step toward her, closing the distance between them. He stared at her so long and hard that she shivered and looked away.

“He is my father, after all,” she added defensively.

“And what will your call achieve?”

Keira couldn’t answer and Kalen took her chin in his hand, tilted her face up to his. “What do you think you’ll do?” he repeated his question impatiently. “If your father intended to listen to you, to care about your opinion, to care about your needs, he would have listened to you already.”

She hated what he was saying, hated that he was right and she tried to pull away but Kalen wasn’t about to let her go.

“Your father was going to use you to further his own political ambitions,” he added roughly, his fingers too hard on her jaw, his tone too sharp. “To a man like your father you are merely an object, a possession to be used, bartered, traded.”

Each word was worse. Each word bit and stung. “But you’re the same, aren’t you, Sheikh Nuri?” Her throat was swelling closed and she had to force each syllable and sound out. “You’re using me, too. You’re using me to get back at my father. At least be man enough to admit it.”

She heard his soft hiss at her insult. His touch changed, shifted, fingers extending from her chin to her jaw, his fingers briefly caressing the width of her jawbone.

“You lack a Barakan woman’s good sense and quiet tongue,” he said, his thumb slowly sweeping beneath the edge of her jaw, stirring the nerves in the most tender of skin.

Her skin flamed, nerves tightening at the maddening touch. “I’m not Barakan.”

“Yet I’m beginning to think you deserve a Barakan husband. One who would teach you humility and a modicum of self-control.”

She ground her teeth, temper flashing in her eyes. “Hate to disappoint you, Sheikh Nuri, but some things can’t be taught.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, laeela. Anything can be taught. It just takes the right teacher.” A flicker of dark emotion shone in his eyes. “And you would need not just a good teacher, but a patient teacher.”

A hot stinging fizz went through her veins, so hot, so intense that her lips parted on a silent gasp of tangled pleasure and pain.

He made her feel.

He made her feel far too much. “I don’t want a man.” She felt wild, desperate. She’d had so many feelings for Kalen Nuri all those years ago and then everything bad happened, everything had come unglued. “I never want a man.”

“You will when you meet the right man.”

“There is no right man.”

He gave her a long, level look. “There used to be,” he said, tone pitched low, hinting at intimacy and she stiffened.

“Never.”

“There was. Once.” His eyes narrowed, black lashes concealing his expression. “Many, many years ago.”

She closed her eyes, hiding her alarm. He was bluffing. He knew nothing.

Kalen’s thumb caressed her skin, lightly, teasingly stroking from chin to the small hollow beneath her earlobe. “There is always a right man. There is always the one man that can turn a girl into a woman—”

Panting, Keira pulled away, tearing herself from his touch, his words, tearing away the web he was weaving.

This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening. She headed into the house, trying to put fresh distance between them and yet Sheikh Nuri followed immediately. She heard the front door shut, the lock turn. They were alone in her house.

Odd.

Heartbreaking.

And for a moment Keira held her breath, nerves taut, senses too alive. “Pack a suitcase,” Kalen said, meeting her in the hall, just outside her bedroom door. He looked so incongruous in her small, snug house with the bright yellow painted walls and the rich oak trim. It was a sunny house. A happy house. “We need to leave soon.”

Pack. Leave. He was frightening her and nervously she reached up, smoothed tendrils of hair back, combing her long dark ponytail, the ebony strands falling over her shoulder. “I can’t just leave. I have a job, responsibilities—”

“You chose me, remember?”

His soft question silenced her. She didn’t know what to say. Nothing came to mind. Nothing about this was logical and logic was her cornerstone, her foundation. Logic was how she functioned. Logic. Order. Structure.

In her bedroom she grabbed at clothes, pulling shirts and blouses, skirts and slacks from hangers. Everything went into her suitcase, shoes and belts and underwear, too.

She emerged ten minutes later, silent. He nodded at her suitcase, the purse in her hand, the coat over her arm. “Good. Let’s go.”

In the back of his car she sat as far from him as possible. She stared at a point beyond the car window. Minutes passed. Nothing was said but clearly the driver was heading somewhere. There was a definite destination in mind.

“Where are we going?” she asked, forcing herself to speak.

“London.”

“London?”

“That big city in England.”

Years ago she’d had a crush on Kalen Nuri, had even imagined herself in love with him. Kalen Nuri had dominated every waking thought—never mind her dreams. Now she was horrified she’d wasted one thought on him, much less a single breath. “You do not amuse me.”

“Does any man amuse you?”

When she didn’t answer he laughed softly, and there was nothing remotely kind in his laughter. “You’re one of those man-haters, aren’t you?”

“I didn’t realize we’d become a species, Sheikh Nuri.”

He laughed again, even more unkindly than before. “It will be interesting having you in my protection.”

“I’ve changed my mind.”

“Too late. You’re in my car. In my care.”

“Stop the car.”

“And soon you will travel in my airplane.”

“I won’t—”

“You will, because you, Keira al-Issidri, cannot stop what you have started. It has begun. This. Us—”

“No.” Hysteria bubbled up, bubbling close to the surface. “I didn’t know what I was doing, I wasn’t thinking—”

“You knew at the time. You knew it was me, or them. You chose me.”

She could hardly breathe. Her chest constricted. Her lungs felt as though they were collapsing. Try another tactic, a little voice urged her, there must be another way to reach him.

She tried again. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate your concern, Sheikh Nuri, but I’m twenty-three, nearing twenty-four. I live in Dallas, am employed here in Dallas, and going to London isn’t possible.”

Kalen Nuri said nothing.

The car continued sailing along the freeway.

Keira felt her freedom ebb.

“You’re nearly as Western as I, Sheikh Nuri.” She attempted to reason with him, remind him of all that which they shared. “You’ve lived in London for at least fifteen years. You wouldn’t treat an English woman this way, would you?”

“I would. If she’d made a promise to me.”

“I made no promise!”

“But you did. You said my name, you asked for my help, and I heard you. I extended my protection to you.”

“I’m an adult, Kalen—”

“There you go. Kalen. You called to me in front of your house. You used my given name then just as you did now. Kalen, you said. Help me, Kalen.” Sheikh Nuri’s golden gaze narrowed, fixed on her, a curious mixture of sympathy and contempt. “If you’re an adult, Keira al-Issidri, you wouldn’t play games like a child.”

She exhaled in a slow stream, head spinning. “I don’t see this as a game.”

“Good. It’s not.”

He settled back on his seat as though he were finished. That the discussion was now closed, as if there was nothing left to be said. But there was plenty, Keira thought, plenty to still say, plenty to be decided. Like where he’d drop her off. And how he intended to get her car back to her.

“An adult,” she repeated more fiercely, staring at him pointedly. “And I don’t need looking after. Especially not by a man.”

That caught his attention. He turned his attention back to her. “By a man,” he repeated softly, the words echoing between them. “Just what did happen to turn you off men so completely, Miss al-Issidri?”

She forced herself to meet his gaze and his expression was thoughtful, thick black lashes fringing intelligent golden eyes. Keira felt the oddest curl in her belly, a flutter of feeling that made everything inside her tense. “Nothing happened.”

“Interesting.”

She saw the tug of a smile at his firm lips. He had a mouth that was sensual, the lower lip fuller than the upper, and when he smiled mockingly as he did now, he looked as if he knew things that could bring a woman to her knees.

“You might be surprised to discover that there are good men out there,” he added, still smiling.

His smile inspired fear. He’d taken her father on, and now he was challenging her.

He enjoyed power. Relished control. Keira blinked a little, overwhelmed by the differences between them.

Kalen might live in London, might have left Baraka well over a decade ago, and perhaps his clothes were gorgeous Italian designs, and his accent British old school, but he was still a sheikh, and not just any sheikh, but one of the richest, most influential men in the world.

His lashes lifted, his golden gaze met hers, holding her captive. He was looking at her as though she were naked, his eyes baring her, not sexually, but emotionally. He was seeing what she didn’t want seen. He was seeing the shadows in her, the places of anger and defiance, and heat seeped through her. A scorching heat that started in her belly and moved to her breasts, her neck, every inch of skin.

She felt as if she were fighting for her life now. “I’m trying to be practical, Sheikh Nuri.”

“Practical, how?”

“It’s necessary I establish my independence from my father, that I demonstrate in his eyes, that I am not going to marry whomever he wants, just because he wants.”

“Your father doesn’t care.”

“Nor do you.”

Her flash of resentment resulted in a low rough laugh that rumbled from his chest. “So much fire, laeela, so much defiance. But unlike your father, I could grow to want someone like you.”

CHAPTER THREE

THE jet took off an hour before midnight. It was Kalen Nuri’s private jet, a brand-new aircraft waiting at the executive terminal on the outskirts of Fort Worth.

Sheikh Nuri had her shown to the private bedroom in the back even though the last thing Keira wanted to do was sleep. But later, after reaching cruising altitude, Keira did manage to stretch out on the bed and close her eyes.

And then she was being woken, informed by the flight attendant on board that they were making the final approach into the business airport adjacent to Heathrow.

On the ground, the jet taxied to the terminal. Disembarking took minutes and as the morning sun shone warmly overhead, they slipped into a private car, traveling in silence to Sheikh Nuri’s home in Kensington Gardens.

“You’ve been exceptionally quiet,” Kalen said, as the car wound through the old elegant neighborhood, a neighborhood of grand Victorian mansions, all gleaming creamy-white in the pure morning light.

“What’s there for me to say?” She couldn’t even bring herself to look at him. He’d forced her here, forced her to come to London as surely as her father’s men would have forced her to return to Baraka.

“You’ll grow to enjoy the lifestyle.”

Her head snapped around, eyebrows lowering. “Please tell me you’re kidding.”

“No.” The car stopped before a tall house with a glossy black door, iron railings at tall paned windows, the symmetry of the house more striking for the perfect boxwood topiaries framing the entrance.

He stepped out. The front door of the house opened, a butler appeared on the front step even as the uniformed chauffeur moved around to the side of the car to assist them.

“Welcome to your future,” Kalen said, upper lip curling with dark humor. Sheikh Nuri’s face was just as she’d always remembered—hard, perfectly symmetrical, classically beautiful—like a marble statue. His beauty was that precise. His control was that absolute.

“My future?” she repeated.

His lip curled further, emphasizing his harsh beauty. “Your life with me.”

For a moment Keira could only stare at him, finding it all too incredible, too implausible for her to believe.

She, who’d been infatuated with Sheikh Nuri for so long, was in his protection.

She, Keira Gordon, was to live with the one man she’d most admired. The man she, as a schoolgirl, had secretly, passionately adored.

Inside the house, Keira paced her bedroom suite like a caged tiger.

Kalen’s house. Kalen’s guest bedroom. Kalen’s proximity would kill her.

She still felt so hopelessly attracted to him, and she shouldn’t. He might be physically beautiful but he was hard, arrogant, insensitive.

He was using her, too, using her to get to her father and yet instead of feeling contempt for him, she felt…curiosity. Desire.

She wanted contact.

Wanted warmth and nearness, wanted skin.

She stopped pacing long enough to open a closet and look inside. Empty.

Bureau drawers, empty.

Good.

Although the room was masculine, she was afraid she might be sharing another woman’s bedroom, and she couldn’t do that. She’d never be able to share Kalen Nuri with anyone. Funny how some things were so damn clear.

Keira sat down on the arm of an upholstered chair. So this was her room. A high white ceiling. Mushroom painted walls. The velvet headboard a dark fern-green. Two small dressers flanked the bed—both dressers mirrored—and the large pillows butting against the headboard were various shades of moss, fern and forest velvet.

Kalen’s house, she silently repeated. Kalen’s guest room.

Kalen.

Seven years ago she’d gone to the party to see him. Malik Nuri might be the older brother and heir to the throne, but Kalen was the Nuri all the girls were crazy about.

Kalen was the one to get.

Kalen wasn’t narrow, political, boring. Kalen lived in London, traveled extensively, spent money freely, spoiling friends…including his women.

All the good girls among the Atiq upper class fantasized about being Kalen’s woman. What it would mean. What life would be like.

And it wasn’t even his money the girls liked. It was his attitude.

His arrogance. His cynicism. His physical beauty. For he was beautiful. Beautiful but forbidden. In Baraka it was a woman’s duty to remain pure, untouched, until her marriage. Women tended to marry young to protect their name and the family reputation. But when Kalen Nuri walked into a room, and when Kalen Nuri looked at a girl—woman—even if she was wearing a jellaba, even if only her eyes were showing—he looked at her as though he owned her. Owned her heart, mind, body and soul.

He was a magician. A sorcerer.

He was mystery and danger, sensuality and power. The ultimate fantasy.

He’d been her fantasy, too.

Which is why she’d snuck out, gone with a couple of the other girls, wilder girls, girls with parents less restrictive, less conservative than her father to the party hosted in Kalen Nuri’s honor.

The party was supposedly segregated, as well as chaperoned. Turned out it was neither.

Neither, Keira repeated silently, wearily, unable to escape the shadows and shame of the poor decision she had made.

She’d never talked about it. Who would she tell? Her liberal intellectual mother? Her orthodox political father?

There had been no one to talk to, no one to turn to for comfort or advice. And she’d done the only thing she could—she’d moved forward, moved on, moved emotionally and physically, leaving Baraka never to return, eventually leaving England to begin university studies in the States.

A knock sounded at the locked bedroom door. Keira opened the door. A housemaid stood in the hall, holding a garment bag and assorted shopping bags from several of London’s most exclusive jewelry boutiques.

“From His Excellency,” the maid said, dropping a small curtsey.

A curtsey. For her. Keira would have laughed if she weren’t so tired.

“Would you like me to unpack for you, miss?” The house maid offered, carrying the shopping bags into the room.

“No, thank you. I can manage,” Keira answered with an uneasy glance at the collection of expensive shopping bags weighting down the maid’s arms. It looked as if a fortune had been spent in less than an hour…

“What are those for?” she asked as the maid hung the garment bag in the closet and then placed the remaining bags on the bed.

“You, miss. His Excellency made calls and then sent the driver around to the shops to collect the items.”

“I don’t understand.”

“They’re gifts, miss. Presents. His Excellency does this for all his women.” The maid smiled cheerfully. “You’re very lucky, aren’t you?”

Keira’s mouth opened and closed without making a sound. Lucky? Is that what she was?

She half turned, gazed at the handsome bedroom before looking at the maid. “Does he have many women?”

The maid suddenly flushed bright red. “Forgive me, miss. I meant nothing—”

“It’s fine.” Keira gestured reassurance. “Thank you.”

The housemaid moved to the door. “If you need anything, just ring. You’ve only to ask.”

“And Sheikh Nuri? Is he still here…?”

“No, miss, he’s gone for the day. But he will be back for dinner.”

“I see.”

“Dinner will be served at seven. His Excellency dresses for dinner.”

“How nice,” Keira drawled, more than a little irritated. Kalen had uprooted her, dumped her at his London house, headed off for work or wherever it is he’d gone and was already leaving messages with the maid.

The girl bobbed her head and slipped out the door, closing it quietly behind her.

Keira went to the closet, looked at the garment bag hanging on the rod and then carefully closed the closet door. Just as carefully she moved the shopping bags from her bed.

She wasn’t his woman. She didn’t want his gifts.

At six-thirty Keira bathed and dressed for dinner. Wrapped in a lettuce-green bath towel, Keira thumbed through her own clothes she’d unpacked earlier and hung in the closet. She’d brought a mishmash of colors and styles and certainly nothing that could be viewed as elegant.

Good.

She’d dress for dinner. She’d just dress like an American woman. Independent. Successful. And free.

Sliding into a pair of old Levi’s jeans, Keira drew on a gray pin-striped blouse, the starchy blouse normally worn to work with a conservative suit, but now she let the tail of the shirt hang out, left the collar unbuttoned and twisted her long hair into a half-hazard knot at the back of her head.

No jewelry.

A bit of makeup.

Flat leather loafers.

And she was good to go.

Keira appeared in the dining room at seven on the dot. Kalen was already there, and the maid was right. He had dressed for dinner. Kalen wore black trousers, a black dinner jacket and a white dress shirt which highlighted his golden complexion, his thick black hair, and the amber of his eyes.

Handsome, she thought, drinking him in. He was by far the most handsome man she’d ever met and living in Texas, working for an international company, she’d met a lot of good-looking men.

“You look…” and Sheikh Nuri’s voice drifted off as his gaze swept her “…lovely.”

She flushed, assailed by guilt. He’d made an effort where clearly she’d made none.

But had she asked to come to London? Had she asked for any of this?

“Thank you,” she answered, smiling serenely, successfully hiding her self-doubts. Over the years she’d become very, very good at hiding everything real and true. Self-preservation, she thought, allowing Kalen to seat her at the table.

“Blue’s a good color for you,” he commented, taking a seat opposite her.

“I’m not wearing blue,” she said, glancing down at the thin gray stripes of her blouse. And then she saw her jeans and she understood. “Ah, the Levi’s.”

“Very chic.”

“You did tell the maid to have me dress casually, didn’t you?”

His dark eyebrows arched, a challenging light lit his amber eyes. “Is that what she told you?”

“I’m not sure. I didn’t understand anything after the His-Excellency-Has-Gone-Out-You-Must-Wait-Here bit.”

Kalen’s forehead furrowed. “I have a job, laeela. Things to do.”

“And I have a job, too. I should be in Dallas working, doing what I need to do, not sitting in a bedroom of your house waiting for you to come home!”

“Things have changed. You must adjust.”

She had to adjust? Why was she the one who always had to compromise? Sacrifice? Why was she the one who had to give, adjust, change? “I don’t want to adjust. I liked my life. I liked my work—”

“Being a cheerleader?”

“You know I worked for Sanford Gas. You know I had a responsible position and I was good.” She sat stiffly at the table, temper so hot she thought she might explode. “Too good to just give it all up because you said so.”

“So what did you do this afternoon?” he asked, leaning forward to fill their wineglasses.

“Nothing.”

“It doesn’t have to be nothing. You can rent movies on satellite, watch TV, chat with friends—”

“That’s empty activity. I need more.”

“Then improve your brain. Read. I have an extensive library here, and you’re free to order books off the Internet.”

“Reading is what I do at night before bed. It’s not what I do all day.” Keira’s frustration grew. “Sheikh Nuri, I didn’t go to college to play a pampered princess.”

“You’re angry that I haven’t paid you more attention.”

She laughed out loud even as she blushed. “I don’t even know you! The idea that I could need you—depend on you—is amusing, but untrue.”

“You speak boldly for a twenty-three-year-old girl.”

“Woman.” Her body crackled with tension and it was all she could do to keep her seat. “I’m a woman, and I’ve grown up with men like you, Sheikh Nuri. Unlike the models and actresses you meet, I don’t need your wealth, your notoriety, or your connections.”

“My mistress has a sharp tongue tonight.”

Her face flamed hotter, her fingers curled around the edge of her chair seat. “I’m not really your mistress. We both know that.”

Kalen’s eyebrows furrowed. He shot a curious glance around the elegant dining room fragrant with the centerpiece of white orchids and lilies. “Am I missing something, laeela? Are you not here, in my home? Are you not taken care of—every need and wish accommodated? Have I not offered you my complete protection?”

She went hot and cold, his word, the endearment laeela, once again burning her from the inside out. Laeela was such an intimate endearment from a Barakan man and Kalen wasn’t the sort of man to flirt lightly. He was serious.

Sheikh Nuri lazily watched Keira who sat tall and rigid across the table from him. Her long dark hair had been pinned back and her cheeks, so ashen last night, glowed hot-pink now.

A high-strung filly, he thought, she was young, sensitive, nervous.

He took a sip from his wine goblet, the robust red filling his mouth, warming his taste buds.

Keira merely fidgeted with her wine. She’d barely touched it.

He should touch her.

He studied her flushed face. Last night she’d been pale like porcelain, a creamy alabaster, but tonight she burned. She glowed. Her dark blue eyes shone, her cheeks flushed a hot feverish pink.

She needed a firm hand. She could use a calming hand.

How convenient. He had two.

“You don’t have to be afraid,” he said, speaking almost gently, reassuringly. “I will always treat you well.”

“I’m not afraid,” she answered tersely, and yet when she looked up at him she was all wide blue eyes and apprehension.

No, he thought, she wasn’t afraid. She was terrified.

She knew what could happen. She knew just as he did that the tension between them wasn’t the usual garden variety of interest. What simmered between them was deep, intense, a heat and interest dating back years…back to when she was just a schoolgirl.

“And you don’t have to worry about me,” she added, her voice strained, rough. She reached up to push away an inky tendril that had slipped free. “I’m fine.”

“Hamdullah,” he answered. Thanks be to God.

Tears scratched at Keira’s throat, the back of her eyes. Until yesterday she hadn’t thought she’d ever see him again and yet here she was, a day later, in his home, in his care. It was incredible, impossible, unfathomable. Just looking at him made everything collide and explode inside her, emotions hot and sharp like New Year’s fireworks.

Hamdullah. The word echoed in her head and she hurt. No one else made her feel so tense, so nervous, so desperate for more. No one else made her want to throw herself into a river of ice water. No one else…

Hamdullah.

“And you?” she asked formally, continuing the ritual greetings. “How are you?”

“Very well, Miss al-Issidri. Thank you.”

“But it’s Gordon, Sheikh Nuri, not al-Issidri. I’ve never used my father’s name.”

“You did until you were seven.”

“How did you know that?”

“I know things that would surprise even you.”

She regarded him warily. His eyes were gold, so gold, warmer than she remembered. There was so much about him familiar and even more that wasn’t. Was it age? Time? Experience?

Again she glanced at him, a surreptitious glance beneath heavy lashes, seeing again the broad forehead, his long, strong nose, the very square chin which had fascinated her endlessly as a teenager.

Was it possible she’d fallen in love with an image—a face—and not the man?

“Breathe,” he said, his gaze never leaving her face.

“I am.” But her voice came out too high and thin and she couldn’t look at him anymore.

He leaned across the table, an arm extending toward her, his right hand up, palm open. “Give me your hand.”

She looked at his hand, the broad palm, the skin lighter than the back of his hand, deep lines etched into the skin and she flashed back to last night, the way he’d touched her on her front porch. Kalen’s touch had been like an electrical storm. So hot and bright and fierce. He’d made her feel. And she’d felt absolutely everything.

“Your hand,” he repeated softly, commandingly.

She gave her head a half-shake. “Never.”

Her gaze slowly traveled up, from the crisp white collar of his shirt, over his bronze columned throat, past his full firm lips to his eyes which looked at her with mockery, challenge, even disdain. Pointedly she held his gaze. “You’re not safe.”

For a split second he remained expressionless and then his lips curved. His eyes creased. “That just might be the most intelligent thing I’ve heard you say.”

CHAPTER FOUR

“SO WHAT did you think of my gifts?” Kalen asked, lazily switching topics as he leaned forward to top off their wine goblets.

He moved so easily, gracefully, all fluid motion and for a moment she lost concentration, thinking he’d be equally at home on a pony playing polo, astride a camel, pouring mint tea in his desert kasbah.

“Did you like the jewelry?” He added, “I’d hoped you might wear one of the diamond bangles tonight.”

Diamond bangles. Weren’t the two words incongruous? “I actually didn’t open any of the shopping bags.”

“No?”

“I don’t need, or wear, expensive jewelry.”

His lashes dropped over his eyes. “You like cheap jewelry?”

“If I want jewelry, I buy my own.”

“You’re rejecting my gifts?”

She heard his tone harden, his voice suddenly reminding her of crushed velvet over steel. “I am not a woman that accepts gifts from strangers—”

“Be careful, laeela, before you insult me.”

His tone had dropped even lower, husky like whiskey, and she felt a light finger trail her spine, sweeping nerves awake. “I’ve no desire to insult you, Sheikh Nuri—”

“Kalen. It’s Kalen. After all, you want something, remember?”

Heat surged to her cheeks and she sat tall, hands clasped tightly in her lap. “The sooner I return to Texas, the better.”

“Return?”

His soft inflection conveyed more than words could. She could see them, two warring parties, and she’d just put his back in the corner. “We’ve made a point. Shown my father that he can’t control me—”

“Your father remains a threat.”

“To whom? You? Or me? Because I think you’re not worried about me.”

“Sidi Abizhaid would never tolerate this kind of frank talk, laeela. You would never be permitted to be so confrontational. You would never be permitted to speak publicly, either.”

A lump swelled in her throat, large, restrictive. “What do you want from me, Kalen? Tell me so I understand.”

“You know what I want. I want you here, with me.”

“No. There’s more to it than that. This has to do with my father, not me, and I need to understand what he has done. Tell me how a man who has spent his life serving the Nuri family can be considered a threat.”

“It’s not a topic for discussion.”

“Why not? Because I’m a woman?”

Kalen didn’t contradict her. Instead he gazed at her from across the gleaming walnut table set with the finest of china and crystal, white taper candles flickering in tall silver candelabras. A profusion of white orchids and lilies spilled from a low round centerpiece.

His silence was a torture and she leaned forward, trying to make him understand. “This is my father, my family, you call a threat. I have every right to know.”

“You should spend more time eating and less time arguing.”

She shook her head, livid. “You are as bad as them, Kalen. No, make that worse. You don’t live in Baraka, you live in England, and you do not dress in robes and head cloths but in Italian suits, but beneath the suit and fine shirts you are just as restrictive, just as rigid and condescending.”

He said nothing, his expression blank and she drew a quick, short breath. “I want to go home, Kalen.” She hated feeling so vulnerable, had worked hard to protect herself from feeling this way. Vulnerable was the one thing she couldn’t be. Years ago she’d sworn she’d never let anyone hurt her again.

And still he studied her, coolly, dispassionately. He wasn’t moved, she thought. He felt nothing. And daggers of pain cut into her heart. “Kalen, hear me. I need to go home. I need my life back.” She’d worked so hard to protect herself from this lost feeling, the sense of confusion that came from being torn between parents, homes, cultures, identities. “My life was good for me.”

He shifted in his chair, leaning forward, arms folding on the table edge. “Your new life here will be good, too.”

“No.”

“It is a change, yes, but it will also be good.”

“But this isn’t my life! This is yours—”

“And yours. Now.” He studied her a long moment and when he spoke next, his tone was gentle. “You need to accept that your life has changed. Everything has changed. Permanently.”

Accept that overnight she’d been forced from her home, into this odd world where she belonged to a man she knew only from her childhood? It was ridiculous. Preposterous. She wasn’t a medieval bride.

“No.” Hands shaking, legs feeling like brittle strands of ice, Keira pushed away from the table. “No. You’re wrong.” Her body was cold and yet her eyes burned hot, gritty, and she blinked, refusing to let one tear form or fall. “You’re wrong, Kalen Nuri, about everything.”

In her bedroom Keira curled up in one of the overstuffed armchairs and buried her face in the crook of her arm. She wasn’t staying here. She couldn’t stay here. What was she supposed to do here?

The panic rose, filling her, and her eyes felt as if they were dusted with sand but she couldn’t cry.

What had happened in Baraka to create such friction between Kalen and her father? And what made Ahmed Abizhaid so dangerous that Kalen refused to see her family and Ahmed’s join in marriage?

And was her father really the problem or could the problem be Kalen himself?

She knew her father had never liked the youngest Nuri prince. And yet because of his loyalty to the Sultan, her father had never, could never, voice his suspicion aloud, but from the reports she’d once found on her father’s desk she knew her father kept Kalen Nuri under surveillance.

This was more than personal, she thought. This was bigger than that. So what was it really about?

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