‘Stay,’ she blurted.

It stunned him into silence.

‘I’ll hire you privately … to stay … here.’

With me, she couldn’t quite bring herself to say.

Tiny lines appeared at the corners of both his eyes. ‘I can’t, Sera.’

She kicked up her chin. ‘I’m not worth breaking a few rules for?’

‘I’m not … I can’t …’ Breath hissed out of him. ‘I don’t want to hurt you any more than I already have, Sera.’

Just when she’d felt sure her newfound courage would be rewarded. Did the universe not realise how difficult it was for her to open herself up like this? But having started she couldn’t stop. Too much rode on it.

‘Then what’s stopping you? Because it’s not your job?’

‘I think I’m stopping me, Sera,’ he murmured.

It was the pain that got her attention; it shadowed his gaze and thickened his voice. His leaving would hurt her, but staying was hurting him. Somehow. She didn’t want to hurt him. But she had to understand. And she would never forgive herself if she didn’t try just one last time.

‘Some things are more important than rules, Brad. Aren’t they?’

Bodyguard…to Bridegroom?

Nikki Logan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

NIKKI LOGAN lives on the edge of a string of wetlands in Western Australia, with her partner and a menagerie of animals. She writes captivating nature-based stories full of romance in descriptive natural environments. She believes the danger and richness of wild places perfectly mirror the passion and risk of falling in love.

She loves to hear from readers via www.nikkilogan.com.au or through social media. Find her on Twitter: @ReadNikkiLogan and Facebook: NikkiLoganAuthor

For Margaret Kruger

‘White, no sugar, half a cup.’

And for the staff—and wildlife— of Al Maha Desert Resort who offered me such a transformative experience.

Contents

Cover

Introduction

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

EPILOGUE

Extract

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

IT TOOK BRAD KRUGER all of three seconds to sift through the faces in the crowd of passengers disembarking from the pointy end of the flight from London and identify the one he needed. First, he filtered out anyone with a Y chromosome, then the women over forty or under eighteen, then the impeccably dressed locals returning to the pricey desert emirate of Umm Khoreem. That left only three priority passengers that could be his client and only one of them had her long hair out and flowing gloriously over bare shoulders.

There she was...codename ‘Aspirin’—for the headache he was going to have for the next month.

Of all the gin joints in all the towns...

Brad glanced along the long row of immigration staff in their pristine robes and watched as Seraphina Blaise was subtly corralled to the entrance of a long, winding and empty queue that casually eased her away from the one filled with locals and towards a counter with double the staff. As she negotiated the maze of retractable belts, she seemed oblivious to the fact she’d just been selected for special immigration attention.

She might have left a British Christmas all rugged up, but somewhere over the Baltic she’d pared back into something more suited to a desert one—except that apparently she’d dressed for the heat rather than for the culture.

‘Here we go...’ Brad muttered under his breath, pushing off the ornately carved pillar he’d been leaning against and triangulating a course to bring him as close as possible to the official who’d flagged her.

Her inadequate dress had probably caught Immigration’s attention, but it was her arrest record that would likely keep it. Umm Khoreem issued visas on arrival for those who were just visiting. No visa, no entry; and people had been refused entry into the security-conscious state on much less than bad fashion choices and a fresh conviction.

A carefully blank official took her passport as Brad drew closer on the Umm Khoreem side of the immigration barrier, asked a few questions, frowned at her answers, and spent the next few minutes reading various pages on his touch screen while the leggy brunette shuffled awkwardly before him. She glanced around to pass the time, and Brad saw the moment she finally registered that she’d ended up in a queue for one while everyone else was being whisked through further along.

Her rounded eyes swung back to the official.

Yep. Just you, love...

Her whole body changed then. She lost the casual lightness with which she’d practically bounced along the switchback lanes, her bare shoulders sagged and her spine ratcheted straight. Remembering her last run-in with authorities perhaps...

Brad caught the eye of one of the other immigration staff, who took his time sauntering over but bowed his cloaked head and listened as Brad briskly murmured his name, credentials and purpose. The man nodded and returned to his post, then picked up the telephone. At the next aisle, the first immigration officer answered, flicking his eyes up to his colleague and then over to where Brad now stood before returning his gaze to the woman in front of him. The official barely acknowledged him, but barely was all he needed.

Whatever happened from now he’d just insinuated himself within the process.

And he could do a much better job from within than from without.

The official requested her bags and a customs officer set about a professional but laborious inspection more designed to buy them time to run a series of immigration checks than to fulfil any particular fascination with the contents of her designer luggage. When the computer had spat back everything they needed, the men stepped out from behind their barrier and gestured for her to follow them. Her feet remained fixed to the spot and she glanced around for someone—anyone—to come to her aid. No one did. After a moment, the larger of the two men returned the few paces to her side and gestured, not unkindly, towards the interview room.

Perhaps it was the ‘please’ that Brad saw on his lips in English that got her feet moving. Or perhaps it was the intractable hand at her back that stopped short of actually touching her. Either way the official achieved his aim, and Seraphina Blaise took the first careful steps behind one official while the second flanked her from behind. Just before they left the arrivals area, the man to the rear glanced his way and jerked his head just once in permission.

Brad moved immediately.

* * *

Two was bad enough, now there were three. As dark and neutral as the other officials but this one wasn’t in the traditional robe and headdress of his people. He looked more like a dark-suited chauffeur. Or a CIA agent. Or a chauffeur for the CIA.

All three men stood on the other side of the soundproof glass of her containment room talking about her but not to her. The immaculately dressed officials listened attentively—one of them even smiled, which had to be a good sign except that he followed it up with a firm and distinctly suspicious glare in her direction. The chauffeur talked some more, his hands gesticulating wildly.

‘Is there a problem?’ she asked aloud, with more confidence than she felt, counting on the soundproofing being one-way. Only the chauffeur bothered to look up for the briefest glance before his attention returned to the airport officials and their intense conversation.

This wasn’t her first run-in with authorities, but it was her first in such a conservative country where everything was done so differently from Britain. Still, the basic rule applied here as it did everywhere in life...

Show no fear.

But do it politely.

‘Perhaps we could please begin?’ she called out carefully, as though the only part of this bothering her were the delay. ‘I have a service waiting to collect me.’

She threw in a winning smile for good measure. Hopefully, it would temper the thump-thump of her heart clearly audible in her voice. But the smile was wasted as the rapid, under-their-breath discussion continued without her. Then the largest of the officials shook the chauffeur’s hand and crossed to the table where her documents lay spread out. He flipped her passport open and stamped it with the visa, then initialled it and passed it to him.

She jumped as the glass between the spaces suddenly snapped to opaque, then again a moment later, when the door to her half of the room was flung open and the chauffeur stood there, her bag in one fist and her documentation clenched in the other.

‘Welcome to Umm Khoreem,’ he said, with no other explanation or apology, wedging the door open.

He might have shared the same tan skin and dark hair as the other officials, but his accent wasn’t Arabic. She stared at him, her feet still nailed to the floor as he spelled it out in clearer terms.

‘You are free to leave.’

‘That’s it?’ Her passion for natural justice started to bubble. ‘Why was I detained in the first place?’

She had a fairly good idea—those few hours in a disguised medical research lab north of London were going to shadow her forever—but she just wanted to hear him say it. Plus, she wanted to narrow down his accent. But he wasn’t in the chatty mood, it seemed; he slid his sunglasses on, turned and walked away from her with her suitcase. And her passport.

She hurried after him. ‘Can I please have my—?’

‘Keep walking, Ms Blaise,’ he gritted, nodding towards the distant glass exit. ‘You’re not legally in the country until we get past that door up ahead.’

His tortured vowels gave her an answer—Australian—and the way he practically barked at her made her reassess him as airport security or some kind of translator. The other officials might have been obstructing her entrance but they were nothing but painfully and professionally courteous. He might have facilitated her release but he was curt and grumpy.

So, if he wasn’t airport staff then who was he? Why should she follow a random stranger down some long dark corridor?

Though she had little choice as he marched off with all her worldly goods.

‘Sorry, what just happened?’ she puffed, hurrying up beside him as he strode along the passageway. Other than, clearly, she was almost refused an entry visa. ‘Why did they let me go, just like that?’

He didn’t deign to do more than angle his head slightly back as he answered. He certainly didn’t stop or even slow. ‘They had little option when the ruling Sheikh vouched for you.’

Her feet stumbled to a halt. ‘You’re a sheikh?’

His laugh ricocheted off the polished walls of the corridor. ‘Do I look like a sheikh?’

How would she know? Maybe they were all neat-bearded, square-jawed types. ‘Then how—?’

‘Sheikh Bakhsh Shakoor is my employer. I therefore spoke on his behalf.’

Oh, everything was starting to make more sense now. ‘And why exactly does Sheikh Whatsit care what happens to me?’

Or even know about it, come to think of it? It all happened so quickly. One minute she was happily arriving, the next she was unhappily interned.

‘You are a long-stay guest in his most prestigious resort. He would not be pleased to hear you had been detained on a technicality.’

A criminal charge wasn’t exactly nothing. That was why she’d declared it on her immigration form. Transparency and accountability and all that. But she was spending a fortune on her month at the Sheikh’s desert resort and being booted out of his country bound in red tape would obviously be an expensive outcome for the resort. And since he probably also owned the airport...

‘He has no idea what you just did, does he?’ she guessed.

‘The Sheikh does not have time for trivialities.’

Way to make a girl feel special... ‘So, you just got creative?’

His lips pressed closer together as he lifted her suitcase as though it were empty of designer contents and pushed it ahead of them through the official exit into the Umm Khoreem side of the airport.

To freedom.

Kind of.

‘I gave them a few assurances,’ he went on. ‘Nothing that should put a crimp in your sunbaking plans.’

Yep, he probably did think she’d come to bask under Umm Khoreem’s toasty winter sun. Rather than for the sanctuary—from life and from her least favourite time of year.

‘What kind of assurances?’

The pace he set across the polished stone of the airport terminal was almost hard to match, though it was fantastic to be moving her limbs again after nine hours on a crowded plane. She hurried after him as he wove in and out of the thick stream of passengers like a rally pro.

‘While you are within the fenced bounds of Al Saqr resort, you are a guest of the Sheikh,’ he said, back to her, ‘and his protection extends to you. Under those conditions they were happy to overlook your recent...crime...and grant you entry into Umm Khoreem.’

‘You make it sound like I was caught robbing a bank,’ she huffed.

‘You’d be surprised how much I know about you, Ms Blaise.’

She glanced up at him and tried to guess how serious he was about that. There wasn’t much to know. Her criminal record was empty of anything but a shiny new conviction for trespass. For defending those who could not defend themselves.

On balance, that was a pretty good trade-off.

‘Wow. Someone is a little judgey...’

It was all there in the frost in his tone and the grind of his jaw, but getting into a fight was not how she’d imagined starting her month-long exile. Then again, neither was being detained, and—once again—she reminded herself how foreign this culture was from her own.

‘The resort’s boundaries are massive,’ he said. ‘As long as you remain within them, you’ll be fine.’

Being managed irked her as much as it always did. ‘And what is to stop me from just taking my bag and disappearing into the glass and chrome of Kafr Falaj?’

She could see the tallest of the capital’s buildings from here.

His locomotive surge across the terminal came to an abrupt halt, and she almost crashed into him. Impenetrable black glass swung her way.

‘I am.’

Even without being able to see his eyes, she believed him. Her long legs might get her some distance in the short term but his hard build said he would easily best her on endurance. Plus she’d never been any good at running in sand.

‘I gave them my own word, too,’ he went on.

‘So, now I’m beholden to the Sheikh’s chauffeur as much as the Sheikh himself?’ she tested.

Coral lips thinned between the neatly trimmed beard and moustache. ‘I am not a chauffeur, Ms Blaise. I’m part of the royal protection detail.’

Was she supposed to be impressed that his title had the word ‘royal’ in it? Well, snap, buddy, she was celebrity royalty, and it had never done her any particular favours. Quite the opposite, really.

‘Which makes me your protection detail for the next month,’ he added blandly.

Immediately she regretted everything about the past fifteen minutes. It wasn’t this guy’s fault that she’d been dumb enough to be taken in by people she’d thought she could trust—a man she’d wanted to trust—or that it had all happened right before Christmas, a season she struggled with at the best of times. A forty-minute drive was one thing; the thought of spending the next four weeks butting heads with someone over baggage that wasn’t rightfully his did not appeal. She’d come out here to lie low—and to do the right thing by her father—not to stir up the locals.

But she was more proficient in nurturing chasms than bridging them.

‘Gosh, you drew the short straw,’ she joked. ‘Babysitting me for an entire month.’

She’d meant that to be self-deprecating, but she saw the word ‘babysit’ hit him as surely as the word ‘chauffeur’ had. His jaw clamped that tiny bit harder.

‘On the contrary,’ he gritted. ‘I drew anything but a short straw. You’ll understand when you see where I get to spend the next four weeks.’

She might be known for her questionable decision-making now and again but even she knew to back away from the edge, sometimes. And the stiff way that this man held his body told her that this was definitely one of those times. But retreating didn’t mean she had to scramble, so she took her time setting off as he headed for the airport’s exit and she swanned after him with as much grace as she could muster, even as the glass doors slid wide and the warm desert air slapped her full in the face.

* * *

Outside the window of Al Saqr’s luxury SUV the region’s capital, Kafr Falaj, whizzed past in all its expensive glory—a spectacular city that had sprung up out of the sand in just a couple of decades. A testament to man’s supremacy over nature.

Except that Sera preferred nature’s supremacy to mankind’s any day.

The travel website had told her it translated as ‘village of channels’, grown on the strength of the massive network of ancient irrigation conduits that rivalled the Roman aqueducts and that still funnelled water from underground aquifers and mountain foothills to the desert village’s thriving agriculture. A village that had quickly grown into a city. Thankfully, this was as close as she needed to get to Kafr Falaj and its over-abundance of foreigners—living there, working there, visiting there. Where they were headed, the handful of foreigners would be vastly spread out.

Studying the city had killed some time, then the emerging desert, and, in between, she’d studied him while he’d concentrated on the fast desert highway. The neat cut of his dark hair, the crisp edges of his suit collar, the clip of his dark beard so close it had to be a professional job, the curious scar cutting down into his left eyebrow. He hadn’t spoken since bundling her into the back seat of the massive SUV. She’d squeezed herself through the gap and into the front passenger seat before he’d even come around to his own door.

She hated the whole Miss Daisy thing. She never rode in the back if she didn’t have to.

‘So, we’re going to spend four weeks in each other’s company,’ Sera said, simply to crack the long silence as they drove out of the city. ‘What should I call you?’

‘What did you call your last protection?’ he finally grunted.

‘Russell it is, then,’ she said, smiling. ‘What are the odds?’

Dark sunglasses turned her way, just slightly. ‘You can call me Brad, Ms Blaise.’

‘You know that Blaise is a stage name, right? First and last name all in one. Like Madonna. Or Bono. Apparently that was a thing in the eighties.’

‘I assumed.’

But maybe he remembered the vast quantities of money that she was spending on this trip, because he spoke again and this time it was longer than three syllables. ‘Would you prefer a different surname?’

‘I’d prefer no surname at all, actually.’ Ha! Like father like daughter.

‘Okay. Seraphina.’

‘God no! That’s as much of a show name as Blaise. Pretty sure Dad’s publicist picked it.’ Forgetting that a little girl needed to live with it.

His lips pressed more tightly together within the architectural facial hair. ‘What do you call yourself?’

‘Sera.’

‘Fine. How about we set some ground rules, Sera?’

She’d had a gutful of alpha-male types. They could tie her in knots way too easily. ‘You know...you sure are shovey about how things need to be.’

‘Establishing parameters is necessary. I have a job to do.’

She opened the console fridge between them in the back seat and cracked the lid on one of several frosty bottles of water she found there. ‘I’m not sure how parameters are going to go with me. Didn’t you read my file? There must have been a note.’

From her father. Or Russell. Or the security detail before him. Her tutor before that. Any of her nannies. How far back did he want to go?

‘There were quite a number of notes, in fact.’

And he struck her as a man who would have read them all. ‘I do like to think of myself as noteworthy.’

Again, no reaction to speak of. Just that steady, impermeable, infuriating, Polaroid regard pointed firmly at the road ahead.

‘How about I set the first parameter, Brad?’ she went on.

‘Go ahead.’

‘What say whenever any one of us has something to say to the other we remove our sunglasses and make actual eye contact? Like polite people.’ She sweetened it with a smile.

Oh, well...start as you mean to continue.

The silence grew weighted—blue whale kind of weighted—but then Brad lowered his head just slightly, removed his glasses and folded them carefully into his breast pocket with the hand not steering, then turned back to meet her eyes square on. But his weren’t contrite, and the act didn’t weaken him. His regard burned into her as if he were scanning her DNA and, for just a moment, she wished she’d kept her big mouth shut.

Pale grey eyes—combined with his dark colouring they were stunning.

Yep, you’re going to need to leave those glasses on...

‘You do realise you’re textbook, I suppose?’ he said as he returned his focus to the traffic around them and she was able to breathe a little easier.

‘Textbook what?’

‘New client. Trying to control things.’

She glanced out at the eight lanes of pristine highway cutting south through the open desert on the outskirts of the city and thought about making light of it. But then something about the unfairness of his judgement pushed a few of her natural justice buttons.

‘Listen, Brad, I’ve lived my whole life in the care of professional people. A couple of jerks, most of them nice. Some of them completely lovely. But all of them were paid to be there, too. I don’t think it’s too much to ask for a little eye contact when we speak. Just so I know you’re real.’

He focused his grey gaze on the highway ahead—thinking, driving—until finally he came to some kind of conclusion. He swung his regard her way again, and a little puff of heat formed at her collar.

‘Parameter one,’ he agreed on a single nod before turning back to the road. ‘Courtesy in all its forms.’

Meaning...?

But, before she could finish the thought, he barrelled onwards while he changed lanes to tuck their black SUV in behind a huge silver one.

‘Parameter two,’ he continued mildly. ‘I’ll respect your right to independence if you’ll respect my responsibilities as your specialist security detail.’

And if his responsibilities and her rights failed to align...? ‘Is that your way of asking me to do whatever you say?’

‘It’s my way of asking you not to fight me just for the sake of it.’

Hmm. Maybe he had read her file.

‘Fair enough. Parameter three...’ Time to really lay down the law. ‘I’m your responsibility, but not your friend. You get to be annoyed but not disappointed if things don’t go how you’d like them to.’

Okay, so maybe that baggage wasn’t really his to be encumbered with but it couldn’t hurt to knock it on the head nice and early. The last thing she needed on her big desert time out was anything that reminded her of her father’s not-so-quiet disappointment.

‘I’m good with that. Very good, in fact. I’m not here for the conversation.’

She sat back straighter against the plush leather seat. ‘Any final comments?’

He considered. ‘Parameter four. If you need help—if you really need it—you come to me. No matter what else has gone down between now and then. I’ll manage whatever it is.’

There was that word again...

She’d been managed her whole life.

‘You really have a thing for control, don’t you?’ Which was tantamount to waving a red tea towel at the bull of her capricious nature.

He shrugged. ‘I’m paid to control our environment.’

Her environment, for the next four weeks.

‘Okay...’ Four weeks was a long time, she needed to lighten things up a bit. ‘Courtesy, cooperation, respect and emergency protocol. I think we’ve covered everything. Except maybe a safe word? I vote for “capsicum”.’

His dark brows folded. ‘Capsicum?’

‘You know...in case either of us needs out of this arrangement at any time?’

If she thought the muscles of his face capable of it, she would have pegged that tiny twist on the right of his mouth as a smile. Probably just gas. Except then he really blew her mind by making a joke.

Kind of.

‘What if you’re ordering at a restaurant and you say it?’ he queried, eyes fixed on the road ahead.

Her perception of him shifted just a little. In an upward direction.

‘I’ll call them peppers.’

‘And if you’re planting a garden?’

She matched his straight face. ‘In the deserts of Umm Khoreem?’

‘What if you’re picking out wall colours?’

She laid her hand on her heart. ‘I pledge to do no interior decorating until this month is up.’

His eyes returned to hers and—miracle of miracles—they were just a hint warmer than before. More bark of oak and less Thames in winter.

‘Okay.’ He nodded. ‘Capsicum it is.’

Why did it feel good to have had a small win over this man, even in jest? And exactly when had it started feeling a little bit like flirting?

CHAPTER TWO

THE MORE SHE SPOKE, the more comfortable Brad felt about the month ahead. This wasn’t some helpless princess who would flap her hands every time something didn’t go her way. She wasn’t the needy type. She might well end up being a pain in his butt but at least she wouldn’t be looking to him for any kind of rescue. As far as he could see, this gig was more about protecting her from herself.

Still, she was celebrity offspring and he was a pro and so, out of habit, his eyes scanned the many expensive vehicles keeping pace with them at two hundred clicks on the highway away from Kafr Falaj. Each one with extra dark window tinting that obscured its occupants. Once, that would have made him twitchy, but this was Umm Khoreem—there was an oil-rich sea between here and any of the conflict hotspots he’d ever been stationed. And he was here keeping an eye on some rock star’s kid, not enforcing sanctions or protecting UN personnel.

Those days were behind him.

He cracked his knuckles and slid his eyes back to his client. Sera had made quite a meal of studying the endless desert since the whole ground-rules conversation had limped to a civil halt between them, and her eyes were still fixed on the massive dunes in the distance as they sped along the Al Dhinn highway.

His mind flashed up the client sheet that her London-based security firm had provided.

Seraphina Blaise. Twenty-four years old, daughter of a middle-aged Goth frontman who’d been performing live for most of Brad’s own youth and still was today. A punishing and relentless schedule that kept his band, The Ravens, at the top of the charts whenever they released anything. Blaise didn’t really seem old enough to have an adult daughter, but who knew with these rock types—they started their careers young, or made their mistakes early. Whichever.

His daughter’s file was full of labels like ‘ardent’ and ‘rash’ but also ‘committed’ and ‘loyal’. And ‘damaged’. There were screenshots about her very public arrest earlier in the year mixed amongst older citations for volunteering, academic excellence and her talent as a photographer. So which was true? He had citations—a drawer full of them—and they didn’t necessarily make him a better person.

Maybe he’d be better off ignoring what was in Sera’s file and conducting his own assessment.

Her tongue might be a little sharp but it worked for a pretty switched-on brain; not everyone called him out as thoroughly as she had just now. It was hard not to respect a pre-emptive striker even if she was overly cranky. She’d just been detained by one of the toughest and touchiest governments in the world—he’d throw her a bone on that one.

She’d been carved by some kind of post-modern sculptor. A whole bunch of mismatched parts that came together into an intriguingly curious package. Everything about her was long. Her face, her jaw, her nose. Hair. Fingers. Legs. It reminded him of Al Saqr’s best Arab horses but still managed to be feminine. It shouldn’t really work together but somehow it did, leaving her more...striking than classically pretty. She didn’t accessorise with copious amounts of jewellery the way most of her flight had; other than the silver clasps on her flimsy blouse, the treacle-brown hair tumbling down over her bare shoulders was all the decoration she needed.

On the other hand, she’d swanned into a conservative country with her arms and shoulders bare. Ordinarily, he would have chalked that up to cultural ignorance, but in Sera... He found it hard to imagine that she hadn’t read up on the region she was visiting. It was almost as if she was challenging Umm Khoreem to a silent social debate.

Maybe she was. Her file was full of protests and causes and righteous indignation about one thing or another.

For the second time in forty minutes, Brad hit the indicator to change lanes, and he navigated the SUV around and under the highway to reach the start of Al Saqr’s access road. He let the massive vehicle own the road; when the resort was as exclusive and private as Al Saqr, oncoming traffic was rarely an issue.

Sera sat up straighter to see what was ahead. The composed woman he’d seen at the airport was morphing, with every stretch of her long neck, into a different creature. A more excited, engaged, relaxed woman.

Or maybe the desert was just wielding its subtle magic already. It was good like that.

‘Still fifteen minutes,’ Brad murmured, and she slumped back into her seat like an impatient teen. He forced himself not to smile. ‘Is this your first desert?’

‘Not counting ones I’ve flown over? Yes.’

‘Whatever you’re expecting,’ he murmured, ‘you’re wrong.’

Her eyebrows raised, but she didn’t bite. She peered, instead, out the front of the vehicle at the vast...nothing...that was ahead of them.

Five minutes later, he pulled to a halt at Al Saqr’s armed boundary checkpoint. Per the regulations, the guard came out and eyeballed the whole vehicle—including the empty back seats—checking Sera’s name off the sparse guest register before waving them through the raised boom gate. In his periphery, Sera eyed the massive mesh fences stretching out in both directions as far as she could see and the casual way the guard’s high-powered weapon was slung over his shoulder. For the first time, her confidence seemed to wobble. Just a little.

‘Do you get much trouble out here?’

‘The fences are to protect the wildlife,’ he reassured. Though, in truth, they went a long way to making his job easier given the only people allowed past Al Saqr’s checkpoint were registered guests, staff and suppliers. That lessened his field of professional concern from everyone on the Arabian Peninsula to just a comparative handful.

Although something told him that Sera, herself, would be dominating his field of concern for the next few weeks of his life.

That elegant neck started craning again as they left the asphalt and hit the compacted road gouged through the desert. Around them, the geometric shapes carved by wind into the sand and the occasional fire bush dominated. But as they crested a high dune she got her first glimpse of the resort far ahead, nestled in the middle of an enormous expanse of interlocking, golden blonde sand dunes.

Like the oasis it functionally was.

‘It’s gorgeous,’ Sera breathed.

Yeah, it was. The resort stretched like a jewelled tiara along the top edge of a massive sand ridge.

Not that the desert needed any gilding.

The date palms that signalled the presence of shallow groundwater started to whizz by, first in singles, then in spikey clusters. Tucked away between small dune rises on their left and right were small, scattered buildings—service sites for the resort and their staff—but the road kept on moving past those, disappointing Sera visibly every time one was not part of the larger resort. Finally, the palm clusters merged into a proper croft and Sidr and Ghaf trees thickened up around them as neat herringbone pavers seemed to emerge from the graded sand like the yellow brick road in Oz.

Just as well, too, or Sera would have run out of seat to climb. He glanced sideways at her and tried hard not to acknowledge that curiosity did good things to her face.

‘Oh, wow!’

He loved this part. The moment that someone saw Al Saqr for the first time. The luxury resort that she would be calling home for the next month.

He scanned the arrivals area ahead as they pulled into the paved circle in front of the resort’s reception despite knowing that no one but authorised personnel and guests could have been inside the fences. Old habits died hard.

‘Standby,’ he instructed, levering his door handle.

Dry heat rushed past him as he climbed out, still scanning for threats, then crossed quickly in front of the SUV to open the passenger side door as two staff emerged from the heavy timber entrance of the resort’s central hub. The shorter of the two was traditionally but comfortably dressed, smiling broadly enough to pop dimples, his hand outstretched. Behind him stood a taller man, ginger haired, dressed in khaki and boots.

They nodded briefly to Brad then stood at attention as he gave Sera his arm down from the high SUV.

She stepped forward enthusiastically as soon as her feet touched earth.

‘Hi!’

Brad closed the SUV door quietly and stood in much the same pose as his colleagues—hands behind him, back straight—as they introduced themselves to Sera. There was little sign of the woman from the airport, now. This Sera had pulled her thick hair back in a desert-friendly ponytail while she was waiting for him to clear the arrivals area and wore undisguised excitement on her face. You had to be a real tough guy to remain unaffected by Al Saqr’s unique beauty.

This Sera was more girl than woman, and the unfamiliar twist in his gut hit him again.

‘Ms Blaise, welcome,’ the shorter of the two men said in impeccable English, pressing an introduction card into her hand for her later reference. ‘I am Aqil, your guest relations coordinator. Anything you need, do not hesitate to ask for me.’

Eric was taller, and he leaned around Aqil to shake Sera’s hand and introduce himself before adding, ‘I’m an Al Saqr field guide. You’ll be doing your activities with me.’

Two more staff emerged with a guest trolley and quietly collected Sera’s luggage from the SUV as Aqil and Eric ushered her beyond the main doors. Brad followed the arctic air that pumped out through the opening courtesy of air-conditioning powered by the ocean of solar panels tucked between the dunes out of guest view. No matter how many times he was assigned out here, stepping inside was always like walking into Aladdin’s cave. Cool, dark and just a little bit mystic. Traditional Arabian architecture and furnishings had been put to good use in the resort’s foyer, and the whole place smelled vaguely...herbal. It had an immediate impact on Sera.

‘I wish I’d kept my camera out of my luggage,’ she murmured, running her eyes from the labyrinthine floor tiles up to the ornate timber roof features.

Aqil turned a winning smile on her. ‘It is beautiful, no? You will be in this building often over the coming weeks. Many opportunities. This way, please.’

They guided her into the receiving lounge off to one side of the foyer, filled with richly upholstered sofas and low, old tables. Old in a good way—an expensive way—not old like the beaten-up furniture he remembered from his UN days in the desert villages. Eric returned with a tall glass of tropical fruit juice for Sera.

‘While you rest here I’ll just have a word with your liaisons,’ Brad murmured.

She might have heard him, she might not. Her attention was so thoroughly taken by the feel of the woven sheaves hanging over the arched doorway and the intricate wrought iron decorating the window looking back out to the foyer. But he took momentary leave to check in with Aqil and Eric.

Their focus shifted immediately once they were out of Sera’s presence.

‘What’s the protocol?’ Aqil said quietly.

‘Close contact,’ he briefed them, fast. Which meant he needed to be on hand nearby. Very nearby. ‘Where have you put her?’

Aqil consulted the site map spread on his desk. ‘Suite ten is vacant on both sides.’

Ten was good. Far enough away from other guests for privacy and quiet but close enough to the main buildings for a fast response if needed. And it meant he could set up camp in eleven, right next door. Al Saqr had multi-roomed suites, but an unrelated man and woman under one roof on the Arabian Peninsula...? Nope, not even if she was under serious threat. But better safe than sorry. Celebrity did weird things to people.

And he didn’t take any risks these days. He’d come too close in the past.

‘No one enters her suite when she’s in it unless I’m present,’ he ordered.

‘Understood.’

He rattled off a few other need-to-knows and then turned back to the lounge where Sera had finished fondling the curtains and sat, happy as a clam, sipping her juice on the luxuriously padded traditional lounge. Her smile was as bright as the desert outside when he returned to her side.

‘It’s all so amazing,’ she gushed.

His gut twisted that little bit more. He didn’t want her softening. He didn’t want bright innocence to start peeking out from behind the façade. He wanted the self-assured, cranky client to stay. Because she was easier to dislike.

And dislike was easier to manage.

‘Ready for your room?’

She glanced longingly at the juice still half-full in her hand then back at him.

He caught the smile before it infected the rest of his neutral expression. ‘Those are as common as sand out here.’

She took one final long, hard suck on her straw, then placed the glass down on the carved coaster that had been discreetly laid out for her.

‘Let’s go.’

* * *

Al Saqr must look a bit like a scorpion from the air, Sera thought. Long stretches of treed pathway extended out from the resort’s main building like articulated legs, going in different directions along the bank of the massive dune the resort was built on. Dotted along them at private yet accessible distances were the individual suites.

Not rooms exactly, she saw as they passed two that weren’t theirs, more like quasi-tents with the same plastered white walls and dark timber windows as the resort, but with canopied canvas roofs sitting like a broad sun hat over each hexagonal suite. With timber deck everywhere its shadows reached.

She sighed as her eyes fell on every new and alien thing. Nothing here would remind her of the media and their scrabbling. Or of home. Or the season.

‘Here we are,’ Aqil advised, pulling the courtesy buggy into the shade of a suite about halfway along the front leg of the scorpion, facing all that empty desert.

The way the suites were staggered, it was easy to feel that it was just she and the desert. No other human being or work as far as the eye could see. She took her time getting off the buggy, knowing that Brad would get there before her and indeed he did, sweeping inside as soon as the door opened and clearing the room before she was allowed into it. She smiled awkwardly at Aqil, who just shrugged and waited in patient, dimpled silence with her.

Stepping inside was totally worth the wait. Cool and dim and fragrant. Just like the resort reception. But that was where the similarity ended. This was a suite that managed to be simple yet more luxurious than anything she’d ever stayed in before. The six-sided shape of the room was countered by custom furniture in traditional style so that everything fitted without making it feel cluttered. Long sofas, luxury coffee station, writing desk and an opulent, high, king-sized bed centred against it all. Three of the six edges of the suite were glass doors with thick light-controlling drapes of the same kind of silken weave she’d gone crazy patting earlier.

Until Aqil flung one set open.

Beyond the glass doors, the Arabian desert flowed golden and dramatic, its dunes laid out in all their glory all the way to the horizon where the shadows of mountains loomed. And immediately in front, between all that sand and her air-conditioned life-support system, a gorgeous, deep, blue plunge pool, half in desert sun, half in shade.

Sera pressed her hands to the glass doors and leaned into the heat soaking in through them. Hot desert. Cold pool. Espresso station. Massive Princess and the Pea bed...

Some of the tension she’d been carrying around for the past year shifted and broke away, turning to dust on the warm desert breeze.

‘Your home for the next month,’ Aqil murmured. ‘Let me show you everything...’

It only took a few minutes, yet there was nothing she could need that Al Saqr hadn’t thought of. Lazy luxury from top to bottom.

‘Mr Kruger is in the suite immediately to your right,’ Aqil said when the tour was done, handing Brad an old-fashioned, hand-wrought key that matched hers. ‘His bag has been placed there already.’

On cue, hers was whisked in. Even with only one bag, she’d over-packed. Right now she would be entirely happy to spend the whole month in her swimsuit, though probably she’d need to throw on a dress to go for food now and then. She glanced at the table set up by the pool.

Unless she had dinner come to her...

Another knot in her shoulder unravelled.

‘Aqil, thank you. This is...exactly what I needed.’

Silence. Beauty. Nature. Far enough from civilisation that even she couldn’t cause a stir out here. The perfect place to lie low for a bit.

And not a hint of Christmas festivity.

‘We pride ourselves on being what our guests need, Miss Blaise,’ Aqil murmured. Then he excused himself, told her how she could contact him if she needed him and departed. She leaned back on the warm glass doors, closed her eyes and let even more of the tension soak away into that heat.

When they reopened, Brad was still there. Waiting quietly for instructions.

Kruger. Brad Kruger. A strong name for a strong man.

‘I’m going to dig out my camera,’ she said, pushing the thought away as firmly as she pushed herself away from the glass. ‘And I’m going to take a swim. And lie on this day lounge. Possibly not in that order. Why don’t you get settled in next door and come back when you’re done? We can talk about how this is all going to work.’

He nodded—the only discernible part of his inscrutable expression—and departed, leaving just her, her heavy heart and the non-judgemental desert.

* * *

Brad tore himself away from the familiar view and got up off the sofa. Getting ‘settled’ had only taken him a few minutes—how long could it take to unpack one small bag and lay out basic toiletries in the obscenely large bathroom?

If Sera’s UK security were paying for anything other than close contact then he would be back in his own apartment in the city, driving out to the resort every morning to supervise his client. But close contact meant close and so he’d be enjoying the resort’s six-star facilities gratis for the next month. His eyes strayed back out to the soft, rich light falling onto the desert sands.

There were definitely worse ways to spend your Christmas.

He’d heard the distant splash of Sera lowering herself into her pool a while earlier, so he trusted that she was too busy enjoying the view to be getting up to any early mischief. But he’d figured she could probably use a little mental space after her dramatic arrival in the country, so he’d cooled his heels for the twenty minutes after unpacking, then done a token perimeter assessment of both their suites to stretch it out a little more.

In his experience, protectees never adjusted quite as well to the idea of close contact as the protectors, even the ones whose lives depended on high-level guard. It was a skill, hitting that fine balance between too much and too little supervision. Relaxed enough to keep your client sane and compliant, but not so relaxed that it opened a window for the kind of risk that he was hired to protect them against. And not so much that the client became overly reliant on you and stopped listening to their own instincts. Overly reliant or overly fond—the small twist in his gut reminded him. That was just as dangerous. As he’d discovered the hard way.

The best balance was...indifferent acquiescence.

That was what he’d be pushing for with Sera.

His suite, which also meant hers, was unchanged from the last time he was assigned to Al Saqr—locked from the inside, glass doors on three sides, huge pair of timber doors on the public side, privacy fences all around but open to desert everywhere else. Rule of thumb here was that you kept your desert walks away from your neighbouring accommodations; a privacy thing. So staff wouldn’t visit while Sera was in the suite and no one should be hauling themselves up the dune face and stumbling into her private pool area any time soon.

Though shouldn’t and wouldn’t weren’t necessarily the same thing. His formal orders were to make sure Sera stayed out of trouble while the media attention from her recent legal troubles died down, but when your father was as rich and famous as hers, anything was possible. And he wasn’t about to get caught out by letting his guard down.

Once burned, ten times shy.

Brad locked suite eleven’s door behind him and jogged past Sera’s to the neighbours on the other side to confirm nine was definitely empty. Then he checked his watch to ensure a full hour had passed and he presented himself back at her door, knocking firmly.

He counted to ten before trying again.

Still nothing.

‘Sera?’

His chest filled with lead. Please don’t let her have gone exploring alone...

Just because she’d agreed to ground rule number two in the SUV didn’t mean she’d stick to it when faced with the seductions of this unique place. He stepped down off the decking leading to the front door and walked around the side of the suite where his own had a side opening for maintenance staff to use. He could hear a bunch of animal noises he didn’t recognise—one of them a kind of gaspy hitch—so the wildlife around them could be just about anything.

‘Sera?’ Something about the desert silence made him not want to shout. ‘I’m coming around.’

But as he stepped back up on to the decking within her back yard, his quick eyes saw exactly why Sera hadn’t heard him. She floated at the deep end of her little pool, the water cascading over her arms that lay folded on its tiled infinity edge, chin resting there, staring out at the desert beyond. Her long hair looked even darker wet and it hung flat down her back between pale shoulders and blue swimsuit straps, which made it easy to see the headphones she had wedged into her ears. He followed the white wires over to where her phone rested on the flat, dry tiles of the pool edge.

Something about her posture stilled his feet before he reached the steps, though.

And then he heard it... The choked hitch he’d attributed in amongst the other desert wildlife sounds. It wasn’t an exotic bird calling at all; it was Sera, crying—sobbing, actually, if only she weren’t doing such a good job of muffling it in her folded arms. He stood, frozen, and stared at her heaving shoulders and back. Everything in him burned to go and check on her. The urge bubbled up and made his feet twitch.

But a single image fought its way through all the instinct and kept him utterly immobile—a young, glittery-eyed face, splotched red with distress, pressed up against the rear window of a hastily departing transporter, his little mouth open in a cry that Brad couldn’t hear.

But he’d felt it down to his very soul.

He still did.

Sera’s tears could be about just about anything. The ex-boyfriend her file said she’d parted ways with. Bad news from home. Work hassles, if not for the fact that she didn’t have a job, at least, not a proper one. Her father’s money had brought her freedom from the worries of ordinary people.

He stared at the soft lurches of her pale shoulders.

Clearly, money hadn’t exactly bought her happiness.

Whatever it was, it wasn’t any of his business until it put her at physical risk. His job was to keep Sera out of trouble for four weeks. Muddling around in her emotional well-being was completely outside his remit. He wasn’t paid for it.

And he wasn’t remotely skilled at it.

He took a backwards step, and then another, and vanished the way he’d come, leaving Sera to her privacy.

And her pain.

CHAPTER THREE

‘HAVE YOU TASTED the bananas?’ Sera burst out, answering his door knock a little later. ‘They’re amazing. God, I’ve missed bananas.’

Brad reeled a little at the sheer joy on her face. Quarter of an hour ago she was inconsolable. Maybe the desert with its ever-changing moods was a fitting place for her.

‘Is there some kind of British banana shortage I’m not aware of?’ he said, rather than obsess on things that were outside his purview.

She turned and walked back into her suite, leaving him to follow. ‘I stopped eating them. All our bananas are flash-frosted and shipped in from West Africa or South America; it’s been ages since I’ve had a fresh, locally harvested banana. Sensational.’

Somehow, she’d even managed to make fruit political.

‘Are you okay?’

She smiled, and it appeared totally sincere. Obviously a quick rebounder, then.

‘Sure. Are you?’

He narrowed his focus on her red-tinged eyes. ‘Do you need some eye drops?’

Really, Kruger? You gotta keep snooping? Let it go, man.

She waved his concern away. ‘The pool is lightly salted.’

A little bit extra now, given her copious tears. But her easy dismissal made it impossible for him to exercise the absurd Galahad complex she seemed to have triggered in him.

Seraphina Blaise did not need—or want—his help.

His attention tracked to her still-unpacked luggage. ‘How are you settling in?’

Her mouth split into a smile as wide as the desert they sat in. ‘It’s unbelievable, already. Have you seen the light? It changes by the hour. It’s going to be amazing to photograph.’

‘We’ll be doing a bit of that, then?’

‘I’m here for a month,’ she murmured. ‘I’ll go mad without a focus. Besides, it’s what I do. You know?’

Yeah. He knew all about her photography. It was what had got her in the papers in the first place. Taking photos of animals in confidential research labs. And getting caught doing it. Though that hadn’t been quite the accident she’d first believed.

‘I figure I’ll be busiest in the mornings and late afternoon, when it’s coolest and the light is richest,’ she said. ‘Do you...? Are you supposed to be twenty-four-seven?’

The settling-in phase was always clunky, but Sera managed to make it feel extra awkward. As if he were some kind of stalker and they were negotiating the terms on which he’d lurk around after her.

‘I’ll be seven days a week for the next month,’ he confirmed. ‘But I won’t be in your face all the time.’

‘There’ll probably be three or four hours in the hottest part of the day when I’ll retreat in here. That’s time off for you.’

‘Maybe,’ he hinted. It all depended on what she got up to while she was alone. Complementary WiFi was a potentially dangerous thing. All it would take was one culturally bolshie blog...

‘I’m your protection, Sera. My job is to be here when and if something happens.’ And something could whip up like a sandstorm. ‘I’m not going to be out having shots at the bar when you might need me.’

She stared him down and it reminded him much more of Sera from the airport. ‘This place is like Fort Knox. What could possibly happen to me here?’

Any question whether or not she knew what he was truly here for evaporated on the warm desert air.

Okay, time to toss his cards on the table...

‘My brief is to ensure you keep a low profile for the next month,’ he admitted.

‘Actually, that’s my brief,’ Sera said. ‘You’re here because my father clearly doubts my ability to honour my promise to him.’

The politics of her family had no more place in his mind than her tears did. Nor the confused hurt that had just flashed across her bold gaze. He forced his natural empathy aside.

‘Your UK security firm are taking no chances,’ he said. ‘I’m paid for close contact, which means twenty-four-seven.’ Or as much as the culture here would allow. ‘That will keep you safe from any crazies and—conveniently—means I’ll be around to head off any...social issues that might emerge.’

‘What if I pledge not to publish any manifestos while I’m here?’ she joked.

He couldn’t match her light laugh. That was exactly the sort of thing he was hired to restrict. ‘I’ll be resetting your device passwords daily. More often if I need to.’

‘Of course you will,’ she grunted. ‘Why not just take them off me?’

‘Because you’re not a child.’

The irony of that made her laugh. ‘Thanks for noticing.’

‘My job is to create an environment that limits risk, Sera. I’m your protection, not your parent. You already have one of those.’

Again, the flash across her gaze. But while her irritation was real it didn’t seem directed at him.

‘You can’t work around the clock, Brad,’ she said, and he got the sense that the idea was genuinely troubling her.

‘You’ll barely know I’m—’

‘I’m not worried for me,’ she interrupted. ‘It’s not fair on you. I’m sorry that you have to be inconvenienced for something that won’t even be happening. I had hoped that no one would be put out by me this Christmas,’ she muttered.

Was it his imagination or was there an extra subtle leaning on the word ‘this’? But curiosity belonged between them about as much as empathy did.

Indifferent acquiescence...

‘It’s not an inconvenience. It’s my job. Besides, personal protection isn’t exactly taxing,’ he said.

‘Until it is?’ she guessed.

Again, that sharp mind at work.

‘Nature of the beast,’ he murmured. ‘It’s all waiting around and watching until it blows up.’

‘Well, it won’t be blowing up because of me,’ she vowed with determination in her eyes. ‘No matter what my father thinks. I’m afraid it’s going to be a dull month for you.’

Yeah... The road to hell was paved with good intentions. ‘Did your last protection detail buy that gentle sincerity?’

Right before he got reassigned over the whole research-lab debacle.

He deserved her annoyance, but the flush he got instead was shame. It peaked high in her cheeks and cast her eyes downward.

‘I’ll be all right,’ he assured her in lieu of apology. ‘I’ll take my downtime as I can.’

‘I just want you to know that I’m okay with the idea of personal space,’ she murmured.

He couldn’t help the laugh then. ‘I’m sure. Unfortunately, I’m required to intrude on yours quite a bit.’

She sighed and moved to the bedside table to collect her key. ‘Well, we might as well get on with it, then. The resort schedules a complimentary spa session for anyone who has come in on an international flight. Mine’s in half an hour.’

Back on the job. ‘I’ll call up the buggy.’

‘I’d like to walk. To get some pictures before the spa,’ she said. ‘Then perhaps some more shooting after lunch.’

It wasn’t a request, no matter how politely delivered. Here was a woman who’d been negotiating with protection details her whole life, though, while she was good at it, her tension told him she didn’t enjoy it. Fortunately, he did. Clear, confident directions boded well for a client who would accept his daily intrusions into her life.

‘Sounds good,’ he said.

In reality, protection details were dull more often than they were good. The trick was in staying alert and on your game while your mind turned to mush watching some client reading a book or watching their kid at a ball game or catching a movie. The consequences of losing focus could be bad. And prevention was a whole lot better than cure.

As he knew from experience.

Sera grabbed her camera from her luggage and a wide straw hat from her bedhead and turned for the door.

‘Let’s go.’

* * *

‘Did the floor say something to offend?’ Sera asked him, her voice husky from an hour of languorous spoiling in the spa. The rest of her was buried in her oversized robe, enjoying the dazed, spaced-out, post-massage moments.

Brad’s grey gaze shot upwards as he pushed to his feet. ‘Sorry, what?’

Her smile was as slow to form as her slurred words, but the uncomfortable expression on his face as he looked her over made her want to double-check that the robe was closed everywhere it should be. It made her want to fix her just-massaged hair, too, but she resisted the urge.

‘The floor,’ she clarified. ‘You’re frowning at it pretty severely.’

‘We, uh, disagreed on a few fundamentals.’

His gruff chuckle did more for undoing the stresses of her arrival in Umm Khoreem than the hour-long rubdown she’d just enjoyed. Or the good, cathartic cry she’d had in the pool. A laugh, on this man, was as surprising and rare as the light out here.

‘Feel good?’ he said, dragging himself up into professional guard stance.

‘Amazing.’ She smiled.

Her new favourite word. The desert was amazing. The suites were amazing. The massages were amazing. For someone who so easily found the beauty in the visual, her grasp of the verbal was taking a real hit this trip. It had to be connected to those eyes.

She never should have ordered him to take his sunglasses off.

‘I’ll wait by the door,’ Brad said, nudging her towards the changing room. She stumbled forward in her half-drugged state.

The Sera that emerged from the change rooms fifteen minutes later was more the woman she liked to present to the world. She’d taken her time redressing and scrunching her hair into something vaguely stylish—using every complimentary product in the place and delighting in the complex, Arabian smells—and her bare arms and throat practically glistened from whatever oils her masseuse had used on her. She felt spoiled and mellow and fresh.

She signed her tab at the spa’s reception desk and then turned and floated out the door. Brad trailed behind her, playing Sherpa to her camera gear.

‘Don’t forget to eat,’ he murmured. ‘One banana isn’t going to keep you going for long, no matter how delicious it was.’

‘After that massage I’m ravenous. Let’s go get lunch,’ she said. Sometimes—just sometimes—it was nice to have someone to do your thinking for you.

They headed for the resort’s pretty hub, stopping only once to take a photograph along the way—a leggy young gazelle standing in the sand, its little tail waggling madly. Sera captured its markings, coat colour and the deep, watery depths of its eyes. Then she remembered her growly stomach.

Brad had ditched the suit in favour of dark jeans and a light shirt, but he’d kept the pricey glasses firmly in place and added a neutral baseball cap for good measure. Totally Secret Service now. Did he imagine he blended right in with the other guests? Given how he carried himself, he probably blended in nowhere outside some elite force of Arab mercenaries.

It was all very distracting.

She forced her focus back onto the landscape as they wandered along the winding stone pathway criss-crossed by the traditional watercourse that ran through the whole resort. The light was gorgeous even in the middle of the day—textures, colour—and everywhere she looked were images worthy of capturing later. The wind ripples on a bank of sand that looked otherwise completely solid. Plants she’d never seen. Birds she’d never seen. A crazy little side-winding lizard that took its twisty time cutting across in front of her.

But right now she was all about eating. And partly about ignoring the man tailing so close behind her.

He followed her over the doorway plinth into Al Saqr’s heart—literally over it, all doors in the resort were cut into a much larger timber frame to keep the sand out—onto the plush rugs scattered across the stone floor. The heat and glare immediately dropped off. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust but only a moment longer to scan the entire space. The restaurant hanging off the back of the main building offered darkened, delicious-smelling dining indoors, or decorated, shade-covered tables on its deck, peering over the desert waterhole below.

‘Outside, I think,’ Sera said, when asked for her preference.

A minute later, she was seated on the edge of the deck, looming over the desert, her favourite juice on hand and a jug of icy water delivered. They seated Brad a few tables back, out of her view but presumably where he had a good clear outlook over the whole area. If she were her father, there was no way his security would have let him sit here, so exposed to anyone bedded down in a distant dune. But the kind of obsessive crazies The Ravens’ gothic music occasionally attracted and the kind of pathetic try-hards she would attract were totally different creatures.

The only shot someone was going to take at her would end up in the tabloids, not in a morgue.

There were six other diners also having a late lunch, all of them in couples and looking very loved up. This was exactly the right sort of resort for honeymoons or anniversaries. Or romantic Christmases, as it turned out. On balance, though, it was still better to spend the festive season here than back home. Alone.

Even if she was in disgrace.

Her meal came, and right behind that Brad’s did. They each ate in silence, the occasional clink of his cutlery a kind of Morse code reminding her he was close by. Sera never once turned to look at him but his presence almost hummed; the silence was thick with it. It dragged her attention off the gorgeous view and the delicious cuisine until she might as well have been eating airline food.

When the staff came to remove her first-course dishes, Sera pushed her chair back, turned and marched towards him.

‘This is crazy. Come and join me.’

‘I’m on the job,’ he declined. ‘But thank you.’

‘Okay, you’ve said what your employer would want you to say. Now, please join me.’

His eyes didn’t quite meet hers. ‘Let’s just keep it by the book.’

His manners did little more than irritate her further. Partly because she wasn’t getting her way. Mostly because she was supposed to be off men—she shouldn’t want his company.

But she did.

‘What’s problematic about having a conversation while we eat?’

His grey eyes turned wary. ‘I’m paid to shadow you, not monopolise you.’

‘I don’t feel monopolised,’ she said, low, glancing around at the other diners. ‘I feel conspicuous.’

‘You’re not used to dining alone?’

Was he kidding? She was mostly alone, even when she had company. A nanny had always eaten with her when she was younger but it was always a very...functional exercise. Any conversation they’d had was mostly limited to which hand she held her fork in or whether she had to eat all of her beans. ‘In case it’s escaped your notice this is a very coupley resort.’

His gaze scanned the pairs dotted around the restaurant. ‘You want it to seem like we’re together?’

Her hiss of annoyance drew more than one curious look. ‘Look. I’m the client, asking you to join me for—’ she glanced around for inspiration ‘—my safety!’

He wasn’t the slightest bit moved.

‘Okay, forget it. I’ll just go back to my gorgeous view and have no one to talk about it with.’

With that, she turned and flounced back to her seat, taking an oversized gulp of her dewy melon juice and sinking lower than before into her padded chair.

Stuff him—she was not about to beg. She’d never begged for someone’s company in her life.

No matter how tempted she might have been.

* * *

The first Sera knew that Brad had moved was the scrape of the chair opposite hers. He stepped into the gap he’d created, placed his iced water on the table and sank down in front of her.

‘The reason we don’t do this,’ he said without waiting for any kind of response from her, ‘is that it sets up awkwardness later. What if you want to dine alone in future? What if I do? This way there’s no pressure or expectation on either side. Everything remains easy.’

She turned a baleful glare at him. ‘You think I’m going to expect you to dine with me?’

He held his mettle and her gaze. ‘You wouldn’t be the first female client to misinterpret the terms of service for their protection. The rules exist for a reason.’

‘If you can’t handle yourself with some cougar, Brad, that’s on you.’ She turned back out to the desert.

His voice next came quietly—amused but slightly disappointed.

Oh, well...join the queue! Her father had communicated more disappointment in the past few months than any other sentiment all year.

‘You didn’t strike me as a sulker.’

‘I’m not sulking,’ she gritted, forcing patience she didn’t feel. ‘I wanted to... I don’t do the reach-out thing, normally.’

Because reaching out just wasn’t worth the potential rejection, in her experience. Which begged the question: Why bother, now?

‘But?’

‘But...even if some newspaper did track me out here into the middle of all this nothing, those gigantic fences and armed guards mean there’s no chance of a picture ending up in some tabloid with a fabricated story. I just hoped that maybe I could ease back a bit on the rules this trip. Since no one knows who I am out here. You know, relax.’

His steady regard made her fingers twitch, and she curled them subtly into her fists. It only seemed to drive the flutters inward, just below her sternum.

‘No one here knows you,’ he said, still without blinking, ‘but everyone knows me. These are my colleagues.’

The flutters fell to the floor of her gut and died there. That was right. Her plea for some latitude was essentially asking Brad to compromise his professionalism.

Remorse congealed in her blood.

‘Sorry, I wasn’t thinking.’ Well, she was...but not about him. ‘Maybe you should—’

He stopped her before she could send him away.

‘Leaving again is going to draw more attention than me staying,’ he murmured. ‘Let’s just finish lunch, yeah?’

But having achieved the company she’d set out to secure, Sera suddenly found herself struggling for a single fascinating thing to say. And he was apparently not about to help her out.

‘So, you’re ex-military?’ she finally guessed, though she wouldn’t win any prizes for intuition. Everything about him screamed Defence Forces.

‘Ten years in the Specials.’

Ten years? She was just a kid when he was first heading into danger. Was that why she felt so breathless around him? Like some sixteen-year-old? She was a mere teen, compared to his life experience. ‘You seem to know a fair bit about deserts.’

He paused, his fork halfway to his lips. ‘More than most.’

‘Were you posted to the Middle East?’

‘My unit provided support to the United Nations. Mostly based in the capital. But I got out in the sand often enough.’

That brought her eyes back up. ‘That sounds interesting.’

‘If by “interesting” you mean political and volatile, sure.’

‘When did you leave the UN?’

His eyes darkened over. ‘Two years ago, now.’

‘What made you leave?’

His eyes flicked out to the horizon.

‘A mistake,’ he murmured, discomforted. ‘My mistake.’

She wanted to quiz him further but every question she posed made her feel like that cougar that he’d mentioned; the rare Snoopy Desert Cougar.

‘And you’ve worked for the Sheikh since then?’

‘As soon as the opportunity came up. I held out for his team.’

‘Why?’

He shrugged massive shoulders. ‘They’re the best.’

‘Must have been competitive,’ she murmured.

‘So am I.’

Did he have any idea how intriguing that twisted thing he called a smile was?

‘And you’re always based out here?’

‘Not always. But Al Saqr is the gem in Sheikh Bakhsh Shakoor’s crown. All his guests come here at some point, which makes for pleasant work.’

She leaned back in her seat and smiled. ‘How many of them couldn’t leave again without risking deportation?’

He fought a proper smile, but failed. As with the last glimmer she’d had of it, it transformed his face. ‘You have the honour of being the first. My first, anyway.’

The idea of being Brad’s first anything resurrected all those butterflies lying prone in her gut and they lurched back to life. She fought to focus on their conversation.

‘Who was your most challenging client?’

‘It would be unprofessional of me to comment.’

‘No names, obviously.’

He stared in silence. Until she realised.

‘Truly,’ she gasped. ‘I’m your worst?’ How few had he had?

‘You didn’t say worst,’ he was quick to reply. ‘You said challenging.’

‘We’ve been here three hours. How can I possibly challenge you already?’

For the first time, she got the sense that he wasn’t saying exactly what was on his mind. ‘Do you think I improvise immigration incidents every day?’

‘Well, you didn’t seem the slightest bit troubled by it.’

Irritated, yes...

‘It’s my job to appear in control.’

Seriously? Did he have to remind her every five seconds that he was paid to be here?

A beautifully dressed young woman appeared at their table with two flat stone platters dotted with pretty little desserts. She placed them down with a gentle smile, enquired after their needs and then tiptoed off again. Brad’s eyes glanced after her.

For no reason at all that made her grumpy.

‘So, are we okay to get some photos this afternoon?’ she said, drawing his focus back to her. ‘Once it starts to get cooler?’

‘Whatever you need.’

He inclined his head, waiting politely for her to lift her dessert fork. She was happy to oblige, tucking into a mysterious, bluish sticky morsel—totally foreign to her but scrumptious—and the next ten minutes were all about eating in silence. Until he broke it.

‘What’s the story with the photography?’ he asked. ‘Hobby or job?’

Here we go. He wasn’t the first person to assume that someone with money didn’t want or need to work.

‘I don’t know that I’ve sold enough shots to truthfully call it a job,’ she said. ‘But I take it much more seriously than a hobby. Maybe we could settle on it being a...pastime?’

‘How’d you get into it?’ His interest seemed more than just polite.

‘I don’t remember whose idea it was, but I remember the excitement of the day my tutor took me shopping to buy my first equipment. And Friday afternoons when a professional photographer came out to teach me how to use it with any skill.’

‘Do you remember what your first photograph was?’

Did she ever.

‘A picture of Blaise. I ended up framing it on the wall.’ But not because it was good—which it wasn’t—it was so she could see her father every day. ‘Then it was endless semi-skilled portraits of the staff who looked after me.’

She’d cheerfully showed them the good ones—hungry for their praise—but it wasn’t those images that she’d kept. Instead, she’d papered her room with images of them captured unawares or unprepared; tidying their hair for the real photo or glancing at each other before posing properly. Laughing. Smiling. Pulling a face. Natural. As though her everyday life were simply swimming in such unguarded moments. Photography let her rebuild her world the way she wished it were...instead of how it actually was.

Who’d want to look at an exhibition of images of people carefully keeping their distance?

‘Once I photographed my first London stray, though, I was all about animals. And how they intersect in the city environment. That’s where I really had the best result. I don’t think people are really my thing.’ In so many ways. ‘That led me to photograph shelter animals, to help get them new homes. I enjoyed that.’

‘Not too many strays out here,’ he murmured.

She thought about that. ‘Stray is merely what we call “wild” in urban areas. Not much of a distinction. And the wildlife has plenty of opportunities to interact with human environments out here.’

Brad studied her close, and seemed to be wrestling with something. Finally he spoke again.

‘Can I ask you something else?’

‘Depends.’ She smiled. ‘Will it lead me to bore you to tears about my photography?’

But he didn’t smile at her joke. On the contrary, his face sobered up until it was the professional mask again. ‘Is there anything I need to know? About earlier... In the pool?’

Every muscle in her body coiled tighter. She shouldn’t be surprised he knew about her big cry-fest. He was trained to know. But how did you tell someone you’d just met that you’d been waiting all year for that cry? That you’d been holding on to the indignity of your arrest and the disappointment it had brought your father since it had happened, knowing that, while the family lawyers had kept the actual arrest quiet, the court case was always going to be public and a total media circus. How knowing that still hadn’t prevented the other shoe thudding down onto your heart like a steel-capped boot when the conviction had finally gone public a fortnight earlier.

And, with it, your boyfriend’s betrayal.

Though really she’d lived with that since the day it had dawned on her what Mark had done. And why.

He’d officially ended their four-month ‘thing’ while sitting in the arraignment waiting area at courtroom number four. As redundant exercises went it was pretty spectacular. What—other than his enormous male ego—made him imagine for a moment that she would want to be anywhere near the man who had set her up for arrest? The man who had betrayed her trust and used her for the publicity her name would bring to his animal-rights cause.

Though, truthfully speaking, she’d set herself up. She with her hopelessly optimistic expectations and lousy judgement. He’d just sealed the deal by holding the metaphorical door open for her to walk into the arms of the authorities.

‘Crying is good for you,’ she joked. ‘Better out than in, right?’

‘So that was...catharsis?’

‘It was decompression. I’ve had a rough couple of months.’ She struggled to keep it light. ‘To be honest, you’re lucky it didn’t start at the airport. It was touch and go for a while there.’

He didn’t understand. The three little lines between his eyebrows said so.

She tilted her head and studied him. Men were such alien creatures. ‘I guess crying is unprofessional, too, huh?’

‘I’ve cried,’ he said, before thinking about it. A dark flush streaked up his jaw but he didn’t shy away from the topic. ‘But it didn’t feel good.’

He struck her as a man who wouldn’t appreciate her pity. Or her curiosity. So she didn’t ask.

‘I’m not in any trouble,’ she confirmed instead. ‘But thank you for the concern.’

It seemed so genuine—even if it was reluctant—Sera had to concentrate on not letting it birth a warm glow deep inside. It was his job to care. It wasn’t personal.

It never was.

Grey eyes bored into hers, but then he must have decided to trust her. ‘Okay. But remember—’

‘I will come to you the moment I’m in any real need,’ she pledged. ‘Rule four. I haven’t forgotten.’

He meant risk kind of need, of course. If she felt in any kind of danger. But it felt lovely—just for a moment—to think that she had someone to go to if her heart hurt or her head wanted to explode or something just really messed with her mind. An emotional storm home.

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