‘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

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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.

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