by Dana Marton
Carpets covered most of the sand, except for around the fire. An ancient curved sword hung from one of the poles. She made a mental note of that. Better than nothing.
A strange contraption sat in the corner. A camel saddle, she realized after a moment. She spotted two ammunition belts as she turned, but no guns. Then she didn’t have the chance to gawk any longer as both Fatima and Lamis were already on the other side of the divider, expecting her to follow them.
She went straight to the carpet and blankets she’d woken up on, sat and ate the remainder of her food, drank some water and lay down. She had to regain her full strength then get to town. If an opportunity didn’t present itself, she’d create one.
She kept her eyes closed, pretending to sleep, not wanting to be bothered, and especially not wanting to be asked any questions she was not at liberty to answer.
The women chatted on in the corner, paying little mind to her. Good. She needed time to think up a plan.
DARA OPENED HER EYES and peered around in the dark tent, listening to the sound of gentle snoring somewhere nearby. A moment later when her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she could see the lone sleeping figure by the outer wall of the tent. Shadia, the servant woman.
She better not have—Dara rubbed her eyes with her fingers, sniffed them. No suspicious odor. Good. Shadia hadn’t done anything disgusting to her while she’d slept. Which was fortunate for everyone around. Because although she’d shown amazing restraint and politeness this afternoon, not wanting to offend her host, if somebody came near her with a bucket of camel urine again, she was ready to defend herself.
She sat up, careful not to make a sound. Now that her body was rehydrated and she had food in her stomach, she was close to being back to her full strength. The rest helped, too. She was ready—if not for leaving, at least for a small reconnaissance mission. Although, if she came across a vehicle she could grab, she was out of here.
She rose little by little, arranged the blankets to show a lump in case Shadia woke and looked her way. Barefoot, she crept toward the spot where the wall carpets overlapped, separated them silently and peeked through to Saeed’s side. The flap was closed, this section of the tent as dark as the other.
The sword was gone from the pole.
Saeed didn’t trust her. She couldn’t blame him.
Her eyes settled on a briefcase by the tent’s outer wall. It hadn’t been there before. She moved forward silently, stopped and listened before squatting down. She pressed her palm against the lock to muffle the sound as she pushed the button. The metal clasp sprang open against her skin with a barely audible click. She let it up slowly.
The briefcase’s lid opened without a sound, and she rummaged through the contents, identifying them as much by feel as sight in the dimness of the tent. Files, a couple of letters—their envelopes previously opened—a satellite phone. Her fingers closed around the latter. She stopped to listen for anyone approaching from outside. Nothing.
She flipped the phone open and turned it on, dialed the Colonel’s number, held her breath at the series of beeps, but the servant woman’s snoring remained steady. The phone rang on the other side. What time was it there? Midafternoon, she guessed. Then finally the Colonel came on the line.
Cupping her left hand around the phone and her mouth, she whispered her identifying number for this mission.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“The others? We’ve had no contact.”
“No, sir.” She swallowed, and told him about the crash.
“What is your location?”
“I’m not sure, sir. I’m at some kind of a Bedouin camp, three hundred kilometers from Tihrin. The clan leader is someone by the name of Saeed.”
“Sheik Saeed ibn Ahmad?”
Sheik? She swallowed again, pulled an envelope from the briefcase and held it up to the meager light the phone’s LCD provided. The addresses were in Arabic. She picked up another, the same. The third had come from England, bearing careful lettering she finally recognized. Sheik Saeed ibn Ahmad ibn Salim ben Zayed. “Yes, sir,” she said. “He’s the one.”
And the name clicked at once: the man the U.S. sought to support to take over the throne, the man who refused all outside assistance.
“How did you find him? He disappeared three days ago.”
“He found me in the desert, sir. He was under some kind of attack.”
A moment of silence on the other side. “You must stay with him. It is imperative for the region’s stability that he remains alive. As of now, your number-one objective is to ensure that. Your mission just changed, soldier. You’re now assigned to his personal protection.”
Chapter Three
The camel dung would hit the fan when Saeed found out about this.
“Yes, sir,” Dara said, no matter how much she hated the idea. She had the feeling Saeed would have a few words to say about her being his bodyguard. She was a woman, her new role hardly acceptable in his culture. Plus she was an outsider, and he was famous for resisting all cooperation with foreigners.
“I will try to get in touch as soon as I have anything else to report.” She clicked off, put the letters and the phone back and closed the briefcase, then turned to sneak back to her bed. Before she made it two steps, she was enfolded in a viselike grip, one arm around her waist holding her hard, a hand over her mouth.
She jammed her elbows back into her attacker, threw her full weight to the floor, hoping to slip from his grip, trying to get him off her back without killing him. Couldn’t chance that, considering that most likely “he” was Saeed, not recognizing her in the dark and taking her for some kind of an intruder.
Damn. If he let go of her mouth, she could explain. No such luck. And he was strong. Fighting him off without harming him appeared increasingly difficult.
They tumbled to the carpet together. She could not shake him. His elbow came into hard contact with her ribs, sending a bolt of pain up her side. Fine. The gloves were coming off. She kicked, missing him narrowly, her feet getting caught in the tent flap. It opened a few inches, letting in some moonlight.
They rolled. She kicked again, hit flesh this time. The narrow shaft of light fell on the man’s head. His face was wrapped in a black headdress that showed small, vicious brown eyes glinting with predatory hunger.
She stared into the stranger’s gaze, surprised for a split second, then she began to fight in earnest. He was thin but strong. She twisted, kicked with both feet. He rolled back. She jumped up, ready to push her advantage, wishing she was running on full steam. He lurched at her before she could reach him, and sent them both sprawling again.
Damn. This time she landed on her bad shoulder, with his added weight on top of her. Hot pain shot down her arm, and she sucked in her breath, blinked to clear the stars from her eyes. The next second, she felt the blade at her throat.
Then the tent flap flew open and a vision stood outlined in the opening: Saeed, his long white shirt cascading from wide shoulders, the moonlight glinting off the curved dagger in his hand.
The attacker jumped up and charged at him, the two men coming together with a battle cry.
She sprang to her feet. Why was she the only one without a weapon? How the hell was she supposed to protect him?
The men fought, then separated to circle each other, then lunged into a clash again. She watched them, waiting for an opportunity. The attacker staggered back, blood gushing from his arm. He extended his hand as if to drop his knife in capitulation, but in the last split second he threw it instead—with force.
She didn’t have time to think. Instinct pushed her forward. She caught a glimpse of surprise on Saeed’s face before he propelled himself at her to knock her out of the way, taking her to the ground. He had already thrown his own dagger.
It hit its mark.
She stared at the attacker’s limp body not ten feet from them, then noticed that Saeed, on top of her, wasn’t moving either.
Was he
hit? She turned her head to look at him.
His blue eyes stared at her with such intensity she couldn’t breathe. His muscular body pressed into hers. The adrenaline of the fight still pumped through her veins, every nerve ending alive. Having the prince of the desert lying on her did nothing to settle her down. “I—”
Voices filtered in from outside. A dozen or so men poured into the tent with guns drawn. The first few pulled up short, looking from them to the dead man.
After Saeed came to his feet, she sat up, grateful for the air that was slowly returning to her lungs. Any minute now and her brain would start working, too. She hoped.
One of the men said something she didn’t understand. Must have been a joke, because the rest of them laughed.
Saeed talked to them in Arabic, and they quieted. One of them responded before they backed out, taking the body with them.
“We will talk. Now.” He closed the flap before he stepped to her and extended a hand to help her up.
She ignored it and stood on her own.
He lit a lamp.
Oops. She stepped forward. She’d been lying in his bed. They’d been lying in his bed.
He flooded her senses. And he wasn’t doing anything, just standing there, looking at her. She had to get a grip. He wasn’t the first handsome man she’d come across. In the SDDU, men outnumbered women twenty to one, all of them well-built, powerful, in their prime. But none of them had ever unnerved her the way this one did.
And she couldn’t put it down to adrenaline. Not all of it.
She had experienced attraction at first sight before, but never this strong, and her rational mind had usually talked her out of it. At the moment, her rational mind wasn’t functioning.
He was a hairbreadth from her. She didn’t recall either of them moving.
He touched his lips to hers and she fell into his kiss. Plummeted.
And it was like silk, and honey, and going home. Familiar, as if she’d known him before and they had kissed like this, perhaps in a dream that she had long forgotten.
The tent disappeared from around them, and the desert, and their countries. They had no separate identities, but a man and a woman joined together as one, floating under the stars.
And after an eternity, she felt a nudge of conscience and drew away.
“Don’t do that again,” she said, realizing her protest was too weak and too late. She hadn’t exactly kicked and screamed when the prince of the desert had had her in a lip lock.
It helped that he looked as stunned as she felt. Took a little off the edge of her anger, though not enough to let it go.
“Just because you saved my life, it doesn’t mean that you can take liberties with my body.” Better make that clear now if they were to work together.
He inclined his head. “I apologize.”
“I do, too.” The bluster went out of her all of a sudden. She was here to do a job. What she had just done fell miles outside the borders of professional conduct.
Better focus on the task ahead. She drew her spine straight and tall.
“I haven’t been completely honest before. My name is Dara Alexander. I work for the United States government. My orders are to protect you.”
His face hardened as he stepped back. “Absolutely not.”
SAEED SWALLOWED HIS ANGER, damning his rising lust that proved to be harder to control. So she was military. He wasn’t surprised. Her camouflage uniform; her skill with the knife; the efficient, in control way she moved supported her claim. “You don’t have a dog tag.”
“I’m in a special unit.”
“And what unit would that be? The kind that engages in unauthorized missions in foreign countries?”
She remained silent, but from the carefully blank look on her face he knew he had hit close. “You must leave.”
The woman folded her arms. “I have my orders.” Her body language made it clear she had no intention of going anywhere.
As skeptical as he had been about her amnesia, he believed her now. The picture slowly forming in his head fit her.
“You have to leave us,” he said again, trying to be patient. “After you recover, of course.” She was a guest in his tent and, in the desert, hospitality to strangers was the law of the land. Three days was customary. Required. Even if the man who walked into your camp was your worst enemy. A Bedu breaking the custom would have brought shame to his family for generations. A sheik who did not offer hospitality brought shame to his whole tribe.
“You’re welcome in my tent until we leave for Tihrin. Then I’ll take you to your people.”
She nodded, but he didn’t think she was really agreeing. Stubbornness was written all over her beautiful face, apparent in the stiff set of her shoulders. She was buying time.
“In the meanwhile, I’m going to need some weapons,” she said with an easy smile, confirming his suspicions.
“You are not my bodyguard. You are my guest.” The sooner she accepted that the better.
“No offense, but it looks to me like you aren’t exactly Mr. Popularity these days.” She gave him a pointed look. “Even if I didn’t guard you, I would still need something to protect myself. We’ve been attacked twice in two days. Sharing your company could be hazardous for my health.”
She had a point there. She had come into danger because of him. He watched her face for a few moments. “You were attacked in my home. I apologize. It is my duty to protect my guests.”
“You’ll give me a gun then?”
She was tenacious—a most unbecoming trait in a woman. “No.”
“You know, you’re a real piece of work. Can I at least have my knives back?”
He watched her eyes, trying to read her true intent. Could she be trusted?
“If any of my people come to harm at your hand, you will answer to me.” He reached under one of the pillows and pulled the knives out, handed them to her. “It will matter not that you are a woman.”
She nodded.
He hoped she was smart enough to heed his words. “Tell me what you are doing in my country.”
“Fighting terrorism.”
“And your presence here is authorized by our government?” He waited to see if she would lie. King Majid had turned his back on his foreign allies as soon as they first began to criticize his methods of ruling.
“I’m a soldier. I’m not privy to government negotiations. I get an order, I follow it.”
“You think I have ties to terrorists?”
She shook her head. “But I think the people who are trying to kill you might.”
He had considered that. And as much as he wanted to deny it, he couldn’t. Majid was determined to keep power. He would support anyone who supported him, never realizing what harm he might do in the long term.
“So you were dropped in the middle of the desert without food and water to find and protect me?”
“I was on another mission at the time.”
“But you got reassigned?”
She nodded.
“How fortunate for me.”
“I’m here to help you.” She stood, obsidian eyes flashing. “You should be happy.”
“I did not ask for help.”
“Look, I’m here anyway. Maybe I can help, maybe I can’t. What is it going to hurt to let me hang around?”
Plenty, he thought. It would hurt plenty. He could not afford to be distracted now. And he didn’t need another person to feel responsible for. He didn’t need to be thinking about kissing her again, wanting it so much he had a hard time focusing on anything else, like explaining to her how impossible her long-term presence would be here.
“I’m going to check the perimeter of the camp.” She moved toward the tent flap. “I have to start thinking about how to make it more secure, ASAP. Your guys are going to be okay with me walking around, right?”
She was going to secure his camp. The thought was as laughable as exasperating. An affront, really, but he decided not to take offense. He nodded and fol
lowed her out, instead of forbidding her to leave. Because he couldn’t be sure if they stayed inside he wouldn’t again taste her lips. And he wasn’t sure if he could stop there.
He shook off the weakness. He could not afford to let her foreign beauty get to him. Not now. Not ever. Not this woman.
She had no place in his life, not on the professional level and certainly not on the personal. She was of a different people. There could never be any understanding between them. He had too many principles to take her as his mistress and to consider her as more was unthinkable. The only choice open to him was to ignore whatever insane attraction existed between them.
DARA STEPPED OUT into the starry night and took a deep breath. The camp looked deceptively peaceful, about fifty tents scattered across the sand, surrounded by a makeshift barbed-wire fence.
“This is your security?” She turned to him. He had to be kidding.
“It keeps the camels from wandering into camp and chewing up everything.” He took her by the shoulders and turned her, pointing into the darkness.
He was too close, his touch on her body too distracting. It took a while before she made out the nearly invisible figure of a man among the shadows. She turned her head then to look for more and found them, sitting at irregular intervals, blending into the night.
“That is our security,” he said, and withdrew his hand.
“But the attacker slipped through.”
“No he didn’t. He was one of ours. A servant Nasir hired a few months ago.”
“Someone got to him?”
He nodded, his expression grave. “He had a large family to support back home.”
She processed that information as she moved forward. “Is there anyone else in camp you don’t trust one hundred percent?”
He stepped in front of her and stopped, his gaze searching her face. “You,” he said.
“Why?”
“What brings you here?”