Alim’s hands lifted Hana’s face.
Then she saw his eyes, lashes spiky with unshed tears. “My Hana,” he said, huskily. “My sweet, healing star, you’ve sealed our destiny.”
With a cry she pulled him to her, falling backward. Her fingers twined through his hair, caressed his neck. So many years feeling half-dead, living only for others, existing inside the shadows of fear; now she was alive at last. And at last she knew how it felt to be filled with love given and returned….
When an ordinary girl meets a sheikh…
If you love reading stories set in distant, exotic lands where women just like you are swept off their feet by mysterious, gorgeous desert princes—then you’ll love our miniseries!
Look out for more Desert Brides stories, coming soon!
MELISSA JAMES
The Sheikh’s Destiny
Melissa James is a born and bred Sydneysider who swapped the beaches of the New South Wales Central Coast for the Alps of Switzerland a few years ago. Wife and mother of three, a former nurse, she fell into writing when her husband brought home an article about romance writers and suggested she should try it—and she became hooked. Switching from romantic espionage to the family stories of Harlequin® Romance was the best move she ever made. Melissa loves to hear from readers—you can e-mail her at [email protected].
This book is dedicated to Vicky, my beloved sister-in-law, who never once denigrated this job I love, and despite dyslexia bought and read every book I’ve had released. To a wonderful sister and dearly beloved aunt to my kids, thank you for showing us what true courage under fire means.
We think of you and miss you every day.
December 2, 1963–October 9, 2009
To Michelle, Donna and Lisa, the “angels” who nursed Vicky through her illness, giving her last months dignity and love despite work and family commitments. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I can only invent heroines—but each of you is one in the eyes of our family, and all the many who loved Vicky.
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
EPILOGUE
PROLOGUE
The road to Shellah-Akbar, Northern Africa
THEY were closing in on him. Time to open throttle.
Alim El-Kanar shifted down into low-gear sports mode, in the truck he’d modified specially for this purpose. He wasn’t letting the men of the warlord Sh’ellah—after whose family this region had been named—take the medical supplies and food meant for those the man made suffer, so he could keep control and live in luxury. Alim wasn’t going to be caught, either—that would be disaster, but for the people of this region, not him. As soon as Sh’ellah saw the face of the man he’d taken hostage, he’d hold Alim for a fabulous ransom that would keep them in funds for new weapons for years.
When he had the ransom, then he’d kill him—if he could get away with it.
But Sh’ellah hadn’t yet discovered who Alim was, and he gambled his life on the hope the warlord never would. Even the director of Doctors for Africa didn’t know the true identity of the near-silent truck driver who pulled off what he called miracles on a regular basis, reaching remote villages held by warlords with medicine, food and water-purifying tablets.
With a top-class fake ID and always wearing the male headscarf he could twist over his famous features whenever he chose, he was invisible to the world. Just the way he liked it.
Who he was—or what he’d been once—mattered far less than what he did.
He always gave enough medicine to each village to last six to eight hours. Then, when Sh’ellah’s men came for their ‘share’, most of it was gone; they took a few needles, some out-of-date antibiotics, and strutted out again.
The villagers never told Alim where they hid the supplies, and he didn’t want to know. They kept just enough bread, rice and grain out for Sh’ellah’s men to feel smug about their theft. To Sh’ellah, such petty control made him feel like a man, a lion among mice.
Even Alim, flawed as he was, would be a better leader—
Don’t go there. Grimly he shifted down gear, following the indented tracks in the scrubby grass on what was loosely called a road to the village of Shellah-Akbar. He’d had tyres put on this truck like the ones used in outback and desert rallies so he could fly over rocks and sudden holes the wind made in the dusty ground. He also had a padded protective cage put inside the cab, much like the one he’d had in his cars when he was still The Racing Sheikh.
He’d once been so ridiculously proud of the nickname—now he wanted to hit something every time he thought of it. His fame and life in the fast lane had died the same day as his brother. The only racing he did now was with trucks with much needed supplies to war-torn villages. And if the term ‘sheikh’ was technically correct, it was a privilege he’d forfeited after Fadi’s death. It was an honour he’d never deserve. His younger brother Harun had taken on the honour in his absence, marrying the princess Fadi had been contracted to marry. Harun had been ruling the people of his principality, Abbas al-Din—the lion of the faith—for three years, and was doing a brilliant job.
Thinking of home set off the familiar ache. He used to love coming home. Habib Abbas, the people would chant. Beloved lion. They’d been so proud of his achievements.
If the people wanted him to come home, to take his place among his people, he knew an accident of birth, finding some oil or minerals, or the ability to race a car around a track didn’t make a true leader. Strength, good sense and courage did—and Alim had lost the best of those qualities with Fadi’s death, along with his heart and a lot of his skin. He had just enough strength and courage left to risk his neck for a few villagers in Africa. The fanfare for what he did was silent, and that was the way he liked it.
He growled as his usual stress-trigger, the puckered scars that covered more than half his torso, began the painful itching that scratching only made worse. He’d have to use the last of his silica-based cream on the pain as soon as he had a minute, as soon as he lost these jokers—and he would. He wasn’t Habib Abbas, or The Racing Sheikh, any more—but he still had the skills.
Stop it! Thinking only made the itch worse—and the heart-pain that was his night-and-day companion. Fadi, I’m so sorry!
Grimly he turned his mind to the job at hand, or he’d crash in seconds. The protective roll cage inside his truck might be heavily padded with lamb’s wool so if the truck rolled, he could use his modified low centre of gravity shift and oddly placed air bags to flip back right way up—but it wouldn’t help if he was too busted up to keep going.
He checked the mirror. They were still the same distance behind him, forty men packing weaponry suitable for taking far more than a truck. They were too far away from him to shoot accurately, but still too close to shake. He couldn’t do anything clever on this rugged, roadless terrain, like spilling oil to make them slide: it would sink straight into the dirt before the enemy reached the slick, and he’d risk his engine for nothing.
But he had to do something, or they’d follow him right to Shellah-Akbar and take the supplies. He had to find a way to beat the odds currently stacked against him like the Spartans at Thermopylae thousands of years ago.
If he could rig something with the emergency flare…could he make it work?
Alim’s mind raced. Yes, if he added the tar-based chemica
l powder he kept to help the tyres move over the sand without sliding to the volatile formula inside the flare, and tossed it back, it might work—
He was used to driving one-handed, or steering the wheel with both feet. He shoved a stone on the accelerator, angling it so it kept going steady, and drove with his feet while pulling the flare apart with as much care as he could, given his situation.
He was nearing the four-way junction ten miles from the village, where he must turn one way or another. He had to stop them now or, no matter what clever methods he employed to evade them, they’d know where he was going. They’d use their satellite phones, and another hundred thugs would be at the village before sunset, demanding their ‘rightful’ share of the supplies proven by their assault rifles.
He poured the powder in with shaking hands. He had to be careful or he’d kill them; and, murderers though most of the men undoubtedly were, it wasn’t his place to judge who had done what or why. He’d had a childhood of extreme privilege, the best education in the world. Most of the men behind him had been born in horrendous poverty, abducted when they were small children and taught to play with AK-47s instead of bats and balls.
He’d leave enough food and supplies behind so their warlord didn’t kill them for their failure. Part of the solution or perpetuating the problem, he didn’t know; but in this continent where human life was cheaper than clean water, everyone only had one shot at living, and he refused to carry any more regrets in his personal backpack.
He grabbed the wheel as he neared the far-leaning sign showing the way to the villages, and slanted the truck extreme left, away from all of them. Good, the wind was shifting again: it was time for a good old-fashioned wild goose chase.
He put the flare together, closing it tight with electrical tape, shook it and opened the sunroof. He lit the flare, counted one-hundred-and-one to one-hundred-and-seven, shoved his foot hard over the stone covering the accelerator as he tossed the lit flare up and backward, and pulled the sunroof shut.
The truck shot forward and left, when the boom and flash came. The air behind him turned a dazzling bluish-white, then thick and black, filled with choking, temporarily blinding chemicals. Screams came to his ears, the screeches of tyres as their Jeeps came to simultaneous halts. He’d done it…Alim arced the truck hard right, back to the crossroads. He didn’t wind down the window to check. He’d either blinded them all, or he’d be dead inside a minute.
Half a kilometre before the junction, he threw out the half-dozen boxes of second-rate supplies he’d been keeping for the warlord’s pleasure. They’d find them when the chemical reaction from their tears would neutralise the blindness. There was no permanent damage to their retinas, only to their pride and their ability to follow him for about half an hour. Factoring in the wind shift, all traces of his tyre tracks should have vanished by then, covered with red earth and falling leaves and branches from the low, thin trees. They’d have to split up to find him, and by the time they reached the village he’d be long gone.
Then a whining sound came; air whooshed, a loud bang filled the cab, and the truck leaped forward as if propelled before it teetered and fell to the left.
Alim’s head struck the side window with stunning force. Blood filled his eye; he felt his mind reeling. One of his specially made, ultra-wide and thick desert tyres had blown. One of the warlord’s men was either not blinded in the explosion, or he’d made the luckiest shot in the world, and blown his back tyre. The only drawback to his special, extra-tough tyres was their need for perfect balance. If one tyre went, so did the truck.
He couldn’t black out now, or he’d die—and so would the people of Shellah-Akbar. He fought passing out with everything in him. He stopped the truck and pulled on the air-bag lever. As the truck tipped, the four-foot-thick pillows that flew to position outside the doors bounced it back up. As the truck righted itself he took his rifle and blew the tyres, the two on the passenger side quickly, but he had to wait until the truck was up and keeling back over to the right before he could balance it by blowing the driver’s side.
The truck landed hard down on the ground as the blackness took over. Alim shoved the truck in first and took off. The rocks and sand would destroy the thick rubber coating with which he’d covered his rims in case of emergency, but he could make far more than the remaining six miles, and there were spare tyres in the back. The tyres weren’t modified, and it’d be a miracle if he made it back to the Human Compassion Refugee camp two hundred and sixty kilometres south-west, but it would get him to where the food-aid pilots could pick him up.
He had to reach the village; he was going to pass out any moment. Blood gushed from his temple wound, and his blood pressure was falling by the second. If he could put the truck in the right direction, and set the cruise control…the compass and GPS system both said he only needed a straight line now to make it.
He pressed the emergency direction finder on his satellite phone; his only hope now was that the nurse he knew lived in Shellah-Akbar had her receiver switched on.
Holding the wheel like grim death, he put the truck in second, made sure the stone was still in place over the accelerator, and fell forward.
The truck came into the village of Shellah-Akbar seventeen minutes later.
A woman was at the wheel. She’d run from her bunk in the medical tent as soon as the emergency signal reached the village. The only one with full medical experience, she’d ridden an old bike as fast as she could while Abdel, the village Olympic marathon hopeful, followed, to ride the pushbike back to the village. While the truck was still moving she’d stopped just in front of the driver’s door, tossed the bike down for Abdel to find, yanked open the door and jumped inside. Sprawled beside her, his head in her lap, was one unconscious driver, who had risked his life so that others may live.
‘In-sh’allah,’ she whispered, and recited the words of a prayer taught her from infancy: a prayer that hadn’t kept her own life intact, but might help God smile upon this courageous man.
He wasn’t going to die. Not today. Not if she could help it.
CHAPTER ONE
‘GET the driver into my hut, and get rid of the truck,’ Hana al-Sud yelled to two villagers in Swahili when she pulled the truck up outside the medical tent. ‘Don’t cook the food. Feed plain bread to those who need it most. Bury the rest in Saliya’s grave.’
‘The fruit will lose its vitamins, Hana,’ her assistant protested.
‘One seed or core can be found in seconds,’ she replied calmly enough, given the urgency of their situation and the rapid pounding of her heart. She ran around the truck to the driver. ‘We can get it back out tonight to feed the children, without losing nutritional value. Just do it, please, Malika! And sweep away any traces of tyre marks!’
An older man ran to the passenger side to take the driver as the fittest young man in the village jumped into Hana’s place in the driver’s seat. The other villagers opened the back of the truck to unload it. Two women ran over with the vital tarpaulins, snatched medical kits and ampoules of antibiotics and insulin to bury it. The future of the entire village depended on everyone working together, and working fast. They’d be here in minutes. The warlord’s satellite phones were the best money could buy. Any sniff of betrayal meant unbearable consequences for them all.
‘Take the driver to my hut. He’s Arabic,’ Hana said tensely in Swahili. ‘I’ll patch him up. When they ask I’ll say my husband came for me.’
The men took the unconscious man to Hana’s small hut beside the medical tent.
Within fifteen minutes it was as if the truck had never been there. Abdel would leave it somewhere in the desert, take the exact coordinates and return on foot. He was the only one with the perfect cover. As he was a long-distance runner aiming for the Olympics, no one thought it strange if he wasn’t in the village at all times.
In the hut, Hana had the injured man laid on an old sheet. ‘Wound and suture kit—an old resterilised set.’ This brave man deserved be
tter, but if she used the new kits he’d brought today and didn’t dispose of them in time, the warlord’s men would know the truth. They had to get every detail right.
There was blood on his face and shirt. ‘Haytham, I need a clean shirt!’ Haytham was her friend Malika’s husband, and approximately the same size as this man. She stripped off the bloodied shirt and tossed it in her cooking fire, noting the angry, inflamed mass of burns scars criss-crossing his chest, shoulder and stomach on the left side. She’d treat them later. Right now she had to save his life.
She checked her watch. From experience, she knew she had five minutes to get it all done. She cleaned his face of the blood, and prepared to suture the wound. She’d wash his hair after, to remove the last traces of his identity as the driver.
She stitched his wound as fast as she could, grateful it was close to his hair; she’d cover it with his fringe, and would have to risk infection by using cover-stick around the reddened skin. There was no way she could risk a bandage, but she’d use one vital ampoule of antibiotic, needle and syringe; the wound could turn septic with hair and make-up on it.
She injected him between his toes, as if he were a junkie with collapsed veins. It was a place Sh’ellah’s men wouldn’t think to look for signs of injury and medical attention. ‘Bury these fast,’ she ordered Malika, who took the precious supplies and ran.
Hana washed the worst of the dirt and blood from his hair with a damp washer, coated with some of her precious essential oils, and covered the wound with the cleaned hair and make-up. Then she rolled the man off the sheet, bundled it up and tossed it in the roaring fire. She put the clean shirt on him—he’d been through several operations for those burns, by the patches of grafted skin over the worst of it—buttoned up the shirt, and checked her watch. Four minutes thirty-eight. Not bad, really. She checked over the hut for any signs of wound treatment.
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