Her Royal Protector (a Johari Crown Novel) (Entangled Indulgence) (8 page)

Something tapped at his memory, some connection, and he searched for it almost idly among his stores until it appeared—ah, yes. She was like the imprisoned princess in the old nursery tale. How did it go? She is locked in a fortress on an island, and the guards keep any rescuer from landing a boat. The prince sails in on a raft of reeds that sinks as soon as the guards run onto it, so they fail to realize that it has carried anyone to the island…

At his elbow, the satellite phone rang. Fouad. Arif was not sorry to have his thoughts—about just how small a reed raft the prince might manage with—to be interrupted.

“We will be in Solomon’s Foot in the morning,” he said, when the urgent business had been covered and Fouad was arranging for the pickup of the papers Arif had just signed. “You had better send the chopper at first light, though, because the scientist moves quickly.”

“I will tell the pilot to watch for the yacht at anchor, and land on the nearest beach,” Fouad said.

…

In her cabin Aly wrote up her notes, prepared a new notebook for the island called Solomon’s Foot, and then sat thinking over the problem that was Arif.

His presence wasn’t threatening only her peace of mind. Arif was also causing a huge problem for the turtle project. And she didn’t know how to cope with either one.

Two years ago, when Richard had come out on a preliminary trip to examine a control group of turtle nests, he’d been appalled to discover that in some nests nothing at all had hatched, with no obvious cause. That was almost unprecedented. Usually only a few eggs in each nest were not viable. And if the problem spread, it would be catastrophic.

Of course he’d brought home samples from the nests and had them forensically examined. The minimal tests the charity could afford had all showed negative for any known disease organisms. Was this some new disease, or perhaps caused by the female turtles ingesting some toxin in the water? Or was it something else? They had to find out—and to do that, they had to mark and monitor the nests though the season. Which was why Aly was here.

But it was not as simple as it sounded. Because one of the darker possibilities was that the nests were being poisoned in an act of deliberate sabotage. And if that was the case, the saboteurs were on the same hunt as Aly. And they would quickly realize what the little red flags she was planting meant. She’d be doing their work for them.

So they had planned to
false
mark most of the nests, leaving a third of nests correctly marked as a control group. At the end of the season, Aly would excavate the nests and examine the contents to see how viable the eggs had been. If the high failure rates were restricted to the correctly marked nests—their control group—and the false-marked nests showed more typical patterns of hatching, the circumstantial evidence for sabotage would be convincing. If there was no correlation, they could focus on other possibilities—like finding the neonicotinamide of the turtle population.

False marking new nests was a simple maneuver, as Richard and she had devised it: all she had to do was record the exact position of the nest in her notes, as usual, but plant the marker stake two meters away.

Cheloniidae johariae
buried her eggs maybe a meter deep. The saboteurs wouldn’t have to dig down far before pouring in whatever poison it was, because it was bound to work its way down through the sand to the eggs. Their hope was that the saboteurs wouldn’t think beyond that. They would find her markers, assume the nest was beneath, pour in their poison
, and look no further.

If she got to a nest first, they would never find the real nest—provided she had managed to false mark it. It had all seemed foolproof when they were making their plans. But they hadn’t factored in Richard’s sudden illness. They hadn’t factored in Sheikh Arif al Najimi’s one month in the mines. And they hadn’t figured that he would want to accompany her, so that she could not false mark any nest.

She had to prevent Arif accompanying her tomorrow. Because if she didn’t false mark the nests, she was giving the saboteurs a massive advantage by marking them at all.

Chapter Eight

“Solomon’s Foot tomorrow,” Aly said, as they sat down to supper. The table was laid on deck again, with low soft lighting creating an intimate space in the darkness. Beyond its reach, the world was black, the island invisible. The canvas top had been removed, and overhead now was a canopy of stars, whose perfect light also sparkled from the surface of an impenetrably black sea. And from Arif’s eyes. Velvet and diamonds.

In the darkness he was even hotter than in daylight, and it was a magical night and her guard was way down. Her stomach was fluttering as if she were a teenager meeting a rock star. All her cells were alive. But she couldn’t have him guessing her feelings, so she said, in a matter-of-fact tone, “Solomon’s Foot tomorrow. That’s mostly uninhabited, isn’t it?”

“There is not a large population there,” Arif agreed. “The island, like many others, was depopulated in Ghasib’s time, and the people resettled or made refugees. We are engaged in rebuilding, but restoring such fractured communities takes time.”

Jamila set down a dish in front of her, and Aly looked up and said,
“Shokran.”
Jamila replied with a smile and a comment she didn’t follow.

“Do you speak Arabic?” Arif asked. There was a slight frown between his eyebrows, and she wondered if he was hoping for the answer no.

“No. I did a few hours of a basic tourists’ course before coming. I’m signed up to start a proper academic course at university this autumn.” She dug into the concoction of delicious baked eggplant. Heaven on the tongue. She looked at Arif. Now he
would
be heaven on the tongue.

“You are going to make a study of the language? Why?”

She chewed thoughtfully, gazing at him. Never a painful occupation. He had a face a person could look at all day and not get tired of. Strong, handsome, noble…maybe a little too stern, but that softened when he laughed. And just altogether the stuff of fantasy.

“I
am
hoping to spend the next few years of my life on
Cheloniidae johariae
, you know,” she said. “At least. With a little luck and a bit of financing, I might be able to come and live here for the entire nesting season each year. And do some research in your university libraries. There’s quite a lot of early writing on the turtle that’s never been translated.”

Arif made the little twist of his head that was already familiar to her. “You are a woman of surprises,” he said, and just with that, even knowing he could mean nothing by it, her blood warmed, her abdomen coiled expectantly, her nerves tingled in her fingertips.

“So tell me more about Solomon’s Foot,” she said brightly. “Is there much rebuilding going on? Will there be a lot of traffic on the beaches?”

“We have a certain etiquette in Bagestan,” Arif said with a slow smile. “We don’t discuss business over food. We believe it is bad for the digestion. In fact, many of the problems of the West, we think, can be attributed to the dysfunctional approach to food so evident there.”

It was said to be provocative, she knew that by the glint in his eye, and Aly laughed.

“Maybe if our national cuisine offered anything half as tasty as what I’m eating right now, England would never have bothered with Empire, in short?”

His deep laughter joined hers, his face warming into an approval that drew her like a fire on a winter’s night. “While you are studying the language, I hope you will also be moved to study the history of the Arab empire, if that is what you think.”

“I do know you conquered the world while we were still in mud huts,” she said, with a grave mouth and a flick of smiling eyes, and was stunned by the look that entered his eyes now. Not just approving, but lazily, sexually approving. A look she never, but never, got from men.

And she wasn’t getting it from him, either. It was a trick of the light.

“Why do you wear no ring?”

The question came straight at her blind side, and all she could do was blink at him.

After a moment she explained dryly, “I’m not big on jewelry since we had to sell everything to pay toward my father’s debts a few years ago. I was allowed to keep the string of pearls I inherited from my grandmother. I haven’t troubled much with decoration since.”

He gave her a look from under his brows. “I meant, why does your lover let you travel the world without his ring on your finger?”

“Lover?” she squeaked, before she had time to think.

He smiled in apparent satisfaction, but that was crazy. He couldn’t mean that. Her vision was being distorted by heat. His body heat.

“You have no lover? A woman like you?” His smile disappeared. The blue eyes probed her, setting fire to her thighs. “Why not? You do not like men?”

If she said no now, she’d be safe forever from any risk of exposure. If she said no now, he would never guess if she slipped and betrayed her interest one fine day.
No, I don’t like men
, that was all she had to say.

“Men don’t like me, I suppose,” her mouth said, before she could gather her forces for the lie.

Arif snorted. “What nonsense. Why do you tell me such fantasies? Do you expect me to believe that, when I have eyes in my head?”

She had no idea what he was after. Only one thing was certain—this was not what it appeared. Why he would pretend a sexual interest in her she didn’t want to imagine, but it seemed that was what he was doing.

Just for a moment, just for one moment, she wished she could be Viola right now. Wished that she had her sister’s way with an eyelash, with that mane of hair. That she could believe what he seemed to be saying. Wished she could inhabit the kind of beauty that made men look at women with the look that the light—or his guile—tricked into Arif’s eyes, and mean it. Wished she could think that the roiling heat that curled in her abdomen might be matched in his.

“That’s enough about me. Your turn. Tell me how you come to have blue eyes,” she said.

…

He was used to hearing the question from women, but not usually asked with such cool scientific detachment. “My mother is Irish,” Arif said shortly.

“And how does an Irishwoman end up marrying a Bagestani sheikh?” she asked with a smile.

Arif drank, set down his glass, leaned back in his chair. “My father is the founder and CEO of Bagestan Telecom. My mother was one of a group of adventurous foreigners who came out to Bagestan to work in the early days. My father saw her and fell in love, and my mother never went home again.”

Aly’s eyes went wide. “Never? She’s never once been back to Ireland?”

“Of course she goes for visits, several times a year now. As she gets older her heart, I think, is more torn.”

“You mean she regrets her marriage?”

Arif shrugged. “She doesn’t say so, but I think any woman is bound to regret such a choice to some extent, don’t you?”

“Why? It’s been happening throughout history, after all. You said your father fell in love—did your mother love him, too, or was she just taking the path of least resistance? I can see her regretting
that
kind of decision.”

“Love can be bought at too high a price. I have watched my mother’s attempts to stay connected to her heritage all my life. I would not put any woman in the same position. I am Bagestani and I will marry a Bagestani woman.”

She frowned. “But blue eyes is a recessive gene.”

“It is what? What is your point?”

“You couldn’t have blue eyes just from your mother. It means another of your ancestors married out. At least one.”

“Of course, you are a scientist.” He bent his head in cold acceptance. “My grandmother was a Parvani.”

“So in fact, you are less than half Bagestani, by blood?”

Cold fury enveloped him, and he said stiffly, “Blood is not everything. I was raised a Bagestani. My father has been devoted to this country, in good times and bad. He refused to flee after the coup, although all the family wealth was seized, and as a distant member of the royal family, he was warned his life might be at risk. He was determined to raise his children here.”

“And your mother was opposed to that? You speak fluent English, after all.”

“My mother did insist on our being partly educated abroad. And she always spoke to her children in English.” He smiled. “Until I was fifteen, I thought that was what ‘mother tongue’ meant.”

Aly laughed appreciatively. For some reason the sound went straight to his groin.

“Did she have to fight your father over the issue? She must be a strong woman.”

“She is a strong woman, but my father did not disapprove. He said the world was changing and we would need to be flexible. He foresaw English becoming the lingua franca of the world many years ago.”

“And will you do your own children the same favor?” Aly asked.

Her words hit him hard. He had never been able to see the way for his future children, and he knew that was a weakness. He shook his head like a boxer, shrugging a half-formed thought away. She got in under his defenses in a way no other woman did. He didn’t like it.

“I have no idea,” Arif said flatly, closing the subject.

…

At the end of the meal Arif started the engine and put the yacht on automatic pilot. As he came to sit down again, Jamila set a tray with two little cups of strong, sweet coffee in front of them.

“We’ll be at Solomon’s Foot before midnight. You’ll be able to start as early as you wish in the morning.”

“That’s good. I want to get on the beach at first light,” Aly said.

“Not a problem. A helicopter will be arriving at
Fajr,
or close to it, to drop off some papers for me. Farhad will collect them and take you to the beach immediately afterwards.”

“But what time will the helicopter come? How far away is
Fajr
from where we’ll be moored? I should get started before sunrise, you know.”

Irritation pricked through his blood. The moon still sailed the serene black overhead. Did she have eyes? “
Fajr
is what we call the dawn prayer. The helicopter will be here as soon as there is sufficient light to land.”

Apart from the one moment when he had seemed to see the woman in her eyes, she had been imperviously impersonal throughout the meal. If he mentioned the stars, she replied about light years and galaxies. When the crescent moon rose, as haunting as the boat that Khosrow had sailed in with Shirin, she discussed how the turtle hatchlings would be drawn to the sea by its light glinting from the water.

“Sorry,” she said now, picking up the little cup with an apologetic smile that soothed him in spite of himself. “I didn’t know what that word meant. The islands were deliberately depopulated under Ghasib, weren’t they? Wasn’t he bribed by some multinational that wanted to exploit the area?”

He sighed. And now she was into the history of the islands. Surely it could only be nervous awareness that aroused such determination in her. Arif thought of a cat at a mouse hole, and relaxed and waited and played her game.

She went on. “Big Pharma wanted sole rights to the medicinal herbs that are unique to the islands, so they bribed Ghasib to depopulate the whole area, wasn’t that it?”

“Yes.” Ghasib had perpetrated many evils in his time, but his inhumane treatment of the Gulf Islanders deserved as much contempt as any. “The damage here was lasting, and is hard to undo. And as for the corporation that financed such destruction in the name of profit…” He did not have words.

“But now the people are coming home?”

“Yes, the objections of environmental groups such as your own delayed the repatriation for some time, but they lost that battle in the end.”

“Not us,” Aly interjected hastily. “Turtle Watch was never aligned with Save the Aswad Turtle, and never took the position that restoring human presence to the islands presented a risk to
Cheloniidae johariae.
But we were too small to be heard against the blast from Save the Aswad Turtle. Richard always wondered who was behind them, because they had a bundle of money. And the group has completely disappeared since.”

Arif took that in with a nod. “It is a pity that we did not know this at the time. We are faced with new problems now. The people live by fishing and gathering medicinal herbs, which they sell to the mainland. The problem now is that the young people no longer wish to return to the islands. Many have spent their entire childhood in the cities or in camps, and the prospect of a hard island life no longer appeals to them.”

Aly closed her eyes and took a breath as he watched. Even without the caring intelligence blazing from her eyes, her face was engaging. A slender nose that was slightly bent from true; straight, strongly-marked eyebrows that slanted a little upwards at the tip;
delicately pointed chin…the rosebud lips. Arif enjoyed the lack of final perfection in her face. It was a pity how so many beautiful women saw any deviation from perfection as a flaw, rather than a gift of individuality. He had known more than one woman who, after going under the surgeon’s knife, had expected him to approve her bland beauty afterwards, when what had caught him before was the very idiosyncrasy she had had removed. Westerners complained about the Islamic veil because it robbed a woman of her individuality, and that was true. But a woman could always take a veil off. The Western smoothing out of individual uniqueness in the name of some arbitrary ideal of beauty was permanent.