Sheik Protector (7 page)

“What were they looking for?” She moved forward and scrutinized the scene. She was definitely not the type of person to quietly sit in a corner while someone else took care of any problems at hand.

He surveyed the room for a long moment. “If we can find that out, we might be able to find out who they are.”

“The same people who want you dead?” She followed him as he walked through the palace, surveying the damage and looking for clues.

He couldn’t not be aware of the graceful way she walked, of her feminine presence beside him.

“Most likely.” He stopped and took in the stubborn look in her eyes. He had to be crazy for even considering telling her the truth. He had figured he would protect her from that. But Julia Gardner seemed dead-set against accepting any sort of protection.

He hesitated for another long moment. Glanced around one more time, just to delay. They were in the kitchen. Expensive china was scattered on the tile floor. Signs of violence were all around them. Maybe it would be better if she weren’t completely ignorant of the how and why. “Take a seat.”

She walked to one of the many boxes the servants had packed, and opened it.

He had a feeling she’d do the opposite of what he asked just to spite him, no matter how reasonable a request he put to her. “Suit yourself.” He shrugged off his annoyance.

She pulled out some canned food and puzzled over the flowing Arabic script that must have looked like scribble writing to her. “Do you cook?”

He raised an eyebrow.

“Forget it.” She mumbled something about rich people and their private chefs.

“I haven’t told you everything about Aziz.”

Her eyes snapped to his face. She dropped the can back into the box. He had her full attention now.

A shadow crossed his heart. “I have reason to believe that Aziz was killed. I’ve been working on tracking down the men responsible for his death.”

Her face went white. He watched as the fight went out of her, replaced by stunned denial.

“Why would anyone want to hurt someone like Aziz?” She paled another shade.

He stepped closer and put a steadying hand under her elbow, cursing himself for being so aware of the fact that he was half-naked and her clothes hid little of her charms. Jasmine and vanilla. He tried not to breathe. He really was a better man than this, wanting blindly what wasn’t his.

She had made it clear that she wanted to be as far from him as possible and was willing to risk her life to get there. The thought stung, so he pushed it away. But could not push away the awareness of how soft her skin felt in his palm.

He was relieved when she pulled away to sit.

“And now the same people want to kill you. Why?” She looked up at him, bewildered.

“You wanted to kill me,” he pointed out, smiling at the irony.

“I wanted you asleep. So I could escape.” She asserted her previous claims once again, and he was tempted to believe her.

“You drugged me unconscious when we had two assassins on our trail.” In his book, that came pretty close to wanting him dead. “What did you think was going to happen when they caught up with us?”

If possible, she turned whiter. “I didn’t realize. I—” She fell silent and braced her elbows on her knees, leaned forward to bury her face in her hands.

Her hair was undone, tumbling over her shoulders, cascading to shield her face. She looked lost and fragile just then, bringing out all his protective instincts until he reminded himself that she was more than capable of handling herself. She had rendered him helpless, something his enemies hadn’t been able to do.

And yet, she hadn’t left. Something to think about.

“You changed your mind. You didn’t leave me to them. Why?”

She murmured something like, “I must be too stupid to live.”

If anything, she was too smart for her own good, certainly for his. He watched her for a long moment before making up his mind. “You did it for honor,” he said. “Because you are an honorable woman, you will do what you must. You dislike me, but you protected me. So you have to understand then why I must protect you.”

“Because you dislike me?” She glanced up.

She didn’t need to know just how far that was from the truth. “Because honor demands it.”

“I hate the whole concept of honor. It’s frustrating.” She drew herself straight in the chair. “And it’s stupid.”

“You might hate it, but you have it.”

“Well, it’s damn inconvenient.”

He grinned at her. She was the only woman he knew to swear. He should have been shocked. But to be honest, he liked the starch in her. He could easily see why Aziz had been captivated by her strange personality.

Aziz.

Had she been the woman of Aziz’s heart? Had Aziz planned to go back for her? He couldn’t imagine any sane man not wanting to go back for her. For that matter, he couldn’t imagine any sane man willing to leave a woman like Julia Gardner behind in the first place.

Perhaps he hadn’t known his twin brother as well as he thought he had.

His mood turned dark as he left the kitchen and strode toward the back storage areas, not stopping until he found the safari kit, which had been riffled through, but not destroyed.

He pulled out a bottle of disinfectant and a sheet of butterfly bandages, some sterile gauze, and sat on the floor to take care of business.

“Let me help.” Julia kneeled next to him.

And because he wanted to feel her touch on his skin again, despite his better judgment, he allowed her. He sat still as she unrolled the stained strip of linen and poured the disinfectant over the wound, didn’t move when she gently rubbed away the dry blood. He clenched his teeth when she massaged the arm so that the disinfectant could dribble as far into the wound as possible.

Burning pain pulsed through his arm, but he said nothing as she finally dabbed away the last of the blood and put the butterfly bandages in place to hold the holes together in the front and the back.

But when her work was done, and she pulled away, he couldn’t let her. He reached for her and pulled her against him.

Her gold-brown eyes went wide with alarm. He couldn’t do this. He shouldn’t do this.
Forgive me, brother
. He brushed his lips over hers. And as though someone had flicked a switch, he felt no more pain.

Her lips were soft and warm. He was aware of her hands coming up to his chest. More than aware that they weren’t pushing him away. Nor did they caress him or pull him closer, but in his current state, her lack of resistance was the only invitation he needed.

He ran his tongue along the seam of her full lips and felt the effect straight to his toes. She’d made him feel as wired, as alive, as acutely aware of all sensations as sitting on that car bomb had. But this was so much more pleasurable.

Her mouth yielded under his pressure and he tasted her at last, feeling as if he had lived his life up to this point for that taste. The thought was too startling and too out of character for him to consider just now. So he simply stopped thinking and, going forward, only felt.

Warm. Silky. Sweet.

His
.

Every part of him was clear on that. It wasn’t so much a surprise discovery as a quiet recognition. And as he explored her with his tongue, he could lull himself for a while longer into going with the tide and not fighting what every cell in his body was insisting was good and right.

Heat gathered in his groin, heat and need.
Take,
a treacherous voice whispered, then demanded. And he was more than willing to listen to it.

His thumb rested against her pulse as he cradled her face in his hand, and he felt the mad rhythm. His own heart matched it. He kissed her over and over again. Pulled her closer. So close he was no longer sure where his body ended and hers began. And it wasn’t close enough.

Honor
. The single word popped into his consciousness, which was otherwise filled to the brim with the feel of Julia against him.

Hadn’t he just preached about honor not long ago? He had to find his own and in a hurry. He stopped the kiss first, separated his lips from hers with great reluctance, then sucked in air. He let her go then stood abruptly and strode out of the damned storage room.

He had kissed her.

And he had wanted to do more. So much more, wanting it so strongly that it scared him.

He was a man of self-discipline. Surely he had more control than that. For the sake of his brother’s memory.

And even beyond that, there were the laws of the country to consider, common sense and decency. If he let things get out of control, he would be forced to marry her.

And the scary thing was, for a man who had sworn never to wed, the thought didn’t seem half-unappealing.

Her stomach comfortably full with whatever canned food they had shared, Julia pretended to sleep, wondering if she were fooling him at all. Her head was so full of questions, she wouldn’t have been surprised if Karim could hear her thinking.

He had kissed her.

What had
that
been about? was the first and foremost question on her mind. How could Karim kiss her like that then ignore her for the rest of the evening? Maybe he always kissed like that. The thought bothered her more than she cared to admit. She didn’t want to think about him kissing other women.

Aziz had never kissed her like that. Nobody had ever kissed her like that. She hadn’t realized there were kisses that could still make your knees weak hours later in the night.

To say that he surprised her didn’t begin to describe how she felt. He’d spent most of their time together up to that point snarling at her and giving her orders. He’d always been cool, and solid, collected. She wouldn’t have guessed much could make him lose that iron control, certainly not her.

And she would not have, in a million years, guessed her own response to the man. Something really weird was going on between them. The threat of imminent death, most likely. That was the thing that sharpened all her senses. Subconsciously, they wanted to reaffirm life or something like that. Or it could be that her hormones were the culprit. She’d heard a former co-worker say once that after making her tired and pukey for the first trimester, in the second, her hormones made her incredibly horny.

Julia squeezed her eyes together. Oh, yeah. She was there. Hot and bothered. And nowhere near being able to forget the damn kiss. Give her a year or two. She really hated having no control over her body. And she had a feeling it was going to get worse before it got better.

But no matter what her body wanted, she was
not,
under any circumstances, getting involved with Karim. She was leaving. He just didn’t know it yet. And she wasn’t interested in getting tangled up in another relationship again. She was going to be a mother soon. She was determined to spend her life trying to be a better mom than her own was, to give all the love and attention to her child she or he needed. From now on, the baby was going to be the focus of everything she did.

She’d tried relationships and failed every single time. She wasn’t willing to risk continuing that track record and messing up her baby’s life. For as long as this kid needed it, she or he would have her full attention.

But that kiss was
—She pushed her lips together when they tingled from the memory. She couldn’t afford to think about that kiss.

Definitely not now.

But
—

No but.

Maybe
—

She sighed into her pillow. Okay. In eighteen years, when the kid went off to college, maybe she would look up Karim.

K
ARIM WOKE
to a scratching noise in the middle of the night, out of a very pleasant dream of kissing Julia again. She’d leveled him without half trying. He couldn’t afford to lose his head like that again.

He looked at her across the room on the divan, her hair spread across her pillow. She didn’t stir. He slowly rose from his own couch. There were plenty of rooms upstairs, but he didn’t want to have her in a separate room from him. Didn’t trust her that much. And to share a bedroom with her didn’t seem right, although they had already broken so many rules of his country. Having her in the same bedroom with him would have meant the same bed.
Don’t think about it
. He didn’t trust
himself
that much.

The noise came again.

He pulled his gun from under his pillow, held his breath as he listened, caught a brief shuffle that definitely didn’t come from mice. Someone was in the back of the house, near the kitchen.

He stole quietly over to Julia and for a second just watched how beautiful she looked in the swath of moonlight that illuminated her face. She breathed softly in her sleep. It was the first time he saw her relaxed since they had met.

He needed her awake, and kissing her awake was a sore temptation. But he resisted, putting a hand over her tempting mouth. Her eyes immediately popped open and filled with fear as she struggled against him. But a few seconds later, when she finally recognized him, she stilled. He leaned close to her ear, inhaled her scent of jasmine and vanilla. That scent was going to be the death of him yet.

“Go into the bathroom. Lock the door,” he said, then added, “No noise.”

He didn’t remove his hand until she nodded.

As she crept toward the hall, he stayed where he was and snored softly at first then picked up some volume to cover her movements and the sound of the door when she turned the lock. When he knew she was safe, he eased off on the snoring and moved slowly toward the back of the house.

The moonlight that came in the windows hindered him about as much as it helped. He could see, but it also meant that he would be seen. And the furniture was all pushed around and turned over, all strangeness instead of the familiar shadows he was used to.

He kept to those strange shadows and peered ahead in the semidarkness, hoping to spot the source of the noise. Before he could make any plans, he needed to know how many intruders were in the house. And it wouldn’t have hurt to know who they were and with what they were armed.

His left arm was stiff. He rolled it a few times, ignoring the pain. He had to make sure to compensate for the arm. Compensating for his right eye had become second nature over the years, not something he ever needed to think about.

He spotted the intruder as the man slipped from the kitchen, moving toward the stairs that led to the second floor. Young and thin, the guy moved without a sound, his sandals barely touching the floor. There was no other sound. And the guy’s body language said he was alone. His gaze darted all over the place, expecting trouble from every direction. He wouldn’t have been this jumpy if he had backup.

Karim waited until the guy reached the stairs, climbed and disappeared down the hallway above him. Only then did he sneak toward the kitchen, needing to be one hundred percent sure there was no one else to worry about. He wouldn’t leave Julia behind until he confirmed this.

But the kitchen was empty, one of the back windows cut out of the frame, cleverly fooling the security system. It monitored windows being opened, the frame moving away from its place. But with the removal of the glass there had been no need to move the frame at all.

He moved faster now that he knew the intruder was alone, thanking Allah for that favor as he reached the stairs. Gun held in front of him, he took the steps carefully. He could see no one when he reached the top. The long hall had doors to the various rooms on each side, the hallway itself widening into an octagonal sitting room at the end. He had no choice but to check the rooms one by one.

He didn’t find the intruder in any of them.
Another floor
. Karim headed toward the stairs again and went up and up, disappointed when he found this floor empty, too.

He nearly turned to rush back to Julia, worried that the intruder had somehow gotten by him and might be a danger to her, when he remembered the attic. His own palace was of traditional Muslim design with its flat roof and the single dome over the middle. But Aziz had some fashionable American designer work on the plans of his home, and the man had added that strange foreign roof line that contained an attic that could be, of course, no use at all in this climate, due to the unbearable heat that gathered up there.

Just past the last room, the attic door was a hidden panel that looked like a piece of carved art, a swirling image of verses from the Quran, decorated with geometric patterns. He found it slightly ajar and eased himself inside.

Heat and stale air hit him in the face, and he thanked Allah that the stairs were made of stone because wood would have dried out long ago and the creaking would have given him away. He made his way to the top.

The large space wasn’t empty as he had expected. He stared with surprise at the collection of strange things. The first item he walked by was a stone statue. He couldn’t make out much. Barely any light filtered up from the partially open door below. He didn’t want to turn on the overhead lamps and give himself away. He couldn’t see deep into the attic, but as far as he could see, the place was filled to the brim. It was like a very hot, very dry, overcrowded sauna.

Aziz apparently used his attic to store some of his finds from his amateur archaeological adventures. Odd, really. Karim had been under the impression that everything Aziz had found went into Queen Dara’s museum. The country’s foreign queen had an obsession for preserving the past—the first thing his countrymen had agreed with her about before she had irrevocably wormed her way into the people’s hearts with her many projects.

There were crates up here. Not one of them broken, nor any of the statues disturbed. Whoever had ransacked the house below had not been in here.

But the attic did hold an intruder tonight.

Where was he?

Karim peered into the darkness and tried to breathe in the oppressive heat. He moved forward, passed another statue and realized why these never made it to any museum. Most of the statues depicted human shapes, a practice forbidden by Islam. What on earth was Aziz doing with them?

He heard noise from the back and stole forward, spotted the man’s dim flashlight. He stayed hidden behind the crates and statues as he moved forward, careful not to make noise. The attic was enormous, spanning the whole width and length of the palace. A few minutes passed before Karim could make out what the guy was doing. The intruder had a sheet of paper in one hand and the flashlight in the other. He was examining the statues, looking carefully at each one before moving on.

He had both hands full and no weapon that Karim could see.

“Stop,” Karim called in Arabic and aimed his gun at the man.

He turned off the flashlight at once, enveloping them in complete darkness. They were too far from the entrance for any light from there to reach them. He heard clothes swish and made a grab that way, but caught nothing but air.

He moved quickly toward the exit, knowing the man would head that way, too, not wanting to become trapped up here. He was about halfway when they bumped into each other at a fair speed. The man went down. Karim saw stars when the guy slammed right into his bullet wound, and lost his own balance, toppling forward as well.

“Who are you?”

He grabbed the man tightly, and they rolled on the floor, bumping into crates. He could have shot the guy, but he didn’t want to, not unless he had no other choice. More than anything, he wanted answers.

“Who are you?” he repeated.

The only response he received was a grunt.

They rolled again and something sharp burned his side. A blade? He reached out and found that hand, immobilized it, felt the handle of a knife.

He outweighed the intruder by close to twenty pounds, but the man was wiry. And fought dirty, he realized the next second when the intruder bit his neck hard. Karim brought up his elbow sharply, hit the guy on the chin by chance and heard the man’s neck snap back. Then his opponent went limp.

Karim secured the man’s hands with his own before he dragged him toward the light, down the stairs.

A youth, barely over twenty. He was shaking off the injury by the time they reached the landing.

“Who sent you?”

The intruder was grubby, most of his front teeth missing, his clothes and hair unkempt. He spit at the floor by Karim’s feet and lunged at him. Karim held him back, reached for a curtain pull, yanked it off the wall and tied the guy’s hands.

“All right. I’ll call the police. They’ll know what to do with a thief.”

The young man went white. Until recently, the punishment for thievery was cutting off the criminal’s right hand in the marketplace. Although most of Beharrain’s ancient laws were being reformed, a thief could still count on a severe caning and considerable time in prison.

“In Allah’s name I beg you for mercy.” The intruder fell at Karim’s feet.

“When you tried to kill me, was that in Allah’s name, too?” He wasn’t impressed by the plea. “Who are you?”

No response.

“Who sent you?” He had a fair idea that he was a street boy turned beggar-slash-thief. How would someone like him know about Aziz’s attic? He’d gone straight for it, didn’t bother with the rest of the house. How did he know there was something of value up there? And what the hell was it? He hadn’t grabbed any of the statues. Looked like he’d been searching for something specific.

“I meant no harm. I was to take nothing.” He remained prostrate.

“What were you doing up there?”

“I was given money to find something. That is all. I swear to Allah, that is all.” His forehead nearly touched the floor, the back of his shirt stained with sweat.

“Find what?”

“Just some stone. Worth nothing. Just to find them, not to take them. I swear to Allah, sheik.”

The man probably had no idea who he was, and was only calling him sheik as a sign of respect. Probably would have done anything to get away. But Karim couldn’t let him go.

“Why? Who wants to know what is in Sheik Aziz’s attic?”

The man stayed deeply bowed before him.

Karim pulled his cell phone from his pocket, opened it and dialed.

“Abdul Nidal from the
souk,
” the man said quickly, probably fearing the call would go to the police. “Just to look, he said. Just to look.” And he paled when Karim didn’t shut the phone.

The call was answered on the other end.

“I need you to come to Aziz’s palace and pick up someone here,” Karim told his chief of security.

The young man looked up, his face now completely white with fear.

Karim dragged him to his feet. He had broken in, had attacked him in the attic, would have killed him if Karim had been slower. All that for a handful of change, most likely. And he would do it again.

His chief of security would figure out who he was and hold him until they knew for sure that he’d spoken the truth. Then they’d see if the police were looking for him for anything. If so, he would be handed over to face justice. If not…Karim would think about giving him a chance and a job at one of the company’s oil wells. The men who worked the wells in the middle of the desert were a tough lot. They could handle him.