Sheik Protector (8 page)

Abdul Nidal
. He turned the name over in his mind. It didn’t ring any bells. Then again, there was no reason why it should. He hardly knew every store owner at the
souk,
the local market.

How was Abdul connected to Aziz?

There was only one way to find out.

“N
OTHING
.” Julia kept scanning the floor.

She had followed Karim up after his security picked up the intruder. Four of his men were now stationed downstairs, guarding the house from further disturbance. They were pretty-grim looking men. Hence her preference for the attic, even though the place seriously creeped her out with its eerie statues. Despite the fact that the light was on, the scene still looked like a graveyard. And it
was
still the middle of the night.

She didn’t understand why finding a scrap of paper couldn’t wait until morning. Karim was convinced he’d seen some sort of a drawing in the guy’s hand when he’d first spotted him, but by the time he caught the man, the intruder had been empty-handed.

Statues and crates loomed in the heat. She tried to stay near Karim, but the whole point was to search different areas of the attic so they could cover ground more quickly. Still, she hated it when he disappeared from sight.

So when had he gone from being a threat—a person she needed to get away from at any cost—to being a point of security for her? Something to think about.

She could not let a single kiss addle her brain this much. But it had been a good kiss. Great.
Beyond great
. She was so busy reliving it that she almost missed the stained piece of paper that had slid half under a crate.

“Found it,” she called out, more excited about being able to go back downstairs now than about her find.

Karim was by her side in seconds, taking the crumpled sheet. A careful drawing of four primitively carved statues filled the page, complete with measurements. They were smaller than the ones up in the attic, small enough to be carried by a man, and looked like they might have been made of something different than stone. Their shapes were shaded to indicate color and shine.

Still, they weren’t exactly the sort of thing that took your breath away. To her, the larger stone statues of the attic were far more impressive. “What are they?”

Karim shrugged and folded the paper carefully. “I have no idea.”

“Can we leave now?” she asked, full of hope. She was exhausted after a tumultuous day. It was about three in the morning. She longed for some more sleep.

Karim watched her for a moment. “You go get some rest. I’ll check the crates. I’d rather not involve even my security in this for now. Things like this—” he motioned around “—are controversial in our country’s religion. I want to know if Aziz had what our intruder was looking for.”

He wasn’t the type to quit before he got what he wanted. She’d be smart to keep that in mind.

She drew a deep breath. If he thought she was going back down to his mean-looking guards all by herself, he was nuts. “I guess I’ll stay.”

He gave her a faint smile, which brought her attention to his masculine lips. And made her wonder what the chances were of repeating that kiss before she somehow broke away from him and made her way home. Probably not very high.

But he didn’t walk away from her. “You were scared.”

She didn’t respond. Of course she was scared. She didn’t normally have criminals breaking into places where she was sleeping. And thank God for that.

“I wouldn’t have let him get to you.” The words were firmly spoken.

She believed him. He was a tougher, harder man than she had ever met before.

And she relaxed fully, finally, realizing only now that the panic of huddling in the downstairs bathroom not knowing where Karim was or what he was doing, not knowing if some assassin was going to kick the door in and shoot her between the eyes the next second, was still there, and that it had settled into her muscles. And when she finally let the fear go, her limbs began to tremble.

She was such a wuss. He was a strong man, probably as disgusted by displays of weakness as her ex-boyfriend, Steve, had been. She tried to still her tremors as she waited for him to walk away.

Instead, he stepped closer and drew her into his arms. “It’s okay.”

The comfort he gave felt incredibly good. She pressed closer, against the hard muscles of his wide chest, knowing that she should be moving in the opposite direction. Her goal was to get as far away from him as possible. At the moment, she found that goal exceedingly hard to remember.

His hands came to her back to comfort her. Odd that she would feel so incredibly safe in his arms. It had no logic to it. He was not her ally by any means. He meant to keep her prisoner.

She tilted her head to look at him, brought her hands to his chest like she had earlier to push him away. Her hands stayed where they were, like earlier. She couldn’t move them all of a sudden. She couldn’t move anything. Not when he was dipping his head and she knew that he was going to kiss her again.

This time she braced herself for the effect and it didn’t make a damn difference. He still blew her away. The soft brush of his lips against hers aroused her more than anything any other man had ever done to her.

Insane.

Impassioned.

Impossibly good.

A lot of
I
s. There was another one, one that she wasn’t going near with a ten-foot pole.
In love
. If there ever was a man who could drag her down that perilous road again, it was the one who could kiss like that. But she did stupid things when she was in love. Handed over her heart and let it get stomped on. If she did another round of that, she was afraid she might not be able to piece it back together again.

No matter how Karim Abdullah made her feel, she could not fall for him. A simple matter of self-preservation. Having had the childhood she had, she was good at self-preservation, wouldn’t have survived this long if she weren’t.

She
would
leave. But not tonight, she thought and gave herself over to his kiss.

J
ULIA WOKE TO
the sun shining into her eyes through the window, and looked around disoriented. She was lying on a sofa in some sort of an office, Karim working on the computer, intent on the screen.

He looked freshly showered, crisp in a clean suit. The sun glinted off his jet-black hair and outlined his wide shoulders. He radiated power even when he was doing something as mundane as sitting at a desk.

She remembered looking through crates in the middle of the night, and some more phenomenal kissing, the memory of which was enough to set her tingling all over. She must have fallen asleep when she had sat down to rest. And he must have carried her down here.

Her first thought was embarrassment, the second disappointment that she hadn’t been awake for it.

“Did you find the statues?” she asked.

He glanced up. “Nothing that looked even remotely similar. But at least I know what they are.” A shadow crossed his face.

She sat up and smoothed down her clothes then her hair, although the latter was hopeless.

“They were made before Islam.” He pointed to the drawings they’d found in the attic. “My people, the Bedu, had a different religion back then. They worshipped idols. False gods. Today, religious extremists call this time
Jahiliah
—a time of ignorance and evil. They do whatever they can to destroy all history and evidence of these ancient religions.”

“That’s what the statues are, idols?” she asked. She’d never heard of any of this.

He nodded. “Statues of ancient gods. Back then, when people came to the Kaba stone, they placed their god statues there. When Muhammad came to power, his armies conquered Mecca. He purified Kabba of pagan idols, and the sacred stone became the focus of Islam.”

“When you say purified, you mean?”

“Destroyed the idols.”

“So to find one is rare?” She was beginning to understand why Aziz’s house had been searched so thoroughly, why tonight’s intruder had been here.

“Extremely.”

“I’m guessing they’re worth a lot.”

“Their worth is indefinable, but they could be never sold or exhibited in a museum.”

“Why?” That made no sense at all. Especially not the museum part. The stuff in the attic was definitely museum material.

“Religious extremists consider them the very devil.”

“So those are probably the people who are looking for them, to destroy them.”

“Destroy the statues and everyone who has come in contact with them, who had any role in their survival at all. People get rabid about this kind of thing. It probably seems strange to you. But here, for some people, religion is a matter of life and death. Some are willing to die or kill for it.”

That took a few moments to digest. She particularly disliked the
kill
part. “How do you know all this?” He hadn’t had a clue about the drawings when he’d first looked at that sheet.

“I sent a digital picture to the royal palace.”

Oh. Well, the king
was
his cousin.

“Queen Dara identified the statues. What that woman doesn’t know about Beharrain’s past isn’t worth knowing.”

How strange, she thought, considering that the queen was born in the U.S. But she was glad that Karim had access to an expert. She wondered if Aziz might have consulted with the queen, as well. Then another, darker thought occurred.

“You think there is a chance whoever is after these statues killed Aziz?” She could still scarcely believe that anyone would want to kill Aziz. Aziz was fun and open and giving. If she had to place bets on who made more enemies between the twin brothers, her money would have been on the Dark Sheik, Karim.

He stood from his desk, his grave expression betraying that he had considered her question already. “I’m becoming more and more sure.”

“And now they want you, why?”

“I’m handling my brother’s affairs. Since they weren’t able to find the statues, they are assuming they’ve been passed down to me.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, his face turning grimmer.

“What is it?”

“You asked after Aziz at the reception at MMPOIL. You were with me in the parking lot, then in the car, then at the hotel. They might think you are involved with this.”

“That’s insane. I just got here.”

“Aziz could have called you to appraise the statues. You could be here to take them to the U.S. Any number of things.” He made a gesture of frustration.

“So now they want to get me, too? Just how powerful are these religious extremists?”

His lips flattened into a tight line. “Very.”

“And they are coming to get us.” Her heart beat in her throat.

“They are not going to stop until they have the statues, and they think we have them.”

“But why kill Aziz? Why not capture him and try to get the location of the statues out of him?”

He thought for a second. “They probably thought they knew the location of the statues. They figured if they got Aziz out of the way, the statues would have nobody to protect them.”

“But now that they realize they don’t know where the statues are, why try to kill you? I mean, if they think you know the location. Wouldn’t that be lost if you died? They would never find them.”

“They haven’t killed me yet,” he said darkly. “Not in that chase and not at the hotel. Maybe they were going for capture.”

“And the car bomb?” That would have been enough to finish anyone off.

“Remote control,” he said pensively. “Wasn’t activated until I dove from the car. They wanted to scare me, set me off balance.”

“So they want to kidnap you and torture the location of the statues out of you before they kill you?” She felt faint.

His face darkened. “Not just me, I’m afraid. I’m fairly sure that at this stage, they want the both of us.”

She thought for a moment. “To be honest, from where I was standing, they didn’t look like they were just trying to scare you.”

He shrugged. “Maybe not. Maybe they think if they take me out, it’ll be easier to get one of my men to talk. I’m sorry that you got involved in this.”

She was ready to run for the hills. Her first thought was that he had to let her go now, had to let her leave the country. Her life was in danger here and so was her child’s, Aziz’s child. She knew he wouldn’t be indifferent to that.

But after a moment she realized that if some religious wacko decided to take her out, her simply crossing the border wouldn’t stop him. If she’d learned anything from watching the news in the last couple of years, it was that fanatics were more than resourceful and extremely mobile. And even if she left, that would still leave Karim in danger.

She cared only because he was her baby’s uncle, she told herself. She had so little family. Really, Karim and the baby were it for now, and the rest of Aziz’s family, whom she hadn’t met yet. And was in no hurry to do so. If they were anything like Karim, they would want her baby and wouldn’t be averse to locking her up and throwing away the key to get what they wanted.

She’d spent years fantasizing what it would be like to have family, people around her that she had a connection to. And now she found some, not a connection of blood, but a connection through her child. Still, a stronger connection than she’d had to anyone in a long time. She’d met only one so far and he was already driving her crazy. And frankly, based upon this initial experience, she was a little scared of meeting the rest of them.

She planned on doing whatever was necessary, in fact, to avoid such meeting and get sucked further into the Abdullah family. Karim was all she could handle. Who was she kidding? The Dark Sheik was more than she could handle. So much more.

And yet she felt obligated to do what she could so the Abdullahs didn’t meet a bad end. Family stuff was crazy, she thought, then something occurred to her and she saw a ray of hope at last. Running and hiding would only work for so long. And she didn’t want to spend “so long” in this country. She still had her original goal firmly in mind, although her priorities had been reshuffled.