The Black Sheep Sheik (3 page)

She clamped her mouth shut, regretting most of that monologue as soon as the last word was out. A simple no would have sufficed. She was projecting and she knew it. But at least she didn’t leave any doubt about how she felt. Considering how used to getting his way he must be, that couldn’t be a bad thing.

His face hardened on cue, his eyes filling with determination as he took her hands and kept them. “My purpose is not capturing you for selfish reasons. I want only what is best for you and my son. I would give my life to keep you from danger.”

The I-control-you-for-your-own-good song and dance. She knew that one by heart, had watched her mother live it with various men after she’d abandoned the family.

“I’m not marrying you, and you can’t make me,” she told the sheik and she meant it.

He glared regally.

He was the only man she knew who could look magnificent in a hospital gown and make her head swim. Figured. Somehow he managed to radiate strength—along with massive disapproval—even in his current, weakened state.

She hadn’t forgotten him in the past nine months, and she was pretty sure she wouldn’t have forgotten him—even if he hadn’t returned—for as long as she lived. But he did return. She’d been moonstruck enough so that if he’d suggested a loose liaison after the baby was born, she might have gone for it. He was the perfect man to have an affair with.

But what he wanted was to control her completely.

“You carry my son,” he said with the arrogance of a man who knew he held the trump card.

“And this is not the Middle Ages,” she told him with the certainty of a woman who believed she had sanity and progress on her side. She pulled her hands out of his, at last, away from his tingling heat.

His voice dropped an octave as he said, “Do you hate me that much for not coming back sooner? I did not abandon you. You were gone when I woke. Matters of the state… I had to return home to take care of things.”

“I hate you?” She threw her hands up, her frustration escaping at last. She didn’t have as good a grip on her emotions these days as she would have liked. A flood of hormones ruled her mind and body.

“Right. I hate you. That’s why I put my entire career and everything I worked so hard for at risk by hiding a patient. If anyone found you, I could have lost my medical license. I could have gone to jail.”

She’d had plenty of time to worry about that while he’d been out cold. Giving birth in jail wasn’t on the list of things she wanted to try. She had risked
everything,
because she couldn’t do otherwise. Because she’d believed him when he’d said he was in danger.

His eyes never left her face. “I do thank you for keeping me here all this time. Ask for any reward and I will see that you shall receive it. But the matter of my heir is nonnegotiable.”

Of all the magnanimous…
She walked away before she could have said something she would regret. “I think I preferred you in a coma. You’re much nicer when you’re not talking, you know that?”

The prince of Persia she remembered was passionate and…well,
very
passionate and intelligent and had a sense of humor. Also, um, passionate. She swallowed. Sheik Amir Khalid was arranging her life without any regard to her wishes. Nobody was the boss of her. She’d worked hard to make sure that her choices would be her own, that she wouldn’t owe anyone anything, that she wouldn’t depend on anyone for anything. Ever. She would never be like her mother.

She needed to get out of the cabin and away from him for a while. She had the perfect excuse. “Why don’t you lie down and get some rest, give your mind a little time to settle? I need to leave for an hour or two. I have a doctor’s appointment today.”

“Is something wrong?”

“A regular, scheduled checkup.”

Relief crossed his face as he returned to his food. She could see that swallowing was difficult for him, but he was determined to finish. He understood that eating was necessary to regain his strength. Good. At least they wouldn’t have to fight about that, because she was about out of the patience she kept in reserve for stubborn sheiks.

“You will not go,” he decreed between two spoonfuls. “I will have the royal physician flown in by tomorrow. He shall take over your care.”

She could feel her blood pressure inch up. “I will go to the doctor of my choice. Because I’m a free woman in a free country, and not one of your subjects.” She folded her arms over her chest, working hard not to say anything she might regret later. He
was
the father of her child, and he would be that forever. She needed to keep that in mind. Establishing an acrimonious relationship wouldn’t serve anyone’s interest.

“I am your future husband. You should not think angry thoughts about me,” he said with disapproval.

He didn’t know half of her angry thoughts. She was happy to fill him in. “I’m thinking whether I’d lose my medical license if I strangled you with the IV line, Your Highness.”

She expected him to issue some further royal command, or even a threat, and was ready with a retort. She wasn’t scared of him—he’d be lucky if he made it back to the sofa on his own. But instead of berating her for her latest insolence, he laughed. The same laugh that she remembered, the one that had a way of sneaking inside her chest. It completely disarmed her.

The warm, rich sound brought back memories of a luxurious suite with an equally luxurious bed, a thorough seduction, the most amazing two days of her life. The images flitting through her head stole her breath. She turned and busied herself with tidying up his hospital bed while she regained her equilibrium, resenting that he could make her lose it so easily.

He finished his meal and did stagger back to the sofa unaided, abandoning his empty bowl on the table. Of course, His Highness would. She shot him a glare and went to take care of that. She always did all the dishes immediately and kept all food sealed away. Otherwise, she’d have a battle with ants on her hands. Not something on the sheik of Jamala’s radar, obviously. He had a palace full of staff to worry about that sort of thing.

“I do need my cell phone now.” Sitting with his back supported, he lifted his left leg and tried to hold it steady before lowering it again, then did the same with the right leg.

“You don’t have a cell phone. You didn’t have much on you when you climbed from the wreckage.”

His face turned somber at the mention of the explosion. “Then I’ll need yours, if I may.”

She pulled it from her pocket and tossed it to him. He caught it. At least his reflexes were okay. He was doing amazingly well, considering that he’d been in a coma for nearly four weeks. His bearing was still regal, his head held high and proud. He could be just as well sitting on a throne than on her worn-out couch. Okay, minus the leg lifts.

“If you don’t know who blew up that limo… How do you know whom to trust?” She’d kept him alive this long, and he’d made it. Calling the wrong person could end all that. Just because she didn’t want to marry him didn’t mean she wanted to see him hurt.

He kept up with the leg exercise. “I must call the palace.”

The
palace.
Right.

Because he was a sheik. And she was a Wyoming doctor who was still paying off her student loans. A giant gap stretched between them, a gorge that could not be bridged: different countries, different cultures, different social status.

And all that distance didn’t
have
to be bridged, really. Because they were not going to be part of each other’s lives in any meaningful way. There was no way in hell that she was marrying him. No way was she going to be Mrs. Sheik.

He could make his calls, have his people come and pick him up, the sooner the better. Then she was out of here. She had a baby to bring into this world, and a carefully planned life to live.

She hesitated for a moment, a small part of her wishing for the impossible.

Then he said, “I’ll assign you a secretary who will tie up all loose ends for you here. You won’t be coming back to the U.S. for a while. I’ll hire a manager to take care of this cabin and any other property you own if you wish to keep them.”

On second thought, the smartest thing might be to leave before his people got here. She didn’t think he would take her against her will, but then again, she wouldn’t stake her life on it.

“How nice of you,” she said, while at the same time she thought,
Time to ditch the sheik.

T
HE MAN GIVING
the orders rattled off a residential address for one of the quiet suburbs of Dumont, the perfect hiding place to move his plans to the next stage. “Use GPS. You shouldn’t have any trouble finding it. Make sure you’re not followed.”

“Yes, sir.” The man taking the orders hesitated. “At the pickup site… It looks like we’re going to have some collateral damage.”

“Potential for witnesses?”

“Slim to none. We’re talking about a pretty remote area here.”

“Good. I’ll send a cleanup crew. You keep your focus on the sheik. Bring him to me. Alive if you can.” He hesitated. Yes, Amir Khalid would make the perfect bait for his royal friends, but if the men were too careful around him and let him slip through their fingers once again… “Of course, if he dies, he dies. As long as he doesn’t escape again, I’ll be pleased.”

“Yes, sir. There’ll be no mistakes.”

“There better not be.” This was just the beginning.

“We’re heading out right now, sir.”

“I expect a call within the hour about whether you made a capture or made a kill.”

A
MIR DIALED HIS
secretary at the palace, lifting his right leg and rolling his ankle at the same time. He didn’t want to limp in front of his security. Or in front of Isabelle. Her resistance baffled him. In his experience, people challenged authority when they perceived it as weak. The sooner he regained his full strength, the better.

He knew what was best and he was going to take care of her and his son. As soon as she was over her feminine hysteria, she would come to see that his was the best way, the only way, really. Protocol and tradition demanded they be together. And so did he.

“I’ll be outside, watering.” She headed for the door.

“If you see that chopper again, come back in.”

The line was picked up at the other end. “Sahed Habib, royal secretariat. How can I be of service?”

“It’s Amir.”

Stunned silence came first, then the sound of rapid breathing. “Are you all right, Sheik?” The always stoic voice thrilled for the first time that Amir could remember. “What happened? Everybody is looking for you.”

He explained as much as he knew, then had the man fill him in on all that he’d missed. Fahad had betrayed the alliance and was dead. Amir sat stunned, the news hitting him hard. Fahad had been his best friend’s cousin and head of security.

He and Efraim were going to have a long talk about this, which he didn’t look forward to. But first, he had other matters to arrange.

“I need the royal physician here at the Wind River Ranch and Resort. Put him on the next plane,” he ordered, without going into detail about Isabelle.

He was careful about what he said over the phone, careful not to mention his location. If Fahad had been involved, then so could others from the palace. He sent short messages of reassurance to his sister and key people in the government about being in touch very soon, then ended that call and dialed Efraim.

“Where have you been? Do you have any idea… Never mind. Don’t go anywhere. Don’t talk to anyone. Don’t even call the police. There’s danger—” The line went dead. No battery power left on the phone. He grunted with frustration as he slapped the phone onto the counter and headed for the door. He needed the charger from Isabelle.

He caught a glimpse of her through the window. She was walking from the back of her SUV to the front and…getting in? The nervous glance she cast toward the cabin confirmed his sudden suspicions. She was sneaking out on him once again.

“Isabelle!” He lunged for the door, a feat his legs weren’t quite ready for, tripped and grabbed on to the shelf by the coat hanger, pulled the stack of blankets off it by accident. The hunting rifle that had been hidden under them crashed to the floor with a clatter.

So it was nothing but sheer luck that when the beaten-up black van tore up the road, leaving a dust cloud in its wake, he had a gun in hand. An exceedingly good thing, since the second the van stopped, the men jumping from it opened fire.

They weren’t playing around. Judging from their weapons, they were stone-cold professionals, here to do business.

Isabelle dove inside the SUV as best as she could, considering her round belly. He provided her with cover and prayed that she got out of there before she got hurt. Instead, she drove to pick him up, tires squealing.

“Go! I’ll hold them off.” He took aim and squeezed off another shot.

“I swear if you don’t get in…” She looked scared to death but determined, steel glinting in her blue eyes.

And he didn’t have any choice but to jump into the car. Hesitating would have put their lives in even more danger.

Then Isabelle was peeling out of there, driving like mad down some trail that went behind the cabin.

“Duck!” he yelled just in time, as a hail of bullets hit the back window and it exploded.

“Are you hit?” Isabelle swerved to avoid a pothole the size of a meteor crater, her voice an octave higher than usual. She was used to hospital emergencies, but a shoot-out at her father’s old cabin was a whole different category. Normally, she had to deal only with the aftermath of violence, sewing up cuts after a fight or removing bullets. Being in the middle of a battle was a whole other kettle of fish.

“No. You?” Amir pulled himself back into the car at last. He’d been hanging half out the window, firing at the men behind them like some Old West gunslinger, keeping them pinned to their positions, doing interesting things to the hospital gown he was wearing.

Good thing she wasn’t watching.

He was not a sheltered palace royal, obviously. “I’m fine. Where did you learn to shoot like that?”

He gave her a hard look. “You know, all Arabs are not terrorists. My father was an excellent hunter. He used to take me with him.”

She glanced into the rearview mirror. “I wasn’t implying anything.”

The van gave pursuit, but they didn’t know every dip in the old country road as she did, and the “dirt-bike obstacle course” nature of it slowed them down. “I’m guessing those are the men who want you dead,” she said as calmly as she was capable. “Who are they?”

“I don’t recognize a single face.” He scowled. “Are you sure you are all right? You didn’t hit your belly?”

“I’m a doctor. I can monitor my own condition.” She didn’t need him to take care of her. She needed to be far away from him.

She glanced in the rearview mirror again. “They’re getting closer.” As they neared the main highway, the old road got better and better, proving less of an impediment.

He rifled through the glove compartment. “I’m out of bullets. Do you have any more?”

“Sure, and check for that grenade launcher under your seat.” She rolled her eyes. Just because she lived in the country, it didn’t mean she was some militia chick. Although, at the moment, maybe just one extra cartridge would have been nice.

He actually checked under the seat.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake. You know, all Americans are not gun crazy.”

“You had a gun.”

“My father had a gun. And I don’t think he ever shot anything.”

She reached the main road at last and pulled onto it, seeing only one other car way far ahead, and one way far behind them. “Hang on.”

She floored the gas and the SUV shot forward at an even greater speed. She didn’t much care about the speed limit. The cops pulling her over would be a good thing right now. Of course, the cops were never around when you needed them.

“Do you have the phone?”

“I left it at the cabin. Dead battery.” He shoved his long fingers through his jet-black hair.

She really needed a new battery for that phone. This one was getting worse and worse at holding a charge. Of course, she might not live long enough to have to worry about that again. She gripped the wheel tight and passed a beaten-up pickup that was towing a horse trailer.

“I should be driving.” Frustration and disapproval sat clear on Amir’s face. “We should switch.”

“Because I look ready to perform acrobatics in tight places?”

“You don’t like doing what I tell you,” he observed with obvious displeasure. “Tough chickpeas.”

“What’s that?”

“Something my father used to say. Sit back and hang on until we lose these idiots. I’m going to have to handle this, because there’s no other way.” He really
had
been a lot more agreeable when he’d been in a coma. They’d had a couple of really good talks. She’d talked. He listened very sweetly, even when she’d berated him for having concealed his true identity. She’d also run some ideas by him about the future and her plans to raise her son. His silent support had been much appreciated.

At the moment, he was eyeing the steering wheel as if he were considering grabbing it.

“Don’t make me go for the eject button,” she warned.

He folded his arms in front of him, the tight look on his face betraying just how little he appreciated her sense of humor. Odd how for the last nine months, she’d been thinking about him as a dashing foreigner who’d been all fun and games. Better put that down to hormonal brain damage.

“If you want to do something, put some clothes on. I have a bag of my father’s old things in the back.” She’d planned to drop it off at the Salvation Army on her way to her doctor’s appointment today.

He reached back and pulled the bag forward, selected a dark shirt and a pair of jeans, then shoved the rest back.

“The jeans will probably be too big in the waist. There are a couple of belts in the bottom of the bag.” She kept her gaze straight ahead as he dressed—jeans on bare bottom. Completely straight ahead. As if her life depended on it. Which it did.

The temperature in the car rose a few degrees. She cursed her peripheral vision. She so didn’t need any more tantalizing images of Amir in her brain. At the speed she was driving, it simply wasn’t safe.

He turned fully toward her when he was done, bracing himself on the dashboard with his right hand. “I’m going to ask you some questions. Do not be offended.”

She let out a slow breath. “That’s not a good start, is it?”

He scowled some more. Where did he get that? She didn’t remember him scowling once during the two days they’d spent together in the Emerald Suite. He’d been fun-loving, curious and imaginative.
Very
imaginative.

“Did you have anything to do with that limousine exploding?”

Her hands tightened on the steering wheel. “No.”

“Did you know who I was back when we first met?”

“No. And I wish I still didn’t know.” His royal background only complicated things.

He paused before his next question. “Do you want me dead?”

Oh, for heaven’s sake.
“I spent the last month of my life taking care of you.” She glared at him for a second. She couldn’t afford to take her eyes off the road longer than that. “Do I want you back in Jamala? Oh, yes. Dead? No. And that’s an insult, by the way.” She glanced into the rearview mirror. Their pursuers were even closer now than the last time she’d checked.

“I need to know without a doubt—”

“Could you not accuse me of attempted murder in the middle of a high-speed, armed chase? It’s the first time I’m doing something like this.”

He muttered something under his breath. Sounded like he was once again lamenting the fact that he wasn’t sitting behind the wheel.

And she didn’t say anything back. She was a doctor. She was used to dealing with the U.S. health-care system. She was used to disrespect. She was used to frustration. She was just going to treat him as a difficult patient or a snotty health-insurance representative. She was going to take the high road if it killed her.

She kept her focus on the road as miles whizzed by. Her game was to put as many cars between her SUV and the black van as possible. All the hand-eye coordination and quick reflexes she’d gained practicing general surgery now came in pretty handy.

“I’m going to trust you,” he said out of the blue, just as she passed a tractor-trailer.

“Whoopee.”

“Do you mock me?” He sounded startled.

She wanted to beat her head against the steering wheel. “I wouldn’t dare.” First he asked her to marry him;
then
he decided to trust her? She almost pointed out the insanity of that, before she realized that he hadn’t actually
asked
her to marry him. He’d told her.

She gritted her teeth, while he seemed to have fallen into regal, disdainful silence. The black van was still following them, but at least their pursuers were no longer shooting. A definite improvement.

“Why did they find me now?” he asked after a while. “Why not before? They had four weeks to track me down.”

She hadn’t had time to think about that yet. She considered his question as she took the next exit, heading for Dumont, hoping to lose her pursuers in a maze of narrow streets and alleys.

“I made some calls yesterday,” she confessed. It was the only possible link she could come up with. “This baby could come any minute. You couldn’t be left alone at the cabin while I went into the hospital to give birth. You needed someone to run the medical equipment.”

He thought that over. “How did you get all that equipment together with short notice?”

“My father recently passed away from cancer. He wanted to die at the cabin, so I had everything set up for him.” Including two generators, plus the sun panels on the roof. “He had a twenty-four-hour nurse, and I went out there every day after my shift ended.” Her father had desperately tried to hang on long enough to meet his grandson.

Moisture gathered in her eyes. She blinked it away. “With the funeral and all, I hadn’t had a chance to call for pickup yet when you showed up.” It hadn’t been an easy summer.

“I’m sorry about your father.” His tone was subdued.

She nodded, driving as fast as she could while still keeping control of the vehicle.

“You made sure your father was taken care of. Then you cared for me. You are an extraordinary woman.”

Probably trying to butter her up for something. But when she glanced over, she saw only surprise on his face. Which irked her. “Did you think I would abandon my father at the end of his life? Or that I would leave the father of my child bleeding on the road?”

“I was giving you a compliment. We didn’t have sufficient time to fully discover each other before. Many things about you are new to me. I’m looking forward to getting to know you better.” He looked surprised at that, too, as if the words coming out of his mouth were a revelation to him.

They were finally in Dumont and she took the first bigger road to the left, heading for a more densely populated area where enough smaller streets crisscrossed each other for a car to disappear.

“You can be part of your son’s life without us having anything to do with each other.” She didn’t like the idea of sharing her baby—it hadn’t been the way she’d planned things—but, fine, he had the right, and her child would want to know his father. She could be flexible. To a point. “Once he’s old enough to be in school, he could go to Jamala for a week each summer.”

“My son will not grow up in a broken home,” he said in a tone he must have used for royal decrees, authoritative and final.

How did they get back to the subject of marriage again? “Let’s talk about something else before my blood pressure sends us hurtling into a phone pole, okay?”

“Do you have problems with your blood pressure? You said the pregnancy was going well,” he accused her.

“No problems whatsoever before you woke up.” She gritted her teeth. He got to her like no other, pushing all the wrong buttons.

Funny how nine months ago he’d been pushing all the right ones. And then some. She bit her lip. She so needed to stop thinking about those insane two days.

She glanced at the rearview mirror. No black van in sight. She careened into a back alley and slowed, surveyed the row of back doors, which she knew led to kitchens and laundry rooms, swerved to avoid the garbage cans lined up by the road. Not a person in sight, only a cat sauntering in front of her.

She brought the SUV to a complete stop. “Do we try to find a phone and call the police?”

He shook his head.

“Who then? FBI? CIA? Department of Defense?”

“No.”

“Of course not.” Because that would have been easy. “Then what?”

He looked darkly ahead.

“Did you talk to anyone on the phone before the battery went dead?”

He nodded.

“Bad news?”

He nodded again.

“Can I just remind you that you recently decided to trust me? Some information would be nice. We’re in this together.”

His face darkened further. “I apologize for that.”

She didn’t want apologies. She wanted a plan. “Why can’t we call the police?”

“Efraim said… The phone gave out before he could explain. No police.”

“Fine. Then we find a phone and you can call this Efraim again.”

“Yes. That would be best. My friends will send a team for us. We’ll be safe at the resort. Once the royal physician arrives, he’ll take you to Jamala under guard. I might have to stay here for a day or two. There are international relations to consider. I might have duties left still with things we came here to accomplish.”

She wasn’t thrilled at the idea of his security staff arriving and taking control of her. “Or, how about this? Why wait for anyone? With armed madmen looking for us out there, I’m thinking time is of the essence. I can take you to Wind River and your friends. Then we part ways. I’ll drop you off at the gate.”

“We must not fight about this. Stress is not good for you or my son. You should be reasonable.” He had the gall to reproach her.

Enough steam gathered in her head to fill the steam bath at the resort’s fancy spa. She gave Amir her sweetest smile. “If you don’t like my plan, you can always get out of the car right here.”

He didn’t have the chance to respond. The black van appeared at the other end of the alley, flying toward them, motor roaring.

No room to turn the SUV around.

No time to inch out of the narrow alley backward, slowly.

They were trapped.

B
EFORE ANY BULLETS
could fly, Amir bolted from the car, Isabella right next to him. He hated, absolutely hated, that he’d brought danger to her. He couldn’t believe she had the wherewithal to grab her purse first, but she had it with her as they busted in through the back door of the nearest house. They ran through a small, empty kitchen, then a living room, a half-dozen cats scattering from their path and giving them dirty looks.

“Is that you, Brian?” a woman called from upstairs, hardwood floor creaking as she moved around. “Where have you been?”

They burst through the front door without answering, then scrambled across the road, into a crowded bar that smelled like smoke and beer, the Jukebox blaring a country song he wasn’t familiar with. They slowed to make their way to the back without drawing too much attention. In seconds they were in another alley. His muscles were shaking; his breathing was heavy. He cursed his weak legs, which slowed them both.