The Sheik's Safety (8 page)

Nasir nodded. “Will you leave the foreign woman with us?”

He hesitated for a moment, looked back to where she was rolling something into a blanket, helping a couple of women. “I'll take her. If I don't, she'll steal a car or a horse and come after me anyway.” He did believe that. Dara was nothing if not stubborn.

His brother raised an eyebrow.

“Where will I find you?” Saeed changed the subject to ward off some uncalled for remark on his inability to control a single woman.

“At the old oasis.”

“Shelfa?”

The place had been named after the traditional Bedouin spear that it resembled—a long narrow strip of fertile land they rarely used because of the undependability of the weak water source beneath it. Still, for a day or two, it should support the camp. And that was all the time he needed. “
Ma'al salaama,
Brother.”

“Alla ysalmak.”

He rode Hawk to Dara, watched as she hung food and water on the saddle, and wondered if he was wrong for taking her with him. He should send her to Saudi, to the safety of the American embassy. Of course, she wouldn't go. He could try to talk her into going with Nasir to Shelfa under the relative safety of the camp, but he had a feeling she would refuse that, too.

He held his hand out to help her up behind him, knowing he wasn't doing it because she would demand it, or even because he wanted to keep an eye on her to ensure her safety. He had decided to take her for one reason only—because he wanted her with him.

The admission rocked him. She was the wrong person at the wrong time.

It didn't matter.

 

T
HEY RODE THE BETTER PART
of the night before they reached their destination, Hawk held back by the weight of two people and their supplies. A car would have been faster and more practical, Dara had thought as they rode, but understood Saeed's wisdom once they walked into the cave. The opening was large enough to allow Hawk in, leaving no telltale sign of their presence that could be seen from outside.

He turned on a flashlight and panned it around. Rocks, rocks and more rocks. She watched as he
picked up one from a knee-deep pile in the corner and set it aside. Then another, then another. She went to help him.

“Rest,” he said.

“You know, women are not really the weaker sex.” She kept on working.

He turned to her and she could see the dark shadow that settled over his face. “They are strong. But still they should be protected.”

His voice was hollow, and she got the idea that he was no longer talking about lifting rocks. And the question flew from her lips before she could stop it. “What happened to your wife?”

He went back to working, disassembling the rock pile methodically, stone by stone.

Fine. If he didn't want to talk about it, he didn't have to. But she couldn't help wondering if he had been very much in love with her, if he was in love with her still.

“She was hit by a car,” he startled her by saying.

And it sounded so ordinary, as if it were almost unreal. She had expected a scorpion bite or a snake or an overly hard childbirth in the desert without medical help.

“We were in Tihrin. She was shopping for clothes for Salah. She stepped out in front of a speeding car,” he went on. “Didn't see it from her burka. They don't allow much peripheral vision.”

Didn't she know it. The few times she had to have the thing on drove her crazy. And suddenly she was angry for the death of the woman of whom a moment ago she was jealous. She was angry for Saeed's loss and for Salah's.

“I'm sorry,” she said.

He nodded and went back to work.

When he was done, she looked at the exposed slab, about three feet by two. He tried to push it out of the way, but it didn't budge. He sat on the floor, wedged his body against a side wall, pushed with his feet. The large stone moved aside a fraction of an inch.

“If we could move it just a little more we could get a rope behind it and have Hawk pull it,” she said as she grabbed on to help.

He nodded and pushed again.

Even with help from the horse, it took over half an hour to move the stone.

Dara peered into the dark narrow shaft open before them. She'd once spent two days in the rat-and-snake infested sewers of Baghdad. She really didn't care to repeat the experience. “You first,” she said, and when he crawled forward, she followed him.

After ten yards or so, they came out into an open area, about eight by eight and half as high.

“It's nice down here.” She picked up his flashlight and looked around, enjoying the air that stood still
instead of swirling with sand. The temperature was comfortable, too.

But he didn't seem to notice it long enough to appreciate it. Saeed ran his hands along the wall, apparently searching for something. Then he found it—a loose rock. He pushed. The rest of the section gave easily, and when she looked closer she realized a small part of the wall wasn't rock after all, but carefully concealed mud brick.

The shaft that opened in front of them was slightly more spacious than the previous one. He grabbed the flashlight and moved forward. They were able to crawl on their knees and elbows, instead of having to slide forward on their bellies.

“This thing has an end, right?” she asked after about fifteen minutes. “I mean you're not planning on hiding out in Beijing, are you?”

“China?” His muffled voice reached her.

What was opposite on the globe from Beharrain? Hawaii? “I mean Honolulu. I feel like we're tunneling straight through.”

They came out into another opening, about half the size of the previous one. Saeed sat up and leaned against the wall, set the flashlight aside, and pulled her out of the shaft.

There wasn't all that much room. They were pretty close. “Pink beaches,” she said to distract herself, but then the picture of Saeed in a Speedo popped
into her mind. Distracting all right, but not exactly what she needed to think about when their knees were touching.

“How about a private beach?” he asked and the slow smile that spread on his face screamed, “Swim-wear optional.”

“You have one?” She stared at him, dumbstruck both from the idea of owning a private beach in Hawaii and the thought of being there with Saeed.

“My father was king.” He laid his hands on the wall again.

The opening they cleared this time was the size of a regular door, and the room behind it too large to be fully lit by the single flashlight they carried.

They stood still while Saeed ran the light over the walls. Wow. The cave before them was as big as a couple of ballrooms put together, the floor littered with jars and rolled up carpets, crates piled high against the walls. Some sort of an ancient warehouse.

“What is this?”

He walked to a hip-high terra-cotta jar, pried the wax seal from its mouth with his dagger and tipped it. Gold coins showered to the ground. “The treasure of my Bedu ancestors,” he said.

From time to time she had experienced events in her life that were so far from the expected, so unimaginable, her brain had struggled to accept them, insisting she was dreaming or hallucinating. This
was one of them. They were probably dying of exposure somewhere in the desert and she was imagining the comfortable cave and the soft trickle of water….

“Wait a minute—there's water?”

He walked forward, turned a corner behind a larger boulder. She followed him and gasped at the sight. In a side wing of the cave where the ceiling was lower, a steady trickle of water ran over the rocks, collecting into a pool about eight by eleven or so.

From the look on Saeed's face, he didn't expect this, either.

“My grandfather said there was some water down here. I always thought he meant a well.”

“You've never been down here before?”

“Never had the need.”

She admired his self-restraint while she ogled the pool. After having ridden across a good stretch of desert, acquiring significant amounts of sand in places it didn't belong, the pull of the water was irresistible. She kicked off her shoes, yanked off her socks while hopping on one foot, then finally stuck her toes in. Cool, but not overly so.

He watched her with a smile playing on his lips. “You may bathe if you wish.” He set the flashlight on a rock in a way that it illuminated the larger room of the cave but left her in the shadows, then walked away from her.

She shed her clothes and slipped into the pool quickly, held her breath as the cold water surrounded her, swam to the other end then back until she got used to it. Around the edges she could stand up, but in the middle her toes did not touch the bottom.

She dunked her hair in, went under completely and stayed under as long as she could before breaking the surface again, her gaze settling on her dirty clothes. Would have been nice to get them clean.

“Here. Try these.”

Saeed's voice made her spin around.

He stood a few feet from the pool's edge, his gaze on her face, and spilled an armload of silk to the ground.

She knew he could not see anything below her neck, there wasn't light enough to see under the water, and yet her pulse quickened, her heart thumping loudly in her chest. She drew a deep breath, trying to relax. It wasn't as if she were shy. Women in the military were not allowed that luxury. She had been on countless missions where she'd been the only female member of the team. She had gotten used to lack of privacy a long time ago.

And yet, Saeed's gaze made her so self-aware she wanted to hide from it, feeling it on her skin as if he had touched her.

“Thank you,” she said, hoping he would leave.

He didn't budge.

She stared at him, unable to look away as the light coming from behind illuminated his wide shoulders. Ali Baba and his treasure. The man and everything about him fell way outside her circle of experience.

“I'll be done in a minute and you can take your turn,” she said to break the tension between them.

He nodded and turned at last to leave. She watched him as he went back to the crates and looked through them, brought poles and ropes from the back, unrolled a few dozen carpets, made a tent.

She washed her clothes while he secured the top and side flaps, amazed at the elaborateness of the structure that resembled a miniature castle rather than the Bedouin tents she'd seen so far.

She emerged from the water and stayed in the cover of the boulder that separated the pool from the main portion of the cave, pulled the clothes to herself, lifted them one after the other. They weren't clothes after all, but lengths of fabric, silks in every color.

She dried herself in one and wrapped another, pale azure, around her torso. It reached from her armpits to the floor. She took a sea-green piece, folded it in half and twisted it around her waist to make sure nothing gaped open, looped it up to cover her shoulders, but it was long enough only to cover one. Oh, well. She tucked the end into her “waistband.” The end result was a cross between an Indian
sari and a woman's toga from ancient Rome. But most of her body was covered and she could be reasonably sure she wouldn't expose herself when she moved. That was what counted.

The silk felt luxurious on her bare skin as she walked toward the tent, wishing for a moment for the kind of style and grace some women were lucky enough to possess, then angry at herself for even thinking of it. She knew little about being alluring, spent most of her life in army fatigues. And it shouldn't have mattered whether Saeed found her attractive or not. It
didn't
matter, she reinforced the thought. Their relationship was strictly professional.

“You look like a water nymph from a myth,” he said, looking at her with open admiration.

“A portable palace?” she asked, unsure how to handle the compliment.

“About a tenth of one. I didn't think we needed all of it, but we might as well spend the day in comfort. We can't ride to Shelfa until we have the protection of the night. Too many planes flying overhead.” Saeed let his gaze glide over her, sending her heartbeat galloping.

He pulled open one of the front flaps for her. “I suppose in my grandfather's time rulers were more given to pomp and ceremony.”

A half dozen oil lamps burned on the sumptuous carpets that covered the floor inside, silk pillows
scattered in the corners. The sight took her breath away. A stage set for seduction. She bit her lip to bring herself back to reality.

Saeed wasn't about to seduce her. They were on a mission.

And if he had somehow forgotten that, it was her job to remind him. Still, that he might have thought to seduce her— The idea and the images it brought sent tingles across her skin.

“When I go to the oasis tonight, I wish you would stay here in safety,” he said.

And just like that, she was brought back from her little self-indulgent moment of fantasy. He wasn't trying to seduce her, he was trying to get rid of her. She forced herself to be patient. “I couldn't very well guard you from here, could I?”

“You insist on putting yourself in the way of harm.” He bit out the words.

“So do you. You went to the palace without taking anyone with you.”

“I could have taken every guard I had at the house and it wouldn't have mattered. It would have made Majid's case stronger against me. He would have claimed I went against him with force.”

“You could have taken me.”

The intense expression on his face broke into a small smile. “You came anyway.”

“Exactly. Don't leave me behind again. It takes a
lot of effort to track you down. Effort that would be better spent protecting you.”

“I do not need protection.”

She gave him an impatient look. Things would go so much smoother if only he were willing to admit that he needed her.

“I would have gotten out of the palace on my own.”

“You got out faster with me.”