The Desert Sheikh's Innocent Queen: King of the Desert, Captive Bride

CHAPTER THREE

A HALF hour later they reached the famous Mena House Hotel, a historic hotel on the outskirts of Cairo.

Liv leaned forward to get a glimpse of the historic property but saw little of the hotel’s entrance with the dozen black cars lining the drive and virtually blocking the front door.

“It looks like the President of the United States has arrived,” she said, staring at all the cars and security detail. “I wonder who it’s for?”

“Us,” he answered cryptically, as security moved toward their car, flanking the front and back.

She jerked around to look at him. “Why?”

He shrugged as the door opened.

“Your Highness,” one of the men said, bowing deeply. “Welcome. The hotel is secure.”

Liv didn’t move. She couldn’t. Her body had gone nerveless. “Who are you?”

“I’m Sheikh Khalid Fehr. Prince of the Great Sarq Desert.”

And then it came together, all the missing pieces, all the little things that hadn’t added up. Sarq. Fehr. The family name, Fehr. “Your brother is King Fehr,” she whispered.

“Yes.”

“You’re … royalty.”

His broad shoulders shifted. “I didn’t ask for the job. I inherited it.” And then he climbed out of the car.

They were escorted through the opulent, gilded lobby to a private elevator that glided soundlessly up to the royal suite, which occupied the entire penthouse floor.

Their suite consisted of two enormous bedrooms and ensuite baths opening off a central living area. The suite was dark, the windows curtained, but then the butler drew the curtains back and the suite was flooded with late-afternoon sunlight, and the most astonishing view of the Great Pyramid.

“Incredible,” Liv murmured, standing at the window, hands pressed to the glass.

“There’s a balcony in each of the bedrooms,” the butler offered. “Very nice for a morning coffee or evening nightcap.”

She could only nod. She didn’t want to move, or be distracted. She just wanted to stand here and feast on the most amazing thing she’d ever seen.

The golden stone pyramid soared … gigantic, mythic, spectacular.

This is why she’d traveled so far from home. This is what she’d wanted to see. Ancient wonders. Relics of a glorious past.

But then Khalid Fehr spoke. “The doctor is here, Olivia.”

Her insides did a quick freeze and she slowly, reluctantly turned from the window. A woman in a dark slack suit and wearing a dark scarf around her shoulders stood next to Khalid.

“I’m Dr. Nenet Hassan,” the woman said briskly. “I’m a friend of Sheikh Fehr’s from university. The exam won’t hurt, and it won’t take long, either. We’ll just step into your room and get it over, shall we?”

Liv wouldn’t even look at Khalid as she headed for her bedroom with Dr. Hassan close behind. She didn’t want the exam, didn’t need a checkup, but no one seemed to be listening.

Fortunately, the exam was as quick as Dr. Hassan had said and in less than ten minutes the physician was putting her instruments away. “You’re healthy,” Dr. Hassan said. “And I know you’re dying for a bath so go ahead, enjoy. I’ll have a word with Sheikh Fehr and see myself out.”

Khalid was waiting for Nenet as she emerged from Liv’s room. “Well?” he demanded.

“She has some bruises but they’re not specific to any injury.”

“She hasn’t been beaten?” Khalid asked bluntly.

“She does have marks and the odd bruise or cut, but that’s to be expected. It’s a well-known fact that the female guards are far harder on the female prisoners than the male guards are on the men. They’re just more aggressive, although the abuse leans toward the mental instead of the physical.”

“What about drug use?” he asked.

Nenet lifted her head, and her somber brown gaze searched his. “You suspect her of using?”

“No. But you never know.”

The doctor’s expression remained speculative. “I didn’t see needle marks, or anything else indicative of drug abuse.”

“Good,” he answered, turning away to look out the same window that had so completely captured Liv’s imagination earlier.

“Do you really intend to marry her?” Nenet asked, catching Khalid off guard. “Or is it just another baseless rumor?”

His forehead creased and he turned from the window to look at the doctor over his shoulder. “How did you hear?”

“How did I hear? Khalid, it’s all over the news! A highranking Jabal official announced that you’d visited his country today to bring your betrothed home.” Nenet swallowed hard. “And this … this … American … she’s your betrothed?”

None of this was supposed to be happening, Khalid thought. He was supposed to have freed Olivia from prison, zipped to Baraka in his jet, had her cleared by a doctor and then hurried onto a waiting jet provided by Kalen Nuri, and then she’d fly home and he’d fly back to the Sarq desert in his jet and it’d be finished. No naming of names, no police chases, no publicity.

“I don’t know that this is an appropriate conversation for us to be having,” he said flatly.

He’d once dated Nenet Hassan during his second year of graduate school, but the pressures on both of them had been intense, and then when his sisters had died, he’d broken the relationship off. Nenet had written long letters to him, saying she’d wait for him, promising he could take all the time he needed to heal, but Khalid hadn’t wanted time to heal. He hadn’t wanted to heal. He just wanted out. Away. Gone from the life he’d lived and the people he’d known.

“Forgive me, Khalid. Please don’t be angry. I know it’s not my place,” Nenet added quickly, trying to ease the tension and awkward silence, “but I can’t ignore what you’re doing. It wouldn’t be right.”

“And what am I doing?” he asked even more gruffly.

“You know what you’re doing. I know what you’re doing. But stop. Don’t. Don’t sacrifice yourself for her.” Grief darkened her eyes. “You aren’t merely a good man, Khalid, you are a great man, and a man that has suffered enough. You owe her nothing, especially not your future, or your freedom.”

In the bathroom, Liv stood in the middle of the marble tiled floor for what seemed like forever.

The bathroom was beyond decadent. The decor was reminiscent of the Great Pyramid outside, with pale ivory and gold limestone pavers on the floor and more buttery-colored limestone surrounding the deep bathtub.

A series of three glass-covered jars rested on the tub surround. She lifted each of the lids and smelled the different scented bath salts—verbena, orange blossom and hyacinth—and suddenly a lump filled her throat, making it hard to breathe.

She’d been in hell for weeks and just when she thought there was no hope, she was plucked from her cell and rushed to the airport. Now she was in this palatial suite with a palatial bath furnished with thick, plush towels and exquisitely scented bath salts and fragrant designer shampoos.

It was strange. Impossible. Overwhelming.

The transition was too much.

Leaning over the marble surround, she turned on the water. While the tub filled she stripped off her hated robe and the black sheath she wore under the robe and balled the fabric up and smashed it into the rubbish bin beneath the vanity.

Naked, she examined herself in the mirror. Even to her eyes she looked too thin, gaunt, with yellow and purple-blue bruises on her arms and legs. Turning part way, she studied her back and spotted a big fading bruise on her hip and a newer bruise on her left shoulder.

But the bruises would go and she’d recover and she’d be home. Soon. Soon, she repeated, dumping in two scoops of the verbena-scented bath salt before sliding carefully into the hot water.

The bath felt like heaven and she soaked until the water cooled, forcing her to action by shampooing and conditioning her hair.

Later, clean and wrapped in the soft white cotton sateen robe found hanging on the back of the door, Liv left the bathroom for her bedroom and then realized she didn’t know what to do next. She had no clothes. She didn’t feel comfortable wandering around the suite in just a robe. The conservative climate of the Middle East made her aware that she shouldn’t be sharing a suite with man she didn’t know.

Fresh anxiety hit and out of an old nervous habit, she began chewing her thumbnail down, chewing it to bits.

She had to go home. She needed to go home, and even thought the hotel was gorgeous, and this was probably the only time in her life that she’d ever stay in a five-star property, she couldn’t enjoy it. Couldn’t appreciate the high ceilings, the tall windows and the exotic decor, not when her mother and her brother were waiting for her and worrying about her.

Crossing to the table near her bed, she picked up the phone and asked the hotel operator to put through a call to the States. The operator answered that she couldn’t make the call for her, but gave Liv the international codes so Liv could dial the call from her hotel room.

Liv was scribbling the codes down when a knock sounded on her bedroom door. Her heart skipped. “Just a minute,” she called, swiftly trying to dial the string of numbers, then making a mistake in the middle and having to start all over again.

“We need to talk.” It was Khalid’s deep voice on the other side of the door.

Fingers trembling, she finished inputting the long sequence of numbers. “Okay,” she called back. “I’ll be out soon.”

There was a pause. “We should really talk before you call home,” he said. “There are things you should know, things that you might, or might not, want your family to know.”

She could hear the ring of her mother’s line. Liv gripped the phone more tightly. She suddenly wanted to hear her mother’s voice more than anything in the whole world.

“Olivia,” Khalid continued, his deep voice unnervingly clear despite the door between them, “you don’t have a passport any longer, and it could be difficult to get another issued soon. Perhaps we should discuss a way to break the news to your family without frightening them?”

She could hear the ringing on the line. Could imagine her mother looking for the phone, wondering where she’d left it this time.

Eyes smarting, emotion thick in her chest, Liv hung up before her mother could answer.

She couldn’t worry her mom. She loved her too much.

Beseiged by conflicted emotions, Liv walked to the bedroom door and opened it. Khalid stood on the other side, his robe discarded in favor of exquisitely tailored European- style clothes: dark slacks, supple black leather belt, crisp long-sleeved cotton shirt the color of espresso and black leather shoes. His dark hair was cut short and sleek, emphasizing the strong lines of his face.

He didn’t even look like the same person and she didn’t know why his transformation felt like one more blow.

Nothing was what she’d expected. Imagined.

Nothing made sense.

Pressing her hands into her robe’s pockets, she took a quick breath for courage. “Sheikh Fehr, in the car, you said to wait to call my brother until after I’d seen the doctor, and I waited. Now you tell me not to call home because I don’t have a passport and I shouldn’t worry my family.” Her eyes met his and held. “I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

“Maybe we should sit down.”

“I don’t want to sit. I just want the truth.”

“As you, yourself know, the truth is complicated.”

She blinked, puzzled. “What does that mean?”

“You were charged with smuggling drugs, and the drugs were found on your person—”

“In a bag I was holding for a friend!”

He shrugged. “But it was in your backpack, in your possession, making you responsible. Complicating the truth is the fact that this ‘friend’ disappeared and we have no proof she ever existed.”

“That’s not true! I had her bag. Her cosmetics. Her toiletries.”

“Who is to say they aren’t yours?”

She stared up at him, appalled. “You don’t believe me? You think I did it—”

“I never said that. I was just pointing out that truth isn’t always what it seems, just as my freeing you, isn’t quite what it seems, either.”

She suddenly felt very woozy, her head starting to spin. “I’m beginning to feel dizzy.”

His brows pulled in a fierce line. “I knew you were better off sitting.”

Ignoring her attempt to brush him off, he put one hand to her elbow and the other to the small of her back—a touch that scorched her even through her thick robe—and escorted her to the plump upholstered chair in the living room.

“I’m not going to break,” she said breathlessly, her heart hammering unsteadily as heat washed through her. She could feel his hand despite the plush robe, could feel the press of his fingers against the dip in her spine, and it made her head spin even faster.

“I know you’re not going to break,” he answered, making sure she was safely ensconced in the chair before stepping away, “but you’ve been through a traumatic ordeal, and unfortunately, it’s not over yet.”

Liv stared up at him, battling to get control over her pulse and her thoughts. “I’d think the American embassy would step in now, accelerate the process of getting me home.”

“They’d like to, but they work with the local government, and Jabal is lobbying very hard to have you returned to them for sentencing.”

She made a soft sound of disbelief. “Can the Jabal government extradite me from here?”

“No,” he answered, standing above her, arms folded, his expression downright forbidding. “At least, hopefully not.”

With a trembling hand Liv pushed a damp tendril of hair away from her face, trying to sort out everything he was saying, stress and exhaustion making the task even harder than it should be. “That doesn’t sound very reassuring,” she said hoarsely, blinking back the sting of tears.

“It’s not meant to be. You should know the truth, and the truth is, things are … unpredictable … at the moment.”

His response just added to her fears. “I won’t go back to Jabal,” she choked. “I can’t. I can’t—“

“I know, and I wouldn’t let you go back.”

She looked up at him, scared, so very scared, and bundled her arms more tightly across her chest. “Why are you doing all this? Why are you helping me?”

“Your brother posted a message for help on the Internet. His message came to my attention.”

Her chest felt so hot, and her emotions felt ragged. She didn’t know if she could—should—believe him. “You did all this just because you saw a message on the Internet?”

“Yes.”

Who did things like this? Who broke into prisons and rescued people? “Why?”

His shuttered gaze rested on her face, his expression as blank as the tone of his voice. “Your brother said your family was frantic.” He paused for a split second before adding, “It touched me.”

Her brow wrinkled as she digested his words, thinking it was odd to hear him use the word touched when he struck her as emotional as one of the limestone statues she’d seen carved into the wall of the Ozr fortress turned prison. “And you acted alone?”

“Yes.”

“But if you weren’t working with an embassy or government, how did you get me released?”

He made a rough, mocking sound. “The old-fashioned way. Power. Blackmail. Intimidation.”

“Isn’t that illegal?” she asked, trying to keep the horror from her voice.

“Blackmail is never pretty,” he answered. “But it was you or them, and it’s not as if the guards were good to you. The doctor told me she found bruises on you, bruises I’m certain you didn’t inflict on yourself.”

She just looked away, towards the window with the spectacular view of the pyramid.

Khalid dropped to his haunches, crouching before her, and turned her face to him. “No diplomatic measure would have ever gotten you freed from Ozr. Jabal doesn’t care about diplomacy. They don’t recognize diplomacy. They only recognize power and money. I did what I had to do, and I don’t apologize for it. At least you’re here, safe and alive.”

Liv felt his fingers on her chin, felt the fierce heat in his eyes and the coiled tension in his powerful frame. She was simultaneously fascinated and terrified by the fire in his dark eyes. He intrigued her and yet intimidated her. He was hard and fierce and remote, and yet he’d also come to rescue her when no one else had, or would. “But not free,” she whispered.

“Are you free to go home, back to Pierceville, Alabama? No. Are you free of the prison cell?” He hesitated for a fraction of a second and then stood again. “For now.”

For now. The words echoed loudly in her head. She was free only for now.

“But money alone didn’t buy your freedom,” he added. “It required honor. My honor.”

She gave her head a slight shake. His honor. It was such an archaic-sounding word, so old-fashioned it didn’t even make sense to her. “I don’t understand.”

“I vouched for you,” he said bluntly. “I told them you were mine.”

She blinked at the word mine, heat flooding through her, heat and shyness and shame. Mine was such a possessive word, a word implying ownership, control. It was a word two-year-olds loved, but not one she would have expected to come from a man. At least in the United States you’d never hear a man refer to a woman as his. “How could being … yours … free me?”

“By claiming you, I have personally vouched for you.”

She was even more confused than before. “Claimed me … how?”

“I said you were my betrothed.”

Betrothed? The archaic word didn’t make sense for a moment and then it hit her. “Engaged?”

Appalled, she saw him nod.

“Because of our … relationship … you are protected for the time being.”

Liv’s mouth opened but she couldn’t make a sound, couldn’t think of a single thing to say. Instead shock washed over her in gigantic mind-numbing waves, and before she could think of anything to say, the butler materialized with a tray of small sandwiches, pastries and a large pot of tea. He placed the tray on the low table in the living room and served them both sandwiches, pastries and tea, before departing.

Liv stared at one of the small open-faced sandwiches on her plate. “We’re not really engaged,” she said at last, finally finding her voice.

“I gave them my word,” he said bluntly.

“Yes, but that was to get me out. That was to free me—”

“And I did, but we had complications on the way out of Jabal. Remember that police stop earlier today? They’d come for you. They’d learned that you’d been released from Ozr and they’d been given instructions to seize you. The only way I could protect you was by claiming you. And once I claimed you, they couldn’t touch you.”

“But you will still send me home, right? You are going to put me on a plane first thing in the morning….” Her voice trailed off as she stared at his face, his expression hard and unyielding.

She tried again. “If you were going to send me home earlier, what has changed?”

“Everything. It has been announced by the Jabal government that we are engaged. They cannot be faulted. It is what I told them, and my honor is based on my word. My word is central to who I am, and to who my family is. I … we Fehrs … do not break our word.”

“We’re not really going to get married.”

“Today at Ozr you said you wanted out, you begged me to get you out, and I did what you asked me to do.”

It was just beginning to hit her that she’d celebrated her release from the Ozr prison far too soon.

Her panicked gaze searched the fierce lines of his face, the high brow, the long aquiline nose, the generous but unsmiling mouth, as tremors of fear coursed through her. “There must be another way. There must be some other way….”

He didn’t answer and his silence terrified her. “Sheikh Fehr,” she pleaded. “Don’t tell me we have no other options. I can’t believe there aren’t any other options.”

“There is another option,” he said flatly. “And you’re right. It’s not a done deal yet. You can choose to return to Ozr—”

“To Ozr?” she interrupted, stunned. It’d been hell, sheer hell, locked up there. No sunlight, no bathroom facilities, no running water to speak of. “People die there all the time!”

“It isn’t a good place,” he agreed.

She bolted up from her chair, nearly upending her plate. “So why would you think I’d want to go back there?”

“Because as of now, those are your only two options. Marriage to me or a return to Jabal.”

She sank back down, her legs suddenly impossibly weak. Her gaze clung to his, trying to see, trying to understand if he was absolutely serious. “But you don’t want to marry me. There can’t be any possible benefit for you!”

His upper lip curled. “None that come to mind.”

“So why?”

His features hardened, his dark eyes almost glittering with silent anger. “What would you have me do? Let you rot in prison for the rest of your life? Tell your brother to be glad you’re in prison because you’re at least not dead?”

She dropped her gaze, her cheeks flaming. Jake would have been desperate, too. He’d always been so protective of her, the quintessential big brother. “You don’t have to do this. You didn’t ask for any of this—”

“Did you smuggle the drugs?” he demanded harshly, abruptly.

Her head jerked up. “No.”

His shoulders twisted. “Then I have to do it. If you are innocent, how do I stand by and do nothing? How do I explain to your brother that your life has no value? That his love for you means nothing here? How do I live with myself knowing that all your lives have been laid to waste over someone else’s mistake?”

“You’re one of those men with a hero complex,” she said, feeling desperation hit. “I’ve read about people like you. Heroes are ordinary people who do extraordinary things—”

“I’m not a hero,” he interrupted roughly. “But I did go to Jabal and you are here now, and we’ve got to get through this.”

“But marry …” Her voice faded and she stared at him with disbelief. “It seems so extreme, so … impossible.”