Seized By The Sheik

And yet he needed this. At this moment he felt like he couldn’t do without it.

She was something, this woman. Strong and determined, yet with a tender heart. What he wouldn’t give to stay in her arms, to make her his. To wake every day to a woman like this. To let her be his reason for living.

But he was a sheik from a foreign land and she was a Wyoming cowgirl. It was an impossible dream.

Efraim ended the kiss and looked down. He knew he should feel ashamed, that he should regret it. But he’d never regret kissing Callie.

No matter what happened.

Seized by the Sheik

Ann Voss Peterson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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To everyone who chooses tolerance and love over hate and fear.

About the Author

Ever since she was a little girl making her own books out of construction paper, ANN VOSS PETERSON wanted to write. So when it came time to choose a major at the University of Wisconsin, creative writing was her only choice. Of course, writing wasn’t a practical choice—one needs to earn a living. So Ann found jobs, including proofreading legal transcripts, working with quarter horses and washing windows. But no matter how she earned her paycheck, she continued to write the type of stories that captured her heart and imagination—romantic suspense. Ann lives near Madison, Wisconsin, with her husband, her two young sons, her border collie and her quarter horse mare. Ann loves to hear from readers. Email her at ann@annvosspeterson.com or visit her website at www.annvosspeterson.com.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Efraim Aziz—A sheik from the small island nation of Nadar, Efraim doesn’t trust the United States or anyone in it. That is, until he meets Callie McGuire.

Callie McGuire—An assistant to the U.S. Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Callie dreams of finding a man who accepts both sides of her—the world-traveling diplomat and the all-American girl who grew up on a Wyoming ranch.

Fahad Bahir—The man would go to great lengths to protect his cousin, Sheik Efraim, and the interests of his beloved country of Nadar.

Clay McGuire—Callie’s father wants her to settle down, but a sheik isn’t the man he would choose for his only daughter. How far will he go to prevent the match?

Brent McGuire—Callie’s older brother is a hothead with anger issues. How far would he go to protect his sister from the man he sees as a threat?

Russ McGuire—Little brother Russ likes to follow Brent’s lead in all things except women. There he is in a league of his own. But this time, has a woman led him astray?

Timmy McGuire—The youngest McGuire sibling is only in high school, and when he’s attacked, the whole family rushes to his aid.

Kateb Bahir—Kateb competes with his older brother in all things. Did sibling rivalry finally turn to violence?

Tanya Driscoll—Does the party girl simply want a good time? Or is she after something more serious…and deadly?

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter One

The place felt like death.

Efraim Aziz lowered his rein hand and let his horse pick his own path through the acres-wide gash of eroded red-and-beige rock. Wind whistled through the formations and battered his face, incessant and strong. A few sticks of sagebrush twisted through kinks in the rock to stretch their silver-green leaves to the sky, the only living thing for what looked like miles. These badlands, the high plains, the mountain ranges to the west and north—it was a harsh landscape populated by hard, arrogant people. And somewhere in this hell Amir Khalid was struggling, dying…if he wasn’t already dead.

Efraim had to find his friend.

“Sheik Efraim! Wait!”

He recognized the voice immediately, its sound shivering over his skin like the warm breath of a lover. He knew someone would come looking for him, but he’d never guessed it would be her.

He glanced over his shoulder.

She rode toward him through the badlands astride a palomino quarter horse. Her long blond hair glimmered in the Wyoming sun like the golden beaches of his island nation of Nadar.

Efraim tried his best to ignore the spike in his blood pressure, the acceleration of his pulse.

He didn’t even know her, this Callie McGuire. They’d engaged in a few polite discussions when he’d arrived in America, and only glances in the stressful days since. But whenever she was near, he had a hard time keeping his eyes off her. It was as if she was the only person in the room. Magnetic. And as hot as the sun itself.

Whoever sent her to collect him was shrewd, indeed.

“Sheik Efraim. Please.”

He scooped in a deep breath of hot horse and leather and braced himself before turning his mount back to face her.

She’d come to talk him into going back, holing up like a coward. And even though he didn’t intend to follow her advice, he knew he would listen to her every word with the attentiveness of a teenage boy enslaved to his hormones. Embarrassing for the leader of a country. Shameful.

She came to a halt in front of him, but her eyes darted around, taking in the sagebrush, the crumbled rock outcroppings, the mountains on the horizon. “Where’s your security?”

He thought of his cousin Fahad and the men who worked under him. “At the Wind River Ranch.”

“You’re out here without protection?”

“Who sent you after me? Fahad?”

“I like to ride, clear my head.” She gave him a doe-eyed look, all innocence.

A sure sign he was being handled.

He raised a brow. “So is this the job you expected when you chose to work for your country’s Office of Foreign Affairs? Babysitter?”

She rested her rein hand on the saddle horn, her blue eyes squinted against the glare. “You shouldn’t be out here, sir. It’s too dangerous. Whoever planted that car bomb to kill Sheik Amir will be trying to kill you, too.”

“So Fahad did send you. My head of security?” Efraim knew it. Kateb must have run to his brother this morning as soon as he’d trailered Efraim and one of the Wind River Ranch’s horses to the rural road where the explosion had occurred.

“I haven’t heard from Mr. Bahir.” She let out a breath, as if giving up. “Actually I was hoping he was out here keeping an eye on you.”

“Yes, I wouldn’t be surprised if he is.” Efraim took his own glance around the landscape but saw no sign of his cousin. “So if it wasn’t Fahad, who sent you?”

“That’s not important.”

“It is to me.” He wasn’t sure if he was more disturbed by the thought that someone believed Callie McGuire could protect him better than he could protect himself, or by the indication that whoever had sent her knew of his powerful attraction for the fresh-faced blonde.

If it was one of his men, he’d be on the next plane back to Nadar.

“You need to head back to the resort. Sunset comes early in these parts because of the mountains.” She stared him down, her jaw as set and determined as it had been yesterday.

That was it. Her jaw. The flash in her eyes. That was what drew him. He was a sucker for strong women. Being from a country where women weren’t allowed to be strong around men, this feistiness was novel and obviously the source of his fascination with Callie McGuire. “You’re worried about me?” he said in a dry tone, but he couldn’t pretend there wasn’t a note of teasing interest under his words.

“You’re very important to the coalition.”

In the past few weeks, he’d heard enough about the Coalition of Island Nations, or COIN, to last him a lifetime. He wasn’t even sure it was in Nadar’s best interest to be part of it. With each day that had passed since the explosion, his doubts had grown. “Nadar’s offshore oil fields are important to the coalition. The shipping lanes are important to the coalition. Not me.”

“Then why did Prince Stefan call me?”

So it had been Stefan Lutece who’d thought he needed a babysitter and had chosen Callie McGuire for the job. Humiliating that the Prince of Kyros could see his interest so clearly, but at least he wasn’t a subordinate. “He shouldn’t have bothered you.”

“If anyone knows about the dangers all the members of the coalition face, it’s Prince Stefan.”

“Or Amir. And finding him is why I’m here.”

“You think you’re going to find some sign of him out here on the BLM?” She gestured to the surroundings with her free hand.

As Efraim understood it, the barren canyonlike area he was now searching in was called Rattlesnake Badlands, a part of public land controlled by the Bureau of Land Management. The locals just referred to all of it as the BLM.

“I’m not going to cower at some luxury resort ranch while Amir might be out here dying.”

“There are people searching.”

“Who? The police? Some honest ones, or just the ones taking money from organized crime?”

She scrunched up her nose, and he noticed for the first time that she had a sprinkle of freckles across the top of her cheekbones. Fascinating.

He concentrated on a large clump of sage just past her right ear. “Amir didn’t disappear. He has to be somewhere.”

“So don’t rely on the authorities. Let your own people do the job. You don’t have to do this personally.”

But he did. It was that or go crazy. The Wind River Ranch and Resort was a luxurious place, that was for certain, but he couldn’t enjoy it knowing Amir was out there, maybe dying, maybe dead. “There’s no argument you can make that Fahad has not already made.”

The hard line of her lips softened. “I know the two of you are close. I know you’re worried about him.”

Whereas her passion had been arousing, the softness and empathy in her eyes mesmerized him and for a moment, he found himself physically leaning toward her in his saddle.

He caught himself before he swooned like a lovesick teen. “When Amir is found, I will stop searching.” He laid a spur to his horse’s side, and the animal broke into a jog. He wasn’t wild about much of what America had to offer, but he might make an exception for its quarter horses and its women.

At least this woman.

“Then I’ll help—”

A gunshot cracked through the air, cutting her sentence short.

Efraim grabbed for his pistol and tried to gauge where the shot came from. The report bounced off rock and mixed with the whistle of the wind.

So much for finding Amir. Hemmed in by canyon walls, he and Callie would be lucky if they got out of the Rattlesnake Badlands alive.

Chapter Two

Pulse pounding so hard that her hands shook, Callie pulled her prize rifle from the scabbard on her saddle. Her throat felt as dry as the dust under their horses’ hooves. What was she thinking, rushing out here without bringing the sheik’s security detail with her? How did she think she and a rifle were going to stack up against the forces out there who would do anything to stop the COIN summit from taking place? When she’d gotten the call from Prince Stefan, she’d been confident she could talk Efraim into returning to the ranch. She hadn’t given an extra thought to what she would do if they suddenly found themselves in a war zone. “We need to get out of here.”

“We need to make ourselves smaller targets.” Sheik Efraim threw a leg back over the saddle and slid to the ground. “The echoes. Can you tell where the shot came from?”

Her boots hit the ground. The crazy way the sound bounced off the canyon walls made finding the source nearly impossible. She pointed in the direction she thought she’d first heard the sound. “There. Can’t tell for sure.”

He gestured to a formation, and they slipped behind it. Walls of red-and-tan rock rose around them. A miniature version of a box canyon. Safe, but only until the shooter decided to block off the only escape route.

“We can’t stay here,” Callie whispered. “They had to have seen where we went. We’ll be trapped.”

“I’m not planning to stay.” He squinted into the sun. Lines fanned out from the corners of his eyes. He looked concerned, yet calm. A man used to being in tight places. “Do you have a phone?”

“No reception out here.”

“What’s closest? Town?”

She shook her head. Dumont was a good distance by foot or by horse. Even the ranch owned by family friend Helen Jefferies would take an awfully long time to reach through this canyon. Faster to get out of Rattlesnake Badlands as quickly as possible and head in the other direction. “My family’s ranch is closest. If we exit the canyon to the south, we can probably make it by nightfall.”

The sheik arched his black brows. “Your family?”

“I grew up here.” For some reason, she’d assumed he knew that. Strange. But every time he looked at her, it felt like his dark eyes saw everything. Her innermost thoughts and feelings. Even her past.

“Then you know the land.”

“Yes. Any ideas who is shooting at us?” She’d like to think it was a local out shooting targets on the BLM, something she and her brothers did more times than she could count. But she knew that was unlikely at best.

“Russian mob? That might give us some room to work.”

“Room to work?” That was her worst fear. A sniper like the one who had tried to kill Prince Stefan. A man whose aim was to kill, ruthlessly, and who had the skill to pull it off.

“He probably doesn’t know the area. Not like you do.”

A silver lining, if only a shred of one. “You’re right. So we have an advantage there.”

“We sure don’t have one in firepower.” He held up his pistol. A nice weapon, but not much use at a distance. “Are you a good shot?”

“Won some shooting contests when I was in high school.” She held up her rifle, showing him the brass plaque on the stock proclaiming her Wind River County Champion Marksman, Junior Women’s Division. The whole idea of shooting competitions seemed ridiculous and trivial in light of the situation they were in. Fun and games in the face of life and death.

He nodded, as if it was exactly what he was hoping for. “Okay. Then you can cover me.” He handed her his horse’s reins.

His words jolted her like a slap. “Cover you? Where are you going?”

“That first shot, it wasn’t meant for us.”

“Who was it meant for?”

“Whoever is up on that ridge.” He pointed across a rough area of the canyon floor to a ridge of rock. “See him?”

She shielded her eyes with her hand.

“To the right. You can see something white, a sleeve.” Lightly touching her cheek, he tilted her face in the correct direction.

She tried not to think about the feel of his touch and focus on spotting what he was trying to show her. Sure enough, some sort of white cloth was flapping in the wind. “I see it. You think it’s a person?”

“I think it’s a body.”

“You saw him get shot?”

“Not exactly. I didn’t realize he was there. Not until after the shot was fired and he suddenly wasn’t.”

“And you plan to climb up there?”

“We can’t leave him.”

“Do you know who it is?”

He shook his head. “Let’s hope not.” Holding his weapon at the ready, he stepped forward.

“Wait.” She grabbed his shoulder. “If this is a sniper…”

He looked back. His eyes fixed on hers. “That’s why I’m relying on you. Can you cover me?”

Her insides shook so badly that she didn’t even know if she could manage to get her finger to the trigger. The dossier she’d studied on his background had mentioned military service, as with the other COIN leaders. But even though she’d grown up around guns and knew the terrain, she was no soldier. At the sound of that first gunshot, adrenaline had hollowed out her stomach and turned the rest of her into a quivering mess.

He leaned toward her, closer than a man had been in a long while, and tapped on the award plaque on her rifle stock. “You’ll be fine.”

She nodded, even though she wasn’t so sure. She squinted up at the ridge and the wisp of white fabric flapping in the wind like a flag of surrender.

“Wait.” She stepped to her mare’s side and rummaged through the saddlebags with her free hand. Her fingers touched the pair of binoculars she had used to find the sheik. She pulled them out and handed them to him. “You should be able to see the area better from up there, maybe spot our shooter.”

“Good thinking.”

She shouldn’t feel so warm at his praise, but she couldn’t deny the flicker in her chest. A flicker that for a moment eclipsed the shaking. She stood up a little straighter. “Please be careful, Sheik Efraim.”

“Just Efraim. Please.”

“Efraim. Be careful.”

He nodded. Pistol in front of him, he started climbing up through the eroded and crumbling rock.

She shouldered the rifle and scanned the area through the scope. She’d ridden out here to bring him back to the Wind River Ranch, and that’s what she’d do. If there was one thing her daddy taught her, it was to do what needed to be done.

A lesson that had served her well so far.

The crunch and scrape of his footsteps faded into the wind. She forced herself to breathe, stay steady and alert. Next to her, Efraim’s horse tossed his head. Her mare, Sasha, pawed the ground.

“Callie,” Efraim called, his voice rasping, as if his throat was filled with sand.

She lowered the rifle slightly and glanced up.

His dark head peeked over the edge of the cliff, bent over the body they’d seen from below. “I need your help.”

“I’ll be right there.”

“Can you find a way to get the horses up here?”

She tried to picture the canyon in her mind’s eye. If she wound south, the slope was more gentle. The horses should be able to handle it. “I think so.”

“I’ll cover you as best I can. Hurry.”

Tucking her rifle back in its scabbard, she grasped the reins and started trudging in a wide arc that sloped up to the canyon’s edge. Whoever Efraim found up on that cliff must be hurt, not dead. And knowing that gave her a little more hope that all this would turn out okay.

The trek seemed to take forever. But except for a few slips and scrambles of steel shoes on hard rock, the horses plugged along. She turned the last corner, the point that should bring her to the level where Efraim crouched by the body. A rock face loomed in front of her.

She let out a heavy breath.

It wasn’t high, only about ten feet of jumbled rock rising to a wider cap formation on top called a hoodoo. But small or not, the barrier was squarely between her and Efraim.

She could climb the side and skirt around the saddle-horn-shaped hoodoo with a little effort, but the horses couldn’t.

She glanced around, her gaze landing on a scraggle of half-dead sagebrush. Sasha was trained to ground tie with the best of them. She wasn’t so confident about the horse from the Wind River Ranch. Without a sturdy halter and lead, she couldn’t tie the animal very securely, but maybe it would be enough.

She looped the horse’s reins around the woody base of the sage. She dropped Sasha’s reins free next to it. “Whoa.” As long as something didn’t happen, they should be fine.

Turning back to the rocky face, she spied Efraim staring down at her. He cupped his hand around his mouth. “Do you have something plastic? A bag? Something like that?”

Her mind raced, trying to decipher the reason behind the request. She turned back to her horse. She kept a number of things with her when riding out on the ranch or the BLM, but plastic bags weren’t among them. She returned to Sasha and grabbed the saddlebags from the saddle. Pausing, she grabbed the rain slicker she’d tied on the saddle’s skirt and carried all back to the swell of rock and started climbing.

Loose sand and stones skittered under her feet. She slipped twice, trying to catch herself with hands weighed down with saddlebags and slicker. A rock face about three feet high formed the final hurdle. But from here she could clearly see Efraim and the white fabric they’d spotted from the canyon floor.

It wasn’t a shirt, as she’d previously thought, but a traditional head cloth designed to protect the wearer from the harsh sun.

The kind of sun that beat down on the island of Nadar.

A chill fanned over Callie’s skin despite the June heat. She focused on Efraim. “One of your people?”

Efraim looked up, dark eyes glistening. Rusty red smeared his cheekbone where he’d swiped at his eyes with a bloody hand. “It’s Fahad.”

NUMBNESS PENETRATED bone deep. When Efraim first realized the body lying on the canyon’s edge was Fahad, he’d almost staggered under the blow. Then training had kicked in. Cold, methodical. His cousin was badly injured, but alive. Callie and he were in danger. It was up to him to get them all to safety before it was too late.

Fahad stared at him with dark eyes and open mouth, struggling for oxygen. With each breath, a sucking sound emanated from his chest wound. Efraim pressed his wadded-up shirt against the wound. Within seconds it was soaked with blood, warm and sticky on his hands. The sound continued.

He looked up at Callie, climbing the last few feet of rock-strewn slope. “Plastic?”

“I have a slicker and some first-aid supplies.” She held up a bundle cradled in her arms.

He needed those supplies. And she couldn’t climb the last rock wall while carrying them. He rose to his feet to take them from her.

A second shot split the air. Rock exploded next to his face.

Efraim hit the deck. His foot hit Fahad’s rifle, sending it careening into the canyon. Still climbing the rocky slope, Callie flattened. Beyond her, a horse whinnied. Steel shoes clattered on stone.

The horses. They were running away.

Keeping low to the ground this time, Efraim crawled to the slope. His thoughts raced. The shot had hit the stone near him, Callie had to be merely taking cover. She had to be okay.

Reaching the edge, he peered over.

She looked up at him, her freckles streaked by dust, her blue eyes wide. “Here.” She pushed the bundle toward him.

He took the saddle bags and slicker. “Stay low.”

“I’ll climb up. I can help.”

“No.” The last thing he wanted was for Callie to attempt to climb the ridge and get shot for her efforts. “I’ll tend to Fahad, then you can help me move him.”

He moved back to Fahad’s side. His cousin was still conscious, still fighting. He moved his lips, but no sound came, just the sucking noise mixed with each gasp for breath.

“Hold on. I have supplies. It will be all right.”

His cousin gave a light bob of the head.

Efraim folded the slicker and pulled an elastic bandage from the saddlebags. He wasn’t sure this was going to work, but he did know that if he did nothing, Fahad would die.