The Sheik Who Loved Me
“Tell me what’s going on! You’re pale as a ghost.”
David tried to take her hand, but she waved him off. “I was just remembering…” She clamped her mouth shut. Instinctively. She’d been about to tell him she remembered who he was. But something inside made her stop. Something told her it was a matter of life or death.
Oh, God, why?
“I…I think I just need to rest. You were right, David. It’s the sun. I shouldn’t have been out. I’ll be fine. Really.”
And something cold sank in her stomach as he carried her to her room. Because she knew she couldn’t tell him what she knew about him. Because her life and the lives of others depended on it.
She just didn’t understand why….
The Sheik Who Loved Me
LORETH ANNE WHITE
Books by Loreth Anne White
Silhouette Intimate Moments
Melting the Ice #1254
Safe Passage #1326
The Sheik Who Loved Me #1368
LORETH ANNE WHITE
As a child in Africa, when asked what she wanted to be when she grew up, Loreth said a spy…or a psychologist, or maybe marine biologist, archaeologist or lawyer. Instead she fell in love, traveled the world and had a baby. When she looked up again she was back in Africa, writing and editing news and features for a large chain of community newspapers. But those childhood dreams never died. It took another decade, another baby and a move across continents before the lightbulb finally went on. She didn’t
have
to grow up. She could be them all—the spy, the psychologist and all the rest—through her characters. She sat down to pen her first novel…and fell in love.
She currently lives with her husband, two daughters and their cats in a ski resort in the rugged Coast Mountains of British Columbia, where there is no shortage of inspiration for larger-than-life characters and adventure.
This one is for Leslie Wainger and the eHarlequin community, where the seeds for the Sheik were sown. And of course to Susan Litman for once again making it all happen.
Contents
Prologue
M
onstrous clouds of hot desert sand mushroomed in the fierce wind, blotting out a sun that boiled blood-orange over an angry black sea. Panic squeezed Kamilah’s heart. She scrambled up the dune as fast her little six-year-old legs would carry her. She shouldn’t be out in this storm. Her father would be furious.
But it didn’t matter now. Nothing mattered. She had to get help or the mermaid might die. After all this time, all this waiting, she had finally come.
But she was broken.
Tears stung Kamilah’s face. Her lungs burned. The wind clawed at the very roots of her hair. The ocean behind her boomed as she ran, heaving foaming water onto the outlying coral reefs, pounding it into the bay, making the ordinarily placid waters swell and surge with turbid life.
Daddy please help. Before the sea takes it away again.
The words screamed inside her brain, drowning out the gusts of wind. Words that wanted to be spoken out loud for the first time in a very, very long time.
Lightning cracked the sky. Kamilah flattened instantly to the ground, scrunched her eyes tight and waited for the crash of thunder. It resounded through her little body making her limbs tremble and her heart drum so fast she thought it might burst right through her chest.
But she had to move. She had to get Daddy. She scrambled up the sand bank, lurched over an exposed root, skidded back down. She grasped desperately for purchase as pain seared her hands, her knees. The sand stung her eyes.
But she could not give up. She would
not
let the sea take it back. Because Mummy had sent this mermaid. She just knew it!
David Rashid pushed a yellow pin into the large map that covered the entire back wall of his office. The pin denoted the last of the Rashid International oilfields to be reclaimed from the rebels. It too was now in full production, drawing rich black gold up to the arid Saharan surface, oil that had for centuries been buried deep under the northern reaches of Azar. Oil his father had known was there.
The smaller red pins clustered into the map up near the Libyan and Egyptian borders flagged the final desert strongholds of the now-straggling rebel army. The two big blue pins to the southeast of Azar represented the biggest prize of all, the Rashid uranium mines. And it was no ordinary uranium that Rashid International was drawing out of the earth. It had a unique molecular structure that made it invaluable in cutting edge nuclear technology. David’s mines were among only a handful in the world in a position to deliver this particular uranium. It had put Azar squarely back in the game.
David stepped back, folded his arms, and smiled. It was a coup he could be proud of. One his father had dreamed of. One that would rebuild his nation by bridging the old world with the new, that would fuel the economy and give pride and spirit back to a forgotten people, the Bedu of Azar, the warrior nomads of a country wedged between Chad and Sudan with Egypt and Libya to the north.
David’s only wish was that his father had lived to see this. And to see how he’d managed to heal the bitter rift between himself and his half brother, Tariq.
He rubbed the stubble on his jaw as he studied the clusters of red pins on the map, vaguely aware of wind tearing at battened-down shutters, swirling and shrieking in the old castle’s protected courtyards. The only question that still ate at his mind was, who was backing the rebels? But before he could chew on it, his office door flung open with a resounding crash.
David jolted, spun around. The storm winds blew fine desert sand up out of the courtyard and into his office. His daughter tumbled in with it. Her hair was a wild, dark tangle about her bloodless face, her chocolate-brown eyes wide with terror.
“Kamilah!” He lunged for the door, slammed it, shutting out the storm. He dropped to his knees and took her slight shoulders in his hands. She was trembling violently.
“Kamilah? What is it?”
Her eyes were impossibly huge, and they stared straight at him.
Into
him. David could barely breathe. She was trying to tell him something with those beautiful expressive eyes, eyes that hadn’t gazed directly into his for almost two years.
Every muscle in his body tensed. The sound of the storm faded into far recesses of his mind. He was afraid to move, to breathe even, fearful any slight gesture might sever the tenuous connection between him and his child. It was like a thread, fine as gossamer. He didn’t know whether to grab hold and yank it in to him, or to tread softly around for fear of breaking it. God, he never knew what to do with his beautiful baby girl. He swallowed, tentatively moved a tangled strand of hair from her pale cheek.
She didn’t back away. It fed his courage, his hope. He breathed a little deeper. He took her tiny hands in his own, looked deep into her eyes and dropped his voice to a gentle, reassuring whisper. “What is it, Kamilah? Can you tell me?”
She drew in a shuddering breath. Her lips parted. David’s heart stopped. He waited. Not a muscle moved in his body.
The struggle to form words showed painfully in Kamilah’s dusky features. Then she suddenly closed her lips, compressing them into a tight line. David’s heart dropped like lead. His pent-up breath came out in a whoosh. He closed his eyes and his chin sunk to his chest. He shouldn’t have even dared to hope. Hope only bred despair.
“The…mermaid,” she whispered.
His eyes flared open.
She spoke!
His heart stumbled and kicked into a light stutter.
“She…she needs help,” Kamilah said hesitatingly, shrinking back from the sound of her own words. But to David it was pure music, her little voice sweet like rain on the sands of a drought-ridden desert. A ball of emotion expanded painfully in his throat. Kamilah hadn’t uttered a single word in twenty-one long months. Not since the accident. Not since she’d watched in horror as the ocean had swallowed her injured, drowning mother. Not since she’d witnessed her own father fail to save his beloved wife from the choking grip of the sea.
David had begun to believe his baby daughter might never speak again. And now that she had, he was absolutely terrified he’d do the wrong thing, say the wrong words, make her stop again.
He couldn’t even begin to find his own voice. All he could do was take her soft cheeks into his hands, stare into the depths of her dark eyes and let the emotion spill hot and wet over his face.
“Daddy?”
His heart clenched. Oh God, how could a word be so painfully sweet?
She tugged at his shirt, her eyes widening in dark intensity. “She…she’s dying, Daddy.”
Confusion clashed with the euphoria in his brain. He’d been so focused on the sound of her voice, on the fact she’d spoken, that he hadn’t heard the meaning in her words. He blinked, registered. With cognizance came a hot thread of panic. Was his sensitive little girl losing her tenuous hold on reality? Was she reliving the accident? Imagining things?
“
Who
is dying, Kamilah?”
“The…the mermaid.”
“Mermaid?”
She nodded.
He hesitated. Hell, it didn’t matter. Did it? Whatever it took to keep her talking, he’d play along, even with an imaginary mermaid. They could deal with the rest later. “Where is this mermaid?”
“Half-Moon Bay.”
“
You
were at Half-Moon Bay? In
this
storm?”
Something shuttered in her eyes. She turned her face abruptly away from him.
“No!”
Don’t turn from me. Not now.
“It’s all right, Kamilah. Look at me. Tell me, baby, what’s wrong with the mermaid?”
Those huge dark eyes lifted slowly to once again meet his. “She’s hurt. You have to help before the sea takes her away again.”
“Yes,” he said, desperately trying to second-guess his child. “Yes, of course I’ll help. I’ll go find her.”
Hope lit Kamilah’s eyes making them once again dance with life. It made David’s heart soar. It made every molecule in his body sing. “But listen, Kamilah, you must stay here, in the palace, with Fayha’, okay? The storm is much too dangerous for you.”
Her little fists clutched at his shirt. David tried to move but Kamilah’s grip tightened, balling the fabric. He realized then that she wasn’t convinced he’d actually go. She wasn’t sure if she could trust him.
Like she hadn’t been able to trust him to save her mother.
A maelstrom of emotion crashed through David. He sucked in a deep breath, hooked his finger under her chin, lifted her face gently. “Listen to me, Kamilah, I
promise
to look for your mermaid. If she’s hurt, I
promise
I’ll help her. I won’t let you down, baby.”
Not this time.
He’d do anything to keep that sweet little voice talking. Whatever it was out there in that storm that had cracked her open, he’d find it. And he’d make damn sure it stayed on his island.
“Come here. Give me a hug.” He swooped her up into his arms, felt her warm little body close to his. He felt her tiny hands creep up behind his neck and hug him tightly back. Warmth flooded him. Hot tears spilled down his face. For the first time in nearly two years he had found a connection. He was sure his heart would burst with the sheer joy of it.
With new fire in his blood, David set his daughter down. He had a storm to brave, a mermaid to find. And he had a little girl to get reacquainted with.
The wind was ten times more powerful on the battered beach of Half-Moon Bay. Froth whipped off the surface of the sea in fat globs, and bullets of hot rain beat against his face. David squinted into maelstrom. What had disturbed Kamilah? What had she seen?
Then he saw it. A pale form among the debris. The symmetry of the shape was unmistakably human. And female.
Kamilah’s mermaid!
He kicked his stallion into a gallop along the packed wet sand. The form remained motionless as he neared. David dismounted, crouched down beside her.
She lay among scattered debris, limp as the pieces of broken jellyfish that had washed up with her. David pressed his fingers against the cold skin of her neck, searching for a pulse. She was alive. Barely. He quickly assessed the scene.
She was naked from the waist up. Her wet hair was almost hip length, and it tangled like amber seaweed about her upper body. She had the most perfect breasts he’d ever seen. Small with dusky coral-tipped nipples scrunched tight. Torn green fabric swathed her legs.
He glanced up at the perilous, churning ocean, the waves thundering over the outlying razor-sharp reefs. It was an absolute miracle she hadn’t been sliced to ribbons.
He carefully moved the strands of hair from her face, looking for injury, and his breath caught. She was utterly exquisite. Her slanted eyes were closed, fringed with long amber lashes. Her honey-brown skin glistened with rain. But below the cosmetic appearance of a healthy tan, she was deathly pale. He could see why. A gaping gash split the skin on her temple. It had been washed bloodless by the sea.
He rolled her gently over toward him. There were more cuts, angry ones, down the left side of her torso. And a jagged wound on her left forearm, also bloodless from time in salt water. As he assessed her injuries, a rogue part of his brain noted she wore no wedding band, no engagement ring. A primal male awareness quickened the pace of his heart.
Thunder exploded above him and he winced. Lightning forked over the horizon. The wind shifted suddenly, thrashing in frenzied circles as if delirious at the prospect of even heavier weather. A solid wall of blackness begin to swell out over the water. It rose like a monstrous gray-toothed maw, filling the sky, sucking in everything in its path. And it began rushing in a towering, screaming wall toward the island. It was the brunt of the electrical sandstorm and it would hit any second. He had to risk moving her. Thank God Dr. Watson was still on the island. The foul weather had stopped him from flying out to Khartoum this morning.
David yanked the curved dagger from his waistband, slashed the fabric binding her legs. He ripped off his shirt, carefully slid his hands under the woman, winding the wet fabric around her. He then lifted her limp and unconscious form up onto his horse’s back, praying she didn’t have a back injury because this movement sure as hell would seal her fate if she did. But he had no choice. She would most certainly die out here if he tried to go for help first.
He mounted, gathered her in close to his naked chest and kicked his stallion forward. The horse bolted, stumbling wildly up the dune, eager for the shelter of home. David bent low over the woman, shielding her from the worst of the violent weather. His concentration was on speed, yet a part of him was acutely aware of the stinging sand and slashing rain on his bare back—and how the painful sensation contrasted with the soft feminine swell of the woman’s breasts, of her smooth wet skin against his naked chest.
And even as he raced for his palace, deep down in his heart, David Rashid he knew he was in trouble.