Her Royal Protector (a Johari Crown Novel) (Entangled Indulgence) (3 page)

Her heart went dead with foreboding. “Oh, my God. And here I’ve been jabbering away…Tell me.”

“I need surgery, sadly. Minor, but it needs doing right away.”

“
Surgery?”
Anxiety ramped through her blood with one great thump of her heart. They’d all assumed it was nothing more than a bad bout of travelers’ tummy. “My God. Are you…are you…?” Richard was more than a research partner. He and Ellen were among her closest friends.

“Aly, relax. It’s not serious, but it does require action. A fairly simple hernia.” He told her the details. “They say best to get it done sooner rather than later, and I think I should listen.”

“Of course.” Her brain reeled, trying to piece it all together. “What will we do, Richard? Just delay the whole project for a couple of weeks? Or I suppose Ellen and I could manage for awhile without you. Will you be back on your feet in time to…what does Ellen say?”

“Aly, Ellen’s coming home with me. I am desperately sorry about this, but I do need her beside me, and in any case, Ellen insists—”

And that was when it hit her. It was over. Even simple surgery wasn’t something you recovered from in a couple of weeks. Aly’s breath locked just below her ribs. “Of course Ellen has to go with you,” she agreed in a whisper. Of course. And now she was torn in two. Her friend Richard. And the turtles.

“I know how dreadful an effect it is going to have on your doctoral thesis as well as the project, Aly, and I’m sorrier than I can say. We have looked at putting it off, but I think I’d be a fool to risk sailing around those uninhabited islands with this hanging over my head. It could get serious very quickly.”

“Good God, don’t even think of it,” Aly cried. “We’ll come up with something.”

They wouldn’t, of course. There was no way around this. Aly gazed past masts and hulls out over the turquoise harbor, watching everything she’d been working toward for the past two years sink without trace into the blue, blue sea.

“Such crap timing,” Richard said. “I’m sorrier than I can say, Aly.”

“Richard, it’s just life. Don’t think about it, you have to concentrate on your health. Worrying about this won’t help anything.”

After a short silence, Richard said, “We’re catching a flight tomorrow at two. There is still space available, but Ellen didn’t book for you. We weren’t sure if you might want to stay on here for a bit of a holiday.”

“That’s a nice thought, but I’m coming home to hold your hand, Richard,” she said. “I’m sure Ellen’s going to need moral support, even if you aren’t.”

“Now you’re being ridiculous. I’m suffering from enough guilt as it is, Aly. Anyway, the surgery is unlikely to be scheduled immediately. Now you’re here in paradise, why not stay on a bit? A very small consolation prize—I think the charity could spring for a week at the hotel for you.”

“Yes, maybe. Thank you for the offer, Richard. I’ll have to think.” Her brain was blank with shock and disappointment. Anything like coherent planning was impossible right now. “Anyway, I don’t need the hotel, I can just move onto the boat here, if it comes to that.”

“So you can,” Richard agreed in a tone of surprise

“And I suppose someone should eat the food, now I’ve spent the money on it.”

“That’s a point. All right, well, let us know what you decide.”

“I’ll do that,” Aly promised.

She disconnected, then leaned back on the wooden bench and stared into space.

It couldn’t be over.
It
couldn’t
be.
She had worked so hard to make this trip a reality. Everything depended on the research being completed—everything. Not just her doctoral thesis, not just all the effort and money that had already been sunk into the project, but the turtles. She knew more about the Johari turtle than all but a handful of scientists. She knew how fatal was the pattern of dying nests to its future survival. She knew how little time there might be to find the cause and correct it.

It had taken two years to get this far. If the trip didn’t go ahead this year, if she had to go home and start over planning for next year…

It just wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be allowed to happen.

You could go alone.

Aly gasped as the thought unfolded in her mind, unveiling itself like a flower opening in time lapse.

Why not? She could sail, she could navigate—she’d started sailing almost before she could walk. Trojan Percy might have been ruthless in pointing out her physical deficiencies, and uninterested in her academic abilities, but he’d made sure his children had all the modern accomplishments suitable to the young of their class. Aly was as much at home in and on the water as on land. She’d taken sailing courses every year from the age of eight till it all started coming apart, her father’s financial empire disintegrating round them to reveal the utter sham of their lives. And later, taking comfort in wind and water and solitude, she’d sailed alone every chance she got.

She could do this.

“This isn’t the Norfolk Broads,” Ellen objected five minutes later when, her decision made, she rang Richard again. “It’s not even the English Channel. It’s the Gulf of Barakat, Aly.”

About which she knew a great deal as far as turtles went, but not much when it came to winds and currents and safe harbors.

“People sail unknown waters every day,” Aly objected in her turn. “I’ve got the charts.”

One of the things she’d loaded aboard this morning was the pack of charts they had brought, fully plotted with their journey. A circuit taking in every beach, every potential stretch of sand where the majestic Johari sea turtle might nest.

“What’s this, Aly?” Ellen had given the phone to Richard. She explained again.

“Aly, this doesn’t sound doable. The Gulf of Barakat is subject to storms that blow up without warning, we know that much. I’ve never been all that happy about the
Oneira.
It was the best we could do, but I’m even less happy about that boat if you’re running it on your own.”

“Richard, don’t worry. I’ll be slowed down, of course. I won’t try to do everything we planned, but if I can cover half, even a third of the area, it’s better than nothing.”

Richard was starting to weaken. “It might well be enough to clarify in what direction the problem lies. But still—”

“I have got to do this. I have to,” Aly interrupted urgently. “You know what a risk it will be if we have to wait till next year. If it’s deliberate sabotage that’s killing the turtles, Richard, it’s got to be stopped
now.
”

The environmentalist in him won out. “All right, Aly. Against my better judgment I’m going to say, go ahead. Come into the hospital this afternoon with the charts, and we’ll sort out a new schedule for you. And we need to discuss the false marking of the nests before you go.”

When she had hung up, Aly sat looking out over sea and sky and heaved a huge breath. It felt right. There might be danger involved, but nothing in her life had ever felt righter than this decision. They all knew that immediate action was critical to saving the Johari turtle. This wasn’t perfect, but as she’d told Richard, it was better than nothing.

And if it
happened
to show Sheikh Arif al Whatever with the hot-and-cold-running blue eyes that she was not as incompetent as he clearly believed, well…it would be a pleasure one day to serve him the dish of crow, even if, as seemed likely, he would refuse to eat it.

Chapter Three

The yacht sailed into the harbor, grace and majesty in every elegant line. People were stopping on the dock or coming up on deck to watch and comment, in the usual way of the yachting community. A variety of voices she couldn’t quite hear, and languages she couldn’t understand, but then an English voice said clearly,

“
Dhikra.
The Sultan’s own yacht, Barb.”

“Beautiful thing, isn’t it? I do love a traditional shape,” a woman responded.

A couple of boats along from where she was moored, a retired couple stood together at the stern of their sailboat, watching the mega yacht through binoculars. The Red Ensign fluttered in a light breeze, and for a moment Aly smiled at the quintessential Englishness of the couple.

“Not as big as some,” the man said. “In fact, rather modest, as mega yachts go.”

“More than modest, as Sultans go. I wonder if Himself is aboard?”

“Much more likely to be a banker,” said her husband. “Didn’t Maurice tell us that the Sultan now leases her by the month?”

“So he did. Now, there’s a destination wedding for you,” said the woman dryly.

For a moment Aly stood there, too, staring. Modest, they called it. Her mouth twisted with something like disdain. Her father had bought a mega yacht not long before the fall. He’d been trading up all her life, every year a bigger yacht, in a kind of compulsion, until his ego was finally satisfied with the mega yacht.

None of them could have known that the millions he’d spent on such ego-enhancing luxuries had come directly out of the pockets of the friends and clients who’d trusted him, who’d believed his lies. But when he’d taken the family aboard for the virgin sail, even then Aly had been horrified by the grotesque ostentation. It seemed to her to be totally divorced from any real pleasure in sailing.

“But you won’t even know you’re at sea,” she had said as they stood in the “main forward salon” surrounded by carpets and wainscoting and recessed lighting worthy of a Savoy Presidential Suite, for her father’s angry disapproval had never managed to quell her knack of blurting out whatever was on her mind. “What’s the point of it?”

“The point is, it’s beautiful,” Trojan Percy had said with that undertone of malice no one ever seemed to notice but herself. “But you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you, my sweet?”

He’d only ever called her “my sweet” in irony, when he was really furious with her.

Aly turned away from the sight of the Sultan’s yacht and dragged another box below.

She had discussed the journey with Richard at the hospital, and then spent the night poring over the charts, studying the curtailed trip she would make—she would visit fewer islands, and fewer beaches on each island. A modest schedule, and she was pretty sure she could keep it. Now she was stowing the last of the equipment and food, making the boat ready.

Her heart was light, her decision made. She’d checked out of the hotel, brought her gear aboard, turned on the freezer, and now this snug little boat would be home for the next six or seven weeks. Within the hour she would check in with the harbormaster and be away.

“Ah, they’re lowering a boat. Someone coming ashore,” she heard. But the Sultan’s mega yacht held zero interest for her.

…

Arif al Najimi stood on the upper aft deck training his binoculars on the small blue boat moored near the end of a jetty on the far side of the harbor.
Oneira.
He snorted in disbelief. Only an Englishman could propose to take a vessel like that on such a journey. An old Greek fishing boat, he guessed, and how it had made its way here to the Gulf of Barakat required too great a leap of the imagination for him to begin.

There was movement in the cockpit, and the scientist appeared from below. He focused the binoculars more tightly. She danced along the short gangplank and leapt barefoot onto the dock with an ease that spoke of long experience with boats and docks. She was wearing loose clothing—denim cut-offs that were held up on her slender frame only by the aid of a fat leather belt, and a floppy grey t-shirt. She looked even more like a refugee waif than she had at the banquet—and he could imagine how those wide-open, hungry eyes would add to the impression.

She bent straight legged to pick up a box, providing him with a view of a denimed butt, baggy shorts hanging to her knees, and two slender, curving shins tapering into surprisingly delicate ankles. Arif grunted in surprise. At the banquet she had been so awkward and diffident that he had half imagined stick legs under the ludicrous dress.

In this sun she should be wearing a hat. He lowered the glasses from his eyes. Waifs were not his style, ankles or no.

He turned his head a fraction and spoke in an undertone. “You see her?”

“I see her, Excellency.”

“You will act as her assistant in her work. If her presence should interfere with attempts at sabotage she may be at risk. You will go armed, to protect and guard her, in case there is any attempt at foul play. You will keep her under close surveillance at all times. I do not want to learn that she has been kidnapped.”

“I understand, Excellency.”

Arif turned and looked the agent in the eye.

“You will also keep your eyes open for evidence of sabotage of the turtle nests, as we discussed, and notify me immediately if you see any sign of it. From whatever source. In short, you are on your guard against all possibilities.”

The agent clenched his fist against his heart. “On my head and eyes.”

Arif nodded and raised his voice a little. “Lower the tender,” he called.

“Immediately, Excellency,” cried a voice behind, and Arif put the glasses up to his eyes again and watched the small figure carry another box from dock to boat.

A woman alone sailing unknown waters through often deserted and sometimes backward islands. No one but a fool could dream it up. And yet he was sure she was no fool.

She had carried the last box aboard, and now was busy stowing things in a locker under one of the seats. The t-shirt flopped loosely, shrouding her upper body, but the wind blew hard suddenly, revealing the slender shape underneath, and he had a sudden memory of how her shoulders had risen from the beaded bodice of the dress, brown and smooth. His blood pulsed in his groin, and he remembered his dream. He twitched with shock as the memory surfaced, and he let the glasses fall against his chest.

He had dreamt about her. Those eyes staring up into his, dark with hunger, as he pounded into her, wanting to give her more and more, his determination burning in his heart and groin, her body warm and firm under his hands….

What games the mind played in sleep! Why his dream should have chosen to present him with this gauche, awkward elf in such a way was beyond guessing. He preferred women with obvious charms, women who knew the game. Women who, unlike this one, did not need protection, either from his own desires or from the world. Women who wanted no more than a trophy lover in their beds and a jewel on parting, and who knew how to get it.

“Excellency, the tender is ready.”

Arif turned, slipped the strap of the binoculars over his head, and handed them to the crewman, immaculately dressed in the navy- and emerald-trimmed uniform that marked
Dhikra’s
colors.

“See that lunch is ready to be served upon my return. And prepare a stateroom for one guest,” he said, and headed down the ladder to where the gleaming tender danced on the water.

…

Even though she was focused on her task, Aly knew when the Sultan’s yacht lowered a boat and a white- and khaki-clad figure went down the steps to board it, because the entire harbor was watching and the murmurs rose like a cloud over the bay. She was distantly aware when the smaller boat backed gently away from the elegant mega yacht, turned in a wide half circle, and headed towards the mooring jetties. But when it became clear that the jetty the driver was heading for was the one where
Oneira
was moored, even she stopped to watch.

As could be expected from such an elegant yacht, the tender, which would serve to shuttle the Sultan’s guests from ship to shore when the yacht was moored out, was a beautiful thing in its own right, glittering with polished teak and chrome.

Aly’s eyes popped in disbelief as she took in the sight of the proud, tall figure at the wheel. She leapt for the binoculars and pointed them towards the lone occupant of the boat, now on a direct trajectory to
Oneira
.

He came into focus, large and forbidding and very present, so that she actually took a step backwards: His Excellency Haji Sayed Sheikh Arif Akhtar ibn Jaber ibn Jafar al Najimi, Cup Companion to His Royal Highness the Sultan of Bagestan.

Turned out she had no difficulty remembering the name after all.

Without the jewels he looked even more of a devil. The curling black hair glinting in the sun, the neat beard, strong hands, muscled arms, the tanned, glowing skin a rich contrast with the white of his immaculate polo shirt.

Aly dropped the glasses and watched helplessly as his boat came nearer and nearer on the same course. He couldn’t really be coming to her. He couldn’t.

“It’s a coincidence,” she said aloud. But she was not reassured.

The English couple had settled quietly into their seats and were now covertly glancing between Aly and the Sultan’s emissary, waiting for the show to begin. Aly glanced around the jetty. They were not alone in their fascinated focus. The worst of the yachting crowd was its sheer bloody nosiness, she remembered that.

He edged his way into the space between the
Oneira
and the small cruiser on her other side as the entire port, Aly included, stood agape. Aghast.

“Good morning,” the Cup Companion called cheerfully, leaping onto the dock. Surefooted as a cat, he fixed the mooring rope to a bollard.

“Good morning.”

At the stern of the fishing boat, he lifted a hand. “Will you allow me to come aboard?”

“I’m surprised you feel it necessary to ask.” Aly blurted her thoughts uncensored. Again. Her knees gave way and she sank down onto the seat, her eyes fixed on him.

Arif al Najimi lifted an eyebrow and negotiated the short gangplank. The sun was behind him now and his silhouette was dark against the halo of bright sunshine. Aly was blinded. She swallowed.

“Surprised? Why?” he asked in that cat-stroking voice.

She could just see herself telling him it was because he looked like a man who boarded wherever he liked. At least she managed not to blurt that one out. As he leapt down into the cockpit she leaned back away from his psychic heat and unconsciously crossed both legs and arms.

“To what do we owe the honor?” she asked. He was making her jumpy already, and he was five feet away. Oh, but he was gorgeous. His arms and chest muscled, stomach flat and tight, his jaws cut by a master sculptor.

He laughed, his eyes glinting. “I come only to fetch you.”

“
Fetch
me?”

“I invite you to lunch aboard
Dhikra,”
he said, like someone announcing a treat to a hungry pauper. She was not a pauper and it would not be a treat. Just looking at him made her hungry. But one out of three was not good enough.

“Dhikra
is the Sultan’s yacht?”

“Ah, you know it.”

“I do now,” she said.

“It is there.” He gestured over his shoulder towards the mouth of the harbor, where the yacht sat waiting, her lines elegantly beautiful, her paintwork glistening white, navy and emerald in the sun. “Lunch is ready.”

Another chance to make a fool of herself in front of the man so soon! How did a girl get so lucky? Aly glanced down at her outsize denim cutoffs and t-shirt. Then her eyes moved up to the sheikh’s again, slowly, taking him in, thighs, waist, chest, chin, eyes. The expensive tailoring of his chinos and polo shirt did not hide the powerful thighs, the hard masculine strength of his chest and shoulders. The concentrated maleness. Heat prickled along her spine and into her face and abdomen. There was danger here, and animal instinct screamed a warning.

Her hand unconsciously combed her tangled hair.

“I can’t possibly,” she said. “I haven’t got anything suitable to wear.”

“The Sultan is not aboard. Your attire does not matter in the least,” he said reassuringly. The jaws of the English pair were practically on the deck. “We lunch alone.”

Chills shivered up her spine. She did not want to eat with him. She especially did not want to eat with him alone. He was overwhelming in every way—size, power, authority…masculine impact. Whatever he wanted from her, her position was weak, and would be weakened further if she went aboard that yacht. She was sure of it.

“Why, Your Excellency?”

“Why?
” She was pierced with glittering blue. The bolt went all the way to her toes, then mushroomed up in a fog of nervous energy that made it impossible to think. “Is the invitation not enough of a reason?”

Got to get away from this man. “But I’m hoping to be on my way within the hour.”

He stared down at her. “That is why we are having lunch, Ms. Percy. So that we can discuss your proposed trip.”

Proposed
. Her heart kicked in protest.

“Could we discuss it here? I can offer you coffee—I’ve just brought some aboard.”