Guarding the Princess (6 page)

He shot her a fast glance, worry spurting through him.

“I don’t believe it,” she said, tears of relief pouring down her face, and she smiled. “We made it,” she whispered. “We actually made it!”

Her emotion made his eyes prickle, too.

“Yeah,” he said, placing his hand on her knee, his throat going tight. “We bloody well did. We make a good team, Princess.”

She bit her lip to stop it from trembling, and nodded.

Brandt maneuvered the jeep a little higher onto the hard ground and into a grove of tall fever trees, where he parked under the canopy. They sat for a few minutes in silence, mentally regrouping as drops of water from the leaves plopped onto the canvas above their heads. There was a sudden shaking of the ground and an explosive roar. In their headlights they saw a wall of chocolate-brown water streaked with foam come crashing down the river, swallowing up logs, fallen trees spinning, dead cattle bobbing, along with an old tire and other unidentifiable debris. Waves licked and churned and danced up the banks, pulling in great blocks of sand that crumbled away into the flood. On the far side of the river, the flames ate at the blackened trunks of trees, the orange glow of the fire casting a coppery sheen over the churning brown water.

Finally Brandt doused the headlights.

Neither spoke as they listened to the roar of the floodwaters, watching the strange interplay of ghostly orange light on the raging river. A few more minutes and they would have been swallowed by it, too.

In silence, Brandt reached into the backseat, found the whiskey bottle, uncapped it. He held it out to her. Dalilah hesitated, then took the bottle from him. She took a deep swig and coughed, eyes watering.

She handed the bottle back to him, and he took a deep drink himself.

For another few seconds they sat like that, stunned, the adrenaline still humming through their bodies as the severity of what had almost happened sank in. She reached for the bottle, took another sip, put back her head and laughed. Husky, deep, real gut-laughter, a little crazy.

“Dalilah?” He touched her, worried. “You okay?”

She wiped tears from the corner of her eyes. He wasn’t sure whether they were tears of laughter or not. Or both.

Then she looked at him, really looked at him, her eyes black and luminous in the faint coppery light being cast by the fire on the opposite bank.

“I don’t think I’ve ever felt so alive as right now. Even though the pain is killing me.” She took another swig, handed him the bottle, wiped her mouth. Then closed her eyes as she let the whiskey do its thing.

Brandt was startled by a dawning realization—this woman was fired by adrenaline, adversity. It fueled instead of cracked her. He got this. He got
her
—she was like him. And the knowledge gave him a deep twisting feeling in his chest, a sense of kinship. A bond he didn’t want. With it came a whisper of fear—they had a long way to go yet.

She laughed again, softly, more sadly, her eyes still closed. “God, when did drinking get to be so good?”

And now all he wanted to do was kiss her, so badly he thought he’d burst. He wanted to feel her lips against his, rip her out of that torn, wet cocktail dress, hook his fingers into that scrap of a G-string and just bury himself in her, have those firm dusky thighs wrapped around him. Become one. Defy death, affirm life—an urge as old as time.

Her eyelids fluttered open as she sensed a shift in him, and something in her features stilled as she registered the look on his face. Their gazes held as something dark swelled between them, the pent-up emotion almost tangible. Raindrops plopped onto the canopy above. Brandt could smell the smoke, the mud in the churning water, the heat of the jeep’s engine. And he leaned forward, inexorably pulled toward her by some undeniable force. He could detect the faint scent of coconut in her wet hair. Their mouths were so close he could taste the whiskey on her breath. Her lips opened.

The water rumbled and there was a dull boom as a tree thudded into the bank below. Another grumble of thunder growled far over the plains.

He began to throb, ache, in places so deep he didn’t know they even existed anymore. His vision narrowing, he leaned in closer and gently cupped the side of her face. She tilted her chin to him.

Their lips touched, brushed, lightly as feathers. A volcano of lust erupted fierce into his belly, molten desire firing into his chest, quickening his breathing. She arched up into him, her hand touching his waist as he pressed his mouth to hers and her tongue found his. Brandt stroked his palm down the length of her arm, his fingers softly covering hers, kissing her harder, deeper. Then he felt the rock on her hand, the diamond. Christ, what were they doing!

He jerked back, shocked.

She stared into his eyes, just as stunned. Silence—heavy, loaded with crackling tension—filled the space between them. Words defied Brandt.

Sorry didn’t cut it. Because he wasn’t sorry. He’d do it again in a heartbeat.

And that’s when fear plunged its blade really deep into his heart—this woman scared him. She made him want. In a way that was raw and deep and very dangerous. A way that he hadn’t wanted in years, not since a time when life still held possibilities and dreams. She’d reawakened a part of himself he thought long dead. Dalilah really was too hot for him to handle. And for the next few days, it was going to be his job—to handle her.

“Brandt,” she said.

“Don’t,” he said. “Please, don’t say anything, Dalilah. It... Nothing happened.”

Her mouth went tight, and he saw something heavy and sad in her eyes. He also saw her complexion was suddenly wan, and she was starting to shiver again.

He cursed himself, resenting the erection still hard and hot in his pants—a mocking reminder he was a damn fool. He was supposed to be taking care of her, not satisfying his own lust.

Self-recrimination slicing like ice through him, he flung open his door. “Let’s find you some dry clothes, take a look at that injury, get some food into you.”

He put the Petzl headlamp back onto his head, clicked it on, and rummaged around in the back for a second headlamp, which he’d taken from the bush camp. He looped the strap of the second lamp over the roll bar, under the jeep’s canvas roof, so that it cast its light down into the interior of the vehicle.

Survival lust. That’s all it was, he told himself as he tossed things out of the backpack. It was normal. Survivors could become euphoric in the face of cheating death. Humans were hormonally primed to jump each other’s bones after times of war. This ensured propagation of the species, survival of the tribe. There was a design to nature, and that’s all this was. Humans, at the base level, were programmed no less than other mammals.

Focus. Get over it.

But Brandt knew he was fruitlessly trying to justify his actions. Actions that were inexcusable, the same kind of actions that had gotten Carla tortured, raped and murdered while he’d been forced to watch helplessly.

He tossed a pile of clothes into the front seat beside Dalilah. “Put those on.” His words were brusque, and he knew it. He saw a glimmer of hurt in her eyes, but he didn’t care—couldn’t afford to. It was best this way. She gathered up the clothes, and her gaze held his for several beats.

“What?” he snapped.

“Nothing.” Her words were just as terse.

“Dalilah,” he said, then hesitated. “It was a mistake. It won’t happen again.”

She bit her lip and turned away from him.

Brandt cursed again to himself as he dug a kikoi out of the backpack. He held up the woven African sarong. It looked brand-new—those poor German tourists must have bought it at some market recently. He draped it over the roll bars that divided the front from the backseats, making a curtain to afford Dalilah some privacy while she changed.

From behind the curtain he said curtly, “If you need help changing, tell me.”

“I won’t,” she said crisply. “I’m fine.”

Silence.

Brandt scrubbed his brow and blew out a chestful of air. He’d crossed the line, but she was just as guilty. She was engaged to another man, and Brandt held on to that. Women could not be trusted. They broke promises.

Especially women like her.

Chapter 6

D
alilah tried to sort one-handed through the jumble of clothing Brandt had thrust onto the seat beside her, but she was shivering badly now. Temperatures had dropped, but she knew the kiss had shaken her more than the cold. She didn’t want to articulate what that really meant to her, or her future. But she sensed a seismic shift had taken place somewhere deep down within her and it had all started with this last ClearWater mission to Zimbabwe. Dalilah suddenly had no idea what she was doing anymore. After all these years of knowing with crystal clarity that it was her royal duty to marry Sheik Haroun Hassan, after knowing she had to come to the marriage a virgin, as per the contract her father had signed, Dalilah had gone and kissed a virtual stranger—and liked it. A lot. Too much.

She’d barely ever kissed a man in her life.

Stupid,
she muttered to herself.
Damn stupid.
You’re drunk, stressed and in shock and in pain, and it’ll all look different in the morning. Just shut it out, like it never happened. In daylight you’ll be able to see your path again.

Dalilah struggled out of her torn gown and into the light safari pants. She pulled a long-sleeved cotton shirt over a T-shirt, and fumbled to get her feet into the socks and hiking boots Brandt had given her. The dry clothes were deliciously welcome, if a little big.

As she tried fruitlessly to do up the buttons on the shirt, Dalilah glanced at the sarong Brandt had used to partition off the driver’s seat from the back of the jeep. He might be a brutish, scarred lion of a man, but there was a gentleman buried deep inside that tawny brawn somewhere. And the tenderness in his touch had not gone unnoticed in spite of the way he’d shut her down—he was struggling with something inside himself, also. It made her even more curious about him.

Cursing as a button refused to slide through the tiny opening, she glanced again at the curtain. Behind it she could see Brandt’s shadow moving as he organized things in the back.

If you need help changing, tell me.

No way on this earth was she going to ask him for help dressing, not after what his touch had already done to her body. And her mind.

While she struggled, Dalilah could hear Brandt going around to the rear of the jeep. The vehicle began to bounce around as he hefted and grunted. Then she heard his boots crunching through twigs as he left the vehicle. Quickly she leaned forward and peered around the sarong curtain.

He was carrying the stiff leopard carcass across his shoulders, the headlamp lighting his way toward a cluster of trees. With a grunt, he lowered himself to his haunches and tilted the leopard’s body onto the dirt. It landed with a soft, dull thud. Dalilah closed her eyes.

She’d forgotten for a moment the leopard was still on the backseat. She’d forgotten, too, in their struggle to get out of Zimbabwe alive, about the little cub left behind in the tree. Emotion ballooned painfully in her chest.

It had all been too much. She breathed in deeply, steadying herself as she opened her eyes and watched Brandt.

He was on his haunches, his forearms braced on his muscular thighs for balance, as if he was just sitting there, thinking. Then he reached out and laid his palm gently on the animal’s fur, something reverent in his gesture. Something very private. Then as if sensing her watching, he suddenly spun around.

Dalilah ducked quickly back behind the kikoi. She heard him returning, opening the tool compartment at the rear. Then she heard a clunking sound as he removed something, and his boots crunched over to the leopard again. Once more she peeked round the curtain.

He had the shovel in his hand. The blade chinked against small stones as he thrust it into the soil—Brandt was digging a grave for the female leopard.

Dalilah’s chest hurt as she watched him gently roll the dead animal into its resting place. He began to cover it, his muscles rolling under his soaked shirt, and it struck her how tired
he
must be. How long he’d been at it since flying his plane into Zimbabwe, hiking up to the lodge to rescue her. Finding all this equipment and getting them both across the river. Now he was taking time to bury the leopard in a way that revealed a respect for life.

Compassion washed through Dalilah. And for a brief moment she wished she hadn’t witnessed this vignette. It was bad enough falling in lust with this man, but feeling this kinship, this compassion—it complicated things she was already struggling with in her own head.

Omair might have sent the right man to save her life. But on some level Dalilah sensed Brandt was a game changer—he’d unleashed something in her that wasn’t going to be easy to put back into its box. Perhaps Omair had actually made a grave mistake.

She should never have kissed Brandt back. But she had. Dalilah’s gaze lowered to the massive diamond on her swollen finger, a stone that could probably feed an entire Zimbabwean village for a lifetime. A stone that could buy access to clean water resources, to solar power. A stone that could help her do the good she craved. And Dalilah was suddenly overwhelmed. She felt like a hypocrite and it all came crashing down on her now, rapid-fire chunks of thoughts, images. Her life. Her duty. Her freedom. Why she’d been in Zimbabwe in the first place...how this had been her last big deal. How her brothers had lied to her by omission, trying to protect her by not informing her that they knew their family’s arch enemy—Amal Ghaffar—was still alive.

How she felt nothing at all for Haroun—hardly knew him at all.

And suddenly she was spent, in pain, beyond thinking, analyzing, didn’t even want to. She just wanted to get through this. Alive.

Exhausted, Dalilah sat limp, staring at the coppery glow of the flames on the churning and swirling river, listening to Brandt moving in the shadows as he finished covering the grave.

“You done yet?” he called out as he returned with the shovel.

“I’m surprised you went to the trouble of burying it,” she said. “Why did you?”

“Trackers would have seen it,” he said, voice clipped as he marched around to the rear of the truck, where he replaced the shovel.

“They’re going to see our tire tracks here under the trees, anyway,” she said, reading more into his actions than he was admitting.

Choosing not to answer, he sullenly dusted his hands off on his shorts and re-angled the headlamp on his head before reaching for the first-aid box. “So, are you done?”

“Apart from the buttons and the bootlaces. I can’t do them with one hand.”

He grunted as he ripped open a pouch containing a pad soaked in disinfectant and cleaned his hands with it. Then, climbing into the front seat next to her, Brandt regarded her, assessing her condition. Under the light coming from the lamp on the roll bar above, Dalilah noticed for the first time a tattoo of a lion on his shoulder.

“Clothes don’t fit too badly,” he said, opening the first-aid kit.

“Good thing the pants came with a belt.” Dalilah offered a tremulous smile, but he did not return it. A strange little sinking feeling went through her stomach.

All business now, Brandt took her arm, felt for a pulse, before cutting off the sleeve above her elbow. Feeling carefully along her radius, he lingered, closer to her wrist, gently palpating where there was swelling. She winced, and immediately he released pressure.

“Seems to be a fairly straightforward fracture. Best we can do is splint and stabilize it until we can get medical attention. Your fingers are quite swollen,” he said. “If you swell any more, Dalilah, we’re going to have to cut that thing off, okay?” He jerked his chin at her engagement ring.

She moistened her lips, nodded, tears of pain and emotion filling her eyes. He glanced up at her face, forcing her to squint against the sharp light from his headlamp.

“Sorry.” He lowered his head, averting the light from her face.

“I’m okay. Just...tired.”

He inhaled slowly, deeply, as he opened a packet containing a blue-and-orange splint. “SAM splint,” he explained. “Made from malleable aluminum lightly padded with foam on either side. It can be molded and shaped for various splinting tasks.”

He bent the splint to form a long channel, which he wrapped around the back of her elbow, sandwiching her arm down to her fingers, which he left free. He bound the splint firmly into place with a bandage, his movements deft and smooth.

“You’ve done this before,” she said.

“A couple of times.”

“Are you a mercenary, Brandt?”

“Ex. I’m going to do up your buttons, then make a sling.” His hands moved between her breasts and he kept his eyes averted from hers. “Now, hold your splinted arm against your abdomen like this,” he said, showing her. Then, lifting the damp hair away from the nape of her neck, he tied a sling fashioned from one of the triangle bandages.

A shiver chased down her back as the rough skin of his callused hands brushed against the tender skin on the back of her neck. She felt him pause briefly at her reaction. The tension between them was still thick and sexual.

“There,” he said, packing up the first-aid kit. “That should do it.”

“Did you work with Omair, with the Force du Sable?”

“You need to eat something,” he said, ignoring her question. “I’ve got some tinned food, biltong, apples.” He moved the curtain aside and reached into the cooler at the back as he spoke. “We’ll get something into you, then you must sleep. We’ve got about an hour left until first light. The flood buys us some time, and it’s better not to move into unknown terrain while dark if we can help it. But when we do move, we’ll need to go fast because we’ll be leaving a trail in the mud that even a blind man could track.” He held up three tins. “Bully beef, ravioli or chili con carne?”

She glanced at the tins. “You said you had apples?”

He frowned, handed her a green apple.

“Thanks.” Dalilah took a bite. It was sour, and she felt nauseous.

“You need something more substantial than that,” he said, reaching up to click off his headlamp.

She said nothing, just chewed, focusing on making the fruit go down. He watched her intently, then his gaze slid back down to the diamond ring poking out of her splint.

“Who’s the guy?”

Dalilah swallowed her mouthful of apple. He was probably thinking about the fact she’d kissed him back while she was promised to another man.

“Sheik Haroun Hassan of Sa’ud,” she said.

His eyes flashed up to hers.

“The
Kingdom
of Sa’ud?”

“Yes.”

His jaw tightened and he leaned back into the driver’s seat, facing the front. He stared at the churning river as he spun a can of ravioli round and round in his hands.

“You have an issue with the Kingdom of Sa’ud?” she said quietly, watching his profile, the tension in his hands.

“I know the House of Sa’ud is stinking oil-rich.” His words were abrupt, and he didn’t look at her when he spoke. “I also know the Sa’ud royal family is fiercely traditional, and that the old king is not expected to live long. It’s creating some uncertainty in the Middle East.”

She nodded. “Haroun is his only son. He’ll be king soon.”

“And then you’ll be queen.” His tone was matter-of-fact, yet spiced with distaste.

“And you disapprove.”

He just snorted.

“Brandt—what is it?”

“Two years ago,” he said quietly, watching the water, “there was a big to-do in the news about a sheik from the House of Sa’ud. He was accused of having his fiancée murdered while she was visiting Dubai. The king used his influence, made the charges go away.”

Dalilah swallowed, the apple sticking in her craw. “Yes,” she said quietly. “The sheik was—is—a very distant cousin of Haroun’s. But the Dubai incident had nothing to do with Haroun.”

He spun suddenly to face her. “The woman was his
fiancée,
Dalilah.”

“She was killed by two Egyptians. It was a robbery gone wrong in her hotel room. The Egyptians were caught.”

“The BBC claimed the Egyptians were hit men—”

“There was no proof, no evidence. No—”

“There were rumors the hit men were hired after the Sa’ud sheik found his fiancée was cheating on him, that it was an honor killing, because she was unfaithful, tainted goods.” He turned to face her and his ice eyes were suddenly ice-cold and fierce under the white light of the Petzl lamp above.

A chill sunk into Dalilah. She held the half-eaten apple in her lap, her own insecurities about the case welling inside her again.

“Do you believe everything you read?” she said.

“I believe in this case, where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”

“The truth is not always what it seems at first blush, you know. This guy—Haroun’s cousin—was prejudged because of his culture, because he’s a wealthy oil sheik.”

“Is
that
what you think this is? Prejudice?”

“Yeah, I do. Just like you prejudged
me
for being royalty.”

He glared at her, a muscle working along his jaw.

Dalilah pushed a fall of hair off her brow, self-conscious now. And she realized her hair was thick with mud, and that she was too darn tired to argue or explain anything. Or even think about how Haroun had sidestepped the issue when she’d tried to discuss the case with him last year. She put her head back, the unfinished apple resting uneaten in her hand.

“So, when is the wedding?”

She looked away. So far away, it all seemed. She got a sinking, claustrophobic feeling in her chest at the thought of it all.

“Nineteen months.”

“You’ll get married in Sa’ud?”

She nodded.

He blew out a breath.

Dalilah turned her head toward him. “What exactly is it that you don’t you approve of, Brandt? It’s not like you’re getting married—my choice has nothing to do with you.”

He met her eyes. “You’re right, it doesn’t.”

Guilt sliced through her—she’d kissed him. And a need rose in Dalilah to make him understand that she wasn’t a cheat, that she had values. That this momentary indiscretion was bothering her intensely.

“Tradition decrees we marry in his kingdom,” she explained.