Taken by the Sheikh (18 page)

The older man was a great deal more circumspect and harder to read. But Rafiq knew he held the ultimate trump card as far as Ash Winthrop was concerned.

Once they were safely past civilization, he slowed to a halt, removed the borrowed chauffeur’s hat, and turned to address them.

“Gentlemen, you will now be accommodated somewhere very special. Al Sounam welcomes visitors, and treats them kindly.”

He let Barry curse and bluster for a few seconds and then ignored him.

“I have your granddaughter,” he said to Ash. She’s safe and well, and waiting to meet you.”

The older man’s expression changed instantly from mild exasperation to disbelief...hope...then hunger.

“This better not be some sort of stunt,” he barked.

“No stunt at all,” Rafiq replied, and then added, “And none of that,” as he spotted Barry slipping the black mini-recorder from his pocket. “I’ll tell you the full story later,” he added, “but you can never make it public.”

“Says who?”

“Says a hundred thousand American dollars—paid personally to you in cash. And half that again for each year I require your silence.”

Barry opened his mouth, thought better of it and closed it again. “Two hundred,” he suggested a few seconds later.

“Or fifty?” Rafiq said pleasantly. “That’s still a better offer than a bullet in the back.”

He turned to Ash and ignored the gaping journalist. “She’s another hour’s drive away. Looking forward to meeting you immensely. Probably choosing what to wear to impress you. I bought her some clothes.”

“And you say she’s well?”

“Full of energy.” Rafiq let his mind drift back to exactly how energetic Laurel had been as dawn broke that morning. As he turned away to resume driving, a slight smile danced across his face.

“How...has this happened?” Ash asked, leaning forward so he could talk more easily. “Dammit man, let me get in the front with you.”

Once again Rafiq slowed the big car. Ash heaved himself out of the rear seat and resettled himself to his satisfaction.

“Is there any news of my daughter?” he demanded.

Rafiq shook his head. “Not good news, I’m afraid. Laurel said her mother died. When she was only four or five.”

Ash bowed his head and then stared deliberately out across the desert as the powerful vehicle picked up speed.

“She was always a willful girl,” he said eventually. “Hard to control. Rather like young Laurel seems to be, to judge by that recording of her.”

“You should have seen the live performance.”

Ash’s indrawn breath came as no surprise.

“You were there?” he demanded, pinning Rafiq with a furious glare.

“I shot it. Three different set-ups. There’ll be another one shown tonight.”

Ash twisted back against the door and regarded Rafiq with extreme distaste.

“How the hell can I trust you after you’ve told me something like that? You’re one of them?”

Rafiq shook his head and glanced in the rear-view mirror. Barry was fiddling with the mini-recorder again.

“The hundred thou I offered comes down by ten each time I see you with that from now on,” he threw over his shoulder. “The bullet option happens at eighty. Your choice.”

Barry met his eyes in the mirror and grimaced. He shoved the recorder out of sight again.

Rafiq enjoyed a brief taste of satisfaction and turned back to Ash. “I work in security at the highest level. Al Sounam is a peaceful country, and we prefer to keep it that way. You do realize if you ever repeat this to anyone you’re in line for a bullet as well?”

Ash managed a wheezy chuckle at that.

“Best offer I’ve had in ages,” he said. “Tell me more about Debs and Laurel. I’m not very interested in you.”

Rafiq grinned at such dry humor.

“Laurel was captured by mistake, as it happens. She’s much the same build and coloring as the daughter of the American family she’s been working for. She’d borrowed the other girl’s baseball cap because her own sunhat wouldn’t stay on in the wind. One blonde in a red cap and jeans looks much the same as another from the back. My ‘associate’ grabbed the wrong girl.”

Ash shook his head in disbelief.

“Dear God,” he said quietly.

“I’d infiltrated the group and volunteered to be cameraman. Persuaded the two others to take the tape back to the TV studios in Al-Dubriz so I could stage her escape.”

“Stage?”

“They’re not fools.”

The big SUV rocketed on for several minutes while Ash considered that.

“Laurel said she lived with a succession of foster-families,” Rafiq continued. “No father, I gather. She’s trained as a nanny, and that’s really all I can tell you.”

Except that she’s natural and uncomplicated and affectionate. Inventive in bed and lively out of it. That I’d almost rather shoot you than let you steal her from me.

“Mr. Marsh,” he rasped, more abrasively than he intended. “Lean back and grab the blue bag behind you. That’s your cash. I’m entirely serious about this story staying under wraps. If I hear the slightest murmur—and I’m in the business of slight murmurs—then you’re dead.” He glanced into the rear-view mirror when he heard the bag’s zipper scraping open. Barry’s face became a study in disbelief and avarice. A hundred thousand was a nice pile of greenbacks—even in medium-to-large denominations.

“So we’ll all have a pleasant lunch together,” Rafiq continued, as though blackmail and death threats were of little consequence. “You’ll be taken back to your hotel later to collect your luggage. Laurel and the money stay with me to ensure your enthusiastic return in time for dinner. And then we’ll arrange your departure from my beautiful country in the next day or two.”

“With Laurel,” Ash said firmly. 

“With Laurel,” Rafiq agreed. “She’ll need to be disguised to leave un-noticed. The second video of her will be shown tonight. She’ll soon be on the celebrity A-list at this rate.”

Laurel was indeed trying on clothes. She’d gone from trousers to skirts and back again. From a metallic-printed cross-over top to a high-necked jade-green tunic, and then back to her old jeans and T-shirt. How would her grandfather like her best?

When Rafiq gave three short blasts on the horn to announce their arrival she shot out of the lodge with no idea of what she was currently wearing, and raced barefoot across to the gate. She’d seen Ash again and again in the interview; he was an old friend now. She launched herself into his outstretched arms and collapsed in floods of ecstatic tears. Ash ducked his face to hide the fact that his own eyes were suspiciously moist.

Rafiq drew Barry Marsh aside.

“So do we have a deal?” he demanded. “If the truth of this gets out, a lot of lives are at risk, including Laurel’s. And a huge amount of hard and dangerous work will have been wasted for nothing.”

“Yes, dammit, we have a deal,” Barry muttered, thinking of the uncomfortable mortgage on his new Auckland apartment. A tax-free hundred thou would certainly help, and there might be more in a year’s time if this madman kept his word. But what a story to miss out on!

Rafiq’s black eyes stayed glued on Laurel across the lunch table. She was, of course, sitting next to her grandfather. The joy on her face was reward enough for the hard work and horrendous risks he’d endured to free her. Being able to produce Ash was something he’d never expected. Just as he’d never expected to lose his heart so completely and confusingly—especially to a foreign woman who’d be deserting him as soon as he could arrange it.

He chafed to be rid of the others so he could be alone with her again. So little time remained.

Once Malik had departed with Ash and Barry to collect their luggage, Rafiq took her by the hand and hustled her through to the bedroom. He peeled off her clothes, swung her up into his arms and laid her down on the bed.

“I don’t like sharing you,” he murmured as he smoothed his lips over her skin, kissing and nipping to mark his progress, inhaling the sweet fresh scent that was so distinctly her.

“He’s my
grandfather
,” she protested.

“He’s a man. You kissed him. You hugged him. I’m jealous.” He pulled her legs apart and licked a trail up the silky skin from her knee, along her inner thigh, and over her belly as far as her navel and then back down the other thigh.

“You missed a bit,” Laurel whispered, addicted now to his mouth on her flesh, his hot breath and soft lips all over her.

“Punishment,” he grated.

“For hugging my grandfather?”

“That, and much more. Forcing me to spend time without you while I collected them.”

He swiped his tongue exactly where she wanted it and she caught her breath.

“For not sitting next to me at lunch.”

Another hot lick.

“For being polite to that fool of a journalist.”

A long searing suck that raised her hips off the bedcover and ripped a moan from her throat.

“Enough punishment for now,” he said. He stood and gazed down at her as he undid his trouser belt.

Laurel didn’t think she’d had nearly enough punishment, but plainly Rafiq had something else in mind. She heard his zipper rasp down as he crossed to the bathroom.

“I’ve heard the rumor,” his husky voice called “that women like a man in a uniform.” Seconds later he appeared again—six feet three of fiercely aroused naked man topped with the chauffeur’s officious hat.

She lay there shaking with laughter as he strode back to the bed.

“Lie down,” she giggled. “It’s your turn now.”

He lay, but flipped her over so she sat astride his chest.

“More punishment,” he murmured, pushing her arms up so she was braced against the headboard. He slid lower, probed with his tongue, settled his lips around her magic little bud and suckled until she screamed.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

They assembled in front of the TV to watch the evening’s main news bulletin. Rafiq kept the volume low until the hostage story appeared.

Laurel shivered as she saw herself again. The forbidding wall of the bunker...the big clock right behind her...her wrists wrapped in chains. 

“You have to believe me,” she heard herself insisting. “I am Laurel de Courcey.”

“So you’re intent on talking? Tell us more,” Rafiq’s voice taunted.

“Pig!” she spat back. “I’ll tell you nothing if you’re too stupid to even kidnap the right woman.”

Rafiq’s big brown hand suddenly clamped around her face. His off-camera voice said “Be careful who you insult, little one. It’s unwise to speak like that in your current position.”

Laurel continued to glare at the camera until the shot ended.

Ash was first to react. “Good God, my dear girl,” he barked. “I suspect I’m very lucky I ever got you back. Didn’t it occur to you to be polite to them?”

“They weren’t being very polite to me,” she said in a small voice. “Were you?” she demanded, looking across at Rafiq.

“I had to make it look good,” he said, shrugging. “The other two are hard men. Not easily fooled.”

“And then you did the third scene where you messed my hair up and put dusty smudges all over my shirt. As if I’d been locked up for ages. Will that ever get shown?”

“If we need to buy more time, then yes. Hopefully though, another day or two should see the end of this particular group.”

“It can’t happen fast enough,” Ash agreed. “But I suppose if Laurel had never been kidnapped, I wouldn’t have known she existed or ever met her. I’ll be very pleased to get her safely home to New Zealand.”

Rafiq steeled himself to be strong.

You’re doing this for Laurel
.

“And I’ll be relieved to get rid of such a liability,” he said. “She could lead them to me, and inadvertently to our other intelligence personnel. The sooner she’s on the other side of the world, the better.”

He couldn’t look at her as he spoke the cold words. Knew her blue eyes would darken with pain at his apparent indifference. Could almost feel the shock rolling off her to where he sat on the other side of Ash.

But it had to be done. Somehow he had to wrench her out of his heart so he could continue with the work. And he felt it would help her to settle into her new life if he provoked her into disliking him...gave her reasons not to look backwards to their desert idyll as though it had meant anything significant.

Laurel almost fainted at his cruelty. Surely she’d been more than a bit of fun to him? She’d known there’d have to be an end to their intense and joyful union, but suddenly he sounded so casual and uncaring. Yes, it had been brief, but it had been a brilliant shining jewel to remember for the rest of her life—not something worthless to be ground under his heel until it was a smear of nothing.

How could he dismiss it so lightly? Or—and this gave her only the slightest comfort—was he putting on some sort of macho act for Ash and Barry? Pretending there was nothing between himself and her? That he was a man as hard as Fayez and Nazim, who had no need of a woman in his life?

“I can’t wait to be home again,” she managed to say with only the slightest quaver. “Out of this barbaric country. Away from the awful heat.”

“As soon as you can arrange it then,” Ash confirmed to Rafiq. “I want to make up for some of those lost years.”

And Laurel sat there trembling, thinking of the endless future where she would never know if her Sheikh was still alive.

Yasmina served dinner in the big dining room.

This time there were no romantic red roses or flickering candles. Instead, she’d put on a show of wealth to impress her visitors. The chandeliers sparkled...the cutlery was gold-plated...course after course of exotic food appeared on the finest antique china.

“Tomorrow I’ll show you my horse,” Laurel told Ash. “My temporary horse,” she added, not daring to glance across to where Rafiq sat opposite her.

“She’s called Azizah and she used to be the—”

She stopped short to avoid mentioning any royal connections. “She used to be grey, but now she’s nearly white,” she amended. “How many horses do you have at Trinity Stud?”