Sheikh Protector

“You listen.” He wiped the sweat from his forehead. The air was well over a hundred degrees outside, and even warmer in the car. He had run up to his office for only a few minutes to grab some papers before he headed off to the camel races, so he hadn’t bothered to pull in to the climate-controlled underground parking garage. He let loose the frustration and anger that churned inside him. “Get the hell out of here. Now.”

The woman stopped, but only momentarily. Her wide brown eyes flashed with determination, and her deep auburn hair swirled around her face in the dry breeze that’d been blowing from the desert all day. Hair that flowed in soft waves well below her elbows. Her soft linen skirt fluttered around her ankles, the light color matching her modest top—clothes that accentuated her tall, slim figure. She looked as beautiful as an angel and as determined as Satan’s handmaiden.

Few men would have remained standing there when he had that glare on his face and that edge in his voice. But incomprehensibly, instead of running the other way, her delicate chin came up. She was maybe four feet from him and not budging.

“All I want—”

Oh, hell. “There’s a bomb—” Karim saw movement in one of the windows behind her, and acted on instinct.

He vaulted out of the car and flew across the space between them, crashing her to the hard pavement, doing his best to break her fall. He didn’t stop, but rolled and rolled.

She screamed the whole time and beat on his shoulders, resisted with all the power in her slim frame, her long hair entangling them. Then the car finally blew, shaking the parking lot.

Heat.

Smoke.

Fear.

She screamed even louder, but it barely registered now over the ringing in his ears.

Head down. He kept her covered as best he could, protected her from the burning debris that flew across the air like projectile missiles. As strong and determined as she had looked a moment ago, she seemed scared and fragile as she clung to him now.

“Don’t move,” he said near her ear, unable to hear his own voice, half-deaf from the explosion. “It’s okay.” He made an attempt to reassure her anyway. They would assess their injuries and face reality in a moment. For now, he was still trying to catch his breath.

The air swirled blazing hot around them. But even the acrid smell of smoke couldn’t completely drown out the scent of the woman in his arms: jasmine and vanilla.

In his peripheral vision, he registered security personnel running from the building.

“Ambulance. Now! Cover his position.”

“Secure the grounds! Secure the grounds!”

“Are you all right, sir? Sheik?”

Karim let the woman go and nodded, the ringing in his ears diminishing with each passing second. She looked wide-eyed with shock, staring at the car a few short yards from them. Her fair skin was now positively white, to the point of being translucent, save a few smudges of dirt.

“What happened?” She pressed a hand to her abdomen, breathing in quick gasps.

He’d probably knocked the air out of her.

After checking her over for visible injuries and not finding any, he followed her gaze, clenching his teeth at the sight of the twisted metal behind him. That had been close. Too close. Aziz’s death still filled his mind, dulling his attention to other things. He had to separate himself from the grief, had to block the memories of the burning well—a fire a thousand times larger than what burned in the parking lot now. He couldn’t get distracted and be taken out. He had to find who killed Aziz.

The company’s private ambulance was racing through the parking lot toward them. For him.

“I’m fine. You take her.” Whatever she wanted from him, he had no time to deal with her now.

He’d spoken in Arabic, but she must have understood his body language, because she began to protest.

“No, I’m fine. Really. I don’t need to see a doctor.” She was rattled and scared, more than a little bewildered, fighting to hide it. Her chin came up, trembling slightly and smudged with dirt from the pavement. “I can’t go.” She backed away a few steps. “I’m not going.”

The woman showed a deep-seated aversion to do as she was told. Even if it was for her own good.

He wasn’t in the mood just now to humor her. “Get in.”

Even his own security stilled at the growl in his voice.

“No,” she said, oblivious to danger once again.

His eyes narrowed. Did she just stomp her feet or had she been flexing her knees?

He had been careful with her when he’d taken her down. She didn’t look hurt. She was breathing normally now. Her clothes were barely rumpled and only slightly stained. Her hair looked the worst, tangled and with a fair amount of sand in it. The desert winds had been blowing for days, dusting the parking lot and everything else in the city.

His security force closed in a circle around them and awaited his orders. They would remove her forcefully; all he had to do was give the word. He should. He had a million things to do at the moment and no time for the distraction of a stubborn woman.

“Fine. No hospital,” he said instead. “Just get in. Whoever did this could be still out here.”

She paled even more, if that was possible, and stepped up into the back of the ambulance. He went after her, on second thought, not because he was scared for his life, but because if whoever was out there decided to shoot at him, the bastard might hit one of his men instead. Better to remove himself from sight.

“We can drop you off at your hotel. Please, sit.” He gestured to the gurney. He remained standing, holding on to one of the restraints as the vehicle moved out. He nodded toward the lone paramedic’s cell phone with a questioning look.

He handed it over immediately. “Of course, sir.”

Karim’s chief of security came on the line after the first ring.

“How did they get in? I want a report the second you find something,” he told the man in Arabic. “I want the whole building in lockdown until everyone inside is verified. And I want a digital copy of the security tapes e-mailed to me immediately.”

“Yes, sir.”

He handed the phone back and focused on the foreign woman who was watching him with morbid fascination. She looked even more impossibly beautiful than his first impression had been—high cheekbones, delicate features, eyes the golden brown color of a perfectly ripe, sweet fig. Eyes that held wariness and secrets, and a certain amount of plucky determination.

Then it clicked.

Media.

A less disciplined man would have groaned. She probably wanted an interview for some foreign paper. Sheer bad luck that she had caught him at a moment like this. There’d be no way now to keep the attack out of the papers. She’d be impossible to shake off. But he had other things to do, which meant he had to get her—and the distractions she brought—out of his life as fast as possible.

“At which hotel are you staying?”

She drew a deep breath and pulled her spine straight. “I need to talk to you first. I’m looking for Aziz.”

His fists clenched. He made a point to relax them. Not a reporter then. Aziz. Of course. He should have known.

Aziz had always been the lucky one between the two of them, the ladies’ man, or as some Western tabloids had once called him, the Playboy Sheik. Aziz had been in his element at the high-society events of Cannes and Monaco, and had kept a party house—with Hollywood celebrity neighbors—in Miami on Star Island. He’d lived the high life and pursued a wide range of interests, had dabbled in everything from yacht racing to desert archaeology.

“And who are you?” he asked.

“Julia Gardner.” She extended her hand. Some of her color had come back. Her skin was now the palest of pinks. A tangle of bead bracelets encircled her slim wrist.