The Sheikh Who Stole Her: Sheikh Seduction / The Untamed Sheikh / Desert King, Doctor Daddy

She was sitting on the floor with her back against the wall, eyeing the food he carried.

He tossed the blanket onto the floor and spread it out with her help, then poured his loot in the middle. “I’ll go get water.” And he’d keep an eye out for that satellite dish. On the off chance he had been the main target of the attack, he wanted to warn his brothers. If someone was after control of MMPOIL, they would be next.

“What can I do to help?” She stood gracefully, although she had to be exhausted both physically and emotionally. She walked to the door with him.

“See if there’s anything left in the car we might need while we’re here.” He hurried toward the main water pipe, keeping her in his line of sight as she made her way back to the Hummer.

She disappeared inside the building only briefly, soon coming back into view with what looked like an armload of garbage.

When the pot was filled, Tariq started to return, but something caught his eye near an outlying building.

“I’ll go look around,” he called out, waiting until she reached the villa before he did so. His gaze settled on the shapeless business suit she wore—probably in deference to the customs of his country. Idly, he wondered how she dressed at home, in her own element. His mind readily skipped to form-fitting, skin-revealing outfits he’d seen plenty of during his time in California.

He thought of those years with nostalgia. Nothing would ever be that simple for him again. He had grown an impenetrable shell in the four years since he’d been back in Beharrain, an armor needed to protect him from his enemies, from the pain of betrayals. Only lately had he been realizing that while it served its purpose of staving off attacks, his shield was also beginning to imprison him.

He set the water down and strode toward the distant lines in the sand. Sara Reeves had asked him to send for his most trusted men. Truth was, he did not, could not, trust anyone except Omar—the man who had been a mentor to him since his return—and his brothers. He would ask his brothers for help. He wanted to get Sara away from danger, wanted to be back in the city himself, back in his own element. Once the sandstorm passed, tracking the bandits would be impossible, all signs of them erased. He would have to use other avenues to investigate.

Omar and all his manpower and wealth were probably working on finding Husam already.

The tire tracks came from the west and disappeared into a partially completed building that would be a hotel someday, fashioned after a famous medieval palace that had stood along one of the caravan routes many hundreds of years ago. Tariq preferred modern architecture like his company headquarters, but the resort had been designed to please tourists and fulfill their expectations.

Clenching his teeth, he kept his eyes fixed on the ground. It looked as if a number of trucks had passed in and out during the last couple of days. Any earlier and winds would have swept away the tracks by now. This was the season for sandstorms.

Tariq entered the building carefully. Only the first two floors were standing, nothing but the load-bearing walls. He checked around, but didn’t find anything beyond some trash and cigarette butts. A gust of wind rose and pushed against him as he came out and strode across the sand.

“I got all the empty bottles,” Sara said as he walked in with the pot of water. “We can fill them up for the road.”

He nodded. In the desert, water was always the first thought—and the last.

“And I got everything that would burn,” she added. “In case we need to start a fire. I found a lighter.”

He listened to the desert for a few seconds, not liking what he heard. The winds heading for them were strong. “We’ll probably stay the night.” There was plenty of scrap wood around the construction site, and what she’d gathered would make perfect kindling.

She deposited her load in a corner, then gestured toward the door. “So what happened here? Why was this place abandoned?” She brought the bottles to him.

“Put on hold,” he corrected. He wasn’t the type to give up on something he’d started. Although some said his years of living abroad had washed the Bedu blood from his veins, apparently, enough remained. He would not give up the fight. “Permits were recalled.”

Suddenly, and without any explanation, about three months ago. Just like everything else he’d tried to do, this project had met an impenetrable wall. He had a hard time getting new businesses off the ground. And even MMPOIL, which tens of thousands of his people depended on for survival, was regularly sabotaged. Tariq had managed to keep the company together only with sheer will and unending vigilance.

He didn’t want to think that Omar had been right when he’d opposed the new projects. Tariq had put it down to the old man’s age. But perhaps Omar knew the country better and was more realistic.

A pang of guilt pricked Tariq at how much he owed Omar. And now he had let his mentor down by losing his eldest son.

“Did you have a bad builder? You’d think people who worked for a sheik would pay attention. Why were the permits revoked?” Sara tilted her head, exposing her graceful, slim neck, an expanse of creamy skin.

“Politics. Who knows?”

Her blue eyes hardened. She probably knew something about corporate maneuvering.

Tariq could go back at any time to the life and the company he had left behind in Sacramento. He’d been a valued executive there. Their doors would always be open to him, they had said. Staying there would have been easier. Certainly safer. But his fate, his destiny awaited in the desert he barely knew, and with the people who treated him as a foreigner. People whom, nevertheless, he loved. He cared little about the danger to his life, only to the degree that it would affect those who worked for him, and depended on him for their own safety.

His men had been killed today, Husam taken. The bandits had meant to take Sara, too. That had to be a coincidence. They’d seen her and wanted her; what man wouldn’t? He couldn’t fathom her being in any way connected to them. But he couldn’t let any option go unexamined.

“Is this your first trip to the Middle East?” He watched her closely as he unscrewed the caps.

“And likely the last,” she said. “No offense.”

He could detect no telltale sign of deceit in her gestures or her voice. She had clear, honest eyes. If someone wanted her kidnapped, it would have been so much easier to do from her hotel, at night when she was alone, rather than when she was with a convoy that included armed guards. And who would have known about them going by car instead of taking the chopper, anyhow?

He thought of something else. When he did make his call, he was definitely going to ask for the helicopter to be looked at for signs of tampering. Until he knew more about that, he would focus on their only clue so far: Husam.

Now that he thought of it … “Wouldn’t it have been easier to kidnap Husam when he was on his way home from work, alone in his car?”

Sara drew up her eyebrows as she considered. “Anything had to be easier than an armed convoy,” she said after a moment. “So what are we missing?”

He shook his head. Damned if he knew.

“Husam called someone before we left. He joined the convoy unexpectedly. Maybe he knew the bandits. Maybe he went with them willingly.”

“Why? And why kill everyone?”

“They wanted to take me,” she said with a pensive expression.

“I have no trouble believing that he found you attractive, but kidnapping you? He could have just asked you to dinner.” Tariq had considered that himself, after he’d gotten off the elevator and she’d gone up to the helipad.

He hadn’t worked closely with Husam, but from all signs, the man seemed a competent businessman, hardly given to such outrageous crimes as kidnapping a woman. He was Omar’s son. Was it possible for the fruit to fall that far from the palm?

“Okay. Fine. I’m just trying to consider all the possibilities.” She straightened her spine and glared at him.

He admired her strength. Shortly after the attack, she’d been out there in the burning sun, helping him dig the grave.

He held her gaze. “A weaker person would still be curled up somewhere in shock.”

Her expression softened marginally at his compliment. “I want to make sure we do whatever it takes to get out of the desert. They are not going to get me,” she said.

“No, indeed.” He would see to that.

She gave him a tremulous smile that made something clench in his chest.

“I’m glad we have these.” He filled the last few bottles. “If we left the water in the pot, it would evaporate in the heat, and get dirty in the meantime.” Intermittent gusts of wind swirled sand in from outside. “Be careful if you go out. I saw some tire tracks.”

“You think the bandits visit this place? Why isn’t there any security here?” she asked with some alarm, moving to help when the last bottle wobbled and nearly tipped.

“There’s not much of value that’s movable.” The heavy machinery had returned to Tihrin when it had become obvious that the obstacle his enemies had put in his path wasn’t one that could be speedily removed. “The site is on tribal land, anyway.” No one from the tribe would damage the property. The people were loyal to their sheik.

For the most. Tariq thought of the possibility of Husam’s betrayal. He didn’t want to believe that one of Omar’s sons could be like that, but now that Sara had planted the thought in his head, he had a hard time dismissing it. Maybe he’d been too focused on fighting with his enemies in the government, and had overlooked the dogs that slinked around his own backyard, waiting to bite when his back was turned.

Leaving her to screw on the caps, he strode to the window to look out at the endless desert, which, instead of sheltering him, as it had done for countless generations of his ancestors, had haunted him throughout his life.