Traded To The Sheikh

‘Is she in trouble?’

The quick injection of concern almost tripped Emily into spilling her own worries about Hannah’s situation. Caution clamped onto her tongue before it ran loose with information that was better kept private. Being an Australian, she was in the habit of assuming the world around her was safe unless it was proved otherwise. She had just been learning—the hard way—that she trusted too easily. Blithely believing that most people were of goodwill could land her in very nasty places.

‘It’s just a family meeting. I said I’d come. She’ll be expecting me,’ Emily stated, trying to sound matter-of-fact rather than anxious.

‘Miss Ross, if I am to believe you were not in league with Arnault and his drug-running…’He paused to give emphasis to his line of argument. ‘If I am to believe in your determination to meet your sister in Stone Town…there must be a designated place—be it hotel, shop, or private residence—and a name that can be checked there, giving credence to your story.’

Okay, she could see there was a credibility gap here that had to be crossed or her guest/prisoner status would remain as long as the sheikh cared to keep it in place. On the other hand, from the way he’d been eyeing her over, Emily had the distinctly uneasy feeling that not even credibility would earn her release from his custody. Still, she had to offer some proof that she was on a completely separate mission to Jacques Arnault’s.

‘The Salamander Inn. I don’t know if Hannah has booked ahead. Unlikely, I’d think, since she was unsure of when she’d make it to Zanzibar. But that’s our meeting place.’

‘The Salamander Inn is a boutique hotel. It offers the best and coincidentally the most expensive accommodation of all the hotels on this island. I know this.’ He smiled with an arrogance that somehow implied she’d just been very stupid. ‘I own it.’

Oh, great! The chance of escaping from this man anywhere on Zanzibar looked increasingly dim!

‘Fine!’ she said on an exasperated sigh. ‘Then you can easily check if Hannah has arrived or not.’

‘Her full name?’

‘Hannah Coleman.’

‘Not Ross?’

‘Coleman is her married name.’

‘So your sister is not likely to book under the family name of Ross?’

‘Hardly. Ross is my married name.’

That information ripped him out of his languid pose against the heaps of satin cushions on his couch. His body jerked forward, his loose robes suddenly pasted to a tautly muscled physique that seemed to bristle with assault readiness. Yet he spoke with a soft silky contempt which crawled straight under Emily’s skin, priming her into retaliation mode.

‘Where is your husband, Madame Ross?’

‘His ashes were thrown to a breeze out at sea…as he’d once said he’d prefer to being buried,’ Emily grated out, hanging firmly to being matter-of-fact so that she wasn’t embarrassed by one of the waves of grief which could still sweep up and overwhelm her when she thought of Brian’s death.

They’d been school sweethearts, rarely parted during all the years they’d spent sharing almost everything in each other’s company. Then to have him taken from her so abruptly…being left behind…alone…cheated of a future together…No, no, no, don’t go there, Emily!

She concentrated on watching her antagonist digest the news of her widowhood, the withdrawal of all expression from his face, the slow emergence of more sympathetic inquiry in his dynamic dark eyes.

‘How long ago?’ he asked quietly.

‘About two years.’

‘He was young?’

‘Two years older than me.’

‘How did he die?’

‘Brian was with a rescue team during a cyclone.’ She grimaced. ‘He died trying to save an old lady’s pet dog. A panel of flying roof hit him.’

‘A brave man then,’ came the thoughtful observation.

She managed an ironic smile. ‘I don’t think fear ever had any influence on Brian’s actions. He just did whatever he set out to do. We used to go adventuring a lot, working our way around Australia.’

‘You do not have children?’

She shook her head. ‘We weren’t ready to settle down with a family. In fact, we were getting ready to set off on a world trip…’

‘When the cyclone happened,’ he finished for her.

‘Yes,’ she muttered, frowning at the realisation that she’d spoken more of Brian in the past two minutes than in the entire two years since her departure from Australia.

You have to move on, she’d told herself, and move on she had, a long slow trip across Asia, more or less going wherever the wind blew her on her travels, not wanting to face making any long-term decisions about her life—a life without the man who’d always coloured it.

She’d attached herself to other groups of people from time to time, working with them, listening to their experiences, soaking up interesting pieces of information, but what was highly personal and private to her had remained in her own head and heart.

So why had she opened up to this man?

Her mind zapped back the answer in no time flat.

Because he was getting to her in a highly primitive male/female way and she’d instinctively brought up the one man she’d loved as a shield against these unwelcome feelings. Her marriage to Brian was a defence against other things, as well, like the idea she was a belly-dancer with indulgent sugar-daddies on the side.

She was, in fact, a perfectly respectable widow who hadn’t even been tempted into a sexual dalliance by the many gorgeous eye-candy guys who’d offered to share their beds and bodies while they were ships passing on their separate journeys. Sex without emotional involvement hadn’t appealed, and it didn’t appeal now, either, she fiercely told herself, willing her body to stop responding in this embarrassingly animal fashion to a very foreign sheikh who wanted to treat her as a whore.