At The Sheikh's Command

Bitter tears of despair burned in Abbie’s eyes and, as she reached the half-landing, she sagged against the wall, covering her face with her hands.

Her brother had been a delicate child. He suffered badly from asthma and had often been in hospital or just sick at home. As a result he’d missed a lot of schooling so that he was young for his age and very naive. The trip to Barakhara had been his first experience of being abroad on his own. Now he was locked in some foreign prison and in the single brief phone call they had had from him, arranged with a lot of difficulty by the British Ambassador, he had quite obviously been terrified, begging them to get him out—to let him come home.

Frantic diplomatic efforts had followed and the Sheikh’s visit was the result of that. It was their only chance. It couldn’t fail. It just couldn’t!

The sound of movement in the room below jolted her upright in haste. Someone was coming to the door—opening it.

Her father appeared in the hall below. He paused, looked back at the man inside.

The Sheikh, Abbie reminded herself. The man of power who held the future happiness of their family in the palm of his hand.

In the palm of his arrogant hand, a spark of defiance added, recalling the way that the man had turned to look at her in the moment of his arrival. The assessing way those dark eyes had scanned her.

‘I’m sorry, but I must take this call.’

It was her father who spoke, his voice floating up to where she stood.

‘I won’t be long…’

He hurried off in the direction of the kitchen and Abbie watched him go. From her position here, higher up on the landing, even her father’s powerful figure looked shortened, smaller somehow and reduced. The sight of him wrenched at Abbie’s heart, making her bite her lip hard against the distress that threatened to choke her.

‘Oh, Andy…’ she began again, then caught herself up sharply.

It wasn’t all Andy’s fault! Okay, so her brother had been silly—downright stupid—but surely what he’d done hadn’t been all that bad! Other boys his age had done as much, worse even! In England, pocketing some items from the archaeological dig he was working on would just be petty theft—wouldn’t it? So what right did this sheikh have to lock her brother up and throw away the key?

Anger made her heart swell. A sense of bitter injustice made it beat at twice the speed as before, sending the blood coursing through her veins so fast that it made her head spin.

Who did he think he was? How dared he…?

She hadn’t even realised that she was moving until she found herself halfway down the stairs again—heading in the direction of the hallway and the room her father had just left. She didn’t know what was going to happen, had no idea what she was going to say. She only knew that she was going to say something.

The library door was still partly open, just as her father had left it. There was nothing there to make her stop, or even pause to think. The impetus that had taken her down the stairs had built up into almost a run, taking the last couple of steps two at a time, and sending her hurtling into the room before she had a chance for second thoughts.

Or before she had a chance to think of anything to say.

So there she was, suddenly face to face with the man—the sheikh—who had come to make demands of her family. Who was, in most respects, holding her younger brother to ransom, and was now letting them know just how they would have to pay.

Here she was, face to gorgeous face…

Oh, no, heaven help her, she didn’t want to think of how stunning he was close up. How devastatingly dark and sexy. Just seeing him scrambled her thoughts until she had to fight against the urge to say something that was the complete opposite of the anger that had brought her in here.

He was lounging comfortably at his ease, damn him, in one of the big, well worn, soft leather armchairs that flanked the big open fireplace. His handsome head leaned comfortably against the studded leather back, soft blue-black hair brushing equally soft chestnut leather. His long, long legs were stretched out in front of him, crossed at the ankles, revealing superbly crafted handmade boots. One hand held a teacup, the finest bone china looking absurdly small and delicate, impossibly white, against the burnished bronze strength of his broad palm, the powerful fingers of the other hand resting negligently on the arm of his chair, totally relaxed.

Unlike Abbie, who was fizzing with rage, bristling with defiance.

‘You can’t do this!’

The words burst from her before she had time to consider them or even try to decide if she would be wiser to hold them back. And she didn’t know whether to feel a sense of near panic or intense satisfaction as she saw the way that his head went even further back, forceful jaw tightening, gleaming jet-black eyes narrowing sharply as he looked up into her face.

‘I beg your pardon?’

It was a shock to realise that these were the first words she had ever heard him speak clearly. She had been intensely aware of him, of his presence in the house, ever since that moment that he had stepped out of his car and into the sunlit courtyard. It was as if he had always been in her life, not just newly arrived in her experience.

‘What did you say?’

The rich, dark, lyrically accented voice had sharpened, developing a razor’s edge that made her wince inside to hear it. And there was a new tension in the long muscular body that no longer lounged easily in the chair but had developed the tightness of a coiled spring, like that hunting cat she had imagined earlier waiting and watching for just the right moment to pounce.

He hadn’t actually moved but still there was enough of a threat of danger in him, in the tautly drawn jaw, the sharply narrowed eyes, that made her insides quail at the thought of that coldly reined-in anger turned on her. And yet somehow the new sense of risk added a sharper edge to the harsh male beauty of his face, the brilliance of those glittering jet eyes.

But not enough to curb her tongue.

‘You can’t do this! You can’t treat people this way!’

‘And what way would that be?’

‘You know only too well!’

‘I think not.’

To her nervous horror, he was leaning forward to replace the cup and its saucer on the table, uncoiling his long body with a slow and indolent grace as he got to his feet. Standing at his full height, he towered over her, big and overpowering, sending her throat into a spasm of shock and freezing her runaway tongue into silence. She swallowed hard and fought for the control not to turn and run straight for the door—fast!

‘I don’t believe I know what you’re accusing me of—or why,’ he went on, the beautiful voice shockingly soft and warm. Deceptively so because there was no way that the tone of his words matched the fierce, cold assessment to which those black, black eyes were subjecting her. ‘So perhaps you’d like to explain.’

He’d wanted to meet the sexy blonde from the moment he’d seen her watching him from the window, Malik reminded himself. In fact, he’d agreed to James Cavanaugh’s suggestion of tea largely in the hope that the maid would be the one who would bring it. He’d been disappointed when James himself was the one to go and fetch the tray. But then his host had been called away to an important phone call and now here was the blonde, appearing unexpectedly in the library without warning.

He would have sworn that, in the moment their eyes had met earlier, he had seen the same sudden flare of interest, of attraction, that he had felt for her. In fact, he had been so sure of it that he had been content to wait, believing it was only a matter of time before they came together. And her sudden appearance seemed to have proved him right.

She was even more stunning close up than he had imagined from the quick glimpse he had had of her through the window. She was tall, with rich, full breasts, a neat waist and curving hips. That ridiculous apron with its multicoloured flower print should have made her look anything but glamorous but the way it fastened around the slenderness of her waist emphasised the swell of her breasts, the flare of her hips. A real woman, unlike the almost boyish figures of so many of the females he had seen around London.

The sudden clutch of sexual hunger he experienced, just looking at her, was so primitive it was shocking. It was a long time since his rather jaded appetite had been stirred so strongly.

But her mood was not at all as he had anticipated. This hissing, spitting cat had little in common with the image of a warm, willing temptress he had built in his mind, letting himself consider that perhaps this trip to England might not be the boring diplomatic duty and family responsibility it had promised to be.

Instead he was faced with an aggressive, fiery creature who had marched up to him in a way that no woman in Barakhara would ever dare to do, confronting him with her hands on her hips and a blaze in her cool grey eyes.

‘I don’t need to explain! You know why you’re here!’

‘My business here is with Sir James—’

The attempt to squash her, silence her, failed as she drew in a sharp breath, then launched into a further attack, dismissing his intervention with an audacious wave of her hand.

‘Your business here is to decide Andy’s—Andrew’s—fate!’ she flung at him. ‘I don’t know who you think you are, dicing with people’s lives like that! Just what gives you the right…’

‘The law gives me the right,’ Malik broke in on her with a snap. ‘The law of—Barakhara. The same law that young Andrew chose to flout when he decided to pocket some of the items he found at that archaeological dig he was working on.’

Andy, his mind had noted, grabbing at the single word and working on the meaning behind it. She’d changed it pretty hastily to Andrew, but Andy was what she’d said at first, before she’d corrected herself.

And Andy meant a familiarity, a closeness that was more than servant to a member of the family she worked for.