His Innocent Temptress

To protect his people, Ibrahim had been negotiating a very public political alliance with a neighboring kingdom on the edge of Saudi Arabia, planning for Sorajhee and Balahar to become allies in the troubled Middle East. He’d even gone so far as to secretly pledge that one of his three young sons would one day marry a daughter of King Zakariyya Al Farid, ruler of Balahar.

Layla’s husband, Ibrahim’s brother, had been very much against the idea. Yes, Azzam was very much against the idea.

And four days ago, during a well-orchestrated demonstration against the proposed political alliance of Sorajhee and Balahar, Ibrahim had been assassinated.

Rose had gone into shock at the terrible news, barely able to function. She had come to Sorajhee as a young bride, leaving her American roots behind her to follow the man she loved with all her heart and mind. Now she was alone, and with three young, vulnerable princes to protect.

Layla had come to her the same day Ibrahim was buried, warning her that Azzam planned to take over the kingdom, first ridding himself of “Ibrahim’s half-breed whelps and their bitch.”

“He said this? He would kill us? Kill my babies?” Rose asked her sister-in-law, her shock giving way to panic and anger. “Ibrahim had considered this, but I never believed him. You and Azzam have been our friends. Our family.”

“Azzam wants his brother’s throne, my sister,” Layla told her, “and if he has to crawl over the bodies of his brother and his nephews, he will do it gladly. Sister, he has already begun. I have learned that it was Azzam’s order, if not his hand, that marked the end of Ibrahim.”

Rose pressed her hands to her cheeks, willing herself past the horror, the anger. She had to set aside her sorrow and pain. She had to consider her children.

Drying her tears, she sat down to think. Small and blond, and looking very much the American that she was, she knew that Azzam and many others believed her to be young and witless. An easy pawn.

An easy target, now that her beloved Ibrahim was gone.

How wrong they were.

She was queen of Sorajhee, mother of the heirs, widow of the sheikh.

But even a wise queen knows when preservation means leaving the field, regrouping, gathering her strength. Protecting her young, as a mother lioness would protect her cubs.

Rose stood and ran to the corner of the room and a small locked chest Ibrahim had shown her months ago, when he had first begun his public negotiations with Balahar. She pulled the slim golden chain from her neck and used the key attached to it to open the chest and retrieve its contents.

“What is this, sister of my heart?” Layla asked, standing behind her, watching.

Rose turned, clutching the wrapped package to her. “The last gift of my husband, Layla. A Swiss bank account with enough funds in it to care for my children, the entire trust fund from my parents, and more. Passports for the four of us.”

“Passports? Sister, consider. Azzam will stop you at the border. Unless…no, it couldn’t work. Azzam would find out and kill me, too. He is my husband, Rose, but I fear him. We must all fear him. Remember, I had been promised to Ibrahim before he met you. Azzam would see me as a traitor who favored the widow of his brother and enemy.”

“Don’t worry, Layla. Most of the work has already been done. These are American passports in my maiden name, Coleman. And very American first names for my boys, names no one will recognize unless they have been warned to look for them. I’ve just got to get the boys across the border and we can fly to safety. I know a way—it has already been planned—but I’ll need your help to get Azzam to let me leave the palace.”

She put her hand on Layla’s cheek. “Sister of my heart, you have warned me. Now help me. Please, help my children.”

THREE DAYS LATER, Rose and her boys were on their way to the summer palace, taking with them a carefully chosen retinue of servants loyal to Ibrahim.

It had been announced in the newspapers that Rose and her sons had voluntarily moved from the palace to retire to the privacy of the country, where they would mourn their husband and father.

The number to the Swiss bank account and the four passports traveled with them, as did a young colt, Jabbar, Ibrahim’s beloved Arabian stallion. No one would expect Rose to flee, not when she was taking a horse with her. Azzam let them go.

They never reached the summer palace. Ten miles outside of the city, Rose and her children stopped at a small house owned by relatives of her maid. They changed clothes and changed transport.

Three hours later, they were across the border to Balahar; five hours later, they were airborne, on their way to England and safety. The servants, well paid, were also on their way to safety from Azzam’s revenge. Jabbar was on another airplane, already winging toward Boston and the necessary quarantine for animals coming into the United States.

Rose held Makin, the oldest of the twins, on her lap as his brother Kadar slept in the aisle seat. Barely more than babies, only three years old, they had no idea what had happened to them, but they could sense the nervousness of their mother and had been fractious and demanding until at last sleep had claimed them.

Their older brother, and heir to the throne of Sorajhee, Alim, was only a year older than the twins, but he had a wisdom and demeanor beyond his four years. He sat beside Rose now, holding her hand, stroking it. “I will protect you, Mama,” he told her solemnly. “It is what my father would want.”

Rose felt tears stinging her eyes as she smiled at her oldest son. How like his father he was, with a thick thatch of night-black hair, a handsome but serious face, and already showing signs of being as tall as Ibrahim. They had named him Alim, which meant “wise and learned,” and Alim seemed to know what was expected of him, even in such a terrible time.

“You will be a little boy, my son,” Rose told him, carefully cradling Makin as she bent to kiss her oldest son’s cheek. “And, one day, you will take your father’s place on the throne of Sorajhee.”

They landed at Heathrow airport, to be met by Rose’s brother, Randy Coleman, who had flown out from his home in Boston the moment he got the wire Layla had sent alerting him that a “precious cargo” would be needing his assistance.

That message had hit Randy square in his stomach, as it was the same one Ibrahim had sent him months ago, another precaution he had taken to protect his family. If Randy received such a message, he was to go directly to Heathrow to pick up his sister and the boys, who would be traveling under the name Coleman. Within minutes of receiving the wire speaking of “precious cargo,” Randy had rented a private jet to take him to England, just as his brother-in-law had requested.

Ibrahim, much as he loved his family and wished to protect them, had known that his duty to his subjects was more important, even more sacred, than his own life. But that didn’t mean he would sacrifice his family, and he had planned well. There had never been more than four passports, for Ibrahim would never leave his people, no matter how desperate the danger.

An hour after arriving at Heathrow, Rose was hugging her boys goodbye in another terminal. She had just given them each a different precious gold ring from Ibrahim’s collection, proof of their royalty. Hung around each small neck on slim golden chains, they were the only tangible memory each would carry of their father until Rose could reclaim their destiny.

“My sweet darlings, don’t cry,” she begged the twins, who clung to her neck as she knelt before them. “Mama will join you soon, and Uncle Randy will take such good care of you, I promise. Alim,” she said, reaching past the twins to gather him close. “You know that I must go back and work to uncover the treachery behind your papa’s death. I cannot do that if I am worrying about you and Kadar and Makin.”

“Aunt Layla will help you?” Alim asked, fighting back tears. “I could help you, Mama.”

“And you will, my darling. You will help me by watching over your brothers and obeying your uncle. And you must tell Uncle Randy all about Jabbar, as your papa has already taught you, help raise him to be the champion your papa knew he would become. Now kiss me, and know I love you. I’ll be with you again soon, I promise.”

Randy, already aware that it would be no use to try to talk his sister out of returning to Sorajhee to rally those loyal to Ibrahim, lifted both twins into his strong arms. He kissed his sister and followed Alim into the passageway leading to the plane, as Rose stood with her hands pressed to her mouth, fighting sobs.

Within days she had lost her husband, and now her sons were leaving her. Pain, real physical pain racked her body, and an emptiness such as she had never felt threatened to swallow her, body and soul. She staggered blindly away, down a narrow side hallway, then dropped to her knees and sobbed as if her heart would break.

“I’ll come back for you, my babies, with your father’s murder avenged and your rights restored to you. I promise you that. But now you must be safe, and there is no safety where I’m going.”

THE DAYS PASSED, the months…and then the news came from Layla. Rose was dead, killed while breaking into Azzam’s chambers armed with a knife, clearly out of her head with grief, planning to murder the new ruler of Sorajhee. Layla warned Randy to hide the children, for they were still in danger from her husband, who was now bent on destroying everyone who could be linked to his dead brother.

Randy had already made sure the boys were both legal and hidden as his wards in Boston, using the names on their passports while gaining them the American citizenship that was their right due to their mother. But it wasn’t enough. The press would soon be hounding him, he knew it. Worse, Layla knew where he was, and Layla was with Azzam.

Clearly he needed to do something to make Rose’s sons disappear.

At Layla’s suggestion, Randy returned the three rings to Azzam, telling the man that his nephews were lost in a boating accident off the coast of Cape Cod. There were no bodies to return to Sorajhee to lie with their mother and father. Azzam accepted Randy’s word and returned the rings to him. Randy put the three rings away until the boys were older, to give to them when they could truly understand their heritage and their loss.

As far as the world knew, and the press was avid in following the fate of the martyred Ibrahim’s widow and children, Rose and her children had retired from public life and wanted nothing more than their privacy. Azzam had declared it, therefore it was so. Sorajhee sighed and accepted the word of a Jeved, as it always had, and Azzam closed the borders, declaring that the Fates had spoken. Sorajhee would not ally itself with Balahar.

Randy moved to a ranch near Austin, Texas, just outside a small town called Bridle. Alex, Cade and Mac Coleman moved with him, as did Jabbar, already growing toward the champion Ibrahim had declared he would someday be. Alim and Kadar and Makin were no more.

With his new wife, Vivian, by his side, acting as surrogate mother to the three boys, and with the birth of their own daughter, Jessica, Randy Coleman’s ranch, The Desert Rose, grew to be one of the finest Arabian horse farms in Texas.

Randy brought a partner into the family’s Boston-founded business with him, to help conceal the Coleman name, and Texan Jared Grayson ran the extensive family businesses while Randy and his nephews worked the Arabians. The three boys grew into manhood as Americans, barely remembering their roots in Sorajhee.

But they never forgot Rose, or her promise to return to them….

Chapter One

“Damn it!” Alex Coleman hastily wiped his hands on a towel, then threw it to the ground as he went racing out of the stall and toward the phone hanging on the wall at the far end of the stable. “Damn it, damn it, damn it!”

This couldn’t happen. It just couldn’t. He hadn’t been expecting the birth this soon, or even considered the possibility of complications.