His Innocent Temptress

Yes, all three were magnificent, but it had been Alex who had caught Hannah’s attention, and dreams, ever since she’d stood on the sidelines sixteen years ago, at the impressionable age of twelve, and knew that she had just lost her heart to the unattainable.

“Hannah? Hannah, are you listening to me?”

She shook herself out of her dream, rather surprised to see Alex standing in front of her in a deep brown corduroy jacket and skintight jeans. “Huh?” she said, and then blushed to the roots of her honey-blond hair.

“I said, I want to apologize again, and thank you. You came through like gangbusters, totally calm and professional.”

“You say that as if you still don’t believe it,” Hannah remarked, carefully stepping around a fallen rake, mentally seeing herself stepping on the tines so that the handle snapped upward and knocked her cold. Proud of herself, she turned her head to say something else to Alex—she wasn’t sure quite what—and felt her flannel shirt snag on a nail, ripping the sleeve as she instinctively pulled herself free. “Oh, God.”

Alex was biting his bottom lip, manfully trying not to laugh at her, she supposed.

“That’s the nail where we usually hang the rake, using the hole in the handle.”

“Yeah, figures,” she answered, her cheeks so hot they were stinging her eyes. Her stupid deer-in-headlights, too-big baby-blue eyes. Blond hair, blue eyes, and not quite five feet and three inches of too-slender body. All in all, at the ripe old age of twenty-eight, she felt about as seductive as a three-year-old with a lap full of dolls.

Still, anyone would think she had clown feet big enough to wear the boxes instead of the shoes, and Mister Magoo eyesight, for the way she was always walking into things, falling over things, knocking things over and generally showing all the grace of a bowlegged kangaroo.

“Maybe if you were to stand still for a minute?”

“Hmm? Oh, all right, Mr. Coleman,” Hannah said, wondering how she had gotten back into the stall, when she had picked up her jacket, her bag. It was like her dad always said, she just didn’t pay attention. Among her other failings, like daydreaming. Boy, had she picked a bad moment to daydream.

“Ah, good. I think I feel more comfortable when you’re standing still,” Alex said. His grin was still gorgeous, full of white teeth and smiling eyes, but this time Hannah wanted to bop him over the head with her medical bag, because he was openly making fun of her.

“You don’t have to keep thanking me, you know. You will get a bill.”

“Which I’ll play, gladly. However, I want to do more than just pay the bill. You can’t know how much Khalid means to me, to The Desert Rose. We’ve put Jabbar to stud any number of times, and kept some of his offspring for ourselves, but most get sold, as you know. Khalid? Well, he’s a gift, from Jabbar to me, to my brothers, my family. He’s special.”

“That’s nice,” Hannah said sincerely. “And almost mystical.”

“Yes. Yes, it is, and so my gratitude should be larger than just saying thank you and then paying the bill. So, if there’s anything else you want—anything, please just ask. I will tell everyone I know about how cool you were under fire, and that they should have no qualms about calling you in when your father isn’t available. But that doesn’t seem like enough.”

Hannah lowered her eyes as the most ridiculous, outlandish, absurd idea flashed into her mind. Boy, could she ever think of a favor Alex Coleman could do for her! But no, that was impossible. First, because she’d never have the courage to ask him, and two, because it was a stupid, personally revealing request. Totally stupid.

“Hannah? How about dinner tonight? It’s not much, but it’s a start, and maybe by then you’ll have thought of something else I could do to show you my gratitude.”

“Dinner?” Hannah’s head flew up so quickly, and she was standing so close to Alex—actually, he was standing so close to her—that she nearly clipped his chin with her head. Stepping back quickly, stumbling for a moment, of course, she looked up at him. “Dinner? Tonight?”

Alex smiled, shook his head. “But no sharp knives,” he teased, taking the medical bag from her hand and walking out of the stable with her, back to her SUV. “I’ll pick you up around six or so, okay?”

She slid onto the seat, praying the keys were still in the ignition, because otherwise she’d be damned if she knew where they could be, and she wouldn’t be able to stick them into the ignition anyway. Her hands were shaking badly, too badly to blame on the damp, biting weather outside the warm stable. “At six. Sounds…sounds fine.”

“Good,” Alex said, slamming the door, then stepping away, probably to make sure she didn’t back up over his toes. Hannah felt his gaze on her until she’d made the turn that would cut off his sight of her, then stopped the SUV, gripped the steering wheel with both hands and tried to get her breathing under control.

He had asked her out! Not a date. Nobody in their right mind could call it a date. It was a thank-you offer. Maybe even a pity offer. But he’d made it, and she’d accepted, and he still wanted to do something else for her. “Anything,” he’d said. “Anything at all.”

Oh, brother. Would she ever get a chance like this again?

ALEX SPENT ANOTHER HOUR in the stable, just leaning over the top of the bottom half of the stall door, watching Khalahari and Khalid.

They would lose Jabbar soon, it was inevitable. He’d had a long, good life, and enriched their lives as much with his presence as with the foals he provided that made up the bedrock of The Desert Rose, the growing legend of The Desert Rose as a premier Arabian stud.

Jabbar. The last legacy of his parents, the only thing besides his two brothers and the golden ring he wore on his right hand, left to remind him of Sorajhee.

There were so few memories, clouded by the passage of time and the fact that he’d only been four-and-a-half years old when he was suddenly ripped from his mother’s arms and put on a plane, traveling halfway across the world to a new land, a new family.

He could remember his father, but only vaguely. A tall man, who never hesitated to bend down to speak to a small child. A man whose face Alex believed he saw in his own mirror as he shaved each morning, now that he was thirty-two, already a year older than his father had been when he was murdered.

Flashes of a long white robe. A bright white smile in a swarthy, sun-kissed face. Big hands, hands that gently held those so much smaller. The soft musical murmur of Arabic, a language Alex once knew but now had almost totally forgotten.

That was a sin, and a shame. But Uncle Randy had seen no need to keep up the boys’ Arabic lessons, or so he’d said, right up until the day he’d sat the three of them down and told them otherwise.

Hiding. They’d been in hiding for twenty-seven years, all of them. Hiding from their Uncle Azzam, who still ruled in Sorajhee. Alex kept up on the news about his homeland, although he didn’t say anything to his brothers, his aunt or his uncle. There was no need to worry them, make them think that he might plan to one day go back, claim his rightful throne.

It was too late for that. Years and years too late. All that was in Sorajhee were the graves of his parents. He didn’t know the people, didn’t even know much of the language. His life, his memories, and those of his brothers, were here in Texas.

Alex knew his father had died trying to make Sorajhee strong, safe from invasion, and that his mother had died to avenge their father and reclaim the throne for her sons. Now, with the passage of years, and the borders still firmly closed, Azzam’s rule was keeping Sorajhee out of the mainstream, keeping open only the ports that were the main income-making industry in the small country. Nobody save the natives of Sorajhee were allowed outside the ports, inside the country that was nearly an island, with only one strip of well-defended border touching the mainland. It was as if Azzam had built a high fence on three sides of the country and marked it “No Trespassing.”

Sorajhee was the past, both because of the time Alex had spent away from the land, and because his Uncle Azzam had decreed it to be so. But Azzam had been lucky so far. Keeping his ports open had kept the greedy eyes of the Middle East turned away from him for years, concentrating them instead on oil-rich countries like the neighboring Balahar.

But nothing stands still, and Alex, from his reading, felt sure that Sorajhee and Balahar would soon have to unite, as his father had prophesied, or they would both be overrun.

No. This was no place for a son of Ibrahim Bin Habib El Jeved. Enough Jeved blood had already been spilled, enough Jeved lives had been altered forever. Let his Uncle Azzam realize his brother had been right, or let him perish. Alex sometimes wondered if he was fatalistic or if what he felt inside him was the age-old Arab belief in fate. Either way, the fate of Sorajhee was not his. That he did know.

Alex had a job, a sacred trust his mother had given him that last day. He was to take care of his brothers, of Jabbar. He was to help his uncle Randy. And that is what he’d done. He was at peace with his past and with his future.

“I just heard,” Cade said, leaning on the wood beside Alex. “I got back from town a little while ago, and Mickey stopped me to give the good news. He’s a beaut, Alex. A true son of his sire. He’ll be black as Jabbar, too. Glorious and proud. But that will take a while.”

Alex smiled at his brother. “First he has to learn to control all four legs at one time,” he said. His brother, youngest of the twins by a few very important minutes as far as the succession went, was the Coleman who had chosen running the business end of The Desert Rose as his life’s work. Both Cade and Mac resembled Alex, but there was something softer, more human, about their dark handsomeness. More of Rose lived in her twins.

Alex flicked at Cade’s lapel. “A suit? You’re wearing a suit? Where did you say you went? And what’s her name?”

“Business, big brother, I went into Austin on business,” Cade corrected him, then shook his head. “Okay, and a girl.”

“There’s always a girl, isn’t there, Cade?” Alex said, turning to walk away from the stall. He was filthy, a little bloody, and suddenly he wanted a hot shower and clean clothes. “If you weren’t so damn good at your job, I’d have to call you a playboy, you know.”

“Well, now I’m insulted. I’d like to be considered a playboy. Has a certain ring to it, you know,” Cade said, obviously joking. “Not that anyone could call you a playboy, big brother. When was the last time you were out on a date? Your Bridle High School senior prom?” They walked across the stable yard together, Cade careful of his dress shoes, heading for the main house.

“Just because I don’t see one girl for drinks at seven, and another at ten for a late dinner, and call that a double date, doesn’t mean I don’t have a social life. As a matter of fact,” he said, knowing he was about to put his foot in his mouth, “I have a date tonight.”

Cade stopped dead outside the front door of the house. “Excuse me? I couldn’t have heard that right. You have a date? Has anyone notified the newspapers? Who is it?”

“Hannah Clark,” Alex muttered under his breath as he opened the front door, gestured for Cade to enter the house ahead of him.

“Oh, Hannah Clark,” Cade said, wiping his feet on the mat, his attention momentarily distracted, as he knew his Aunt Vi didn’t think he was too old to be scolded for tracing stable yard dirt into her house. “Whoa! Wait a minute. Did I just say Hannah Clark?”

“Actually, I said it.” Alex hung his hat on one of the hooks just inside the foyer. “She delivered the foal, a breech, and I wanted to thank her.”

“Uh-huh,” Cade said, watching as Alex stripped off his jacket and hung it on another peg. “Aunt Vi hates when you do that, you know. She says the rack is just for show. You weren’t even supposed to come in the front door in your boots. But, then, having a date with the Hannah Slip-on-a-banana Clark has probably scrambled your brains. Hannah Clark, Alex? Really?”