The Sheikh Who Blackmailed Her: Desert Prince, Blackmailed Bride / The Sheikh and the Bought Bride / At the Sheikh's Bidding

The man looked at her in silence, his glance sliding briefly over her dishevelled figure. Gabby was sure guilt and desperation must be written all over her face—she had never really mastered the art of hiding her feelings.

It occurred to her that she should have dressed for the occasion, then her story might not have been met with such obvious scepticism. It was likely people did not take tea with the King of Zantara wearing grubby jeans and a torn shirt.

‘I had a slight accident on the way here,’ she told the silent man as she lifted a hand to smooth hair that at the best of times refused to be tamed, but just now probably gave her the appearance of an extra in a film that involved mad women and lunatic asylums.

When the man did break his silence it was not to speak to Gabby, whom he regarded with deep suspicion, but to the similarly clad man with him. They conversed briefly in Arabic, then the second man, after sliding a stern look in Gabby’s direction, gave a deferential nod of his head to the first and vanished through a door she had not noticed to the left.

Gabby smiled. It was rare that Gabby’s smile did not evoke a response from its recipient, but the man in the black robe seemed unfortunately immune to the infectious warmth and her dimple.

‘Children and animals like me.’

The limp quip did not draw any response.

He had, she decided, very poor people skills. Maybe being miserable came with the job of protecting the Zantaran royal family from contact with ordinary people? Did they ever step down from their ivory towers?

On the other hand, she conceded, it was possible he knew who she was, and this was the way he treated relatives of almost convicted felons—not that the almost, according to the man at the embassy, was anything more than a formality.

As far as he was concerned Paul was as guilty as hell—and this was the man who was meant to be on her brother’s side!

‘Your brother was caught carrying the drugs, Miss Barton,’ he had reminded Gabby, in response to her angry diatribe on the justice system in this dustbowl of a country. ‘And Zantara is not actually a dustbowl. There are desert areas, obviously, but due to the mountain range to the east and—’ He had caught Gabby’s eye and cut short the geography lesson, concluding apologetically, ‘And in fairness the zero tolerance attitude to drugs here is well known to visitors. Our own government guidelines to travellers actually—’

Gabby, who was not interested in fairness, had cut in, explaining she was not there to read government guidelines but to get her brother out of jail and back home, where she had every intention of throttling him personally.

‘My brother is not a drug runner. Stupid, yes,’ she conceded. ‘Very stupid,’ she added grimly. Only a total imbecile would carry a stuffed toy through Customs for a girl just because she’d smiled at him and looked helpless.

Gabby could see how people found his defence story lame, but they didn’t know Paul. He had spent his entire adult life being made a fool of by pretty girls, and still he retained his child-like faith in the basic goodness of human nature—especially the human nature of pretty girls. It was left to his sister to be cynical for him.

Predictably, the pretty girl in question this time had vanished without trace, and now her brother was incarcerated behind prison walls, where he was likely to stay for a very long time unless Gabby pulled off some sort of miracle. And that was looking about as likely as this guard smiling back at her.

She felt the stirrings of despair, and took a deep and sustaining breath before adding another hundred volts to her smile. Stay positive, Gabby, she chided herself. She had to, for Paul’s sake, and so far being positive had got her further than any of the embassy man’s depressing predictions.

When she had explained her embryonic plan the man at the embassy had laughed. He’d actually given her a patronising pat on the head while explaining that she had to be realistic. It was totally impossible, he’d explained patiently, for her to gain access to the royal palace. As for an audience with the King—well, he had been here twelve months, and that honour had not as yet been granted him.

Gabby had asked him if he had any better ideas.

Once he’d starting talking about tact and diplomacy she had tuned him out, deciding there and then she would get into the royal palace if it killed her.

It hadn’t—though she did have a few bruises to show for her efforts. She was inside—just—and the place looked as though it was straight from the pages of a fairy tale, complete with minarets that glistened with gold and lapis lazuli in the relentlessly fierce sun that shone down from the dizzyingly blue sky. Another time Gabby might have been enchanted by her surroundings, but she had no time for enchantment. She was on a mission.

First impossible step achieved. The next was to see the man himself—because, as her dad always said, if you wanted something you didn’t mess around with the little people, you went right to the top.

And the King seemed about as top as you could get in this oil-rich desert state, and Gabby had every intention of pleading her brother’s case to the man himself.

It had been simply bad luck, walking straight into two guards, but hopefully it was only a minor setback.

In deference to her aching face muscles she stopped smiling. She was wondering if it might actually be more useful to play dumb—though it went against the grain—when another granite-faced black-clad figure appeared—thankfully minus a scimitar.

The man with the face like granite looked Gabby up and down. You could almost hear him mentally filing her as harmless before he announced in perfect English that he was going to escort her from the premises.

‘I have an appointment with the King.’ The more often she said it, Gabby reflected, the less convincing and more crazy it sounded.

‘So I have been told. But there appears to have been a blunder, which I will look into immediately. The King does not have an appointment scheduled today. I am sorry for the inconvenience, Miss …?’

‘Barton.’

‘Miss Barton. I will have to ask you to leave and reschedule.’

He was scrupulously polite, but clearly—despite the lovely manners—not a man to be messed with. A winning smile was not going to work here.

‘Good idea. I’ll do that.’

‘A wise decision.’

Gabby, who was not renowned for her ability to take no for an answer went meekly, keeping up a steady stream of inanity which after the first few minutes he did not bother responding to, and waited for her chance. Hoping she’d know what to do with it if and when it arrived.

She did.

They had entered a square mosaic-floored hallway—one of several they had passed through—when her escort stopped in response to a call from a short man who was one of the few Gabby had seen not armed to the teeth. As he left her side to speak to the man framed in the arched doorway, it clearly did not cross his mind that his instruction to Gabby to ‘Wait there, please’ would be ignored.

Gabby flashed her best meek, dumb smile, and waited until he’d reached the other man—then she hit the ground running, and carried on doing just that, ignoring the cries and sounds that followed her as she took the first turning off the wide corridor. Within seconds she was in a maze of narrow corridors, the echo of her heels loud in the silent hallways.

She ran along corridors and up stairs until her knees were jelly, then flopped forward, her long honey-blonde hair brushing the floor as, hands clasped to her thighs, she struggled to drag oxygen into her lungs.

Trying very hard not to think about the abundance of armed men she had seen, she slipped off her shoes, shoving them in the back pocket of her jeans, and continued more cautiously. The corridors were a regular maze, and there were miles of them. Only twice in half an hour did she hear the sound of raised voices and footsteps—presumably a search party after her blood, thought Gabby, though she sincerely hoped not literally.

The third time she heard voices and footsteps they were much closer. Heart pounding, she flattened herself against the wall—as though that was going to make her invisible, she thought, as the pause gave her time to consider her actions.

Her father, who always gave her the benefit of the doubt, would have said she was impetuous. More like reckless and irresponsible, her mother would have retorted, and on this occasion Gabby could see she might have had a point.

What had she achieved?

Beyond the very real possibility there would be two Bartons behind bars by this evening?

Gabby was mad with herself. She knew she ought to have done more research, but when opportunity in the shape of a distracted driver and an open delivery van had presented itself she had reacted without thinking. If she had had more time to plan she might now have an idea of the palace layout.

The sound of a footfall close by interrupted her gloomy analysis of the situation and sent her instinctively for the worn flight of spiral stone steps to her right. She flew up them in breathless haste.

At the top Gabby found herself in a small foyer, with a large metal-studded, ancient-looking door in front of her. At the sound of steps behind her Gabby took a deep breath and pushed it. Relieved when it swung inwards, she stepped inside and, hastily closing it behind her, turned the big key in the lock, shooting home a couple of heavy-duty bolts before leaning back against the solid wood, her chest heaving.

For the first time she looked around the room she stood in. It was curiously shaped—octagonal—but, more importantly from her point of view, it was empty.

As her racing heart slowed Gabby’s eyes adjusted to the gloom and she surveyed her sanctuary. Unlike the other rooms she had glimpsed inside the palace it was informally furnished, with an eclectic mix of antique and modern items. One wall appeared to be lined with books, several of which lay open on a large inlaid table, and another wall had heavy curtains pulled across. The light that filtered though the gaps suggested there was a window behind it.

The adrenaline rush that had got her this far abruptly receded, and her knees folded. Spine pressed to the door, she slid down to the floor until she sat, her knees drawn up to her chin, shaking.

CHAPTER TWO

STANDING on the balcony, Rafiq gazed out over the palace’s luminous gilded towers and beyond to the city, with its graceful avenues lined by waving palms, its white geometric buildings spreading out into the neatly cultivated fields that had once been desert, and further on again to the purple haze that was the mountain range that ran across the eastern border of Zantara.