The Desert Sheikh's Innocent Queen: King of the Desert, Captive Bride

A series of three glass-covered jars rested on the tub surround. She lifted each of the lids and smelled the different scented bath salts—verbena, orange blossom and hyacinth—and suddenly a lump filled her throat, making it hard to breathe.

She’d been in hell for weeks and just when she thought there was no hope, she was plucked from her cell and rushed to the airport. Now she was in this palatial suite with a palatial bath furnished with thick, plush towels and exquisitely scented bath salts and fragrant designer shampoos.

It was strange. Impossible. Overwhelming.

The transition was too much.

Leaning over the marble surround, she turned on the water. While the tub filled she stripped off her hated robe and the black sheath she wore under the robe and balled the fabric up and smashed it into the rubbish bin beneath the vanity.

Naked, she examined herself in the mirror. Even to her eyes she looked too thin, gaunt, with yellow and purple-blue bruises on her arms and legs. Turning part way, she studied her back and spotted a big fading bruise on her hip and a newer bruise on her left shoulder.

But the bruises would go and she’d recover and she’d be home. Soon. Soon, she repeated, dumping in two scoops of the verbena-scented bath salt before sliding carefully into the hot water.

The bath felt like heaven and she soaked until the water cooled, forcing her to action by shampooing and conditioning her hair.

Later, clean and wrapped in the soft white cotton sateen robe found hanging on the back of the door, Liv left the bathroom for her bedroom and then realized she didn’t know what to do next. She had no clothes. She didn’t feel comfortable wandering around the suite in just a robe. The conservative climate of the Middle East made her aware that she shouldn’t be sharing a suite with man she didn’t know.

Fresh anxiety hit and out of an old nervous habit, she began chewing her thumbnail down, chewing it to bits.

She had to go home. She needed to go home, and even thought the hotel was gorgeous, and this was probably the only time in her life that she’d ever stay in a five-star property, she couldn’t enjoy it. Couldn’t appreciate the high ceilings, the tall windows and the exotic decor, not when her mother and her brother were waiting for her and worrying about her.

Crossing to the table near her bed, she picked up the phone and asked the hotel operator to put through a call to the States. The operator answered that she couldn’t make the call for her, but gave Liv the international codes so Liv could dial the call from her hotel room.

Liv was scribbling the codes down when a knock sounded on her bedroom door. Her heart skipped. “Just a minute,” she called, swiftly trying to dial the string of numbers, then making a mistake in the middle and having to start all over again.

“We need to talk.” It was Khalid’s deep voice on the other side of the door.

Fingers trembling, she finished inputting the long sequence of numbers. “Okay,” she called back. “I’ll be out soon.”

There was a pause. “We should really talk before you call home,” he said. “There are things you should know, things that you might, or might not, want your family to know.”

She could hear the ring of her mother’s line. Liv gripped the phone more tightly. She suddenly wanted to hear her mother’s voice more than anything in the whole world.

“Olivia,” Khalid continued, his deep voice unnervingly clear despite the door between them, “you don’t have a passport any longer, and it could be difficult to get another issued soon. Perhaps we should discuss a way to break the news to your family without frightening them?”

She could hear the ringing on the line. Could imagine her mother looking for the phone, wondering where she’d left it this time.

Eyes smarting, emotion thick in her chest, Liv hung up before her mother could answer.

She couldn’t worry her mom. She loved her too much.

Beseiged by conflicted emotions, Liv walked to the bedroom door and opened it. Khalid stood on the other side, his robe discarded in favor of exquisitely tailored European- style clothes: dark slacks, supple black leather belt, crisp long-sleeved cotton shirt the color of espresso and black leather shoes. His dark hair was cut short and sleek, emphasizing the strong lines of his face.

He didn’t even look like the same person and she didn’t know why his transformation felt like one more blow.

Nothing was what she’d expected. Imagined.

Nothing made sense.

Pressing her hands into her robe’s pockets, she took a quick breath for courage. “Sheikh Fehr, in the car, you said to wait to call my brother until after I’d seen the doctor, and I waited. Now you tell me not to call home because I don’t have a passport and I shouldn’t worry my family.” Her eyes met his and held. “I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

“Maybe we should sit down.”

“I don’t want to sit. I just want the truth.”

“As you, yourself know, the truth is complicated.”

She blinked, puzzled. “What does that mean?”

“You were charged with smuggling drugs, and the drugs were found on your person—”

“In a bag I was holding for a friend!”

He shrugged. “But it was in your backpack, in your possession, making you responsible. Complicating the truth is the fact that this ‘friend’ disappeared and we have no proof she ever existed.”

“That’s not true! I had her bag. Her cosmetics. Her toiletries.”

“Who is to say they aren’t yours?”

She stared up at him, appalled. “You don’t believe me? You think I did it—”

“I never said that. I was just pointing out that truth isn’t always what it seems, just as my freeing you, isn’t quite what it seems, either.”

She suddenly felt very woozy, her head starting to spin. “I’m beginning to feel dizzy.”

His brows pulled in a fierce line. “I knew you were better off sitting.”

Ignoring her attempt to brush him off, he put one hand to her elbow and the other to the small of her back—a touch that scorched her even through her thick robe—and escorted her to the plump upholstered chair in the living room.

“I’m not going to break,” she said breathlessly, her heart hammering unsteadily as heat washed through her. She could feel his hand despite the plush robe, could feel the press of his fingers against the dip in her spine, and it made her head spin even faster.

“I know you’re not going to break,” he answered, making sure she was safely ensconced in the chair before stepping away, “but you’ve been through a traumatic ordeal, and unfortunately, it’s not over yet.”

Liv stared up at him, battling to get control over her pulse and her thoughts. “I’d think the American embassy would step in now, accelerate the process of getting me home.”

“They’d like to, but they work with the local government, and Jabal is lobbying very hard to have you returned to them for sentencing.”

She made a soft sound of disbelief. “Can the Jabal government extradite me from here?”

“No,” he answered, standing above her, arms folded, his expression downright forbidding. “At least, hopefully not.”

With a trembling hand Liv pushed a damp tendril of hair away from her face, trying to sort out everything he was saying, stress and exhaustion making the task even harder than it should be. “That doesn’t sound very reassuring,” she said hoarsely, blinking back the sting of tears.

“It’s not meant to be. You should know the truth, and the truth is, things are … unpredictable … at the moment.”

His response just added to her fears. “I won’t go back to Jabal,” she choked. “I can’t. I can’t—“

“I know, and I wouldn’t let you go back.”