Forged in the Desert Heat

They were offering him a chance to see her returned as if nothing had happened, he understood. If she were assaulted, it would be clear, and Al Sabah, and by extension the new and much-maligned sheikh, would be blamed.

And war would be imminent.

Either from Shakar or from his own people, were they to learn of what had happened under his “watch.”

He made an offer. Every bit of money he had. “I’m not dealing,” he said. “That is my only offer.”

Jamal looked at him, his expression hard. “Done.” He extended his hand, and Zafar didn’t for one moment mistake it as an offer for a handshake. He reached into his robes and produced a drawstring coin purse, old-fashioned, not used widely in the culture of the day.

But he’d been disconnected from the culture of the day for fifteen years so that was no surprise.

He poured the coins into his hand. “The woman,” he said, extending his arm, fist closed. “The woman first.”

One of the men walked her forward, and Zafar took hold of her arm, drawing her tight into his body. She was still, stiff, her eyes straight ahead, not once resting on him.

He then passed the coins to Jamal. “I think I will not be stopping for the night.”

“Eager to try her out, Sheikh?”

“Hardly,” he said, his lip curling. “As you said, there is no surer way to start a war.”

He tightened his hold on her and walked her to the corral. She was quiet, unnaturally so and he wondered if she was in shock. He looked down at her face, expecting to see her eyes looking glassy or confused. Instead, she was looking around, calculating.

“No point, princess,” he said in English. “There is nowhere to go out here, but unlike those men, I mean you no harm.”

“And I’m supposed to believe you?” she asked.

“For now.” He opened the gate and his horse approached. He led him from the enclosure. “Can you get on the horse? Are you hurt?”

“I don’t want to get on the horse,” she said, her voice monotone.

He let out a long breath and hauled her up into his arms, pulling her, and himself, up onto the horse in one fluid motion, bringing her to rest in front of his body. “Too bad. I paid too much for you to leave you behind.”

He tapped his horse and the animal moved to a trot, taking them away from the camp.

“You...you bought me?”

“All things considered I got a very good deal.”

“A good...a good deal!”

“I didn’t even look at your teeth. For all I know I was taken advantage of.” He wasn’t in the mood to deal with a hysterical woman. Or a woman in general, no matter her mental state. But he was stuck with one now.

He supposed he should be...sympathetic, or something like that. He no longer knew how.

“You were not,” she said, her voice clipped. “Who are you?”

“You do not speak Arabic?”

“Not the particular dialect you were speaking, no. I recognized some but not all.”

“The Bedouins out here have their own form of the language. Sometimes larger families have their own variation, though that is less common.”

“Thank you for the history lesson. I shall make a note. Who are you?”

“I am Sheikh Zafar Nejem, and I daresay I am your salvation.”

“I think I would have been better off if I were left to burn.”

* * *

Ana clung to the horse as it galloped over the sand, the night air starting to cool, no longer burning her face. This must be what shock felt like. Numb and aware of nothing, except for the heat at her back from the man behind her, and the sound of the horse’s hooves on the sand.

He’d stopped talking to her now, the man who claimed to be the Sheikh of Al Sabah, a man whose entire face was obscured by a headdress, save for his obsidian eyes. But before she’d been kidnapped...and it surely had only been a couple of days...Farooq Nejem had been the ruler of the country. A large and looming problem for Shakar, and one that Tariq had been very concerned with.

“Zafar,” she said. “Zafar Nejem. I don’t know your name. I can’t...remember. I thought Farooq...”

“Not anymore,” he said, his voice hard, deep, rumbling through him as he spoke.

The horse’s gait slowed, and Ana looked around the barren landscape, trying to figure out any reason at all for them to be stopping. There was nothing. Nothing but more sand and more...nothing. It was why she hadn’t made an escape attempt before. Going out alone and unprepared in the desert of Al Sabah was as good as signing your own death certificate.

They’d been warned of that so many times by their guide, and after traveling over the desert in the tour group on camelback for a day, she believed him.

So much for a fun, secret jaunt into the desert with her friends before her engagement to Tariq was announced. This was not really fun anymore. And it confirmed what she’d always suspected: that stepping out of line was a recipe for disaster.

She was so fair, too much exposure to the midday sun and she’d go up in a puff of smoke and leave nothing but a little pile of ash behind.

So bolting was out of the question, but the fact that they were stopping made her very, very uneasy. She’d been lucky, so lucky that the men that had kidnapped her had seen value in leaving her untouched. She wasn’t totally sure about her new captor.

She took a deep breath and tried to ignore the burn in her lungs, compliments of the arid, late-afternoon air. It was so thin. So dry. Just existing here was an effort. More confirmation on why running was a bad idea.

But she had to be calm. She had to keep control, and if she couldn’t have control over the situation, she would have it over herself.

Her captor got down off the horse, quickly, gracefully, and offered his hand. She accepted. Because with the way she was feeling at the moment, she might just slide off the horse and crumble into a heap in the sand. That would be one humiliation too many. She had been purchased today, after all.

“Where are we?” she asked.

“At a stopping point.”

“Why? Where? How is it a stopping point?” She looked around for a sign of civilization. A sign of something. Someone.

“It is a stopping point, because I am ready to stop. I have been riding for eight hours.”

“Why don’t you have a car if you’re a sheikh?” she asked, feeling irritated over everything.

“Completely impractical. I live in the middle of the desert. Fuel would become a major issue.”

Oh yes. Fuel. Oil. Oil was always the issue. It was something she knew well, having grown up the daughter of the richest oil baron in the United States. Her father had a knack for finding black gold. But he was a businessman, and that meant that the search was never done. It was all about getting more. Getting better.