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

She shouldn’t have said yes to the ring. It wasn’t proper. Nice girls—good girls—didn’t accept expensive gifts from men, much less from men like sheikhs and desert princes.

Her mother would have another heart attack if she knew Liv was even wearing a ring like that.

“It’s just a ring,” Khalid said flatly, standing not far behind her. “You haven’t damned your soul yet.”

She glanced at him over her shoulder. “Yet.”

His generous mouth with that slightly bowed upper lip curved in amusement. “Most women love trinkets.”

“Sheikh Fehr, yellow diamonds aren’t trinkets.”

“I don’t think you can continue with the Sheikh Fehr title now that we’re engaged.”

“But we’re not really engaged.”

His faint smile disappeared, and his chiseled features grew harder, fiercer. “On the contrary, we really are, and in just a few hours you’ll have the ring to prove it.”

CHAPTER SIX

MR. MURAI returned to the hotel by eleven with the sized ring and by eleven-thirty she and Khalid were in the car, heading for the airport.

At Cairo’s executive airport they boarded the royal jet for Aswan, the southernmost outpost of ancient Egypt, a city five hundred and fifty miles south of Cairo.

During the first half hour of the flight, Khalid stared out the window, reflecting on the early morning phone call from his brother.

Sharif had been wrong about several things, but he had been right when he said that Khalid had pushed people away and severed relationships. Khalid didn’t want anyone dependent on him, much less emotionally dependent. He needed space—freedom—and he wasn’t ready to give it up.

He’d do what he had to do to get Olivia home, but this wasn’t about love. It wasn’t about emotion. It was duty. Pure and simple.

The flight attendant appeared to tell them she would soon be serving lunch, and proceeded to set up a table that locked into the floor in between their club chairs, turning the sitting area into a cozy dining room.

Liv glanced at Khalid as the flight attendant spread a pale gold linen cloth over the table. She didn’t want to be intimidated by him but there was something overwhelming about him. She didn’t know if it was his silence, or the stillness in his powerful frame, but he reminded her of the desert he lived in. Remote, detached, aloof. A desert—and a man—she wanted nothing to do with.

Horrifying tears suddenly started to her eyes. She reached up and knocked them away with a knuckle. She hadn’t cried in Ozr. She certainly wasn’t going to cry now, but she’d gotten her hopes up. She’d thought—imagined—she was free. She’d thought that once she left Jabal with Khalid she was just one step away from home. But instead of home, they were setting off on a different journey. A new journey. A journey she wasn’t ready, or willing, to take.

The flight attendant served their first course, sizzling prawns, on the Fehr royal china, with its distinctive geometric gold-and-black pattern that struck Liv as exceptionally Egyptian.

Baked red snapper in a lightly spiced tomato sauce followed the sizzling prawns, with a minted pomegranate yogurt on sliced grapefruit presented for dessert.

They ate with almost no conversation or discussion, which did little to ease Liv’s nerves. “We don’t eat like this on commercial air flights,” she said awkwardly as the last of the dishes were cleared away. “Especially not in economy.” She took a quick breath, adding in a rush, “Not that you’d ever fly economy.”

His brow lowered. “I’m sure I have once.”

She waited a good minute, and Khalid was still thinking. “You haven’t,” she answered for him, “or you’d remember. It’s horrendous, especially on international flights when you have to sleep sitting up and you can’t because you’ve been cramped for so long.

“There’s no room for your tray table,” she added, “no room to lean back, no place for your legs or feet, and the people sitting on either side of your seat hog the armrests, which squishes you even more.”

He grimaced. “I’d never fly if I had to fly like that.”

“I actually didn’t think it was going to be so bad. I sell coach tickets all the time but it was miserable. I just kept thinking once I arrived in Morocco the trip would get better….” Her voice faded and she stared out the window at the impossibly blue sky.

After a moment she drew a deep breath and looked back at Khalid. “I honestly don’t know how everything went so wrong. I thought I was being careful. Cautious. I avoided going out on my own, didn’t dress provocatively, never allowed myself to be alone with men …” Her voice drifted off as she shook her head. “I’m just so disappointed. Not just with the world, but with me.”

“Why are you disappointed with yourself?”

“I thought I was smarter. Better prepared. I thought I could take care of myself and instead I end up arrested and in prison.” She clasped her hands in her lap. “But it’s my fault I ended up there. I have no one else to blame but me.”

“And how is it your fault?”

Liv struggled to explain it, but the words didn’t come. How could she make him understand exactly what had happened that day? It was already such a blur. Just remembering the day she was arrested filled her with cold, icy despair. She bit into her lower lip as she searched for the right words.

“I offered to hold Elsie’s bag,” she said at last, her voice unsteady. “I had a backpack and she had that awkward purse. I told her to slip her purse in my backpack so she wouldn’t lose it.”

Khalid listened intently. “Did you know Elsie well?”

Liv shook her head. “No, we’d only met a couple days earlier. She was part of this big group of people in their twenties from Europe, the U.S. and Australia. There were guys, girls, a very friendly international crowd. A lot of them had met while traveling through Spain, and then they crossed from the tip of Spain into Morocco, and that’s where I met them. We traveled around Morocco for a week before deciding we’d go to Jabal.”

“Why Jabal?”

“We missed the bus to Cairo and it seemed like an adventure. No one really goes to Jabal anymore, and yet everyone heard it was cheap and we could catch a bus to Cairo from Jabal’s capital.”

“That was the destination—Egypt?”

“We all wanted to see the pyramids and the tombs. That’s why I ended up joining them in the first place. I was trying to be smart, proactive. I thought I’d be safer traveling with a group of people than being on my own—” She broke off, realizing all over again how wrong she’d been, and the shock of it, and the anger over it, surged through her, wild, fierce, uncontrollable.

“If you hadn’t come …” she said, her voice muffled. “If you hadn’t come I would have never gotten out.”

“But I did come, and I’ve promised you my continued protection.”

She lifted her head to look at him and her eyes met his and held. His eyes were so dark, so commanding, that she couldn’t look away, and Liv didn’t know if it was the heat there in his eyes, or his slightly rough rumble of a voice, but shivers raced through her, shivers of hope and fear, anticipation and curiosity.

He was so very much a man—confident, controlled, a little ironic, a little intimate. The combination was incredibly dangerous, especially for someone like her who had such limited experience with men.

With the table now collapsed and once again stowed, she found she’d missed the protection it offered.

The table had created a sense of distance and space, and with it gone, Khalid seemed even more imposing than before. He was sitting close, very close, not even an arm’s length away, and even though they weren’t touching she could feel him, feel his warmth and energy, and it was an electric awareness. Hot, sharp, dizzying.

Liv needed that table back, needed a barrier between them, because right now she felt very exposed, and vulnerable.

Maybe this is why women in the Middle East and Northern Africa hide beneath robes. Maybe they’re not hiding their bodies from men, but from themselves.

Interesting how a man could change so much so fast. Liv had never felt delicate before, nor all that feminine, but Khalid made her aware of the differences between them, made her aware that he was bigger, taller, stronger.

He was tall and broad-shouldered and powerfully built. She was smaller, not even reaching his shoulder, and slender. But it was more than height. It was the way they were shaped. The way she was shaped. Her narrower shoulders. The swell of her breasts. The curve of her hip. The line of her thigh.

Her wardrobe only accented the differences between them, too. Everything he’d bought for her yesterday was feminine, each piece fresh, charming, stylish and of course perfectly made. Even her blue-and-white seersucker sundress, topped by a small white cardigan edged in lace, emphasized her delicate frame. The 1950s retro-style dress was innocent and yet flirtatious. The bodice molded to her breasts, nipped at her waist and then flared at her hips in a swingy skirt that hit just above her knees.