Desert Sheikh vs American Princess (19 page)

"Noelle, I am crushing you."

A frisson of what?--warning? fear? anticipation?--trembled in her belly. What was she doing? She'd never clung to a guy after sex like this. The few men she had slept with, she'd definitely liked, even cared about. But clung to like some kind of weird barnacle? No way.

"It takes more than that to crush me," she said, and meant it. "You'll have to try harder."

He planted his forearms on either side of her head, propping himself up. And looking into her eyes. "I have no desire to crush you, like this, or any other way."

"You won't," she promised. "I'm a big girl, I can take it."

He scanned her face as if he was looking for something. Did he find it? She never knew. He simply rolled her to her side and folded her back to his chest.

Normally, she loved this part. Held close, bathed in sweaty warmth and happy hormones. She felt her mind start to spin down, rational thought melting away. And some small part of her recognized what a horrible idea it was to get comfortable here.
 

Eight

N
OELLE
WOKE
COOL
and cozy under Walid's sheets. She also woke alone.

Thoughts drifted through her sleepy mind like golden dust motes through a shaft of morning light.

I slept with Walid last night.

It was amazing.

I can still smell him on the sheets.

He's not here now.

He said he wouldn't regret it. He probably regrets it.

The only part she regretted was this part, right now. The sex? That had been hot, just like Walid. She should probably check the linen for scorch marks.

He'd been right. They were good together. Really good. Not only did they heat up the bedroom, when they weren't fighting, they had an emotional connection. There was something between them that had the potential to grow.

But no matter what, he was the guy who'd kidnapped her. The guy who
was
still
kidnapping her, in fact. It wasn't like he'd stopped.

How much did that matter now? Okay, it wasn't great. But she sort of understood his motives. It wasn't about her at all; it had been to get her father to pay up money he legally owed. Now that she knew Walid a little more, she knew he had to have some desperate reason for needing that money, or he wouldn't have done it.

She probably should have gotten that info out of him before sexing him up, she thought. She would definitely have to find out before sleeping with him again. If he even wanted to.

What was going to happen with him now? Yes, they'd connected in bed last night, but more than that, she'd revealed way too much about herself. He even knew about Bonnie.

Thale definitely had a big mouth.

Was she going to keep trying to escape now? Why would she? She could just wait her father out, enjoying Askar's hospitality and Walid's bed. When her dad finally paid his bill--or Walid got tired of her and kicked her out--she could fly off into the sunset.

Was that Walid's goal in sleeping with her? Maybe last night was a tactic, him trying to control her after all. Hadn't seemed that way, but here she was, considering trashing her escape plans.

Not good. Or was it? Was she seeing things that just weren't there?

She let out a mental scream of irritation, but even that came out strangled.

Here was her problem: she needed to go for a run. A run would clear her mind, spark the brain cells, and fill her with happy chemicals that made everything seem better. Then she could face her problems.

She sat up, the sheets falling to her naked waist. As she braced herself to launch into the (very confusing) day, she felt a crispy crackle under her hand.

A paper. With scrawled writing. Walid's writing.

Noele:

Forgive me, I should like to make love to you this morning, but I have busines.

I leave you something to ocupy you until we see each other again, this evening. You wil find it on the table. I know you wil take care of this historic artifact, which I do not have to tel you is special. I have given you every caution about this, but as you insist on being your excelent stubborn self, I provide this distraction before you atempt to build an explosive device and blow a hole in the wals of my palace.

Please enjoy.

Yours,

Walid.

P.S.: I do not regret last night.

P.P.S.: Give my regards to the pirate princes who lives in your head. I think this should please her, at least.

If you'd asked her what Walid's handwriting would be like, she would have said straight-edged and precise. Like him. No question.

Well, some of his writing was like that. Some was curly and spontaneous. Instead of conformity, each of his words decided what size they wanted to be and just went with it. And what was with his habit of leaving out a consonant in words with double letters? Even in her name. Did he do it to save time? And was it bad that she thought "Noele" was kind of cute?

Probably very bad.

But one word stood out from all the others.

Artifact,
suggested Bonnie, who'd been absent during last night's activities. But Walid greeting her had summoned the pirate princess, naturally.

"Yours."
 

Bonnie rolled her mental eyes.
Whatever. Let's find what he left for me!

Wrapping herself with a robe that hadn't been on that chair last night, and that smelled even more like Walid than the sheets, Noelle stepped over to the table.

Da-amn
, Bonnie breathed, and Noelle couldn't bring herself to disagree.

Historic artifact.

The map. The freakin' treasure map.

X marks the spot,
enthused Bonnie.

On the map, all of Askar lay before her, in miniature. The borders with Zallaq and Yalbrin were the limits. That was good. Since both Zallaq and Sadad had once been part of Askar, they might have been on the map, and part of the treasure hunt, too. That would have made searching for the Palm of Askar way harder, and it would have been complicated if the Palm had been found in what was technically another country. Guess Askar, Zallaq, and Sadad were separated before World War II.

The map was printed on fabric. She touched it, reluctantly. Silk. Of course. Lightweight, durable, easy to hide. The perfect choice for a map you wanted to keep around for a while. Walid's great-grandfather had been very, very clever.

Even cleverer, she realized, the map was not printed--or painted--at all. The gray lines that defined borders and landmarks, and some weird, weird symbols that didn't look like Arabic to her were woven right into the strands of the silk. This map could be washed, could age, could fade, but it would last for centuries.

Look,
pirate symbols!
yelled Bonnie.

Noelle swallowed, scrabbling at her rationality, trying to keep Bonnie's excitement from overtaking her. Because, yeah, they looked a lot like some sort of secret pirate code.

That code looked so familiar, like something she forgot a long time ago and could remember if she just stared at it long enough.

There, that pointy character with the curly bit looked like an arrowhead if you squinted. The next one, a tilted oval bisected with two lines... Was that a coffee bean? Triangle in front of a pair of circles. Maybe a bird's face, if you used your imagination.

Arrowhead, coffee bean, bird's face. Did that mean something? Hmm, not really. And they were just three symbols in a series of two dozen or so.

She did a quick count. Eight "paragraphs" of these symbols. How was she supposed to know which one led to the treasure?

Not to mention the other graphics on the map. She recognized the Ash Thalfa mountain range, but not where it sat. Before Walid had kicked her parents out, they'd gone to the mountains,
in the east
, along the border with Yalbrin. This map showed them to the west, and too far north. For some reason, a flower-petal-blue lake drowned out the middle of the desert. Totally wrong. Did it represent an underground water supply?

Where's the X?
asked Bonnie.
That's where the treasure is.

No X
, she told her friend.

It's in the code, then. We have to crack it.

I don't know, Bonnie. The Nazis had some skill at cracking codes. I doubt we can figure it out if they couldn't
.

Don't get bummed out! We can do this. But we might need some help to read this.
Here Bonnie paused, as if looking at the map
.

Help? I don't think anyone here knows how to read pirate code.

Nope, but I think someone here will know how to read this,
Bonnie replied.

She looked where Bonnie directed her attention. Discreetly hiding in the bottom left corner of the map were tiny Arabic letters, woven into the fabric in light green script. Since Arabic was written right to left, the left corner was the opposite of where a message should be written.

Yup, she thought, satisfaction filling her. Someone would definitely be able to read that.

And they might even tell her what the words meant, if she hadn't pissed off everyone interested in helping her.

*****

Noelle's tongue whisked over her lips as she hesitated at the kitchen door. Sure, she was mostly the richest girl in the room, mostly the most popular. She mostly had people at every party sucking up to her, shoving others out of the way as stylishly as they could so they could get a look at what she was wearing this tonight.

And none of that seemed to matter when she had to face down a room packed with women who might hate her just as much as Faridah did. Women with knives.

Then again, maybe Faridah had forgotten all about it.

Yeah, sure,
Bonnie put in.

Before she thought too much about it, she forced herself to knock a warning, then pushed the door open.

She stood with the kitchen spread out in front of her. The place whirled with choreography, with capped and aproned women dancing massive trays into ovens, pirouetting ingredients from one stainless steel station to another, drumming out beats on slabs of wood with cleavers and vegetables.

At the center of the not-chaos stood Suzette, her short hair tied under a handkerchief, her hammy biceps flexing as she worked a mass of dough in a sturdy metal bowl.

Suzette's iron eye didn't miss anything in her kitchen, and she nodded to Noelle before the door even shut. At the same time, she yelled an order to a young cook at a modern deep-fry station, pointing a hand coated in flour to its dimpled elbow.

Okay, seemed like she still had at least one friend in the kitchen.

Suzette called to the woman next to her, who took over her kneading. She pointed Noelle to the table in the corner where they'd had those awesome cookies the day she'd accidentally run in here.

Mmmm, cookies,
spouted Bonnie.

Or map?
Noelle asked.

Map,
said Bonnie.
Definitely map. But map
and
cookies...

Suzette strode over to the table, leaving behind a dusting of white powder as she wiped her hands. And in the corner of her eye, Noelle caught a person-sized flash of silky mauve.

Faridah. Faridah for sure. She knew because the paralysis in her hands started again.

"Suzette." Noelle played up a pleading tone in her voice. "I'm sorry about what happened with Faridah. I really am. And I need your help."

The large woman's pinched face pinched even tighter at the mention of Faridah. But she nodded anyway. "My niece is still very hurt."

"I know," she admitted.

Suzette cocked her head to the side and planted her working hands on industrial-sized hips.
Go on
, said her stance.
I haven't got all day.

"Have you ever seen this?" As she unrolled the map--after making sure the table didn't have crumbs on it--she felt Suzette's bulk stiffen beside her. A deep breath was being drawn into big lungs.

"I have not." Clearly, she'd always wanted to. In her wide-legged pose, she leaned forward, fascinated by the piece of her country's history laid out in front of her. Suzette held those flour-coated hands firmly behind her back, well out of any danger of contaminating the map.

The boss' fascination drew the attention of the scurrying kitchen mice. Before long, a dozen women of various ages had arranged themselves around the table, the ones in back on tiptoe, to get a peek at what had petrified Suzette in the middle of a work day. Awed whispers in Arabic passed around the circle.

Hanging back was a hint of mauve that Noelle tried not to focus on.

"Why do you have this?" Suzette's tone was about half of her usual bark.

"His Majesty lent it to me."

The reply had been automatic. Now she wished she'd lied her face off.

The women in the circle went wide-eyed and silent. Their ruler had let a foreigner have one of Askar's most famous relics. A king had died for this map. It had saved the lives of many people by distracting the Nazi invaders from other projects.