Desert Sheikh vs American Princess (22 page)

An older woman followed him. The expert tailoring of her tunic flattered her aging body with style and grace. The woman herself wore it with the grace of someone who knew the power that beauty bestowed on a woman, and who was used to wielding that power.

"Your Majesty." The older woman's voice was knife-sharp and steady. "May I present my granddaughter, Kalilah. You will find her most suitable."

Suitable. The temperature of Noelle's blood plummeted as the word ran through her veins.
Suitable.
Suitable for what?

"We have met," rumbled Walid's deep voice. He was studiously ignoring her, as if she stood behind an invisible brick wall. "Several times."

Kalilah gave Walid a vague bow. So why did she keep her eyes on Noelle the whole time? "Noelle, this is my grandmother, Sheikha Reda Farouk. She's very rich. Way richer than your dad with his puny hotels. My grandmother," Kalilah said, her platinum-bright beam never fading, "is making me and Walid get married."

Reda Farouk bit out a slew of Arabic at her granddaughter. Noelle didn't have to understand the language to get the underlying harsh tone.

Wait, "puny hotels"? Kalilah knew who her father was. Which meant that the girl had only been pretending not to know who Noelle was.

The shoulders of Kalilah's pristine suit jacket slid up, then down again quickly, in a shrug that showed no remorse. "What? It is a good match. We are rich and he is the king. We shall stay out of each other's way, as our interests do not coincide. You will get the power you crave. What could possibly go wrong?" Kalilah turned her attention to Walid. "Your Majesty, I was just introducing myself to your mistress. "

"I--uh," Noelle stuttered.
Quick, why would I possibly be here? Give me some excuse, brain. Anything will do--as long as it's logical and probable.

"Miss Oldfield is--" began Walid, about to offer some logical and probable explanation.

The sheikha raised a hand, cutting him off.
Damn
, thought Noelle.
It takes cojones to interrupt the ruler of your country.

"No need, Your Majesty. You and my granddaughter are not yet promised to each other. We have no intention of interfering in your affa--" The older woman laughed, fluttering a hand over her heart. "Excuse me. We have no intention of interfering in your business."

"Yes," Kalilah rushed to put in. "Not now, and not after the wedding either."

Noelle flattened her hands against the thighs of her khakis. If she hadn't, she would have put them to her head to help stop the drunken spinning.

Wedding. Okay. Wedding with a suitable girl. Right. Walid was getting married. Of course he was, because that would just be the icing on this particular cake. But
this
girl?
This
was suitable?

"It is good to see you again, Kalilah." Walid inclined his head to her. "I trust you are well."

"Very well," Kalilah declared. "I am very fond of our new friend Noelle. I think she and I could have great fun together. She is welcome in the palace at any time."

Did anyone miss the overt side-eye Kalilah shot at her? Anyone? Noelle glanced to Walid and Sheikha Farouk. They began talking studiously together in Arabic. No one had ever been ignored harder than Walid and Sheikha Farouk were ignoring Kalilah right now.

A wince of pain flickered across Kalilah's flawlessly made-up face. With all the ignoring going on, no one noticed it but Noelle. Hmmm. Kalilah seemed genuinely hurt by being ignored. Was she ignored because she acted out, or did she act out because she was ignored?

Had anyone asked Kalilah if she
wanted
to be suitable for Walid?

Kalilah caught Noelle looking at her and lit up like a solar flare. "Will you come to the palace after Walid and I are married? Pretty please? Come visit me. Say you will."

"I think I'll be way too busy," Noelle said, and meant every word.

*****

As he suspected she would, Noelle followed Walid into his office.

The Farouks had departed, the sheikha promising to follow up with a legal proposal for him to review. And the entire time he had spoken with Reda Farouk, Noelle's sharp eyes had been all over his face, demanding attention he did not give. She would wish to discuss this. At length.

He had no wish to discuss it.

This morning, he had woken with Noelle in his bed. Slumbering in the sun, she had once more seemed like the personification of Askar. Yes, she had problems. The people who should have protected her, while allowing her to make her own decisions, had failed in every way. She did not believe in her own competence. She gave up far too easily. And yet... no one had challenged him the way she did. Not since his childhood competitions with his brothers. No one brought out his own protective instinct as she did. No one interested him like her. Certainly Kalilah did not.

Now, what was he to do? To save Askar, he must put aside the woman he selfishly wanted. He must make up for his sins, no question. That meant giving up Noelle. Never discovering what they could have been to each other. If their passion for each other could have turned into the
something more
that it constantly threatened to, as they became closer.

"Are you going to make me ask?"

He turned to see Noelle with her arms folded and her toe tapping on the plush carpet of his office. That carpet had been a gift from one of the Askari hill tribes on his coronation. It had taken thirty women six months to spin the wool, dye it, and finally, to tie the thousands of individual knots that made up the crest of Askar.

All so that he had something to walk on. And now, would he walk on Noelle? Or was it Kalilah he was walking on?

Or was Sheikha Farouk walking on him?

"Fine," Noelle said, sounding strangely calm. "I'll bite. Why are you marrying her?"

"It is not final yet," he found himself saying. Clinging to the words, to the idea that perhaps there was another way...

"Sheikha Farouk seems pretty sure it's final," she insisted. "Also, they both seem evil. What's with that?"

Evil? No. Sheikha Farouk's actions were understandable, at least to him. "I cannot see how this is your business."

"Walid." Oddly, Noelle didn't lose her temper. "You're not acting like yourself."

"You do not know me." They had met mere weeks ago. "Are you basing your judgment on the romantic drivel I wrote to you this morning? I would not trust that if I were you."

"Yeah, because you're in the habit of lying to me all the time." She twitched up a corner of her mouth skeptically. "Maybe I haven't known you all that long, but I feel like I'm starting to see you for who you really are. And I think that the key to everything you do is that you want to help Askar. That you would kidnap someone for Askar. That you would even marry someone you didn't want to for Askar."

She had come so close, but not close enough. Askar, yes. He had a responsibility. But what drove him was not his country. It was his guilt.

"So," she continued, "how does marrying this girl--who is way too young for you, by the way--help Askar? She'll suck as queen. She'll make you a worse king by making you miserable. You will spend all your time cleaning up her messes instead of ruling fairly, like you have so far."

Ruling fairly.
He couldn't help reacting. A tiny snort escaped him.

She cocked her head at him. "What's even weirder is that I think you know all this."

"Your jealousy is unattractive."

"You think I'm just jealous of her?" She tossed her hair to one side. "Okay, I have to admit. Maybe a little. It isn't super fun to know that you crawled out of bed with me and started planning your next lover, but I will be long gone by the time you marry that girl. So what is it with you, Walid? What's going on?"

"What is going on with me is not your concern. Do not trouble yourself." He drew indifference around himself like armor. All the while, some small voice inside him counseled that he should simply tell her his dilemma. On the other hand, the last person he had revealed his need to had cornered him into marrying her granddaughter.

"But Walid--"

"No, Noelle. I intend to--" Here he could not force himself to say
marry
. His mouth refused to form the word. "--become engaged to Kalilah Farouk shortly. There is nothing you can do to stop it."

"If it's what you want. But I don't think you want it, and I don't think what you're doing is good for the country that you love."

He refused to let the truth of her words get past his armor. "Then why have you come to see me this morning? Why were you in my waiting room in the first place, embarrassing me in front of my respected guests?"

"Stop it, Walid. You haven't bullshitted me yet, so don't start now. If you're embarrassed of me, that's on you. You kidnapped me, and no one forced you to sleep with me last night. I'm actually pretty sure that part was your idea."

He turned away, unwilling to look her in the eye. And also unwilling to apologize.

"As for the reason I came here, you can just live in suspense."

By the time he turned back to her, she was gone.

Noelle was right. And he could not admit she was right. He needed Sheikha Farouk's money, and that was all. The matter was simple. Only Noelle's presence injected complications.

He could rid himself of the complications by ejecting her from his palace. And yet... if her father paid his debt in the next four days, the matter became even more simple. He could delay the engagement and review his options. On the fifth day, the payment had to happen. On that, he had no choice.

To keep all avenues open to him, Noelle would remain in the palace.

The only thing that troubled him now was her final phrase. What should he be living in suspense for? What did she intend to do?

Nine

T
WO
DAYS
LATER
, Noelle craned her neck to squint at the tallest palm in Askar. At least the handcuffs let her do that.

She was off the palace grounds for the first time since she'd tried to make the U.S. embassy. Askar, she'd realized, was a stunning country.

When her parents had been here, one of Walid's lackeys had escorted them on an excursion into the desert. Sure, it had been nice. They'd driven twenty minutes into the desert and ended up sitting on a dune, watching the sun set over the city of Deira. Now, that felt like a safe little prepackaged tourist excursion.

The real desert, where they were now, felt utterly wild. The sun burned down at her as if the planet had a malevolent will to reach across space and torment everything it saw with nuclear heat. All around, an infinite sea of golden sand beckoned.

Their convoy of five SUVs was a ship bobbing on an ocean, only it was an ocean of dry emptiness. But one wrong step away from the trucks and no one would ever be able to find you. You might be less than a mile from safety, and you'd never know it.

Sort of like the real ocean, actually.

On either side of the patchwork-paved road, the dunes swept up and away like waves petrified in the instant before crashing. Sweeps of gold sand, curved into the two thin lanes of asphalt, forcing vehicles to slalom between them. Or, in the case of their trucks, just drive over the humps when necessary.
 

In the distance, beginning to be touched by a dipping sun turning orange at the edges, in the middle of the sea made of sand, hung a valley of tepid green. The Agatir Oasis. She'd been surprised to learn that an oasis was not a single pool of crystal water flanked by a couple of palm trees. That was what you thought when you got your information from Bugs Bunny cartoons, she supposed.

An oasis was actually a valley that had access to water, fed by an underground spring. Sometimes the spring didn't even reach the surface. Agatir, for example, just had a really reliable well, enough to support a medium-sized village.

A village, plus the oldest, tallest palm in Askar. One that held a jeweled secret.

The tree rose into the sky above the rooftops in the distance, dominating the buildings that spread out from its base. She'd never seen a palm so tall.

Apparently, the village was pretty proud of the palm. From what Suzette had told her in the two-hour journey, the palm was kind of their thing. Apparently the tree, and its grove, had been sacred to the djinn-worshipping religion that dominated Askar in pre-Islamic times. Under Walid's rule, with its freedom of religion that he'd instituted, some of the spirit worshippers were coming out of hiding and resuming the rites they'd observed in secret for hundreds of years.

Of course it didn't hurt Walid at all that these were the folks who believed he had djinn blood in him. You had to support a guy who might be related to your not-quite-gods.

Whatever else Walid was, the guy was not dumb.

Except when it came to the thing that drove him to think about marrying that Kalilah person. Then he was magnificently stupid, the idiot.

"Princess?" asked her driver, in heavily accented English. "Might we continue? You did mention we are in some hurry."

Noelle looked to the convoy to see that a dozen pairs of eyes looking back at her. Uh, okay, so she when she'd yelled for the trucks to stop to let her catch a glimpse of the palm, she was the only one who'd gotten out to look. She was the only one who thought the sight was anything worth looking twice at.