Heather Graham (21 page)

Haman himself left the tent, followed by Zaid, who nervously held his hand to his injured cheek.

Ali stared at Dan incredulously. “Alex is here? How? How did you know?”

“I’ll explain later,” Dan said quickly. “Did you find out everything you could about Jim?”

“Yes. I have some information that may help us.”

“Good,” Dan said. “Let’s get Alex back then and get the hell out of here.”

Ali nodded gravely. “I am glad you were able to act with restraint, my friend. You bargained well with Haman. Killing him would have been a calamity.”

Dan nodded in return. It was a strange world. Except for the possible consequences—many lives ridiculously lost—Ali wouldn’t have cared in the least if he had killed Haman. Murder and honor took on different dimensions here.

Haman returned, followed by Zaid and the Arab guard who had stood outside the tent where Dan found Alex. Between them Zaid and the guard, who still mirrored his terror though his dark eyes, carried a struggling burden wrapped in a blanket.

“She is dangerous,” Haman apologized to Dan.

The writhing burden was placed upon the floor. Seconds later a furious Alex emerged. She sprang from the floor as if catapulted and launched herself at Dan, tears forming in her eyes.

“How could you have left me like that! Left me, to be taken again in that stinking blanket by these—”

Her words became incoherent as she flailed against him. Dan caught her wrists, not angry but both amused and a little proud that she had come out of it all still fighting.

But he couldn’t afford so much as a smile. He would lose his credibility and respect as a man if he allowed her to rail against him and physically attack him in front of these men. And if they lost an iota of respect right now while they were still in Haman’s domain, they could be in serious trouble.

He glanced at Haman and grimaced and winked. “Throw the blanket back on her, will you? You are right, Sheikh Omar Khi Haman. She is nothing but trouble. But—she is mine. It is the will of Allah.”

She was shrieking like a wild thing as she was trundled back into the blanket. Dan left the tent with her packed over his shoulder.

Someone had alerted the caravan to be ready to move. Dan was about to mount his horse with Alex still over his shoulder when the Arab guard came racing out of Haman’s tent, tears streaming down his face. He fell to his knees at Dan’s feet.

“Please,
please!
Oh, by the mercy of Allah! Am I dying? Am I dying already? Have I hope? Please, remove this new American weapon from my neck! I am a man with three wives and ten children, I am a good Muslim, I am a good man!”

Dan had forgotten all about him. The poor man was as white as death itself. Dan shifted his weight to hold his writhing package firmly against his shoulder with one hand so that he could use the other to pretend to pluck his “weapon” from the man’s neck. “You’re fine now,” he told the Arab.

He turned away as the man, still clutching his neck with uncertainty, praying fervently, thanked him profusely. “I will live?” he called after Dan. “Please, the poison—how much …?”

“The poison didn’t get through,” Dan called back over his shoulder. “You will definitely live.” He was trying very hard not to chuckle, and also to reassure the half-crazed Arab. Dan glanced back once. He lowered his gaze quickly. The man was finally regaining a healthy color.

It was difficult to mount his horse with Alex still over his shoulder, but he didn’t want to chance freeing her until they were out of the desert domain of Omar Khi Haman. Dan saw Ali’s eyes twinkling merrily as he watched Dan strain to mount. Ali didn’t interfere or help, either because he didn’t want to make Dan look less a man or, more likely, simply because he was finding the spectacle too amusing.

Dan groaned silently as he made it to his horse. He had done so smoothly, but he was also sure he had strained every muscle in his shoulders and back.

“Let’s go,” he growled to Ali, and with a smart kick against his horse’s flank, he was off.

Ali raced alongside him, the rest of his men falling behind. “Tell me something!” he shouted against the stir of the wind they created.

“What?”

“What was that ‘American secret weapon’?”

Dan laughed despite the ride ahead of them and his aching muscles. “Ingenuity!” he shouted back. “American ingenuity!”

Then he sobered. His blanketed “fiancée” was squirming like a snake, and he could hear her muffled pleas. Very soon he was going to have to release her, and he wasn’t sure he wouldn’t rather face a score of cobras.

A
COOL BREEZE WAFTING
in from the Persian Gulf with the coming of twilight touched her cheeks like a soft caress as she stood at the open window. Below her she could see a blanket of brilliant green spotted by rainbow colors: Sheikh Ali Sur Sheriff’s town palace gardens. The place was beautiful, and in direct contrast with the desert. Beyond the palace walls were the streets of Abu Dhabi. Camels, donkey carts and horses traversed the roads, but so did automobiles. The majority of the people who rushed home from their businesses were in Arab dress, but there were a number of smart European business suits to be seen also.

There was even an occasional female who walked past in the distance in Western dress. Some of these women, Alex knew, were the wives of diplomats, or employees of the various Western concerns within the city. But some of them were actually Arabian women; women who were being educated, women who might one day bring about change in an ancient way of life.

Ali did not resent the change he deemed to be inevitable. For one thing, he didn’t believe it would come in his lifetime. He spoke of the Bedouin way of life with a little sigh and great wistfulness, as if he would miss it dearly were it to be taken from him, but he would also tell her with pride that modern highways were being planned across the land, that the newspapers and fledgling television stations were flourishing, and that one day modern plumbing and electricity would stretch as far as his desert hideaway, the oasis he called his own.

She had come to know a great deal about both Ali and Dan in the last twenty-four hours—mainly that both were very human. She had been a bit surprised to find herself fed and then shipped off to bed upon their return to Ali’s camp, both men having decided for her that she had to be exhausted. She had nervously asked Dan if she was not expected to pay up, but she had seen a warmth in the jet fire of his eyes when he answered that she had never noticed there before. He had given his deep, husky chuckle, and she seemed a bit taken aback when he had announced, “Really, Alex, I’m not a sadist!”

She had slept like one dead, to awake in the morning to discover that he had slept with her. The indentations in the sheets and the pillow beside her were still warm. In a bit of confusion she wondered if something had gone on after all, but she quickly dismissed such a notion. If a man such as Dan D’Alesio had held her with anything more than simple comfort, she would have known.

Alex had learned almost immediately upon awakening that they were leaving, heading back toward the city. And she was thankful that their route back was to be far different from the way she had first come to Ali’s oasis. The camel ride to the Gulf was less than two hours, and from there they had traveled the coast on Ali’s French superluxury yacht. She had tried to ask questions aboard the yacht, but both Ali and Dan had insisted that she enjoy the beauty of the voyage.

And she had enjoyed it. She didn’t think she had ever seen anything more beautiful than the shimmering turquoise of the Persian Gulf. And the yacht had been so lovely, so modern, it had taken her mind so distantly from the camp of Omar Khi Haman that she could remember her experiences only vaguely, as if they had happened to someone else.

Dan had spent the majority of the short sea voyage engrossed in plans which he said he would shortly explain to her. And so she had spent the hours chatting with Ali and learning more about him and his way of life. Although he was the most devout of Muslims and totally abstained from alcoholic beverages himself, he kept a well-stocked bar aboard and she was given the gigantic Scotch and mineral water she had dreamed about when the desert had so parched her throat. It was even topped with a number of lemon twists.

Alex became so relaxed in his company that she asked him if he would mind a very personal question, and when he smilingly assured her he would not mind at all, she had demanded to know how he could possibly love all his wives, and how they could accept sharing him. Ali had enjoyed the question. He had explained that much like the American Mormons, Muhammad had founded his religion with a shortage of healthy young men. Wars and blood feuds had been costing the Near and Far East their manpower for centuries. Muhammad, being chaste and caring, had probably decided it was better for women to share their husbands than to have their lives reduced to the status of whores.

“Many Muslim men take only one wife,” Ali said, his eyes twinkling. “To many men, Christian and Muslim alike, one wife is more than enough! But for me the old system works. For one, I can afford four wives! And my ladies are all very different. Shahalla loves the nomadic life and she prefers to await me at the oasis. Hima loves London, and so she keeps our home there. Delia is in the United States and becoming very modern, I might add, but still charmingly loyal; and Zana you will meet in town. All my wives have children who fill their time, except for Shahalla, my youngest, who, we ecstatically believe now, will present me with a ninth child in the spring. Everyone, however, returns to the desert when we celebrate Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting. And so our heritage is retained while we also move forward.”

Alex had shaken her head a bit, thinking of how unbearable it had been to learn that she shared Wayne with other women. Ali, as if reading her mind, had touched her hand with a soft smile. “You were raised very differently, Alex, and you should never expect less than total fidelity from your mate.” He smiled at her strangely, and Alex wondered again just how much of what had passed between her and Dan the Arab knew. Ali continually behaved as if she and Dan had become lovers for a lifetime.

Ali was a man of principle, yet it often seemed that he would humor Daniel D’Alesio no matter what. Ali had been involved with Dan’s charade when she had first come to the desert. She didn’t, however, feel like arguing with him when the day was so beautiful and the gulf so tranquil. She might have told Ali then that until just a few days ago, she had been fervently hoping to see the man who had once been her husband. But Wayne too seemed incredibly distant. Only Ali, the yacht, his cordial servants and Dan D’Alesio—oh, definitely Dan D’Alesio—seemed to her to be real.

Hero worship, she chided herself. She would have fallen a little bit in love with any man who rescued her from Omar Khi Haman. But Ali too had rescued her, and Ali was a fascinating and charismatic man. She liked him; she felt as if he had become, almost instantly, an old and dear friend.

But she didn’t feel that static electricity with Ali, or the almost overwhelming desire to reach out and touch him. She was, she had to admit, afraid of Dan. She was nervous around him; her spine was assaulted by continual heated ripples. She was waiting for his touch, for his demand, half determined that she would somehow avoid him, half longing for him to demand that the devil receive his due.

And when she allowed her mind to dwell on him, she became worried sick all over again about her father. But both Ali and Dan professed their belief—to her, at least—that James Crosby was alive. And she believed them, because she had to.

She had felt a bit solemn when they docked in the port at Abu Dhabi Town. Ali had pointed across the gulf and reminded her that Iran and Iraq were at war, and that differences in religious belief were as hot as the demand for oil. He had also explained to her how the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman were considered to be a jugular vein. A war that racked the entire world could break out if the gulfs were ever blockaded, because the proportion of the world’s oil shipped through these bodies of water was astronomical.

Alex felt a little shiver when she thought of such things, more than she ever had before. Because of Dan. Because he climbed the hills in Afghanistan, because he filmed from the Iraqi border. Because he was always where there could be danger.

But now, as she stood at the window she wasn’t thinking about the Iran-Iraq conflict; she wasn’t even thinking about her father as the soft breeze touched her face. She kept thinking about Dan, and it was making her a wreck!

She had been given an entire suite of rooms within the palace, which had been built with the best of both the ancient and the modern worlds. There was a deep whirlpool in the bathroom, which was decorated in beautiful blue mosaics, and the rugs that dotted the tiled floor were plush fur. The bed was a modern king-size—but it was covered in rich silks and offered another billowing canopy.

She couldn’t keep her eyes off the bed, but each time she glanced at it, she hurriedly looked away.

Physically she wanted Dan. She was fascinated by him in a way she had never been fascinated before. More fascinated, she admitted guiltily, than she had ever been by Wayne.

How could she have forgotten Wayne? How could she feel this overwhelming need for a man she barely knew? But she did know him; he had become her life.

A tap sounded at the ivory-embedded door to the outer chamber. Alex jumped, then stilled her beating heart and swept through the salon with its water pipe, divans—and well-stocked refrigerator—to the door.

She was greeted with a low bow from one of Ali’s turbaned servants. “The sheikh and Mr. D’Alesio wish for you to join them now,” the man said with a gracious smile. “If it is convenient, I will lead you to them.”

“Yes,” Alex murmured, annoyed that she was flustered. “Yes, of course it is convenient.”

Her heart began to thud, because she was about to hear all that they had discovered about her father—and because she was about to see Dan.

Ali’s servant bowed again, and Alex automatically bowed back and began to follow him. She was glad she had a guide. Ali’s palace swept on and on, seemingly forever. Each room was luxurious, each hall a masterpiece of romantic building techniques. Minarets adorned the palace as they might a mosque, affording tiny tower rooms with stained-glass views into the garden. The corridors all surrounded a courtyard with a beautifully flowing fountain, but despite the logical layout, Alex doubted if she would be able to find her way to Ali’s office alone.