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The Sheikh
Who Claimed Her
Master of the Desert
Susan Stephens
The Sheikh’s Reluctant Bride
Teresa Southwick
Accidentally The Sheikh’s Wife
Barbara McMahon
Master of the Desert
About the Author
SUSAN STEPHENS was a professional singer before meeting her husband on the tiny Mediterranean island of Malta. In true Modern™ romance style they met on Monday, became engaged on Friday and were married three months after that. Almost thirty years and three children later, they are still in love. (Susan does not advise her children to return home one day with a similar story, as she may not take the news with the same fortitude as her own mother!)
Susan had written several non-fiction books when fate took a hand. At a charity costume ball there was an after-dinner auction. One of the lots, ‘Spend a Day with an Author’, had been donated by Mills & Boon® author Penny Jordan. Susan’s husband bought this lot, and Penny was to become not just a great friend but a wonderful mentor, who encouraged Susan to write romance.
Susan loves her family, her pets, her friends and her writing. She enjoys entertaining, travel and going to the theatre. She reads, cooks and plays the piano to relax, and can occasionally be found throwing herself off mountains on a pair of skis or galloping through the countryside. Visit Susan’s website: www.susanstephens.net—she loves to hear from her readers all around the world!
CHAPTER ONE
SHE had the figure of a glamour model, the face of an angel—and she was threatening him with a knife.
It wasn’t every day his ocean-going yacht was boarded by a barely clothed virago. What few clothes remained on the young girl’s bruised and scratched body were ripped and sodden, and the knife she was brandishing looked as if it had come from his galley. In her other hand, she was holding a hunk of bread and cheese, stolen from the same place, he presumed.
Was a French baguette worth killing for?
Probably, he mused, remembering he had persuaded a top French boulanger to open a branch in Sinnebar.
As the merciless sun sliced its way through the mist, his first impulse was to get the pirate princess into the shade, but he remained still, not wanting to provoke her into anything more reckless than she had already attempted. She was young, barely out of her teens, but had clearly been through some sort of trauma. He took in the tangled mass of blonde hair and bruised face with slanting blue-green eyes, more wounded than wounding. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he said calmly.
‘Don’t!’ she threatened, jabbing the sultry air with her knife.
He held the laugh, relieved she was okay. Mist hung tenaciously, making visibility poor; she must have climbed up on deck while he’d been in the sea checking the hull for storm damage.
‘I’m warning you!’ she exclaimed, though he hadn’t moved.
If she backed away another inch, she’d be over the side.
Her shock at seeing him had forced her into the role of aggressor, he concluded, remaining still so as not to alarm her. She hadn’t recognised him or she would have put down her little knife. ‘Why don’t you give me the knife?’ he suggested, knowing if she had meant to attack him she would have done so by now. ‘Or, better still, throw it overboard?’
She bared her teeth at that to give him a little warning growl, like a kitten with a toothache. ‘Don’t you come any closer,’ she warned, ‘Or I’ll—’
‘You’ll what?’ He disarmed her in one absurdly easy move. There was a flash of warm flesh beneath his hands, then it was all shrieking and clawing as she fought him as if to the death. ‘Wildcat!’ he exclaimed, feeling a sharp thrill of pain as she dug her sharp, white teeth into his hand. Resigned to capture, she couldn’t take her eyes off the much bigger knife he wore hanging from his belt. ‘I have no intention of harming you,’ he reassured her.
She had no intention of listening, which left him dealing with a wriggling desperado, who drummed his deck furiously with her tiny heels as he steered her towards the opening leading to the lower deck and his first-aid kit. Finally losing patience, he bound her arms to her side and swung her over his shoulder. ‘Stop that!’ he instructed as she arched her body and pummelled his back. ‘Do you want to bang your head?’
She went rigid as he padded sure-footed below deck into what was an all-purpose space on the ocean-going racing yacht. She was still in shock, he registered as he set her down on the one and only seat. All home comforts had been stripped away below deck to make room for necessary equipment, but as he’d been trialling on this voyage rather than racing there was plenty of fresh food on board—hence the bread his pirate wench had stolen. He had brought other supplies and small comforts along to make his time aboard more pleasurable, including the cushions he’d laid out on deck so he could sleep beneath the stars.
When the girl groaned and put her head in her hands, his first thought was to rehydrate her. He reached into the cold box for a glucose drink. ‘Here,’ he said, loosening the top and offering it to her. Her expression didn’t change. She remained stiffly non-responsive, staring ahead with her jaw set in white-faced fright.
‘Drink it, or I’ll hold your nose and pour it down your throat.’ He’d used similar shock tactics years back when his younger brother Razi had refused to take his medicine.
Just like then, she retaliated with a furious, ‘You wouldn’t dare!’
One look from him was enough to settle that argument. She held out her hand. He gave her the bottle; she gulped down the contents greedily.
‘When was the last time you had something to drink?’
She refused to answer. Swiping the back of her hand across her mouth, she raised blue-green eyes to his face. Chips of glacial ice would have held more heat.
No surrender, he concluded. And as for apologising for trespassing on his yacht? Forget it.
Tugging on the first top that came to hand, he began heating water to bathe her wounds. Blocking her escape with his body, he reached into a cupboard for antiseptic, lint and cotton wool. Adding a splash of disinfectant to the water, he stuffed a blanket under his arm and turned around. ‘Here—put this round you.’
She flinched and refused to look at him, drawing her legs in defensively, but it was when she crossed her arms over her chest that he finally lost patience. ‘I’m not interested in your body,’ he assured her, only to be rewarded by a tiny squeak of protest from a girl who was clearly accustomed to being admired. Proving the point, he put the bowl down and tugged the blanket tightly round her slender shoulders, trying not to notice that one lush, pert breast was partially exposed.
Seeing his momentary distraction, she snatched the blanket from him, holding it so tightly closed that her knuckles turned white.
‘Don’t flatter yourself.’
She was safe from him—too young, too reckless, plus he resented the intrusion. Any other time or place and he would have had her removed from his presence.
But she was tougher than she looked or she would have been reduced to a hysterical mess by now. She was an irritation, but she was also courageous, he concluded, and a breath of fresh air after the painted harpies who regularly served themselves up at court for his perusal.
There was only one thing wrong with the girl: she reminded him of someone else. Those tangled locks and slanting eyes held an echo of his father’s mistress, a woman who had destroyed his mother’s life and who had referred to Razi—the step-brother he couldn’t have loved more if they had shared the same blood—as the worst mistake she had ever made. That woman might be dead now, but she had left disaster in her wake, and as far as he was concerned she had defined his father’s weakness. It had been a fatal weakness that had stolen his father’s attention away from his country and its people. With that lesson guiding him, things had changed for the better since he had assumed control. There was no longer chaos in Sinnebar, and his people knew that he would never repeat his father’s mistake and become a slave to his heart.
He refocused as the girl shifted restlessly on the bench. ‘I’m going to bathe your scratches before they turn septic,’ he informed her crisply.
She recognised a command, but to his astonishment something in her eyes said she would dearly like to strike him. ‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you,’ he warned grimly, at which she scowled and slumped back like the spoiled teen he thought her to be. ‘When did you last eat?’ he demanded as he assessed her wounds and general condition.
Her stomach answered this question with an imperative growl, and then he remembered the hunk of bread she’d dropped on the deck. ‘When I’ve finished, you can eat.’
She tilted her chin at a defiant angle to stare haughtily past him.
So, let her go hungry—though he was forced to concede he admired her nerve. He liked the electricity between them too, but neither of these things would affect how he dealt with her. He would administer basic first-aid and then turn her over to the authorities. ‘Arms,’ he prompted brusquely, and then, deciding he would teach her what it meant to risk her life in the Gulf, he demanded, ‘Don’t you know anything about maritime law?’
Her flickering gaze suggested not.
‘If I report your actions to the ruling Sheikh in Sinnebar … You have heard of the man known as the “Sword of Vengeance”, I take it?’ He had the satisfaction of seeing her pale. ‘If I tell him that you came aboard my yacht, stole my food and threatened me with one of my own knives I would imagine the most lenient sentence he could hand out would be life imprisonment.’
‘But you wouldn’t!’
Even as she protested her eyes were narrowing in defiance. He liked her fire. He liked her voice. He liked … ‘Report you?’ he rapped, calling his wayward thoughts back to order. ‘That depends on you telling me exactly how you got here. And be completely honest with me; I shall know at once if you lie.’
Hearing the menace in his voice, she slowly unfurled her legs as if deciding a temporary truce was her only option. ‘You were moored up, and so I thought …’
She’d take her chances, he silently supplied, feeling a beat of lust as she held his gaze. She spoke English well, but with the faintest of Italian accents. ‘You don’t look Italian,’ he said, dropping it in casually.
‘I had an English mother,’ she explained, before her mouth clamped shut, as if she felt she’d said too much.
‘Start by telling me what brought you to the Gulf and how you arrived on my yacht.’
‘I jumped overboard and swam.’
‘You swam?’ He weighed up her guarded expression. ‘You’re telling me you jumped overboard and swam through these seas?’ His tone of voice reflected his disbelief.
‘For what felt like hours.’ She blurted this, and then fell silent.
‘Go on,’ he prompted, continuing to bathe her wounds.
‘Before the mist closed in, the boat we were on was hugging the coastline.’
‘“We”?’
She shook her head as if it was important to concentrate. ‘I could see this island and was confident I could make it to the shore.’
‘You must swim well,’ he commented.
‘I do.’
She spoke without pride, and, taking in her lithe strength, he was tempted to believe her. But she must have swum like an athlete to survive the storm, and however capable she believed herself to be she was no match for the dangerous currents and unpredictable weather conditions in the waters of the Gulf.
The girl had stirred some instinct in him, he realised. It was the instinct to protect and defend, and he hadn’t felt that so strongly since his brother Razi had been young. ‘What made you jump overboard?’ He had his own suspicions, but wanted to hear it from the girl.
Her face grew strained as she remembered. ‘Our boat was attacked.’
‘I’ll need more than that.’ If his suspicions were correct, his security forces would need all the information he could glean from her. ‘Was your boat attacked by pirates?’
‘How do you know that?’ The terror in her eyes suggested she thought he was one of them. In fairness, she had had quite an experience, and he was tempted to comfort her. It was an impulse he resisted.
‘I suspected as much, and you just confirmed it. And I’m not a criminal,’ he added when she continued to stare at him as if he had just grown horns. ‘Quite the contrary—I bring people to justice.’
‘So you’re a law-enforcement officer?’
‘Something like that,’ he agreed.
Partially reassured, she settled back. ‘I was lucky to escape with my life,’ she said, echoing his thoughts exactly. ‘I escaped.’
And now she was over-doing it with a dramatic hitch in her voice. As she looked at him, as if trying to gauge his reaction, he suspected she was used to playing someone—an older brother, perhaps? She was out of luck with him. He wasn’t so easily won over. ‘You are lucky to have escaped with your life—and I’m not talking about the pirates now. You boarded my yacht without permission. I carry arms on board and wouldn’t hesitate to use them. What use would your little knife have been to you then?’
Colour rushed to her cheeks while her intelligent eyes sparkled like aquamarines. He didn’t need a further reminder to put some distance between them. He picked up the radio, to call the officer on duty and let him know the girl had been found and was safe—and when he turned to look at her he felt another bolt of lust.
She couldn’t stop shaking and the man didn’t help. She had never imagined such a combination of brutal strength and keen intelligence existed, let alone in such a perfectly sculpted form. His manner was proud—disdainful, even. He was magnificent. He only had to touch her for her body to react as if he was caressing her intimately. There was just one thing wrong. She could be as bold and determined as she liked, but she was way out of her depth here, and he frightened her. She was a flirt, a tease, and was used to getting her own way, but she had never met a man so hard—so hard on her. She wasn’t used to indifference. She was spoiled—she was the first to admit it—spoiled, both by a brother who adored her and by the attention of half the world’s men. If anything, there were times when she wished herself invisible. This was not one of those times.
But why should the man be interested in her? He was out of her league—older, tougher, better looking and more experienced in every way. She had left her comfortable cocoon back in Rome to learn about life, but never had she anticipated learning quite so much quite so fast. She didn’t even know if this man was more trustworthy than the pirates, and only had the fact that he had bathed her wounds to go on. Would he have done that if he had intended to harm her?
However caring that might make him seem, she refused to be reassured, or to relax her guard. There was something dangerous about him. At least when the pirates had attacked she’d had the chance to jump overboard, but she suspected this man had lightning reflexes and slept with one eye open. Right now he was talking on the radio in a husky tongue she guessed must be Sinnebalese. She had studied the language before setting out on her journey, and could pick up a word or two, but frustratingly not enough. She could learn more from his manner, Antonia decided, which was brisk, to the point and carried an air of authority. He was someone important—someone people listened to—but who?
He made no allowances for the fact that she was young and vulnerable, and she couldn’t decide if she liked that or not. Her brother smothered her, believing she required his constant supervision, whereas this man was more like a warrior from one of her fantasies, and had no time to waste on indulging her. Tall, dark and formidably built, in her dreams she would think of him as a dark master of the night, intense and ruthless, the ultimate prize—in reality, he made her wish she had never left home.
She continued to watch him furtively through a curtain of hair. She’d had no alternative but to board his yacht. She had swum to the point of exhaustion, and when she’d seen his boat looming out of the mist she hadn’t thought twice about seizing her chance.
As soon as he finished the call, she quickly drew up her feet and locked her arms around her knees, burying her head to avoid his penetrating stare. But he was ignoring her again, she realised, peeping at him.
She studied him some more as he moved about the cabin. He was spectacularly good-looking, with deeply bronzed skin and wild, black hair that caught on his stubble. The firm, expressive mouth, the earring, the look in his eyes, his menacing form all contributed to the air of danger surrounding him. He might look like her ideal man, but this was not one of her fantasies, and she was so far out of her comfort zone she was having to make up the rules as she went along. But there was no question he could melt hearts from Hollywood to Hindustan, and would certainly make a great Hollywood pirate, with those sweeping, ebony brows and that aquiline nose.
Then she remembered that real pirates were scrawny, smelly, ugly and mean.
As she whimpered at the memory of them, he whirled around. ‘What’s wrong with you now?’
‘Nothing,’ she protested. She’d get no sympathy here.
CHAPTER TWO
‘YOU must never put yourself in such a vulnerable position again,’ he told the girl sternly.
She looked at him in mute surprise, but he cut her no slack. If he eased up she’d think taking chances in the wilderness was acceptable, whereas he knew that if the visibility had been better, and helicopter gun-ships from his air force had been flying over the yacht when she boarded, his snipers might have shot her.
‘My boat was attacked by pirates,’ she protested. ‘I jumped overboard and swam for my life. What else was I supposed to do?’
He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had challenged him. In a world of bowed heads and whispering obedience, it was almost a refreshing change. But the girl’s safety came first, and for the pirates to be captured he had to warn her off ever doing anything similar again, and find out everything she could tell him. ‘Save the attitude,’ he barked, ‘And stick to the facts.’
She blinked and rallied determinedly, and as her story unfolded his admiration for her grew. It also made him doubly determined that she must learn from the experience. ‘You seem to have confused some romantic notion with reality,’ he observed acidly when she paused for breath. ‘This part of the Gulf is no holiday resort, and you’re lucky these are only scratches.’
It had been a relief to find that none of her injuries was serious and was what he might have expected after hearing she’d jumped overboard. ‘This will sting,’ he warned, loosening the top on a bottle of iodine. To her credit, she barely flinched as he painted it on. The only sign that it hurt her was a sharp intake of breath. She had beautiful legs, coltish and long, and her skin was lightly tanned, as if she had only recently landed in the Gulf. ‘What brought you to these shores—a gap year?’
‘Sort of.’
She winced—from fear of discovery that she was doing something she shouldn’t, he guessed—but before he could question her she hit him with, ‘What brought you here?’
No one questioned him. He had to forcefully remind himself that here on this desert island they were anonymous strangers and she couldn’t know who he was. He shrugged. ‘The storm.’
That was the simple answer. Sailing grounded him; it reminded him he was not only a king but a man, and that the man owed it to his country and his people to go hunting for his humanity from time to time. Whether he would ever be successful in that quest, only history would judge. ‘And where did you say you were heading?’ he prompted.
‘I didn’t say, but I’m heading for Sinnebar,’ she admitted grudgingly when he held her stare.
She was hiding something, he concluded when her gaze flickered away.
‘Do we have to talk now?’ she muttered, playing the hard-done-by card.
‘If you want the pirates to escape …’
‘No, of course I don’t,’ she declared, staring him full in the face.
‘Good. So tell me where the attack took place. Did you get a fix—coordinates?’ he pressed when she didn’t answer right away.
‘I know what you mean,’ she flared, but for the first time he thought she seemed disappointed in herself because she couldn’t give him the detail he required.
He gathered from what she went on to tell him that the pirates had taken advantage of the poor visibility to target an unsophisticated boat that lacked the latest radar equipment and alarm systems. ‘So you weren’t sailing your own boat when the pirates attacked?’ he guessed.
‘No.’
Burying her head in her knees, she tensed, but with the criminals still on the loose this was no time to go easy on her. ‘Sit up,’ he barked.
She snapped upright, and the look in her eyes suggested she was only now realising she might have jumped from the frying pan into the fire. He felt some sympathy for her. Dressed in cut-off shorts and faded top with a shark knife hanging from his belt, he was hardly a reassuring sight. ‘Come on,’ he pressed impatiently. ‘I need this information now, not sometime next week.’
She bit her lip and then admitted in a voice that was barely audible, ‘I hitched a lift on a fishing boat.’
‘You hitched?’ Words failed him. The girl’s naivety appalled him; the danger she had put herself in defied reason. ‘What were you trying to prove?’
‘Nothing.’
He doubted that. There would be someone back home she wanted to impress. ‘Couldn’t you have caught the ferry? Or was that too easy for you?’
‘I thought the fishing boat would give me a more authentic experience.’
‘More authentic?’ he demanded cuttingly. ‘So, you’re another tourist who thinks you can visit a foreign country with nothing more than your thirst for adventure and a bleeding heart in your survival kit?’
Her face paled. ‘It wasn’t like that at all.’
‘It was exactly like that. And then you wonder why you find yourself in danger? Keep your arms outstretched,’ he reminded her when she flinched.
His pulse was thundering with outrage at the thought of pirates in the sea off the shores of Sinnebar, though the girl had his attention too. He looked at her tiny hand and thought her courage all the more remarkable, given her petite frame. She was barely half his size, her skin-tone pale against his bronze. Her quick thinking had saved her, he concluded, and because her boldness was at odds with her fragile appearance the pirates had underestimated her. He would not make the same mistake.
Now she was speaking more, she went on to talk with passion of punishment for the pirates and compensation for the fishermen, which launched another unwelcome surge of arousal which he quickly stamped on. However soft and yielding she felt beneath his hands, her mind was not half so compliant, and he had no room in his life for complications. ‘What type of boat did they have? Never mind,’ he rapped, impatient to gather as much information as he could before placing a second call to the commander of his naval forces. ‘Just tell me the colour.’
‘It was a skiff,’ she said with mild affront. ‘Powerful engine; peeling white paint above the water-line; black below. And the interior was painted a vivid shade of aquamarine.’
‘A vivid shade of aquamarine?’ he murmured dryly. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Perfectly sure,’ she said, holding his gaze with curiosity, as if surprised to see the humour there. ‘Have I told you enough?’ she asked as he turned to use the radio.
‘More than I expected,’ he conceded as he prepared to place the call. ‘You did well.’
He could feel the heat of her gaze on his back as he fired off orders. He had become part of her desert fantasy, he guessed. Too bad; he wasn’t interested. There were plenty of women who knew the score, and this girl wasn’t one of them. Breaking radio connection, he turned to face her again.
‘Okay?’ she said hopefully.
‘Okay,’ he confirmed. ‘So now it’s all about you.’ He ran a cool stare over her. ‘Let’s start with your name and what you’re doing here.’
No name. She could have no name. Signorina Antonia Ruggiero must have no name. Whoever he was, this man was successful; successful people knew other people. And people talked. How good would it look for her to be branded a thief? Or, worse still, a demented creature with a knife? Before she’d even begun the work she’d set out to do.
‘You’re European,’ the man observed in a voice that strummed something deep inside her. ‘Although, like me, I suspect you were educated in England. Am I right?’
She took in the fact that his husky, confident baritone was barely accented even though he had spoken Sinnebalese fluently. ‘Yes, that’s right.’ Her own voice sounded hoarse.
‘Where in England were you educated?’ His keen eyes watched her closely, and the intensity of expression in those eyes warned her not to lie to him.
‘I went to school in Ascot.’
‘Ascot?’ There was a faint note of mockery in his voice. He’d heard of the very expensive girls’ school there. ‘So you’re a very proper young lady?’
Not in her head. One flash of this man’s muscular back when he changed his top confirmed she was anything but proper. ‘I try,’ she said primly.
‘What is such a well-brought-up young lady doing on my yacht, stealing my food and threatening me with a knife?’
His relentless stare sent ribbons of sensation flooding through her, making it hard to concentrate—but this was her best, maybe her only, chance to get to the mainland and it was crucial to forge a relationship with him. She also had to persuade him not to report her to the authorities to avoid being arrested the moment she landed. ‘I was hungry—thirsty. Your yacht was here; I took my chances.’
She flinched when he laughed. Short and sharp, it held no hint of humour.
‘You certainly did,’ he agreed. ‘Didn’t you think to call out when you came on board? You could have made some attempt to locate the owner before you stole his food.’
‘I did call out, but no one answered.’
His lips curved as he propped his hip against the bench where she was sitting. ‘So you helped yourself to whatever you felt like?’
‘I didn’t touch anything outside the galley.’ Must he move so close and tower over her?
‘And that makes it right?’
‘I’m sorry.’ She sounded childlike—plaintive, even—but was lost for something else to say.
‘Next time I’m in Ascot, I’ll wander into your house and see what I fancy taking, shall I?’
‘I don’t live in Ascot.’ The angry words shot from her mouth without any assistance from her brain and her reward was an ironic grin.
‘So, we’ve ruled out Ascot,’ he said.
Before he could delve any further, she swayed and clutched her throat.
‘Feeling faint?’ he demanded caustically, refusing to be fooled by her amateur dramatics for a single moment.
‘I’m fine,’ she assured him, matching him stare for stare. Whatever it took, she wasn’t about to let him see how badly he affected her.
‘You’re not fine,’ he argued, narrowing his eyes. ‘You’ve had a shock and need time to get over it.’
She hoped that meant a reprieve, and shrank instinctively from his intense maleness as he eased away from the bench.
‘Relax.’ His lips tugged with very masculine amusement. ‘You’re safe with me.’
Did he mean that to be reassuring, or was he insulting her? And was she safe? Could he be trusted? For once, she didn’t know what to think. The man’s manner was dismissive and abrupt, and his appearance … Well, that was rather more intimidating than the pirates.
There could be no guarantees, Antonia concluded, even if he had bathed her wounds. So was the flutter inside her chest a warning to be on her guard, or awareness of his sexuality?
‘Are you travelling alone?’
A shiver of apprehension coursed through her as she stared into his eyes. Why would he ask that? ‘Yes,’ she admitted cautiously. ‘I’m travelling alone—but people know where I am.’
‘Of course they do,’ he said sarcastically. ‘So your family allows you to wander the world without their protection?’
This time she couldn’t hold back. ‘They trust me.’ She was not defending herself now, but Rigo, the older brother who had cared for her since her mother had died six months after giving birth to her, her father having passed away shortly after that.
But the man pursued her relentlessly. ‘And breaking the law is how you repay your family for their care?’
‘I’ve already apologised to you for coming on board,’ she fired back. ‘I explained I had no option but to board your yacht.’
His hands signalled calm as her voice rose. ‘Lucky for you I was moored up here.’
She balled her hands into fists as a last-ditch attempt to keep her temper under control, but all it gained her was another mocking stare. But what a stare … She couldn’t help wondering how it would feel to have that stare fire with interest, or darken with desire.
‘I hope you’ve learned your lesson,’ he snapped, shattering that particular illusion.
‘Oh, I have,’ she assured him meekly. It was time to stop dreaming and accept the facts. She was far too young and inexperienced to interest a man like this. He thought her fragile and foolish, and couldn’t know her determination. She wasn’t fragile, and this trip was her chance to prove she wasn’t foolish. To prove to the brother she adored—who protected her, perhaps a little too much—that she could survive without his supervision. Not that she’d made the best of starts, Antonia conceded as the man held her gaze.
