His Desert Rose

‘Where is Tim? What have you done with him?’ she demanded as she spun back to face him, her own voice hushed in the absolute still of the desert night. Hushed! She should be screaming her head off…

‘Nothing. He’s still chasing after Abdullah’s favourite stallion.’ The eyes gleamed. ‘I imagine he’ll be gone some time. This way, Miss Fenton.’ Her eyes, quickly adjusting to the darkness, saw the uncompromising shape of a Land Rover waiting in the shadows. Not one of the plush, upmarket jobs that her brother drove, but the basic kind that took to hard terrain like a duck to water. The kind used by military men the world over.

Far more practical than a horse, she didn’t doubt, any more than she doubted that she would go wherever he was taking her. Her only alternative was to run for it, try and dodge him in the rocky outcrops of the rising ground behind her. As if he anticipated she might try it, Hassan tightened his hold and urged her towards the waiting vehicle.

Despite the prickle of fear that was goosing her flesh, all her journalist instincts were on red alert. But, although her curiosity was intense, she didn’t want him to think she was going willingly. ‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ she said, and dug in her heels.

‘Kidding?’ He repeated the word as if he didn’t understand it. Then he raised his head, looked beyond her. The moon was rising, and as she turned she saw the dark silhouette of her brother in the distance. He had managed to get the head rope on the stallion and was leading him quietly back towards the Range Rover, completely oblivious to her plight, to the danger he was walking into.

Hassan had seriously underestimated his skill, his empathy with even the most difficult of horses, and, realising it, he swore beneath his breath. ‘I don’t have time to argue.’

She wasn’t about to let Tim walk into trouble, but even as she drew a ragged breath to shout a warning she was enveloped in blackness. Real blackness, the kind that made starlight look like day, and she was wrapped, parcelled, bundled, lifted off her feet and slung over his shoulder.

Far too late she stopped being the cool correspondent, absorbing every last detail for her report, and began to struggle in dreadful earnest. Too late she realised she should have yelled when she’d had the chance. Not for help, since that would surely be pointless, but to make sure that Tim called her news editor to tell him what had happened.

She kicked furiously in an effort to free her head, not wasting her breath in shouting, because her voice wouldn’t make it beyond the confines of the heavy cloth. But although her feet were free to inflict whatever damage she could manage they appeared to make no impression upon her captor. If only she could free her hands! But they were pinned uselessly to her sides… Well, not quite uselessly. One them was still gripping the little mobile phone. She almost smiled. The mobile. Well, that was all right, then. She’d call the news desk herself…

Then she was dumped unceremoniously on the floor of the truck, and even through the thick muffling cloth she could hear the sound of an engine, smell hot diesel oil. Diesel oil? Where were the horses? Where was the glamour?

Right now, according to the book she’d read on the plane, she should be racing across the desert crushed against her captor’s hard body and struggling desperately for her honour…

She almost laughed. Times had certainly changed. Her honour was the last thing on her mind. She’d been kidnapped and all she could think about was calling in the story.

Well, not quite all. There had been a moment as she’d been crushed against Hassan’s chest, with his hand clamped across her mouth and his gaze locked with hers, when swooning would have been very easy. And it didn’t need a particularly vivid imagination to picture his body hard against hers, holding her tightly as she continued to fight him even as the Land Rover sped away.

Only three days ago she’d been joking about being swept off by a desert prince. Bad mistake. It wasn’t a bit funny. She was being jolted hard against the Land Rover floor and, as if he realised it, her captor rolled so that he was beneath her, taking the worst of it. Although whether lying on top of a man hell-bent on abduction could be described as an improvement… But with his arm still clamped about her, she didn’t have any choice.

Maybe it would be wiser to stop struggling, though, put the fantasy firmly from her mind, ignore the intimacy of their tangled legs and try and work out what on earth Hassan thought he was doing. Ask herself why he had taken such a crazy risk.

It would be easier to think without the suffocating weight of the cloak depriving her of her senses, without his arms wrapped tightly about her.

She supposed she should be afraid. Poor Tim would be frantic. Then there was her mother. So much for the constant nagging to be prepared. For the first time in her life she had a real use for the safety pin, could have jabbed it into His Highness’s thigh hard enough to make him seriously regret grabbing her, maybe even hard enough to make him let go so that she could throw off the covering.

Unfortunately her handbag, containing the pin, was sitting on the floor of Tim’s Range Rover. Along with the clean hanky and the ten pence piece for the emergency telephone call.

This situation certainly fell into the emergency telephone call category, although how many public telephones was she likely to find in the desert? Her mother hadn’t thought of that one.

Still, when she found out that her daughter was missing, Pam Fenton would spend far more than ten pence on the telephone giving the Foreign Office hell.

If she found out her daughter was missing. Rose had the feeling that her disappearance would be kept out of the news if Abdullah could manage it. And he probably could. Tim wouldn’t be too hard to convince that her safety depended upon it. And the embassy would do whatever they thought was most likely to achieve her safe return. Just as well she had the mobile, then; Gordon would never forgive her for failing to turn in this scoop.

Oh, Lord! Whatever had happened to her fright-or-flight mechanism? She wasn’t afraid; she wasn’t planning escape. The primary emotion flowing through her system was indignation at the unromantic manner of her abduction.

She should just be grateful that Hassan hadn’t hurt her, that he hadn’t tied her up, or gagged her. Well, he hadn’t needed to. She hadn’t yelled when she could have, should have. Even now she was lying still and doing nothing at all to make life difficult for the man. That was because curiosity was running indignation a close second.

What did Hassan want?

Not just a cosy chat. If he’d wanted that he could have knocked on the villa door any time and she’d have been happy to offer him a cup of tea and a chocolate digestive. It was the way they did it in Chelsea. Maybe they did things differently in Ras al Hajar.

Or maybe he had an entirely different agenda.

Think, Rose! Think! What possible reason could Hassan al Rashid have for kidnapping her? What reason did anyone have?

Ransom? Ridiculous.

Sex? There was a momentary wobble somewhere low in her abdomen at the thought, then she dismissed the idea as errant nonsense.

Could this be the playboy prince’s idea of a joke? After all, his cousin the Regent would be seriously ticked off by the kind of publicity this little escapade would generate, and rumour suggested there was no love lost between the two men. She could just imagine the headlines, the news bulletins…

Suddenly everything clicked into place. That had to be it. Headlines. This was no joke. Hassan wanted Ras al Hajar in the news. More than that, he wanted to embarrass Abdullah…

Quite suddenly, she lost her temper. Drat the story! Here she was, wrapped up like a parcel of washing, her bones rattling like stones in a cup, and all because Hassan thought it would be amusing to irritate his cousin with bad headlines and she happened to be a handy source of aggravation.

She felt aggrieved. Seriously aggrieved. She was a woman. Not film star material, maybe, but she had all the right bits in all the right places. Her hair… All right, she might have personal reservations about her hair, but there was no doubt that it was an unmissable shade of red. Her eyes might be plain old brown, but they did the job and came complete with the regulation set of lashes. Her nose… Oh, what the heck. She stopped the inventory and, digging her knees into whatever part of his anatomy happened to be in the way, she heaved herself up and back.

Surprise, or maybe pain, together with the serendipitous lurching of the Land Rover as it raced over the rough terrain, combined to loosen Hassan’s grip. She just had time to fling off the cloak before he recovered, caught her and pinned her against the floor. And, as she dragged great gulps of fresh air into her lungs, she was once again staring up into those dangerous grey eyes.

Her situation was not lost upon her. She was vulnerable and utterly at the mercy of a man she did not know, whose motives were less than clear. One of them had better say something. And quickly.

‘When you ask a girl to dinner, Your Highness, you really, really mean it, don’t you?’

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