Jane Porter: The Desert Sheikh's Innocent Queen: King of the Desert, Captive Bride

“I get people out of prison, whisking them off to safer places. The government here doesn’t like it.” He shrugged. “They don’t like me.”

Liv’s stomach did a peculiar somersault. “So why did they let you in?”

He briefly glanced out the window, his shoulders shifting carelessly before glancing back at her. “I paid off several high-up officials.”

Drawing a quick breath she felt her stomach fall again and wondered if she’d ever feel safe again. “You bribed them?”

“Didn’t have much of a choice.” He dark eyes rested on her face, his expression grim. “It was either that, or allow you to go before the Ozr Prison judge in two days’ time, and believe me, you wouldn’t have survived the sentence.”

Liv bit her lip and looked away, out the window. They were approaching the city center, which was far more cramped than the modern neighborhoods. Smoke rose from food stands on the street corners. “It would have been harsh,” she said.

“It would have been deadly,” he agreed.

“And I just wanted to have an adventure,” she said, her voice low. “I never imagined this nightmare.”

The driver slowed, then braked to a complete stop. The sheikh’s wireless phone suddenly rang and he answered it, his eyes on the line of police cars ahead.

“The nightmare,” he said, echoing her words as he hung up the phone, “isn’t over yet.”

Liv leaned forward to get a look at the police officers ahead. “What’s happening?”

“We’re to be questioned,” he answered shortly, his features hardening. Turning his head, he looked at her, a close, ruthless inspection that was as thorough as it was critical.

“Pull your headscarf forward,” he directed. “Hide all your hair and wrap the fabric across your mouth and nose so that as much of your face is covered as possible.” He retrieved the sunglasses from the seat and handed them to her. “And keep these on. Don’t take them off unless I tell you to.” Then he opened the car door and stepped out, slamming it shut behind him.

THE nightmare isn’t over yet.

Sheikh Fehr’s words rang in her ears as he walked from the car. The driver had locked the car doors the moment the sheikh left the vehicle and she watched Sheikh Fehr now, heart in her throat, as a group of uniformed officers approached him.

From inside the car she could hear their muffled voices outside. The officers practically surrounded the sheikh, but he appeared unruffled.

They were speaking Arabic and she understood nothing of what they were saying other than there seemed to be a problem, and from the way the officers kept gesturing to the car, their voices growing louder, she had a sick feeling that the conversation had something to do with her.

Several long minutes passed and then Sheikh Fehr turned to the car and opened the back door. Liv ducked her head as the officers crowded around to get a look inside. Terrified, she kept her head down, her eyes closed behind the oversized pair of sunglasses.

After what seemed like eternity the car door slammed shut and shortly after the sheikh climbed back in the car. The chauffeur immediately started the ignition and pulled away.

Liv nervously laced and unlaced her fingers. “Is everything okay?” she asked, as they left the narrower, old city streets behind for the wide boulevard that ran along the North Africa coast.

“Yes.”

When it became clear he didn’t intend to say more she added, “What did they want?”

“They wanted to know if I’d legally entered their country and if I’d done anything illegal while here.”

“Have you?”

“No and yes, but that’s not what I told them. I couldn’t tell them that or you’d be in one of their cars heading straight back to Ozr.”

“So what did you tell them instead?”

He hesitated a moment, then plucked the sunglasses from her face, calmly pocketing them inside his robe. “That I was escorting a female member of my family home.”

But he wasn’t, she thought, her uneasiness growing. “Did they believe you?”

His expression turned mocking. “They know who I am, and they saw I had the proper paperwork. There wasn’t much they could do at that point.”

He was setting her newly heightened inner alarm, the one that should have been working when she agreed to carry Elsie’s bag in her backpack.

Her inner alarm hadn’t been attuned to danger then, but it was now, and Liv knew from Sheikh Fehr’s tone, as well as his evasive answers, that there was something he wasn’t telling her. Something wasn’t right. She didn’t know what it was and she very much wanted to know. “The officers were upset about something,” she persisted.

He shrugged. “It’s a cultural thing.”

She leaned forward. “Tell me.”

“We’re a man and woman traveling alone together.”

“So?”

“We’re not actually related, which is illegal in Jabal.”

Liv sat back against the seat, her fingers curling into her palms. “So they could rearrest me,” she whispered.

“Not if we get out of here first.”

They reached the small business airport in less than thirty minutes, the airport built on the outskirts of the capital city. The chauffeur drove them through the airport gates and right out onto the deserted tarmac, pulling close to the jet’s stairs.

The jet was long, sleek and narrow, the body a shiny silver with a discrete gold-and-black emblem on the tail. Sheikh Fehr walked Olivia to the jet’s stairs. “Go ahead and board,” he told her. “I need to speak with the pilot about our flight plan.”

She nodded and, holding on to the handrail, climbed the steps. A flight attendant greeted Liv as she entered the plane.

“We’ll be leaving soon,” the flight attendant said, leading Liv to the grouping of four enormous club-style leather chairs that made up one of the plane’s sitting areas. “Do you have any bags or luggage for me to stow?”

Liv shook her head as she sat down. “I don’t have … anything,” she said, reaching for the seat belt.

“So your luggage has been sent ahead?” the flight attendant asked.

“Unfortunately, I’ve lost everything,” Liv answered, and suddenly, remembering how she’d been callously stripped and searched, she shivered. They’d confiscated everything that first night. Her backpack, her passport, her clothes, her makeup bag. All of it. The only thing she had was what she wore, and even that was a prison-issued robe and headscarf.

The flight attendant saw Liv shiver. “Cold?”

“A little,” Liv admitted, still chilled from the weeks and weeks in the dark, dank cell. It’d been so awful, so unbelievable. She still couldn’t understand how she’d ended up at Ozr. She’d never broken a law in her life—well, except for driving over the speed limit, and even then, it had been five miles over the limit, not twenty.

“Would you like a blanket?”

“Please.” Liv smiled gratefully.

“Poor thing. Have you been sick?” the flight attendant asked sympathetically as she crossed to the wood-paneled cabinet and retrieved an ivory cashmere throw and small pillow, the ivory blanket the same color as the supple leather seats.

Returning, the flight attendant unfolded the blanket and draped it across Liv’s legs. “And just between you and me, I think the air conditioner is a little too efficient. Now, how about something warm to drink? Coffee, tea?”

“Coffee, with milk and sugar. If that’s not too much trouble.”

“None at all.”

The flight attendant disappeared into the jet’s galley kitchen and Liv sank deeper into her seat. This was surreal, she thought, tugging the blanket up to her shoulders. An hour ago she was still locked up in Ozr and now here she was, on a private jet, being waited on hand and foot.