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

THE DESERT

Sheikh’s

INNOCENT QUEEN

King of the Desert, Captive Bride

Jane Porter

The Sheikh’s Secretary Mistress

Lucy Monroe

www.millsandboon.co.uk

King of the Desert, Captive Bride

JANE

PORTER

JANE PORTERgrew up on a diet of Mills & Boon ®romances, reading late at night under the covers so her mother wouldn’t see! She wrote her first book at age eight, and spent many of her school and college years living abroad, immersing herself in other cultures and continuing to read voraciously. Now Jane has settled down in rugged Seattle, Washington, with her gorgeous husband and two sons. Jane loves to hear from her readers. You can write to her at PO Box 524, Bellevue, WA 98009, USA. Or visit her website at www.janeporter.com

Don’t miss Jane Porter’s exciting new novel,A Dark Sicilian Secret,available in May 2011 from Mills & Boon ®Modern™.

SHEIKH Khalid Fehr read the message posted on the Internet bulletin board again.

American Woman Missing in the Middle East.

Help desperately needed. My sister disappeared two weeks ago without a trace.

Her name is Olivia Morse. She’s twenty-three years old, five-four, 105 pounds, blond, blue eyes. She speaks with a Southern accent and is on the shy side. If anyone has seen her or knows her whereabouts, please call or e-mail me. Her family is frantic.

In his tent, sitting at his laptop computer, Khalid reread the last sentence— her family is frantic —and felt a heavy weight lodge in his gut.

He knew what it was like to be frantic about a family member. He knew how it felt to be an older brother panicked about a sister. He’d once had two younger sisters and then one day they were gone.

He scrolled back through the message on the Internet bulletin board and discovered an earlier message from the same Jake Morse.

Missing American woman! If you’ve seen this woman please call or e-mail immediately.

There was a photo attached and Khalid clicked on the attachment and waited for the photo to open.

It finally did, although slowly due to the connection being via satellite phone, and Khalid found himself looking at a black-and-white photo that had to be a passport photo. White-blond hair. Light, light eyes. Pale, translucent skin. She was definitely pretty. But what really held his attention was her expression, the tentative smile and the look in her eyes—shy, curious, hopeful.

Hopeful.

His chest tightened and he leaned back in his chair, away from his desk.

His sister Aman used to look at the world that way. She was so much shyer than Jamila, the more outgoing twin. Aman’s tenderness and quiet sense of humor always brought out the best in him, brought out the best in everyone, and when she died a week after Jamila he’d felt his heart break. His heart had never been the same.

Frowning at the computer screen, he ran his palm slowly along his jaw, the short, rough bristles biting at his skin. And again he looked into this missing Olivia’s eyes and tried to imagine where she was, tried to imagine her circumstances. Was she sick, hurt, dead?

Had she been kidnapped? Murdered? Raped?

Or had she disappeared by choice? Was there someone, something, she was running from?

It was none of his business, he told himself, rising from his computer. He’d left city life and civilization behind to live in the desert, far from violence, noise and crime. He’d chosen solitude because he hated how most people lived.

But what if this were his sister?

What if Aman or Jamila had gone missing?

They wouldn’t, he brusquely reminded himself. They’d been princesses—royal—and security detail had followed them everywhere.

He didn’t know this Jake, didn’t know anything about the man, but he could still see the words he’d written, could still hear the plea for help echo in his head.

Turning at the edge of his tent, Khalid looked back at his computer, at the enlarged black-and-white photo. Olivia Morse, twenty-three years old, five foot four, and one hundred and five pounds—if that.

With a snap of his wrist he flung the tent flap back, exited his tent and called for one of his men.

He might live in the middle of the Great Sarq Desert and he might be a nomadic sheikh, but he was still a king, one of the royal Fehrs, blessed with power, wealth and infinite connections. If anyone could locate this American, he could.

HE’D found her.

It’d taken three weeks, a small fortune, two private investigators, the help of Sarq’s secretary of state, a lot of secret handshakes, deals and promises—as well as some threats—but at last he was going to see her.

Sheikh Khalid Fehr ducked to enter through Ozr Prison’s low threshold. He was escorted past the men’s wing to the women’s side of the prison, the foul smell of overflowing toilets and unwashed bodies so overpowering his stomach rose in protest.

At the entrance to the women’s prison wing his male guard handed him over to a female guard who examined Khalid’s paperwork.

The female guard, covered head to foot by her black robe, took her time reading through his paperwork, and Khalid stifled his impatience. Ozr had the reputation for being one of the worst prisons in the world—it was a place notorious for the lack of human rights—but finally the female guard looked up, nodded curtly. “Follow me,” she said.

He followed her through one low arched corridor after another, deeper beneath the old fortress which had been turned into Ozr Prison a half century ago.

As they walked through the corridors, hands reached out, and voices in Arabic, Egyptian, Farsi and even English begged for help, for mercy, for a doctor, a lawyer, anyone, anything. Ozr was the last place on earth any man would want to be. God only knew how it was for a woman, as once you entered through the prison’s gates, you discovered you’d earned a one-way ticket. Once you were in, you never came out again.

One of Khalid’s friends from high school had gotten into trouble in Jabal and after being arrested was tossed into Ozr was never heard from again. Khalid’s father, the King of Sarq, had made enquiries and then entreaties on his son’s friend’s behalf all to no avail.

Jabal, bordered by four countries including Egypt and Sarq, remained a dangerous dictator state, with international travel warnings in place, warnings that Olivia Morse had obviously ignored.

The guard stopped before a cell that was empty except for a woman sitting on a narrow cot, her knees drawn to her chest, wisps of blond hair escaping from her black veil.

Olivia.

Khalid’s chest tightened, a visceral reaction to seeing her for the first time.

In her passport photo she’d been pretty, fresh-faced, a hopeful light in her blue eyes. But the young woman sitting inside the cell didn’t look like the photo anymore. The woman inside the cell appeared vacant, even half-dead.

“Olivia Morse,” he asked, stepping toward the bars.

Her head briefly lifted but she didn’t look at him.

“You are Miss Olivia Morse, aren’t you?” he persisted, his voice pitched low.

Liv sat on the cot, legs pulled up against her, her arms wrapped tightly around her knees, trying to make herself smaller.

Maybe she wasn’t really here, and maybe there wasn’t another bad man standing outside her cell demanding information, threatening another interrogation, interrogations that always ended with a beating.