Her Royal Protector (a Johari Crown Novel) (Entangled Indulgence) (9 page)

Perhaps this was the source of Aly’s lack of feminine confidence—that she thought nothing beautiful except the empty perfection of a magazine cover face. A burst of protectiveness of her awkward charm pulsed through his blood. She would not go under any knife if he could help it.

The thought gave fuel to his intent. He would make her see her own beauty, he would have her glory in it, before the six weeks were up. He would do that.

She opened her eyes again, sorrow swimming in the depths. “So they’ve won. Big Pharma has won,” she said. “They’re playing the long game. In fifty years, when the older generation has died off, the islands will be empty of people. And maybe of turtles.”

“Don’t despair so completely. We are looking at ways to tempt the young people back to their traditional homes,” he said. “There are…”

“Tomorrow I have to go alone,” she interrupted with rough urgency, in a leap that he could not follow. “We wasted time double walking that beach today. I’ll make better time if I’m on my own.”

Arif sat looking at her for a long moment. First she had ruined her presentation at the banquet. Now she was determined to mark the nests alone. And maybe even her shy sexuality was a ploy. He must not let his blood lead him into error.

“All right, I will not walk with you tomorrow,” and watched that rosebud mouth smile with relief.

…

Back in her cabin for the night, Aly pulled on the faded shirt that she wore as a nightgown, combed her hair, put out the light. Then she stood for a moment at the porthole, gazing out at the moonlight rippling on the black water. The engines were silent. They were anchored off. With luck even now a female turtle was making the journey up the beach to lay the eggs of the next generation.

And with luck in the morning she’d be able to false mark the nest.

Her own deep instinct now urged her to confide in the sheikh. He seemed to her strong, upright, utterly moral, and committed to his country’s wellbeing. But how far her instinct was based on emotion—the desire to trust him just because the alternative was so ugly, or worse, because he made her weak with longing and she wanted to believe she could trust the look she’d seemed to see in his eyes—she couldn’t trust herself to know.

Their only hope lay in the fact that the saboteurs didn’t know they suspected sabotage. Once that advantage was lost…they were helpless.

Richard did not trust him. Richard trusted no one in high office on principle, and he had met plenty and he had good reason. If she was going to discount Richard’s instructions, she needed more than gut instinct as a guide. She could not take the risk on instinct alone.

People had trusted her father, after all. “What a wonderful man your father is, I’d trust him with my life.” She’d heard that more than once. It had made her doubt herself, because she had never trusted her father.

But that didn’t mean a different sort of man might not get in under her radar. A man like Arif. Who might even be trying to do just that. He’d probably figured her for sex-starved from the get-go. And for sure a man like him would know how to play on that. Those eyes had been knocking them dead since he was in his highchair. If he really got her in his sights she didn’t stand a snowball’s.

Did a snowball enjoy the melt?

Chapter Nine

It was still dark when the faint cry pierced her dream. Aly stirred and woke in sudden alarm. Then she heard it clearly:
Allahu akhbar…

With a little puff of relief she sank back against her pillow. The call to prayer. What had he called it?
Fajr.
Surely they were too remote here to pick it up from a minaret? So someone had turned on a radio. Jamila and Farhad, perhaps, preparing themselves for the day. She wondered if Arif was doing the same.

If she got up now she would have time for coffee before it was light enough to start work. Suiting the action to the thought, Aly flung herself to her feet, glanced out the porthole in passing to see nothing but the dark sea, and stepped into the neat little bathroom. Fifteen minutes later she had showered, dressed, made her bed, and tidied the cabin. Her backpack was packed and ready.

She picked it up and went out. She passed through the still shadowed main cabin into the galley, where she flicked on lights and was hunting for a coffee pot when Jamila came in. Aly mimed coffee and was shooshed out with frowning smiles. Jamila would bring breakfast on deck.

Aly pointed to her watch and mimed the limited time, and Jamila nodded and exclaimed reassuringly. So Aly obediently went up on deck. She dropped her pack by the ladder and stood at the rail to watch the sky turn pale. Farhad was already on deck, and she exchanged morning nods with him.

The fresh smell of morning greeted her. Solomon’s Foot lay before them in the first faint blush of dawn, a tiny island, with a craggy black outcrop curving up at one end and a white sandy flat at the other. And in between, slanting from high to low, a rich green forest. This eco-system, she knew, was unique to these islands. Some scientists believed this area was the last remnants of a much wider area that had been the Garden of Eden. Clear evidence for pre-historic climate change, a warning that it could happen again.

But what interested Aly right now was the long white sweep of the beach just becoming visible in the pink-gold gloom, and the fact that they had low tide. Perfect.

She heard a
whup whup whup
that made her think of a war movie in Sensurround, and a thread of adrenaline zinged through her. “What am I, Pavlov’s dog?” Aly asked herself aloud.

“Is that what you call a leading question?” The voice behind her was Arif’s, and her adrenaline count shot even higher. She blew out tension on a breath and turned to grin at him.

“My animal brain has been programmed by war movies,” she explained. “I hear a helicopter coming in low and my instinct is to run for cover.”

“An instinct which will serve you well in many areas of the world, but is surplus to necessity here in the Gulf Islands.”

A moment later, the noise booted up to a pounding roar and the helicopter thundered over their heads, en route for the island.

“Is he going to land on the
beach
?” Aly cried.

Arif looked amused. “Where else? Do you expect him to land on deck?”

“But he’ll blow away the marks.”

She watched in horror as the helicopter’s approach whipped up a storm of white sand. Farhad was going down the ladder to the dinghy, and Aly leapt for her backpack. “Wait,” she cried. “I’m going with you.”

Arif put out a hand to stop her, but she warded him off, dashed down the ladder after a bemused Farhad, and leapt into the dinghy as he cast off. Arif followed her, leaping aboard just in time.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded. “I told you, you would be ferried to the island once the helicopter was gone. You can’t walk the beach till it leaves, you must know that.”

“When he takes off again, he’s going to blow up the sand even more. I want to get a look at the beach before he wipes away every trace of any nests.”

“It’s too dangerous. You can’t get onto the beach until he has lifted off again. He will not even shut down his rotors.”

“Then how are you going to get the papers? Is he just going to toss them into the sand?” she asked in disbelief.

“Farhad will go in.”

“If Farhad can go, I can go.”

“Farhad has experience of dealing with helicopters in such situations. Do you?”

“If he can go, I can go,” she cried again.

The chopper was down and waiting, its rotors still turning, whipping up a small sandstorm. “Oh, my God,” she moaned. “If there are any hatchlings, they’ll be blown to kingdom come.” Farhad grabbed up a large black plastic envelope and leapt out into three feet of water, but when Aly got up, she felt Arif’s hand close on her arm.

“No,” he said. “It is too dangerous. You must wait till it leaves.”

She twisted her arm, but his grip held. “Let me go! I just want to look. Just a quick look.”

“I am sorry for what has happened, but it cannot be cured by letting you go into danger.”

Giving a resigned sigh, Aly dropped the backpack and made to sit again. His hand relaxed, and with a sudden dive she was in the water, beyond his reach. A few seconds later she was on the beach, not far from where the helicopter was still blasting the sand. It stung her skin and settled in her hair.

Arif could not follow her immediately without risking the loss of the dinghy, and she didn’t waste time looking over her shoulder to watch him trying to beach or anchor it. Farhad was bent over, running underneath the blades towards where the pilot was holding out a package. Shaking the salty sting out of her eyes, Aly bent double herself, and ran along the white sand at the water’s edge, looking for those telltale depressions that would mark a turtle’s movements, through the spatter marks that the helicopter’s rotors had produced. The light was good now, the sun not quite up.

But she saw nothing. When she had gone beyond the spatter marks, she turned right and ran up the beach to the high tide mark, then turned again to double back behind the chopper.

The pilot would not, could not take off again while she was so near. As long as she kept low she was safe. The sand was whipping her painfully now, the noise deafening as she got closer to the machine again. She’d seldom heard such a painful volume of sound. But she wasn’t turning back now. Aly plugged her ears, squinted against the blast of sand, and kept running.

And
there
. There it was. It was all she could do not to leap up and punch the air, which might have lost her her hand, if not her head. Instead she fell to her knees, groped for the nearest sun-dried palm frond, and poked it roughly into the mound of sand to mark the spot. Not good enough. She crawled over to a large stone, worn round and smooth by an infinity spent being driven in and out of the sea, dragged it back and set the stone, too, over the nest.

“You are a fool,” Arif shouted in her ear as he arrived behind her. “Is one nest worth risking your life for?”

“Not a risk if we keep our heads down. Let’s go,” she cried, before getting up into her crouch again to continue her run. He followed on her heels.

She found only the one nest, and when they were beyond the spatter marks in the other direction they straightened up and turned to head down to the water’s edge again. Farhad was in the dinghy now, dragging up the anchor that Arif had hastily tossed over. Flinging herself into the water, Aly swam over and clung to the side. Arif followed, the pilot waved, and the chopper lifted into the air again.

Her foot tingled with heat in the cool water, and then Arif’s linked hands lifted her, and a moment later Aly was over the side and dragging herself aboard. With a great spray of water, Arif landed beside her. No one spoke until the helicopter was a distant roar that seemed like silence.

“Right,” said Aly then and, dripping with water, was up and rooting in her backpack as Farhad pulled the anchor aboard. She tossed the walkie-talkie down on the seat. “If you’ll ask Farhad to take me back in, I’ll call you when I’m done.”

Arif gazed at her with an unreadable look, but whatever he had it in mind to say, he bit it back and instead spoke an order. Five seconds later they were in shallow water again, where Farhad idled the engine. Aly sat on the cool rounded rubber and slipped into thigh deep water. “Will you pass me my backpack, please?”

With a splash Arif was in the water beside her, reaching up to take her backpack from Farhad’s hands.

“Let’s go,” he said.

…

Aly stared at him. Water dripped into her eyes and she impatiently swiped it away. “But you said you wouldn’t walk with me today.”

“That was when I thought you were an intelligent woman who could be counted on not to walk deliberately into danger,” Arif said. Never in his life had he met so difficult, irritating and unpredictable a woman. “Since you are not, obviously you must have protection.”

“Danger,” she snorted. “What kind of danger do you foresee me getting into on a deserted beach?”

Her dismay was clear, and again he wondered what she could possibly have to hide. Or was she worried about his motives? Was it being alone with him that concerned her?

“None from me, if that is what you fear,” he said flatly. “I have never coerced a woman in my life.”

She actually jumped. “What?” So it was not that that she feared. The tension in his gut let go.

“Then why do you resist having company as you work? I thought your objection was only to the time we wasted double-walking the beach, but we will not have to do that today.”

“I don’t understand what danger you think I might run into on my own, here of all places.” She waved an arm at the turquoise sea, the white sand, the forest rising behind.

“There are serpents even in Eden,” Arif said. “And what about the risk that you might miss a nest? Surely two pairs of eyes are better than one?”

“Yeah,” she agreed unhappily. This was a mystery he had to unravel somehow. “Shall we get going, then?”

…

Solomon’s Foot offered rich pickings, relatively speaking.

“Are you pleased with the result?” Arif asked as Farhad, in the dinghy, approached where they stood on the beach. They had made almost a full circuit of the island.

“Yeah, pretty much. On an island this size, three nests on one day is good,” Aly said, without enthusiasm. In fact, it was a great result, except for one thing: she hadn’t been able to false mark even one nest.

It was crucially important to false mark the nests on the less inhabited islands. On the islands where there was a lot of beach traffic, it was more important to let people, especially tourists, know exactly where the nests were, so that they did not inadvertently damage them. On tourist beaches, she would be putting a small cage up over each nest to discourage dune buggies and bikes.

Sabotage would be much easier on the uninhabited beaches, where it was less likely that someone would be walking the beach and get too curious for a saboteur’s comfort.

She hadn’t even been able to ask the islanders to keep an eye out for sabotage because Arif would have had to interpret for her.

A small group of islanders had come down to the beach early to invite them to visit the village and eat lunch with them. When Aly refused, on the grounds that they would be finished and gone well before lunch, the islanders had found them again later in the morning, and brought with them a small gas canister, a pot, coffee and cups, and insisted on their stopping for a coffee, which was brewed up right there on the beach. Even Aly couldn’t refuse such determined hospitality.

“I’m sorry we couldn’t stop for lunch with them. They were lovely people,” Aly said now, as they waded out to the dinghy and clambered aboard.

“If there is anything the inhabitants of Solomon’s Foot understand, it is work,” Arif said easily. “Next time our timing may be better.”

As it was, they would save time by lunching aboard
Janahine
while en route to the next island on the list. “I’m itchy with salt,” Aly said, as they approached the yacht. Arif leaned out to grasp the sea ladder and pull them close as Farhad idled the motor. “My clothes are stiff with it.” In this heat, of course, her clothes had dried on her body within a few minutes of her climbing out of the sea. But a long morning’s trek in sun-dried, salt-caked shorts and t-shirt didn’t count among life’s pleasures. “I can’t wait to get into the shower.”

“Next time, perhaps, we can spend a few minutes preparing for the morning’s work, instead of leaping into the task so precipitately,” Arif observed, holding the dinghy against the swell as she shouldered her backpack and leapt out. He must be uncomfortable, too, but on him it looked so good. His t-shirt was hugging every hard muscle of chest and stomach, his shorts had dried snugly against his groin, and the sight sent a shaft of desire right through her.

“Next time maybe you won’t try to interfere in my work.” She looked down at him from a position of safety halfway up the ladder. Sunglasses hid his eyes above the devil’s beard. An aura of sex and power smoked off him, and her body was puffing into flame all over. “I do know what I’m doing.”

He followed her up. For a moment he was threateningly close, and she didn’t know if she was nervous because he seemed so dark and dangerous, or because of a sudden, crazy conviction that if she stepped close he would burn in the same flame that was scorching her.

“You do not know what you are doing when it comes to helicopters,” he reminded her, as she came to and dashed up the remaining steps to the safety of distance and the deck. “If it had been a less experienced pilot, you might have been killed.”