The Sheikh's Destiny Read online

  “That’s according to the law—here. Where I come from only hadd’al herabah is appropriate punishment for this heinous crime.”

  She shuddered again as she imagined the ancient punishment sanctioned in their home region for those caught red-handed in major crimes like this—amputating an arm and a leg from opposing sides.

  Deeming the subject closed, he turned to the fallen goons. And she saw it. A glistening wetness below his coat.

  Sick electricity forked through her as she grabbed his arm, jerked him into the light. He pulled away from her frantic grip, made her grasp him to restore her balance. Her hands sank into the unmistakable warmth of blood.

  She tore them away, looked down at her crimson-stained palms before looking up at him in horror. “You’re injured!”

  His gaze moved from her upturned hands to his midriff before travelling up to hers. “It’s nothing.”

  “Nothing?” she exclaimed. “You’re bleeding! Ya Ullah!”

  Something like...annoyance? Impatience? simmered in his eyes. “It’s just a scratch.”

  “A scratch? Your whole left side is drenched in blood.”

  “And?” There he went again with that and of his. “Are you squeamish? I hope you won’t faint.”

  “Squeamish?” she exclaimed. “It’s you I’m worried about...”

  Dread clogged her throat, more suffocating than anything she’d felt on her own account. His nonchalance had to be shock. His wound had to be severe to bleed that much, to not have registered its pain yet. Adrenaline and cold must be all that was keeping him on his feet. By the time the ambulance arrived, it might be too late...

  Stem his bleeding. Buy him time.

  Tearing her scarf from around her neck, she lunged at him, pressing its creamy softness against the tear in his sweater. He stiffened, his hands covering hers as if to push them away.

  She threw her weight at him, pressing him back against the side of the building, panting now. “We must apply pressure.”

  He stilled against her, stared down at her, his face a mask. Was he on the verge of losing consciousness?

  He undid her hands, replaced them with his. “I’ll do it.” She sensed that he would, not because he believed he needed it, but to keep her away. “You can go now.”

  Huh? He didn’t only want her to stay away, but to go away?

  She shook her head, hands smeared in his blood trembling. “I have to be here when the police arrive.”

  He reached for her hands, wiping them clean with the other end of the scarf. “I’ll say they attacked me. Those lowlifes will welcome my adjustment. A jury will give them a lesser sentence for attacking me rather than you.”

  “But you wanted them to get the harshest punishment possible.”

  “Whatever sentence the law passes won’t be that. I am bound by no such limitations, and I’ll make sure they’ll never think of doing this to anyone else ever again.”

  “You mean you want them to get off lightly so you can administer your own brand of justice...?” She threw her hands up in the air. “What are we talking about? You’re injured. And I’m going nowhere but to the E.R. with you.”

  “Since I’m not going to the E.R., the only place you can go now is home.” At her head shake, his voice hardened. “Take my car and drive a few blocks away. My guards will come to escort you back home. They’ll come up with you to make sure the coast is clear and will stand guard until we make sure this abduction plan had no contingencies.” When she didn’t move or answer he exhaled forcibly. “Go now, before the police arrive. You’ve been through enough on those scums’ account. Walk away and forget this ever happened.”

  “I can’t and won’t leave you. And you will go to the E.R. Is that your car?” She indicated the imposing Mercedes.

  He nodded. “I stopped to send a file from my phone.”

  “And that’s when you saw me being attacked.”

  He didn’t nod again, his gaze growing incapacitating.

  “Give me your keys.” A formidably winged eyebrow told her what he thought of her demand. “I’m driving you to the E.R.”

  “As you pointed out, I can’t leave the crime scene. The police will be here in minutes.”

  “They can take our statements at the E.R. You might succumb to hypothermia and shock in those minutes.”

  “I will succumb to nothing. I’ve had injuries a dozen times worse, endured them for days in conditions that make these pleasant in comparison.”

  She knew he wasn’t exaggerating. She couldn’t imagine what he’d endured in war, couldn’t bear to think what kind of injury had given him that blood-curdling scar that slithered like an angry snake from his left eye down to his jaw, neck...and below.

  Noticing her eyes on his scar, his lips compressed. “As you can see I’ve survived far worse. Don’t concern yourself over this glorified paper cut.”

  Retorts fired in her mind, froze on her tongue. What did he think her? A selfish twit who’d grab the easy way out and run away?

  But if he thought so, then... “You don’t recognize me?”

  That eyebrow rose again. “I need to know someone to come to their rescue?”

  “That’s not what I meant.” She knew he’d defend to the death anyone in need of his superior powers. He’d once made a career of it as a warrior. He’d clearly never stopped being one.

  He just as clearly hadn’t recognized her.

  Then he said, “Of course I recognized you. Just like the one who sent those goons did. You’re more recognizable than you evidently think you are, Princess Laylah.”

  So he did recognize her. Which actually shouldn’t have been a sure thing. There’d been far...less of her when he’d last seen her, and she’d been wearing glasses back then, too. He’d always made her feel he’d never seen her, the way he’d look through her, like he had everyone else. Even now, nothing in his demeanor indicated that he knew her. The reticent Rashid she’d known had become impenetrable.

  “I saw you many times around the city before tonight.”

  Would this man stop surprising her? “Y-you did? Where?”

  “I have offices in this building. You also frequent the restaurants I do.”

  He had been the presence she’d felt!

  Now that made sense. As did the fact that he hadn’t thought of acknowledging her until he’d been forced to, to save her life no less. She’d always known Rashid had been a far-fetched dream, but he’d become an impossible one after he’d turned from her closest cousins’ best friend to their mortal enemy.

  “You clearly don’t recognize me,” he added.

  “I’d as soon not recognize myself, Sheikh Rashid.”

  Everything in him seemed to hit Pause. The wind, the whole world followed suit.

  Okay. That had come out too...revealing. Another attack of what her mother called her “crassness affliction.” She’d thought she had it under control, but it seemed she couldn’t control her brash candor any more than her mother’s family could their crooked ways.

  So be it. She’d never be able to give him anything of equal value to what he’d given her tonight, so she’d at least give him the truth. He could do with it as he wished.

  It appeared he was at a loss what to do with it. Her confession had clearly stunned him.

  His response, when it finally came, was to pretend he hadn’t heard it and to pursue his previous point. “Back my statement, that they attacked me and not you, and I will go to the E.R.”

  He was trying to spare her the postattack ordeal, from the investigations through to the trial.

  Still... “I can’t let you bear the burden of this mess.”

  Those daunting shoulders barely moved in dismissal. “In comparison to the messes I deal with daily, this is a breeze.”

  She’d bet. Rashid had created his IT development empire from scratch in record time. He must have dealt with endless obstacles and adversaries to remain at the top of such a cutthroat field. And it would be a mess for her, sabotaging
the peaceful life and low profile she’d struggled to create since she’d left Zohayd.

  “Okay.” The tension gripping the night eased, until she added, “But only if you let me drive you to the E.R.”

  “You think I won’t keep my word?”

  “I think you’d keep your word even if it meant your life.”

  Another long, empty stare greeted her statement, which she now realized signified surprise. “Why this stipulation, then? You think I can’t drive myself?”

  It was her turn to shrug. “I’m taking no chances.”

  His grimness deepened until she was certain he’d say no.

  Suddenly, he handed her the bloody scarf. She fumbled with it as if with a hot coal as he fished inside his coat for a pen and a notebook. He scribbled a few lines, tore the paper out, bent and tucked it onto a thug. A calling card on gifts for the police?

  The thug stirred as Rashid whispered in his ear before slamming him into the ground, snuffing his consciousness again.

  Calmly rising, he retrieved the scarf from her limp fingers, turned on his heels and crossed the street to his car.

  He was leaving?

  She watched him go, at a loss for what to do.

  Instead of taking the wheel, he walked around to the passenger’s side. Then, leaning over the car’s top, he looked across the distance at her. “Coming?”

  Her heart gave a thunderclap of relief as she stumbled into a run, her four-inch stilettos a staccato of eagerness on the asphalt.

  In seconds she was inside the posh car, heard faint sirens in the distance as the door closed behind her with a muted thud.

  Trembling with the urge to throw herself at him and hug him, she turned to him. “Thank you.”

  He ignored that. “Are we waiting for them after all?”

  “Oh, no.” She fumbled for the ignition, discovered that the car was running, the motor so smooth it didn’t produce sound or vibration. The car was such a dream to handle that even in her state, she drove to the nearest E.R. without incident.

  As she parked, he turned to her. “Now drive home. I’ll have the car and a driver at your disposal from now on.”

  He was almost out of the car before she flung herself after him. “I’m coming in with you.”

  His stare was even more spectacular in close quarters. “The deal was to drive me here, not escort me inside.”

  She clutched his arm tighter. “New deal, then.”

  “You have nothing to thank me for.”

  Now he answered her earlier thank you.

  “I wasn’t thanking you for saving my life, since I figured you’d have an allergic reaction to that. I was thanking you for letting me bargain with my safety for yours. Don’t revert to being an aggravating superhero and insist on walking into the night alone.”

  After yet another long stare, he turned and exited the car.

  Her heart constricted with disappointment and anxiety. If she persisted now, she’d be imposing on him.

  Well, tough. That big, bad warrior would just have to use his endless stamina to put up with her concern.

  The moment she was out of the car, her heart gave that boom that only he provoked. He was standing at the E.R. entrance, his pose worthy of the superhero she’d likened him to, one hand braced on his lean hips, the other still gripping her bloody scarf.

  He was waiting for her.

  She ran toward him, her heartbeat overtaking her feet.

  Before she reached him, those cruelly sensuous lips twitched. Was that a smile? She wouldn’t know. She’d never seen him smile.

  Before she could make sure, he turned and strode inside.

  He had her running to keep up with him, demonstrating that her concern was needless. And that he wouldn’t make it easy for her to see her purpose through.

  Once she knew he’d be okay, she’d show him exactly how much she’d put up with to be with him. That, if he let her, she would follow him to the ends of the earth.

  Two

  All through the admission process, Rashid felt Laylah’s presence a breath away.

  He couldn’t take one without it mixing with the scent and heat of her body and her worry.

  He found himself barely breathing so both wouldn’t deluge him further. But rationing that involuntary act turned out to be easier than stopping another supposedly voluntary one. In spite of his intention to demonstrate that her presence was unnecessary as well as unimportant, his gaze kept going back to her like iron filings to a magnet. When no one, certainly never a woman, had ever commanded his unwilling response.

  But Laylah Aal Shalaan wasn’t anyone. There was no one else in the world that he remembered from the day of their birth.

  He’d just turned eight when she was born, the first female offspring in the Aal Shalaan family in forty years. It had only been a week after he’d met her maternal and paternal cousins, Haidar and Jalal, and begun a friendship that had lasted for the next two decades.

  She’d grown up under his gaze, always in his orbit, glowing brighter every day with a radiance that had progressively dismayed him. He’d thought it so unfair, for her to be so matchlessly beautiful on the outside, when she could possess no beauty at all on the inside. Not when she was the daughter of a house of serpents.

  Now that she’d matured, the injustice had been exacerbated.

  His gaze returned to her again and again, documenting her every nuance. Hair and eyes the color of the richest chocolate and brushed with sunlight, skin of honeyed velvet and warm sunsets, a body of lush vitality and femininity and a face of a peculiar brand of splendor and harmony. But it was what those most unusual features radiated that perplexed him.

  How could they transmit such...sweetness? Such...genuineness? The woman was descended from ruthless bitches and hardened criminals. There was no way any of that could be real.

  Yet he was forced to believe one thing was real. Her concern for him. Its purity and intensity singed him.

  But that could be explained away. By gratitude. To her lifeline in this harrowing experience. Once fright and shock drained away, so would her simulation of humanity and good nature.

  Then he’d be free to resume thinking the worst of her. And treating her accordingly without the least remorse.

  For now, he had to get out of her range. He needed to get his act together. To plan his next step.

  * * *

  “I’m coming with you.”

  At her blurted-out declaration, Rashid turned at the door of the treatment room. That eloquent eyebrow of his made her feel like an illogical species in the presence of a Vulcan.

  He’d so far let her accompany him through the admission procedure. When the police had arrived, he’d fielded doubts about her being involved in the attack, lying with spectacular smoothness when they’d asked about her bruise.

  According to him, it had been a basketball to the face during a one-on-two match with Mira—whom he’d always seen with her in the times she’d only sensed him—who’d back up anything she’d say. Just like the thugs would back up anything he said.

  Not that those policemen would investigate any further. She had a feeling they realized the truth but seemed to appreciate his motivation for adjusting it wholeheartedly. They’d behaved as if they realized they were in the presence of a superior force who’d taken the pursuit of justice far beyond their level. The bare bones of his background had left them—and her—awed. They’d left the E.R. shaking his hand for what he’d done to those repeat offenders and slapping his back for how ruthlessly he’d done it.

  It was the female E.R. doctor who answered her. “Only family members can accompany patients.” She turned her awed eyes to Rashid. “Or if the patient specifically asks for your presence.”

  And you’d rather he didn’t ask, Laylah almost retorted.

  She tried cajoling, something she was abysmal at. “You’ve come this far. Might as well let me go all the way.”

  His eyes confirmed that she had failed to learn that survival mechanism
as an endangered estrogen-based species in her family’s testosterone jungle. Then he presented her with that unyielding back as he preceded the woman into the treatment room.

  By the time thirty minutes had passed and more and more doctors had rushed into the room, she was certain they’d discovered his injury was catastrophic, and they’d been trying to contain the situation—and failing...

  “I can’t believe your luck, lady.”

  Laylah started, her nerves jangling. It was the E.R. nurse who’d first met them. She was exiting the treatment room.

  Nurse Norma McGregor smiled widely at her. “Not that you were almost kidnapped, but that this god happened by and swooped in to save you.”

  She barely remembered Rashid’s version in time. “Uh...that isn’t what happened...”

  “Oh, I know what he said happened, but I’ve seen the men he ripped apart. That had to be to punish what he’d consider a far more serious crime than attacking him. Attacking you. I also don’t buy that story about your bruise. You two don’t feel like you know each other enough for basketball. But don’t worry. The boys in blue will swear on his version, so we can discuss the truth.”

  Laylah released the air trapped in her lungs. “You’re uncanny at reading people.”

  Nurse McGregor tinkled a laugh. “Comes with the territory.”

  “I didn’t want him to give the police a false statement...”

  “But he insisted,” Nurse McGregor put in. “And it makes him even more of a god. Shouldering this for you will save you no end of aggravation.”

  “Yeah. And he’d already saved me from far worse. If not for him, I would have been somewhere in the underbelly of Chicago by now, wondering if I’d survive. Instead, it was he who...who...” She had to stop as the tears finally began to flow.

  Nurse McGregor frowned. “Hey, easy, girl. This is going to hit you hard when you process what happened and what could have happened. So don’t fight it. Seek help.”

  Laylah wiped away her tears. “This isn’t about my reaction. It’s his wound...”

  “Seeing that much blood disturbed you, huh?”

  She shook her head. “I was a volunteer paramedic in my country. I’ve dealt with all kinds of injuries. But to see him hurt because he came to my defense...”