Guarding the Princess

chapter 13



Brandt moved faster and faster as the sun climbed higher and burned down hotter. Dalilah half ran, half stumbled behind him. She was already desperately thirsty, and blisters from yesterday were rubbing raw in her oversize boots.

Humiliation, desperation, burned through her chest. She’d opened up, made herself so vulnerable, told him she was falling in love with him, while confirming at the same that she was going to marry Haroun. How stupid could she possibly be? What on earth had she hoped to achieve?

Had she thought he’d miraculously rescue her from having to make her own decisions? From her own desires? From her obligations?

All she’d done was make it tougher on him, and on herself, and she’d made herself a wanton fool in his eyes.

“Faster, Dalilah!” he yelled from ahead of her.

“Dammit, I’m going as fast as I can!”

He marched harder, his stride wider. She had to start running full tilt to keep up.

She stumbled, hitting the ground with such a hard thud that it forced him to spin round. The look on his face was ferocious, eyes icy cold. He unsheathed his panga, grabbed a nearby branch and hacked it from the tree. He lopped off the pieces of frayed wood on the end, then he thrust the stick at her.

“Use it to keep balance.” He was breathing hard, body glistening with sweat, the sun shining gold on his hair.

“You have to stay focused and move. We need to find a vehicle now, before those guys get over the cliff, or we’re both as good as dead, because we’ll be outgunned and outmanned.”

About another mile out and Dalilah could no longer breathe. She bent over, bracing her good hand on her knees, hyperventilating as she strained to catch her breath, drenched in sweat.

“I said keep up, stay right behind me!”

“I’m trying,” she snapped.

He stopped, wiped sweat from his brow, frustration burning in his features.

“My boots are too big. You have a longer stride. You’re fitter, trained.” Emotion filled her eyes, her fear of Amal, her desperation over what was happening between them, her physical inability to match his pace—it was all overwhelming her.

He opened his mouth to say something, but before he could, she said, “And don’t think I’m whining. I’m not—I’m just saying it like it is. Those are the facts in front of you—so deal with it!”

“Deal with it?”

She lifted her head, met his eyes. “Yeah—deal with it.”

“The fact you’ve signed your life away to a man you have no desire to sleep with? Deal with the fact I’m trying to save you—that you’ve saved yourself—for that? So your brothers can benefit?”

Slowly, angrily, she pushed herself back to an upright position, dizziness swirling. “You really are an ass.”

He snorted. “I’m a simple guy. I boil things down to the basics, and those are the basics.” He paused. “Aren’t they? I’m saving you from Amal’s murderous animals for what? So you can marry some other tyrant?”

“Haroun is not like that! I don’t have to justify myself to you.”

“Then why did you tell me?”

Dalilah’s pulse pounded.

He muttered a curse and thrust the water pouch at her. She swigged, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, shoved it back at him.

“I don’t expect you to understand!”

“You’re right, I don’t.”

“And why the hell not?”

“I thought you said—” He stared at her. “Look, drop it. Now is not the time.”

She looked daggers at him, her cheeks hot.

He glanced at the sun, then his watch, irritability and tension rolling off his body. “You ready?”

“I need to rest another minute. I can’t go on like this.” She began to sit down on a rock, but his hand shot out and he grabbed her good arm, yanking her away from the rock. Shock, rage, sliced through Dalilah and she shook him off. “What the—”

He jerked his chin to where she’d been about to sit. A scorpion, translucent brown, scuttled, sideways, tail curved high in warning. She stared at it, then started to tremble, her head pounding in pain as she fought the emotion threatening to suddenly overwhelm her.

He was watching her intently.

“Okay,” he said. “Sit. Five minutes—that’s it.” His tone was softer, but underlying it she heard the frustration, the urgency. Amal was gaining. Her life was unraveling.

He fiddled with his GPS while she rested on the rock. Sun pressed down relentlessly, no shade anywhere for respite.

Brandt hooked the GPS back onto his belt, then as if he couldn’t hold it in, “It’s just—” He stopped himself.

“Just what?”

“Nothing.”

“Say it, Brandt. You owe it to me.”

He glanced away, struggling with something. Then he said, “You just don’t seem the type to go through with an arranged marriage, Dalilah.”

“Oh, and what type might that be?”

He rubbed his brow. He seemed to be fighting the need to go there, but it was eating at him nevertheless.

“You’re liberated, strong, independent...Jesus, Dalilah, you have more assets than...” He swallowed. “All those things you forced on me about yourself—your job, being an investment consultant, buying your own penthouse, having good friends, doing volunteer work that satisfies you. You shoot like an ace. You’re strong...and goddamn beautiful.” His voice hitched, going thick. “You’re desirable enough to make a man weep.”

Her eyes gleamed.

“And no matter how you package it to me, or to yourself, you’re throwing it away because some man signed you over to an Arabian prince when you were five.”

“Not some man, Brandt. My father. A king.”

“Doesn’t change what it is.”

“It does. I’m a royal. I have obligations. This is bigger than just who I want to sleep with.”

His eyes darkened, a muscle working on his brow.

“You know what,” she said suddenly. “I lied—I did expect you to understand, because of the importance you said you placed in a promise. Because of the way you spoke about loyalty and honor.” She held her arm up. “And that is what my ring is about—loyalty, honor, duty.”

He stared at her, then the ring.

A vulture circled up high, casting a shadow. Brandt rubbed the back of his neck.

“It’s the double standard,” he said quietly. “That’s what irks the hell out of me. Your brothers got to marry whoever they wanted. Omair was the king of one-night stands before he took a bride. Yet you—you can’t enjoy those same freedoms and choices. You’re sold like a pawn for their benefit.”

“And what about my benefit?”

“Really?”

She glared at him, her pulse racing. Then she said, very quietly. “You know, I wavered once, several years ago. I had met a guy that I liked. A lot. And one night...it led to a kiss, and I wondered if I could go through with this. Then, the very next morning, I got news of the coup in Al Na’Jar—my mother and father had just been murdered in their own beds—their throats slit by their own guards. And on that same night, my oldest brother, Da’ud, was murdered on his yacht off Barcelona. Assassins also went to Zakir’s penthouse in Paris and the only reason he escaped was because he was out that night.” She inhaled deeply.

“Da’ud had been next in line to take the throne and he’d been ready for it. But Zakir wasn’t prepared to lead—he never wanted to. He was a playboy and an entrepreneur, yet he was compelled to return to Al Na’Jar, where he took the throne in a very troubled and violent time of rebellion. Zakir did his duty, Brandt. He gave up his life for our kingdom. And he didn’t tell anyone he was going blind as he did this.” Her voice grew thick, emotional. Caught.

“Dalilah, this is not the time to—”

“No! I want you to hear it. I need you to hear this. Omair didn’t shy from committing to relationships because he didn’t want one. He had to. He couldn’t have a normal life. He couldn’t involve a woman in what he was doing. He was driven to hunt the globe to bring those assassins to justice, desert style. A blood honor. Only through that process did he find Faith, his wife—and he was able to bring her into his life because she was like him, a soldier. An assassin. She understood him, and his life.”

Brandt opened his mouth, but Dalilah raised her hand. “No, hear me out, Brandt, please. Tariq was a neurosurgeon and he was engaged to a woman he loved more than life itself. But Amal’s father had a bomb planted on our royal jet and Tariq’s fiancée died in his arms as he tried to save her. Tariq was badly scarred in more ways than one, and he lost the use of his arm in that blast. His career was over. In some ways he died himself that day. And it took a long time, and the help of a special woman to bring him back to life.”

She paused, looking into his eyes, emotion ballooning in her chest. “And me? I went to school in the United States. I got to pursue my career, my interests. Sure, I built something, but I never suffered like they did.” She inhaled deeply. “My brothers did their duty, are doing it. And now, this is my cross to bear, my way to give. It was my dead father’s wish.”

He stared at her. “You’re doing it out of guilt,” he whispered.

“I’m doing it for family and kingdom.”

Something changed in his face. “It’s not right, Dalilah,” he said quietly. “It’s not you.”

“You barely even know me, Brandt.”

“Oh, I know what you’re made of. You put someone into a life-and-death situation and you get to see pretty damn quick what’s at the core of that person. You’ve got what it takes—you’ve got so much. I hate to see you throw your life away.”

“I’m not throwing it away—I’m gaining a political advantage.”

“Yeah, well, apparently you’ve made up your mind about that one. So, don’t come looking to me for endorsement, because I don’t think your brothers deserve what you’re doing for them. How well do you know this Haroun anyway—apart from meeting him five times?”

“Well enough.”

“Will you be safe? Are you certain he won’t hurt you?’

“What are you saying, Brandt?”

He hesitated, turned away, stared out over the bush. Then he turned back, as if having made up his mind about something. “I’m saying I know things. I did covert intelligence work in Libya. Those two Egyptian men who killed that Sa’ud sheik’s fiancée in Dubai were known assassins—the Libyan authorities were looking for them.”

Tension thrummed.

“Doesn’t prove anything,” she whispered.

“Those men had done contract work for the Kingdom of Sa’ud before, Dalilah, paid for by Hassan royalty.”

“Work?”

“Murder for hire.”

Blood drained from her head. “And you know this because of your covert work?”

“It wasn’t a robbery gone wrong in Dubai, Dalilah. That woman was killed by the Hassans because she’d tainted the royal family by sleeping with another man.”

“Does Omair know this, too?”

“I don’t know what Omair knows. He wasn’t with me on the job in Libya.”

She stared at him, her brain reeling.

“Haroun had nothing to do with that incident. He wasn’t part of it.”

“Are you so sure—a Sa’ud sheik about to become king? Do you think, in the eyes of his kingdom, he’d be allowed to be seen tolerating any indiscretion on your part? I just don’t trust the House of Sa’ud.”

Silence quivered between them. She could hear bees buzzing somewhere, the shriek of a raptor. Her head hurt.

“He’s probably slept with a thousand women himself, and expects you to come to his bed a virgin.”

Heat flushed her cheeks. “That’s unfair,” she said quietly.

“That, Dalilah, is the way the cookie crumbles with men like Sheik Haroun Hassan. Trust me, I know. He can have whatever—or whoever—the hell he wants, when he wants, but you can’t.”

“You don’t even know him.”

“Yeah,” he said softly. “Well, apparently, neither do you.”

Tension simmered between them.

“Why—” her voice came out in a hoarse whisper

“—are you so bitter? Is it because your own marriage didn’t work?”

He came close. She could feel his heat, a kinetic energy rolling off him. He bent down, abruptly cupped the back of her head, and kissed her. Hard. Angry, fierce. She stiffened under him, then instantly melted under her own fire, opening her mouth, reaching up behind his neck, pulling him into herself, kissing him so wildly she could taste blood. Tears came from her eyes, her tongue twisting with his, tasting the salt of him, feeling the rough stubble of his jaw against her cheek.

He pulled back suddenly, breathing hard, his eyes wild.

“That’s why,” he whispered.

She was shaking, her eyes burning.

“Because I care. Because I’ve fallen for you, Princess. And because I can’t have you, and Sheik Hassan can.”

Moisture pooled in her eyes.

“And believe me, Dalilah, I tried not to care—I’m trying not to care. But...” His eyes glittered. “I do respect your honor, your decision to marry for politics, for your kingdom. But what I can’t swallow is that you’ll be sacrificing your identity when I can see it makes you so unhappy.”

The tears in her eyes slid down her cheeks. He appraised her silently for a moment, struggling with something himself. Then he checked his watch. “Five minutes are up, Princess.” He spun away sharply and began to march over the dry, baking earth.

“We’ve wasted enough bloody time!” he muttered over his shoulder. “Amal will be right on our asses at this rate.”

* * *

It was almost 11:00 a.m. when Brandt stopped suddenly and held up his hand. Dalilah, zoned out from heat and almost five hours of continuous walking, bumped right into his back.

“What is it?” she whispered.

Then she heard it, a lowing, the distant clang of a bell.

“Livestock. We must be close to the village.”

They came over a ridge and Brandt quickly motioned for her to get down.

He lowered himself beside her, just under the lip of a sandy ridge baking under the noon sun.

“Lie flat,” he said softly.

They studied the village from their hiding spot. It was fenced and contained several small square houses, painted brightly, with corrugated tin roofs. Papaya trees grew in barren red ground. A few dogs lay in shade and chickens scratched in soil. Goats bleated behind an enclosure while barefoot children played in what looked like a schoolyard—dusty brown legs. A burst of bright laughter reached them.

Dalilah’s heart twisted.

It felt so strange to hear children laughing, see them playing, to think of a weekday and school hours while they’d been on the run, hunted by violent killers still on their tracks. And now she was lying here with this man she was beginning to love, and couldn’t have—it made it all seem so surreal.

There was a small fenced-off vegetable garden beside the school building and a tower with a water tank nearby. A windmill creaked in the hot breeze. No phone lines. No electricity. A little oasis of life separate from the rest of the world. Dalilah watched as two women with yellow plastic containers in a cart bent over a tap with a hose attached, filling the vessels. A toddler played in the sand at their feet.

It drove home suddenly the reason she was here in southern Africa. The deal in Harare.

The dead delegates. Her brother sending Brandt.

She looked at him.

Because I care. Because I’ve fallen for you, Princess. And because I can’t have you, and Sheik Hassan can...

Did her brothers care? She’d never spoken to them about her marriage doubts. Apart from that one instance of hesitation right before her parents were killed, Dalilah hadn’t even articulated her fears to herself. Until now—until the Zimbabwe trip, until she’d met Brandt, and kissed him. Until he’d abducted her—physically ripping her out from the very fabric of her life, affording her a reprieve.

How could she expect her brothers to understand or care if she hadn’t spoken to them? Dalilah wondered what her father might say if he were alive today, and she told him she wanted to marry a man for love.

Brandt felt her watching him and turned to look at her.

“What are you thinking?” he said.

“About their water. About my volunteer work and what it means to me.”

Brandt held her gaze, something softening in his eyes, then he turned back to the village. “One jeep,” he said. “Over there, parked behind what looks like some kind of communal building.”

“Can we bargain with them for the jeep, do you think?”

“I don’t want them to see us. If Amal gets wind these villagers have any information on us, he’ll slaughter them all—like he did everyone at the lodge.”

“You want to steal it?”

“Liberate it, temporarily.”

She smiled. “I’ll pay them back for it once we’re safe.”

“Your brother will.”

“No. He won’t.”

He shot her a fast glance, brow raised.

“This is not his mission. Not anymore.”

Brandt opened his mouth, but she spoke first.

“I don’t care what you say about paying him back, or owing him. That’s between you and him. This is about me. My life. My mission. I’m taking it back, taking control. My brothers don’t run my life.” Then she muttered, “As much as they might try.”

He laughed, softly, darkly. “They do control it if you marry for them and not for yourself,” he said.

She held his gaze. “If I marry, it’ll be my choice.”

His features tightened, eyes narrowing.

“If?”

Dalilah’s heart beat faster. She hadn’t intended phrasing it that way. She averted her eyes.

A woman came out of the school building and rang a handbell. The noise of the children rose as they pushed and jostled and raced to line up in front of her. The woman waited until the line fell silent, then she led the kids single file into the building. In the shade of a tree two men were talking.

“How can we get that jeep with all these people about?”

Brandt took the camera from his pack and panned the village using the telephoto lens. “We could wait until dark,” he said. “But that could cost us valuable time. The foot-and-mouth fencing makes it more difficult,” he said, adjusting the lens and focusing on the jeep. “There’s only one way in and out and that’s through the cattle gate and disinfectant troughs over there.”

“Is that fencing and trough to control the spread of hoof and mouth, then?” she asked.

He nodded. “The disease devastated Botswana some years back,” he said. “See, next to the cattle gate is a smaller trough for people to walk through so they don’t carry the disease on their shoes.”

They lay a while longer in the sun, watching for opportunity.

Brandt cursed softly. “I hate the very idea of bringing Amal close to this place. This village,” he said, “is what Botswana is about for me. This peace. This lack of outside distraction, just people living in the present with what they’ve got.”

“Is that why you came to Botswana, Brandt?”

He grunted, moved the camera, focusing in on the jeep again. “The longer we wait, the closer Amal gets. It’s becoming a toss-up between keeping this village safe, and you alive.” He swore again, set the camera down, fingered his gun, watching, thinking. She could see he was conflicted.

He turned and looked toward the western horizon. She could see him calculating alternatives.

“That road you mentioned—how far is it from here?”

He rubbed the back of his neck—it was being burned by the sun. She could feel her own skin burning and was grateful for the hat. He had none.

“It’s not just the distance to the road. Once we hit that road we need to go south, then veer off into bush again. It would take us days on foot.”

“Maybe we could flag down a vehicle on the road.”

“The traffic is sporadic at best. We could be sitting ducks waiting out there.” Tension was tightening his voice. He was being eaten up with this immobility, the waiting. She swatted a fly. Another hour ticked by, but life continued to move in the village.

“I made your brother a promise,” he said quietly, as if thinking out loud. “No matter what you say about this mission being yours or his, I’m going to get you home alive. And I need that jeep to do it.”

The sun hit its zenith, small and white-hot in the hazy sky. Dalilah took off her hat and smoothed back her hair, wiped her brow. Brandt handed her a stick of biltong. They chewed in silence.

“So, what did happen ten years ago, Brandt, that has you paying Omair back like this now?”

His mood darkened. Then after a few beats he said, “I think you already have it figured out, Dalilah.”

She hooked her brow up. “How so?”

“You’ve been digging information out of me in bits, storing them like puzzle pieces in that pretty head of yours—I figure you’ve put most of the puzzle together.”

A dung beetle tried to roll a ball of dung up the sandbank. It got almost to the lip, then the dung rolled back down. Like a small black crepuscular tank the beetle scurried after it, started again. Almost at the lip, the ball escaped the beetle’s grasp, rolled back down, and the beetle once again began the upward push—a Sisyphean task. Beetle needed a damn break. She picked up a stalk of dry grass and pushed the dung ball over the lip for the beetle, then dusted her hand off on her pants.

“You want me to tell you what I’ve got, then?” she said finally.

“Not really.”

She poked holes in the dirt with her stick, thinking. “I’m going to tell you anyway.”

A wry smile twisted his mouth. “Why does this not surprise me?”

“I got that ten years ago something happened while you were with the FDS. Maybe on a job. It involved a woman, and it involved betrayal. And you blame yourself for her death—it cracked something inside you.” She glanced at him. “It made you bitter, leery of any level of commitment, afraid to fall in love again.”

His eyes bored into her, intense. A muscle began to tick at his jaw.

“Omair intervened and saved your life somehow.” She paused, thinking. “It had to be something big, or you wouldn’t be here with me now, paying him back like this.”

She doodled her stick, then slid her gaze back to meet his. He wasn’t smiling. He looked dangerous—a look she’d glimpsed in him before. She swallowed, throat dry, feeling nervous suddenly. “But the part I haven’t figured out,” she said, “is that you mentioned you were betrayed twice. Promises broken twice.”

He remained silent, regarding her intently.

“So—what happened? Does it have something to do with marriage?” she said after a while.

“Why do you ask that?”

“Because you said you were not the one to talk about marriage, that you’d failed at that.”

“Dalilah.” His voice was low, cool. “Why are you pressing me like this—what difference does it make to you?”

Her face heated. She glanced away, watched a row of little red ants trying to attack a dragonfly—iridescent green and turquoise. She thought of her jewels, her wealth. Her ring.

Slowly she glanced up and met his eyes again. “Because you’re not the only one who cares, Brandt.”

“And that’s where it ends.”

“Does it?”

His eyes narrowed sharply. “What are you saying, Dalilah?”

“I don’t know what I’m saying.” But she did know—she was thinking beyond caring for him. She was thinking about the possibilities of acting on her affection. Of being with him beyond this mission.

He moistened his lips, a pain gleaming in his eyes, brief, then gone. He wiped his brow, fingered his gun.

“When I was twenty-one,” he said slowly, “just after I got out of the army—they had conscription back then in South Africa—I married the woman I loved. We had a son.”

Shock whispered through Dalilah—this she had not expected.

“What’s his name, Brandt? How old is he?”

“He’s dead.”

Double shock. Dalilah’s brain raced, a reticence to push further fighting with her now-intense curiosity.

“What happened?”

He checked his watch as if the time would miraculously give him a way out. He shifted his body on the sand, features tight. He was like a caged lion who couldn’t handle immobility, trapped with her questions in this cauldron of dust and heat.

She touched his hand. “It’s okay, I don’t need to know.”

He inhaled deeply. “His name was Stefaan, Stefaan after my father. A beautiful blond little boy, hair like white fluff—blue eyes.” His voice thickened, catching. His eyes were raw.

Emotion gripped Dalilah’s throat.

“He was two years old when he was mauled and killed by our dog.” Brandt looked away, getting a grip on himself. “It was my fault. I left the two of them alone in the garden for one second—went in the house to get lemonade for Stefaan.” His voice was flat now, empty. “Yolanda, my wife, blamed me for it. We ended up in different rooms, different beds. She wouldn’t—couldn’t—look me in the eyes. Sometimes I’d feel her watching me, though, and I’d turn, and recognize pure hatred on her face.” He inhaled, blew out a long, slow breath, wiping sweat from his brow again.

“She was in pain. We both were. Yolanda looked to my older brother for comfort. Pieter.” His jaw tightened around the name. “Pieter had always had a thing for Yolanda, and he stepped in and took on the role of comforting her. And sleeping with her.” He paused, a long while. “He shot the dog.”

Words defied Dalilah. But she suddenly understood Brandt wholly, the bitterness. The issues with promise and commitment.

“It was my damn dog,” he said very quietly. “A Staffie cross, russet coat. I found him living wild in the bush when I was stationed up at Caprivi. I sneaked him home, named him Jock.” He made a wry smile. “Like the old story we all read as kids, Jock of the Bushveld. Do you know it?”

She shook her head.

“Written by Sir James Percy Fitzpatrick in the 1800s, a true story about his travels across the veldt with his dog. Jock’s become part of South African culture. My Jock was a good dog—I thought he was fine with kids. Until that day. I still don’t know what set him off. Maybe Stefaan just got in his space.”

She touched his arm, gently. His skin was hot. He stared at her hand.

“Brandt, I’m so sorry. You should have been able to grieve together—”

“Damn right.” He ground out the words. “I figure she’d have eventually cuckolded me with that brother of mine. Losing our son was a catalyst—gave him opportunity.”

The wind rose, dust picking up in small dervishes.

“Is that when you joined the FDS, after your marriage fell apart?”

“Yeah. Buried my boy. Buried the dog. Sold the farm. Got as far away as possible. I worked with men who understood loyalty. And I earned good money, played too hard, didn’t think too much.”

“Except for the photos.”

His eyes shot to hers. But he said nothing.

“And then you met someone else?”

He snorted softly. “Carla. Daughter of a Nicaraguan police chief. He had a big drug crackdown looming, a battle with a cartel leader whose son his daughter had started seeing. He wanted me to get her away and keep her away—he expected bloodshed and retaliation, and he figured the cartel would use his daughter to get to him. My job was to abduct her and hide her, protect her. It was a mission that took months. She was beautiful—dark hair, smoky eyes, dusky skin, body to die for. She pushed all my buttons.” He glanced her way. “You remind me of her.”

Dalilah swallowed, another puzzle piece clicking into place—his conflict over her, his brusqueness when they’d first met.

“You fell for her.”

Brandt was silent a long while. “I crossed a line, Dalilah. A line I had no bloody right to cross. She came on to me. And I fell for it.”

“What do you mean, fell for it?”

“She was using me, and I didn’t see it coming. We were in a remote mountain area. Just our camp, me and her. We started sleeping together. I lost focus enough to think I didn’t have to watch her every second. I began to trust her, and one night she used my communications equipment to tell Alejandro—the drug lord’s son—where she was. His father sent Alejandro and some men. They attacked two nights later. He killed her.”

“Alejandro killed her?”

Brandt closed his eyes and his voice went strange. “He was never into Carla. They were using her all along—her father was right. They surprised me, beat me, tied me up where I was forced to watch and hear them rape her. Then Alejandro slit her throat.” He swallowed. “They let me live—to deliver the message to her father.”

Horror washed up her throat. “Oh, God, Brandt.”

How did someone come back from that?

“People do make mistakes in life,” he said quietly. “You learn from them and move on. But my mistakes—they resulted in death. I tried to run from the images in my head, the sights, sounds, smells...her screams. But they would wake me in the night. That’s when I hit the whiskey—looking for relief. I was blind drunk for months, living in a slum. That’s when your brother came to Nicaragua, to find me, haul me out. He took me back to the FDS base on São Diogo, sobered me up, slapped me around and forced me back into some sort of functional shape. And that, Dalilah, is why I’m going to hand you back to Omair in one piece, or die trying.”

No man left behind.

The final puzzle pieces locked into place. Emotions rushed through her chest.

“So that’s when you quit military life—you vowed to get out, to stop killing.”

“I used to think of violence as a harsh but justifiable means to an end—most soldiers do, or they couldn’t keep doing the job. But violence has consequences—it always, always comes with collateral damage. You think soldiers, cops, become inured—that’s a myth. Most perpetrators of violence just keep pushing their reactions down deep, until there’s too much buried, and you wonder why they snapped.”

A profound and powerful affection for this man swelled so fast and hard in Dalilah’s chest it was painful. This powerful body of Brandt Stryker’s housed a man with depth and compassion. He’d been hurt inside and out, and was badly scarred because of it.

Dalilah understood that kind of scarring—her family had been through it with her brother Tariq. And she was filled now with the need to nurture, hold him, love him, heal him and it made her eyes burn because it scared her.

His gaze flicked to her engagement ring.

“That’s also why I know marriage is not what it’s cracked up to be,” he said quietly.

Without thinking, Dalilah leaned forward, took his roughly stubbled cheek in her hand, drew his face toward her and kissed him. Softly, tenderly.

Brandt melted into the sensation of her lips over his, the touch of her hand against his skin. His eyes burned with a sweet kind of pain as he kissed her back gently, so gently it hurt every aching, burning nerve in his body. And he wanted her—all of her—for himself.

He wanted to take her home. Make her his.

Brandt had never taken a woman back to his farm.

His world narrowed as he threaded his fingers into her hair, soft and thick in his hand, and he drew her closer to him.

Then a slow prickle started up Brandt’s neck—a hunter’s instinct. A sense of being watched, preyed on. He froze. Her body stilled under his.

“Don’t move,” he murmured against her lips, his hand going for his gun, finger curling into the trigger. He breathed in slowly, very slowly, then whipped onto his back, spinning the rifle round.