Guarding the Princess

chapter 6



Dalilah tried to sort one-handed through the jumble of clothing Brandt had thrust onto the seat beside her, but she was shivering badly now. Temperatures had dropped, but she knew the kiss had shaken her more than the cold. She didn’t want to articulate what that really meant to her, or her future. But she sensed a seismic shift had taken place somewhere deep down within her and it had all started with this last ClearWater mission to Zimbabwe. Dalilah suddenly had no idea what she was doing anymore. After all these years of knowing with crystal clarity that it was her royal duty to marry Sheik Haroun Hassan, after knowing she had to come to the marriage a virgin, as per the contract her father had signed, Dalilah had gone and kissed a virtual stranger—and liked it. A lot. Too much.

She’d barely ever kissed a man in her life.

Stupid, she muttered to herself. Damn stupid. You’re drunk, stressed and in shock and in pain, and it’ll all look different in the morning. Just shut it out, like it never happened. In daylight you’ll be able to see your path again.

Dalilah struggled out of her torn gown and into the light safari pants. She pulled a long-sleeved cotton shirt over a T-shirt, and fumbled to get her feet into the socks and hiking boots Brandt had given her. The dry clothes were deliciously welcome, if a little big.

As she tried fruitlessly to do up the buttons on the shirt, Dalilah glanced at the sarong Brandt had used to partition off the driver’s seat from the back of the jeep. He might be a brutish, scarred lion of a man, but there was a gentleman buried deep inside that tawny brawn somewhere. And the tenderness in his touch had not gone unnoticed in spite of the way he’d shut her down—he was struggling with something inside himself, also. It made her even more curious about him.

Cursing as a button refused to slide through the tiny opening, she glanced again at the curtain. Behind it she could see Brandt’s shadow moving as he organized things in the back.

If you need help changing, tell me.

No way on this earth was she going to ask him for help dressing, not after what his touch had already done to her body. And her mind.

While she struggled, Dalilah could hear Brandt going around to the rear of the jeep. The vehicle began to bounce around as he hefted and grunted. Then she heard his boots crunching through twigs as he left the vehicle. Quickly she leaned forward and peered around the sarong curtain.

He was carrying the stiff leopard carcass across his shoulders, the headlamp lighting his way toward a cluster of trees. With a grunt, he lowered himself to his haunches and tilted the leopard’s body onto the dirt. It landed with a soft, dull thud. Dalilah closed her eyes.

She’d forgotten for a moment the leopard was still on the backseat. She’d forgotten, too, in their struggle to get out of Zimbabwe alive, about the little cub left behind in the tree. Emotion ballooned painfully in her chest.

It had all been too much. She breathed in deeply, steadying herself as she opened her eyes and watched Brandt.

He was on his haunches, his forearms braced on his muscular thighs for balance, as if he was just sitting there, thinking. Then he reached out and laid his palm gently on the animal’s fur, something reverent in his gesture. Something very private. Then as if sensing her watching, he suddenly spun around.

Dalilah ducked quickly back behind the kikoi. She heard him returning, opening the tool compartment at the rear. Then she heard a clunking sound as he removed something, and his boots crunched over to the leopard again. Once more she peeked round the curtain.

He had the shovel in his hand. The blade chinked against small stones as he thrust it into the soil—Brandt was digging a grave for the female leopard.

Dalilah’s chest hurt as she watched him gently roll the dead animal into its resting place. He began to cover it, his muscles rolling under his soaked shirt, and it struck her how tired he must be. How long he’d been at it since flying his plane into Zimbabwe, hiking up to the lodge to rescue her. Finding all this equipment and getting them both across the river. Now he was taking time to bury the leopard in a way that revealed a respect for life.

Compassion washed through Dalilah. And for a brief moment she wished she hadn’t witnessed this vignette. It was bad enough falling in lust with this man, but feeling this kinship, this compassion—it complicated things she was already struggling with in her own head.

Omair might have sent the right man to save her life. But on some level Dalilah sensed Brandt was a game changer—he’d unleashed something in her that wasn’t going to be easy to put back into its box. Perhaps Omair had actually made a grave mistake.

She should never have kissed Brandt back. But she had. Dalilah’s gaze lowered to the massive diamond on her swollen finger, a stone that could probably feed an entire Zimbabwean village for a lifetime. A stone that could buy access to clean water resources, to solar power. A stone that could help her do the good she craved. And Dalilah was suddenly overwhelmed. She felt like a hypocrite and it all came crashing down on her now, rapid-fire chunks of thoughts, images. Her life. Her duty. Her freedom. Why she’d been in Zimbabwe in the first place...how this had been her last big deal. How her brothers had lied to her by omission, trying to protect her by not informing her that they knew their family’s arch enemy—Amal Ghaffar—was still alive.

How she felt nothing at all for Haroun—hardly knew him at all.

And suddenly she was spent, in pain, beyond thinking, analyzing, didn’t even want to. She just wanted to get through this. Alive.

Exhausted, Dalilah sat limp, staring at the coppery glow of the flames on the churning and swirling river, listening to Brandt moving in the shadows as he finished covering the grave.

“You done yet?” he called out as he returned with the shovel.

“I’m surprised you went to the trouble of burying it,” she said. “Why did you?”

“Trackers would have seen it,” he said, voice clipped as he marched around to the rear of the truck, where he replaced the shovel.

“They’re going to see our tire tracks here under the trees, anyway,” she said, reading more into his actions than he was admitting.

Choosing not to answer, he sullenly dusted his hands off on his shorts and re-angled the headlamp on his head before reaching for the first-aid box. “So, are you done?”

“Apart from the buttons and the bootlaces. I can’t do them with one hand.”

He grunted as he ripped open a pouch containing a pad soaked in disinfectant and cleaned his hands with it. Then, climbing into the front seat next to her, Brandt regarded her, assessing her condition. Under the light coming from the lamp on the roll bar above, Dalilah noticed for the first time a tattoo of a lion on his shoulder.

“Clothes don’t fit too badly,” he said, opening the first-aid kit.

“Good thing the pants came with a belt.” Dalilah offered a tremulous smile, but he did not return it. A strange little sinking feeling went through her stomach.

All business now, Brandt took her arm, felt for a pulse, before cutting off the sleeve above her elbow. Feeling carefully along her radius, he lingered, closer to her wrist, gently palpating where there was swelling. She winced, and immediately he released pressure.

“Seems to be a fairly straightforward fracture. Best we can do is splint and stabilize it until we can get medical attention. Your fingers are quite swollen,” he said. “If you swell any more, Dalilah, we’re going to have to cut that thing off, okay?” He jerked his chin at her engagement ring.

She moistened her lips, nodded, tears of pain and emotion filling her eyes. He glanced up at her face, forcing her to squint against the sharp light from his headlamp.

“Sorry.” He lowered his head, averting the light from her face.

“I’m okay. Just...tired.”

He inhaled slowly, deeply, as he opened a packet containing a blue-and-orange splint. “SAM splint,” he explained. “Made from malleable aluminum lightly padded with foam on either side. It can be molded and shaped for various splinting tasks.”

He bent the splint to form a long channel, which he wrapped around the back of her elbow, sandwiching her arm down to her fingers, which he left free. He bound the splint firmly into place with a bandage, his movements deft and smooth.

“You’ve done this before,” she said.

“A couple of times.”

“Are you a mercenary, Brandt?”

“Ex. I’m going to do up your buttons, then make a sling.” His hands moved between her breasts and he kept his eyes averted from hers. “Now, hold your splinted arm against your abdomen like this,” he said, showing her. Then, lifting the damp hair away from the nape of her neck, he tied a sling fashioned from one of the triangle bandages.

A shiver chased down her back as the rough skin of his callused hands brushed against the tender skin on the back of her neck. She felt him pause briefly at her reaction. The tension between them was still thick and sexual.

“There,” he said, packing up the first-aid kit. “That should do it.”

“Did you work with Omair, with the Force du Sable?”

“You need to eat something,” he said, ignoring her question. “I’ve got some tinned food, biltong, apples.” He moved the curtain aside and reached into the cooler at the back as he spoke. “We’ll get something into you, then you must sleep. We’ve got about an hour left until first light. The flood buys us some time, and it’s better not to move into unknown terrain while dark if we can help it. But when we do move, we’ll need to go fast because we’ll be leaving a trail in the mud that even a blind man could track.” He held up three tins. “Bully beef, ravioli or chili con carne?”

She glanced at the tins. “You said you had apples?”

He frowned, handed her a green apple.

“Thanks.” Dalilah took a bite. It was sour, and she felt nauseous.

“You need something more substantial than that,” he said, reaching up to click off his headlamp.

She said nothing, just chewed, focusing on making the fruit go down. He watched her intently, then his gaze slid back down to the diamond ring poking out of her splint.

“Who’s the guy?”

Dalilah swallowed her mouthful of apple. He was probably thinking about the fact she’d kissed him back while she was promised to another man.

“Sheik Haroun Hassan of Sa’ud,” she said.

His eyes flashed up to hers.

“The Kingdom of Sa’ud?”

“Yes.”

His jaw tightened and he leaned back into the driver’s seat, facing the front. He stared at the churning river as he spun a can of ravioli round and round in his hands.

“You have an issue with the Kingdom of Sa’ud?” she said quietly, watching his profile, the tension in his hands.

“I know the House of Sa’ud is stinking oil-rich.” His words were abrupt, and he didn’t look at her when he spoke. “I also know the Sa’ud royal family is fiercely traditional, and that the old king is not expected to live long. It’s creating some uncertainty in the Middle East.”

She nodded. “Haroun is his only son. He’ll be king soon.”

“And then you’ll be queen.” His tone was matter-of-fact, yet spiced with distaste.

“And you disapprove.”

He just snorted.

“Brandt—what is it?”

“Two years ago,” he said quietly, watching the water, “there was a big to-do in the news about a sheik from the House of Sa’ud. He was accused of having his fiancée murdered while she was visiting Dubai. The king used his influence, made the charges go away.”

Dalilah swallowed, the apple sticking in her craw. “Yes,” she said quietly. “The sheik was—is—a very distant cousin of Haroun’s. But the Dubai incident had nothing to do with Haroun.”

He spun suddenly to face her. “The woman was his fiancée, Dalilah.”

“She was killed by two Egyptians. It was a robbery gone wrong in her hotel room. The Egyptians were caught.”

“The BBC claimed the Egyptians were hit men—”

“There was no proof, no evidence. No—”

“There were rumors the hit men were hired after the Sa’ud sheik found his fiancée was cheating on him, that it was an honor killing, because she was unfaithful, tainted goods.” He turned to face her and his ice eyes were suddenly ice-cold and fierce under the white light of the Petzl lamp above.

A chill sunk into Dalilah. She held the half-eaten apple in her lap, her own insecurities about the case welling inside her again.

“Do you believe everything you read?” she said.

“I believe in this case, where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”

“The truth is not always what it seems at first blush, you know. This guy—Haroun’s cousin—was prejudged because of his culture, because he’s a wealthy oil sheik.”

“Is that what you think this is? Prejudice?”

“Yeah, I do. Just like you prejudged me for being royalty.”

He glared at her, a muscle working along his jaw.

Dalilah pushed a fall of hair off her brow, self-conscious now. And she realized her hair was thick with mud, and that she was too darn tired to argue or explain anything. Or even think about how Haroun had sidestepped the issue when she’d tried to discuss the case with him last year. She put her head back, the unfinished apple resting uneaten in her hand.

“So, when is the wedding?”

She looked away. So far away, it all seemed. She got a sinking, claustrophobic feeling in her chest at the thought of it all.

“Nineteen months.”

“You’ll get married in Sa’ud?”

She nodded.

He blew out a breath.

Dalilah turned her head toward him. “What exactly is it that you don’t you approve of, Brandt? It’s not like you’re getting married—my choice has nothing to do with you.”

He met her eyes. “You’re right, it doesn’t.”

Guilt sliced through her—she’d kissed him. And a need rose in Dalilah to make him understand that she wasn’t a cheat, that she had values. That this momentary indiscretion was bothering her intensely.

“Tradition decrees we marry in his kingdom,” she explained.

Several beats of silence filled the space between them, and his gaze lowered slowly to her lips. Dalilah swallowed.

“I suppose,” he said slowly, still focused on her mouth, “that your guest list reads like a United Nations who’s who. I mean, who doesn’t want to rub shoulders with Sa’ud royalty, in spite of who they are. Did you send an invite to the White House, too?”

“You do have a problem.”

“Lady, I’ve got a lot of problems. Acquired over a lot of years. You don’t even want to go there. Let’s just deal with what’s at hand, okay. Why don’t you lean your back against the door, get your feet up on the seat here so I can lace up your boots.”

She put her feet up and he tied her bootlaces, his jaw tight, his movements brusque, tension still rolling off him. He yanked the laces tight. Too tight.

“Ouch.”

“Sorry.” He didn’t sound it. He loosened the lace, tried again.

“Is it Haroun’s wealth, his power that you don’t like?” she said irritably. “Or you don’t respect tradition or what? Or just the Sa’uds and their power?” She was pushing. She knew it, but now she needed to know, maybe because she was struggling trying to justify it all to herself.

“I guess I’m wondering where Haroun is right now,” he said. “And why Omair, not your fiancé, is paying me to save your royal tush.” He leaned forward slightly, lowering his voice to a dark whisper. “And you know what else is worrying me, Dalilah? It’s what Haroun might do if he finds out you like to kiss strange men—because Sa’ud sheiks seem to have a bad reputation handling that sort of thing.”

Blood drained from her head. “Brandt, it’s not what—”

He held up his big hand, stopping her dead. “Forget it, Dalilah. I don’t want to know.”

“You lie,” she said softly. “Or you wouldn’t have asked otherwise. You owe it to me to allow me to explai—”

“Here.” He abruptly peeled the top off the can of ravioli in his hands and stuck the fork end of his army knife into it. “Get this into you.”

Frustration burned through her. “I told you, I’m vegetarian.”

“Not on my watch you’re not,” he snapped. “I’m getting you out of the bush alive, whether you like it or not. We have no idea how long this will take. And when the jeep’s fuel runs out, we could be trekking on foot for days. You need energy to survive and there’s precious little lettuce or tofu you’re going to get out here, so you’d better adjust.” He took the half-eaten apple from her hand and replaced it with the tin.

“Eat.”

Defiance set her mouth and she glared stubbornly ahead.

He grabbed the rifle, flung open the door and went to stand on the riverbank, a dark silhouette against the fading glow of bushfire.

She glanced at the tin. In spite of herself hunger was gnawing into the acid burn of whiskey and sour apple in her stomach. Dalilah carefully tested a mouthful of cold beef ravioli. It didn’t taste half-bad. She tried to put her principles aside and took another mouthful.

Brandt began to pace along the bank, rifle in hand, staying close enough to ensure she was eating. And she did eat, suddenly overcome by ravenous hunger. The last time she’d had food, she realized, was part of a green salad at lunch yesterday. Finishing the contents of the small tin, she set it on the dash and within minutes, was asleep on the front seat.

Brandt glanced up to the vehicle. Under the faint bluish-white glow of the Petzl, Dalilah was slumped, head to the side, her dark, muddy hair splayed across the top of the seat. He blew out a heavy breath of air and stood for a while longer on the bank.

A predawn cold descended on him as the fire across the river began to die down to embers. He stared at the twisted black silhouettes rising out of the glowing coals, the carnage they’d escaped. Dawn was imminent, and with first light would come Amal. Brandt figured he’d let Princess sleep for maybe thirty more minutes, then they needed to move.

He returned to the vehicle, untied the sleeping bag from the bottom of the pack and, unzipping it, he draped it gently over her, tucking in the edges.

Unable to stop himself, he carefully studied her face in repose, taking time now to note the arch of her lips, the density of her impossibly long, black lashes, the angle of her cheekbones. Brandt’s skin heated as he thought of her kiss, her taste, her hunger, how he’d acted completely apart from logic.

Hell, he still wanted her—physically. Which went against the grain. His idea of commitment these past ten years was staying the whole night.

But this woman was in another league.

And she was promised to a man soon to be king, a sheik richer than the bloody queen of England. This knowledge had starkly redefined the boundaries of his mission. And yeah, maybe it was jealousy in part that made him feel a little bitter, that had made him attack the Sa’ud royal family like that, but there was something darker at play here. Haroun Hassan and the House of Sa’ud were dangerous.

Brandt knew this for a fact—he had inside information about those two Egyptian killers. While doing covert intelligence work in Libya, he’d seen proprietary photos of the two men, and in intelligence circles, those men had both been known assassins.

This gave him a whole other reason to keep his hands off Princess Dalilah Al-Arif—it was for her own protection. Because he had little doubt that if Sheik Hassan found out Dalilah was messing about with some hot-blooded, bush-addled ex-merc, it could be the death of her.

And him.

Oddly, this realization also stirred a protectiveness in him, which didn’t make sense. He glanced down at her again, and softness stole into his heart in spite of himself. There was something so gentle and vulnerable about her in sleep, her fiery energy blurred. He wondered why she’d actually chosen to marry Sheik Haroun Hassan in the first place, why she wanted to give up her independence, the charity work she was doing in Africa. Probably prestige, he thought. The Kingdom of Sa’ud was far more wealthy and politically influential than the Kingdom of Al Na’Jar—Haroun was a catch. With these thoughts came a whisper of disrespect.

For whatever reason Princess Dalilah had promised herself to the future king of Sa’ud, it was the choice she’d made. And in wearing that ring she’d made the man a promise.

A promise was something Brandt took very, very seriously.

He’d been burned himself by broken promises—he knew what that could do to a man. Brandt reached for the bottle of whiskey and took a hard swig. As the burn flushed through his chest he glanced down at Dalilah again, and this time he managed to feel nothing. She was just a principal. A package. He’d deliver her to her brother, and he to her prospective husband. No coddling. Talking only when absolutely necessary.

Just a job—for more reasons than he could count now.

* * *

Jacob held up his hand, calling the hunt party to a halt. A hint of light was creeping into the sky and he could just make out the glint of a small plane on the grassland below.

He and Jock had been leading the hunt posse through the night, assisted by Amal’s tracker and followed by four men on horses and six men in jeeps, including Amal. Jacob crouched to quietly watch the plane from the ridge and assess the situation.

But as Mbogo caught sight of the plane he whooped, hitting the accelerator of the jeep he was driving. Swerving around Jacob, Mbogo barreled his vehicle down the ridge and out over the plain toward the aircraft. The other jeep and three of the men on horseback bombed after him. One man on horseback remained to guard Jacob, his gun ready lest the tracker tried to take the gap and flee.

These men were stupid, thought Jacob as he began to proceed after them, slowly on foot, watching Jock carefully as he moved. They would miss signs by going straight for the plane. As he got to the bottom of the ridge, Jacob noticed Jock alerting to scent. He followed Jock until the dog alerted again.

Crouching, Jacob examined the ground with his flashlight, the man on the horse behind watching him. The rest of the party was circling the plane and he could hear snatches of voices carrying over the grassland. But his interest was in a series of holes in the ground. In some of the holes were tiny flecks of gold that reflected in his beam. The marks of gold stiletto heels, he thought. And one of the heels had been broken.

The princess had been here, crouching. There was a faint handprint, too. Jacob cut for more sign around this area and found a boot depression pooling with water. Slowly he glanced up and studied the plane in the distance. In the increasing light he saw it had no propeller, no doors.

The man who took the princess must have been planning to take to the air. But his plane had been robbed. No supplies, no transport, broken shoes on the woman. They would not get far. If the pilot was sharp, he’d go first to look for transport, food, water, before moving on.

Jacob looked up into the sky. If the pilot came over the Tsholo River in his plane, like a bird he would have seen the bush camp that lay to the north.

“Soek, Jock,” Jacob whispered to the dog, showing him the ground to initiate another search. The dog soon led him to what he was looking for—a set of tracks heading northward, toward the camp. He patted Jock, gave him a piece of biscuit from his pocket, then started toward the plane and the men. As he got closer, he saw, painted on the tail, the word Tautona.

Jacob knew immediately whose plane it was. A person could not be in Africa long without being given a nickname, something that described his personality. Tautona was the Setswana name given to a legendary bush pilot from Botswana named Brandt Stryker who sometimes flew guests over the border to the safari lodge where Jacob worked. Tautona was one of the few pilots who would still fly into Zimbabwe. Now look at what had happened to his plane—that’s why people didn’t come here anymore. The country was too hungry.

Jacob did not tell Amal what he’d seen, or knew. He just watched as Amal’s tracker started gesticulating west toward the river. The tracker was saying the plane had Botswana registration. It meant their quarry would probably have continued on foot directly west, making for the Tsholo River.

Amal glanced suddenly at Jacob, and he tensed inside.

“Jacob, come!” Amal pointed west. “They went that way—find their tracks!”

“I think they went another way, boss.”

“What?” Jacob pointed north. The men shook their heads and murmured in dissent.

“Get over here!” Amal ordered. Jacob just lowered his head. This angered Amal, who marched up to him and unsheathed his dagger. He shoved the tip against Jacob’s neck. “You messing with me, old man? You trying to send me on a wild-goose chase?”

“No, sir.”

Something flickered in Amal’s oil-black eyes. “We’ll see. If my tracker is right, if we find their trace at the river, I cut your guts out and leave you for the hyenas, understand?”

“Yes, sir, boss.”

Amal resheathed the dagger.

Jacob moved silently behind the posse of men as they headed straight for the line of dense foliage in the distance. Behind him the man on horseback followed, and Jacob knew the rifle was continually trained on him.

But he was biding his time. He had good information—he now knew how to find Mr. Stryker even without tracks, and he’d use his knowledge when it would serve him best.