Guarding the Princess

chapter 7



Dalilah came awake slowly, surfacing from some dark and terrible nightmare. Her head was spinning, images slicing through her brain. Automatic gunfire. Blood. Massacred bodies strewn under tables. Broken glass. Being carried on the back of a brutish man into the black African night. An awful dream...then her eyes jolted open.

Faint, gray light filtered into her field of vision. She turned her head slowly. Branches dripped onto the drab, olive-green canopy above her head. She was covered by an unzipped sleeping bag, warm, and she could smell mud, foliage like hay. The sound of a churning river filled her brain.

Panic licked suddenly through her and Dalilah tried to push herself into a sitting position on the front seat of the jeep before remembering her arm was broken. Gingerly, she edged fully up on the front seat. Through the dirty windshield the brown river swirled with yellow foam. The scent coming from wet, burned trees across the river was strong. Her heart started to pound. It wasn’t a dream.

The nightmare was real.

She held dead still, trying to orient herself, recall the sequence of events that had brought her here. But her arm hurt and her brain was fuzzy. Carefully she moved her head, neck stiff, taking further register of her surroundings.

She was alone in the front seat. Rain had stopped. The jeep was parked under a cathedral-like canopy of tall trees with lime-colored bark, leaves moving like silvery fish in a warm breeze that stirred up cooler pockets of air; the sensation of both warm and cold against her face felt strange.

Her heart beat faster, something akin to dread licking into her belly as she wondered where Brandt was, and then she recalled his kiss, the taste of him. Her own hot well of desire.

Oh, God.

She inhaled deeply, spun round in full-blown panic now, then sucked air in sharply as she saw him standing in the shadows, silent, rifle cradled in his arm. He was watching her, his pale eyes glacial-cool slits against darkly tanned skin, his features hard in this cruel light of dawn. Had she imagined it all in the night—the compassion in his touch, the warmth, the ferocity and tenderness of desire?

“How’re you feeling?” His Afrikaans accent sounded as gruff as he looked this morning.

Dalilah brushed a tangle of knotted hair back off her forehead. “Terrible, thanks.”

She disentangled herself from the sleeping bag as he started toward the jeep.

“Do you need to stretch your legs, or can you wait?”

She took his question as euphemism for bathroom break. “I can wait.”

“Good, because we need to get moving—I already let you sleep too long.”

He climbed into the jeep beside her, and the weight of the vehicle shifted. He secured the rifle on the dash and folded down the spattered windshield.

Brandt started the ignition and the diesel engine purred to life. He began to reverse from their spot beneath the trees. Swinging the wheel around, he checked the GPS and set a course directly perpendicular from the river. Dalilah saw him glance at his watch. Tension whispered through her.

Sharp grass stalks clicked and rustled under the carriage as they negotiated the space between trees and already temperatures were increasing. Dalilah glanced at Brandt’s profile, taking her first proper study of him in the unforgiving light of dawn.

He had a fighter’s face. The bridge of his nose had a bump, as if it had been broken more than once, and he had a fine scar across his jaw. He was not handsome, but arresting—there was something mesmerizing about the broad strokes and aggression of his features. This was a man who wouldn’t shy away from confrontation, who’d physically stand up for what he believed, or wanted.

His mouth was also powerful—wide, well-defined lips, the lines bracketing them etched deep. She liked the character in his face, a rugged map of his past experience. The memory of the taste of him, the sensation of the feather-soft brush of those powerful lips against hers filled her mind and Dalilah swallowed, her gaze lowering to his strong neck muscles that flared into broad shoulders which she knew from experience were strong and hard like iron. Dalilah glanced at his hands on the wheel. Firm, sure. Big. Knuckles also scarred.

She knew the palms of those hands were rough, and his fingers callused, but that his touch could be as gentle as he was dexterous. This was a physical man who spent a lot of his life outdoors, a man shaped, most likely, by wilderness, the sun, the space and freedom. And violence.

Dalilah wondered again about what he’d said about killing people, about how he knew her brother. He could feel her studying him, she was sure of it. But he didn’t glance her way. The sky turned soft gold as the first rays of sun crept over the land. Heat and humidity peaked instantly. She loosened her shirt, feeling thirst.

“Why a lion?”

Now he looked at her. “What?”

“Your tattoo.”

He gave a soft snort. “My African name—Tautona. That’s what the locals call me. It means old lion.”

“Why an old lion?”

A wry smile twisted over his lips. “Guess they figured I’m like those scarred old males that have been ousted from their pride and live alone on the fringes of the veldt. Have to hunt all by themselves—no females to do the job for them.”

“Is it true?”

He shot her another glance, and the brackets around his mouth deepened, but he said nothing.

“Where are we going?” she said finally.

“First, west. Then north, then southwest.”

“I mean, what is the plan, our destination? How long is it going to take?”

He inhaled, his grip firming on the wheel, as if irritated by having to explain things.

“Look, it might help to share the plan,” she said. “I helped you back at the river, remember? You might need me again. We made a good team last night.”

A muscle began to pulse at his jaw. And when he didn’t bother to dignify her with a reply, she lowered her voice and said irritably, “Brandt—”

He muttered something in Afrikaans she couldn’t understand, then said, “I want as much distance as possible between us and the Tsholo, okay? Then we turn northward to find a route up onto a plateau. Once up on the plateau we’ll head for a paved road, hopefully lose tracks while driving south along the tarmac for a while, then we’ll cut back into the bush and make for a safe place and phone your brother.” His tone was terse. “However, if by the time we reach the plateau tonight there is no sign of them following us, we might stop and rest for the night at an old airstrip I know, move again at first light.”

“How will we know if they’re following?”

“We should be able to get a good view of the land all the way to the river from up on the plateau.” He reached into the giant cooler on the seat behind him as he spoke, his eyes fixed on the terrain ahead. He came out with another apple and a bottle of water.

“Breakfast,” he said, dumping them in her lap. “I’ll make you some tea later.”

“Tea?” A sudden craving for the strong, warm sweet liquid filled her with a kind of desperation. “How?”

“Found a gas burner and kettle in the back with the shovel. Tea bags come from the bush camp.”

She positioned the water bottle between her knees and unscrewed the cap with her good hand. “I’m impressed that you got all this stuff,” she said, raising the bottle to her lips. “We could go for days—”

“Hope not,” he said crisply.

She paused, bottle midair. “Me, too. I was just—”

“Eat,” he said brusquely. “Drink.”

Dalilah glared at him, something immediately resisting inside her. She wasn’t accustomed to being ordered around. Her brothers tried, but she fought them every step of the way. It had become a reflex—her life was dominated by too many alpha men trying to push her around for her own damn good.

In spite of her thirst, Dalilah’s mouth flattened and she recapped the water bottle. She set the bottle and apple on the seat next to her.

He cast her a sideways glance, the sun’s rays filtering through the trees making his eyes an even paler blue.

“You really should eat.”

“I will when I’m hungry.” She was drawing her own little line in the sand, for whatever that was worth. But it made her feel stronger.

He was about to argue, but stopped himself, a whisper of another wry smile ghosting his lips. He found her rebellion amusing. Her blood began to boil.

As the sun climbed higher into the sky, the air grew humid and blisteringly hot. The jeep bumped and bounced over increasingly rocky terrain. Trees went from green to a blackish-gray, leafless, sharp. Strips of bark hung from trunks. Surprise rippled through Dalilah as she became suddenly aware of silvery monkeys in the branches around them. The troop was watching them pass. Silent. Menacing.

Qua-waaaaee—Go awaaaay. Qua-waaaaee—Go awaaaay. The sad call of a gray lorie again.

Brandt glanced up into the trees, and she could sense a renewed tension in him. In spite of the heat, a ripple of coolness trickled down Dalilah’s neck.

Soon they were out on a plain again, this one dotted with the iconic acacia trees of Africa. White thorns as long as her middle finger and fat as a pencil stuck out from the branches.

“Keep your arm inside the jeep,” he ordered as one of the tree branches scraped down the side of the jeep. “Those thorns will shred skin to ribbons.”

Dalilah removed her elbow from where she’d been resting it on the door.

“You didn’t say where we were actually going after we get up to the plateau,” she said, wiping sweat from her brow with the back of her hand.

“A safe place.”

“Like, where?”

“Like, you don’t need to worry about it.”

Exasperation flushed through her. “Anyone ever tell you you were short on both words and manners?”

“Get down!” He swerved as a branch whipped inside the jeep, and Dalilah flung herself onto his lap.

He grinned as she looked up at him in shock.

“You did that on purpose!” Dalilah snapped as she shoved herself back into a sitting position. The brackets around his mouth creased and fine lines fanned out from his eyes, but he said nothing.

“I know what you’re doing, Brandt! You’re being a cantankerous boor to keep me all worked up. You think if I’m angry, I’ll focus on survival and won’t wimp out on you!”

“If you’ve shown me one thing, Princess, it’s that you don’t do wimpy.”

She glowered at him. “Is that a compliment or insult?”

“Fact.” He chuckled low and throaty, but without the sound of real mirth. “And you got that right. I am a Boer—come from good old Dutch-Afrikaner farming stock.”

“I said boor, not Boer.”

He chuckled again and she muttered a curse in Arabic, grabbed the bottle of water and took a big angry swig as she turned her body away from him and sat in simmering silence.

The veldt stretched endlessly to the horizon, just rocky outcrops, thorny trees, dry, dead grass, dun soil. The wind died, and heat began to shimmer in oscillating waves off the land. Dalilah lifted her thick hair off her neck, wishing she had something to tie it up with, but there was no way she was going to ask Brandt Stryker for help.

Abruptly Dalilah felt the jeep slow, then stop. She swung round in the seat, instantly worried.

“Look...over there,” he said softly, pointing into the distance.

About a hundred yards out, as if materializing from the interplay of shadow and light in the trees, two graceful giraffes stood side by side, looping their necks around each other. Brandt cut the engine.

Heat pressed down, the engine ticking as it cooled. The sounds of the bush seemed to rise from nowhere to envelop them—the slight rustle of grasses, the clicking of grasshoppers. The faint chorus of a million birds that exploded suddenly into the sky, swarming in unison, alighting on a tree, then bursting up from the branches in a riot of movement as the flock moved to another tree.

Dalilah shaded her eyes, and as she watched the towering animals swinging their necks, everything else seemed to slip into the far reaches of her mind. No Manhattan. No Haroun. No looming wedding. She felt a shift in Brandt’s energy, too, and glanced up into his face. He met her gaze for a brief moment, and Dalilah saw something dark and hungry. But his eyes narrowed abruptly and he turned away. That’s when it really hit Dalilah—Brandt was fighting an attraction to her. He was angry with himself for overstepping the line, and with her for enabling him.

“Two males,” he said, nodding toward the animals. “You can tell by the lack of hair on top of their horns—they rub them smooth by fighting. And see over there?” He pointed, and Dalilah was conscious of the golden hairs on his strong, tanned forearm. “In the trees to the right—there’s the female they’re fighting over.”

“That’s fighting?”

He nodded.

They watched for a few seconds longer as the giraffes, torsos pressed together, did a sidestepping movement, like a dance, gangly legs moving in perfect choreography. Then suddenly, the giraffe with the darker markings swung his neck down low then slammed it hard up into the other male’s neck. A slapping sound carried over the veldt.

Dalilah’s stomach clenched. The light-colored giraffe seemed stunned by the blow and stumbled as it tried to sidestep away from the aggressor. But the larger, darker giraffe stepped in time with him, keeping his torso pressed against his opponent.

“The one on the left, the lighter-colored, younger male is trying to get away now,” Brandt explained as the older one looped his neck down again and swung it hard up against the other animal with another resounding crack.

Dalilah gritted her teeth, her hand fisting.

The younger giraffe staggered and its long legs buckled slowly under its body. It hit the ground in a puff of red dust, the tawny rise of its torso just visible through the gold grasses. The older giraffe hovered above the fallen animal, leg raised, hoof poised to kick, his head held high. When the fallen animal struggled to stand, the old male kicked hard, and its opponent went back down.

They waited. Grasshoppers clicked. Heat shimmered. “What’s going to happen?” she whispered.

“The young male will die if it’s fallen flat and can’t get up,” Brandt explained. “These animals have hearts as heavy as a human head, so they can pump blood all the way up those long necks, but lying down too long will send too much blood to their brains and they’ll pass out and die. It’s why they sleep standing up.”

She swallowed, a strange desperation clawing up inside her. So much beauty in this land, even in this graceful fight. Yet it was combat. Harsh and deadly. Over a female, the right to mate. To create life.

The palette of this bushveldt—the stark reality of it, was just so in-your-face raw, life and death at its purest.

Hunt or be hunted, kill or be killed.

Just as she and Brandt were being hunted now, and could be killed.

When the fallen giraffe failed to get up, Brandt started the ignition and they began to move away. Dalilah turned in her seat, hoping. But he didn’t rise from the grass.

“You okay?” he said gently.

She bit her lip, nodded, thinking that even while on the run, Brandt had stolen a moment to stop and point those animals out to her, that he’d stayed to appreciate this world he inhabited, this Africa that she, too, loved. Curiosity about him deepened within her.

“Your name, Brandt,” she said quietly. “It comes from an Afrikaans word, doesn’t it?”

“Dutch. It means burned, or to burn.”

“Figures,” she said with a wry twist of her mouth.

He raised his brow, glanced at her.

“You were born in South Africa?”

“Yeah.” But he offered nothing more. Dalilah figured it was as much as she was going to get right now.

* * *

The early-morning sun had turned the raging floodwaters of the Tsholo River a burnished, seething chocolate color.

“There’s nothing here!” Amal snapped at his tracker. He could feel time bleeding through his fingers and he was not prepared to lose the Al Arif princess’s trail. Not when he’d gotten so close, had almost tasted his revenge.

Sweat beaded along his tracker’s brow as the man once more tried to cut for sign along the riverbank. But there was no trace of them at all along this stretch of the Tsholo. Horses whinnied and his other men shifted on their feet.

“Mbogo,” Amal yelled. “Fetch Jacob!”

Mbogo went to get the old man and pushed him in front of Amal.

“Why do you think they went north from the plane and not down here?”

“If they came by the sky,” said the old man, “then they probably have a long way to go. And now they have no more transport. If they are to go this long way on foot, they’ll need water, food, some shoes for the lady. Maybe they’ll want some more transport. From the sky the pilot would have seen a safari bush camp that lies north of here. A smart man would go to the camp first for supplies, and then try to cross the river before the flood. I think they’re on the other side already.”

Amal’s body vibrated with rage.

“Get my tracker,” he growled quietly to Mbogo through his teeth, then he turned back to Jacob. “Are you certain?”

“No, boss, but a hunter must track with his eyes and his head and his heart. This is what things are telling me.”

Amal inhaled deeply as Mbogo brought forward the tracker he’d enlisted in Zambia.

“Get on your knees,” Amal commanded as he unholstered his pistol. The man looked shocked.

“Now!”

He knelt before Amal, who pressed the nose of his gun to the man’s forehead and looked at Jacob. “This is what’ll happen to you if you mislead me.” Amal curled his finger round the trigger.

Jacob closed his eyes, turned his head away.

“Watch!” Amal yelled.

Slowly, Jacob met the Arab man’s eyes. In their depths he saw the Devil. Amal fired.

His tracker slumped forward to the ground.

“We try it your way now, Jacob. Find that pilot and the princess for me, and you’ll live.”

Not for one moment did Jacob believe this Devil would allow him to live once he’d found his prey. From the bottom of his soul, Jacob understood he had to kill this man before the man killed him. But first he would have to lead him close, very close, to what he was seeking. Then it would be Jacob’s chance.

Quietly the old man clicked his tongue for Jock to follow him and started back across the grassland toward Tautona’s airplane.

* * *

They passed through an area of tall trees where baboons swung, limb to limb in the canopy above them. The animals stopped and stared as they drove under the branches.

When they left the trees, all the birds seemed to fall mysteriously silent apart from one. Ha! Ha! HaaHaa!

Dalilah swatted at a cloud of insects, tension coiling tight inside her.

HaHa-di-Daaaa!

Brandt flicked open the glove compartment, took out a plastic tube and tossed it to her.

“Bug repellent.”

Silently Dalilah opened the tube and patted the white cream around her neck, the chemical scent making her feel queasy.

Hah hah haaaa! Di daaaaaaa...Ha! She willed the bird to shut up as she scanned the trees for sight of it. But she couldn’t locate it.

HahaHaHaaaa!

Again, that ominous feeling of being observed by unseen eyes came over her. As if their progress was being communicated and telegraphed ahead of them as they went, as if the bush was a whole sentient thing, merely allowing them passage. But always watching.

“Do you think they’ve found our tracks on the Zimbabwe side yet?” she said.

“Yup. But they’ll be held up by the river for a day or so. Once they cross and find our camp, however, they’ll come fast.”

Dalilah’s thoughts turned to their campsite the previous night. The leopard. The baobab. Him.

“What did you mean, Brandt, about a vow never to kill again?”

“It’s nothing.”

“It’s not noth—”

“It’s not your business, okay. Don’t worry about it.” His words were clipped.

“I was just wonder—”

“Forget it, Dalilah. I just said it to drive home a point, to get your mind back on track. It’s got zip to do with you.”

Irritation spiked through her. Every now and then it was as if his guard came down, and she felt she connected with this guy, felt that they shared a bond. Then it was as if he flicked a switch.

“It’s got everything to do with me,” she snapped. “You said as much yourself—that rescuing me forced you to kill a man back there at the lodge. You said I made you break a vow not to kill another man, or woman. Did you kill a woman, Brandt? What woman?”

Any hint of congeniality vaporized instantly as a cold hard anger altered his features and his hands fisted around the wheel. Right away Dalilah knew she’d hit the nerve in Brandt Stryker. He had killed a woman.

Part of her brain screamed to drop the subject right here. But she couldn’t.

“Who was she, Brandt? What happened ten years ago?”

“Dalilah,” he said very quietly, “I’m not looking to make friends, nor tell my life story. My mission is to get you to a safe place, and to call your brother. He will either come fetch you, or send someone to take you off my hands.”

“So I’m just a package to be picked up and dropped off.”

“Yes,” he said. Then, as if he couldn’t stop himself, either, he said, “And then you can be nicely handed over to King Haram.”

“Haroun!”

“Whatever.”

She glared at him, her blood starting to boil, her face going hot. “Where do you know my brother from, anyway?” she demanded.

“I told you, Omair and I used to work together.” His voice was going tighter, lower, even quieter. Warning flushed through her. But she was like a runaway train now, unable to pull the brakes, heading downhill no matter the cost.

“And you said you owe him—why?”

Brandt flashed her a fierce look, his wolf eyes like slits, warning her to back down. “I told you already. Omair saved my life. So let’s drop it.”

“How did he save your life—what happened?”

He fixed his gaze dead ahead, fists clenched on the wheel, as he negotiated a particularly rocky section. “Look, Princess,” he said, the jeep swaying, “save your energy, because you’re going to need it. This is not a social trip. You don’t need to know me, and I don’t need to know you. Let’s just get this over with.”

She muttered in Arabic, repressing the urge rising in her to punch him, to beat out the information, make him drop the damn barriers. One trait she’d never managed to outgrow was curiosity and dogged determination to ferret out the truth, especially if someone tried to thwart her from doing so.

He swerved sharply as the jeep cut too close to another acacia tree and the branches raked down the side of the vehicle, slapping inside. She ducked back, but not in time. A thorn ripped through her sleeve, splitting open her skin. Blood welled. Dalilah’s eyes burned with pain and frustration.

“I told you to keep your hands in!” he snapped.

“I did! You’re doing this on purpose. You’re a pig!”

“Yup.”

“I know you care—I felt you care!”

His gaze shot to her, eyes crackling. She was getting to him, rattling his cage. Things were shaking loose inside—she could see it in his eyes, in the set of his features, the tension in his neck.

“You know nothing, Dalilah, and it’s none of your goddamn business what happened in my past. I don’t know what you hope to achieve by pressing me like this.”

“I’m pressing because I want to know what happened to the nice guy who rescued me last night. The guy who fixed my arm and helped me through the darkest hours of dawn. Who...” Her voice cracked. “Who kept my morale up. Who...who kissed me.”

Angrily she swiped the tears pooling in her eyes.

“You want to know why I kissed you, Dalilah? Is that what this is about? I’m a red-blooded male, that’s why. And you looked pretty damn hot in that body-hugging cocktail gown. I carried you on my back, and it felt good—it gave me an itch I needed to scratch.”

“Damn you,” she spat at him.

“You did a bloody good job of kissing me back,” he countered crisply.

Her cheeks went hotter, a fire burning into her stomach, embarrassment twisting through her chest.

“Why did you do that?” he said.

But as Dalilah opened her mouth, she realized the stupidity of what she was trying to say—that she’d kissed him because he...what? Had awakened something in her? Lust? A need she didn’t know she even had? Because in spite of his overbearing attitude she’d been drawn to the tenderness underneath all that brawn, and that he was sexy as all get out himself. Rough. Raw. Ready. And she hadn’t realized how much she liked that, or what she might be missing for the rest of her life. She inhaled deeply, scrubbed her hand over her face.

“I must have had an itch of my own,” she said quietly.

“Touché,” he said. “Next time save your itch for your fiancé.”

“Oh, you’re a real bitter piece of work, you know that,” she whispered, turning away from him, humiliated.

The humidity and heavy silence that weighed down between them became almost unbearable as they traversed an endless plateau of smooth rock that trapped the sun’s heat and radiated it back at them. A snake, long, black with a yellow stripe, slithered out of their way and into a dark crevice. Dalilah worried her engagement ring, turning it round and round her swollen finger, angry at herself for starting the argument, and for the need she felt now to defend herself. But no matter how she thought about coming at a defense, she knew this tough-ass mercenary who’d been around the block more than a few times would not understand.

How could she explain that she’d been in Haroun’s company a total of five times in her life? She could count the occasions on one hand. And each time had been in the presence of a royal chaperone, as per traditional decree. The wedding contract stipulated the couple follow a traditional courtship, and as per Sa’ud custom, once a woman had met with a man in this manner, this many times, it constituted an engagement anyway, contract or not.

But she’d never kissed Haroun, barely even touched him, apart from posing for official engagement photographs. It was decreed she come to the marriage utterly pure.

Dalilah had been raised to accept this. It was her royal heritage, and her duty to her kingdom, to fulfill this political contract. And it was a relatively small price to pay compared to what the rest of her family had sacrificed and endured for their kingdom. Da’ud, her eldest brother, had been assassinated on his yacht in Barcelona as he slept. Her parents had also been assassinated—throats slit in their palace bed. Zakir, next in line to the throne, had been forced to give up his career to take the throne at a time of violent unrest while he’d tried to hide the fact that he’d been going blind. Omair in turn had been doomed to hunt the globe in an attempt to unveil the assassins and exact revenge. And pulling the strings, creating all the problems that had plagued the Al Arifs, had been the Ghaffars, led by Aban Ghaffar, aka The Moor.

To learn that his son Amal was here, in Africa, alive—to discover that this violent battle for their lives and kingdom was not over—was terrifying. Overwhelming.

The least Dalilah could do was forge ahead and fulfill her marriage obligations with Haroun. The political alliance would strengthen the Al Na’Jar army and economy. Sa’ud and other Middle Eastern allies would come to their defense if needed.

She had to do this even more so now to protect her brothers, their growing families. And the innocent people of her nation.

This was not a time for inner conflict and selfish desire.

Dalilah stared out over the dry scrub, the red rocks of the Botswana plains, and wished she could return to the clear convictions she’d once held.

It shouldn’t feel as difficult as it did—Haroun was a striking and likable man. He seemed kind, smart, easy enough to be with. But there was no chemistry at all. How could she tell Brandt what his kiss had truly done to her? Or why she had even kissed him, or how it all fed into the mounting insecurities and fears over her own future with Haroun?

Sure, she might come to feel something for Haroun. But the idea that she might never, ever experience true love, the giddy highs of real passion—the stuff of films and great books, emotions that drove people to fight wars, create magnificent art, build soaring temples—depressed her.

As much as Brandt mocked her for being royal, it wasn’t easy. She couldn’t have the things normal people aspired to, even though her needs as a woman might be just as deep and real as the next woman’s.

He reached into the backseat suddenly, yanked out the whiskey bottle, held it between his thighs as he unscrewed the cap, took a deep swallow. She watched his Adam’s apple working, and slow fingers of desire tickled down inside her...she couldn’t help it. Even now.

He held the bottle out to her.

“Want some?”

“No.”

He took another sip, then recapped it.

“What are you seeking alcoholic relief from? Me?”

He gave a hard, dry, hard laugh. “I’m not seeking relief. It’s the breakfast of kings. Oh, wait, not your kind of king.”

Her jaw dropped. “You’re jealous?”

He barked another laugh, pressing down on the gas, and bouncing the jeep in a way that forced her to grab the roll bar for balance.

“Jealousy doesn’t suit you, you know.”

“Suits me just fine.”

“I thought you’d want to stay sharp, not drunk,” she said.

“This is me being sharp, sweetness.”

She cursed at him in Arabic again and he drove faster, jouncing her around in the front seat.

“So that’s it—you despise me because I’m engaged to a man with more money and power than you’ll ever have, yet I still kissed you.”

“Jesus, Dalilah, give it up, will you? It’s just a freaking kiss.”

“You think I’m promiscuous, cheating on him, betraying him, is that it? Is it that simple?”

“I’m a simple guy.”

“Oh, that’s amusing! Simple is the last thing you are. You’re a...a cantankerous bull with issues over your past and...God knows what else.”

He snorted.

“See? You even sound like one.”

He spun abruptly to face her, and she recoiled slightly at the sudden ferocity in his features. “You want the truth, Dalilah? Here it is—” he turned back to face the terrain “—I don’t do commitment and I like to be with women who don’t do commitment, either. No promises. Just straight-up good sex. Both sides understand the equation and want nothing more. I do not have a problem with promiscuity.”

Blood flared hot into her face. “So what is the problem?”

“The problem is you. You do commitment. You made the choice to marry Haram—”

“Haroun!”

“You made him a promise by wearing a rock big enough to feed a small goddamn country, and you know what? While I don’t do commitment as a matter of routine, when I do choose to make a promise, that’s everything in my book. Believe it or not, I do have honor, and I’m loyal to a goddamn fault. Just ask your brother. It’s why I went to work with men like him—men who promise to leave no man behind, and know how to keep that promise. And it’s why he came to get me out of a hellhole in Nicaragua—he wouldn’t leave me behind. And that, Princess, is why I owe Omair. That’s why I’m here saving your pretty little ass right now, because Omair knows I owe him, and that I’ll die before I let you get hurt.” He clamped his mouth shut as he swerved sharply round a steep rock, almost tipping the jeep onto its side.

“Doesn’t mean I have to be nice about it,” he muttered as he gunned the jeep into an expanse of sand dotted with squat Mopani.

Dalilah stared at his rugged profile, assimilating this new information, her heart thudding wildly in her chest. “You think I have no honor? You think I don’t keep a promise? Because that’s not true! You have no idea what I’m prepared to give up for a promise not even made by—”

“Just stop talking, okay.”

Her eyes widened. “Where in hell do you get off—”

“I was in that other man’s position, Dalilah,” he snapped angrily. “Not once, but twice. Call me a fool, but I didn’t learn from the first time around and a woman just like you burned my ass. Then got killed for it.”

Her mouth dropped. “That’s not...you don’t understand. I—”

“I don’t want to understand.”

He drove faster, harder, sending up clouds of fine gray dust that coated the trees, giving them a ghostly air of menace in the heat. Vegetation closed in again, as if the bush was deliberately trying to block their way.

Brandt swung round a thick clump of Mopani, and dead ahead in the track, hemmed in by trees on either side, loomed a large bull elephant with crooked tusks.

He slammed on the brakes.

Silence descended as dust rose in soft billows around them. Time stretched, warped, shimmered in the heat. The elephant was so close Dalilah could see individual hairs poking out of its leathery skin. Two egrets rode on his shoulders and tracks of dark moisture leaked like tears from behind his eyes.

The bull raised its trunk, catching their scent, and his ears flapped out wide. The egrets took flight.

Her heart began to slam against her ribs.

“Don’t. Move,” Brandt whispered.

She couldn’t if she tried. She was paralyzed with fear. Her attention shifted to the animal’s tusks, then to the moisture tracking through gray dust on the inside of the bull’s back legs. His penis arced almost to the ground.

The bull flapped his ears in and out, swayed his tusks.

Slowly, carefully, Brandt shifted the gears into Reverse.

But before he could even touch the gas, the bull’s ears suddenly flattened against his head and he curled up in his trunk, lowering his head.

“Oh, hell,” Brandt whispered, hitting the gas. “He’s coming!”