* * *
Qa’lat al Mina’a, perched high on its rocky promontory, shimmered like a mirage in the soft pink haze of the setting sun.
Far below, beyond a perfect curve of white sand, a dhow was drifting slowly along the coast under a dark red sail and for a brief moment Ruby felt as if she might have been transported back into some Arabian Nights fantasy, flying in on a magic carpet rather than a gleaming black helicopter.
The illusion was swiftly shattered as they circled to land.
The fortress might appear, at first glance, to be a picturesque ruin, a reminder of a bygone age, but behind the mass of purple bougainvillaea billowing against its walls was a satellite dish, antennae—all the trappings of the communications age, powered by an impressive range of solar panels facing south where the jebel fell away to the desert.
And the tower did not stand alone. Below it she glimpsed courtyards, arches, gardens surrounding an extensive complex that spread down to the shore where a very twenty-first century gunmetal-grey military-style launch was sheltered in a harbour hewn from the rock. And they were descending to a purpose-built helipad. This was not some romantically crumbling stronghold out of a fantasy; the exterior might be battered by weather and time but it contained the headquarters of a very modern man.
As they touched down, a middle-aged man in a grey robe and skullcap approached the helicopter at a crouching run. He opened the door, glanced at her with astonishment and then shouted something she couldn’t hear to the pilot.
He returned a don’t-ask-me shrug from his seat. Sensing a problem, Ruby didn’t wait but unclipped her safety belt, swung open the door and jumped down.
‘As-salaam aleykum. Ismee, Ruby Dance,’ she said, raising her voice above the noise of the engine. ‘Sheikh Ibrahim is expecting me.’
She didn’t wait for a response but shouldered the neat satchel that contained everything she needed for work, nodded her thanks to the pilot and, leaving the man to follow with her wheelie suitcase, she crossed to steps that led down to the shelter of the courtyard below.
The air coming off the sea was soft and moist—bliss after hours cooped up in the dry air of even the most luxurious private jet—while below her were tantalising glimpses of terraces cut into the hill, each shaded by ancient walls and vine-covered pergolas. There was a glint of water running through rills and at her feet clove-scented dianthus and thyme billowed over onto the steps.
It was beautiful, exotic, unexpected. Not so far from the fantasy after all.
Behind her the pilot, keen to get home, was already winding up the engine and she lifted her head to watch the helicopter take off, bracing herself against buffeting from the down force of the blades. As it wheeled away back towards the capital of Ras al Kawi, leaving her cut off from the outside world, she half lifted a hand as if to snatch it back.
‘Madaam...’
Despite her confident assertion that she was expected, it was clear that her arrival had come as a surprise but, before she could respond to the agitated man who was following her down the steps, a disembodied voice rang out from below, calling out something she did not understand.
Before she could move, think, the owner of the voice was at the foot of the steps, looking up at her, and she forgot to breathe.
Sheikh Ibrahim al-Ansari was no longer the golden prince, heir to the throne of Umm al Basr, society magazine cover favourite—a carefree young man with nothing on his mind but celebrating his sporting triumphs in some fashionable nightclub.
Disgraced, disinherited and exiled from his father’s court when his arrest for a naked romp in a London fountain had made front page news, his face was harder, the bones more defined, the natural lines cut a little deeper. And not just lines. Running through the edge of his left brow, slicing through his cheekbone before disappearing into a short-clipped beard was a thin scar—the kind left by the slash of a razor-sharp knife—and dragging at the corner of his eye and his lip so that his face was not quite in balance. The effect was brutal, chilling, mesmerising.
He was never going to be the beast—his bone structure beneath the silky golden skin was too perfect, the tawny eyes commanding and holding all her attention, but he was no longer the beautiful young man who had appeared in society magazines alongside European aristocrats, millionaires, princes. Whose photograph, trophy in hand, had regularly graced the covers of the glossier lifestyle magazines.
She was momentarily distracted by a flash of pink as a droplet of water, caught in the sun’s dying rays, slid down one of the dark, wet curls that clung to his neck.
She was standing with her back to the setting sun and he raised a hand to shade his eyes. ‘What the devil?’
Mouth dry, brain freewheeling and with no connection between them, her lips parted but her breath stuck in her throat as a second drop of water joined the first, hung there until the force of gravity overcame it and it dropped to a wide shoulder, slid into the hollow of his collarbone.
She watched, mesmerised, as it spilled over, trickled down his broad chest, imagining how it would feel against her hand if she reached out to capture it.
The thought was so intense that she could feel the tickle of chest hair against her palm, the wet, sun-kissed skin, and instinctively closed her hand.
She hadn’t expected him to be wearing a pin-striped suit or the formal flowing robes of a desert prince, but it was her first encounter with an employer wearing nothing but a towel—a man whose masculinity was underlined by the scars left by his chosen sports.
‘Who are you?’ he demanded.
Not some empty-headed ninny to stand there gawping at the kind of male body more usually seen in moody adverts for aftershave, that was for sure, and, sending an urgent message to her feet, she stepped down to his level.
‘Not the devil, Sheikh.’ She uncurled her clenched hand and offered it to him as she introduced herself. ‘Ruby Dance. I’ve been sent by the Garland Agency to hold the fort while Peter Hammond recovers from his injuries.’
Sheikh Ibrahim stared at her hand for what felt like forever, then, ignoring it, he looked up.
‘Injuries?’ Dark brows were pulled down in a confused frown. ‘What injuries?’
She lowered her hand. Well, that explained the confusion at her arrival. Obviously the message about his aide’s accident had failed to reach him.
‘I understand that Mr Hammond crashed off his snowboard early this morning,’ she replied, putting his lapse of manners down to shock. ‘I was told that he’d spoken to you.’
‘Then you were misinformed,’ he said. ‘How bad is it?’
‘The last I heard was that he’d been airlifted to hospital. I’ll see if I can get an update.’ She took her phone from her bag. ‘Will I get a signal?’ He didn’t bother to answer but she got five strong bars—those antennae weren’t just for show—and hit the first number on her contact list.
There were endless seconds of waiting for the international connection—endless seconds in which he continued to stare at her. It was the look of someone who was sure he’d seen her before but couldn’t think where.
‘Ruby? Is everything okay?’ Amanda Garland, the founder of the Garland Agency, had called her first thing, asking her to drop whatever she was doing, fly out to Qa’lat al Mina’a and hold the fort until other arrangements could be made.
‘Yes...’
‘Tell me.’ There was no fooling Amanda.
Ruby swallowed, took a breath. She was imagining it, she knew. It had been years since her photograph had been all over the media, but his sculptured chest, the smattering of hair arrowing down beneath the towel—far too reminiscent of that scene in the fountain—was wrecking her concentration.
In