Lord of the Desert. Diana Palmer

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СКАЧАТЬ of problems to an uninterested but objective stranger.” When she hesitated, he chuckled. “We are strangers, n’est pas?”

      “Yes. And I don’t guess you know anybody in Qawi?”

      He lifted his eyebrows expressively.

      She shrugged. “Well, Maggie got a job working for the sheikh there and since she can’t take it now, she wanted me to take her place without telling anyone who I was.”

      His eyes were twinkling. “You disapprove?”

      “She wasn’t really thinking straight, or she wouldn’t have suggested it. I don’t like telling lies,” she said flatly. “And I’m not any good at them, either. Besides, I don’t think I can pass for an executive-type businesswoman who’s also a widow. I’m not sophisticated and I don’t know how to plan parties or welcome visiting dignitaries. All I know how to do is legal work. I worked for a firm of attorneys in Jacobsville.”

      He listened attentively, his eyes narrow with speculation and a half smile on his wide, thin mouth. “Amazing,” he murmured.

      She looked up at him with wide gray eyes. “What is?”

      “Never mind.” He searched her eyes. “So you think the job is beyond your capabilities?”

      “Certainly it is,” she said. “I’m going to finish my vacation here and then fly to Amsterdam and go home,” she added, making her decision as she spoke.

      One dark, elegant eyebrow lifted. “Do you believe in fate, Miss Brannon?”

      “I don’t know.”

      “I do. I think you should go to Qawi.”

      “And live a lie?” she murmured unhappily.

      “No. And tell the truth.” He uncrossed his legs and leaned forward abruptly. “I know the Sheikh of Qawi. Rather, I know of him,” he said unexpectedly. “He is a fair man, and he admires nothing more than honesty. Use your friend’s ticket. Take the job.”

      “He won’t give it to me,” she interrupted. “He was emphatic about Maggie’s qualifications, and one of them, for some reason, was that she’d been married…”

      “Tell him the truth, and take the job,” he repeated firmly. “He will make allowances. I happen to know that his need of an assistant is personal and immediate. He will not want to waste time trying to find someone else with Madame Barton’s qualifications.”

      “But I’m not qualified,” she emphasized.

      He smiled. “To meet people?” he chided. “You and I are strangers, yet here we are sharing a holiday trip.”

      She let a smile touch her soft mouth. “That was only because I almost knocked you down,” she pointed out. “I can’t really make a habit of it, just to meet people.”

      He waved a hand. “I think you will make an excellent assistant.”

      “As I mentioned earlier, I can’t speak any other language except Spanish.”

      “You can learn Arabic.”

      “And worst of all, I’m not Muslim,” she worried.

      “Neither is the sheikh.” He leaned forward with a grin. “Qawi is unusual as a nation in the mixture of her cultures. There are as many Jews and Christians as there are Muslims, owing to an unusual colonial history. You will feel right at home,” he assured her. “And in the past two years, it has become an ally of both the United States and Great Britain.” He grinned wickedly. “Oil contracts are lucrative temptations to democracies. How many friends Qawi has gained because of her new wealth!”

      She smiled. “You make this sound very easy,” she told him.

      “As it is.” He frowned as he studied her oval face. She was attractive, but no real beauty. However her features were nice, and she had warm eyes. Her mouth was perfect. He grimaced as he looked at it and mourned for what he could never experience again. Her hair, though, was what fascinated him. It was platinum blond, obviously long, and definitely natural. She reminded him, oh, so much, of Brianne Martin…

      She was looking at him, too. She wondered how he’d gotten those scars on his face. There were others on the back of his left hand, the same side as those on his face.

      He saw her curiosity and touched his cheek lightly. “An accident, when I was much younger,” he said frankly. “There are other scars, better hidden,” he added in a harsh undertone.

      She smiled self-consciously. “Sorry,” she said at once. “I didn’t mean to stare. They’re not disfiguring, you know,” she added easily. “You look like a pirate.”

      His eyelids flickered. “Mademoiselle?”

      “You need an eye-patch and a cutlass and a parrot, though,” she added. “And one of those sexy white ruffled shirts that leaves half your chest bare.”

      His delight was in the explosion of brilliance in his black eyes, in the hearty laugh that fell like music on her ears. She had a feeling that he laughed very rarely.

      “Oh, and a ship,” she continued. “With black sails.”

      “One of my ancestors was a Riffian Berber,” he told her. “Not quite a pirate, but very definitely a revolutionary.”

      “I just knew it,” she said with glee. She searched his dark eyes and felt a thrill in the pit of her stomach that had no counterpart in her memory. Her breath was catching in her throat. No man had ever made her feel so feminine. “Have you ever ridden a camel?” she asked.

      “What prompted that question?” he asked.

      She indicated a man standing with a small herd of camels at the front of a hotel on the coast, whose parking lot they were just entering. “I really do want to ride a camel before I go home.”

      “There are no saddles, you know,” he said as the driver parked the car and got out to open the door for them.

      Gretchen looked at her gray slacks and sandals. “No stirrups, either?”

      “No.”

      She looked longingly at the camels. “They’re so pretty. They’re like horses on stilts.”

      “Treachery!” he remonstrated. “To compare a mere beast of burden with something so elegant as our Arabian horses!”

      She arched her eyebrows and looked up at him. “Do you ride?”

      “Of course I ride.” He looked at the camels with distaste. “But not in a suit.” An Armani suit, but he wasn’t going to mention that.

      She caught his sleeve lightly. She didn’t touch people often, but she felt safe with him. He wasn’t a stranger, even though he should have been. “Please?” she asked. “I don’t even want to go far. I just want to know what it’s like.”

      It was like gossamer strands of silk brushing open nerves to have her soft green eyes look at him that way. Her fingers СКАЧАТЬ