shaking more than just her blue, white and silver pom poms before sixty thousand people?
Keira al-Issidri was in serious trouble. In more ways than one.
It might be late September, Keira thought out on the playing field, but it felt like the hottest day of summer.
In the middle of the grass, beneath the blinding hot Texas sun, Keira’s head spun as she kicked and twirled and shimmied, her short shorts riding high on her thighs, her white boots clinging to her calves as she kicked her leg up over her head.
She was going to be ill.
But it wasn’t the hot sun making Keira her sick. It was the realization that she didn’t know her father, she’d never known her father, and that if her father was determined to do as he’d vowed, there was nowhere she could go to hide from him, no way to escape.
Her father had too much money. Too many connections. Her father, the Sultan’s right-hand man, had all of Baraka’s resources at his disposal. If he wanted her home. He’d get her home.
Chest tightening, air bottled inside her lungs, Keira tried to force herself to concentrate on the dance routine but she couldn’t escape her father’s voice, or the memory of his threat, and as the sun beat onto her skull like a hammer on a drum, she felt a strange disconnection with the rest of her body. Her legs were lifting, kicking, her arms moving, her body spinning, bending.
Lifting her face to the sun, Keira let the hot golden rays cover her and tried to block the sickening knowledge that pounded in her brain.
Things were about to get ugly.
Very, very ugly.
Hours after the game ended Keira leaned on the railing of a penthouse balcony holding a glass of wine she wasn’t drinking.
She hadn’t wanted to come to the party tonight, hadn’t been in the mood to socialize with a bunch of people she didn’t know, but one of the owners of the team had invited her, told her he had an important guest in town, and he hoped Keira would attend the party he was giving for his guest.
The team owner—who was also the man who wrote her paychecks—rarely asked anything of her and Keira reluctantly showered, dressed and headed to the party.
Now she stood on the balcony, which was blessedly dark, fixed her gaze on the lights of downtown Dallas, and tried to relax. But her father’s threat usurped every other thought. He’d vowed to drag her home. Vowed to force her into this marriage.
What was she going to do? Where could she go? For that matter, who could she go to?
Her father had served the Sultan of Baraka for fourteen years—nearly all of the Sultan’s reign. Her father had power, connections, wealth. He inspired fear in those who crossed him.
Who would help her, knowing her father was Omar al-Issidri? Who would take such a risk with his or her life?
She frowned faintly, rubbed at her temple. It hurt to think. It’d been such an ungodly long day and now she was here, trapped on the balcony, assaulted by the rock music pulsing from speakers inside the apartment and the raucous laughter of rich men seducing beautiful women.
She shouldn’t have come. The music was too hard, too loud. The people too different. The night too hot and humid.
She was tired. Overwhelmed. Panic set in. This was not a good place to be, not safe for her, not safe in any way. Clutching her wineglass, she drew a deep breath, and then another. Calm, think calm. Nothing bad is going to happen. Everything’s fine.
It had been years and she still hated parties. All these years and the heat, the noise, the liquor-fueled gaiety of parties still unnerved her. You could run from the past, she thought wearily, but the past eventually caught up.
“Don’t jump.” A male voice, cool and mocking, spoke behind her. His accent was different—British, cultured, and yet exotic.
Keira felt the strangest prickle at the back of her neck, but she didn’t turn around. “I’ve no intention of jumping,” she answered equally coolly, lifting her wineglass and taking a sip while keeping her gaze fixed on the skyline.
“Even though you’re hopelessly trapped?”
She beat back the flicker of alarm. Ignored the silver slide of adrenaline. “A bit presumptuous, don’t you think?”
“Not if you know as much about someone as I know about you.”
She didn’t like his tone, or his cocky attitude. Arrogant men turned her off. And while her survival instinct told her to race back to the penthouse, she wasn’t about to give the man the pleasure of watching her run like a timid jackrabbit.
“I could call your bluff,” she said, giving her glass a swirl, “but I don’t care enough to continue this conversation.”
“Then I shall call your bluff, Lalla Keira al-Issidri.”
Arabic. And not just Arabic, but Barakan Arabic.
He knew her father. He had to know her father. He’d called her Keira al-Issidri.
Slowly, painfully, she forced herself to turn to face him but the shadows darkened the balcony just like the shadows filling her head. “Who are you?”
“A family friend.”
Her lashes closed, her breath failing. It had happened already. Her father had sent someone for her. Her father hadn’t waited twenty-four hours. He hadn’t even waited eight hours.
She opened her eyes, drew a deep breath to settle her nerves. “What do you want?”
“To give you options.”
She trusted no man, least of all a Barakan male. “I don’t understand you.”
“I think you do.”
There was something in his tone that made her nerves scream, a familiarity that didn’t sit right at all with her. “Step into the light,” she said crisply, investing as much authority into her voice as she could manage. “I want to see you.”
“Why?”
“I want to see the cowardly man that enjoys intimidating a woman.”
“In that case.” He moved from the shadows, toward the yellow light pouring through the open glass door.
“Better?” he drawled, hands shoved in his trouser pockets. “Can you see the cowardly man now?”
She inhaled sharply, eyes widening in shock. She shied away from who—what—she saw.
“Perhaps the shadows are better,” he said, moving away from the doorway again, slowly walking toward her.
“Yes. That way you can do whatever it is you want to do.”
“And what do I want to do?” he sounded mildly intrigued.
“Drag me back to Baraka.”
“Ah.”
That one sound was strangely beautiful, seductive, conjuring a sailing ship carrying precious cargo of gold and spices from faraway places.
He stopped not far from her, took a position at the balcony railing, leaned against the smooth polished steel.
In the dark with the help of the faraway moon, she tried to make out his face and shape. In the reflection of ghostly white light she saw straight black eyebrows, the high hard edge of cheekbone, a strong uncompromising jaw.
The line of cheekbone and jaw was familiar. Too familiar although it’d been years since she saw the one, the dream…the one, true fantasy…
She closed her eyes, not wanting to remember, the association too tangled with heartbreak and pain. No dream should be so abruptly broken, not the way she’d been broken.
Keira drew another breath, opened her eyes, and yet without looking at him, she was uncomfortably aware of him, aware of his size,