lips pressed closer together as he lifted her suitcase as though it were empty of designer contents and pushed it ahead of them through the official exit into the Umm Khoreem side of the airport.
To freedom.
Kind of.
‘I gave them a few assurances,’ he went on. ‘Nothing that should put a crimp in your sunbaking plans.’
Yep, he probably did think she’d come to bask under Umm Khoreem’s toasty winter sun. Rather than for the sanctuary—from life and from her least favourite time of year.
‘What kind of assurances?’
The pace he set across the polished stone of the airport terminal was almost hard to match, though it was fantastic to be moving her limbs again after nine hours on a crowded plane. She hurried after him as he wove in and out of the thick stream of passengers like a rally pro.
‘While you are within the fenced bounds of Al Saqr resort, you are a guest of the Sheikh,’ he said, back to her, ‘and his protection extends to you. Under those conditions they were happy to overlook your recent...crime...and grant you entry into Umm Khoreem.’
‘You make it sound like I was caught robbing a bank,’ she huffed.
‘You’d be surprised how much I know about you, Ms Blaise.’
She glanced up at him and tried to guess how serious he was about that. There wasn’t much to know. Her criminal record was empty of anything but a shiny new conviction for trespass. For defending those who could not defend themselves.
On balance, that was a pretty good trade-off.
‘Wow. Someone is a little judgey...’
It was all there in the frost in his tone and the grind of his jaw, but getting into a fight was not how she’d imagined starting her month-long exile. Then again, neither was being detained, and—once again—she reminded herself how foreign this culture was from her own.
‘The resort’s boundaries are massive,’ he said. ‘As long as you remain within them, you’ll be fine.’
Being managed irked her as much as it always did. ‘And what is to stop me from just taking my bag and disappearing into the glass and chrome of Kafr Falaj?’
She could see the tallest of the capital’s buildings from here.
His locomotive surge across the terminal came to an abrupt halt, and she almost crashed into him. Impenetrable black glass swung her way.
‘I am.’
Even without being able to see his eyes, she believed him. Her long legs might get her some distance in the short term but his hard build said he would easily best her on endurance. Plus she’d never been any good at running in sand.
‘I gave them my own word, too,’ he went on.
‘So, now I’m beholden to the Sheikh’s chauffeur as much as the Sheikh himself?’ she tested.
Coral lips thinned between the neatly trimmed beard and moustache. ‘I am not a chauffeur, Ms Blaise. I’m part of the royal protection detail.’
Was she supposed to be impressed that his title had the word ‘royal’ in it? Well, snap, buddy, she was celebrity royalty, and it had never done her any particular favours. Quite the opposite, really.
‘Which makes me your protection detail for the next month,’ he added blandly.
Immediately she regretted everything about the past fifteen minutes. It wasn’t this guy’s fault that she’d been dumb enough to be taken in by people she’d thought she could trust—a man she’d wanted to trust—or that it had all happened right before Christmas, a season she struggled with at the best of times. A forty-minute drive was one thing; the thought of spending the next four weeks butting heads with someone over baggage that wasn’t rightfully his did not appeal. She’d come out here to lie low—and to do the right thing by her father—not to stir up the locals.
But she was more proficient in nurturing chasms than bridging them.
‘Gosh, you drew the short straw,’ she joked. ‘Babysitting me for an entire month.’
She’d meant that to be self-deprecating, but she saw the word ‘babysit’ hit him as surely as the word ‘chauffeur’ had. His jaw clamped that tiny bit harder.
‘On the contrary,’ he gritted. ‘I drew anything but a short straw. You’ll understand when you see where I get to spend the next four weeks.’
She might be known for her questionable decision-making now and again but even she knew to back away from the edge, sometimes. And the stiff way that this man held his body told her that this was definitely one of those times. But retreating didn’t mean she had to scramble, so she took her time setting off as he headed for the airport’s exit and she swanned after him with as much grace as she could muster, even as the glass doors slid wide and the warm desert air slapped her full in the face.
* * *
Outside the window of Al Saqr’s luxury SUV the region’s capital, Kafr Falaj, whizzed past in all its expensive glory—a spectacular city that had sprung up out of the sand in just a couple of decades. A testament to man’s supremacy over nature.
Except that Sera preferred nature’s supremacy to mankind’s any day.
The travel website had told her it translated as ‘village of channels’, grown on the strength of the massive network of ancient irrigation conduits that rivalled the Roman aqueducts and that still funnelled water from underground aquifers and mountain foothills to the desert village’s thriving agriculture. A village that had quickly grown into a city. Thankfully, this was as close as she needed to get to Kafr Falaj and its over-abundance of foreigners—living there, working there, visiting there. Where they were headed, the handful of foreigners would be vastly spread out.
Studying the city had killed some time, then the emerging desert, and, in between, she’d studied him while he’d concentrated on the fast desert highway. The neat cut of his dark hair, the crisp edges of his suit collar, the clip of his dark beard so close it had to be a professional job, the curious scar cutting down into his left eyebrow. He hadn’t spoken since bundling her into the back seat of the massive SUV. She’d squeezed herself through the gap and into the front passenger seat before he’d even come around to his own door.
She hated the whole Miss Daisy thing. She never rode in the back if she didn’t have to.
‘So, we’re going to spend four weeks in each other’s company,’ Sera said, simply to crack the long silence as they drove out of the city. ‘What should I call you?’
‘What did you call your last protection?’ he finally grunted.
‘Russell it is, then,’ she said, smiling. ‘What are the odds?’
Dark sunglasses turned her way, just slightly. ‘You can call me Brad, Ms Blaise.’
‘You know that Blaise is a stage name, right? First and last name all in one. Like Madonna. Or Bono. Apparently that was a thing in the eighties.’
‘I assumed.’
But maybe he remembered the vast quantities of money that she was spending on this trip, because he spoke again and this time it was longer than three syllables. ‘Would you prefer a different surname?’
‘I’d prefer no surname at all, actually.’ Ha! Like father like daughter.
‘Okay. Seraphina.’
‘God no! That’s as much of a show name as Blaise. Pretty sure Dad’s publicist picked it.’ Forgetting that a little girl needed to live with it.
His lips pressed more tightly together within the architectural facial hair. ‘What do you call yourself?’
‘Sera.’