The Sheikh's Tempted Prisoner Read online

  Vanessa found herself often watching Ramin. He seemed at home in this environment, sharing jokes and coaching her on her riding as they went. His dark skin glowed in the sunlight. He looked like a prince from one of his fairy tales, off to adventure. Vanessa reminded herself that she wasn’t interested, and even if she was, it would only lead to heartbreak.

  He’d never met a woman he hadn’t left behind, and she was planning to steal from him. Hardly an ideal situation for romance.

  “We must be getting close,” she said as the day wore on, pulling out a modern map of the area which they’d marked. “Keep an eye out for any unusual dune structures or sinks that might be a sign of something buried.”

  Ramin took out his compass, comparing it to her map.

  “Our best bet is in that direction,” he said, pointing. “You seem to have got a hang of riding. Let’s see how well you gallop.”

  He grinned at her, then suddenly urged his horse on with a shout, exploding into a gallop that carried him away from her at impressive speed. Vanessa fumbled for a moment, then remembered the signal he’d taught her for speed and held on tight as her horse rocketed away after Ramin.

  She laughed victoriously as she caught up with him, the horses straining beside one another as they loped over and down a huge, wave-like dune. Vanessa smiled at Ramin, exhilarated, and he grinned back, his delight dazzling.

  Vanessa’s heart raced, half from the excitement, half from the sight of him cheering as he stood in his saddle, spreading his arms to the sunlight as they raced across the sand. All she could think was that he really was making this difficult for her.

  By the time the horses needed to rest, Ramin had spotted an oasis on the horizon. They turned aside to stop there and rest in the shade of the palm trees which clustered around a clear desert spring. The oasis was beautiful, a garden of lush greenery in the midst of the endless sand. They and the horses drank, then relaxed in the shade.

  “It’s a good thing I brought lunch,” Ramin said as he unpacked bread, hummus, and cheese from one of the saddle bags. “Plus this.”

  He pulled out the bottle of wine with a cheeky grin, holding it over his head as Vanessa reached for it.

  “Ah-ah,” he said, laughing. “No way, I need you coherent for the ride home.”

  “Oh, come on, I can handle one glass,” Vanessa said, flustered.

  “All right, one,” he teased. “But I’ll be watching you, missy.”

  “Excuse you,” she said primly as he uncorked the bottle. “You are neither my father nor my husband. I believe you have precisely no right to judge my drinking habits, sir.”

  “It’s ‘Your Highness,’ actually,” he pointed out, grinning playfully as he continued to hold the wine out of her reach. “And seeing as it’s my wine, I think I actually have every right.”

  Vanessa had no answer for that, so she just scowled as he finished opening the bottle and took a long swig directly from the neck. As soon as he lowered the bottle, she lunged for it and, laughing, he moved it out of her way again.

  “All right,” she said, rolling up her sleeves. “I see how it’s going to be. Fine. I’ll wrestle you for it.”

  He looked over all 5’4” of her and laughed.

  “I’ve squashed bigger flies than you!” he teased.

  “You underestimate me!” she declared. “And that is why you will lose!”

  She threw herself at him as ferociously as she was able and he caught her, surprised and still laughing, and in the struggle, she snatched the bottle from his fingers and rolled away, victorious.

  “All right, all right, I conceded defeat,” he said, eyes teary with mirth. “The wine is yours.”

  Vanessa punched the air with a fist, the other busy pouring wine into her mouth.

  Both giddy with the beautiful day and each other’s company, not to mention the wine, they lounged in the shade through the hottest part of the day, talking idly and enjoying themselves. For once, Amanirenas—normally Vanessa’s first priority at all times—felt secondary to just spending this day with Ramin.

  “…and then he jumps in with the faux invitation to join his expedition to find Cush,” Vanessa was saying, her toes in the warm water of the spring. “As though I would ever work with him—as though he genuinely wanted to! He’d probably already hired that Dubois woman and just wanted to humiliate me.”

  “Kush as in Amanirenas’s kingdom?” Ramin asked with a confused frown.

  “No, not quite,” Vanessa explained. “The biblical Cush-with-a-C. One of the sons of Ham, son of Noah.”

  “No relation to Amanirenas, I take it?”

  “Of course not.” Vanessa rolled her eyes. “Unless you’re a particularly ossified kind of biblical archeologist. The kind of people who think the world literally flooded for forty days think Cush, son of Ham, was the founder of the kingdom of Kush. Because the names sound the same, you see.”

  “That’s really it?” Ramin leaned back on his hands, unconvinced.

  “That, and an outrageously racist theory from before World War One,” Vanessa explained. “Rather misleadingly called the ‘Curse of Ham.’ Supposedly, Noah fell asleep drunk and naked in his tent, and his son Ham came in and saw him. Ham laughed at him, then went and got his brothers, who entered the tent walking backward and dropped a blanket over their father so they wouldn’t have to see him.

  “But Noah wakes up and finds out Ham saw him and laughed at him and flies into a rage, in the course of which he curses Ham’s son Canaan, saying he will be a servant of his brother’s servants forever. At the time, the curse of Ham was used to justify the slavery of the Canaanites to the Israelites, but a few hundred years later the story was twisted to declare that the curse had turned Ham’s sons, including his eldest, Cush, black. The so-called Curse of Ham was commonly invoked as a justification for the slave trade.”

  “Occasionally, in the study of history,” Ramin said bitterly, “one finds too many reasons to be ashamed of humanity.”

  Vanessa nodded in weary understanding.

  “Anyway, if you believe in the Curse of Ham,” she continued. “Then the mere fact that the Kingdom of Kush was a nation of sub-Saharan Africans is ‘evidence’ that Cush must be its founder, and thus there must be evidence of him somewhere in the country.”

  “That is thin evidence indeed,” Ramin said, shaking his head.

  “But enough to bring Terrance Peterson to Ksatta-Galan looking for his burial site,” Vanessa said, shaking her head. “Honestly, the sooner biblical archeology is dismissed as a serious subject of study, the better.”

  “I take it you’re not religious, then?” Ramin guessed.

  “No,” Vanessa said, then suddenly worried she’d offended him. “Are you?”

  “I do not actively practice, though my family has been Muslim for centuries.”

  “I’m sorry for…” Vanessa trailed off, cringing in embarrassment.

  “There’s no need to apologize,” Ramin said at once. “I understand your frustration, even if I don’t quite agree with you.”

  “So, you agree with biblical archeology?” Vanessa asked, frowning.

  “Well, first of all,” Ramin began. “I think the kind of people who could, in this day and age, be pursuing the Curse of Ham as serious scholarly evidence should spend more time reading their scriptures and less time trying to force them to conform to their own warped beliefs. I have read the Christian Bible, and I think there are some critical passages about how we are all God’s children and meant to love one another that Mr. Peterson must have missed.”

  Vanessa laughed, licking some hummus off her thumb. “You’re telling me.”

  “But I do not think that religious scriptures should be discounted as a source of valuable historical information,” Ramin went on. “Certainly, it must be more difficult to approach things objectively when dealing with history that has personal, spiritual significance. But the Abrahamic scriptures are ancient documents that, even in their newest and most heavily alter
ed forms, reveal critical information about the cultures, beliefs, and practices of ancient civilizations. When they are treated as the palimpsest of historical and cultural information they are, rather than flawless statements of literal fact, they are an invaluable resource.”

  “I suppose I can’t argue with that,” Vanessa admitted a bit reluctantly. “It’s hard to remember that when I’m constantly faced with people like Peterson.”

  “I also don’t think there’s anything necessarily wrong with searching for the miraculous,” Ramin went on. “For people as passionate about their spirituality as we are about history, why wouldn’t they want to seek more, learn more, hope to find the indisputable truth of what they already believe so sincerely?

  “You know, with faith and certainty, that Amanirenas is out there. You believe in her story, even when others tell you that it’s a fool’s errand. What wouldn’t you give to bring back just a shred of proof to show those who had doubted you? That passion, that belief against all sense and all known fact, is what drives you. It’s what drives all scientists. Nothing can remain unknown forever because, somewhere, there is the person who believes an answer exists and will do whatever it takes to find it.”

  Vanessa listened, a little awed by his fervor, and realized with sudden embarrassing certainty just how badly she wanted to kiss him. She shook it off, looking away.

  “It’s starting to cool off again,” she said. “We should probably get moving.”

  “You’re right,” Ramin said, picking up the wine bottle from between them. “There’s a little of this left. Do you want it?”

  “Oh, please,” Vanessa said at once, reaching for it. He held it out of the way again, laughing as she pouted. He got to his feet and suddenly pulled off his shirt, dropping it into the sand as he ran out into the shallows of the spring.

  “Come and wrestle me for it!” he demanded, the sun gleaming on his bronze skin, water running over the sculpted muscles of his stomach. Vanessa felt her face flush red and she looked away quickly, trying to master herself.

  “No, thank you,” she said. “I’m suddenly not thirsty, actually.”

  She began busily packing up their lunch as Ramin, laughing, came back out of the water.

  “Fine, you don’t want to fight for it,” he said, darting in front of her, still wet and stripped to the waist. “I’ll trade it to you.”

  “What for?” Vanessa asked suspiciously.

  “A kiss,” he suggested, confirming her suspicions.

  Vanessa scoffed incredulously and turned away, hurrying to her own horse.

  “I’m sorry,” he said at once, following her. “I’ve offended you. I saw the way you were looking at me and I thought—”

  “I’m not going to be one of your tabloid articles, Your Highness,” Vanessa said stiffly, trying to convince herself as much as him. “I’m here to work, nothing more.”

  “Of course,” Ramin said, looking a little hurt. “I just thought—”

  “I’ve seen what happens to women who get involved with you,” Vanessa said, untying her horse. “And I am not interested. I should have guessed that’s what you were after from the beginning.”

  “Vanessa!” Ramin said sharply, offended now. He grabbed her by the arm, turning her to face him. “You would really believe those magazine articles about me before you even get to know me?”

  She jerked her arm out of his hand, angry at him for grabbing her and angry at herself for her inability to be honest with herself.

  “If all you wanted from this expedition was a quickie,” she said, swinging onto her horse, “then I would rather search alone!”

  She spurred her horse on before she could think better of it, galloping away. She heard him shouting after her, telling her that it was too dangerous to be out in the desert alone, but she didn’t dare look back lest she lose her nerve. This was for the best. She couldn’t trust herself around him. And if they found the tomb, she wasn’t certain she’d be able to lie to him about her intentions.

  Chapter Eight

  She’d left the compass with him, but she had her map and a reasonably good idea of where she was going. She urged her horse in that direction, eyes open for the sign of buried structures.

  For a moment, she thought she saw something, an unnatural edge in the dunes. She pulled her horse up short. Too short, after a long gallop. It reared, whinnying loudly, and threw its inexperienced rider. Vanessa hit the sand with a shout, and by the time she’d scrambled back to her feet, the horse was running away from her at full speed, leaving nothing but dust in its wake.

  Vanessa sat down in the sand with a defeated plop, suddenly realizing just how badly she had messed up. Getting out of this desert was going to be an ordeal. At least the horse would be all right, she reasoned. It was a desert breed more than capable of finding its way home. Unlike her.

  First, she made a point to check the ridge she’d seen, but as it turned out, she’d lost her horse for nothing but a natural stone formation under the sand. Brilliant. She was going to die in the desert for a rock.

  She threw a bit of a tantrum then, kicking at the sand and yelling at the sky. But she quickly decided that was pointless, and pulling out the map she’d thankfully kept in her pocket and not in the saddlebags, she picked a direction and started walking.

  The sun sank lower and the sky caught fire, boiling red and orange flames as heat rose over the sand. She trudged on, exhausted and hot, having left most of her water with the horse. Still, it wouldn’t be more than a day’s walk back to the road if she didn’t get lost. And even if she did, when the horse turned up without her, they’d send a search team looking for her. She’d be fine. Probably.

  The sun was hanging off the edge of the horizon by bloody fingertips when she heard laughter and voices in the distance. Exhausted and sunburned, Vanessa followed the sound mindlessly, not caring who it was so long as they could give her a drink and a ride home. She climbed a dune and, from its peak, recognized where she was in an instant.

  One piece of desert tended to look more or less like another, but this piece of desert had been the culmination of her life’s work and her most disappointing failure. And with the tents and tools of an expedition set up across it, it was unmistakable. Her disbelief only grew as she realized who was sitting at the fire, right in the same place she’d set hers three years ago.

  “Peterson,” she said as she stumbled up to the circle. “What in God’s name are you doing here?”

  “Vanessa?” Peterson said in surprise. Renée Dubois sat next to him along with a handful of other men Vanessa knew to be colleagues and mercenary muscle hired to guard the expedition and barrel their way into stubbornly sealed tombs. These kinds of men had no respect for what they unearthed, and were the type to cheerfully destroy most of a site to tear out the parts they thought were more shiny or exciting.

  “Goodness, you look like a boiled lobster,” Peterson said, laughing. “You really did just walk into the desert, didn’t you? And it looks like you forgot even the trowel. Honestly, what were you thinking? Come and sit down; I’m dying to hear an explanation.”

  “What are you doing at this site?” Vanessa asked, ignoring his barbs. “I thought you were looking for Cush.”

  “I recently acquired some new information to suggest a relevant burial site might be in this area,” Peterson said coolly. “I thought it would be poetic justice to begin our search where you were forced to end yours. Don’t you think it’s just a perfect symmetry?”

  “What new information?” Vanessa demanded. She’d entirely forgotten her exhaustion in the face of the furious suspicion that was growing in her chest.

  “Have a seat, dear, and I’ll tell you all about it,” Peterson said mildly, waving a porter over to bring Vanessa water as she reluctantly took a seat across the fire from them. “Taggert, go get one of the jeeps ready. Miss Hawkins will need a ride back into town. Oh, and do put your head in the old man’s tent. He’ll want to see this.”

  One of th
e mercenaries—a large, intimidating man with sandy blond hair—stood and shuffled off towards the vehicles parked at the edge of the camp. A porter handed Vanessa a canteen of water which she drank half of immediately in one long gulp.

  “Well,” Peterson began. “You know how I prefer to continue the work of others rather than breaking new ground myself.”

  “You mean you like to steal other people’s research and take credit for it,” Vanessa said, scrubbing water from her mouth with the back of her hand.

  “Allegedly,” Peterson said, raising an eyebrow. “None of those accusations have ever been proven.”

  Because Peterson Senior paid the victims off, Vanessa thought sullenly. But she just glared at Peterson Junior, waiting for an explanation.

  “But I recently became engaged in a rather rare corner of the field,” Peterson went on. “Which, as you know, precious few people are working on. I had no choice but to start from scratch, which I’m sure you can agree is tedious beyond all bearing. I must admit, I wasn’t making much progress.”

  “It might have helped if you weren’t looking for a myth,” Vanessa pointed out.

  “But searching for myths is so much more rewarding, wouldn’t you say?” Peterson leaned forward with a cold smile, the fire making his features look manic. “Say you’re looking for the grave of Cush, stepping stone to Noah himself, and people will throw money at you. They’ll clamor for the opportunity to follow your expedition with documentary cameras and write a dozen articles about the mere possibility. If you tell people you’re looking for some dusty old queen who no-one cares about, you’ll end up, well, like you, Miss Hawkins. With no funding, no respect, and your life’s work unfinished. Isn’t that right, Abraham?”

  Vanessa looked up in shock at the name. Taggert was returning from the vehicles and Professor Van Rees was beside him, looking at Vanessa with an expression of shock and shame.

  “Abe,” Vanessa murmured, heart aching with the betrayal. “You’re working with them?”