Her Royal Protector (a Johari Crown Novel) (Entangled Indulgence) Read online

  Her own reaction shook her. Surely even susceptible, beautiful women with some hope of a return didn’t start going weak-kneed after five minutes in the company of….

  “It’ll take double the time,” she protested. “I don’t have time to walk every inch of beach twice over, especially when it’s so boiling hot. Why can’t you just go back to the yacht and come for me when I’ve finished? It’ll be done sooner.”

  Arif nodded as if he saw the force of this argument. “Next time I will ask Farhad to run us in. But we’re here now, and I want to learn what it is you do.”

  “Why?” Aly demanded.

  He stiffened. And suddenly she was looking not at Arif, skipper and sailing companion, but His Excellency Hajji Sayed Sheikh Arif Akhtar ibn Jaber ibn Jafar al Najimi, Cup Companion to His Royal Highness the Sultan of Bagestan.

  Who also happened to be the environment czar in his country’s government. What kind of idiot was she?

  “Because I want to know,” he said in a measured voice that sent a chill up her back. Not a man to make an enemy of. This one would be ruthless in enmity, and Aly shivered while her cheeks got hot.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I don’t know why I’m being so…”

  “Obstructionist?” he filled in humorously, and Aly laughed with relief. But she would not soon forget what she had seen in that implacable face. If he were really the enemy of what she was doing….

  They dragged the boat onto the sand. Then Aly led the way up the beach to a point near the ridge of seaweed deposited by the last high tide, and turned to walk parallel to the shore.

  It doesn’t get better than this: walking on a perfect, utterly deserted beach, the sun beating down, a cooling breeze in your face, the smell and rush of the sea…and the handsomest man for a thousand miles at your side. If the man were your lover and you could look forward to a lazy swim in that divine sea, and then a return to the yacht to eat and make afternoon love…what perfection that would be.

  Not the sort of thing that will ever happen to you, girl, and best you stop fantasizing. You are one of the workers of the world.

  And no handsome Cup Companion was ever going to look at her twice, no matter how luscious the beach and the breeze, or how perfect the scenery and the solitude.

  “Tell me what we are looking for.” His voice broke into her thoughts, and she heaved a breath and returned to the here and now.

  “Well, I told you yesterday that we find the nests through identifying the tracks the female turtle makes on her journey up the beach,” Aly began. Just as she lectured her students at the university. She pointed. “She comes up the beach to a position above the tide line, where she digs her nest, lays her eggs, and then covers them in sand before leaving again. What we hope is to see her tracks before the sea washes them away. Otherwise the nest is lost to us until it hatches. We’re also on the lookout for signs a nest has recently hatched and the hatchlings have made their way to the sea.”

  Arif listened with full attention, asking a question only now and then as they walked and she talked. Her love of her subject was intense, her commitment to this task total; she couldn’t resist the chance to share her passion. And if Arif was in the pay of those who were killing the turtle, all the more reason to make him understand and love the beautiful Cheloniidae johariae.

  If. She had to act as if Richard were right about him, but looking up into that strong face, she knew she’d need a lot more than Richard’s suspicion before she believed anything so dreadful about this man.

  She had always known her father was living some kind of lie. She had almost smelled it on him. There was no such smell around Arif al Najimi.

  Unless you are deluding yourself, of course.

  …

  There was no sign of a nest on the beach. “But we’ve had a lovely walk.” Aly’s joke had a little bite as they pushed the dinghy out into the water again. “The next beach is past the headland there, according to my chart. Do you think it’s best just to go there in the dinghy and leave the yacht where she is?”

  Arif gunned the motor and steered towards the yacht. “But first there is the question of food. It is lunchtime, and the sun is high. We can consider our options for getting to the next beach after we’ve eaten the excellent lunch Jamila will have ready for us.”

  Aly wouldn’t even have remembered lunch. She didn’t keep regular meal hours, preferring to snack here and there when the mood took her. When there was work to be done she would rather get it done. And in an underfunded charity, there was always work to be done.

  “Can you drop me on the beach and then pick me up after you’ve finished lunch?”

  “And you will eat, when?” Arif asked, his hand on the tiller not shifting.

  “I’ll get something later. I don’t bother with food much,” she said. “I’d rather keep going now.”

  He didn’t alter course. “In this climate it is important to eat. And it is unwise to be walking in full sun at midday. So you will come back with me to the yacht for lunch and we will return together when the heat is less killing.”

  “Heat doesn’t bother me,” she lied. What she meant was, the pressure of the work meant she didn’t want to give in to the physical discomfort she was undoubtedly feeling.

  “You are flushed and hot,” he said. “You need to get out of the sun.”

  Aly eyed him levelly. “Are you going to overrule me in everything, Arif?”

  Burning blue eyes raked her, adding their own heat to her discomfort. “What are you talking about?”

  Aly took a breath.

  “Well, so far it’s two out of two. I just wonder if that’s setting the trend.”

  Arif killed the engine as they neared the yacht, and caught the swimming ladder to pull them alongside. Aly clambered up onto the deck with the bow rope and bent to tie it to the cleat as he climbed up beside her.

  The sun was high, but he was tall and cast his shadow over her where she crouched by the cleat.

  “You must be used to getting your own way, if you complain about such trifles,” he observed. Farhad appeared from below with a quick apology and bent to take the rope from her hand.

  Aly straightened and stared up at Arif, trying to read his expression against bright sunlight. “I have a job to do,” she said. “It’s vitally important work and I like doing it and want to do it to the best of my ability. You have interfered with that. Twice in one morning. Time is being wasted. Do you expect me to accept such interference without resisting?”

  Her heart was beating in hard thumps now, and her stomach churned. He was not like any man she had ever met, and what if his ego erupted and he just cancelled this expedition altogether? But she had to take a stand. She had to make him understand how important it was. This was not a sailing holiday.

  And if Richard was right, and this was Arif’s way of sabotaging her mission, better she knew that as soon as possible.

  He stood looking down at her, and the breeze died and she abruptly recognized the heat and her own thirst. She felt seasick.

  “You are the expert on turtles,” Arif agreed. “I am the expert on survival in this climate.” The yacht rocked on the waves so that she staggered a little, and he was right—she was no judge of what a powerhouse sun like this could do to the human body.

  Or maybe she was just lightheaded from his presence. She didn’t have much experience of powerhouse masculinity either. She gazed up into his face. If she challenged him now…her mind shied away from the possibilities.

  Maybe because, however many possibilities there were, none would ever entail his touching her in the way her body ached for him to do.

  …

  Arif showered quickly, hefted his briefcase, and headed up on deck. This morning Fouad had provided him with papers that required his urgent attention, and Arif, well aware of the trouble this sudden decision was causing his PA, had every intention of fulfilling his promise to action them as soon as possible. While Aly showered and changed, he would use the time to lo
ok at the most urgent items and perhaps fit in a phone call to Fouad.

  A welcome breeze blew over his face as he came up on deck, fluttering the white canvas of the canopy that protected the guest seating area. The sound itself was cooling to the spirit, and he stood for a moment looking out over the sun-sparked sea before turning to cross to the table, already laid for lunch. Jamila was at the counter, pouring ice water into a glass. He greeted her briefly.

  And found Aly gazing at him impatiently from her seat at the table. “I’ve waited for you this time, because Jamila has something prepared, but in future I’ll be much happier if I can just grab a sandwich and get back to work,” she said.

  It was the first time in his life that a woman had not taken longer than himself to dress. Arif stared at her for a startled moment, then dropped his briefcase onto a chair and sat.

  “You didn’t want a shower?” he asked. Her face was scrubbed and bare, her wet hair impatiently slicked back behind her ears. She had, in short, taken zero interest in her physical appearance. That was another first. Could there be another woman in the world who wouldn’t have thought half an hour too little time to prepare herself for lunch aboard this yacht? Or one who would show him a face entirely free of makeup. Or even one who would not have changed into an easily-removed sarong worn over a tiny thong—if that.

  “Yes, a quick one, and I saved time by not drying off. The breeze is lovely and cooling on wet skin.”

  Wet skin. Beneath the loose t-shirt sleeves water beaded the lightly browned skin of her arms. Arif wondered how she would react if he leaned over and drank the droplets off with his mouth. Maybe that would convince her to abandon her scientific dedication for an hour. Or two. His groin responded to the idea with interest.

  He lifted his glass and took a deep pull of water. He had to get a grip.

  “That’s not work, is it?” Aly said anxiously, nodding at the briefcase. “I don’t have time to fill in forms or anything now, you know. It’ll have to wait till dark.”

  Jamila set a glass of tomato juice decorated with lime and celery in front of each of them, and he watched again as Aly acknowledged the service. Jamila smiled warmly, so the little scientist had been using the time to establish relations with her. Jamila was more usually invisible to his women guests.

  “There is nothing in my briefcase that involves you. I thought I would have a few minutes to look over some urgent items for my assistant while waiting for you. It can wait for a few hours,” he said mildly.

  A look of dismay crossed her face.

  “It doesn’t have to wait. I really don’t need you to accompany me, you know,” she said, sipping her tomato juice and glancing first at her watch and then at Jamila, who was at the counter putting the finishing touches onto their lunch plates. “I’m sure you’d rather attend to your own work, so if Farhad could just drop me at the beach and come back later to pick me up…”

  He had the sudden urge to see if he could pierce her armor. He gave her a slow smile, looking at her from under his brows. “But I want to go with you,” he said softly.

  The dismay in her face morphed into alarm, and Arif sat back and shifted gears. She wasn’t his business. It wasn’t his job to build the woman’s sexual self-confidence, no matter how desperately it needed building. That task he would have to leave to some other man. It would be a mistake anyway to try and mix pleasure into this business. Six weeks on the yacht—there was too much room for trouble.

  So in another voice entirely, he added, “I am more interested than you seem to believe in the Johari turtle. I wish to learn as much as you can teach me about it over the next six weeks.”

  “Yes, well. In that case,” she said, beginning to attack the lunch Jamila set down before her, “I hope you’re prepared to curtail your usual luncheon habits. Because this job is capable of filling every minute of the day, and still be left half undone. There are two of us where there should be twenty-two.”

  A little flick of disappointment zipped through him and was gone. “What do you mean?”

  She looked up at him with a resigned smile. “To do this job properly, we should have at least one person, preferably two, camping out on every target island for the entire three-month duration of the nesting season. That way they could walk the beaches early every single morning, before the tourists or fishermen get up and mess up the signs in the sand, before the wind or the tide obliterates the tracks completely, and before any lost hatchlings die of dehydration. As it is, I’ll be visiting too many beaches too seldom and too late in the day. That means I’m certain to miss many nests, even being very vigilant.”

  “And why don’t you?” Arif asked.

  She chewed and swallowed while the grey eyes fixed him with a gaze that reminded him again of his dream. “Why don’t I what?”

  “Have twenty-two people here?”

  Aly laughed. Her eyes lighted with amusement that was almost mockery, and he thought that if he once made love to her she would not show him such an expression.

  “Well, because we are a small charity, with limited funding, and because it’s not every student volunteer, even the most committed, who can afford to spend their summer break not earning money. Even for the sake of living on a beautiful island in the Gulf of Barakat for the duration, even for the sake of saving wildlife from extinction. Ideally we should be able to pay them at least an honorarium, but we can’t. Even so, half a dozen of my students were desperate to do it.”

  She took another mouthful of food and chewed quickly. “But getting them out here, setting them up with a camp, feeding them and all that, takes a great deal of money and management. My research grant doesn’t cover even my own expenses on this. The undergraduates who normally volunteer on such projects can’t afford the additional burden of air fare, they’re already struggling under a financial load that will take them years to pay off.”

  Arif frowned. “Why didn’t you apply to us for more funds?”

  She looked at her watch again, took another hasty bite, shrugged. “We put in an application to your umbrella charity for funds to fully cover Richard, Ellen, and me, six volunteers, a boat, fuel, and all supplies for three months. You came back with a grant that would cover the boat and Richard and Ellen’s flights, a bit over. Turtle Watch raised sufficient additional funds with crowd-funding to cover our food and diesel fuel over six weeks. We did what we could. It’s called cutting your suit to fit your cloth, Your Excellency.”

  “Arif.”

  “Arif.”

  “I knew nothing of this. The project was submitted for my approval only in its final form. No one told me that so much more was needed.”

  “Well, I guess that would be why the Sultan sends you for a stint in the mines once a year,” Aly said with a shrug, as if she were inured to such incompetence. “Have you finished? Can we get going?”

  His eyes fell to his plate: he’d eaten barely half his meal. He had never met a woman like this one in all his life. She irritated him and intrigued him in about equal measure.

  He pushed back his chair and stood. “Let’s go.”

  …

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Aly said as they walked on the soft white sand. “Do you know why the turtle is sometimes called Aswad? It’s nothing to do with the scientific name, that’s Cheloniidae johariae. And informally it’s been called the Johari turtle ever since Noah, as far as I can find. I understand johar means jewel, and her shell does spark with wonderful jewel colors. But at some point in the nineteen fifties, the Russian scientists started calling it Aswad. They said it was the earliest traditional name, but I can’t find any evidence for that position.”

  “And you won’t. The Soviet scientists invented the name, at the time they were expanding their empire into Kaljukistan and Joharistan. The Soviets, I’m sure you know, were always eager to divorce people from their traditions, the better to conquer them.”

  “I don’t know much about the politics, I’m afraid.”

  Their shadows
preceded them on the sand now, one long, one short.

  “The Johari turtle is a symbol of sovereignty for the people of Joharistan, and in their state of subjugation by Kaljukistan over the past two centuries, it has become a powerful rallying point. There is a legend among the Johari people that says that, as long as the Johari turtle exists in the islands, the Kingdom of Joharistan must one day be restored.”

  Her eyes went wide and she hooted with laughter, clapping her hands over her open mouth. “But we’ve got exactly that tradition at home. The monarchy will survive in Britain as long as there are ravens at the Tower. They actually clip the wings of the Tower ravens nowadays, to prevent them decamping.”

  It was Arif’s turn to laugh. “Is it so? Then you will understand why the Soviets were eager to divorce the Johari turtle from its name.”

  “Well, I won’t call it Aswad again.” Her eyes had never ceased from combing the sand, from the line of the sea to well above the high tide mark. Arif suppressed the urge to say something that would make her look up at him with that same intent focus. “But now it’s the Kaljuks who are opposed to Johar independence, isn’t it? Why don’t they just let them go?”

  “Because Joharistan means ‘Land of Precious Jewels,’ and it is not called that for nothing,” Arif said dryly. “There are massive deposits in the ruby and emerald and other mines in those mountains. And much other mineral wealth, which Kaljukistan sorely needs now that their oilfields are running dry.”

  Chapter Seven

  They found the first sign of a nest not long afterwards, a line of strange waving tracks leading up the beach and down again, as if left by some kind of moon vehicle. Aly shouted with a noise of profound relief.

  “There, look! Oh, how beautiful. Oh, lovely.” She ran and flung herself to her knees.

  Arif smiled quizzically. “But isn’t this exactly what you expected to see?”

  Kneeling on the sand, pulling tape measure and notebook from her backpack, Aly threw a smile of sheer joy up over her shoulder. “Arif, there are so many natural predators for Cheloniidae johariae that it takes one thousand new hatchlings making it back into the sea to produce one viable adult. It means every single nest is precious. With the sa…with all the added modern problems of pollution and plastics and fishhooks and tourism, I’ve been half afraid… Well, never mind that. At least this wonderful, determined lady made it back home. Can you hold this, please? Don’t step on the nest.”