Read Online The Sheikh's Destiny (Harlequin Romance) by Melissa James - Free Book Online Page B

nightfall tomorrow.’
    She knew her way through this arid wasteland. She’d worked out her escape route well in advance. It told him farmore than she intended…and she’d called him by name again. Even if it was because she currently felt superior to him, he felt a grin form. From the moment she’d touched him, her guard had been falling. As unbelievable as it was, she did desire him.
    He left a few mouthfuls of water for her. ‘You need to drink too, or you’ll end up with a dehydration headache, and then where will we be?’ he teased, even through the pain.
    She mock-bowed again, bending right over and peering up at him from about the level of his hip. ‘Yes, O my master,’ she rasped, and he chuckled as she took the canteen. She’d had the cringing tone of Gollum down pat. ‘Please take this and rub it on your forehead—it will help until the tablets take effect.’ She held out a small dark bottle to him.
    He took the tiny dropper bottle from her, and sniffed its contents. ‘Peppermint and lavender oils?’
    She grinned. ‘Yes, it is, and no, we are not going to use it to kill the stink of sweat and mud. We need it for headaches when we run out of ibuprofen. So use it sparingly, here—’ she pointed to his forehead ‘—and here.’ She touched his pulse-point in his throat, a brief, sweet flutter of a muddy finger, too soon over.
    She waited until he’d rubbed some of the fragrant oils on his forehead before lifting the canteen to her lips, drinking so fast he knew she’d been as thirsty as he.
    She must be closer to dehydration than him. She’d been giving him more water all along, citing his concussion as the reason.
    â€˜You love caring for people,’ he remarked as she packed away the oil bottle and the empty canteen. ‘And being in control,’ he added, teasing her to lessen her suspicions that he was digging again—which he was.
    â€˜Yes, I guess I do.’ She flashed him a rueful smile, her white teeth startling in the darkness and her dirty face. ‘It’s why Ibecame a nurse—that, and my father wouldn’t have allowed me any other profession without being married first.’ A shadow crossed her face, her smile vanished. She said no more.
    â€˜It must be killing you, not seeing your family,’ he said, taking a stab in the dark. Until now he’d thought her alone in the world. Now he sensed the truth lay deeper.
    Her eyes sparked in the night with dangerous fire. ‘Is it killing you?’
    He stared at her unblinking for a moment, and decided to meet the challenge. ‘You know who I am, why I’m in Africa.’ Because it’s as far from my privileged, fast-lane life as I could find on short notice…where they wouldn’t think to look for the missing sheikh .
    And he’d stayed because—well, because he had to. For the first time in his life, he wasn’t the second heir, Fadi’s replacement, or The Racing Sheikh. The people here, from the aid agencies to the villagers, needed his skills, not for entertainment, but to save their lives.
    Hana bowed again, but without the impish fun, the softness in her eyes vanished. ‘It wasn’t hard, my lord. Your face is famous. Your disappearance became a worldwide interest story.’
    â€˜Especially among our people,’ he agreed through gritted teeth. She knew too much about him and his secrets, and he had to piece hers together by all she didn’t say.
    Even in the black of night, he saw her face pale. ‘Stop there.’
    â€˜So you are from Abbas al-Din? Are you on the run from your father, or the husband you claim you don’t have?’ he pressed, wanting something, any part of her, the vulnerability and loneliness he felt beneath layers as strong and as fragile as the burq’a she’d worn the first day.
    â€˜Stop.’
    She wasn’t looking at him, but her