The Sheikh's Secret Son (6 page)

“You always were, Eden,” Ben told her, walking
across the room to pick up her attaché case, hand it to her. “Now, as Attorney Klinger was generous enough to reward you with four extra days of holiday, beginning at this moment, and as his only request to you was that you show me a bit of your lovely city before I return to Kharmistan, perhaps you would be so kind as to join me for a Texas lunch. I have heard very interesting things about something called a fajita. I understand it partially consists of a form of unleavened bread, such as our own pita bread.”

“That's not going to happen. So why don't you just take your sneaky maneuvers, Ben, and stick them in your
kaffiyeh,
” Eden all but growled.

“A
kaffiyeh,
Eden? You took the time to learn the proper name for my headdress between last night and this morning? I am flattered.”

“Don't be. Anyone can look up information on the Internet, and the information was for my own benefit, not yours. And now I am leaving—alone,” she said, grabbing her attaché case out of his hand and all but running from the room.

Ben followed more slowly, taking his time with a flurry of formal bows and stilted farewells the Texans seemed to believe necessary.

Surrounded by his phalanx of bodyguards, he entered the elevator when it returned to the twenty-
sixth floor, then stepped out into the lobby, his pace still measured as he walked outside to his limousine.

Eden was standing there, waiting for him, just as he had known she would be.

No, he never threatened. But he had frightened Eden, how he was not quite sure, and she would only run so far before she stopped to see if he was pursuing her.

If he only knew why.

 

“You reached for the ice water first, remember,” Eden teased as she and Ben walked out of the small family-run Tex-Mex restaurant. “Which means you owe me a dollar.”

“I do?” Ben questioned her, shaking his head, now devoid of his
kaffiyeh,
which he had left behind in the limousine. “I do not remember a wager, Eden.”

“I'm a Fortune, Ben, and we're all born gamblers, in one way or another. So there's always a reward for winning. In this case, I've decided a dollar will do it.”

Ben reached into his pockets and came out empty. “May I owe it to you, Eden? I am afraid I must admit that I never carry money with me.”

“Yes, I noticed that inside when Haskim stepped forward to pay the bill. How do you stand it? I'd feel naked without my purse, my wallet.”

Ben shook his head at the limousine driver and took Eden's arm, guiding her down the sunlit sidewalk in the direction of the famed San Antonio Riverwalk. “I have never thought about it, actually. I do not think I have handled a single coin since becoming sheikh. Money has always simply appeared when I needed it.”

“Money appears, Ben, because you're smart and savvy and you just worked an extraordinary oil and gas deal that benefits our side, definitely, but which positively heaps money into your pockets—or wherever you keep it.”

She looked down nervously, to where his hand cupped her elbow, and then at the street in front of him. “Where are we going?”

“Touristing,” he answered easily, approaching a small, flat boat beside a sign offering tours of the area. He held up a hand and Haskim stepped forward, already reaching into his pocket. “I will take that, Haskim,” he said, relieving the servant of the fat wallet and then dismissing him for the remainder of the afternoon. He had already dismissed the rest of his guards, who had been unhappy to obey him but seemed to find it impossible to not obey him.

“But, Your Highness,” Haskim bleated between bows. “His Excellency will ask where it is you are, and I will have to say that I do not know, that I was dismissed.”

“Ben?” Eden prodded, giving him a slight jab in his side with her elbow. “Do something. You're going to get Haskim in trouble.”

Ben looked up and down the Riverwalk, smiling as he came to a conclusion. “You have a watch, Eden?” When she lifted her wrist to show him that she did, he unstrapped his gold Rolex watch and handed it to Haskim, along with half a dozen hundred-dollar bills. “It is now two, Haskim. Meet us here, at this exact spot, at five, with your arms full of presents you will be taking home to Bashiyra and your children.”

“Your Highness is too kind,” Haskim said, once more bowing to his sheikh. “But His Excellency—”

“His Excellency knows only what we tell him, Haskim. Surely you do not feed him the events of my day each evening along with his sweet tea?”

Haskim shifted his eyes from side to side, his features darkening as Eden took a step forward, looking at him closely. “I serve my sheikh, Your Highness. I serve you.”

“How comforting. Now, run along. We will see you at five.”

Ben watched Eden watch the servant leave. Her blue eyes were shadowed, her expression one of concern. Concern mixed with what he was sure could only be fear. Concern he would have appre
ciated. He did not appreciate the fear. “Is there something wrong?”

She looked up at him, wet her lips. “You don't see it? I watched your associate this morning, Ben, the man Haskim refers to as ‘His Excellency.' Yusuf Nadim, your chief assistant or advisor or whatever you want to call him. And, as you said, I did do some more homework last night, learning more on the internet than the word
kaffiyeh.
”

“And you are about to share this new knowledge with me?”

“You already know it,” Eden said as Ben peeled bills from the thick wad and presented them to the man at the small boat dock.

“We will rent the entire boat,” he said, his tone—and the bills—not allowing for argument. He then helped Eden into the boat, motioned for her to sit before joining her on one of the long benches.

“This is decadent,” Eden said, looking around, and flushing with embarrassment as the boat pushed away from the dock with its two passengers when it could have easily held thirty tourists. “But let's not change the subject, all right?”

Ben took her hand, lifted it to his lips. “I would not dream of doing any such thing, Eden. Especially as you are about to tell me something you say I already know.”

“Ha, ha,” Eden said grimly, her body relaxing a
little as she leaned over the side of the flat-bottomed boat to trail her fingertips in the water as they passed by quaint hotels that lined the Riverwalk. “What I know—what you know, is that Yusuf Nadim is—was—your father-in-law. That he has been chief advisor to your father, and now serves you in the same capacity. And that he is not without ambition.”

“Poor, hopefully devious, painfully obvious Nadim. He positively oozes ambition from every pore,” Ben agreed genially. “You did not like him?”

“I don't trust him, Ben. There's a big difference. I don't know him well enough to not like him. Has there ever been a coup in Kharmistan?”

“A successful one? Not since my great-great-grandfather took over the throne, no. Do you think I should be watching my back, Eden? Is that what you are saying?”

She lifted her hand out of the water, looked up at the scenery passing by. “I don't know what I'm saying, Ben. I just get the feeling that you don't trust your own closest advisor. I also get the feeling that, while you don't trust him, you also don't fear him. Is that wise?”

Ben blew his breath out slowly, shaking his head. “Americans. Always looking for intrigue. Do you really see us all as bloodthirsty savages creeping
through our desert palaces, armed to the teeth and out to slice off somebody's head?”

“Don't insult me or your own people, Ben,” Eden said, stiffening as she sat close beside him. “I'm not saying that Nadim is about to murder you in your bed. What I am saying is that I don't think he'd be devastated if you were to somehow lose your subjects' esteem and they went looking around for a new sheikh.”

“Lose the esteem of my subjects?” Ben thought about this for a moment, then smiled. “You mean, by taking an American wife?”

If they had not been on a boat, gliding down the center of the slim river, Ben was sure Eden would have leaped to her feet, preparing to make another of her dramatic exits. As it was, she left him to sit on the facing bench, her wonderful blue eyes shooting sparks that should have set his hair ablaze.

“I don't want to talk about this anymore, Ben. I thought we had called a truce of some sort—even if I had to come to the peace table under the threat of you telling my boss that I wasn't being a good, cooperative little corporate lawyer. I was enjoying your company. But marriage? That's ridiculous, and you know it. I never thought about that for a moment.”

“That is unfortunate, but I hope not impossible to contemplate sometime in the future. In the mean
time, may I tell you that my late mother was British? She and my father were married for nearly thirty years before she died, without causing a single insurrection. If that eases your mind at all.”

“It would ease my mind to be off this boat and in a cab heading away from you,” she shot back, her cheeks still flushed, although more with embarrassment than anger. At least he hoped this was so.

They moved through the water, watching the passing scenery without speaking, until Ben finally stood, joined her on the long bench.

In a voice meant not to be overheard, he said, “I had a long conversation with Nadim last evening, Eden. A long, rather probing conversation in which he finally admitted that he had not had my messages delivered to you in Paris. His reasoning was sound, if I remembered the unease in my country at the time, the worry over my father's health, the succession, the chance of invasion by bordering countries if we showed even a hint of vulnerability.”

“He wasn't up to having to deal with a lovesick prince mooning after an American? He worried that you might return to Paris, show yourself to be a playboy prince, or perhaps a man who was no longer in touch with the wishes and hopes of his father's subjects?”

Ben shook his head, smiling. “I might have couched all of that in terms more flattering to me, I
believe. But you are correct. If I had left Kharmistan again, followed after you to America, and my father had died—well, it was much easier to remove the threat than to deal with the consequences. At least, to Nadim's mind it was.”

“He was perfectly polite to me this morning,” Eden said slowly, as if still considering Nadim's behavior and finding that politeness on the advisor's part did not equal trust on hers.

“I am secure, Eden, my throne is secure. We are a small but peaceful country. When the time comes, and I have a son, his future will be secure. Nadim's hopes for the throne died with my wife Leila, who had not yet produced the grandson Nadim would tutor, would coach, would do his best to control. He is a bitter man.”

“That's cold,” Eden said, abruptly pulling back her hand as Ben tried to take it in his. “That he would marry his daughter to you for his own ambition. And that you would let him.”

Now Ben did take hold of both her hands, holding them tightly as he looked deep into her eyes. “You were gone, Eden. You wanted nothing to do with a prince, an heir to a sheikhdom. This is what I thought as I agreed to the marriage with Leila, a purely political union we both understood when we agreed to the marriage.”

“I can't understand that sort of thinking, Ben,”
Eden said, her voice small and filled with feeling. “I can't get my mind around your culture, the duties of a sheikh, the personal sacrifices that must be made in the name of preserving what sounds to me like a golden prison. I mean, money and titles didn't do a whole heck of a lot for Princess Di, now did they?”

“I understand what you are saying, Eden,” Ben said as the boat pulled back to the dockside and they prepared to climb onto the cobbled Riverwalk. “I also understand that I am moving too swiftly, without a single thought to anything but the need to erase the mistakes and lost years, to begin again, if we can.”

Her hands were on his shoulders as he lifted her out of the boat by cupping his hands around her waist. He pulled her close, looked down at her, felt the need to hold her, to kiss her.

And fought that need, knowing that he had come far enough in the past twenty-four hours, knowing that he had probably traveled too far, too fast.

Eden matched him look for look, her blue eyes shining with unshed tears, her hands trembling as they gripped his shoulders.

He needed. He wanted.

And he was frightening her because they both knew she also needed. Also wanted.

“Shall we visit some of the shops, Eden?” he
asked lightly, taking her hand in his as they began walking toward the line of small stores they had passed earlier on their way from the restaurant. “I have begun nurturing a nearly overwhelming desire to present my entire staff with cowboy hats. Very large cowboy hats.”

“Ben, I—” Eden began, tugging at his hand so that he stopped and she could stand in front of him. “Some mistakes can be rectified, some problems can be solved. But there are mistakes, and problems, that simply can't be overcome. I think this is—”

“Eden! Damned if I thought I'd see you out of your office today. Didn't I hear that you were working on closing a big deal with some desert chieftain, or something like that?”

“Holden?” Eden's voice was a near squeak and she looked ready to bolt, to run away from this tall, well-muscled man who looked ready to grab her up in a hug and spin her until she was dizzy.

Ben stepped forward, prepared to intercept the assault, when Eden held out a hand and said, “Holden, big brother and big mouth extraordinare, allow me to present Sheikh Barakah Karif Ramir, the desert chieftain you mentioned just as you were stuffing that size twelve boot in your mouth. Ben, may I present my oldest brother, Holden Fortune.”

Ben saw the resemblance then, even if it was limited to Holden Fortune's blue eyes and a certain
sameness about his strong, stubborn chin. And he wondered why Eden looked so panicked, as if all she could want from life would be given to her if her brother would disappear in a puff of smoke.