Falling for Her Forbidden Bodyguard
Author
Hana Sheik
Reads
16.2K
Chapters
14
She doesn't want or need a bodyguard. Especially not one so unbearably attractive… Discover what happens in Hana Sheik's latest Harlequin Romance novel. RESISTING HER OFF-LIMITS PROTECTOR… Independent and strong-willed Anisa is furious. Her estranged brother has hired a bodyguard to follow her all the way to Madagascar, supposedly to protect her from hidden enemies! But as their eyes lock, she can't deny it would be easy to fall for the gorgeous stranger. Clearly Nasser feels the same, yet he's grappling with guilt from a painful past. Anisa knows they mustn't give in to their forbidden attraction…only their connection is too powerful to ignore!
CHAPTER ONE
Take care of yourself.
ANISA ABDULLAHI READ the text from her older brother, Ara, as she had several times throughout her long flight from Canada to Madagascar, yet it still elicited the same shock from her.
A shock she had every right to feel.
Ara hadn’t spoken to her in four years, cutting off all communication when Anisa had decided to leave their family home in Berbera, Somaliland, to pursue an education and a career in Toronto. It was petty of him, but he’d wanted her to know that he was displeased with her choice. At first Anisa had met his cold shoulder with her own childish behavior. Blocking him on all social media had been a way to push him out of her life. She knew that nothing would aggravate him more than not being able to immediately access what she was up to. After all, Ara had shunned her in the first place because he had lost his precious control over her.
A control he’d exerted to protect her...or so he would have her believe. Anisa only went along with his obsessive helicoptering for the sake of their long-dead parents. She’d told herself so many times that Ara needed to do what he had to do to save the family he had left: her. Losing their mother and father had changed him, and it took her a long while to realize that his change wasn’t for the better.
And that was why she refused to be the one to break their silence.
At least, that was how she felt. Over time, Anisa’s embittered heart stirred with a longing. For family. For her brother. Not the man who imprisoned her in their home and tracked her every innocent movement with eagle-eyed precision. Rather, the boy who after pranking her would laugh so hard he’d get a bellyache, but who would then just as easily chase off her school bullies.
She wanted that version of her brother.
Almost as much as she’d just wished for some sign, any sign that he wasn’t gravely upset with her anymore.
Though admittedly the long-awaited message from Ara wasn’t exactly as she’d pictured.
“‘Take care of yourself’... What does that even mean, and how am I supposed to reply back?” she muttered under her breath before dropping her phone in her lap and massaging her throbbing temples. Her hands stilled suddenly when she considered that maybe Ara had messaged her accidentally.
He meant to text someone else, not me.
She sighed, supposing that the universe was having some good fun at her expense.
She’d only waited for most of four insufferably long years to hear from her brother—
“And now I need cipher to decode his message. Great.” Anisa groaned, biting back her sarcastic moaning halfway when two businessmen sitting in chairs nearest to her stopped chatting and eyed her funnily.
With a blush, and a softer groan of embarrassment, Anisa sank into the comfortable armchair in the hotel’s foyer. Before she could hope to disappear, she caught the eyes of another person.
A man standing before the revolving glass doors of the hotel’s entrance and exit.
Anisa’s breath whooshed out, not remembering when she held in the gulp of air. She must have, after noticing the handsome stranger who seemed to be watching her. He was dressed in business attire like the men who had looked at her strangely, but unlike them, his suit molded seamlessly to unmistakable muscle, hinting at the exquisite work of a tailor handling expensive material for his creation. The result was a jacket and pants of obsidian, with a pale gray dress shirt and a gleaming white tie. He was a monochromatic emblem. One that had her discreetly wiping at her mouth after picking her jaw up off the floor.
In fairness, it was the only appropriate reaction to a man who looked that good.
A man who really, truly did appear to be boring holes into her skull from the short distance that separated them.
Instinctively Anisa slid up the chair, sitting straighter, with her hands fastening on the supple leather of the armrests and her sneakers pressed flat to the soft rug carpeting the waiting area. She looked around, certain there was a perfectly logical explanation.
Someone’s standing behind me, that’s it. Probably a gorgeous bikini-clad woman heading toward the hotel’s crystal-blue outdoor pool.
Only she had seen the sign pointing to the pool, and it was in the opposite direction from the foyer, nearer the back of the hotel for privacy.
Yet because it was far more plausible to believe than thinking this hot dude was checking her out, she clung to the woman-in-a-bikini theory.
But no one conveniently stood behind her to explain who he’d been looking at. No half-dressed woman sauntered along the foyer. There was no one but her. And that unleashed a torrent of heat through her blood, her skin flushing readily, her limbs weakening just as her heart strengthened its beats. It wasn’t an entirely awful feeling. Strange, unexpected...
Not terrible, icky, or ugly and unwanted.
But she suddenly experienced a vulnerability she wanted to outrun. That explained her physical reaction.
She wanted to get out of there.
When she tried to move, get up from the chair and rush back to the sanctuary of her hotel room, Anisa couldn’t budge. Couldn’t bring herself to do anything but gawk at the devastatingly handsome man staring her down from across the brightly lit foyer.
So Anisa studied his heart-stopping features. And she missed nothing, her eyes tracking almost hungrily over his short, curly black hair and the low fade that started right around his ears. From there her gaze traveled over his big shoulders, his strong, distinct jawline, up to his well-cut cheekbones, broad-tipped nose, and thick black eyebrows that lowered subtly now that she was noticing. His lushly round lips, dusky in color, curled with the beginnings of a frown under her observation.
But it was his eyes that arrested her mind completely. Fathomlessly dark pupils beheld her as though no one else existed...despite there being several people in the entrance hall with them.
I’m imagining things. Any minute now he’s going to raise his hand, and somebody else will pop up. Any moment he’ll look away. Any second—
If Anisa held another thought in her head, it flew away the instant he suddenly moved in her direction, and along with it any hope to sneak off.
She froze, a doe trapped in a hunter’s snare.
In college she’d worked as a paid student assistant on a nature documentary at a Florida wild cat sanctuary. Right now she was having flashbacks of the big cats she had met. Specifically the rare black panther. Only this man wasn’t prowling toward her on all fours. Rather, his steps were unhurried in polished brown cap-toe oxfords. And it seemed to her that, like an apex predator’s, his stare intensified upon approach.
Another few strides and he’d be right by her side.
What am I going to say?
Anisa’s heart rate quickened as her mind flailed. The worst part was she knew that she wouldn’t be able to utter the first word, not with the way her jaw slackened and her tongue grew stiff in her mouth.
It didn’t stop her from trying. She pried her drying lips apart—
“Anisa! There you are!”
Anisa jerked her head to see her coworker and friend Darya hurrying toward her from the elevator. She blinked in surprise, once, twice, before finally shaking off the stupor clouding her head and discovering she could move her limbs again.
She stood as Darya touched her arm, concern painting her friend’s pale, round face.
“I’ve been calling you,” Darya said. “Weren’t we supposed to meet up in your room first before heading out?”
Because they’d only landed a couple hours ago, and it was well into the evening in Madagascar’s capital, Antananarivo, their film crew wouldn’t officially begin work until tomorrow morning. Once production started, there was very little chance they would have time to themselves outside the long hours that awaited them, especially as they had one day allotted in Antananarivo for their filming schedule. That meant she and Darya had the best chance to do a little city exploring tonight and tonight only.
“Sorry, I got bored and decided to come down for a little people-watching.” Anisa cast her friend a sheepish smile.
“Well, if you’re done scoping out the other hotel guests, may we please go catch our rideshare before it decides to leave us?” Darya batted her long fake lashes for comical effect.
Anisa snorted a laugh.
Darya grinned before hooking her arm through Anisa’s and pulling her toward the exit.
Anisa’s humor dried up on recalling that there was one hotel guest in particular who had consumed most of her attention. She spotted him at Reception, speaking to the staff behind the large circular bronze and white marble desk. Looking back to the armchair she’d vacated, she figured it was possible that he’d been aiming for the hotel’s front desk all along, and that she’d let her imagination get the better of her.
There was no way he was coming for me.
The thought carried some relief and a smidgen of dismay.
Even when she’d wanted to run, she wouldn’t have minded a guy that incredibly hot focusing all his attention on her.
Allowing Darya to tug her through the revolving doors out into the city, Anisa flung a final look back at him before losing sight of him altogether, then forced herself to release her strange bout of disappointment.
Surely there were other attractive men in the world. Maybe even some who were actually interested in her.
So why couldn’t she get this one out of her head?
Anisa couldn’t figure out if she was losing her mind or not. But she didn’t know how else she could explain seeing her stranger from the hotel all over the Analakely Market, a popular outdoor marketplace in Antananarivo, or Tana, as the locals called the city. At first, it was just glimpses from the corner of her eye.
In the narrow paths snaking between vendor stalls. Behind her in the sea of bodies flooding the market space.
He seemed to be everywhere—and nowhere at the same time.
Even when she paused to right her hijab, using her phone’s camera as an impromptu mirror, her hands froze at the sight of those dark eyes searing her. Yet when Anisa whirled around...no one was there.
But when she saw him striding past the large front window of the small restaurant she and Darya had chosen to dine at, Anisa began to question her sanity.
He can’t be stalking me...
Anisa wished her confidence backed her thinking. She continued to feel out of sorts after she and Darya split their dinner bill and left the restaurant, strolling back through the expansive market.
Spread over several blocks, Analakely Market had almost everything, from produce, seafood and meat to clothing, shoes, household items and bootleg films. In that way, it was not unlike most outdoor marketplaces. But it also had unique perks like pop-up nail salons served solely by young men, and grilled lizard meat among other traditional street foods.
Anisa sniffed the air laced with the tantalizing smells, though luckily her stomach was immune to the scents. The big Malagasy-style dinner she’d shared with Darya had saved her from shelling out more money sampling the foods from the market vendors.
Walking past the delectable, deep-fried temptations on display, Anisa trailed her friend to a stall selling hats of all kinds.
The stall owner, an elderly woman with brown skin lined with age, smiled widely in recognition of them. Like most of the market vendors, she was eager to make a sale. Happy to oblige, Darya zeroed in on a fedora.
She popped the hat on and modeled it for Anisa. “Does it make my head look big?”
Anisa disagreed with a laugh.
Smiling her approval, Darya started haggling over the price with the stall owner.
Free to look around the nearby stalls, Anisa paused at a table full of sparkly trinkets, never thinking she would see so many hair clips and ties, ribbons, and bedazzled broaches all in one place. She was looming over the rhinestone-embellished silver pins when the vendor encouraged her to try some on. Eagerly Anisa clipped a bow-shaped pin to her hijab and studied her reflection in the hand mirror the vendor offered her.
Even with the small cracks in the smudged mirror, she couldn’t deny the attractiveness of the accessory.
Parting with a few Malagasy ariary, the local currency, wasn’t an issue.
As she strolled away with her new purchase pinned to her hijab, Anisa hoped Darya was done with her price negotiation so that they could finally leave the market and head for their hotel.
Between Ara’s enigmatic text and believing that she had a handsome stalker, her day could be summed up as a wild roller-coaster ride, and she couldn’t wait for it to end. Pulling her phone up by its long, pearly cross-body chain, Anisa scrolled past Ara’s message and thumbed a quick text for Darya to meet up with her at one of the three long stone stairways that led in and out of the market. Her thighs and calves already burned in anticipation of the workout she’d be getting from climbing all those steps up to La Ville Moyenne, the city’s Middle Town, where they could hail a cab easier. She wasn’t looking forward to it, yet if it meant that she could lock herself in her hotel suite and pretend she had no worries, then Anisa was up for the exercise.
After she sent Darya the message, she bobbed and weaved through the crowds back to where she’d left her friend and wondered how she’d managed to wander away so far, then came to an abrupt halt.
Anisa did a double take, gawking ahead of her, the crowds milling around blocking her view. Springing up on her toes, she searched avidly for some sort of confirmation this time.
Because she saw him again. The stranger from the hotel.
Only just as before, when she searched hard for him, he vanished. No trace or indication that he’d ever been there.
A tug on her shirt from behind startled her. Anisa whirled on a young boy in an old, faded shirt and shorts, his oversized and overly worn sandals caked with grime and dust. He looked up at her with large, dark eyes, held out both hands and said something pleadingly in French.
Anisa didn’t need a translation app to understand what he was asking for. She rooted for some change and passed it to him. No sooner than she did, more children and even some adults approached her with outstretched hands. She didn’t have spare change for them all and knew that she would have to back out of the situation she’d created. But they circled her, and she saw no direct path to slip away.
They crowded closer.
Someone stepped on her foot, an elbow dug into her side, and her phone chain was yanked roughly from behind.
If claustrophobia wasn’t an issue before, she feared it would be after this.
“I don’t have any more money. I’m sorry—désolée,” she pleaded, barely recalling how to say sorry in French. True fear pricked her heart when the beggars, not heeding her plea, pushed in closer, crowding her personal space.
Not knowing what else to do, Anisa kept backing away helplessly. Right into a solid wall...of unyieldingly hard and very warm muscle.
She lurched forward away from the person she’d bumped into and turned to face them with a ready apology.
An apology that never fully formed as her jaw dropped open.
“It’s you!”
Those weren’t the words she’d pictured coming from her, but they seemed appropriate enough when she came face to face with the stranger from the hotel.
Just as appropriately, she followed that surprised observation with, “Are you stalking me?”
Of all the terrible things Nasser Dirir had been called—a rebel, a criminal, a heartless monster—he’d never expected to add stalker to the list.
“Well, are you? Stalking me?” Hurling the query at him, Anisa shuffled away, just as she had when the beggars flocked to her. As though he posed a real threat.
Her defensive posture shouldn’t have bothered him, but it did, and somehow that irked him even more than her downright rude accusation.
It took everything in him to rise above his steaming annoyance and ignore her question. He skipped to the part where he dangled her phone in front of her face, clutching it by its gaudily bejeweled chain. Of course he had to hold the ends of the now broken chain together or else risk the phone dropping and possibly breaking.
“This is yours, is it not?”
Anisa shifted her narrowed gaze from him to the phone swinging between them. He raised it higher so there would be no doubt who it belonged to. Her eyes widened with recognition, the light of a nearby lamppost reflecting off the dark of her irises.
And before she could open that mouth and sting him with her tongue again, he explained, “You should be careful. This pretty string might as well be a sparkling target for pickpockets.” He emphasized his point when the streetlight glinted off the milky-white pearls on the phone chain.
She grabbed at the phone, and Nasser let her have it without a fight.
After checking it over, she looked up at him, her accusatory glare gone. “I didn’t think someone stole my phone.”
“They didn’t get far.”
“You caught them,” she breathed, looking behind him, as though he had the petty thief in cuffs.
“Yes, and then I let the child go.”
“Child?”
“A boy. No more than ten. It was enough that he was scared. I didn’t see a need to drag him before the gendarmerie.” That and the local police would only further traumatize the child thief. Nasser clenched his jaw, leaving out the part that would reveal his...unresolved issues with police officials and other authority figures.
He hadn’t realized he’d been holding a breath until Anisa nodded, silently agreeing with his decision to let her pickpocket go free.
“Well, thank you for recovering my phone.” She pursed her lips, her body language shifting again, and he should’ve seen what was coming. “Though that doesn’t explain why you followed me from the hotel.”
So much for getting through to her.
Allah give me strength.
How was it that she still believed him to be a stalker? Nasser curbed a frustrated growl that managed to roll like ominous thunder through his gritted teeth. “Your brother sent me.”
Anisa blinked, her face an open book conveying her shock.
“He didn’t tell you,” Nasser commented briskly, knowing it to be true and not needing her to confirm it. Her expression was answer enough. Barely containing his irritation, he said, “Ara hired me to watch over you, and he gave me the impression that he’d be informing you of that fact.” The contract was signed and sealed, the price of his hire paid in full and nonrefundable.
“What do you mean, he sent you to watch over me?” Anisa asked.
“He feels you could benefit from some protection.”
“Protection.”
She said the word slowly as if to let its meaning sink in. Then she shook her head, muttering so quietly he almost missed what she said. “So that’s why he messaged.” He detected a flicker of sadness.
“Anisa? Anisa!”
Nasser watched the petite, pale-haired, pale-faced woman who had been with Anisa since the hotel break through the market crowds and come to a breathless stop beside her. If it hadn’t been for her friend’s interference, Nasser would’ve approached Anisa in the hotel lobby and introduced himself far earlier, sparing them both from the embarrassing debacle of having Anisa believe him to be a stalker.
“I got your message, but when I tried calling, you didn’t pick up.” Her friend trailed off, pushing up the fedora on her head before flicking a glance at him. “Who’s he?”
Anisa looked over at him, the frown unbudging on her face.
“No one,” she said quickly. Taking her friend’s arm, she pulled her along, away from him and toward the steep stairway that marked the market’s entrance and exit.
She might believe she’d shaken him off, but Nasser knew better.
He would see her again. Tomorrow, in fact, and the day after, and the day after that, because her brother had paid him handsomely to do his job.
And unfortunately for her, she happens to be that job.
