The Innocent Carrying His Legacy
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Jackie Ashenden
Leituras
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HarlequinCHAPTER ONE
‘SHE’S STILL THERE, SIR.’
Sheikh Nazir Al Rasul, owner of one of the most powerful and most discreet private armies in the world, and a warrior to his bones, gave his guard a hard stare. The guard was young, a boy still, but he wore his black and gold uniform with pride and his shoulders were squared with determination.
Admirable. But Nazir had left strict instructions that he wasn’t to be disturbed. He’d just returned to Inaris after a particularly delicate operation involving putting down a coup in one of the Baltic states and, after two days of no sleep, he was in no mood to have his orders disobeyed by wet-behind-the-ears guards.
Nazir lifted his chin slightly—always a warning sign to his officers. ‘Did I say I was to be disturbed?’ He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to.
The young soldier blanched. ‘No, sir.’
‘Then explain your presence. Immediately.’
The boy shifted on his feet.
Nazir stared.
With an effort the boy stilled. ‘You said to let you know if anything changed.’
Nazir was tired and so it took a moment for the statement to penetrate. And then it did.
The guard was talking about the uninvited guest who’d turned up outside the gates of Nazir’s fortress. That wasn’t unusual—many people made the trek to his fortress in the middle of the desert. They braved the terrible rumours he’d put about on purpose to discourage visitors, wanting either to join his army or seek his assistance, or request his tutelage. He was a master in the art of war, especially physical combat, and his expertise was well known and sought after.
He refused everyone who turned up at his gates, which, alas, didn’t stop people from turning up.
However, they were usually male. This time it was a woman.
She’d appeared several hours ago along with a local guide, who should have known better.
Nazir didn’t let anyone into his fortress and he didn’t want to start now, and so he’d given his guards strict instructions to ignore the woman. Usually people went away after the first couple of hours. Waiting outside the gates in the brutal desert sun was a more effective deterrent than any number of dogs or weapons.
Irritation settled in Nazir’s gut, but he ignored it. A good commander never let either his emotions or physical discomfort affect him, and Nazir was a good commander. No, he was an excellent commander.
‘What’s changed?’ he demanded without any discernible change of tone.
The guard hesitated a second. ‘Well...ah...it appears that she’s pregnant, sir.’
Nazir stared, this time not taking it in at all. ‘Pregnant? What do you mean she’s pregnant?’
The guard opened his mouth. Shut it. Lifted a shoulder. Then seemed to collect himself and stood straighter. ‘She asked for water and a...sun umbrella. Because she was pregnant, she said.’
Nazir didn’t blink, not even at the mention of a sun umbrella. ‘She’s lying,’ he said flatly. ‘Do nothing.’
‘Sir. She had...uh...’ The guard made a curving gesture in the region of his stomach. ‘We could see it on the camera.’
Nazir had had two nights without sleep. He’d just overseen an operation that had required some delicacy, and he already had requests for his services from the governments of two nations, in addition to a number of private enquiries, and what he desperately needed right now was sleep. Not to deal with yet another idiot turning up at his gates wanting God only knew what. Especially a pregnant idiot.
‘Do nothing,’ he repeated. ‘Letting her in will only encourage more of these fools. And as to her being pregnant, that’s easy enough to fake.’
‘Sir, she’s asking for you by name.’
Nazir was not moved. ‘Yes, they all do.’ Though admittedly, that did not include pregnant women. The likelihood of him siring a child was, after all, close to zero since he was always careful when it came to sex and even then he didn’t indulge himself often. Giving in to those baser, more physical instincts made a man soft.
Voices drifted down the echoing stone hallway and then came the sound of running feet. Another young guard appeared, looking excited. He came to a stop outside Nazir’s bedroom door, clicked his heels together smartly and stood at attention. ‘Sir,’ he said breathlessly. ‘The woman has fainted.’
Of course she had. It was clearly too much to ask that he had an uninterrupted couple of hours’ sleep. Clearly it was also too much to ask that his men ignore her. They didn’t get much in the way of female company, it was true, but if all it took was one woman turning up at the gates to generate this much excitement, then it was apparent that either his men needed more and harder drills, or some leave was in order.
It was also apparent that he was not going to get any sleep until the issue with the woman had been dealt with.
‘Bring her to the guardhouse,’ Nazir ordered tersely, letting no hint of his temper show. ‘I’ll deal with her there.’
Both guards saluted and disappeared off up the corridor.
Nazir muttered a curse under his breath then grabbed the black robe he’d hung over the back of a chair, belting it loosely around his waist before striding out.
This was the very last thing he needed right now.
There were always people coming to his gates, but he never let them in and he didn’t particularly want to start now. Especially not with a woman who’d demanded first a sun umbrella then fainted. She was probably some idiot tourist who’d heard the rumours he’d carefully cultivated to deter most of the people who turned up at his door—rumours about the brutal warlord and his army of murdering thugs that he’d collected from prisons around the world, who led a nomadic lifestyle in the desert to escape detection and woe betide any who came across them because they did not understand the concept of mercy.
It was the best kind of rumour, one that held grains of truth. He was a brutal warlord and it wasn’t that he didn’t understand mercy, he just saw no point to it. The murdering thugs and the nomadic lifestyle were smokescreens, naturally, but it succeeded in deterring most idle fools.
This woman was clearly a fool who had not been deterred.
One thing he was sure of though: she definitely wasn’t pregnant. And if she was then she was more of a fool than he’d initially thought. What woman would head out into the middle of the desert in search of him, despite the terrible rumours, then spend a couple of hours standing outside his gates in the sun, and all while she was pregnant?
Nazir strode out of the big stone fortress he called home and across the dusty courtyard in front of it, heading towards the small guardhouse by the massive reinforced steel gates.
It was a sturdy building made of stone, equipped with the same high-tech surveillance equipment that was in use in the rest of the compound. It was also air-conditioned—unlike the fortress, which didn’t need it due to its medieval construction of thick stone walls that protected from the worst of the heat—since the heat was brutal and Nazir preferred his men uncooked, especially when on guard duty.
The two guards outside saluted at his approach and Nazir ran a reflexive, critical eye over them. Guards on duty in the hottest part of the day were relieved on the hour every hour, and, judging by the colour of these two, they were due to be relieved any minute. They were also new recruits, young men wanting to prove themselves to him, which often led to unwanted complications.
‘Make sure you get some water when you go off-duty,’ he said shortly. ‘Soldiers who can’t look after themselves are of no use to me.’
‘Yes, sir,’ the two guards said as one.
Nazir pulled open the heavy iron door into the guardhouse and stepped inside.
Another guard stood near the door while a second sat at the station in front of the bank of screens and computers that constantly monitored all areas of the fortress.
The downside of being Commander of one of the world’s most sought-after and feared private armies was that he’d made many, many enemies. And there were a great many people who wanted him and his army gone. Preferably for ever.
His fortress was marked on no maps, nor was it detectable via any other high-tech search, and all its communications were encrypted. To the rest of the world it simply didn’t exist. Yet there were always people trying to find it and trying to find him.
They always failed.
The beauty of the desert was that it mostly did his work for him when it came to winnowing out his enemies.
Of course, there were always a few determined souls who didn’t let sand and savage heat stop them.
Souls such as the woman who lay in a bundle of dirty white robes on a makeshift camp stretcher set up on the guardhouse floor.
The two guards came to attention the instant Nazir stepped inside.
He ignored them, moving over to the camp stretcher where the woman lay.
She was small, her figure and hair obscured by the robes she wore, which had obviously been bought from the tourist bazaar in Mahassa since the cotton was thin and cheap and would offer exactly zero protection from the sun. Her hair was covered by another length of cotton, but her face was unveiled. She had a pointed chin, a small nose, and straight dark brows. There was an almost feline cast to her features, not pretty in the least, but her mouth was fairly arresting. It was full and pouty and sensual, though her lips were cracked.
Her lashes were thick and silky-looking, lying still on sunburned cheeks...
Actually no, they weren’t still. They were quivering slightly and Nazir could detect a faint, pale gleam from underneath them.
An odd, delicious thrill went through him, though what it was and what it meant, he couldn’t have said. What he did know was that the woman was definitely not unconscious.
And she was watching him.
Ivy Dean had been on the point of pretending to wake up when the door to the small guardhouse she’d been taken to had opened and the tallest, broadest man she’d ever seen had walked in.
Her breath had caught and the fear she hadn’t felt once during the long and sometimes frustrating journey from England’s cool, misty rain to the brutal heat of Inaris had suddenly come rushing over her.
Because it wasn’t just his height—which had to be well over six three—or the fact that he was built like a rugby prop forward, or maybe more accurately an ancient Roman gladiator. No, it was the aura he projected, which she felt like a change in air pressure as soon as he entered the guardhouse.
Danger. Sheer, heart-pumping, terrifying danger.
He radiated a kind of leashed, savage violence, like a dragon guarding his hoard.
And she was the rabbit served up to him for his lunch.
She stayed very still on the camp bed they’d laid her on, holding her breath and silently regretting her decision to fake a faint as he loomed over her, because no doubt he’d pick up on her play-acting easily enough. He was just the kind of man who saw everything, including pretence.
Through the veil of her lashes, she caught a glimpse of a face that looked as if it had been carved from solid granite. His nose was crooked, his cheekbones carved, his jaw square and sharp. His chiselled mouth was as hard as the rest of his features and what could have been sensual had firmed into a grim line.
It was a harsh face, intensely masculine and not pretty in the slightest.
His eyes were what truly terrified her, though. Because they were the most astonishing colour, a bright clear turquoise framed by thick black lashes. She’d seen eyes that colour in the tourist bazaar of Mahassa, in the faces of people descended from the ancient nomadic desert tribes, and they were unusual and beautiful.
But in the face of this man, the colour had frozen and turned as icy as the tundra in the north. There was no mercy in those eyes. No kindness. No warmth.
There was death in those eyes.
This was the warlord, wasn’t it? The one she’d followed all those rumours about. The terrifying, cruel Sheikh who lived in the desert with an army of murderers who either stole people away to sell in some black-market trafficking ring, or killed them where they stood.
‘Stay away from the desert, miss,’ the staff at the tourism information centre had told her. ‘No one goes into the desert.’
They didn’t understand though. She had to go into the desert. Because it was the warlord she had to find. Even though she hadn’t wanted to. Even though it went against every self-protective urge she had.
She had to at least try, for Connie’s sake.
The warlord stared at her, the expression on his harsh face utterly unforgiving, and Ivy’s mouth went bone dry. Unable to stop herself, she slid a protective hand over the slight roundness of her stomach.
His predator’s gaze flickered as he spotted the movement and abruptly he straightened to his full height, looking down at her.
‘You can stop pretending now,’ he said in perfect, accentless English. ‘I know you’re awake.’
His voice was as deep and as harsh as his features, like an earthquake rumbling under the ground, and he issued it not so much as an observation but as a command.
He was a man used to giving orders, which made sense. Authority radiated from him, the kind of authority that came without arrogance, the kind that was innate. The kind of authority that some people were simply born with.
Ivy found herself stirring and opening her eyes before she’d even registered that she was doing so.
The warlord said nothing, his frozen gaze taking in every inch of her as she sat up, making it obvious that the onus was on her to explain herself.
Fear gathered like a kernel of ice in her stomach and she kept her hand where it was, as if she could protect the small life inside her not only from the man standing in front of her, but from her fear as well.
But giving in to such emotions was never helpful and despite the urging of her primitive lizard brain to make a dash for the door, throw it open, and run for her life, she remained where she was. Being practical was key; she wouldn’t get far even if she did run, not in a fortress full of soldiers. And besides, where would she run to? There was nothing but desert outside, her guide having abandoned her as soon as he realised that she had no intention of merely viewing the fortress from a safe distance, that she actually wanted to go inside and speak to the warlord himself.
Anyway, show no fear. That was what you had to do when faced with a predator. Running would only get you eaten.
Ivy ignored the ice inside her, just as she ignored that, even from a few feet away, the man still managed to loom over her, making the guardhouse feel ten times smaller than it actually was.
‘I should thank you,’ Ivy began coolly. ‘For your—’
‘Your name and purpose,’ the man cut across her in that rough, rumbling voice, his tone making it clear that this was not a request in any way.
Okay, so if he was indeed Sheikh Nazir Al Rasul, the infamous warlord—and she had a sneaking suspicion he might be—then she would have to tread delicately here.
But she also wouldn’t allow herself to be intimidated. Back in England, she managed an entire children’s home full of foster kids, some of them with quite severe behavioural and mental-health issues, and she had no difficulty keeping them in order.
One man, no matter how tall and terrifying, was not going to get the better of her.
‘Very well,’ she said. ‘My name is Ivy Dean. I’ve registered my whereabouts with the British Consulate in Mahassa and they know exactly where I am.’ She forced herself to meet the man’s terrifyingly cold eyes. ‘And if I don’t return within a few days, they’ll also know exactly why.’
He said nothing, continuing to pin her where she sat on the edge of the camp bed with that icy stare, his face betraying no expression whatsoever.
Fine.
‘I’m here because I need to speak with Sheikh Nazir Al Rasul,’ she continued, determinedly holding his gaze. ‘It concerns a private matter.’
The man stood so still he might have been carved from desert rock. ‘What private matter?’
‘That’s between me and Mr Al Rasul.’
‘Tell me.’ There was no discernible change in tone from anything else he’d said, but if his other statements had been orders, this was a command. One that he clearly expected her to obey without question.
She should have been cowed. Any other woman in her right mind would be, especially after standing for hours in the hot sun outside the gates of a desert fortress, waiting to speak with one of the most terrifying men she’d ever heard about.
But Ivy hadn’t spent more than two weeks in Mahassa trying to find a guide who would take her into the desert in search of the mysterious warlord for nothing. She’d spent all her meagre savings trying to find this man and she wasn’t going to give up now, especially when she was so close to her goal.
In fact, if her suspicions were correct, then her goal was standing right in front of her.
Except, she needed to know he was indeed the man she’d been searching for. Because if he wasn’t, this could end up going very badly, not only for her but also for the baby she was currently carrying.
Ivy folded her hands calmly in her lap, pulling on the same practical, steely mask that she used with the most recalcitrant boys in the home. ‘I’ll speak with Mr Al Rasul,’ she said firmly. ‘As I said, it’s a private matter.’
Again, there was no discernible change of expression in his icy gaze and he didn’t move. Yet it felt as if the atmosphere in the guardhouse abruptly chilled. The two guards standing at attention became very still, their agitation apparent.
Apparently it was not done to disobey this man.
A tremor of fear moved through Ivy at the same time as she felt something else, something unfamiliar, flicker in her bloodstream. A small thrill. Which didn’t make any sense. She was a woman alone in a fortress full of men who could kill her easily. And no matter how confidently she’d talked about the British Consulate, they couldn’t exactly help her right now if things went south.
Which they might, if the rumours about the man in front of her were true.
So there was no reason at all for her to feel the smallest twinge of excitement, of...anticipation? The thrill of matching wits with someone as strong-willed and determined as she. Maybe even stronger.
Perhaps it was the pregnancy doing strange things to her. Why, she’d just been talking to Connie the other day about—
Connie.
An echo of grief pulsed through her, but she forced it away. No, now was not the time. Connie’s last wish had been to find Mr Al Rasul, and so that was what she was going to do. Then she could grieve her friend properly, once this was all over.
‘Perhaps you did not understand,’ the man said with icy precision. ‘You’ll tell me. Now.’
Ivy refused to be cowed. ‘This is for Mr Al Rasul’s ears alone.’
Something dangerous glinted in his eyes. ‘I am Mr Al Rasul.’
Of course he was. Somehow she’d known that the second he’d spotted her faking a faint.
Still, one couldn’t be sure. And she had to be very, very certain about this.
‘Prove it,’ Ivy said.
The atmosphere, already chilly, plunged a few thousand degrees and the two guards’ stares abruptly became very fixed. They were statue still, like rabbits being eyed by a hawk.
The icy kernel in Ivy’s gut got larger, sending out cold tendrils of fear to weave through her veins.
Why are you challenging him like this? Are you insane?
That could very well be. Perhaps she had sunstroke or was on the verge of extreme dehydration. Perhaps the last few days in Mahassa, spent following up leads only to end up in frustrating dead ends and brick walls, had got to her. Perhaps she was now hallucinating.
Still, she couldn’t back down. Not when the child inside her depended on her. And if she could stare down a bunch of sullen teenage boys who’d been caught shoplifting, then she could certainly hold out against one infamous desert warlord.
Sullen teenage boys aren’t likely to kill you.
That was very true. Though it was too late now.
The man’s cold, flat stare didn’t shift from her, not once. And he didn’t blink. She couldn’t read him at all.
Then he inclined his head minutely and the guard on his left abruptly rattled off in heavily accented English. ‘You are speaking with the Commander, Sheikh Nazir Al Rasul.’
‘That’s your proof?’ Ivy couldn’t help saying. ‘One of your guards who is clearly terrified of you?’
‘That is all the proof you will be getting,’ Al Rasul said. ‘I am not accustomed to repeating myself, but in this case you’re obviously having difficulty understanding me.’ His gaze became sharper, more intensely focused, and Ivy’s breath froze as the expressionless mask dropped and she caught a glimpse of what it had been hiding.
Death. Chaos. Violence. Danger.
This man was a killer.
‘You will tell me your purpose here,’ he went on expressionlessly. ‘Or I’ll have you thrown out before the gates and you can find your own way back to the city.’
It was a death sentence and they both knew it.
This time it was harder to force down her fear and when she reflexively smoothed her robe over her stomach, her hands shook. ‘Very well,’ she said with as much calm as she could muster. ‘But as I said, it’s a private matter.’
‘You need not concern yourself with my guards.’
Good. She needed to get this over with and the sooner the better.
Ivy took a breath, steeled herself, then met his ferocious gaze. ‘I’m pregnant. And I’m here to inform you that the child is yours.’
