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Sheikh Surrender

Harlequin Enterprises, Ltd.

Chapter One

Late-afternoon sunlight slanted across the windshield. Crisp mountain air, tangy with the scent of autumn leaves, filled his lungs. What a strange land, he thought, where a man could drive a couple of hours from Los Angeles and enter an entirely different climate.

And, in a few minutes, meet an entirely different sort of woman.

From the bucket seat beside him, Fario lifted the picture he'd printed out of his Internet sweetheart, Jenny Sanger. Her dark blond hair color looked natural, although you could never tell, and those moss-green eyes gazed at him alluringly. It was the delicacy of her bone structure and a hint of uncertainty in her face that particularly drew him.

She was a woman meant to be dominated by a man like him. Young, too, although with the Internet, he supposed he ought not to assume she was exactly as she appeared. Her skin couldn't be that perfect, could it?

He'd been skeptical at first when a friend at UCLA graduate school suggested trolling the Web for women. Fario had never had any trouble in that department while attending school in Switzerland and university in England. American women, however, were too assertive for his tastes, and a bit suspicious of Middle Easterners as well, although Alqedar was a U.S. ally.

Jenny seemed different: warm and enthusiastic. She wanted a strong man, she'd told him, someone to fulfill her sexual fantasies.

At first, she'd questioned Fario's claim of being a sheikh. He'd emailed her a shot of himself and suggested she compare it with his portrait on the Web site his older half brother and chief adviser, Zahad, had set up as part of his campaign to modernize the province of Yazir. That had done the trick.

Zahad was always doing things like that since their father had died two years ago, after a long and debilitating illness. In addition to establishing a Web site, he'd sought international funding and hired an economic consultant. Fario appreciated this, since he preferred to spend as little time as possible in their dusty, backward province.

He would not like to have Zahad as an enemy. There was something hard and dangerous about his half brother. But his loyalty, Fario believed, was beyond reproach.

From the seat, he lifted the red-and-white checked head-dress he seldom wore in America, except when he made the rare diplomatic appearance, and fitted it over his head. Jenny would love this, although it went oddly with his tailored jacket and designer jeans.

She'd promised to be waiting for him. As for her wardrobe, she wasn't going to be wearing a stitch.

Collecting the bottle of French champagne he'd brought as a gift, Fario slid out of the sports car and took stock of his surroundings. The land here was rugged, and from where he stood, he could see peaks rising to the north. On one side, a ravine filled with tangled brush bordered Jenny's property. On the other, a downward slope led to a couple of small houses tucked behind a screen of trees. There was no sign of anyone around and not even a hum of traffic from the narrow road.

The one-story home had a quaint roughness typical of the mountain residences he'd passed on the way, and utterly different from the mud-brick houses back in Alqedar. Fario liked the privacy. If all went well, he planned to visit here often.

Zahad had drilled him with warnings about potential assassins and insisted he exercise caution everywhere he went. To Fario, this seemed unnecessary. It had been a dozen years since Zahad and his comrades had freed Alqedar from its dictator. No one was going to attack a sheikh in the placid ski community of Mountain Lake, California.

Fario's Italian leather shoes whispered along the walk-way from the parking area to the front steps. Perfume drifted from a flowering bush that defied the early-December chill.

Fario pressed the doorbell and heard the chimes peal within. He saw no movement at the window, although he'd expected Jenny to be watching through the blinds. Nor could he hear footsteps inside.

Growing impatient, he pressed the bell again. It was true that he'd given Jenny only an approximate arrival time, but she'd been so eager to meet him that he'd assumed she would be waiting. He didn't see any other cars around, but hers must be parked in the garage set past the house at the end of the long driveway.

Suddenly he smiled. The door appeared to open outward; if she answered it in the nude, someone might see her. Even in such a remote setting, it paid to be discreet.

He tried the knob. It turned easily.

"Hello, Jenny," he called and opened the door.

A blast destroyed the peace of the afternoon. A crushing pain spread through Fario's chest as the gunshot sent him sprawling backward down the steps. The bottle hit the walk-way and shattered, spraying him with glass and champagne.

As darkness closed in, he formed one last fierce wish. "Avenge me, Zahad," he whispered, and then he spoke no more.

Three days later.

There was a man in her toolshed.

As Jenny Sanger emerged from the garage, she saw the shed door standing open. An instant later, she glimpsed a masculine figure moving inside the rough-hewn structure less than twenty feet away.

Tools had been stolen from that shed to rig a murder weapon. Had the killer come back?

Behind her, the heavy garage door clunked shut, cutting off her retreat. No doubt it also alerted him to her presence, in case he hadn't already heard her drive up.

Inside her oversize purse, Jenny's hand searched for the clicker or for her cell phone. Her fingers scrabbled in vain through a sheaf of reports from the elementary school where she worked as principal.

Maybe it was the police, she thought frantically. But detectives had searched the property thoroughly and given the all clear. Besides, the only vehicle she'd seen nearby was an unfamiliar car parked a short distance down the road.

Under the papers, her fingers identified her lipstick, a tin of breath mints and a bottle of Tylenol. Why couldn't she find what she needed? The man would come out any second now.

At least her keys were still in her other hand. Jenny edged toward the back of the house and winced when her pumps crunched on the fallen leaves.

The late-afternoon sun cast a shadow across the man as he stepped out of the shed. Even in silhouette, she could see that he was tall and solidly muscled. Although she stood five foot eight and had taken self-defense classes, Jenny knew she'd be no match for this guy.

Inside the purse, her hand closed over a tube of pepper spray. She jerked it out, heedless of the tissues and mints scattering onto the walkway, and took aim.

The man lunged. He was so fast that the tube vanished from her hand before she could press the button.

He stopped a few feet away, the spray canister engulfed by his large hand. They stared at each other in a frozen tableau.

The glare of sunlight revealed a sharp-featured man with white scars vivid against his tanned skin. He stood almost six feet tall, with dark, shaggy hair straggling across his forehead and his temples. In his black leather jacket, he put her in mind of a warrior.

He broke the silence first. "Miss Sanger, I presume?" It didn't surprise her that he had a deep voice, but she hadn't expected a British accent mixed with a trace of something exotic.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Sheikh Surrender by Jacqueline Diamond Copyright © 2004 by Harlequin Enterprises, Ltd.. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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