His Desert Rose - Liz Fielding Mills & Boon Cherish

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even think about shouting a warning to her brother, he’d clamped his hand over her mouth. Then, with his free arm flung around her, he lifted her clear of the ground as he pulled her hard against his body. Hard enough for the curved weight of the dagger at his waist to dig into her ribs.

      Definitely not from the local branch of auto rescue.

      She might have done a self-defence course but so apparently had he, because he knew all the moves. Her elbows were immobilised, and with her feet off the ground she had no platform from which to launch a counter-move. Not that it would do her any good. She might make the high ground, but what then? There was nowhere to run to and, although she couldn’t see anyone else, she doubted that he was alone.

      She struggled anyway.

      He simply tightened his grip and waited, and after a moment she stopped. There was no point in wearing herself out unnecessarily.

      When she was quite still except for the unnaturally swift rise and fall of her breast as she tried to regain her breath, he finally spoke. ‘I would be grateful if you did not shout, Miss Fenton,’ he said, very quietly. ‘I have no wish to hurt your brother.’ And his voice was like his hand, like his eyes, hard, uncompromising, not playing games.

      He knew who she was, then. This wasn’t some random snatch. No. Of course it wasn’t. It might have been some days since they’d exchanged that momentary glance on the plane that had brought her to Ras al Hajar, but she’d heard the voice much more recently. Heard it insisting that she must go to the races. And she had blithely assured him that she would be there. That had been the reason for the invitation; he’d wanted to be sure she would be there so he could plan exactly where and when to abduct her.

      Not Simon Partridge, then. But Hassan. She realised that she wasn’t as surprised as she might have been. The voice was a much better fit.

      But what did he want? Just because she’d read a few pages of The Sheik in an idle moment, that didn’t mean she subscribed to the fantasy. She didn’t think for a minute that he was about to carry her off into the desert for the purposes of ravishment. She was a journalist, and not given much to flights of fancy. And why would he bother when, with the click of his fingers, he could bring just about any woman he desired to his side?

      ‘Well?’ He was offering her a choice? Not much of one. She nodded, once, promising her silence.

      ‘Thank you.’ The formal courtesy was unmistakable. As if she had had any choice but surrender! But, as if to prove that he was a gentleman, Hassan immediately removed his hand from her mouth, set her feet to the ground, eased his grip on her. Maybe he was so used to obedience that it didn’t occur to him that she wouldn’t keep quiet, keep still. Or maybe it didn’t matter all that much. There was only Tim, after all, and with a sudden sense of dread she recalled the sudden silence.

      ‘Where is Tim? What have you done with him?’ she demanded as she spun back to face him, her own voice hushed in the absolute still of the desert night. Hushed! She should be screaming her head off…

      ‘Nothing. He’s still chasing after Abdullah’s favourite stallion.’ The eyes gleamed. ‘I imagine he’ll be gone some time. This way, Miss Fenton.’ Her eyes, quickly adjusting to the darkness, saw the uncompromising shape of a Land Rover waiting in the shadows. Not one of the plush, upmarket jobs that her brother drove, but the basic kind that took to hard terrain like a duck to water. The kind used by military men the world over.

      Far more practical than a horse, she didn’t doubt, any more than she doubted that she would go wherever he was taking her. Her only alternative was to run for it, try and dodge him in the rocky outcrops of the rising ground behind her. As if he anticipated she might try it, Hassan tightened his hold and urged her towards the waiting vehicle.

      Despite the prickle of fear that was goosing her flesh, all her journalist instincts were on red alert. But, although her curiosity was intense, she didn’t want him to think she was going willingly. ‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ she said, and dug in her heels.

      ‘Kidding?’ He repeated the word as if he didn’t understand it. Then he raised his head, looked beyond her. The moon was rising, and as she turned she saw the dark silhouette of her brother in the distance. He had managed to get the head rope on the stallion and was leading him quietly back towards the Range Rover, completely oblivious to her plight, to the danger he was walking into.

      Hassan had seriously underestimated his skill, his empathy with even the most difficult of horses, and, realising it, he swore beneath his breath. ‘I don’t have time to argue.’

      She wasn’t about to let Tim walk into trouble, but even as she drew a ragged breath to shout a warning she was enveloped in blackness. Real blackness, the kind that made starlight look like day, and she was wrapped, parcelled, bundled, lifted off her feet and slung over his shoulder.

      Far too late she stopped being the cool correspondent, absorbing every last detail for her report, and began to struggle in dreadful earnest. Too late she realised she should have yelled when she’d had the chance. Not for help, since that would surely be pointless, but to make sure that Tim called her news editor to tell him what had happened.

      She kicked furiously in an effort to free her head, not wasting her breath in shouting, because her voice wouldn’t make it beyond the confines of the heavy cloth. But although her feet were free to inflict whatever damage she could manage they appeared to make no impression upon her captor. If only she could free her hands! But they were pinned uselessly to her sides… Well, not quite uselessly. One them was still gripping the little mobile phone. She almost smiled. The mobile. Well, that was all right, then. She’d call the news desk herself…

      Then she was dumped unceremoniously on the floor of the truck, and even through the thick muffling cloth she could hear the sound of an engine, smell hot diesel oil. Diesel oil? Where were the horses? Where was the glamour?

      Right now, according to the book she’d read on the plane, she should be racing across the desert crushed against her captor’s hard body and struggling desperately for her honour…

      She almost laughed. Times had certainly changed. Her honour was the last thing on her mind. She’d been kidnapped and all she could think about was calling in the story.

      Well, not quite all. There had been a moment as she’d been crushed against Hassan’s chest, with his hand clamped across her mouth and his gaze locked with hers, when swooning would have been very easy. And it didn’t need a particularly vivid imagination to picture his body hard against hers, holding her tightly as she continued to fight him even as the Land Rover sped away.

      Only three days ago she’d been joking about being swept off by a desert prince. Bad mistake. It wasn’t a bit funny. She was being jolted hard against the Land Rover floor and, as if he realised it, her captor rolled so that he was beneath her, taking the worst of it. Although whether lying on top of a man hell-bent on abduction could be described as an improvement… But with his arm still clamped about her, she didn’t have any choice.

      Maybe it would be wiser to stop struggling, though, put the fantasy firmly from her mind, ignore the intimacy of their tangled legs and try and work out what on earth Hassan thought he was doing. Ask herself why he had taken such a crazy risk.

      It would be easier to think without the suffocating weight of the cloak depriving her of her senses, without his arms wrapped tightly about her.

      She supposed she should be afraid. Poor Tim would be frantic. Then there was her mother. So much for the constant nagging to be prepared. For the first time in her life she had a real use for the safety pin, could have jabbed it into His Highness’s thigh hard enough to make him seriously regret grabbing her, maybe even hard enough to make him let go so that she could throw off the covering.

      Unfortunately her handbag, containing the pin, was sitting on the floor of Tim’s Range Rover. Along with the clean hanky and the ten pence piece for the emergency telephone call.

      This situation certainly fell into the emergency telephone call category, although how many public telephones was she likely to find in the desert? Her mother

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