LITMIR.BIZ

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couldn’t worry her mom. She loved her too much.

      Beseiged by conflicted emotions, Liv walked to the bedroom door and opened it. Khalid stood on the other side, his robe discarded in favor of exquisitely tailored European- style clothes: dark slacks, supple black leather belt, crisp long-sleeved cotton shirt the color of espresso and black leather shoes. His dark hair was cut short and sleek, emphasizing the strong lines of his face.

      He didn’t even look like the same person and she didn’t know why his transformation felt like one more blow.

      Nothing was what she’d expected. Imagined.

      Nothing made sense.

      Pressing her hands into her robe’s pockets, she took a quick breath for courage. “Sheikh Fehr, in the car, you said to wait to call my brother until after I’d seen the doctor, and I waited. Now you tell me not to call home because I don’t have a passport and I shouldn’t worry my family.” Her eyes met his and held. “I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

      “Maybe we should sit down.”

      “I don’t want to sit. I just want the truth.”

      “As you, yourself know, the truth is complicated.”

      She blinked, puzzled. “What does that mean?”

      “You were charged with smuggling drugs, and the drugs were found on your person—”

      “In a bag I was holding for a friend!”

      He shrugged. “But it was in your backpack, in your possession, making you responsible. Complicating the truth is the fact that this ‘friend’ disappeared and we have no proof she ever existed.”

      “That’s not true! I had her bag. Her cosmetics. Her toiletries.”

      “Who is to say they aren’t yours?”

      She stared up at him, appalled. “You don’t believe me? You think I did it—”

      “I never said that. I was just pointing out that truth isn’t always what it seems, just as my freeing you, isn’t quite what it seems, either.”

      She suddenly felt very woozy, her head starting to spin. “I’m beginning to feel dizzy.”

      His brows pulled in a fierce line. “I knew you were better off sitting.”

      Ignoring her attempt to brush him off, he put one hand to her elbow and the other to the small of her back—a touch that scorched her even through her thick robe—and escorted her to the plump upholstered chair in the living room.

      “I’m not going to break,” she said breathlessly, her heart hammering unsteadily as heat washed through her. She could feel his hand despite the plush robe, could feel the press of his fingers against the dip in her spine, and it made her head spin even faster.

      “I know you’re not going to break,” he answered, making sure she was safely ensconced in the chair before stepping away, “but you’ve been through a traumatic ordeal, and unfortunately, it’s not over yet.”

      Liv stared up at him, battling to get control over her pulse and her thoughts. “I’d think the American embassy would step in now, accelerate the process of getting me home.”

      “They’d like to, but they work with the local government, and Jabal is lobbying very hard to have you returned to them for sentencing.”

      She made a soft sound of disbelief. “Can the Jabal government extradite me from here?”

      “No,” he answered, standing above her, arms folded, his expression downright forbidding. “At least, hopefully not.”

      With a trembling hand Liv pushed a damp tendril of hair away from her face, trying to sort out everything he was saying, stress and exhaustion making the task even harder than it should be. “That doesn’t sound very reassuring,” she said hoarsely, blinking back the sting of tears.

      “It’s not meant to be. You should know the truth, and the truth is, things are … unpredictable … at the moment.”

      His response just added to her fears. “I won’t go back to Jabal,” she choked. “I can’t. I can’t—“

      “I know, and I wouldn’t let you go back.”

      She looked up at him, scared, so very scared, and bundled her arms more tightly across her chest. “Why are you doing all this? Why are you helping me?”

      “Your brother posted a message for help on the Internet. His message came to my attention.”

      Her chest felt so hot, and her emotions felt ragged. She didn’t know if she could—should—believe him. “You did all this just because you saw a message on the Internet?”

      “Yes.”

      Who did things like this? Who broke into prisons and rescued people? “Why?”

      His shuttered gaze rested on her face, his expression as blank as the tone of his voice. “Your brother said your family was frantic.” He paused for a split second before adding, “It touched me.”

      Her brow wrinkled as she digested his words, thinking it was odd to hear him use the word touched when he struck her as emotional as one of the limestone statues she’d seen carved into the wall of the Ozr fortress turned prison. “And you acted alone?”

      “Yes.”

      “But if you weren’t working with an embassy or government, how did you get me released?”

      He made a rough, mocking sound. “The old-fashioned way. Power. Blackmail. Intimidation.”

      “Isn’t that illegal?” she asked, trying to keep the horror from her voice.

      “Blackmail is never pretty,” he answered. “But it was you or them, and it’s not as if the guards were good to you. The doctor told me she found bruises on you, bruises I’m certain you didn’t inflict on yourself.”

      She just looked away, towards the window with the spectacular view of the pyramid.

      Khalid dropped to his haunches, crouching before her, and turned her face to him. “No diplomatic measure would have ever gotten you freed from Ozr. Jabal doesn’t care about diplomacy. They don’t recognize diplomacy. They only recognize power and money. I did what I had to do, and I don’t apologize for it. At least you’re here, safe and alive.”

      Liv felt his fingers on her chin, felt the fierce heat in his eyes and the coiled tension in his powerful frame. She was simultaneously fascinated and terrified by the fire in his dark eyes. He intrigued her and yet intimidated her. He was hard and fierce and remote, and yet he’d also come to rescue her when no one else had, or would. “But not free,” she whispered.

      “Are you free to go home, back to Pierceville, Alabama? No. Are you free of the prison cell?” He hesitated for a fraction of a second and then stood again. “For now.”

      For now. The words echoed loudly in her head. She was free only for now.

      “But money alone didn’t buy your freedom,” he added. “It required honor. My honor.”

      She gave her head a slight shake. His honor. It was such an archaic-sounding word, so old-fashioned it didn’t even make sense to her. “I don’t understand.”

      “I vouched for you,” he said bluntly. “I told them you were mine.”

      She blinked at the word mine, heat flooding through her, heat and shyness and shame. Mine was such a possessive word, a word implying ownership, control. It was a word two-year-olds loved, but not one she would have expected to come from a man. At least in the United States you’d never hear a man refer to a woman as his. “How could being … yours … free me?”

      “By claiming you, I have personally vouched for you.”

      She

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