LITMIR.BIZ

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gone—a ghost dissolved into mist.

      * * *

      Tariq stormed into the hall of his abbey, wind swirling in behind him as the great wooden doors swung shut. Fat white candles flickered in sconces along the stone wall and a dark, hot energy rolled through him.

      “That woman from the village—” he barked loudly to his men in Arabic “—the one poking around the gates, taking photos of the abbey. I want to know who she is, where she comes from, what she wants with me, and then I want her gone!”

      He shrugged out of his drenched cape, slung it over a high-backed chair and strode through the dark halls to his library where a fire crackled in the stone hearth, shutting the door behind him.

      His library was the one room in this stone monstrosity that he preferred to inhabit. A smaller office with his desk and papers lay off it. The rest of abbey remained unlit and cold, some of it still partially in ruin, wind whistling through cracks and moaning up in the turrets like the ghost of the abbess herself. Haunted suited him fine—he was a mere ghost of himself anyway, a broken shadow, not living, not dead.

      Irritably, Tariq plucked a leather-bound copy of a book by Algerian-French writer and absurdist philosopher Albert Camus from the shelves. He settled into his chair by the fire, flipped it open.

      But he couldn’t concentrate.

      He put on Mischa Maisky’s rendition of the prelude from Bach’s Cello Suite no. 1. It always soothed him. It reminded him of Julie. Of life, of power, of beautiful times.

      He leaned his head back in his chair, arms flopping loosely over the armrests. The first notes of the cello washed over him. And as the music rose in crescendo, Tariq closed his eye, imagining his own fingers moving on the strings, the Pernambuco bow in his hand, the solid shape of the finely carved instrument between his knees. Whenever he’d played this piece, his whole world seemed to drop away, leaving only the moment as the harmony filled him, breathed into him, became part of him. He let his chest rise and fall to the rhythm....

      But then he saw her eyes, bright like spring crocuses, staring at him through the misted boulangerie window, her dark curls tousled about her pale, heart-shaped face like some untamed thing. Tariq cursed, shutting out the image. Another flowed into his mind as the music rose—the sight of her on the heath, like a mythical Red Riding Hood, drifting in and out of curtains of fog as she followed him with her camera. He tried to block her out again.

      She was too bright.

      It was like shutting your eyes after staring at a lamp—the afterimage burned on your retinas.

      Tariq lurched to his feet, strode to where his cello rested in a stand against the wall. With the fingertips of his right hand he caressed the sleek curves of finely grained Balkan maple, a wood of resilience and excellent tone. A cold heaviness pressed into his heart. Never again would he play this exquisitely crafted instrument. Never again would he operate. His left hand was his dominant one, and it was his left side that had been forever crippled in the series of blasts that had killed his fiancée. It had been an attack on his country, on him.

      He should have been the one to die. Not her.

      This war was against his family, not Julie. Falling in love with her, bringing her into the Al Arif enclave, had made her a target. And he, a doctor—a surgeon—had been unable to save her at the critical moment.

      Julie’s death was his fault.

      The Moor, the as yet faceless archenemy of the Al Arif dynasty, had stolen everything that mattered to Tariq, everything that had defined him, everything that made life worth living, leaving him nothing but a coarse lump of a man, an empty, cold shell who’d failed the only woman he’d ever loved. Self-hatred fisted in Tariq’s chest. His gaze was slowly, inexorably, pulled toward the floor-to-ceiling gilt mirror on the wall.

      He was sickened by what he saw in that mirror. Sickened by what he’d become, inside and out. Crippled, broken. Bitter. Twisted.

      That prying young woman in the red coat had pierced through the numb rhythm of his life on the island. She’d reawakened his pain. She’d gone and reminded him a world lurked out there beyond these cold stone walls—a world inhabited by a dangerous enemy who could still hurt his family and the people of his desert kingdom.

      She’d made him look into that mirror—and he hated her for it.

      With his right hand, Tariq snatched a bronze paperweight off the side table and hurled it across the room with all his might. It crashed into the mirror, shattering glass outward in a starburst. Shards tinkled softly to the Persian rug along with the dull thud of the paperweight.

      Anger coiled in his stomach as Tariq stared at the broken glass, shimmering with light from the flames. All he had left was his privacy, the numbness of grief.

      Whatever she wanted, he was not going to allow her to take that from him. Tariq was going to get his men to find out who she was, what she wanted, then he’d take action to ensure she stayed the hell away from him and his abbey.

      Chapter 2

      Bella yanked off her muddy gum boots, flicked on the lamp, closed the drapes. She shrugged out of her wet coat and hat, shook out her hair and pulled on her favorite thick, soft sweater.

      Turning up the oil heater, she powered her laptop, connected her camera and began to download the photos she’d taken. Edgy with adrenaline, she paced her small room as she waited for the high-resolution images to load. The wind grew stronger outside, rattling at her windows, seeking its way in through ancient cracks. Rain began to tick against the panes.

      Bella drew her sweater closer, rubbing her arms as she willed the heater to warm faster. Before her termination with the Washington Daily, the two key stories she’d been following were Senator Sam Etherington’s bid for his party nomination for president, and the terrorist bombing of the Al Arif royal jet at JFK.

      Etherington had since won his party’s endorsement and was now considered to be a shoo-in for president, unless he badly misstepped between now and November. The Al Arif bombing story Bella had scored by default.

      She’d been with her then-boyfriend, Derek, on a separate assignment at JFK when the blast occurred. They’d seized the moment, covering the event from an eyewitness perspective, and the Daily had let Bella run with the story as it continued to unfold over the following days, weeks, months.

      She’d done good work—demonstrating a talent not only for political reporting but showing her capability as a passionate features writer, digging deep into the characters and issues behind the tragedy.

      Derek in turn had shot what was now an iconic image of the injured and bloodied Dr. Tariq Al Arif racing from the burning jet with his fiancée, Julie Belard, hanging limp in his arms.

      Seconds after Derek had taken that famous photo, the prince had dropped to his knees and tried to resuscitate Julie, but a second blast caused by escaping jet fuel had sent chunks of shrapnel flying into the back of his head and left side of his body, severely wounding and concussing him. In the ambulance the sheik lapsed into coma. Days later he was flown home by his family where he was cared for in a private clinic. Seven weeks after the bombing, the palace press office put out a terse statement announcing Dr. Al Arif’s death.

      There were still no arrests, and there’d been no public memorial service—only a small private affair in Al Na’Jar attended by Tariq’s immediate family. None of Julie Belard’s family attended, which Bella had found strange.

      The story seemed to end there, as had her job with the Daily.

      But Bella had trouble letting go of both her job and the prince.

      During the months of covering his story, she’d become obsessed with Tariq—the aggressively good-looking surgeon prince with a brilliant mind was also an accomplished cellist and fierce polo player. Horsemanship, she’d learned, was a talent Tariq had acquired as a young boy in his desert kingdom under the tutelage of his father. Music was a gift he’d inherited from his mother’s side.

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