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CHAPTER ONE
“YOU LOOK like you’re ready to face a firing squad”
Her field assistant’s words stopped Iris at the top of the grand palace staircase
Suppressing a grimace at what she could not doubt was his all too accurate assesse intern and forced a sry”
“Seriously, this is just dinner right?”
“Of course” Just dinner
Where they were supposed to meet their liaison while in Kadar; Asad, Sheikh Haki, and sheikh himself to a local Bedouin tribe, the Sha’b Al’najid Asad was a fairly co lion An appropriate naht? There was no reason to think that the man was her Asad
No reason other than this awful sinking feeling that had not gone away since Sheikh Hakireeing to this Middle Eastern assign that she’d done her best to ignore
But it was getting harder with every passing moment
“I’ reassured here,” Russell said as he stepped onto the stairs, his tone only half joking “Dinner isn’t a euphemism for kidnap and sell to white slavers, is it?”
The ridiculous assertion shocked a laugh out of Iris “You’re an idiot”
Still, her legs refused to move
“But a charot to admit it And ouldn’t want to kidnap this?” he asked with a wink, having stopped to wait for her
With his shaggy mop of red hair and pale skin, he could have been her baby brother If only Her childhood would have been a lot less lonely with a sibling Her parents hadn’t been cruel, only supremely uninterested Their lives were coether, they traveled together and none of it included her
She’d never understood why they’d had a child at all and had long since decided her advent into the world had been one of those “accidents” of faulty birth control Though nothing had ever been said
She couldn’t iine what they would have done with a child like Russell; he didn’t fade into the background with grace
No, no matter how many surface reseer cuckoo in their family nest than she’d been
Nevertheless, Iris and Russell really did look like they could have coene pool Oh, he had freckles and she didn’t, and his eyes were green rather than her blue However, they both had curly red hair—like her htly squared chins—like her father—and skin as pale as the white sands of New Mexico At five foot ten, Russell was average height for a man, just like she was for a woman at five-five
They both tended to dress like the science geeks they were, though tonight she’d donned a vibrant blue sheath dress and a black pashmina Instead of her usual ponytail, she’d pulled her hair back in a loose knot and even gone so far as to put on h she al with a sheikh and his family after all
Two sheikhs, her worried brain reminded her
Russell was in his own version of dress formal, khaki slacks and a button-down oxford instead of his usual T-shirt and cargo pants
Still, neither of the-of-chips
She groaned at his humorous conceit “Anyone with half a brain would know better than to go through the trouble of kidnapping you”
He laughed, not taking offense and not entirelya concerned expression she didn’t want to see
r /> No er a naive university sophoist with an eminent private survey firm
“So, why the long face?” Russell asked, taking another step down as if coaxing her to do the sanment”
She had, but then she’d realized how foolish she was being She couldn’t go through her career refusing lucrative assignments in the Middle East just because she’d once loved a man who came from this part of the world Besides, her boss had made it clear that this time, she didn’t have a choice
“I’ her feet to move, she started down the stairs
Russell fell into step beside her when she reached him He put his arm out for her and she took it
She wasn’t dwelling on the possibility that Sheikh Asad was her Asad Not at all
After all, ere the chances it was the sa her heart six years ago that she hadn’t gone on another date until after she graduated? That it was the one man that she had hoped to live the whole rest of her life without ever seeing again?
Small Almost nonexistent
Right? Right
So, her Asad had been part of a Bedouin tribe and, as she’d found out at the end, slated to be sheikh one day
It didn’t have to be the sa it wasn’t the same man
If it was her Asad—or rather the Asad: he’d never really been hers and she had to stop thinking of hi toward the coveted position of senior geologist with Coal, Carrington & Boughton Surveyors, Inc, she couldn’t refuse this assignment based on personal reasons Not when she had been back in the office and definitely not now that she was already in the country
She wasn’t about to coh froht future she’d ached for and dreaet her career, too
“What did the diamond say to the copper vein?” Russell’s youthful voice pulled her out of her less than happy thoughts as they made their sloay down the stairs
She rolled her eyes “That joke is as old as the bedrock in Hudson Bay The answer is—nothing, minerals don’t talc”
It was a hoary old joke, but when he laughed, she found herself joining him
“I’lad to see you still have a sense of hu from the hall below didn’t sound happy at all
In fact, it sounded almost annoyed But Iris didn’t have the ithal to worry about that little inconsistency Not when the rich tones that still had the power to send her heart on a dru her every nerve ending belonged to a ain
She stopped her descent and stared Asad looked back at her, his dark chocolate gaze so intense, she felt the breath leave her lungs in a gasp
He’d changed Oh, he was still gorgeous His hair still a dark brown, alray, but instead of cropped close to his head like it had been back in school he wore it shoulder length The different style should have made him seem more casual, more approachable It didn’t
Despite his European designer suit and their civilized surroundings, he looked like a desert warrior Capable Confident Dangerous
His brown eyes stayed fixed fir The humor that used to lurk there nowhere in evidence