Sheikh Surrender Read online

  “That’s enough, Mr. Adran,” she said. “I’m not going to allow you to poke through my personal things.”

  He glanced at her computer, no doubt itching to check for signs that she herself was behind the lascivious e-mails. However, the police had already searched it, which he must know from reading the report.

  On the office floor sat a wastebasket containing a crumpled envelope. Zahad frowned. “They should have emptied that. Or if that item was tossed there by the police, they contaminated the scene.”

  Jenny bent to get a closer look.

  “Allow me.” The sheikh knelt beside her, so close that an edge of his leather jacket draped across her knee. Warmth moved through her.

  Using tweezers, Zahad held the bit of paper up to the light. “Do you recognize this pattern?”

  “There’s a pattern?” At an angle, she saw that he was right. There was a watermark in the paper, part of a logo.

  Jenny recognized it, and almost wished she hadn’t.

  Dear Harlequin Intrigue Reader,

  At Harlequin Intrigue we have much to look forward to as we ring in a brand-new year. Case in point—all of our romantic suspense selections this month are fraught with edge-of-your-seat danger, electrifying romance and thrilling excitement. So hang on!

  Reader favorite Debra Webb spins the next installment in her popular series COLBY AGENCY. Cries in the Night spotlights a mother so desperate to track down her missing child that she joins forces with the unforgettable man from her past.

  Unsanctioned Memories by Julie Miller—the next offering in THE TAYLOR CLAN—packs a powerful punch as a vengeance-seeking FBI agent opens his heart to the achingly vulnerable lone witness who can lead him to a cold-blooded killer…. Looking for a provocative mystery with a royal twist? Then expect to be seduced by Jacqueline Diamond in Sheikh Surrender.

  We welcome two talented debut authors to Harlequin Intrigue this month. Tracy Montoya weaves a chilling mystery in Maximum Security, and the gripping Concealed Weapon by Susan Peterson is part of our BACHELORS AT LARGE promotion.

  Finally this month, Kasi Blake returns to Harlequin Intrigue with Borrowed Identity. This gothic mystery will keep you guessing when a groggy bride stumbles upon a grisly murder on her wedding night. But are her eyes deceiving her when her “slain” groom appears alive and well in a flash of lightning?

  It promises to be quite a year at Harlequin Intrigue….

  Enjoy!

  Denise O’Sullivan

  Senior Editor

  Harlequin Intrigue

  SHEIKH SURRENDER

  JACQUELINE DIAMOND

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  A former Associated Press reporter, Jacqueline Diamond has written more than sixty novels and received a Career Achievement Award from Romantic Times magazine. One of her previous three Intrigue novels, Captured by a Sheikh, introduced the hero of Sheikh Surrender as a supporting character. Jackie lives in Southern California with her husband, two sons and two cats. You can write to her at P.O. Box 1315, Brea, CA 92822, or e-mail her at [email protected]. Keep up-to-date online with her new releases at www.eHarlequin.com or www.jacquelinediamond.com.

  THE SUSPECTS

  Zahad Adran—Only his half brother Fario stands between him and the sheikhdom he should have inherited.

  Hashim Bin Salem—This political rival has much to gain by killing Fario and framing Zahad.

  Al Garroway—If greed drives him to become a contract killer, who is he targeting—Fario or Jenny?

  Dolly Blankenship—The retired policewoman always seems to be first at a murder scene.

  Bill Blankenship—Did his bad temper turn murderous?

  Grant Sanger—His ex-wife’s death will give him custody of their daughter.

  Lew Blackwell—Does he want Jenny’s job enough to try to kill her?

  Ellen Rivas—Formerly a friend of Jenny’s, she’s become intensely jealous of her.

  Ray Rivas—A clue from a murder scene leads to the bank where he works.

  Sergeant Parker Finley—His fascination with Jenny may have sent the detective over the edge.

  In memory of Jane Jordan Browne

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Prologue

  Sheikh Fario Adran, governor of the country of Alqedar’s Yazir Province, halted his sports car in the small parking bay. He swayed rhythmically to the closing bars of a rap piece on his CD player before killing the engine.

  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 e-mailed 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 headdress 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 walkway 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 walkway 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.

  Chapter One

  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.

  “It’s Mrs. Sanger.” Although divorced for three years, Jenny had retained her married name.

  “My name is Zahad Adran,” the man said. “My brother, Fario, was murdered here three days ago.”

  His introduction made her only marginally less alarmed. Fario Adran, she had learned, was a sheikh from the small country of Alqedar. There was no telling what notions of honor or revenge his brother harbored.

  Jenny zeroed in on a little scar on the right side of Zahad’s face. It was balanced by a jagged slash bisecting his left eyebrow, further evidence that a lot of people apparently disliked this man. Irreverently, she wondered what other scars he hid from view, until she realized what she was speculating about and banished those thoughts.

  The best defense was a good offense. “I’m sorry about your brother,” Jenny said. “But you have no business trespassing.”

  Zahad ducked his head. “I apologize for startling you. You startled me, also. I will return your property.” He tossed her the tube.

  Jenny’s hand came up instinctively and snatched the small container from midair. She wondered if it would be a violation of etiquette to spray him with it. Not a good idea, she supposed, given the speed of his reflexes. Besides, its return implied that the sheikh had no immediate hostile intentions.

  He picked up the items she’d dropped and handed them to her as well. “I came to bring my brother’s body home, but the coroner has not released him. I took the liberty of examining your shed because I understand the tools were used to position the murder weapon.”

  A couple of deep breaths gave her courage. “Let me bring you up to speed on a few things,” Jenny said. “Number one, this is not public property. It’s my home. Number two, believe it or not, we have a police department in Mountain Lake. They already did all those high-tech things like check for fingerprints and collect DNA evidence.”

  “I am aware of that, Mrs. Sanger,” he replied mildly. “Because of my connection to the deceased, they allowed me to read their report. I attempted to speak with the detective but he was out investigating a carjacking at the ski lodge. They have a small robbery-homicide detail, apparently.”

  “I still don’t see why you’re prowling around duplicating their work. I don’t need any more footprints messing up my yard.”

  His mouth twisted in what might have passed for a smile in other circumstances. “I can see that no one bullies you.”

  “I spent too much of my life being bullied,” Jenny said, although she wasn’t certain why she chose to reveal that to a stranger. “I refuse to let it happen anymore.”

  “Nor should you. Let me be honest. I want to find the killer for my brother’s sake, but I am also acting out of self-interest. Because of the situation in my home country, there are those who suspect that I may have had a hand in his assassination.”

  “Assassination?” No one had referred to the murder that way before.

  “Our father chose Fario to succeed him as sheikh and governor of our province, although I am the elder son by my father’s first wife,” he explained. “The position carries with it a certain amount of power and access to hereditary wealth.”

  She didn’t need him to fill in the blanks. “So your brother’s death makes you a rich sheikh. Or is there a third brother lurking around the oasis?”

  Again, the man favored her with a ghost of a smile. “Just me, although I am certain my stepmother wishes she had another son.”

  “So you want to clear your name.” It made sense, but Jenny wasn’t about to take his problems to heart when she had more than enough of her own. “I apologize if I
sound cold, but I really don’t care what’s going on between you and your stepmother. Someone’s been cyber-stalking me, sending out photos from years ago when I used to model, and luring men here by promising them sex. As far as I’m concerned, that bullet probably had my name on it, not your brother’s.”

  After a long pause, the sheikh said, “You believe someone was trying to kill you?”

  “Someone hates me. The gun was in my house and it was almost time for me to come home from work. That makes it a logical assumption. Speaking of which, I just put in a long day and I haven’t been able to get inside my house since Monday except to pack a suitcase. The police just gave me permission to reenter and I’ve got a lot of cleaning to do.”

  Today was Thursday, and her five-year-old daughter, Beth, would be returning on Sunday from a two-week visit with her father and stepmother in Missouri. By then, Jenny wanted everything as normal as possible.

  “If someone is trying to kill you, how do you know there isn’t another gun ready to fire when you walk in?” the man asked.

  She’d been trying to reassure herself about that all day. “Because I had an alarm system installed and the locks rekeyed.”

  “According to the report, it is not certain the killer used a key,” he said.

  “That’s true, but there was no forced entry.” Several keys were probably floating around from the days when her great-aunt had owned the house. However, Jenny may simply have forgotten to lock the door.

  “I would be pleased to enter the house ahead of you and ensure that it is safe,” the sheikh offered. “I hope you do not interpret this as bullying. I assure you, Mrs. Sanger, if I wished to bully you, there would be no need to interpret it.”

  She didn’t know whether to admire his gall or order him off her property again. She also wasn’t sure she wanted to allow this man to look around inside, which was obviously what he sought. On the other hand, Jenny had been dreading the moment when she would have to step into the house.