Master of the Desert(2)

She'd take her chances, he silently supplied, feeling a beat of lust as  she held his gaze. She spoke English well, but with the faintest of  Italian accents. 'You don't look Italian,' he said, dropping it in  casually.

'I had an English mother,' she explained, before her mouth clamped shut, as if she felt she'd said too much.

'Start by telling me what brought you to the Gulf and how you arrived on my yacht.'

'I jumped overboard and swam.'

'You swam?' He weighed up her guarded expression. 'You're telling me you  jumped overboard and swam through these seas?' His tone of voice  reflected his disbelief.

'For what felt like hours.' She blurted this, and then fell silent.

'Go on,' he prompted, continuing to bathe her wounds.

'Before the mist closed in, the boat we were on was hugging the coastline.'

'"We"?'

She shook her head as if it was important to concentrate. 'I could see  this island and was confident I could make it to the shore.'

'You must swim well,' he commented.

'I do.'

She spoke without pride, and, taking in her lithe strength, he was  tempted to believe her. But she must have swum like an athlete to  survive the storm, and however capable she believed herself to be she  was no match for the dangerous currents and unpredictable weather  conditions in the waters of the Gulf.

The girl had stirred some instinct in him, he realised. It was the  instinct to protect and defend, and he hadn't felt that so strongly  since his brother Razi had been young. 'What made you jump overboard?'  He had his own suspicions, but wanted to hear it from the girl.

Her face grew strained as she remembered. 'Our boat was attacked.'

'I'll need more than that.' If his suspicions were correct, his security  forces would need all the information he could glean from her. 'Was  your boat attacked by pirates?'

'How do you know that?' The terror in her eyes suggested she thought he  was one of them. In fairness, she had had quite an experience, and he  was tempted to comfort her. It was an impulse he resisted.

'I suspected as much, and you just confirmed it. And I'm not a  criminal,' he added when she continued to stare at him as if he had just  grown horns. 'Quite the contrary-I bring people to justice.'

'So you're a law-enforcement officer?'

'Something like that,' he agreed.

Partially reassured, she settled back. 'I was lucky to escape with my  life,' she said, echoing his thoughts exactly. 'I escaped.'

And now she was over-doing it with a dramatic hitch in her voice. As she  looked at him, as if trying to gauge his reaction, he suspected she was  used to playing someone-an older brother, perhaps? She was out of luck  with him. He wasn't so easily won over. 'You are lucky to have escaped  with your life-and I'm not talking about the pirates now. You boarded my  yacht without permission. I carry arms on board and wouldn't hesitate  to use them. What use would your little knife have been to you then?'

Colour rushed to her cheeks while her intelligent eyes sparkled like  aquamarines. He didn't need a further reminder to put some distance  between them. He picked up the radio, to call the officer on duty and  let him know the girl had been found and was safe-and when he turned to  look at her he felt another bolt of lust.

She couldn't stop shaking and the man didn't help. She had never  imagined such a combination of brutal strength and keen intelligence  existed, let alone in such a perfectly sculpted form. His manner was  proud-disdainful, even. He was magnificent. He only had to touch her for  her body to react as if he was caressing her intimately. There was just  one thing wrong. She could be as bold and determined as she liked, but  she was way out of her depth here, and he frightened her. She was a  flirt, a tease, and was used to getting her own way, but she had never  met a man so hard-so hard on her. She wasn't used to indifference. She  was spoiled-she was the first to admit it-spoiled, both by a brother who  adored her and by the attention of half the world's men. If anything,  there were times when she wished herself invisible. This was not one of  those times.                       
       
           



       

But why should the man be interested in her? He was out of her  league-older, tougher, better looking and more experienced in every way.  She had left her comfortable cocoon back in Rome to learn about life,  but never had she anticipated learning quite so much quite so fast. She  didn't even know if this man was more trustworthy than the pirates, and  only had the fact that he had bathed her wounds to go on. Would he have  done that if he had intended to harm her?

However caring that might make him seem, she refused to be reassured, or  to relax her guard. There was something dangerous about him. At least  when the pirates had attacked she'd had the chance to jump overboard,  but she suspected this man had lightning reflexes and slept with one eye  open. Right now he was talking on the radio in a husky tongue she  guessed must be Sinnebalese. She had studied the language before setting  out on her journey, and could pick up a word or two, but frustratingly  not enough. She could learn more from his manner, Antonia decided, which  was brisk, to the point and carried an air of authority. He was someone  important-someone people listened to-but who?

He made no allowances for the fact that she was young and vulnerable,  and she couldn't decide if she liked that or not. Her brother smothered  her, believing she required his constant supervision, whereas this man  was more like a warrior from one of her fantasies, and had no time to  waste on indulging her. Tall, dark and formidably built, in her dreams  she would think of him as a dark master of the night, intense and  ruthless, the ultimate prize-in reality, he made her wish she had never  left home.

She continued to watch him furtively through a curtain of hair. She'd  had no alternative but to board his yacht. She had swum to the point of  exhaustion, and when she'd seen his boat looming out of the mist she  hadn't thought twice about seizing her chance.

As soon as he finished the call, she quickly drew up her feet and locked  her arms around her knees, burying her head to avoid his penetrating  stare. But he was ignoring her again, she realised, peeping at him.

She studied him some more as he moved about the cabin. He was  spectacularly good-looking, with deeply bronzed skin and wild, black  hair that caught on his stubble. The firm, expressive mouth, the  earring, the look in his eyes, his menacing form all contributed to the  air of danger surrounding him. He might look like her ideal man, but  this was not one of her fantasies, and she was so far out of her comfort  zone she was having to make up the rules as she went along. But there  was no question he could melt hearts from Hollywood to Hindustan, and  would certainly make a great Hollywood pirate, with those sweeping,  ebony brows and that aquiline nose.

Then she remembered that real pirates were scrawny, smelly, ugly and mean.

As she whimpered at the memory of them, he whirled around. 'What's wrong with you now?'

'Nothing,' she protested. She'd get no sympathy here.

CHAPTER TWO

'YOU must never put yourself in such a vulnerable position again,' he told the girl sternly.

She looked at him in mute surprise, but he cut her no slack. If he eased  up she'd think taking chances in the wilderness was acceptable, whereas  he knew that if the visibility had been better, and helicopter  gun-ships from his air force had been flying over the yacht when she  boarded, his snipers might have shot her.

'My boat was attacked by pirates,' she protested. 'I jumped overboard and swam for my life. What else was I supposed to do?'

He couldn't remember the last time anyone had challenged him. In a world  of bowed heads and whispering obedience, it was almost a refreshing  change. But the girl's safety came first, and for the pirates to be  captured he had to warn her off ever doing anything similar again, and  find out everything she could tell him. 'Save the attitude,' he barked,  'And stick to the facts.'

She blinked and rallied determinedly, and as her story unfolded his  admiration for her grew. It also made him doubly determined that she  must learn from the experience. 'You seem to have confused some romantic  notion with reality,' he observed acidly when she paused for breath.  'This part of the Gulf is no holiday resort, and you're lucky these are  only scratches.'                       
       
           



       

It had been a relief to find that none of her injuries was serious and  was what he might have expected after hearing she'd jumped overboard.  'This will sting,' he warned, loosening the top on a bottle of iodine.  To her credit, she barely flinched as he painted it on. The only sign  that it hurt her was a sharp intake of breath. She had beautiful legs,  coltish and long, and her skin was lightly tanned, as if she had only  recently landed in the Gulf. 'What brought you to these shores-a gap  year?'