Page 28 of The Sheikh's Runaway Bride

“I’m going to miss this,” she admitted quietly.

“Me too,” he conceded. He stood beside her at the railing, and after finishing his toast, he looped his arm around her waist. “We’ll be back before you know it.”

She smiled up at him. “I’m going to hold you to that.”

“I hope you do.”

Twenty minutes later she was sitting in the back of the jeep with her husband, whose long, drawn out silence made her a little jumpy for whatever was ahead.

It wasn’t until they were finally in the jet winging through the air, another piping hot coffee in her hand, that he told her the bad news.

He sank into the seat next to her, his eyes locking onto hers. “Sweetheart, there is no easy way of telling you this but…Lumana is under attack.”

Her heart lurched and for a moment acid burned its way up her throat.“What?”

He took away her coffee cup, then clasped her hands. “I know this is a shock, but I’ll do everything in my power to reverse the situation. I have strategies in place already and people on the ground working directly with—“

She pulled back. “What about my parents? My mother?”

Though she’d had very little to do with her family over the years, her mother had made the effort to visit at least twice a year. She’d rented a lovely little cottage in London a few miles from Arabelle’s university, where they’d often hired bikes and gone for long rides, revisiting places from her mother’s childhood. Her mother had spoken wistfully of her dear British friends, who she’d given up when she’d married.

Arabelle didn’t want to be like her mother and sacrifice everything for her husband. It wasn’t right or fair. Then again, for a lot of women in a lot of countries around the world, life was never going to be fair.

Mahindar searched her eyes, his hands moving to her shoulders. “Last I heard they are both safe. I’ve sent in some men to retrieve them. But if there is no way out they will guard them and keep them safe.”

“Thank God.” She took a shuddery breath, then glanced at an air hostess who was clearing away their cups. “I’ll have something stronger now, please.”

“Good idea,” Mahindra said. “Get us both something.”

As the air hostess smiled deferentially, then hurried away to fulfill their request, Arabelle asked, “So what happens now?”

“You will be under royal guard at my desert palace. You’ll be safer there, away from my city residence.”

“And what about you?” she asked, a second wave of fear clogging her throat.

“I’ll go to Lumana and sort this mess out.”

She stared at him with wide eyes. “You don’t seriously think I’ll stay behind while you go to my country to save my parents and my people!”

His eyes turned as steely as his voice. “It’s not safe for you there now. You’re my wife, and I will protect you at all cost.”

The air hostess returned with a tray, two glassed of ice and a selection of miniature spirit bottles. Mahindar nodded and chose two whiskeys, and Arabelle gulped down the fiery liquid and set her glass down on the table in front of her, then twisted to stare out the jet’s window.

What had Mahindar said at one time?I’ll do everything in my power to never endure another war again.Yet thanks to his marriage to her another war was exactly what he was going to endure.

His glass clinked next to her empty one, bringing her back to the present. She didn’t bother turning to face him when she said numbly, “I was never given a choice in this arranged marriage. At least give me a choice in going with you to Lumana and making sure my parents are okay.”

He stiffened beside her. “You already know my answer to that,habibi,I’m not risking your life and possibly the life of our unborn child.”

She twisted further away from him, her gut hollow. Therewasa possibility she was pregnant right now, which meant she shouldn’t be drinking, either. Alcohol was easy enough to forgo, but her freedom…that was another matter entirely.

She swallowed back a surge of resentment and pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders. What she wanted didn’t count. She had no rights. She was an object to be kept behind gilded bars. A broodmare.

So why did she press a protective hand to her stomach and decline another drink? She exhaled slowly. Motherhood might never have factored into her plans but she’d do everything in her power to be a good parent.

The journey seemed to take forever and yet no time at all when her mind was whirling with graphic, horrible flashes of bloodied and mutilated, dead bodies. That her mom and dad’s faces were too often superimposed on those same bodies kept her panic bubbling close to the surface.

If Mahindar was aware of her apprehension he didn’t show it. He was too busy pacing the corridor, the air hostesses now keeping out of his way as he spoke into his phone, making critical decisions on the fly, literally. Arabelle overheard snatches of conversation; words that made her blood run cold.

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