Page 4 of Sheikh's Unexpected Triplet Babies

Chapter Two

Jahin saw the girl sprint off in a swirl of unfashionable clothing, and he swore in three different languages. He looked down at the man he held in disgust, releasing him so that the man fell back on the ground with his still-groaning friend.

"Great Lord, you have misunderstood everything," the bald man whined. "The girl, she is a prostitute, nothing more. She made deals with us, and then she went back on them--"

"You are a liar," Jahin said coldly, "and I have a feeling that if I asked the men around us what happened, they would agree with me and not with you."

He had seen the commotion from two rows over, and when he had seen that ugly floral headscarf, he knew at once who was involved. Navigating the lines on his new mount had been a slightly dicey business when he and the black were still so new to each other, but the horse had obeyed, and they were on top of the situation before anything terrible could happen.

He had just gotten close enough to rescue the girl when she’d pulled out that pepper spray and seemed more than capable of rescuing herself.

A man with an official's badge pinned to his tunic appeared.

"Great Lord, your pardon," he said, bowing low. "These two are known troublemakers, and we have been searching for them for some time. Do we have your permission to take them?"

Jahin nodded, his face dark. Muneazil was modern, or at least the city was. Here in the more obscure corners of his emirate, however, banditry, robbery and worse was still more than prevalent, as was the respect his people had for him. In the city, he was a civic leader, a celebrity and a sheikh. Here, his word was law, and sometimes the weight sat heavily on him.

The girl had disappeared by the time the men were in shackles, and he had a feeling that he should find her. Jahin tried to tell himself that it was foolishness, that of course a girl that quick and smart on her feet would be fine. But there was no changing the fact that she was a foreigner in a strange place. If she’d had a local guardian, she would never have been allowed to wander off unattended.

It is my duty to find her and make sure she is well, he tried to tell himself, wheeling his horse around with nothing more than a click of his tongue.

But even as he made his way towards the direction she had been fleeing, a part of him wondered at that. He was a man whose life was directed by duty, but it had never called to him like this before.

***

BEDELIA FELT AS if everything was too bright, but her head was so light that she could barely stay on the ground. Her encounter with the two men seemed like a dark and shadowed thing, something more like an encounter with monsters than a real thing that had happened. Had it really happened? Had she really pepper-sprayed one man and led him to be stomped on by a horse?

If she thought about it too long, her heart seemed to beat too quickly, and for some reason, tears threatened. All she could do was run until she was too tired to run anymore, and then with some frantic sense of irony, she realized that she was exactly where she wanted to be...the vendors area. There were other women here, walking about, doing their business, and for a moment, she felt so safe that she could have cried.

In a heartbeat, however, that sense of safety was ripped away, replaced with a sense of fear. Would the man on the horse simply let her attackers go? Would they come looking for her? She started to shake, but she knew if she let that go on too long, she would freeze up.

Bedelia stumbled towards a small tavern, one where she saw a woman leaving. When she got inside, it was cool and dark, and to her relief, there was a small nook off to one side, a place where she could squeeze herself in and be small and unnoticed.

The friendly waitress came over, and for a moment, Bedelia thought she had lost all of the Arabic she had been so careful to learn. She stumbled over a few English words, and then she finally managed to say that she wanted a soda. The waitress nodded, looking at her a little nervously, but she went away, which Bedelia wanted far more than she wanted a soda. The only reason she had been able to come up with it at all was because it was a line from one of her language modules.

You're fine, you're safe, nothing terrible is going to happen to you, she repeated to herself. There's nothing wrong right now, you're safe, you're safe.

She was almost on the verge of believing it herself when the door opened and in walked a man who looked shockingly familiar, even from the side and with his face turned away. Bedelia was confused by her sense of recognition at first, but then he turned towards her and there was no mistaking those eyes.

She was just beginning to wonder whether it was a strange coincidence when he spotted her and strode over. Her heart leaped up into her throat, and then he spoke.

"I just wanted to tell you that that was neatly done..." he started to say in English, but just about then, her overloaded nerves gave up their tenuous grip on control.

She couldn't help the tears that welled up in her eyes or the whimpers that came up her throat. Bedelia knew she was shaking as if she had a fever, but there was nothing she could do to stop it. All she could do was cover her face to hide her embarrassment, and hope against hope that he would go away.

Unfortunately, he swore instead, and then he slid into the booth next to her, murmuring something she couldn't understand. It might have been English, but right now, the release of panic and fear were so intense that she couldn't figure it out.

It should have been the wrong thing to do. After her encounter with the men at the horse fair, and after her desperate search to find a sanctuary, having a man there in her personal space should have driven her into a deeper panic.

Yet somehow...somehow it didn't.

Instead, the moment that Bedelia felt the warmth of this man's body next to hers, she found that she craved it, that she needed it. She turned to him immediately, burying her face in his chest. He smelled like sun, like horse, like sweat and underneath it, a warm cologne that surprised her.

He sat frozen for a moment, but then he pulled her in close for an embrace. Once again, it should have been all wrong, but in that moment, it was the best thing that could have happened.

She knew she was sobbing into the shirt of a stranger, but when he was murmuring soothing things to her, stroking her hair, just being a stable thing in a world that felt as if it were swinging out of control, she couldn't stop herself.

Slowly, slowly, her tears dried up and her shudders started to smooth over and even out. For a long moment, she simply rested her face against him, and then reluctantly, Bedelia pulled away.

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