Hide-And-Sheikh. Gail Dayton

Ibrahim looked surprised, maybe even wounded by Rudi’s apparent defection. “To celebrate the success of our negotiations. Come.”

      Allah forfend. Rudi stifled his shudder. He could not take another hour of high finance, not another minute. He had been to lunch with these men before. He knew what they talked about.

      “Forgive me, brother. It has been a long morning, and I feel a bit under the weather.”

      “Are you ill?” Genuine concern colored Ibrahim’s voice.

      Rudi was grateful once more that he was merely the seventh son of his father, and not the ninth and youngest. If young Hasim stubbed a toe, the flags in Qarif went to half-mast. Ibrahim would have panicked.

      “Merely tired.” Rudi said. “I will catch a cab back to the hotel.”

      “You will take the car. And Omar.”

      “Very well. I will take the car.” Rudi did not mention that Omar was back at the hotel with a severe case of traveler’s trouble, and had only consented to stay in bed because of Ibrahim’s own bodyguards. This could be his chance to make a break for it.

      Maybe they would send Ellen after him again.

      Rudi was whistling by the time he reached the garage.

      He slouched in the back seat of the bulletproof, bombproof, escapeproof car, and plotted his escape. Without Omar, or any of the rent-a-bodies, it ought to be relatively easy. He had received a phone call from Buckingham, saying that everything was ready and just waiting for him. He could get the driver to drop him at the hotel, catch a cab to the heliport and take a helicopter to the airport. He could be gone without anyone knowing it. Perhaps they would send Ellen after him again. Perhaps he would allow her to find him.

      But not in Buckingham. No one knew about Buckingham, and that was the way he wanted it.

      Then he sat up straight, his attention captured by a woman in the park as the car inched along in the near-noon traffic. It was Ellen. It had to be. No other woman could possibly possess that precise combination of sun-kissed hair and million-dollar legs.

      She was talking with an odd collection of mostly men. Or rather Ellen stood near them while they talked. She did not seem to be paying much attention, looking at her surroundings, until one of the men put his arm around her. Ellen moved away from his arm, but listened to what he had to say, nodding now and again.

      The car moved a few feet ahead, leaving Ellen and the rest of the group walking slowly the other way. Rudi turned to watch, swearing when his view was blocked by a horse and rider.

      In that instant, a plan sprang full-grown into his head. He had always wanted to sweep a woman off her feet and carry her away on horseback, like his great-grandfathers had surely once done. He was even dressed for it, in his desert robes.

      “Stop.” Rudi didn’t wait for the driver to comply. The car was barely moving as he opened the door. “I will be back in five minutes, perhaps ten.”

      He caught up with the horseback rider in a few quick steps, wondering if he ought to rethink his plan. This horse seemed to have little in common with the fiery animals in his father’s stables. He caught the beast’s rein, startling a little shriek from its rider, a slightly plump, barely pubescent girl with braces and red frizz under a white helmet.

      “Hello, might I borrow your horse?” Rudi borrowed Ibrahim’s Oxford accent. It seemed to play better dressed as he was. “I wish to surprise my fiancée.” The lie rolled easily from his lips. “By sweeping her away in the manner of my ancestors.”

      The girl gulped and giggled. Rudi captured her hand. “Surely someone of your sensibility would be willing to assist in my romantic endeavors.” His ploy seemed to be working on the horse’s rider.

      “I’ve only got an hour to ride,” she said.

      “I only need the barest minute.” Rudi glanced over his shoulder. Ellen and her party were retreating deeper into the park. In a moment they would be out of sight. “Please. My heart will be devastated if you do not allow me the use of your steed for a paltry space of time.” Maybe those English literature classes he had suffered through had done better work than he had thought.

      “My heart is in your hands.” Rudi pressed a kiss to the child’s hand, and she giggled again, looking past him at a cluster of other riders who had pulled up to stare gape-mouthed at the scene he was making.

      She sighed. “Okay. But just a minute.” She slid awkwardly from the horse’s back.

      “Allah bless you for your generosity.” Rudi kissed her cheek, knowing it would impress the girl’s audience, then swung into the saddle.

      The horse recognized a knowledgeable hand on the reins and took exception. It preferred being in charge. But after a brief, stern scolding, Rudi reminded the animal of its manners, and it did as he demanded.

      Payback would be sweet indeed.

      Ellen walked back toward the fountain with all the video people, only half listening to their chatter of angles and dollies and dance steps as she mentally placed barricades and personnel across park paths and lawns. So hard did she concentrate on blocking out all the extraneous noise that she didn’t hear the hoof-beats until they were almost on top of her.

      The sudden thunder brought her whirling around to see a horse bearing down on her, on its back a man in the billowing white robes of a desert nomad.

      “Crazy son of a—” The producer had no time to finish his oath before diving aside.

      Too surprised to move, Ellen watched the man lean toward her, saw his arm stretch out. Before she could react, he’d snatched her from her feet and hauled her up onto the horse in front of him. Her mind was so muddled, she could only think what an impressive feat he’d just accomplished.

      Voices rose about them, shouting. “Call 9-1-1!”

      “He’s crazy! Somebody stop him.”

      “He’s kidnapping her!”

      The horse’s stride shortened abruptly, then it whirled and galloped back the way it had come. Ellen clung to the man to keep from flying off during the sharp turn, noticing despite herself the lean, almost familiar strength of his body. Who was this nutcase? She was afraid she already knew.

      She batted the windblown robes out of her way and looked up into the face that had been haunting her dreams. Rudi.

      If the cops arrested him, it could create an international incident. It could get her fired.

      “It’s okay,” she shouted past his shoulder at the video crew. “I know him. He’s a friend.”

      Her words apparently reached them, because the frantic shouting and rushing slowed. The horse didn’t.

      Its rocking gait bumped her against Rudi in a matching rhythm, a rhythm that came too easily to mind in connection with this man. No wonder the body beneath the robes had felt so familiar. Hard as she tried, she hadn’t been able to forget the feel of him under her hands. The muscular thighs that had teased her in that blood-boiling dance now flexed and shifted beneath her, guiding a thousand-plus pounds of horseflesh, pushing their way back into her memory.

      “Am I truly?” He grinned at her, his teeth flashing white in the afternoon sun as the horse thundered on across the park.

      “Are you truly what?” Ellen pried her brain away from the legs beneath her backside and ordered it to get busy with thinking.

      “Your friend. You said I was a friend.”

      “I—” Think. She wanted to bang her head against something to see if she could knock a little sense loose, but the nearest something was Rudi’s chest, and she knew beyond any doubt that would only make things worse. “I didn’t want you arrested.”

      “Ah.” His Day-Glo smile dimmed a fraction.

      The horse came to a skittering halt