CHAPTER ONE

      “YOU LOOK like you’re ready to face a firing squad.”

      Her field assistant’s words stopped Iris at the top of the grand palace staircase.

      Suppressing a grimace at what she could not doubt was his all too accurate assessment, she turned to face the college intern and forced a smile. “You look hungry.”

      “Seriously, this is just dinner right?”

      “Of course.” Just dinner.

      Where they were supposed to meet their liaison while in Kadar; Asad, Sheikh Hakim’s second cousin, or something, and sheikh himself to a local Bedouin tribe, the Sha’b Al’najid. Asad was a fairly common Arabic name, meaning lion. An appropriate name for a man destined to be sheikh. Right? There was no reason to think that the man was her Asad.

      No reason other than this awful sinking feeling that had not gone away since Sheikh Hakim had mentioned the liaison’s name earlier. Ever since agreeing to this Middle Eastern assignment, she’d had a feeling of foreboding that she’d done her best to ignore.

      But it was getting harder with every passing moment.

      “I’m not feeling reassured here,” Russell said as he stepped onto the stairs, his tone only half joking. “Dinner isn’t a euphemism for kidnap and sell to white slavers, is it?”

      The ridiculous assertion shocked a laugh out of Iris. “You’re an idiot.”

      Still, her legs refused to move.

      “But a charming one. You’ve got to admit it. And who wouldn’t want to kidnap this?” he asked with a wink, having stopped to wait for her.

      With his shaggy mop of red hair and pale skin, he could have been her baby brother. If only. Her childhood would have been a lot less lonely with a sibling. Her parents hadn’t been cruel, only supremely uninterested. Their lives were complete with each other. They worked together, they played together, they traveled together and none of it included her.

      She’d never understood why they’d had a child at all and had long since decided her advent into the world had been one of those “accidents” of faulty birth control. Though nothing had ever been said.

      She couldn’t imagine what they would have done with a child like Russell; he didn’t fade into the background with grace.

      No, no matter how many surface resemblances they shared, he would have been an even bigger cuckoo in their family nest than she’d been.

      Nevertheless, Iris and Russell really did look like they could have come from the same gene pool. Oh, he had freckles and she didn’t, and his eyes were green rather than her blue. However, they both had curly red hair—like her mother—slightly squared chins—like her father—and skin as pale as the white sands of New Mexico. At five foot ten, Russell was average height for a man, just like she was for a woman at five-five.

      They both tended to dress like the science geeks they were, though tonight she’d donned a vibrant blue sheath dress and a black pashmina. Instead of her usual ponytail, she’d pulled her hair back in a loose knot and even gone so far as to put on mascara and lipstick, though she almost never wore makeup. She was dining with a sheikh and his family after all.

      Two sheikhs, her worried brain reminded her.

      Russell was in his own version of dress formal, khaki slacks and a button-down oxford instead of his usual T-shirt and cargo pants.

      Still, neither of them were all-that-and-a-bag-of-chips.

      She groaned at his humorous conceit. “Anyone with half a brain would know better than to go through the trouble of kidnapping you.”

      He laughed, not taking offense and not entirely masking a concerned expression she didn’t want to see.

      No matter what, she would be fine. She would. She was no longer a naive university sophomore, but a professional geologist with an eminent private survey firm.

      “So, why the long face?” Russell asked, taking another step down as if coaxing her to do the same. “I know you tried to get out of doing this assignment.”

      She had, but then she’d realized how foolish she was being. She couldn’t go through her career refusing lucrative assignments in the Middle East just because she’d once loved a man who came from this part of the world. Besides, her boss had made it clear that this time, she didn’t have a choice.

      “I’m fine. Just a little jet-lagged.” Forcing her feet to move, she started down the stairs.

      Russell fell into step beside her when she reached him. He put his arm out for her and she took it.

      She wasn’t dwelling on the possibility that Sheikh Asad was her Asad. Not at all.

      After all, what were the chances it was the same man who had done such a good job decimating her heart six years ago that she hadn’t gone on another date until after she graduated? That it was the one man that she had hoped to live the whole rest of her life without ever seeing again?

      Small. Almost nonexistent.

      Right? Right.

      So, her Asad had been part of a Bedouin tribe and, as she’d found out at the end, slated to be sheikh one day.

      It didn’t have to be the same man. She was praying it wasn’t the same man.

      If it was her Asad—or rather the Asad: he’d never really been hers and she had to stop thinking of him that way—she didn’t know what she would do. Working toward the coveted position of senior geologist with Coal, Carrington & Boughton Surveyors, Inc., she couldn’t refuse this assignment based on personal reasons. Not when she had been back in the office and definitely not now that she was already in the country.

      She wasn’t about to commit career suicide. Asad had taken enough from her. Her faith in love. Her belief in the rosy, bright future she’d ached for and dreamed of. He didn’t get her career, too.

      “What did the diamond say to the copper vein?” Russell’s youthful voice pulled her out of her less than happy thoughts as they made their slow way down the stairs.

      She rolled her eyes. “That joke is as old as the bedrock in Hudson Bay. The answer is—nothing, minerals don’t talc.”

      It was a hoary old joke, but when he laughed, she found herself joining him.

      “I’m glad to see you still have a sense of humor.” The deep voice coming from the hall below didn’t sound happy at all.

      In fact, it sounded almost annoyed. But Iris didn’t have the wherewithal to worry about that little inconsistency. Not when the rich tones that still had the power to send her heart on a drumroll and to spark little pops of awareness along her every nerve ending belonged to a man she had truly believed she would never see again.

      She stopped her descent and stared. Asad looked back at her, his dark chocolate gaze so intense, she felt the breath leave her lungs in a gasp.

      He’d changed. Oh, he was still gorgeous. His hair still a dark brown, almost black and with no hint of gray, but instead of cropped close to his head like it had been back in school he wore it shoulder length. The different style should have made him seem more casual, more approachable. It didn’t.

      Despite his European designer suit and their civilized surroundings, he looked like a desert warrior. Capable. Confident. Dangerous.

      His brown eyes stayed fixed firmly on her. Serious and probing. The humor that