She didn’t. She screamed instead, and he lifted her into his arms and strode towards the plane while her cries rose into the night with nothing but the wind to answer them. Khalil paused at the door and shoved her through. Then he climbed inside and pushed her unceremoniously into a seat.
‘Let’s go,’ he snapped at the men scrambling up after him. ‘Quickly!’
The little coterie bowed again, touching their hands to their foreheads. It was a gesture of homage that would, even moments before, have made Joanna laugh with scorn. Now, it made her dizzy with fear.
Suddenly, she understood.
‘You’re not the Prince’s emissary,’ she said, swinging towards him, ‘you’re—you’re Khalil!’
He laughed. ‘As I said, Joanna, you aren’t a stupid woman.’
She leaped to her feet and spun towards his men. ‘Do you understand what he’s doing? He’s kidnapping me! He’ll lose his head for this. You’ll all lose—’ The plane’s engines coughed to life and began to whine. Joanna turned back to Khalil. ‘What do you want?’ she pleaded. ‘More money? You’ve only to ask my father. He’ll give you whatever—’ The plane began moving forward into the dark night and her voice rose in panic. ‘Listen to me! Just take me back. No. You don’t have to take me back. I can drive myself. Just give me the keys to the car and—’
Khalil’s look silenced her.
‘We’ve a three-hour flight ahead of us. I suggest you get some rest before we reach the northern hills.’
‘You’ll never get away with this! You can’t just—’
Khalil put his hands on his hips and looked at her. His eyes were cold, empty of feeling. With a sinking heart, she thought what a fool she’d been not to have guessed his identity from the start.
‘It is done,’ he said. ‘What will be, will be.’
Joanna stared at him, at that unyielding, harsh face, and then she turned away and looked blindly out of the porthole while the plane raced down the sand and rose into the night sky.
He was right. It was done. Now, she could only pray for deliverance.
CHAPTER FOUR
NOTHING made sense. Joanna sat stiffly in her seat, alone with her thoughts in the darkness of the plane, trying to come up with answers to questions that seemed as complex as the riddle of the Sphinx.
Why had Khalil played out the charade of letting her think he was someone else? He could have announced his identity when he’d discovered she was Joanna, not Joe.
Where was he taking her? This wasn’t any quick trip around the block. She glanced at the luminescent face of her watch. They’d been in the air more than an hour now, and she’d yet to feel the tell-tale change in engine pitch and angle of flight that would mean they were readying to land. A little shudder went through her. No, she thought again, this wasn’t a short hop by any means. Wherever Khalil was taking her, it was some distance from Casablanca.
And then there was the most devastating question of all, the one her frazzled brain kept avoiding.
Why had he taken her captive?
She had tiptoed around the issue half a dozen times at least, edging up to it as a doe might a clearing in the woods, getting just so close, then skittering off. She knew she had to deal with the question, and soon, for this flight could not last forever and Joanna knew herself well. Whatever lay ahead would only be the more terrifying if she weren’t prepared for it mentally.
The plane bounced gently in an air pocket and she used the moment to try and see beyond the curtain that separated the tiny lounge area in which she was seated from the rest of the cabin. Khalil had gone to the front shortly after take-off, leaving her alone with a robed thug who sat in total silence. Did he speak English? She thought he must, but what was the difference? He was a brigand, the same as his chieftain, left to guard his prisoner. Where Khalil thought she might escape to was anybody’s guess.
She closed her eyes. It was too late for that, too late for anything except standing up to whatever fate awaited her and showing this—this cut-throat marauder that Sam Bennett’s daughter was no coward.
‘Are you cold?’
Her eyes flew open. A man was standing over her, tall and fierce and incredibly masculine in flowing white robes. Joanna’s throat constricted. It was Khalil.
‘Are you cold, Joanna?’
‘Cold?’ she said foolishly, while she tried to reconcile the urbane man who’d sat beside her at dinner with this robed renegade.
‘You were shivering.’ His eyes, as frigid as winter ice, swept over her. ‘But then you would be, wearing such a dress.’ His tone oozed disdain. ‘It hardly covers your body.’
Joanna felt heat flood her face. Her fingers itched with the desire to tug up the bodice of her dress, to try and tug down the emerald silk skirt, but she’d be damned if she’d give him that satisfaction. Instead, she folded her hands in her lap, her fingers laced together to keep them still, and looked straight at him.
‘I am certain that Oscar de la Renta would be distressed to learn that you don’t approve of his design, Your Highness, but then, the dress wasn’t made for the approval of a back-country bandit.’
The insult struck home. She could see it in the swift narrowing of his eyes, but his only obvious reaction was a small, hard smile.
‘I’m sure you’re right, Joanna. The dress was meant for a finer purpose: to entice a man, to make him forget what he must remember and concentrate only on the female prize wrapped within it.’
Joanna smiled, too, very coldly.
‘I am dressed for dinner at the Oasis. Had you told me we were going on a journey, I’d have worn something more suitable for travel.’
His smile broadened. ‘Had I told you that, I somehow doubt you’d have come with me.’
It was impossible to carry off her end of the dialogue this time. He had struck too close to home, and she shuddered at the realisation.
‘You are cold,’ he said sharply. ‘It is foolish to sit here and tremble when you have only to ask for a lap robe.’
It was hard to know whether to laugh or cry. A lap robe? Did he really think this was a flight on Royal Air Marroc to New York? Did he think she was wondering what would be served for dinner?
‘Ahmed!’ Khalil snapped his fingers and the man seated across the aisle sprang to his feet. There was a flurry of swift, incomprehensible words and then the man bowed and scurried off. ‘Ahmed will find you a blanket, Joanna. If you wish anything else…’
‘The only thing I want is my freedom.’
‘If you wish anything else,’ he said, as if she hadn’t spoken, ‘coffee, or perhaps tea—’
‘Are you deaf or just a bastard? I said—’
She gasped as he bent and clasped her shoulders so tightly that she could feel the imprint of his fingers, the heat of his body.
‘Watch your tongue! I have had enough of your mouth tonight.’
‘Let go of me!’
‘Perhaps you don’t realise the seriousness of your situation, Joanna. Perhaps you think this is a game, that I have instructed my pilot to fly us in circles and then land at Nouasseur Airport before I return you to your hotel.’
It wasn’t easy to look back at him without flinching, to force herself to meet that unyielding rock-like stare, but she did.
‘What I think,’ she said tightly, ‘is that you’ve made one hell of a mistake, Khalil, and that there’s still time to get out of it with your head still attached to your neck.’
He looked at her for what seemed a long time, in a silence filled only with the steady drone of the plane’s engines, and then he smiled.
‘How thoughtful, Joanna. Your concern for my welfare is touching.’ He straightened and looked down at her. ‘But you may be right. Perhaps I have made a mistake.’
A tiny flame of hope burst to life in her heart. ‘If you take me back now,’ she said quickly, ‘I’ll forget this ever happened.’
‘Perhaps I should have accepted what you so graciously offered before I stole you.’
/> Joanna flew from her seat. ‘How dare you say such things to me?’
‘Highness?’
Khalil put his hand on her shoulders and propelled her back into her seat. He turned to Ahmed, who held a light blanket in his outstretched arms.
‘Thank you, Ahmed. You may leave now.’ Khalil dropped the blanket into Joanna’s lap as Ahmed disappeared behind the curtain. ‘Your temper should be enough to keep you warm, but if it isn’t, use this.’
‘Dammit!’ Joanna shoved the blanket to the floor. ‘Who in hell do you think you are?’
He bent, picked up the blanket, and dropped it in her lap again.
‘I am the man who holds your destiny in his hands,’ he said with a quick, chill smile. ‘Now, cover yourself, before I do it for you.’
She snatched the blanket from him, draping it over herself so that it swathed her from throat to toe.
‘What’s the matter?’ she said with saccharine sweetness. ‘Are you afraid my father won’t pay as much ransom if I come down with pneumonia and die?’
His thigh brushed hers as he sat down beside her, the softness of his robe a direct contrast to the muscled warmth of the leg beneath it.
‘Such drama, Joanna. You’re young and healthy and a long, long way from death.’
‘But that is what you’re after, isn’t it?’ The question she’d dreaded asking was out now, and she was glad. Still, it was hard to say the words. ‘Ransom money, from my father?’
‘Ransom money?’ he repeated, his brows knotting together.
‘Yes.’ She made an impatient gesture. ‘I don’t know how you say it in your language—it’s money paid to a kidnapper to—’
‘I speak English as well as you do,’ he said sharply. ‘I know what the word means.’