Chapter Two
Malika
Butte, Montana.
Malika’s nightmare continued.
Their hotel was quaint but without luxury suites. Adeel woke her from a deep sleep by barging through the door between their adjoining rooms to insist she get up and get dressed, because he wished to visit a nearby ghost town, and wanted to arrive when it opened to avoid traffic and tourists.
She should have suspected something was up when his ever-present bodyguards weren’t tagging along.
She’d assumed they weren’t invited because he was annoyed that Jamal, a beautiful, brown-skinned man, with equally beautiful brown eyes shot through with hazel, and beautiful, steroid-enhanced muscles, had been the perfect object for her to perfect her phone sex voice on.
Unfortunately for her, Adeel forgot what it was like to be young and to flirt.
Unfortunately for Jamal, he’d forgotten he was in Adeel’s employ and begun paying too much attention to her body and not enough to its guarding.
The ghost town was remote, which should have been another red flag.
There was very little traffic to speak of and no tourists at all.
The former gold mining town had been established in the mid-1800s near the base of the Pioneer Mountains, when this was Montana Territory and not yet Montana state.
Several other mountain ranges flanked the town’s myopic view.
Low, single-roomed buildings had been replicated from logs, with the occasional false front tacked on in a futile attempt to improve their appearance.
The lone hotel possessed a second story, although calling it a hotel took breathtaking courage.
Adeel’s infatuation with the American Wild West had to be affecting his judgment, but the Jiorjis descended from nomadic desert tribes and the spirit of adventure ran in their blood, so his enthusiasm could be partially explained.
Malika, too, came from a small desert oasis—although unlike Adeel, she had spent a great deal of her early childhood playing with the neighborhood children, and poverty was not completely unknown to her.
This level of poverty, however … she would not have made a good pioneer. Or a willing one, either.
“Imagine the stories these streets could tell,” Adeel said, gazing around him in wonder. “The gold strikes. The gunfights.”
“The pestilence,” Malika added, getting into the spirit of things, and anxious to show off her knowledge of American history, slight as it was. Classes had bored her, and she’d paid to have her papers written for her. “Don’t forget the robber barons who stole from the poor and gave to themselves.”
Adeel raised an eyebrow at her. “What would you know about being poor? Educating you in the United States may have been a mistake. Americans view their history through a contemporary lens and forget that their early leaders were visionaries who believed in this great country’s potential.
Plenty of immigrants made better lives for themselves through hard work and sound investments.
Some started with nothing. Many brought money with them.
The strongest led, and the strongest survived. ”
Malika was the youngest child of a third wife. No one needed to explain the different levels of privilege to her. She had significantly more than the village children she’d once played with, true, but a great deal less than Adeel and her other siblings.
They traipsed around the dusty town for more than an hour before looping back to the parking lot.
Malika spotted a crude wooden bench near the town entrance and made a beeline for it.
Her high-heeled boots, while comfortable enough for short distances on city sidewalks, had never been intended for rural Montana.
Her feet hurt and she was hungry. Their excursion could end any time now.
Adeel followed her to the bench. “You should have worn sensible shoes.”
“These are the most sensible pair I own.” Why else would she wear them for running away on the grand adventure he’d ruined? Plus, they lengthened and slimmed her already-long, slender legs.
“Modern women will forever be a mystery to me,” he said.
Men who wanted more than one wife when they didn’t understand women to begin with was the bigger mystery to her.
Did they believe they’d stumble upon the key to unlocking female secrets if they continued to marry?
But her beloved eldest brother, a man of importance, was spending his morning with her, and she wasn’t about to spoil things by voicing her opinion about his common sense.
A white van pulled into the parking lot. It didn’t stop but continued until it reached the arched gate a few yards from where Malika and Adeel were seated. She paid no attention to it—in hindsight, one more bad decision.
The van rolled to a stop at the gate. The driver’s side window rolled down. A grizzled old man poked his head out.
“Get in the back,” he barked at Adeel.
Malika’s hand flew to the base of her throat. She tried to imagine the level of nerve it would take to speak to Adeel Jiorji in that tone of voice. Then she tried to imagine Adeel blindly cooperating with a blatant kidnapping attempt. In broad daylight. Except she didn’t have to imagine a thing.
Adeel drew her to her feet, then tried to steer her toward the rear of the van. Malika dug her high heels in and refused to budge.
“Adeel,” she exclaimed. “What in the world are you doing?” She struggled to free herself from his grip.
Adeel’s fingers burrowed deeper into the tender flesh of her arm. “I told you. We’re going to a wedding. Do as the man says and stop making a scene.”
She could hardly be accused of making a scene when there was no one around to witness it.
A second man had emerged from the passenger side of the van, narrowing their window of escape.
He reappeared at the van’s rear, where he unlatched the double doors.
They opened wide. Adeel gave up on trying to drag her.
He swept her off her feet and carried her bodily toward the gaping doors.
The second man crouched expectantly on the floor of the van, waiting for Adeel to pass her to him.
Malika, however, had learned many things about attempted abductions from her roommates, mostly because it made their lives easier if she looked after herself.
The first lesson was to prevent being taken to another location at all costs.
She braced her feet against the van’s fender, preventing Adeel from handing her into a stranger’s arms. Indignation fueled her resistance.
Her brother had objected to a little light flirting with Jamal, and yet he was willing to have a total stranger place his hands on her?
She now had a bad feeling about this wedding they were supposed to attend, and whose it might be.
What if the wedding was hers? What if Eli Chamas was waiting for them at the other end of this abduction?
The possibility left her disillusioned and angry.
Beyond that, she was hurt. Deeply. Of all her brothers he was the only one who’d ever shown any affection for her.
They’d had a lovely morning together. She’d basked in his attention.
She’d pretended to have an interest in the Old West, simply to please him.
And now this. A forced marriage. She’d never forgive him.
She would not go willingly, either. She lifted one foot, keeping the other firmly braced against the van’s fender, and drove her heel into the stranger’s upper arm.
He cried out in pain and surprise and fell backward, and she experienced a fierce rush of pride.
She too came from a long line of desert warriors. She would fight back.
Adeel pushed her into the van.
Rage won out over hurt and surprise. She immediately progressed to lesson number two.
In full warrior mode, she was now intent on turning this into a teaching moment and inflicting as much damage as possible to guarantee that neither the stranger nor her brother ever assumed a woman was helpless again.
She leaped on the stranger, and with the meaty side of her hammered fist, she smashed her hand repeatedly against his collarbone and head, then jammed her knee into his groin for good measure.
He cupped his family jewels, dropped like a rock, curled into a fetal position, and moaned.
She’d won.
She flipped her hair out of her eyes and spun around, ready to give her traitorous brother a well-deserved piece of her mind, when the van doors slammed shut in her face. She heard the lock click into place. Then, another door slammed.
“Adeel!” She pounded her fist on the door, but to no avail. The van rumbled to life. The floor jerked beneath her as the van started to move, and her high heels—so useful until now—turned precarious, then finally they, too, betrayed her.
The opponent she’d defeated, still curled on the floor, broke her fall.
He groaned, then muttered something that sounded like Fudge on a stick before planting a hand on her hip and shoving her off him.
She scrambled to one side of the van and sat up, prepared to defend herself against him if necessary, but the stranger had rolled himself in the opposite direction and appeared to lack enthusiasm for any further violence.
Malika took advantage of the respite to assess the position she found herself in. She wasn’t afraid—Adeel had threatened multiple times to have her killed, but only ever in jest—but she was beyond angry. He needn’t think she’d go easily into this marriage. The battle had barely begun.
The rear of the van was blocked off from the cab, where she assumed Adeel now sat with the driver, based on the low murmur of voices, although she couldn’t make out any words.
The van had a skylight but no side panel windows.
All she could see of her exterior surroundings were puffs of white clouds against a very blue sky, although the skylight allowed enough sun to peep through for her to assess her kidnapper more thoroughly.