Her Royal Protector (a Johari Crown Novel) (Entangled Indulgence) by Alexandra Sellers Page A

was at least had not got to this nest.
    “You are crying,” Arif noted in surprise, as she splashed out to the dinghy and tossed her backpack aboard.
    “Am I?” she smiled, sniffed, and pressed her lips together. “Ah well, bang goes the theory that scientists are cold-blooded, uninvolved observers of phenomena.”
    Arif looked as though he wanted to say something, but instead merely got into the dinghy after her. Once at the yacht, Aly grabbed her bag and went lightly up the steps. Jamila appeared in the hatch opening with a tray of drinks and called a question to her boss.
    “Drinks on deck?” Arif translated for her.
    Aly glanced at the scene around and heaved a sigh. Sunset soon. Bliss.
    “Yes, please,” she said. “But I think I’ll take a swim first.”
    She stripped off in her cabin, pulled on the faded black tank suit that was her usual swim gear, ran up on deck, and dived into the cool, cool sea.
    It was delicious. She surfaced with the salt tasting on her lips and stinging her eyes, and struck out towards shore in a relaxed, easy crawl. Then the sea prickled on her skin and she turned, looking for the source. Arif was in the water a few feet away, pacing her. His strong naked chest and arms were potently muscular as they flashed through the water, and the buzz of his presence zinged all through her. Her whole body seemed to pick up an electric current coming from him through the water.
    Aly looked away and floated on her back, gazing up at the sky and trying to forget that he was right beside her. Blue, blue. “This is heaven,” she called, not to Arif, particularly. Just talking to the air, to the place, in gratitude for its beauty.
    And his. She could appreciate him without wishing for more, after all. The statue of David didn’t have to come down off his pedestal and make wild love to you before you appreciated its beauty. She would think of Arif as a living statue, or a natural phenomenon, and appreciate him the same way she did the sea. She could do that.
    After twenty minutes, the sun was near the horizon, and she swam back to the yacht and went aboard. Arif followed her up the ladder and the buzz was still there, transmitting through the bloody air now, and it was all she could do to keep walking.
    So much for statues. The man was a walking electric field.
    She scrubbed him off in the shower. She washed him out of her hair. Toweled dry. A clean pair of shorts, a polo shirt, and she was done and dusted.
    This time Arif was waiting for her, his wet hair standing up in tufts, a clean white polo shirt making him look very dark. He indicated the seat beside him on the bench facing west. Aly hesitated for only a second. To sit with her back to the sunset would be too much of a confession. She would just have to ignore the buzz.
    “Wine? Something stronger?”
    “Wine, please.”
    Arif reached to fill her glass with a chilled white from a beautiful earthen jar. “A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou,” he murmured, and Aly went stiff. That was all she needed, him guessing how she felt and playing games with her.
    “Without a doubt,” she said dryly, giving him a look that invited him to stop trying to snow the snowman.
    He only laughed. “Why did you say you don’t need an assistant? We have seen today that you do. Who is going to hold the tape measure for you if I don’t?”
    She emphatically did not want him to start feeling indispensable. “I’m going to hold it down with a handy rock, what else?”
    He took a sip of what looked like scotch on the rocks, and gave her a look that shivered all the way down to her toes. Six weeks. How was she ever going to last six weeks?
    …
    Aly went to her cabin, leaving Arif to his own work. He carried his papers to the desk by the satellite phone and sat down to read Fouad’s notes before calling him. But his mind wandered to the mystery of the little scientist.
    She had gone into the water in a tired black one-piece that would flatter no one, but