Sheikh Khalid Fehr read the message posted on the internet bulletin board again.

American Woman Missing in the Middle East.

Help desperately needed. My sister disappeared two weeks ago without a trace.

Her name is Olivia X. She’s twenty three years old, five four, 105 pounds, blonde, blue eyes. She speaks with a Southern accent and is on the shy side. If anyone has seen her or knows her whereabouts, please call or email me. Her family is frantic.

In his tent, sitting at his laptop computer, Khalid reread the last sentence—her family is frantic—and felt a heavy weight lodge in his gut.

He knew what it was like to be frantic about a family member. He knew how it felt to be an older brother panicked about a sister. He’d once had two younger sisters and then one day they were gone.

He scrolled back through the message on the internet bulletin board and discovered an earlier message from the same Jake X.

Missing American woman! If you’ve seen this woman please call or email immediately.

There was a photo attached and Khalid clicked on the attachment and waited for the photo to open.

It finally did, although slowly due to the connection being via satellite phone, and Khalid found himself looking into a black and white photo that had to be a passport photo. White blonde hair. Light, light eyes. Pale, translucent skin. She was definitely pretty. But what really held his attention was her expression, the tentative smile and the look in the eyes—shy, curious, hopeful.

Hopeful.

His chest tightened and he leaned back in his chair, away from his desk.

His sister Aman used to look at the world that way. She was so much shyer than Jamila, the more outgoing twin. Aman’s tenderness and quiet sense of humor always brought out the best in him, brought out the best in everyone, and when she died a week after Jamila he’d felt his heart break. His heart had never been the same.

Frowning at the computer screen, he ran his palm slowly along his jaw, the short rough bristles biting at his skin. And again he looked into this missing Olivia’s eyes and tried to imagine where she was, tried to imagine her circumstances. Was she sick, hurt, dead?

Had she been kidnapped? Murdered? Raped?

Or had she disappeared by choice? Was there someone, something, she was running from?

It was none of his business, he told himself, rising from his computer. He’d left city life and civilization behind to live in the desert, far from violence, noise, and crime. He’d chosen solitude because he hated how most people lived.

But what if this was his sister?

Classic Romance

What if Aman or Jamila had gone missing?

They wouldn’t, he brusquely reminded himself. They’d been princesses—royal—and security detail had followed them everywhere.

He didn’t know this Jake, didn’t know anything about the man but he could still see the words he’d written, could still hear the plea for help echo in his head.

Turning at the edge of his tent, Khalid looked back at his computer, at the enlarged black and white photo. Olivia X, twenty-three years old, five foot four, and one hundred and six pounds—if that.

With a snap of his wrist he flung the tent flap back and exited his tent and called for one of his men.

He might live in the middle of the Great Sarq Desert and he might be a nomadic sheikh, but he was still a king, one of the royal Fehrs, blessed with power, wealth, and infinite connections. If anyone could locate this American, he could.