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

counter putting the finishing touches onto their lunch plates. “I’m sure you’d rather attend to your own work, so if Farhad could just drop me at the beach and come back later to pick me up…”
    He had the sudden urge to see if he could pierce her armor. He gave her a slow smile, looking at her from under his brows. “But I want to go with you,” he said softly.
    The dismay in her face morphed into alarm, and Arif sat back and shifted gears. She wasn’t his business. It wasn’t his job to build the woman’s sexual self-confidence, no matter how desperately it needed building. That task he would have to leave to some other man. It would be a mistake anyway to try and mix pleasure into this business. Six weeks on the yacht—there was too much room for trouble.
    So in another voice entirely, he added, “I am more interested than you seem to believe in the Johari turtle. I wish to learn as much as you can teach me about it over the next six weeks.”
    “Yes, well. In that case,” she said, beginning to attack the lunch Jamila set down before her, “I hope you’re prepared to curtail your usual luncheon habits. Because this job is capable of filling every minute of the day, and still be left half undone. There are two of us where there should be twenty-two.”
    A little flick of disappointment zipped through him and was gone. “What do you mean?”
    She looked up at him with a resigned smile. “To do this job properly, we should have at least one person, preferably two, camping out on every target island for the entire three-month duration of the nesting season. That way they could walk the beaches early every single morning, before the tourists or fishermen get up and mess up the signs in the sand, before the wind or the tide obliterates the tracks completely, and before any lost hatchlings die of dehydration. As it is, I’ll be visiting too many beaches too seldom and too late in the day. That means I’m certain to miss many nests, even being very vigilant.”
    “And why don’t you?” Arif asked.
    She chewed and swallowed while the grey eyes fixed him with a gaze that reminded him again of his dream. “Why don’t I what?”
    “Have twenty-two people here?”
    Aly laughed. Her eyes lighted with amusement that was almost mockery, and he thought that if he once made love to her she would not show him such an expression.
    “Well, because we are a small charity, with limited funding, and because it’s not every student volunteer, even the most committed, who can afford to spend their summer break not earning money. Even for the sake of living on a beautiful island in the Gulf of Barakat for the duration, even for the sake of saving wildlife from extinction. Ideally we should be able to pay them at least an honorarium, but we can’t. Even so, half a dozen of my students were desperate to do it.”
    She took another mouthful of food and chewed quickly. “But getting them out here, setting them up with a camp, feeding them and all that, takes a great deal of money and management. My research grant doesn’t cover even my own expenses on this. The undergraduates who normally volunteer on such projects can’t afford the additional burden of air fare, they’re already struggling under a financial load that will take them years to pay off.”
    Arif frowned. “Why didn’t you apply to us for more funds?”
    She looked at her watch again, took another hasty bite, shrugged. “We put in an application to your umbrella charity for funds to fully cover Richard, Ellen, and me, six volunteers, a boat, fuel, and all supplies for three months. You came back with a grant that would cover the boat and Richard and Ellen’s flights, a bit over. Turtle Watch raised sufficient additional funds with crowd-funding to cover our food and diesel fuel over six weeks. We did what we could. It’s called cutting your suit to fit your cloth, Your Excellency.”
    “Arif.”
    “Arif.”
    “I knew nothing of this. The project