Free DesertIslandDelight by Wynter Daniels Page A

where women
weren’t exactly cherished. She drew a calming breath. “Please have a boat or a
helicopter or something to take me back to my hotel. I want to leave right this
instant.”
    Mohd’s eyes widened. “You don’t wish to wait for the sheik?”
    “Definitely not. Right now, please.” She glanced at Chase,
but he seemed to have withdrawn into himself. Screw him. Screw them all.
    She stormed from the room and went straight out the front
door of the palace.
    Less than an hour later, a motorboat dropped her at the dock
where her odyssey had first begun exactly two days earlier. Before she
disembarked, she turned to the pilot. “Give el-Tayid a message for me. Tell him
Diana Weston said fuck you .”
    Wide-eyed, the man just stared at her.
    She walked the short distance to her hotel and had a bellman
let her into her room. Collapsing onto the bed, she let the tears flow.
    * * * * *
    Chase paced the marble foyer of the palace with his hands
fisted at his sides. By the time he’d absorbed all the implications of what
Mohd had told them, Diana had already left the island. He’d considered going
after her but before he did, he was going to give that son of a bitch a piece
of his mind—and maybe something to remember him by.
    One of the servants entered the area and asked him again if
there was anything he could get for him.
    Chase stopped walking. “Yeah. You can tell me when el-Tayid
will be back from his meeting.”
    The man gave him a blank stare. “The sheik in his office.”
    He must have come inside through another entrance. Damn it.
He’d wasted precious time waiting. “Where is it?”
    “This way.” The man turned and started down a hallway. He
stopped near the end and pointed to the door.
    Chase barged inside without knocking. The sheik and another
man stopped speaking.
    “Ah, Mr. Cunningham, I was going to send for you. I
understand Miss Weston has left. But no matter. I was so impressed with your
presentation that I’d planned to give you my account.”
    “Is it true that you set up the entire kidnapping? That you
planned the whole thing so you could test us as if we were your personal lab
rats?”
    The other man in the room cleared his throat and took a step
toward them, but Chase didn’t care.
    “If I am going to throw millions of dollars in business at
someone, I want to know how they will do under pressure. I had cameras set up
in various locations on the island. You were never in any real danger. You did
a brilliant job.” He clapped him on the back. “And I enjoyed watching Miss
Weston prance around in her underwear almost as much as you must have. How
about joining me for a scotch?”
    Every muscle in his body tensed. “You were watching us the
whole time?”
    “Sure. We even had you in our sights for part of that long
swim to the island. Very impressive.”
    “So what? You had a camera on the hammerhead shark’s back?
The one that almost killed us?”
    The sheik’s smile slipped.
    “You’re a bigger asshole than I thought.” He didn’t hesitate
to swing at the bastard’s face. He managed to get in two powerful punches
before the other man grabbed him. It took only an instant for an army of
bodyguards to appear and start pummeling him.
    He didn’t care. He’d taken that son of a bitch down a few
pegs and that was all that mattered. No, it wasn’t really. More important was
getting to Diana to apologize for his delayed reaction.
    He closed his eyes as the goons dragged him from the room
and beat him until his world went dark.
    * * * * *
    Diana found her airline ticket home in a dresser drawer.
Thankfully she’d left it and her passport there when she’d left the room on her
way to the sheik’s island two days earlier but the rest of the important items
in her wallet were somewhere on the bottom of the gulf.
    Hopefully the American Embassy would be able to help her get
a replacement ID before tomorrow’s flight. She headed downstairs to the lobby
to speak to the concierge