A Golden Betrayal Read online

  Nothing will stop him….

  In his Arabian kingdom, Crown Prince Raif Khouri commands, and women do his will…but then he meets headstrong American Ann Richardson. To get back the priceless statue he’s convinced her minions stole, Raif kidnaps her!

  Held captive by the sexy prince and mired in scandal at her auction house, Ann has her hands full. How can she convince Raif she’s innocent…and convince her traitorous body to resist his sultry kisses?

  But after one night with the woman his duty will never let him have, it’s Raif who realizes the high price of ransom—his heart!

  He Searched Her Expression For Dishonesty.…

  Instead he found himself drinking in her beauty. “Ann,” he breathed.

  When she spoke, anger unexpectedly left her tone, replaced by what sounded like wariness. “What do you want me to say, Raif?”

  It wasn’t what he wanted her to say. It was what he wanted her to do. And that had nothing to do with his family’s statue.

  “How can I end this?” she asked.

  “Give me my statue.” He pulled his thoughts back from the brink.

  “That’s impossible.”

  Raif took a step closer, crowding her, determined to get this farce over with. “In Rayas, we would not ask so politely.”

  “We’re not in Rayas.”

  “Pity.”

  “Why? If we were in Rayas, would you throw me in a dungeon?”

  “If we were in Rayas, I’d tie you to my bed.”

  Dear Reader,

  I was delighted to be asked to participate in The Highest Bidder continuity. It’s my first “royalty” book, and I had a terrific time imagining a fictitious kingdom with a royal hierarchy, scandals and secrets. With palaces, yachts, private jets and his own police force, Prince Raif Khouri lives in a world beyond billionaires.

  The Gold Heart statues play a pivotal role in the entire Highest Bidder series, and I was thrilled to wrap up this storyline in my book. Raif is positive Ann Richardson is responsible for the theft of his family’s precious heirloom, the Gold Heart statue. He’s equally convinced that she holds the key to its return to his country. He tries everything from reason to coercion to get her to give up the statue. When that fails, he resorts to kidnapping. Since Ann had nothing to do with the statue’s disappearence, she had no way to bargain with Prince Raif, but he’s not about to either believe her or let her go.

  I hope you enjoy A Golden Betrayal. It was a pleasure to wrap up the series!

  Barbara

  Barbara Dunlop

  A Golden Betrayal

  Books by Barbara Dunlop

  Harlequin Desire

  An After-Hours Affair #2108

  †A Cowboy Comes Home #2134

  †A Cowboy in Manhattan #2140

  †An Intimate Bargain #2158

  A Golden Betrayal #2198

  Silhouette Desire

  Thunderbolt over Texas #1704

  Marriage Terms #1741

  The Billionaire’s Bidding #1793

  The Billionaire Who Bought Christmas #1836

  Beauty and the Billionaire #1853

  Marriage, Manhattan Style #1897

  Transformed Into the Frenchman’s Mistress #1929

  *Seduction and the CEO #1996

  *In Bed with the Wrangler #2003

  *His Convenient Virgin Bride #2009

  The CEO’s Accidental Bride #2062

  Billionaire Baby Dilemma #2073

  *Montana Millionaires: The Ryders

  †Colorado Cattle Barons

  Other titles by this author available in ebook format.

  BARBARA DUNLOP

  writes romantic stories while curled up in a log cabin in Canada’s far north, where bears outnumber people and it snows six months of the year. Fortunately she has a brawny husband and two teenage children to haul firewood and clear the driveway while she sips cocoa and muses about her upcoming chapters. Barbara loves to hear from readers. You can contact her through her website, www.barbaradunlop.com.

  To my husband

  * * *

  The Highest Bidder

  At this high-stakes auction house, where everything is for sale, true love is priceless.

  Don’t miss a single story in this new continuity from Harlequin Desire!

  Gilded Secrets by Maureen Child

  Exquisite Acquistions by Charlene Sands

  A Silken Seduction by Yvonne Lindsay

  A Precious Inheritance by Paula Roe

  The Rogue’s Fortune by Cat Schield

  A Golden Betrayal by Barbara Dunlop

  Special thanks and acknowledgment to Barbara Dunlop for her contribution to The Highest Bidder miniseries.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Excerpt

  One

  Ann Richardson supposed she should be grateful the Interpol agents hadn’t strip-searched her and slapped on the handcuffs. But after her sixth hour in the small, stuffy, gray-walled Federal Plaza interrogation room, she couldn’t muster up anything but annoyance.

  Agent Heidi Shaw was back, a half-filled cardboard coffee cup in one hand, clipboard tucked under her opposite arm with a sheaf of papers Ann assumed were some kind of investigative notes. Agent Shaw was playing bad cop to Agent Fitz Lydall’s good. She was five feet even, maybe one hundred pounds soaking wet. While Fitz was two-twenty of solid muscle with a face like a bulldog and the shoulders of a linebacker. Privately, Ann thought the roles should be reversed, but she hadn’t offered up that suggestion.

  Either way, since she’d watched a few detective dramas in her time, it was easy enough to see through their textbook ploy. The fact that she was innocent was also going to mess with their strategy. Psychological tricks and circular questioning were not going to trip Ann up and make her tell them she was selling a stolen antique statue on behalf of her employer, Waverly’s Auction House.

  She’d learned a lot about Rayas’s Gold Heart statues in the past few months. Three statues had been commissioned by King Hazim Bajal in the 1700s. They were said to bring luck in love to his daughters, who’d been required to marry for the convenience of their royal line and their country. One of the statues was still safe in Rayas with a modern branch of the Bajal family. The other had been lost at sea when the Titanic sank. A third had been stolen five months ago from another branch of the Rayasian royal family, the one that included Crown Prince Raif Khouri. Prince Raif was convinced Roark Black had stolen the statue on behalf of Waverly’s. The accusation was preposterous. But the crown prince was a powerful, determined man, and he had both Interpol and the FBI dancing to his tune.

  Heidi set her clipboard on the scarred wood table, and scraped back the metal folding chair to sit across from Ann. “Tell me about Dalton Rothschild.”

  “You don’t read the tabloids?” Ann countered, giving herself a moment to consider this new line of questioning. Dalton was the CEO of Waverly’s rival, Rothschild’s.

  “I understand the two of you were close.”

  “We were friends.” Ann paused. “Were being the operative word.” She’d never forgive Dalton for betraying her and destroying her professional reputation. His lies about their supposed affair were one thing. But his attack on her integrity was at a whole other level.

  “Friends?” Heidi mocked with obvious skepticism and disdain.

  “So, you do read the tabloids.”

  “I read everything. So I know you never den
ied he was your lover.”

  “Would you like me to deny it?”

  “I’d like you to answer the question.”

  “I just did,” Ann pointed out.

  “Why are you being evasive?”

  Ann shifted her body on the hard metal chair. She was being honest, not evasive, and she resented the agent’s new barrage of questions. She articulated her next words slowly and carefully. “We were friends. He lied about me. We are no longer friends.”

  Heidi stood.

  Ann longed to do the same. But every time she’d tried to rise from the uncomfortable chair, someone had brusquely ordered her to sit back down. Her legs were starting to cramp from inactivity, and her butt was killing her.

  “Where’s the statue?” Heidi fired at her.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where’s Roark Black?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “He works for you.”

  “He works for Waverly’s.”

  Heidi smirked. “Semantics.”

  “‘I don’t know where he is,’ is not semantics. It’s a statement of fact.”

  “You do know it’s illegal to lie to Interpol.”

  “You do know I’m capable of calling a reporter at the New York Times.”

  Heidi braced her hands on the table, making triangles out of her thumbs and forefingers, and leaned forward. “Is that a threat?”

  Ann realized her nerves were getting frayed, and her temper was starting to boil. She allowed for the possibility that she was no longer acting in her own best interest. “I’d like to call my lawyer.”

  “Guilty people say that all the time.”

  “So do women who’ve been denied a restroom for five hours.”

  Heidi’s expression turned smug. “I can hold you for twenty-four hours without charging you.”

  “And without a restroom?” Ann taunted.

  “You think this is a joke?”

  “I think this is ridiculous. I’ve answered every question six times over. I have complete faith in Roark Black. There are two statues at play here. And Waverly’s is absolutely not trading in stolen antiquities.”

  “So, you raised the Titanic?”

  “I don’t know the whys and the hows of where he got it, I only know Roark has the missing statue, not the stolen one.”

  Roark had also signed a confidentiality agreement with the mysterious owner of the Gold Heart statue that had gone missing one hundred years ago. He’d destroy his own career and compromise Waverly’s reputation if he revealed the person’s identity to anyone, including Ann.

  “Where’s the proof?” Heidi demanded.

  “Where’s my lawyer?” Ann shot back.

  Heidi drew a breath and rose to full height. “You really want to go that route?”

  Ann was out of patience. She was through being cooperative, through measuring her words. She was innocent, and nothing anybody said or did would alter that fact. “You really want a long and productive career in law enforcement?”

  Heidi’s brows shot up.

  “Then start looking for a new suspect,” said Ann. “Because it’s not me, and it’s not Roark. Maybe it is Dalton. Heaven knows he’s the guy with a motive to discredit Waverly’s. But if it is him, he’s done it without my knowledge and certainly without my cooperation. I’m about to stop talking, Agent Shaw, and there’s not a single thing you can do to make me say more. You want to be the hero, solve the big, international case, get promoted? Then stop focusing on me.”

  Heidi paused for a beat. “You’re an eloquent speaker.”

  Ann felt like she ought to say thank-you, but she kept her lips pressed tightly together.

  “Then again, most liars are,” Heidi finished.

  Ann folded her hand on the table in front of her. She’d requested a restroom, and she’d requested a lawyer. If they were going to deny her requests, tromp all over her civil rights, she really would take the story to the New York Times.

  * * *

  Crown Prince Raif Khouri was completely out of patience. He didn’t know how investigations were conducted in America, but in his own country of Rayas, Ann Richardson would have been thrown in jail by now. Let her spend a few nights in the bowels of Traitor’s Prison; she’d be begging for an opportunity to confess.

  He should have kept her in Rayas when she’d showed up there last month. Though he supposed canceling her visa and locking her up might have caused an international incident. And, at the time, he had been as anxious to get rid of her as she was to leave.

  “Your Royal Highness?” A voice came over the intercom of the Gulfstream. “We’ll be landing at Teterboro in a few minutes.”

  “Thank you, Hari,” Raif responded. He straightened in the white leather seat, stretching the circulation back into his legs.

  “I can show you the town while we’re here,” said Raif’s cousin Tariq, gazing out his own window at the Manhattan skyline. Tariq had spent three years at Harvard, coming away with a law degree.

  Raif’s father, King Safwah, believed that an international education for the extended royal family would strengthen Rayas. Raif himself had spent two years at Oxford, studying history and politics. He’d visited many countries in Europe and Asia, but this was his first trip to America.

  “We’re not here to do the town,” he pointed out to Tariq.

  Tariq responded with a lascivious grin and a quirk of his dark brows. “American woman are not like Rayasian women.”

  “We’re not here to chase women.” Well, not plural anyway. They were here to chase and catch one particular woman. And then Raif was going to make her talk.

  “There’s this one restaurant that overlooks Central Park, and—”

  “You want me to send you home?” Raif demanded.

  “I want you to lighten up.” Tariq was Raif’s third cousin, but still an important player in the Rayasian royal circle. It gave him the right to be more forthright than others when speaking to Raif. But only to a point.

  “We’re here to find the Gold Heart statue,” Raif stated firmly.

  “We have to eat.”

  “We have to focus.”

  “And we’ll do that a whole lot better with sustenance, such as maple glazed salmon and matsutake mushrooms.”

  “You should have been a litigator,” Raif grumbled, fastening his seat belt as the landing gear whined then clunked into place. The two men had been friends since childhood, and he doubted he’d ever beaten Tariq in an argument.

  Tariq leaned his head back in his seat, bracing himself for the landing. “I would have been a litigator. But the king objected.”

  “When I am king, you’ll never be a litigator.”

  “When you are king, I am seeking asylum in Dubai.”

  Both men fought grins.

  “Unless I can get you to lighten up,” Tariq finished. “Maybe get you a girl.”

  “I can get my own girls.” Raif needed to be discreet, of course, but he was no fan of celibacy.

  The wheels of the Gulfstream touched smoothly onto the runway, its brakes engaging as they sped through the blowing December snow. He would never understand how such a pivotal city had grown up in a place with such appalling weather.

  “There’s this club off Fifth Avenue,” said Tariq.

  “I’m not in New York to get girls.”

  Even as he spoke, Raif couldn’t seem to stop his thoughts from drifting to Ann Richardson. He’d been a fool to kiss her, a bigger fool to like it. And he’d been a colossal fool to let their single kiss get so far out of hand.

  When he closed his eyes at night, he could still see her wispy blond hair, that delicate, creamy skin, and her startling blue eyes. He could taste her hot, sweet lips and smell her vanilla perfume.

  The Gulfstream slowed and turned, and finally rolled to a stop inside an airport hangar. The ground crew closed the huge door behind them against the cold weather.

  When the airplane hatch opened, Raif and Tariq descended the small staircase. A fe
w sounds echoed in the cavernous building—the door clanging into place, a heater whirring in the high ceiling and the ground crew calling to each other in the far corners. Beside the airplane, Raif and Tariq were greeted by the Rayasian ambassador, a couple of aides and some security staff.

  Raif appreciated the low-key reception. He knew it was only a matter of time before his every trip would become a state occasion. Though still in his mid-sixties, his father had been ill for some time with the remnants of a tropical disease contracted decades ago in central Africa. These past few months had been hard on the king, and Raif was becoming more worried by the day that his father might not recover this time.

  “Your Royal Highness.” The ambassador greeted him with a formal bow. He was dressed in the traditional white robe of Rayas, his gray hair partially covered in a white cap.

  Raif detected a slight narrowing of the ambassador’s eyes as he took in Raif’s Western suit.

  But the man kept his thoughts to himself. “Welcome to America” was all he added.

  “Thank you, Fariol.” Raif shook the man’s hand, rather than embracing him and air kissing as was the Rayasian custom. “You’ve arranged for a car?”

  “Of course.” Fariol gestured to a stretch Hummer limousine.

  Raif raised a brow. “I believe my office said nondescript.”

  Fariol frowned. “There are no flags, no royal seals on the doors, no Rayasian markings whatsoever.”

  Raif heard Tariq shift beside him and guessed he was covering a smirk.

  “I meant I wanted a sedan. Something plain and inconspicuous. Maybe something I could drive myself.”

  Fariol drew back in obvious confusion. The younger aide beside him stepped up to speak in his ear. “I can arrange it right away, Mr. Ambassador.”

  “Please do,” Raif said directly to the aide, earning himself another censorious expression from the ambassador.

  The aide nodded and quickly withdrew, pulling a phone from his pocket.

  Fariol turned his attention away from Raif. “Sheik Tariq,” he said.

  It was a slight but very intentional snub. It was the crown prince who ended a conversation, not an ambassador.