Kitabı oku: «The Sheikh's Innocent Bride»
is one of Mills & Boon’s most popular and bestselling novelists. Her writing was an instant success with readers worldwide. Since her first book, Bittersweet Passion, was published in 1987, she has gone from strength to strength and now has over ninety titles, which have sold more than thirty-five million copies, to her name.
In this special collection, we offer readers a chance to revisit favourite books or enjoy that rare treasure—a book by a favourite writer—they may have missed. In every case, seduction and passion with a gorgeous, irresistible man are guaranteed!
LYNNE GRAHAM was born in Northern Ireland and has been a keen Mills & Boon® reader since her teens. She is very happily married, with an understanding husband who has learned to cook since she started to write! Her five children keep her on her toes. She has a very large dog, which knocks everything over, a very small terrier, which barks a lot, and two cats. When time allows, Lynne is a keen gardener.
The Sheikh’s Innocent Bride
Lynne Graham
MILLS & BOON
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CHAPTER ONE
HIS SERENE HIGHNESS, Prince Shahir bin Harith al-Assad, reached his vast estate in the Scottish Highlands shortly before eight in the morning.
As usual, every possible arrangement had been put in place to smooth his arrival with the seamless luxury that had been his right since birth. A limousine with blacked-out windows had collected him from the private airfield where his Lear jet had landed. At no stage had anyone sought to breach his reserve with unwelcome dialogue, for he valued his privacy beyond all other things and his staff worked hard at keeping the rest of the world at bay. Offered a seat in the limo, his estate manager, Fraser Douglas, had answered several questions and then embraced a self-effacing silence.
The only road to Strathcraig Castle stretched for more than fifteen miles, through tawny moorlands surrounded by spectacular purple-blue mountains. The lonely silence of the majestic landscape and the wide blue sky that filled the horizon reminded Shahir of the desert that he loved with an even greater passion. After the frenetic bustle and buzz of the business world, the wild, natural emptiness refreshed his eyes.
As the limo began its descent into the remote forested glen of Strathcraig the passage of a flock of sheep forced the powerful vehicle to a halt. A white-haired woman with a bicycle was also waiting by the side of the road. Only when she turned her head did Shahir appreciate that the woman had barely left her teenage years behind: her hair was not white, it was a very pale platinum-blonde, drawn back from her delicate features in smooth wings. Slender and graceful, she had wide, intelligent eyes and a sensitive, full pink mouth. Even her drab clothing could not conceal the fact that she was as proud and pure in her beauty as an angel he had once seen in an illuminated manuscript. There was, however, nothing reverent about the instant charge of lust that she ignited in Shahir. He was startled by the unfamiliar intensity of his desire, for it had been a long time since a woman had excited his interest to that extent
‘Who is that?’ he asked the estate manager seated opposite him.
‘Kirsten Ross, Your Highness,’ the square-faced older man advanced, and when the silence lay gathering dust, in a way that implied he had answered too briefly, he hastened to offer more facts. ‘I believe she’s employed as a domestic at the castle.’
Shahir would not have dreamt of bedding an employee, and the news that she worked for him in so menial a capacity struck an even less welcome note, for he was a fastidious man. ‘I haven’t seen her before.’
‘Kirsten Ross isn’t the sort to draw attention to herself.’
Hard cynicism firmed Shahir’s well-sculpted mouth. He was a connoisseur of beautiful women, and had yet to meet one unaware of her power. ‘She must be accustomed to the attention her looks excite.’
‘I shouldn’t think she’s ever been encouraged to pay much heed to a mirror,’ Fraser Douglas responded with a wry grimace. ‘Her father is a religious fanatic with a reputation for being very strict on the home front.’
Realising in some surprise that he was still staring at the exquisite blonde, Shahir averted his attention with punctilious care from her. The car drove on.
The older man’s censorious reference to the girl’s father had surprised him, for where did religious devotion end and fanaticism begin? After all, to an outsider village life in Strathcraig appeared to revolve round the church and its activities. The local community followed a very different code of values from the more liberal ways of high society circles. Indeed, the tenants on the estate had a conservative outlook that struck visitors as distinctly grim and outdated, and was probably the result of the glen’s isolation from the wider world.
Yet Shahir was more at home at Strathcraig than he was within a more laissez-faire culture. Dhemen, the Middle Eastern kingdom of his birth, was equally straitlaced. Right was right and wrong was wrong and community welfare always took precedence over the freedom of the individual. Within that clear framework few dared to stray, and those who did were punished by the opprobrium they attracted.
In much the same way Shahir accepted the limitations that fate had chosen to place on his own prospects of happiness. Any woman he took to his bed could only be a poor substitute for the one he really desired, he acknowledged wryly. He loved a woman who could never be his, and casual sexual affairs were his only outlet. But he was thirty-two years old, and that was not how he had planned to live his life.
Concerned relatives kept on lining up the names of promising bridal prospects, and the more broad-minded set up casual meetings with suitable females on his behalf. Perhaps, he reflected grimly, it was time for him to bite the bullet and choose one of those candidates. His darkly handsome features firmed. An Arabian woman would devote her energies 24/7 to the pursuit of being his wife. In return she would expect children, wealth, and the prestige of great position. Love wouldn’t come into the equation and why should it? Marriage in his world had much more to do with the practicalities of status, family connections and, primarily, the provision of an heir. His father had been extremely sympathetic towards his son’s desire to remain single for as long as possible but, as the next in line to the throne, Shahir was well aware that he could not stave off the inevitable for much longer.
It was fortunate that there was not an atom of romance in his soul, Shahir conceded with bleak satisfaction. His hot-blooded temperament and powerful sex-drive had always been kept in line by his strong principles and his discriminating tastes. He was a man who faced the truth, no matter how unpalatable it was. He was not a man who made foolish mistakes. Born into the very heart of a royal family, he knew what his duty entailed and he was proud of his heritage. His keen intelligence told him that accepting the need to acquire a wife would be a much more sensible option than eying up a gorgeous but totally unsuitable Western woman—particularly one who worked for him in so lowly a capacity…
‘You’re living in Cloud-cuckoo-land,’ Jeanie Murray told Kirsten with blunt conviction as she sat on the worn wooden counter, smoking a cigarette in flagrant disregard of her rules of employment. ‘Your father will never let you live away from home to go to college.’
Kirsten continued to wash a bone-thin Sevres china saucer with gentle and careful hands, her classic profile intent. ‘I think that now that he’s married to Mabel he might be prepared to consider it.’
‘Aye, all that kneeling and praying didn’t stop your dad from courting a new bride before your poor mum was cold in her grave. Folk say he likes his home comforts on tap.’ Impervious to her companion’s discomfiture, the plump, freckled redhead rolled her eyes and vented a laugh. ‘But why should he agree to you moving out? You’re bringing home a tidy pay packet. Don’t tell me that that isn’t welcome to Angus Ross—we all know how tight his hold is on his wallet!’
Kirsten tried not to wince at the news that her father’s stinginess was a living legend locally. Jeanie’s frankly uttered opinions and tactless remarks often caused friction with other members of staff. Kirsten, however, could forgive her much, for she valued the other woman’s warm-hearted friendliness. ‘Jeanie…’
‘Don’t go all goody-goody on me just because you think you should. You know it’s true. I’ve heard a story or two about what your home life’s like, and that’s no picnic by all accounts—’
‘But I don’t discuss my family with anyone,’ Kirsten slotted in swiftly.
Jeanie rolled her eyes with unblemished good humour. ‘I bet you’re still doing all the cooking and cleaning at home. Old sourpuss Mabel won’t want you to move out either. Face up to it, Kirsten. You’re twenty-two years old and the only way you’re ever going to get a life of your own is by running away as fast as your legs can carry you from the pair of them!’
‘We’ll see.’ Kirsten bent her head and said nothing more.
It would take a hefty sum of money to enable her to set up home elsewhere. Running away would be the coward’s way out, and doing so without sufficient funds would be foolish, for it would land her straight into the poverty trap. She wanted to be able to rent somewhere decent and plan her future. She just had to be patient, she reminded herself sternly. She was only six weeks into her very first job, and with her father taking a large slice of her wages to cover her keep it would be a few months before her savings could cover any sort of a move.
She could wait until then; her job, humble as it was, still felt like a lifeline to her. She loved working in the medieval splendour of the historic castle. The magnificent surroundings were an endless source of fascination to her. Even riding her bike into work every morning gave her a freedom that had long been denied her. The chance to mix freely with other people was even more welcome. But she was equally conscious that she wanted more out of life than a post as a cleaner, and that she needed qualifications and training to aspire to anything more.
Yet the prospect of having to blatantly defy her father’s rigid rules of conduct was challenging and frightening, for she had been taught from childhood to offer him unquestioning obedience. He was a cold, intimidating man, with a violent temper that she had once struggled to protect her late mother from. Her lovely face shadowed, for she was still grieving for that loss.
Isobel Ross had become ill when her daughter was thirteen years old, and her long, slow decline had been matched by her ever greater need for care. That responsibility had fallen on Kirsten’s shoulders. Her father had not been prepared to assist with what he saw as ‘women’s work’, and her older brother, Daniel, had been kept too busy doing farm work to be in any position to help. Once the brightest child in her class, Kirsten had begun to miss a great deal of school and her grades had slowly worsened.
Fed up with the restrictions imposed by their father’s increasingly obsessive absorption in religion, her brother had finally quarrelled with him and moved out. As soon as it was legally possible, Angus Ross had removed his daughter from school so that she could nurse her mother and take charge of his household.
For the following five years Kirsten had only left the farm to attend church and do the weekly shop. Her father disapproved of social occasions and had discouraged all visitors. Exactly a year after her mother’s death her father had married Mabel. The other woman was sour and sharp-tongued. But Kirsten was grateful that Mabel’s eagerness to see more money coming into the household had prompted her stepmother to persuade her husband to allow Kirsten to seek employment outside the home.
‘We’ll have to see if we can get you a proper thrill this week, while our gorgeous desert sheikh is in residence,’ Jeanie remarked brightly.
A surprisingly mischievous smile curved Kirsten’s lips. ‘I’ve had my treat for the week: I saw the Prince’s limousine, and very impressive it was too.’
‘Never mind the limo. We’ll hide you somewhere to get a glimpse of the man himself! I’ve only seen him a couple of times, and at a distance, but I’m telling you he’d make a sinner out of any saint.’ Jeanie groaned, with a lascivious look in her eyes, as she disposed of her cigarette and put the ashtray back in its hiding place. ‘He’s a right sex god.’
‘I’ll be keeping well out of his way. I wouldn’t want to lose my job.’ Kirsten had been warned when she was hired that all domestic tasks at the castle were to be carried out with as much silence and invisibility as was humanly possible. It had been made equally clear to her that if her phenomenally rich and royal employer was to appear in the same corridor she was to hastily vacate it, so she didn’t think there would be much chance of her bumping into him!
‘If I had your face and body I’d be tripping over myself to accidentally fall in His Serene Highness’s way!’ Jeanie gave her a broad wink.’ If he fancied you he could take you away from all this and set you up in a house somewhere. You’d be made, because he’s minted! Think of the clothes you could have, and the jewels, and a real macho man in your bed into the bargain. You’re really beautiful, Kirsten. If anyone could pull Prince Shahir, you could!’
Kirsten studied her in bewilderment, her colour rising. ‘I’m not like that—’
‘Well, you’d be much better off if you were,’ the redhead told her roundly. ‘At least I know how to have a bit of fun and I can enjoy a good laugh. If you don’t watch out your father will turn you into a dried-up old spinster!’
Having finished washing the Sevres dinner service, Kirsten dried it piece by piece with great care. Even so, her thoughts were miles away. She felt so out of step with Jeanie. Kirsten had been brought up in a house where the only spoken reference to sex had related to what her father referred to as ‘the sin of fornication’. The content of the newspapers and magazines she had glimpsed since starting work at the castle had initially shocked her, for the only written matter in her home consisted of the Bible and religious tracts, and it was many years since her father had got rid of the television. Yet she was guiltily aware that she was sorely tempted by the fashionable clothes and the exotic places that she had seen in those publications.
If only her father were a more reasonable man. If only he would allow her to go out and about and enjoy mixed company, like other women her age. After all, he must have dated her late mother to have married her—and surely that could not have been morally wrong?
Her father was growing terrifyingly unreasonable in his attitudes and his demands. After a dispute with the church elders, the older man would no longer attend church, and Kirsten and Mabel had been forced to stay home as well. Kirsten loved music. One of her few pleasures had been her radio, and he had broken that in a fit of rage when Mabel complained that her stepdaughter spent so much time listening to it that she was late making breakfast. Mabel had been shaken by her husband’s reaction, though, Kirsten recalled heavily. It was small comfort for her to suspect that her stepmother was not wholly content with her hasty second marriage.
‘Would you like it?’ At lunchtime another member of staff extended the magazine she had been reading to Kirsten. ‘It’s OK…I’m finished with it.’
Her face suffused with self-conscious pink, Kirsten accepted the item with a muttered word of thanks. As she left the basement staffroom, she heard the woman say, ‘It’s a pity about her, isn’t it? Angus Ross should be hung for treating her the way he does! She’s scared of her own shadow!’
No, I’m not, Kirsten thought, frantically pedalling away her hurt pride and resentment as she headed home on her bike. She was not scared of her own shadow—but neither was she mad enough to go head to head with her father before she had the means to leave his home.
The beauty of the early summer day soon calmed her temper and raised her spirits. After all it was a Friday, and her favourite day of the week. On Fridays she finished work early, and the house would be empty whilst Mabel and her father did the weekly grocery shopping. Afterwards they would visit Mabel’s elderly mother, and remain with her for their evening meal. Kirsten decided to take her dog for a walk and read the magazine.
Half an hour later she walked through her father’s fields, which led right up to the edge of the forest. She was dismayed to see that fresh tyre tracks had torn up the soft ground, leaving messy furrows of mud that would fill with water when the rain came. Her father had been outraged a few weeks earlier, when a pair of yobs on motorbikes had torn up a newly sown field. News of a second visit and further damage to the land would put Angus Ross into the kind of temper that made Kirsten suck in her breath in dismay.
Deciding that it would be wiser to let her father discover the damage for himself, she crossed the stile that marked the boundary of the farm and followed a little-used path up through the forest to the top of the hill. She kicked off her shoes, undid a couple of buttons at the neck of her blouse, and loosened her hair to relax in the sunshine. Her dog, Squeak, a small, short-legged animal of mixed ancestry, sank down in the middle of the grassy path, for the steep climb had exhausted him. His perky little ears did not prick up at the distant growl of an engine across the valley for as his age had advanced his hearing had steadily become more impaired.
Kirsten began to devour her magazine, and before very long was absorbed to the exclusion of all else in the delightful world of celebrities, fabulous fashion and wicked gossip.
One minute she was dreaming in the sunlight, the next she was jerking up from her reclining position with a stricken exclamation as a giant black motorbike burst with a roar over the hill and headed straight for Squeak. Kirsten made a violent lunge at the old dog to grab him out of the way. Mere feet from her, the bike skidded at fantastic and terrifying speed off the track, and the rider went flying up into the air. Horror stopped her breathing. But, in what seemed like virtually the same moment, he hit the ground and rolled with the spectacular, almost acrobatic ease of a jockey taking a fall.
Kirsten looked on wide-eyed as the rider, who was clearly uninjured, vaulted back upright again. Her shock was engulfed by a flood of unfamiliar anger.
‘You’re trespassing!’ she heard herself yell at the impossibly tall black-leather-clad figure approaching her as she scrambled up.
Shahir was furious with her for sitting in the middle of a track, like a target waiting for a direct hit from on high. She was very fortunate not to have been killed. He could not credit that she was shouting at him—nobody ever shouted at him—but, perhaps fortunately for her, the alluring picture that she made clouded that issue. Her shimmering silvery blonde hair was loose round her narrow shoulders and fell almost to her waist in a stunning display of luxuriance. He encountered eyes that were not the Celtic blue he had expected, but the verdant green of emerald and moss. His attention was by then irretrievably locked to her, and he noticed that she was surprisingly tall for a woman. As tall as his Berber ancestors himself, he stood six feet five in his socks, but barefoot she was still tall enough to reach his chin.
‘In fact, not only are you trespassing—’
‘I am not a trespasser,’ he countered, his dark, deep voice muffled by the black helmet which concealed his face from her.
‘This is private ground, so you are trespassing.’ As far as Kirsten was concerned his failure to offer an immediate apology merely added insult to injury, and her soft mouth compressed. ‘Don’t you realise how fast you were going?’
‘I know exactly what my speed was,’ Shahir confirmed.
He might behave like a yob, but he didn’t speak quite as she had assumed he would. His accent was unmistakably English and upper class, his crystal-clear vowel sounds crisply pronounced in spite of the helmet. She told herself off for being so biased in her expectations. A tourist toff could be just as much of a hooligan as a yob out for a day biking through the hills. Her chin took on a stubborn tilt.
‘Well, you frightened the life out of me and my dog!’ she asserted, lowering her arms to let Squeak down, his solid little body having become too heavy for comfort.
Far from behaving like a traumatised animal, Squeak padded over to Shahir’s booted feet, nuzzled them, wagged his tail in a lazily friendly fashion and then ambled off to curl up and sleep in the sunshine.
‘At least he’s not shouting at me as well.’ Shahir said dryly.
‘I wasn’t shouting.’ Her lilting accent took on a clipped edge of emphasis. His refusal to admit fault was testing even Kirsten’s tolerant nature. ‘You could have killed me…you could have killed yourself!’
Shahir flipped up his visor. Kirsten stilled. Her first thought was that he had the eyes of a hawk from the castle falconry: steady, unblinking, unnervingly keen. But his gaze was also a spectacular bronze-gold in colour, enhanced by lashes lush as sable and dark as ebony. Her heart jumped behind her breastbone and suddenly she was conscious of its measured beat. Indeed, it was as if her every sense had gone on to super-alert and time had slowed its passage.
‘Don’t exaggerate,’ Shahir drawled.
‘You were travelling at a crazy speed…’ she framed breathlessly.
Shahir watched the sun transform her hair to a veil of shining silver that he longed to touch. He was so taken aback by the inappropriate desire that for the first time in his life he forgot what he was about to say. ‘Was I?’
He pulled off his helmet and smoothed back his ruffled black hair with long brown fingers. Kirsten’s mouth ran dry. He was so exceptionally handsome that she simply stared. He also had the most unforgettable face. His fantastic bone structure was composed of high, slashing cheekbones and sleek planes and hollows, divided by a strong, masculine nose and defined by level dark brows. His bronzed complexion and very black hair suggested an ancestry at variance with his beautifully enunciated English. Every aspect of him offered a source of immediate fascination to her. She felt dizzy, as if she had been spinning round and round like a child and had suddenly stopped to find her balance gone. A tiny twist of something she had never felt before pulled low in her pelvis.
‘Were you what?’ she mumbled, belatedly striving to recall the conversation.
The hint of a smile tilted the beautiful curve of his mouth. She was as enchanted by the movement of his sculpted lips as though a magic wand had been waved over her.
‘I always travel at a crazy speed on the motorbike. But I’m a very safe rider.’
Kirsten made a frantic attempt to rescue her wits. ‘But you couldn’t even see where you were going,’ she reminded him.
Shahir was not accustomed to a consistent reminder of his apparent oversight, and he fought back. ‘Should I expect to find a woman and a dog parked in the centre of the track?’
‘Perhaps not…but you are on private land—’
‘I know—and I knew there were no livestock up here. This is my land.’
Kirsten giggled. ‘No, it’s not. I live just down the hill, and you can’t fool me.’
‘Can’t I?’ Shahir watched amusement light up her exquisite face and realised that she assumed he was teasing her. She genuinely had no idea of his identity.
But the sound of that unfamiliar light-hearted giggle emerging from her own lips had startled Kirsten. Her eyes veiled, and dropped from his in dismay. She was finally recalling the furrows ploughed on her father’s ground at the foot of the hill, and she was dismayed that she had contrived to forget what she had seen.
‘This isn’t your first visit here, though, is it?’ she said tautly. ‘You and your motorcycle have already made a mess of the field below the forest!’
Incredulous at the sudden accusation, Shahir surveyed her with narrowed eyes that had the subtle gleam of rapier blades. ‘Now you are talking nonsense. I respect the field boundaries. I am not a teenage vandal.’
Kirsten coloured, but persisted. ‘Well, it seems to me that it’s too much of a coincidence to be anyone else but you who was responsible. Someone has been in that field within the last few days, and there’s been a lot of damage done.’
‘It was not I. You should not make such an allegation without evidence to support it,’ Shahir condemned, with a gravity that was very much at odds with the apparent casualness of his motorbike leathers. ‘I find it offensive.’
His measured intonation made her pale. His dark gaze was uncompromisingly direct, and he spoke with a clear authority that unnerved her. Involuntarily, for she had lowered her scrutiny, she stole a glance at him. Her eyes glittered like jade in the pale oval of her face. ‘I find it offensive that you haven’t even said sorry for giving me the fright of my life.’
The silence lay like a charge of dynamite already lit.
An almost imperceptible touch of colour highlighted his superb cheekbones; Shahir had always cherished the belief that he was innately courteous. ‘Naturally I offer you my apologies for scaring you.’
‘Well, if it wasn’t you who cut up my father’s field,’ Kirsten said doubtfully, ‘I’m sorry I suggested it was.’
Shahir bent down with fluid grace and swept up the magazine lying abandoned on the ground and extended it to her. ‘You were reading?’
‘Yes…thanks.’ Suddenly aware of his keen regard, Kirsten blushed to the roots of her hair and dragged her attention from him, wondering in a panic of embarrassment if he was staring at her only because she had been staring at him.
A sweet, savage hunger gripped Shahir as he studied her downbent head and luscious pink mouth. He let his attention roam to the pouting fullness of her small full breasts. His body hardened with an ardent masculine urgency that shook him.
Kirsten was conscious of the tense atmosphere, and of the inexplicable sense of excitement trying to pull at her senses. She did not understand its source, for it filled her with too much confusion. While one part of her wanted to run away, the rest of her wanted to prolong the meeting. She fumbled frantically for something to say. ‘Is your motorbike going to be all right?’
‘I believe so.’ He had mastered his hunger with fierce self-discipline, and Shahir’s drawl was as cool and discouraging as a shower of rain. He was annoyed by his own brief loss of control. Admittedly, she was very beautiful, but he was used to gorgeous women. Perhaps, he reasoned, there was something especially appealing about such natural loveliness and unmistakable modesty when he was usually accustomed to meeting with boldness.
‘Have you far to go?’ Kirsten muttered, scarcely crediting her own daring. But at that moment all she was aware of was that he was about to walk away and she didn’t want him to.
‘Only to the castle.’ Shahir strode over to the fallen machine and hauled it up out of the flattened grass with strong hands. He could have told her who he was, but he saw no point in embarrassing her when it was unlikely that they would ever meet again. Someone else would soon tell her of the mistake she had made.
He was staying at Strathcraig Castle as a guest? Why hadn’t that occurred to her before? It was, after all, the most obvious explanation for the presence of a well-spoken stranger in the glen. Dismay replaced the daze that she had been wrapped in and her skin chilled. She had offended him, hadn’t she? Would he complain about her? Say she had been rude to him? Accusing him of vandalism had certainly not been the way to demonstrate a hospitable welcome to a visitor. What on earth had come over her? She shouldn’t have said a single critical word to him. After all, if she was sacked she would never find another job locally, and her father would be outraged.
Shahir replaced his helmet and fired the engine of the powerful motorbike, looking back at her only for an instant before he took off back down the track again. With him travelled the image of glorious green eyes pinned to him with anxious intensity. He wondered what sort of a life she had, with the fanatical father his estate manager had mentioned. She looked scared and unhappy.
A split second later, without any warning whatsoever of the trick his cool and rational brain was about to play on him, Shahir was startled to find himself wondering how Kirsten Ross might adapt to being a mistress. His mistress. The instant the idea occurred to him he was exasperated by the vagaries of his own mind; that type of arrangement was certainly not his style. He was a generous lover, who offered commitment for the duration of an affair. But the affairs began and ended without touching his heart or even his temper. Sex was a pleasure to be savoured, but his libido did not control him and he sought nothing more lasting from the women who entertained him in bed.
