Kitabı oku: «Married For The Sheikh's Duty»

CHAPTER ONE

“WHAT ARE YOUR requirements in a bride, Sheikh Al-Ghamdi?”

Sheikh Zayn Al-Ghamdi stared unseeing at the flat-screen monitor that was attached to the wall in his office. Words came to his lips and fell away.

He had known for a while now that this final step of settling down and marrying was coming at him. It had been drilled into him since childhood that he would one day marry a woman who would serve him well as a wife and his country as sheikha.

Of course she would be mostly an image that would be carefully cultivated and supervised to please the people of his country. He had also been taught, by example of his own parents, that her role even in his life would be very minor. Having his children and continuing the legacy of the Al-Ghamdi family was going to be her primary duty.

Last week when Benjamin had invited him and two other men to confab, following the exposé in Celebrity Spy!, he had been the one to suggest that all his problems would be solved if he married and started producing heirs.

All three men, his rivals for years, turned reluctant allies—Benjamin Carter, Dante Mancini and Xander Trakas—had looked at him as if he’d grown two horns and a tail. Until they had seen the sense in his idea after their initial grumbling and posturing.

But faced with the question asked by Ms. Young, the billionaire matchmaker recommended by Xander, he found himself bewildered.

In the little slice of his life that he was actually the master of, Zayn resented being brought to heel like a dog by some bottom-feeding, trashy tabloid.

But thanks to the dirty exposé on the four of them, his image was utterly besmirched. His parents, even though retired from public life, still had lectured him over his image, the effect of every small minutia of his life over the political climate of Khaleej. Even worse, his sister Mirah’s fiancé’s family was talking about canceling the match.

Conservative to the core, they didn’t believe he had a right to any kind of life, much less the kind of reckless debauchery the article hinted at. But that was not acceptable.

Ten years younger than he was, his sister had been a ray of sunshine in an otherwise solitary life. From their parents’ aloof, almost cold, upbringing, to the rigors of preparing for a political life, if not for Mirah, Zayn would have known no true joy. No companionship at all.

“Sheikh Al-Ghamdi?”

“My bride needs to be attractive and young. Attractive enough for me to be able to look at her for the next five decades. And healthy enough to have children. Someone not approaching or close to thirty.”

Ms. Young made scrupulous notes but Zayn saw the vertical frown between her brows. “Is there a problem, Ms. Young?”

Her gaze couldn’t quite hide her judgment. “Women are known to have children even at the advanced age of thirty, Your Highness.”

“Yes, but women reaching thirty have stubbornly decided ideas, Ms. Young. They will not be malleable. I might not meet their expectations of an ideal man, either.”

The woman didn’t quite snort but Zayn had a feeling she wanted to. “A woman ambitious about her career will not do. She’ll have to understand that her role in life is to complement me.”

“So beautiful but not really smart.”

“Yes. She will have to come to me as a virgin.”

Outrage flared in Ms. Young’s expressive eyes. “That’s barbaric.”

“That’s the only way I can ensure there’s no future scandal or shame attached to her name.”

“Virginity need not be required. We check their backgrounds very thoroughly before we make matches based on your requirements.”

“Ex-boyfriends and old lovers have a way of showing up in one’s life to make the most trouble. I would like to avoid any future scandals concerning my Sheikha and her past. This ensures it.”

“Beautiful, young, malleable, not particularly smart and a virgin. I don’t know whether to say this is the easiest or the hardest match I’ve ever made, Your Highness.”

“Are you saying you cannot find me a woman to match those requirements, Ms. Young?”

“Of course I can, Your Highness. But I just wondered if love was going to be a part of the equation.”

“You run a matchmaking business for billionaires, Ms. Young. Has love ever been part of it?”

“I was curious about your opinion.”

“Some foolish, fantastic notion will not make my marriage a success. I require a wife who will yield to my superior judgment in all areas of our life and be an asset to my political life.”

“A kind of accessory?”

“The perfect accessory, if you will,” he finished, amused at the flicker of anger in Ms. Young’s eyes.

He had known for a long time that was all a wife could be for a man like him.

Two weeks later

In all her carefully mapped-out adult life, Amalia Christensen had never imagined that one bright, hot-as-Hades day she would be waiting in the administrative offices of the ruling sheikh, Zayn Al-Ghamdi. In the spectacularly grand palace of her father’s homeland, Khaleej, she stared at the breathtaking domes and ornately lavish halls decorated in pure gold.

In the time that she’d lived with her mother in Scandinavia, a lot of things had changed in Khaleej, and for the better.

With infrastructure improved to rival any western nation, and its meteoric entry into the global finance world, Khaleej was now a flawless blend of artistry, tradition and technology.

If not for the constant knot of worry in her gut about her twin, Aslam, she’d have been clicking pics and Instagramming left, right and center. The rust-colored palace with its turrets and domes, sitting in the center of hundreds of acres of landscaped gardens and a golden sandy beach corralling it on one side was a visual feast.

But in all the years that she’d yearned to visit Khaleej, she hadn’t imagined doing it this desperate way. The beauty of Khaleej and her reconnection with her roots was empty, meaningless, without Aslam by her side.

If only she’d visited last year; if only she’d understood how restless and angry Aslam was...

It had taken her two months after arriving in Sintar, the capital city of Khaleej, to get this meeting with a palace official. After one short visit with Aslam, who had poured out the entire story to her in the jail; several tense, monosyllabic conversations with her father over the phone—Amalia had no interest in addressing the decade-old silence that still stood between them—followed by endless reaching out to friends of Aslam and learning about the instigator of the whole escapade; and finally, asking her boss Massimiliano to use his connections and arrange this meeting for her.

Massi had laughed and asked if it would bring back the best executive assistant he’d ever had to work for him. Glad that he hadn’t written her off during her long-term leave, she’d promised to return soon. Much as she missed her career and cringed at the dent in her savings, she couldn’t leave until Aslam was free.

The sound of the glistening blue waters of the gulf gently breaking onto the pristinely white sandy beach, visible to the right of her, added a background score to the pregnant silence of the corridor.

She’d been told the palace was usually a beehive of activity. Instead a sort of hush reigned over the scarcely occupied hall.

Neither did she forget the diatribe that had flown out of the official’s mouth that Amalia’s appointment had been scheduled on that particular day.

There was hardly any staff around, either.

What was going on?

She’d never been a royalist and yet the recent exposé on the four bachelors, one of whom was Sheikh Zayn, had drawn her interest. Apparently, the sheikh led a very colorful and inventive private life away from the highly conservative media of the country and the grueling lifestyle of his powerful position.

Amalia had seen the numerous articles that had mushroomed following the exposé, questioning Sheikh Zayn’s dedication toward the governing of Khaleej, the conservative ideals of most of the cabinet and his very image in the eyes of his people.

She glanced at her watch one more time and stood up from the comfortable sofa. Her thighs groaned from sitting for far too long.

Gold piping in the mosaic tiles winked at her. A quick glance behind her showed no hovering security guard, and she slipped through a grand archway into a long corridor that looked like it belonged in a fantasy novel.

A blast of heat hit her and she realized that the corridor opened into a courtyard on the left. Pristine white marble gleamed for a mile or more in front of her. In a moment of uncharacteristic impulsiveness, Amalia slipped her feet out of her pumps.

With the cold marble kissing the overheated soles of her feet and a soft breeze coming in from the bay touching her cheeks, the sheer beauty of her surroundings calmed something inside her.

In the three and a half hours since the harried-looking official had asked her to wait, if you didn’t count the hour she’d spent standing at the reception, waiting for the said official to appear in the first place, Amalia had begun to see a pattern emerge. Guests were being shown into this wing of the palace with the utmost secrecy and security for there would be a sudden rise in the activity around the reception area every half hour or so.

And with each group, there had been almost always one designer-clad, elegantly coiffed woman in the center, quite like a queen bee in the center of her hive.

Guests of the sheikh?

Passing a sun-dappled courtyard dotted with cool fountains and swaying palm trees on her left, she wondered why the women were being brought to the palace.

They could be applying to join the sheikh’s harem, the man having decided that he needed recreational variety closer to home now that his extracurricular activities had been exposed to the world’s media.

She snorted. Not even the playboy sheikh could justify a harem in this day and age. Could he?

What if he was building a strip club sort of thing here in the capital city of Sintar for his personal use and they were women from all over the world at the top of their career in pole dancing? A modern-day harem for one man—wasn’t that pretty much what a strip club was?

Not much of a leap, given that Celebrity Spy! had said the sheikh’s sexual appetites were voracious...

Or they could be princesses and queens and top-tier dignitaries from all over the world attending a banquet given by the royal family—hadn’t she read somewhere that his sister was to be married soon?—which meant the man who’d promised to see Amalia was probably busy with the details of the banquet and not coming for hours.

The second prospect sobered her spirits. But she couldn’t leave until she spoke to him about Aslam and the bogus drug charges built up against him while the real perpetrator was hiding in the lap of luxury.

The moment the palace official had agreed to see her, Amalia knew she’d been on the right path. Someone high up had to know they weren’t Aslam’s drugs.

She glanced behind her to the archway and realized she’d walked quite a way.

A heated conversation in the courtyard to her left lifted the hair on her neck. Alarmed, she opened the first door on her right and slipped inside.

Walking in from the bright light of the day momentarily blinded her vision. Faltering on her feet, she reached out with her hands and found a wall.

It took her a few seconds of blinking and focusing before she could see around the room. Her stomach quivered.

The room wasn’t completely dark as she’d thought first. A large skylight at the far side of the vast room cast a golden glow, showing a man sitting on a throne-like chair, complete with dark gold upholstery and clawlike feet. As if he was the king of everything he surveyed.

Shivers spewed over her spine, as if there was a predator in the room.

Light brown eyes first flicked to the pumps in her hand and then to her bare feet. “You are carrying your shoes instead of wearing them. Why?”

With a jerk, Amalia dropped the pumps and with them, plop went her heart.

Unlike the staff that had catered to her, the man spoke English with an aristocratic, upper-class accent. A deep baritone made the words fall over her like drops of ice-cold water over heated skin.

Without looking at him directly, she could feel the man’s intense gaze on her mouth. Her lips quivered. “I... I walked out into the courtyard and I was too hot.”

“I see that you are too hot.” The dry statement jerked her gaze up. Intelligent and imperious, his brown eyes were wide-spaced and hooded under the dark slashes of his eyebrows. And brimming with amusement. “Why did you walk into the courtyard?”

That made her tongue come unstuck from the roof of her mouth. “I got tired of waiting. If I had to sit on my behind any longer, I’m sure it would have been flattened under me, that’s how long—”

“I hope our furniture didn’t cause your...posterior any lasting harm.”

Her hand went to the particular section of her anatomy. “It’s hard enough to find clothes that fit my height within a budget, so yeah, a flattened backside is not good. And nope, it’s perfectly fine,” she quipped. And only after she spoke the words did she realize this whole line of conversation was ridiculous.

Embarrassment sent heat flooding up her neck, blocked her throat. And she wished she had a genie in hand, like in her father’s elaborate stories, to make herself disappear. Or at least, start over this whole conversation.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt...”

“Apology not required,” he said, and Amalia bit down on the retort that she hadn’t been offering one. “The process is taking longer than it should.” A hint of irritation peeked through that sentence. From anyone else, it could have been an apology. But Amalia was pretty sure he didn’t intend it to be one.

She pushed her feet into the pumps. One hand went to her stomach as if to shoo away the butterflies rioting in there, and one went to her hair. She expelled a sigh of relief when she realized her tight ponytail had stayed put. Once she made sure all of her person was intact—she needed that assurance—she raised her gaze.

Between one rushing heartbeat and the next, she became aware that the man’s utter dominance, over everything in the room, even over the very air she was struggling to breathe, was bred into his bones. His power clung to his skin, not his clothes or to this room or the throne.

It was centuries of legacy, she realized, a sheen of sweat covering her forehead now. He looked like a king because he was a bloody king. Or to use the right terminology, His Royal Highness, Sheikh Zayn Al-Ghamdi of Khaleej. Brilliant statesman, inventive playboy that Celebrity Spy! claimed liked fast cars, fast technology and fast women.

Her first instinct was to mumble an apology and run from the room. The element of surprise was on her side and if she just went back through the unending corridor, back to the waiting area, she could lose herself and slither out of the palace.

Poised on the balls of her feet, Amalia forced herself to calm down and reconsider.

This was the sheikh, the man with all the power, the man who was responsible—fine, indirectly—for Aslam being wrongfully imprisoned. What were the chances that she would ever get an audience with him again?

No way could she tuck her tail between her legs and run away just because the man had to be the most dominating presence she’d ever felt.

Her breath seesawed through her chest as he stood up from the recliner, prowled the width of the room and then stood, leaning against an immense white oak desk. A sitting area to the right had a chaise longue.

Although lounging seemed like too still an activity for him.

The energy of the man, his sheer presence, filled the room and pressed at her from all sides, as if to demand acknowledgement and acquiescence.

A shining silver tea set on the side table made her aware of her parched throat.

As if she’d voiced her request out loud, he moved to the silver service, poured a drink—mint and lemon sherbet—into a tall silver tumbler and walked over to her.

That sense of being overwhelmingly pressed on a sensory level amplified. He had a sandalwood scent. And he gave off heat like there was a furnace inside him. Or was that she who was feeling the heat when really he was giving off none?

Sensations she didn’t like and couldn’t control continued to pour through her and Amalia just stood there, shuddering inwardly in the wake of them.

Where was the super-stalwart Amalia that Massi depended on? Where was the woman who’d been dubbed “the calm in the storm” by colleagues and coworkers?

“Drink. Strangers to the country forget that even when they do not sweat, the heat is still unrelenting.”

His command was supercilious, arrogant, exaggeratedly patient. Better if he thought her brain had short-circuited because of the heat than because of the sheer masculinity of the man.

“I’m not a stranger.”

His gaze swept over her. “You do not look like a woman from my country.”

She took the tumbler and drank the sherbet without pause. The liquid was a cool, refreshing breeze against her throat. Even her head felt better. Lowering the glass from her mouth, Amalia wondered if the man’s theory had credit.

Really, she’d been meandering for almost twenty minutes. Was it a stretch that she had lost her composure because of the heat? Armed with that defense, she extended the glass back to him. “Thanks, I needed that.”

He didn’t move. He didn’t take the glass she offered. He didn’t speak, either.

Slowly, Amalia raised her gaze and looked at him. Really looked at what had to be the most aggressively masculine specimen on the planet.

And promptly realized all her theories about heat and dehydration messing with her composure were just those: theories with a hefty dose of self-delusion.

Tall windows above and behind her cast just the right amount of golden light onto his face as if they, too, had been beat into submission by the will of this man.

A single brow rose imperiously, his gaze very much on her face. A gesture filled with a dark sarcasm. Was it because she had given the glass back to him, as if he was a servant? Was his sense of consequence so big that he was insulted by her innocent gesture?

He had short, thick, curving eyelashes that shaded his expression—a tactic she was sure he used to intimidate people. Light turned the brown of his eyes into a hundred golden hues, the eyes of a predatory cat.

Square jaw, rough with bristles, sat below high cheekbones and a straight nose that lent his features a hardness she didn’t like. His mouth was wide and thin-lipped. A mouth given to passion; the strange thought sent a shiver down her spine.

Amalia was tall, only two inches short of six feet. He topped over her easily by four or five inches. His neck was the same glistening tone as his face—a dark golden, as if he had been cast from one of those ancient metals that Khaleejians had used several centuries ago. Her father had had a small knife whose handle gleamed like his skin tone.

He propped a finger under her chin and lifted it up. All of her being seemed to concentrate on that small patch of skin. “Your appraisal is very thorough after being so flustered.”

Heat poured through Amalia’s cheeks. “I wasn’t flustered.”

“No?” The brow-rise again. “A lot of women lose their composure when they see me.”

“Second of all,” she continued, “you look like a man who needs to be met square in the eye, Your Highness.”

Amusement filtered through the implacability in his eyes. “That is a bold statement to make. Tell me your name.”

“Ms. Christensen.”

“Did your parents not give you a first name?”

She didn’t want to tell him her name, which was the weirdest thing Amalia had ever felt.

He waited and the silence grew. “Amalia Christensen. I was dehydrated. Now I’ve found my bearings again.”

Taking the coward’s way, Amalia stepped back from the sheer presence of the man and made a meandering path through the room.

A haunting memory of listening to one of her father’s stories of ancient history of Khaleej gripped her. A traditionally designed curved dagger, almost the size of her lower arm, hung against a beige-colored rug on the wall, its metallic hilt gleaming in the afternoon light. She ran reverent fingers over the handle.

Yet, she couldn’t leave the infuriating presence of the man behind. It was like trying to ignore a lion that was sitting two feet away from you and eyeing you for his next meal. Neither could she curb the rising panic that the longer she took to explain herself, the harder it was going to be to convince him to help Aslam.

The scent and heat of him rubbed up against her senses.

“This is a fifteenth-century khanjar, isn’t it?” she said, just to puncture the building tension around them. “Men used to wear them on their belts. It was a sign of status, a sign of prowess.”

“Among other things, yes,” he said drily, and a fresh wave of warmth washed over her.

“A sign of their macho-ness, in modern words,” she added, tongue-in-cheek.

It seemed they didn’t even have to look at each other for that almost tangible quality to build up around them. Was it just awareness of each other? Attraction? Or was it her fear of the consequences of her pretense that was making her heart ratchet in her chest so violently?

“Decorative pieces now.”

His surprised gaze rested on her face but Amalia looked straight ahead. She couldn’t rid herself of the lingering sensation in her gut.

“You’ve studied the history of Khaleej in preparation for this interview?” he said, a thread of something in his tone. “I have to admit to both surprise and admiration for that. Having a knowledge of Khaleej and its customs is a huge point in your favor.”

Interview? For a position with him?

For the first time in two months, luck was on her side. If it was a job among the palace staff, a position closer to the sheikh himself, much better. Maybe she wouldn’t have to blurt out the truth this minute and risk getting on the wrong side of the man.

Would waiting only make it worse for Aslam? Which option was better?

“Yet, I didn’t receive a file on you from Ms. Young.”

Face coloring, Amalia pulled her phone out of her bag. “I can email you my résumé in a minute.”

“No, that is far too...strange, even for me.”

Now, what did he mean by that?

“Tell me about yourself. I’m curious why Ms. Young picked you to be a candidate when it’s clear you don’t have a royal connection or any other advantages.”

Royal connection? How high up was this job that there were candidates with royal connections applying?

“I didn’t actually prep for the interview,” she said, deciding to dole out truth little by little and see how he reacted. She needed to get a sense of what kind of man he was—if he was fair-minded or just like his cousin.

“I was born here in Khaleej and lived here until I was thirteen. My...father is a historian at the Sintar University and an expert on antique objects. He...” The sudden lump in her throat made it hard. “My twin, Aslam, and I...it used to be our favorite pastime to sit in his study and listen to his long, rambling stories about Khaleej. He is, or used to be, a consummate storyteller.” So good that she’d utterly believed him when he had said he’d send for her very soon. That had been more than a decade ago.

“Used to be?”

“I haven’t seen him in a while.”

“You seek to make a home in Sintar again, to reconnect with him?”

“No. And I have no intention to.” He frowned and she added, “No intention to reconnect with him, I mean. I have other reasons for being here.”

“But you do not have a Khaleejian name.”

She shrugged. “My mother and he divorced and they split us up. She took her name back and asked me if I wanted to, as well. I said yes.”

“You should have your father’s name. You should have something that speaks to that part of your heritage.”

“I don’t really see why when he and I have had nothing to do with each other,” Amalia retorted, angry with him, angry with herself for reacting at all. She was supposed to learn about his temperament, not pour out her own nonexistent relationship with her father.