Bride Behind The Desert Veil (The Marchetti Dynasty 3)

PROLOGUE

‘YOUR WIFE MAY now reveal her face.’

Sheikh Sharif Bin Noor Al Nazar waited with bated breath as his new wife’s attendants came forward to unhook the elaborate face mask that had covered her face for the duration of the wedding ceremony.

Not even her eyes had been visible.

Sharif couldn’t care less what she looked like—he had no intention of consummating this marriage; it was to be in name only for as short amount of time as possible—but if she was at least passably attractive that would certainly make things easier for him.

The delicate chains and gold medallions of the face covering clinked as it was removed and her face was revealed.

The first thing Sharif noted somewhat dispassionately was that he didn’t have to worry about her being passably attractive—because she was stunningly beautiful.

The second thing was more of a visceral reaction. Shock, followed quickly by anger. Because his new wife, far from being the stranger he’d expected, was not in fact a stranger.

Not at all. In fact he knew her intimately.

One word resounded in Sharif’s head. He wasn’t even sure if he uttered it out loud. ‘You!’

CHAPTER ONE

Two weeks ago

‘YOU’RE SAYING YOU don’t even know what your bride-to-be looks like?’

The horrified expression on Nikos Marchetti’s face was almost comical. Sharif Marchetti’s younger half-brother was on a video call from his home in Ireland, where Sharif could see his wife, Maggie, pregnant again, pottering in the background with their eight-month-old baby son, Daniel, on one arm. For some strange reason Sharif found the domestic scene presented before him...distracting.

Because it was catching at something inside him. A place it shouldn’t be catching. Because he found such domesticity utterly alien and unwelcome.

He focused on his brother. ‘No, I don’t know what she looks like. I know nothing about her and I’m not interested. I’m marrying her because of a diplomatic agreement between Al-Murja and Taraq that has to be honoured. And,’ he tacked on with studied nonchalance, ‘because settling down appears to be good for business.’

That was an understatement. Since both his younger half-brothers had recently taken wives—Maks, their youngest brother, had married his wife in a private civil ceremony in London just before Christmas—the Marchetti Group’s stock value had gone through the roof.

But Sharif knew it could go even higher, reaching a stability and value that would finally bring him close to achieving all he’d set out to achieve when his father had died. When the old man had finally relinquished his control over the company that had been built off the backs of the fortunes of others. Namely, each one of his three wives—Sharif’s mother, and the mothers of Nikos and Maks.

Maggie’s face, and Daniel’s cherubic one, appeared over Nikos’s shoulder. ‘Al-Murja and Taraq? An arranged marriage? It all sounds so exotic!’

Sharif wrangled his focus back to the present moment. Nikos was reaching for his son, tucking him competently against his chest while commenting drily to his wife, who had come to perch on his knee, ‘Sharif doesn’t operate at the level of mere mortals. On this side of

the world he’s a Marchetti, and merely one of the world’s most successsful billionaires, but in his mother’s desert home of Al-Murja he’s a royal sheikh and even goes by a different name.’

Maggie’s big blue eyes opened wide. ‘Ooh, Sharif, I never knew that. What’s your other name?’

There was a knock on the door of Sharif’s office in Manhattan. He welcomed it, not liking how this familiarity was impacting upon him. Over the last few months he and his brothers might have developed more of an affinity than they’d ever had before, but they were still far from being truly functional as a family.

‘My car is here. I’ll be in touch, Nikos, as soon as I’m back.’

His brother shook his head. ‘Why are you doing this again?’

Sharif forced a smile he wasn’t feeling. ‘Because I’m envious of what you and Maks have, brother. I want to be as happy as you.’

But as Sharif terminated the connection on Nikos’s sharp burst of disbelieving laughter, his deep-seated cynicism rubbed against something raw. Something he knew would only be made less raw when he stood over the dismantled pieces of the Marchetti Group and ground his father’s legacy to dust.

His conscience pricked as he sat in the back of his chauffeur-driven limousine a few minutes later, thinking of his half-brothers and how they might react if they knew his plans. But he quashed the feeling. They had no more allegiance to their father than he had. And, as much as they might have developed an affinity, he didn’t trust anyone with his plans. Not even them.