The Sheikh's Bartered Bride

“There is a bathroom through here.” He indicated a door in the wall of bedroom. “However, you would be more comfortable changing in here, I think. I will make use of it to undress.”

He’d seen her practically naked, but her nerves didn’t recognize that salient fact and she smiled her gratitude to him.

CHAPTER SIX

Hakim came out of the tiny bathroom, having given his bride time to prepare for him.

Catherine sat in the middle of the bed surrounded by several Turkish pillows. Her glorious hair was unbound for the first time of their acquaintance and its dark honey strands cascaded over her shoulders.

She had her arms locked around her drawn up knees and the expression on her face was rueful. “I didn’t know if I should be standing or lying down. So, I compromised and sat.”

“Are you embarrassed for me to see your body?”

She shook her head causing her hair to ripple and he felt an instant reaction coursing through his body.

“Yet you are curled up like a small kitten.”

“Small?” she laughed. “Perhaps you haven’t noticed, but I’m a good deal taller than most women.”

“Surely not. You are perhaps a shade above average in height, but to me, you are quite small.” He wished he understood this tendency she had to refer to herself as if she were a giant.

“Yes, well, you are pretty tall aren’t you?” The fact seemed to please her.

He shrugged. “Truthfully, among my people I am considered so.” He had not thought to spend any portion of his wedding night discussing their relative heights, but if it relaxed her, he was willing to be tolerant.

“Kids used to tease me when I was little. They called me Amazon Girl, beanpole and other horrible names. ”

He sat down on the bed and laid one hand over her clasped ones. “Talk to me.”

“I don’t want to ruin tonight with bad memories.”

He wanted to banish the remembered torment in her eyes. “Share these memories and I will help you dispel them.”

“You’re so confident.”

So she had said before, or rather that he was arrogant. He shrugged. “I am a man.”

She shook her head.

“I assure you this is true.”

She laughed softly. “I’m not doubting you.”

Unable to resist, he reached out and let a swath of her hair slip through his fingers. “Tell me.” He waited in silence while she made up her mind to do so.

“When I was a little girl, I grew five inches in one summer. I didn’t stop growing until I was taller than all the other children at school. I was thirteen then and some of the boys were beginning to catch up, but I remained taller than most of them for at least another year.”

“It happens to may girls, it’s not so bad.”

“It was. I suppose it’s hard for you to understand but I went to co-ed school. The boys teased me about being a giant and the girls pitied me. I was shy and didn’t make friends easily anyway, my sudden height just made everything worse.”

“But as you say, the boys grew taller and the girls—many of them—would have caught up.”

She shut her eyes. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

There was something else. Something she did not want to share, but he had a need to know everything about this woman he had married. A memory teased his conscious. “Your father said something about laser treatments. What were they for?”

She looked confused and not at all happy. “When did he mention them?”

Remembering the conversation, Hakim considered how best to answer without revealing his secret and could see no way of doing so and speak only the truth. There was proverb among his people, lying in its proper place is equal to worship. It applied now. “We were discussing the upcoming wedding.”

The lie was one of omission only.

“Oh.” A look of profound sadness crossed her features. “When I was thirteen, I started to get acne.”

“This is not unusual for an adolescent.”

“No, but mine was horrible. The doctors tried antibiotics, acne skin treatments… the works. Nothing helped. My face was discolored with purple scars from acne and fresh breakouts for five long years. The fresh breakouts finally cleared up when I was eighteen and I started the laser treatments on the scarring when I was nineteen.”

He rubbed his thumbs along the perfect smoothness of her cheeks. “You are beautiful.”

She grimaced. “Hardly that, but I’m no longer a social embarrassment to my parents and an object of pity to my peers.”

Tension snaked through him at her words. “Surely your parents were not concerned about your looks to that extent.”