Shackled to the Sheikh

Then again, what had she expected? Last night might as well have been a lifetime ago. Rashid had been a different man—attentive, creative and infinitely attuned to her pleasure—and she’d been someone she didn’t even recognise. Impulsive, reckless and brazen in bed. She’d behaved like a wanton.

She dragged in a breath, trying to find calm in a world that was teetering off balance. She’d shocked herself last night at just how shameless she’d been, as if the frustrations of Matt’s betrayal and the despair of letting Sally and Steve down had spilled over on an effervescent tidal wave of passion that had washed away her moral values. Last night there’d been no off switch, no holding back. Talk about out of character for a girl who normally wouldn’t kiss a guy until at least the second date.

Memories of that night should have been her secret thrill, something to smile privately about and wonder at her bravado and total abandonment. Not something to be constantly reminded of every minute of the day by being confronted with the star performer of her night of the pleasures of the flesh. The last thing she’d wanted was to learn that the man at the centre of her night of nights was Flight Nanny’s and her very next client.

No, she wouldn’t want her parents around to witness this. One day she’d marry for real. One day she’d find a man she loved and who loved her more than anything, and they’d be married under a brilliant blue sky and her parents could look down upon her and smile.

One day.

She slipped Atiyah’s legs back into her sleep suit and did up the snaps. Think of the money, she told herself. Think of Sally and Steve and the quarter of a million dollars, merely for marrying Rashid for however long it took. Even if nothing else, now she’d have the money to complete this deal, without having to beg from the banks. Now there’d be nothing stopping Sally and Steve heading for Germany and the radical new treatment that might save him. Just as soon as she managed to give Rashid the bank account details for the transfer of the promised funds.

No wonder she felt a little hollowness in her gut.

The pilot came back then, smiling as he advised them personally they would be beginning their descent soon, and to assure them all would be well.

All would be well? She held Atiyah in her arms and softly sang her a favourite nursery rhyme, wanting to cuddle the baby for as long as she could before she’d have to be strapped into her capsule on the seat for landing.

After a night with Rashid and a mad on-paper marriage, she wasn’t sure things would ever be well again.

* * *

It was done.

Kareem had completed the paperwork on both the marriage and then the adoption in short order.

His faux wife was installed and Atiyah was adopted and for now he could take a deep breath. That was one crisis averted.

His friends would laugh. Rashid married, just as they had warned him. Well, he would let them laugh. It wasn’t as though it was a real marriage. It wasn’t as though he was in love as Bahir and Kadar had attested to be, and it wasn’t that he had to marry and impregnate a wife before he could be crowned Emir, as Zoltan had been required to do by the ancient texts of Al-Jirad when he had married the Princess Aisha.

He grunted. Though if that had been a requirement, he’d already well and truly ticked that box. Memories of last night’s passion rolled through him like replays of a movie, except this was a movie in which he’d had a starring role. He’d only needed to touch her hand to be reminded of the satin smoothness of her skin, and to remember the sleek feminine beauty of the curve of her hip, the dip to the gentle round of her belly and all the places above and below that his fingers, and then his lips, had traversed.

He hadn’t held her hand a second longer than he’d needed to, and yet the mere touch of her had fired his memories and kindled a need that burned like coals inside him.

There was too much going on in his life without complicating it with a woman that had blown his world apart.

He looked over his shoulder, through the gap in the seats, and saw her holding the child as if she were her own, the baby all dark-eyed innocence staring up at her as she spoke words he could not make out. What was with that? Atiyah was nothing to do with her.

So why did she seem to care so much?

Atiyah was supposed to be his sister, after all, even if the sister he’d never asked for or wanted.

And the wrongness of it all got to him and something inside him snapped.

He got out of his seat, determined to tell her so, but as he drew closer he realised she wasn’t talking to the child, she was singing to it, some kind of lullaby, and she was looking down at the baby so intently, she didn’t hear his approach.