Shackled to the Sheikh

‘Forgive me for interrupting,’ Kareem said, appearing at the doorway to the pavilion with a gracious bow, ‘but His Excellency would like to see you privately, Sheikha Victoria.’

Aisha’s ears pricked up first. ‘Sheikha?’

‘I thought that’s what he said,’ Marina said.

Amber was staring at her strangely. ‘But wouldn’t that mean...?’

Tora shook her head, excusing herself as she swept past them, her face ablaze with heat. ‘It’s not what you think...’

* * *

‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Rashid a few minutes later, rubbing his chin as he paced the Persian rug in his big study, ‘now that my friends are here with their wives and families, we need to be careful about them getting the wrong idea about us.’

He paced the other way. ‘I know my friends and they’ll blow it out of all proportion so I’ve decided it’s best if I ask Kareem to be careful how he addresses you and I tell them that you’re simply filling in for the role of my consort for the coronation. I think it’s better that they don’t know about the marriage at all.’

He suddenly stopped pacing and looked up at her, his eyes panicked. ‘What do you think?’

Tora swallowed as she stood there, her fingers tangling as she selected her words carefully. ‘I think it might actually be a bit late for that.’

CHAPTER TWELVE

‘WHAT?’ ZOLTAN’S HEAD swivelled from Aisha to Rashid when the women joined them before lunch. ‘You’re already married? You sly dog! And you made out like it was the furthest thing from your mind.’

‘But it is!’

‘So how does that work when you’re already married?’

‘Because it’s not a real marriage!’

‘I want to know how come you didn’t invite your best friends?’ demanded Bahir.

‘Yeah,’ Kadar said. ‘We invited you to our weddings.’

‘Right, you really want to know why I didn’t invite you to my fake marriage? Maybe it’s because Kareem married us in the plane on the way over here. Sorry, but when you’re flying at forty thousand feet it makes it a bit awkward to get the wedding invitations out.’

‘But when we were talking before, you acted as if you weren’t married at all,’ said Zoltan. ‘Like anything like that happening was years away.’

‘Did any of you guys hear me? It’s not a real marriage!’ He gave a long sigh. He’d known this would happen. He’d damn well known it. ‘Look, I had to marry someone, in order to adopt Atiyah.’

‘Why did you have to adopt Atiyah?’ asked Marina. ‘She’s your sister, isn’t she?’

‘Yes, but our father was supposed to have died in a helicopter crash thirty years ago and the people believe that and— Oh, what the hell does it matter why? Kareem said she had to be adopted and in order to do that, I had to be married. End of story.’

‘Hardly!’ snorted Bahir. ‘We’re just getting to the good stuff. So this woman volunteered to marry you to get you out of a tight spot, did she?’

‘Tora,’ said Aisha. ‘Her name is Tora. I like her.’

‘Me, too,’ said her sister. ‘And she’s gorgeous.’

‘She’s Australian,’ chimed in Amber with a grin. ‘What’s not to love?’

‘Agreed,’ said Kadar, giving his wife a squeeze as he kissed her cheek. ‘This Tora must be some kind of a masochist to volunteer to marry you. What was in it for her?’

‘What do you mean, what was in it for her?’

‘What, she did it out of the goodness of her heart?’

‘I bet it wasn’t for his bedside manner.’

‘Maybe it was,’ suggested Kadar.

‘Okay, okay,’ said Rashid, who’d had enough, holding up one hand to silence his friends. ‘So there may have been a financial inducement involved. We made a deal. So what?’

‘Alas, poor Rashid,’ Zoltan said with his hand over his heart. ‘Unloved and unwanted, left on the shelf, the only one of the desert brothers who actually had to resort to paying a woman to get her to marry him.’

‘Give me a break,’ growled Rashid. ‘Don’t you guys make out you wrote the guidebook on romance—we all know that’s a lie.’

‘But none of us had to break out the chequebook.’