by Leslie North
Raina frowned and shook her head. She didn’t want to think of that, not here in David’s arms. Here in the dark, that life felt like someone else’s, something from a dream. Stella wouldn’t marry a stranger, wouldn’t sell herself off to pay her family’s debts. She’d cast her fate to the winds for fun, not because it might be her last chance.
“Something the matter?” David propped himself up on one elbow.
“No.” She pushed him back and straddled him. “I just wanted seconds. You game?”
He was, and then thirds, and it wasn’t till the first light of dawn that she kissed his sleeping forehead and crept back to reality. Whatever the morning brought, she’d always have her David. She’d always have tonight.
Zenab was still fluttering about their suite in her dressing gown when Raina finished getting ready. The older woman was in high spirits, exclaiming over everything from the view to the softness of the sheets.
“You should get dressed,” said Raina. “Breakfast’ll be here any second.”
“Hungry, are we?” Zenab laughed. “I was the same at your age. I’d eat anything that wasn’t nailed down. That’s your appetite for life, though. You need energy to do it all.” She reached for the room service menu. “What do you call those little cakes with the sesame and fennel? I’ll bet they’d have those here.”
“We ordered already, remember?” She took a step toward Zenab’s room. “Weren’t you going to try that new dress, the one with the beadwork at the cuffs?”
“Oh, don’t fuss. Just, here, let me—”
A knock at the door cut her off. Raina threw up her hands. “See? That’ll be our food.”
“All right, I’m going.” Zenab retreated, a little smile playing about her lips. “Leave me a crumb or two, will you?”
“Uh-huh...” Raina hurried to answer the door. They were running late already, what with Raina taking her time in the shower and Zenab having to check out every option on the room service menu. It would be a miracle if they made their flight.
“Morning,” she said, throwing the door open. “You can just put it...David?”
David blinked. A long moment ticked by, and he cleared his throat. “Is this suite 904?”
“Yeah?” She bit back a nervous giggle, and his mouth turned down.
“Don’t tell me you’re Raina.”
“I am. Who are you?”
“I’m Chadil Halabi. I’m looking for my aunt.”
Her heart plummeted to her toes. “You’re Zenab’s nephew? Not the one I’m meant to marry, though.” She bridled, indignant. “You’re not Italian.”
“I never said I was.”
“You spoke Italian. And you said you’re from the south.”
“Al-Mifadhir’s south of here.” He straightened up, composing himself. “And so’s my older brother. The one Aunt Zenab expects you to marry.”
“Bashar, right?” Raina stepped back, head spinning. She hadn’t known there were brothers. “And you’re Chadil? Do—do people call you Chad?”
“Not if they want to keep their heads.” He smiled, a little stiffly. “Are you going to let me in?”
Her head spun. Was she? After all that had happened, everything they’d done? Could she truly sit down with this man and discuss her marriage to his brother with his aunt looking on?
Chadil strode past her, and her heart began to race.
Grab your copy of
The Sheikh’s Fake Courtship
Available 4 February 2021
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BLURB
Single-mother Hannah Fisher is fine just the way she is. She works hard, earns an honest wage and raises her son without any support. So when Prince Sheikh Chakir decides to “rescue” her from her rather un-royal life, she can’t help but challenge his every move.
Prince Sheikh Chakir can’t believe how much he enjoys spending time with Hannah as he prepares her son for royal life. If only his elders didn’t disapprove of her. For things to work out between them, he needs her to be traditional, silent and proper: not independent, opinionated or quite so sexy…
But with the crown unconvinced of their compatibility and Hannah ready to pull away from her hot chemistry with the Prince, Sheikh has a serious decision to make: break a few rules or risk a broken heart.
Grab your copy of The Sheikh’s American Lover (Sheikhs of Hamari Book One) from
www.LeslieNorthBooks.com
EXCERPT
Chapter One
“You can’t do this, Greg.”
Hannah crossed her arms over her chest and tried her best to look placid. Completely placid, like her stomach wasn’t churning and the back of her neck didn’t feel hot one second and frozen the next. Greg, her landlord, was not her favorite person. When she came home from work at six every day—the after-school program she ran for extra cash kept her an hour later than she’d like—she drove past his house as quickly as possible, hoping the light in his living room would be on. If the light was on, he was in for the night.
Knowing that pattern had served her well for the last several years, but tonight it had failed her.
“You’re three months behind on rent.” Greg’s face offered exactly zero sympathy. She hadn’t expected much, if any—he was in a terrible mood on the best of days, when the weather was beautiful and nothing particularly bad was happening in the neighborhood. “I have every right to put you out of here, and that’s what I’m going to do.”
Hannah’s feet ached, and she shifted her weight from one to the other as subtly as possible. Looking weak wasn’t going to help her. She wasn’t weak, anyway. She spent all day, every day, at Brookside Elementary school, where she was an assistant kindergarten teacher. The job had her crawling under the low tables where the kids sat and jumping up to retrieve balls they kicked onto the bleachers from the minute she arrived in the morning to the minute she left. It was not a job for a fragile soul.
But tonight she blinked away a gritty feeling in her eyes. Ryan hadn’t slept well the night before. He’d sleep for maybe an hour, and then his cries would start up again—Mama, Mama, Mama. It was the most mournful sound she’d ever heard. And while Hannah tried to maintain some small boundaries in her single mom life, she’d broken sometime near dawn and pulled the five-year-old into bed with her.
“I’ve got Ryan, Greg.” It was mid-May, almost the end of the school year, and the night air was already the sultry temperature of high summer. A bug buzzed around Greg’s head. The sneer never left his face. “I need more time. Not forever.”
“That’s what you said last month, and the month before.”
“I know that.” She hated saying it. She hated saying any of it. In her mind, she’d been convincing—some flashy explanation that would get Greg off her back. Now it deserted her.
This entire scenario was a waking nightmare, because Hannah was not the kind of person who got behind on rent. She’d made it work for all five years of Ryan’s life. Sure, sometimes she’d cut it close, but the checks from Tahir always came through in the nick of time.
Then he’d had to go and die.
A duller pain wound its way around her heart and squeezed. Tahir hadn’t been the love of Hannah’s life. He’d been the love of one part of her life—a period of about three months, six years ago. They’d run into each other on the sidewalk outside a luxury hotel in downtown Chicago, and the rest was history. Her “relationship” with Tahir had been a fireworks show—bright, loud, and over in a flash.
There’d been one last surprise out of the whole thing: Ryan.
Damn it, they’d promised. She and Tahir had promised that they’d always help each other out. For her part, she’d sent pictures of his son when he was in Hamari, the Middle Eastern kingdom where he was…a member of the royal family, somehow. Cousin to the king. Something like that. It had never seemed important. Especially not now. Being connected to the royal family hadn’t saved him from the car accident, and the fact that he’d left a son behind wouldn’t save her
from getting evicted.
“Good. You know.” Greg rolled his eyes. “Then you also know it’s time for you to get out. The end of the weekend is good for me.”
“It’s Friday. It’s Friday night. You and I both know that once you serve me, I’ve got five days to—”
“Yeah. Yeah, that’s right.” Greg slipped a white envelope from the back pocket of his jeans and thrust it into Hannah’s hand. “Here’s your notice. You’ve got five days, and then I’ll sue. I’ve got a lawyer who’ll eat you alive.” He laughed, his voice echoing around the front porch. “Be gone by the end of the weekend.”
Hannah put on the calm, accommodating face she wore to greet kindergarteners at the beginning of the day and swallowed the nervous lump in her throat. “Come on, Greg. Everybody’s had a rough couple of months. But I’m almost—”
“Almost. Doesn’t. Count,” Greg growled, and Hannah sucked in a breath that felt razor-sharp. The hair on her arms leaped upright at the black disdain in her landlord’s eyes. But Ryan was sleeping inside. How was she going to pack the little house, find a place to live, and still get him to bed on time all weekend? How was she going to find a place when she didn’t have the money for the first and last months’ rent? It was a stupid situation to be in. She knew that. At twenty-seven, she should have…savings. A rainy day fund. Something.
But she didn’t. Being an assistant teacher didn’t pay much, and Tahir’s death had been the first in a chain of catastrophes. Her car had broken down. Her auto-payment on her student loans had failed, so she’d owed two months at once not to default. Ryan had outgrown all his clothes in the span of two weeks. And, and, and. The rent hadn’t been there.
“Another couple of weeks.” She fought to keep desperation out of her voice. “I’ll bring the check to the door myself. I’ll bring cash, if that’s what you want.”
“Not a chance.” Greg rocked back on his heels and spit on the porch.
“There’s some chance.” She sounded pathetic. Completely pathetic. It made her teeth hurt like she’d been chewing through ice. “If you think about it—”
“What’s going on here?”
The voice came from just behind Greg’s shoulder.
Greg’s eyes narrowed, his mouth curved down into a sharp frown, and he turned.
And when he turned, Hannah saw the man behind him.
Man? The god behind him.
Her entire body lit up with hope, every nerve ending firing with warmth. The night air against her skin felt smooth and forgiving, like letting her fingers trail through bathwater. And the parts of her that would be submerged under that bathwater…
A shiver ran down her spine. His accent. It was so like Tahir’s.
Royalty.
He was royalty, without a doubt. He held himself like she imagined a prince would.
A king.
Hannah tried to get her thoughts in order, but her brain felt short-circuited by the cut planes of his cheeks and the golden-brown eyes that had locked on hers in the dim porch light.
“None of your business,” said Greg through clenched teeth. “This is a private discussion.”
The king—the royal—didn’t so much as glance at the landlord. “Are you Hannah Fisher?”
Every word out of his mouth seemed soaked in honey and power. Should she tell the strange man standing on her little strip of sidewalk that she was indeed Hannah Fisher? Maybe not. But would she?
“Yes. Yes, I am. I’m Hannah. Fisher,” she added.
Greg’s shoulders dropped an inch, and he buried his hands in his pockets. “End of the weekend,” he said again.
The prince—or king, or whoever he was—stepped up onto the porch next to Greg. “Then you must be Mr. Gregory Bolton.”
Greg wore the expression of a man who’d just swallowed spoiled milk. “Yeah. What’s it to you?”
It was the handsome man’s turn to pull an envelope from his pocket. “My family has been contacted to pay the rent.” The next thing to appear from his pocket was a slimmer paper—a check. “My name is Chakir Al-Shafar.” Next, a pen. What else did he have in his pockets? “This check will settle the debt.”
“No,” Hannah said, the word flying out of her lips just before Chakir’s pen met the check. “No, you don’t need to do this.”
His eyes flashed to hers. “I certainly do.”
And now she was in the position of siding with Greg, somehow. “This—this is a private negotiation. I don’t need anyone’s help.”
“This isn’t a matter of charity.”
“What is it, then?” Hannah’s heart did a slow turn in her chest. “Are you from Tahir’s family? Is that what this is?”
“Oh, yes.” A smile flickered across Chakir’s face and disappeared. “I would rather have my cousin here to do this himself.”
“Do what, exactly? Pay the rent?”
Chakir looked at her for a long moment, then signed the check in his hand.
“Wait—”
He didn’t wait. He pressed the check into Greg’s hand. “That will cover the outstanding rent and the lease for the rest of the year.”
Greg folded the check in his hand. “Fine.”
“But Miss Fisher will no longer be your tenant.”
The landlord practically cackled. “Best news I’ve heard all day.”
“What?” What was this bizarre charade? “I haven’t agreed to go anywhere. I haven’t—”
Prince Chakir—she couldn’t help thinking of him that way—turned those eyes on hers again. “You won’t be this man’s tenant because it’s unacceptable for Ryan to remain here.”
Her hackles rose as high as the moon. “Stop right there. There’s no way I’m letting you take my son.”
“No.” Chakir raised a hand in the air. “Not that. I’m here to take you and Ryan back to Hamari. This—” He gestured at the house, the street, Greg. “This is unacceptable for him.”
“Why?” Hannah’s face heated. The neighborhood wasn’t that bad. And she’d kept the house as safe as she could, with extra deadbolts, with everything she could think of… “Why would you think it’s unacceptable?”
Chakir looked her in the eye. “Because Ryan belongs with his family. His Al-Shafar family. You son is a prince of Hamari. He needs to be at home.”
Grab your copy of The Sheikh’s American Lover (Sheikhs of Hamari Book One) from
www.LeslieNorthBooks.com