by Lynn, Sophia
Table of Contents
Sheikh's Secret Child
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
ANOTHER STORY YOU MIGHT LIKE
Sharing a Sheikh’s Bed
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Sheikh’s Secret Child
By Sophia Lynn
All Rights Reserved. Copyright 2016 Sophia Lynn.
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Chapter One
As Penny walked through the halls of the small art museum in Rome, she thought about how lucky she was. Her mother, who had died when Penny was twelve, had never been more than fifty miles from the small Illinois town where she was born. Penny didn't know her father at all, but as her grandmother had said, he was a man who was here today and gone tomorrow. Penny herself could remember--altogether too clearly--being the overly-serious, frowsy girl in ridiculous prescription glasses and hand-me-down clothing, bookish and unpopular.
And yet here she was now in an art museum in Rome.
She paused in the light from a high, small window, letting the light strike her, feeling as if a young woman from the sixteenth century could have stood right where she stood and felt just as blessed.
Then there was a shout, followed by an aggravated shriek, and with a sigh, she turned back to her charges. Most of the group of ten were still fascinated by the gory painting of two dogs killing a stag that stretched across the wide gallery. But one boy held something behind his back while a girl stared at him, her hands fisted and her eyes on the verge of tears.
“Hey, what's going on with you two?” Penny asked, striding over. Immediately, both children burst into frantic Italian, but Penny held up her hand to get their attention. “In English, please!”
She was relieved when both Mario and Flora took deep breaths and considered their words more carefully.
“He took my bracelet,” Flora managed to get out first. “My mama gave it to me, and he took it!”
“I only wanted to see it,” Mario insisted. “She was wearing it but hiding it under her hand, miss! I just wanted to look!”
“Did she say you could look?” Penny asked meaningfully.
Flora started to reply, but Penny shook her head at her. Mario was a willful boy, but not a terrible one, and she trusted him.
Mario's curly head drooped towards his chest, and when he replied, it was barely more than a murmur. “No, miss.”
“When you took it from her, did she say, 'sure, Mario, you can look at that if you want?'”
He squirmed, but he answered honestly again. “No, miss.”
“All right. So what do you think about what you did?”
He squirmed again, but Penny hid a smile when he sighed and looked at the floor.
“I was wrong, and I shouldn't have taken her bracelet,” he said, and Penny nodded. It wouldn’t do to reward him for doing something decent, but inwardly, she was relieved.
“All right, now give the bracelet back to Flora and apologize.”
Sad now and with all the other children watching, Mario gave Flora back her bracelet, making an apology in what was now only slightly accented English. Flora took the bracelet back with a flourish, temper slightly dampened by her classmate's apology. She might have flounced off with it, but Penny reminded her that there was a response to be made to apologies. Flora sighed, angry still, but begrudgingly she said the words that Penny had taught them.
“I accept your apology,” she said then stomped off to stand with her friends.
Mario looked after Flora with eyes that would have done credit to a spaniel puppy, and Penny sighed. As soon as he figured out that girls simply liked being treated as friends, he would do a great deal better with Flora.
It never ceased to amuse Penny how she had found herself in charge of a group of children as wealthy as these were. She was certain the bracelet that Flora wore so proudly had real diamonds circling her small wrist, and she figured that none of the children in her group wore clothing that cost less than three hundred dollars total. They were the children of merchant princes, bankers and politicians, and yet for some reason, they had decided that Penny needed to be in charge of them.
She sighed, shaking her head. One thing her grandmother had always said was that there was no telling how the world worked. All you could do was keep your eye steady, do what you needed to do and move forward.
Speaking of moving forward, they still had a great deal of the museum to see.
“All right everyone!” she said, clapping her hands. “Come on, let's move on to the next wing. There's a lot of great stuff waiting for us...”
This group of seven was a fraction of the group that had come from the private school she worked with. She was relieved that the group she had drawn, while containing a few children with high spirits, was not particularly difficult.
She consulted her map as they walked forward, and she could see some of the older visitors smiling at her. She knew that with her diminutive shape, red hair in shoulder-length braids, and spectacles, she looked more like a student than a responsible teacher. But Penny supposed that was her cross to bear. As long as the children paid close attention to what she was telling them, she figured it would work out just fine.
“All right, folks, let's take a left here, and we'll get to see some stone statuary featuring Theseus and the Minotaur, which we went over last week...”
And apparently, we get to see a drunk man, too, Penny thought in surprise.
As the children gathered close to look up at the gargantuan stone figure of the man fighting the monster, Penny kept her eye on the real man sitting on the bench, or perhaps more accurately, slouching on the bench. In defiance of all rules of the museum, he had a steaming container of coffee in his hands, and given his posture, he was half asleep. She bit her lip, wondering if he was quite well. Her heart and good intentions had gotten her into trouble plenty of times, and right now she had children to worry about. When she risked a quick glance at them, however, they were gazing up at the marble in awe and looking around at some of the other statues as well. They had come to a long gallery that would likely hold their attention for at least a little while, so Penny decided to take the risk.
“Mi scusi...” she began, and then whatever she had been going to say after that fell entirely out of her mind.
The man looked up, and even with a day's worth of stubble on his dark face, he was incredibly handsome. He had a face that Bartolini might have sculpted, but Bartolini would have to have traveled to the Middle East to do it. His skin was dark, but his eyes were piercing and black. His mouth was sharp enough that some might have called it cruel. For a moment, he looked confused by her silence, but then he smiled. And when he smiled, there was something so warm about his mouth that Penny felt her heart beat a little faster.
Oh dear, I think he knows exactly the kind of effect he has on wo
men, she thought in dismay.
“I heard you speaking English to your charges,” he said with a charming smile. “Do you only use Italian with people that you are attracted to?”
“I use Italian every... oh, what am I saying!” For a moment, Penny could only curse her fair complexion, which she guessed was turning beet-red.
He tilted his head to look at her, and although she had gotten quite used to receiving blatantly sexual looks on the street during her time in Rome, there was something she liked about the way he did it. That only made her blush harder, and she took a step back.
Still smiling, the man stood up and stepped closer to her, and she became aware of how tall he was, and how lean. Dressed in expensive clothes that probably cost more than she made in six months, he was a handsome man who suddenly made her feel as if she was all thumbs.
“I think you might be saying that you are interested in me,” he said with confidence. “Don't worry, it is a very understandable reaction.”
“Well, you're full of yourself, aren't you?” she asked, but instead of coming out irritated, Penny thought she sounded nervous. She shook her head at her own silliness.
“Oh my gosh, what am I saying?” she asked, taking another step back. “I just wanted to see if you were all right.”
For the first time, the man looked surprised, and a small part of her whispered that it liked his real expression a lot more than his put-on charm, no matter how truly charming he was.
“You were worried about me?” he asked in surprise. “Why ever would you be worried about me?”
Penny shrugged. “You were sitting over here as if you were sick, or as if you had lost an old friend, or...or maybe you’d had your heart broken...”
She stuttered to a stop, unsure of what she was saying and why she was saying it. She had managed to impress a school committee of distinctly draconian officials to get her job, she had moved all the way to Rome to follow her heart, and yet somehow, she had decided that now she was going to babble like a hapless teenager.
“Well, I suppose you can say that I have had my heart broken,” he said softly, and her head shot up at that. Now the expression on his face was a sad one, doleful, and his eyes looked so dark that she thought she could fall into them.
“I'm sorry to hear that,” Penny said, only a little stiffly. “It's never fun, I guess.”
He nodded as if she had said something profound. “I don't remember either of their names, but when they kicked me out of their flat in the morning with the rest of my friends, my heart, it was terribly broken...”
She finally caught the hint of laughter in his eyes, and without thinking, she made an outraged sound and slapped him lightly on the arm. Something in his eyes darkened at even that light contact, and she felt herself turn red again.
“You made me feel sorry for you,” she hissed. “I can't believe you!”
“You did feel genuinely sorry for me in that moment,” the nameless man teased. “I could see it. You are a very sincere girl, aren't you, bella?”
Penny’s heart beat a little faster at the endearment. It felt like the stuff of fairy tales, running into a handsome man at a museum, his smile, the warm interest in his eyes, the electricity that she could feel sparking between them...
She reminded herself that fairy tales didn't include hung over men who had been kicked out of what sounded like a late night party that went too late. Besides, fairy tales didn't exist anyway.
In real life, it was a lot harder to tell the difference between Prince Charming and the wolf.
“I teach English to small children. I have to be very sincere,” she said primly. “As a matter of fact, I have to get back to that, so if you're fine, you should excuse me...”
She was turning away as she said it, but to Penny's shock, the man took her hand. Her first thought was surprise at how warm his touch was, and that delicate prickle of electricity that she had felt before reached out to shock her again. From the way the man drew in his breath, he could feel it too. It made his smile fade for a moment, but when it came back, it was brighter than ever.
“And what if I decide not to excuse you, bella?” he asked. “What if I would ask after your name and your number? Perhaps a place where I might call on you?”
“I would tell you that I was not available,” she said crisply. “I am a very busy woman, and I do not think the school would like it very much if I was...cavorting with handsome young men instead of tending to the children.”
“So...you do think I am handsome?”
Had she really said that? Damn, damn and double damn. She shook her head, resigned to the fact that her face was just going to be on fire, and reclaimed her hand. For a moment, he pressed his fingers into her palm, a shockingly intimate gesture, before he let her go.
“It does not matter what I think or do not think,” Penny said. “I am going back to my class now.”
She did not look behind her as she went to gather up her students. They were all enthralled by the way the marble could be sculpted to look like flesh and cloth, and she was relieved when they were not overly focused on the nudes that were scattered throughout the gallery. After she did a quick headcount to make sure she had as many students as she’d started with, Penny began to shepherd them out of the gallery, but then she heard a loud whistle.
She and her students turned, and somehow, there was a part of her that was not surprised to discover that same young man was now standing behind her. It occurred to her that he looked like a pirate, with his stubble, his flash of white teeth, the confident way he strode about.
“No,” he said grandly. “This will not end here. I will not allow it.”
Despite how handsome she found him, a surge of irritation washed over her.
“Oh, you will not allow it?” she fired back. “And who are you to allow or not allow me?”
For a moment, it looked as if there was something on the tip of his tongue, but then he shook his head and simply smiled again. “I am the man who lies in awe of your beauty.”
Penny was rolling her eyes when one of her students tugged at her sleeve.
“Miss, what does awe mean?”
The man answered before Penny could tell them to ignore him. “It means that your teacher is so beautiful that she takes my breath away. And I feel like I must be with her or I will perish.”
A giggle ran through the class, and Penny could already see some young eyes shining with the glamour of it all. Of course, it must all look very romantic to them. They were ten years old and had no idea that accosting women in museums while they were trying to work was very likely a poor idea!
“That's enough,” she said, regaining control over the class. “We are going to go see the antiquities, where they keep the swords, and we are going to say goodbye to this gentleman here.”
A chorus of young voices gave the man a cheerful goodbye, but he shook his head.
“No, no,” he laughed. “Do not tell me goodbye! Instead, tell me what your beautiful teacher's name is!”
“It's Miss Bright!” cried a young boy from the back.
Penny's head spun around to look, but they all appeared angelic and silent, and she silently cursed her students. When she faced the man again, he had shoved his hands into his pockets and looked extraordinarily pleased with himself.
“Well, bright in name and bright in nature,” he said, and to her relief--or maybe it was disappointment--he took a step back. “I suppose I would be pushing my luck if I asked for your first name as well?”
“Very much so,” she said, sounding as frosty as she could.
Undaunted, he stepped back again and then suddenly swept down into a deep bow, which should have looked ridiculous, but somehow didn't.
“All right, bella bright,” he said. “Keep your name, and perhaps if I am lucky, I will see you in my dreams tonight.”
“In your dreams,” she said, meaning to make it snappish and off-putting, but instead, for some reason it came out surprisingly soft and a
lmost wistful. The smile he gave her was smaller than his wide grin, but there was something much kinder about it, almost gentle.
And then he turned and was gone.
The students broke into an excited chatter, but she raised her hand for silence again. “If you are going to talk, please do it in English!”
For the moment, that was enough to push them back into line. She could feel the blush on her face ever so slowly returning to its normal color.
Penny firmly put the thought of the man out of her mind. There was nothing to be gained from talking to drunks and philanderers, no matter how adorable they were.
Still, a part of her made her glance back as they left the marble gallery, hoping for at least one last glimpse of him. Instead, he was lost to her gaze, and she told herself that she was likely never going to see him again. So what was she worried about?
Though “worried” wasn't exactly the right word for how she felt.
Chapter Two
By the time Ziyad got back to his flat, he couldn't deny it. There was something about that little redhead back at the museum that affected him in a way he didn't understand. It was like he wanted to eat her up, and perhaps feed her some delicious food at the same time. There was a slightly scrawny look to her, one that he wasn't sure why he found so interesting, but he did.
His flat was part of an ancient senator's mansion, and as he walked in, he made a face. He remembered in a vague way that the cleaning lady had left, stating that she couldn't deal with the parties and music every night. The flat’s disorderly state wasn't terrible yet, he decided. He could hire a new cleaning lady, of course, but a part of him wondered if he wasn't bored with Rome. Perhaps it was time to go to Costa Rica, or better yet, London or Barcelona. One of his friends had a yacht, an enormous, sleek craft that made other boats on the river look small. Perhaps it was time to go for a sail, and perhaps a certain little redhead would like to go with him.
She wasn't the type Ziyad went for usually. He loved his women tall and blonde, aware of their own powerful sexuality and ready to share it with the right man who was the right mix of good looks, wealth and power. The lovely Miss Bright, on the other hand, was barely bigger than a minute. Her coppery red hair was the most noticeable thing about her. Beyond that, there was no way to guess at her figure under her baggy, long skirt and turtleneck. Still, there was something compelling about her that he couldn't deny.