by Leslie North
As a member of the royal family of Zahkim, Nasim had to marry in the palace. He'd chosen the huge garden in the center since two of his cousins had already held their ceremonies here. Might as well keep up the tradition. In truth, he'd rather elope—or have a quick civil service. But Jasmine's father—Sheikh Ahmad Hadad of Dijobuli—wanted tradition upheld.
Right ol' geezer, Nasim thought, glancing at the older man. He smiled, however, and gave Sheikh Ahmad a small bow. The sheikh stood in front of the other guests, his trimmed, white beard jutting out, a frown curving his wide mouth under his beak of a nose, and one tapping foot sticking out from his traditional white thobe. Nasim tugged on his tie.
He'd forgone the traditional robes in place of a black suit—tailored for him by Gieves & Hawkes of Savile Row, of course—but he'd given in to Arif's insistence he must at least wear the white keffiyeh of the royal family. The bloody thing had sweat dripping down the back of his neck, but the heat also had something to do with that, and maybe he should have actually consulted a meteorologist for a wedding date. High humidity left him thinking it might rain later in the day, but at the moment it was simply hot, even in the shade of the garden.
And where the bloody hell was Jasmine?
Nasim tugged on his tie again.
Almost two hundred VIPs from Zahkim and Dijobuli, shifted on their feet in the garden, seeming as impatient as Nasim, and their whispers were like the breeze that warned of an impending sandstorm. Garlands of flowers hung from the white marble pillars that bordered the garden. The fountain gurgled away like a drunk, and Nasim started wishing for a cool pint. He kept a stock of Bass ale and Mackeson cooling, a habit he'd picked up from his years at Oxford with Arif and Tarek—in his penthouse in the city. Would this bloody ceremony ever be done with?
His mobile buzzed, and he pulled it from his trouser pocket.
A wedding wasn't the place to answer a call, but Nasim had contractors waiting for word they could begin the pipeline through neighboring Dijobuli, taking Zahkim oil to the coast. Zahkim would save millions in transportation costs. To cement this deal, all that was missing was the bride from Dijobuli.
Nasim frowned—not Jasmine calling, as he had hoped. It was indeed a contractor, so he took the call. He spoke a few curt words to the man to give an update on if they would indeed have access through Dijobuli starting today or not, and rang off.
Next to him, Arif crossed his arms and shook his head. "Are you trying to curse your wedding even more than you have already?"
"This is a bloody business deal."
Arif scowled. When he did that, he looked far too like their cousin Tarek. All three of them shared the black hair common in Zahkim, but Arif had uncommonly pale eyes.
Nasim slapped his cousin's arm. "Stop fretting."
Looking down at his mobile, he started to text Jasmine's number. Arif grabbed the mobile out of Nasim's hand. "No. You are the groom. You will await your bride with dignity as befits the royal family. Tarek isn't here to be head of family, so it's up to me to see that you behave, and I will also caution you that patience is the key to every great treasure. You might want to move slowly with this girl you are marrying."
Stiffening, Nasim swiped his mobile back out of Arif's hand and pocketed it. "Says the man who fell headlong for his new wife in one night. I can handle my own affairs."
Arif's tone sharpened. "This is not another of your casual affairs."
"Is it not? You're sounding an awful lot like Sheikha Amal now. Tarek's grandmother was full of advice, most of it fit for the 1900s."
"She must have heard the same talk I have that Jasmine's not really up for this wedding."
Nasim opened his mouth to tell Arif he could bugger himself. He bit off the words. Heads had turned to the back of the garden. The crowd hushed. His bride—heavily veiled with the niqab and wearing traditional red robes lavishly embroidered with gold thread—had arrived.
Suddenly, he couldn't breathe, his pulse kicked up to a pounding, and more sweat trickled down his spine. He wanted to turn and run. He wanted to tell Arif and anyone within earshot that he wasn't ready to give up his life of women, business, and more women. He didn't think of himself as vain, but he knew his looks—tall at six-three and fit from mountain biking, with a trim beard and mustache, and thick, flat, black eyebrows that gave him a brooding look—drew the women to him. He'd never given it much thought, but he'd enjoyed the attention. It had been in the back of his mind that someday he would marry. He wanted children—eventually. Just not now.
But in those bloody endless meetings with Sheikh Ahmad, as he'd struggled to negotiate access for Zahkim to the coast, the ruler of Dijobuli had brought up his daughter. "She is too wild. I indulged her. Now she wears scandalous clothing from Paris, wants a profession as a journalist of all things, and says she will defy me when it comes to arranging her marriage."
Wild had sounded good to Nasim, and Tarek had already briefed Nasim on how badly Zahkim needed this boost to the economy. So Nasim had jumped in before thinking too much. As usual. Ah, well, it was done—or was about to be done. He'd agreed to this, had signed the contracts, and now he took a long breath and let it out. He repeated the action twice more and settled to his fate.
Tarek had the country to run—and had married. Arif was up to his neck in education reforms and trying to find funding to build a university—and had married. They'd grown up together—thrown together by early loss—and had gone off to Oxford together.
"Why not this?" Nasim muttered. He opened and clenched his hands twice and wished his shirt wasn't stuck to his back.
His bride crossed the distance from the palace to the fountain in the middle of the gardens, her steps only slightly unsteady. Despite what Sheikh Ahmad had said, she kept her eyes downcast and seemed willing to accept this marriage. If she'd balked, Nasim would have called it off. But really, there was no reason they couldn't go on with their own lives once they wed. Royals did that all the time. She could have her clothes from Paris and her profession—he saw no reason she couldn't. Eventually, they'd get around to children. It would all be—civilized. Good business for all.
And bugger what Arif kept saying about how the royals of Zahkim must marry for love or curse the country. They'd be a damn sight more cursed without that pipeline to the coast.
His bride stopped next to him, and Nasim found himself staring down at her. She seemed…taller than he'd expected. Was she wearing heels?
He'd met Jasmine Hadad twice. She'd been pretty, dark haired, with a stubborn mouth, sharp eyes, and a bristling attitude. He'd thought her a spoilt handful and had never thought about marriage to her—until her father had brought it up. Now he wondered if she really did agree to this.
Well, no woman could be forced into a marriage in Zahkim. She had to willingly accept him as her husband.
The imam—a man even older than Sheikh Ahmad, his white beard down to his waist and his white robes shining in the sunlight—stepped forward and began the ceremony. Nasim spoke four languages, but this man's heavily accented Arabic dated to the old days and the desert, and even Nasim had trouble following him.
At last he asked, the words slow and almost as creaking as his joints, “Have you chosen this young woman for your wife?”
Nasim replied in crisp Arabic, “I have."
Turning to the guests, the imam asked everyone in Arabic, “You have heard?" They answered they had—a marriage required witnesses, and a royal marriage needed more than average.
The imam turned to Nasim's bride to have her speak her agreement to the marriage. She answered, her voice soft and stumbling over her words, almost as if she could barely get them out or her Arabic was rusty. Nasim glanced down at her bent head, her heavy veil, and her robes covering her from head to toes. He could only see the backs of her hands. Odd—she had not had the traditional bridal henna applied.
Well, he would see more of her later. He wished she would look up, however, so he could see if she was resigned to this. Or had she b
een coerced by her father?
He looked over his shoulder at Sheikh Ahmad, who beamed at them like a benevolent grandfather—no doubt already naming his grandchildren to come. Movement next to him drew Nasim's stare back to his bride.
She swayed and started downwards into a puddle of red and gold silk. The imam gasped, and so did several in the crowd. Nasim caught his bride before she hit the tiles under their feet. He swept her up in his arms. It had to be the heat.
Calling out to make way, he carried his bride out of the sunlight and toward the library. Her breasts pressed against his chest, and the swell of her hips left his mouth dry. He could wish he had her in his arms under other circumstances. She smelled of something sweet—like candy, almost. Arif got the French window open in front of Nasim, and turned—thank you, cousin—to hold the curious and the intrusive out of the room. Nasim heard someone calling for a doctor, Sheikh Ahmad spoke up in a gruff voice about how his daughter never fainted or been ill a day in her life, and then the French windows closed, leaving them in the cool of the library.
Thick carpets with an abstract geometric design in gold and beige covered the stone floors. Bookcases lined the walls. Nasim glanced around and chose a long sofa covered in gold brocade to settle his bride. The room offered several chairs—some in leather, some not—side tables in mahogany, and a low brass table for tea. Once he had his bride deposited on the sofa, her face to one side, he straightened to glance around. Tarek had ordered that every room in the palace be stocked with water, so where were the bloody carafe and glasses?
He'd no sooner straightened than his bride sat up and pulled off her veil. "Cho co! It's gotta be hotter than the south side of Hades out there." A light drawl accented her words. She sat fanning herself with one hand.
Nasim's mouth fell open.
He'd expected the dark brown hair, but not the tight curl to it or the warm, café au lait skin that had him wanting to take a sip of her. Brown eyes flecked with gold—wide, amused, and bright—stared up at him. He couldn't see much of her figure under the robes, but what he'd felt had been a pleasant armful. She had to be American—who else could be so brazen? And that drawl…he placed it as coming from New Orleans, where he'd once spent a most memorable week.
Straightening, Nasim faced the woman he'd just married. "You're not—"
"Jasmine?" She wrinkled her nose and scooted around on the couch, struggling to get her robe sorted out. "No, but I can explain about that."
Heat flooded Nasim. He yanked off his keffiyeh and threw it onto the nearest side table. It slid off. "Explain? Really? You are somehow going to explain how you have managed to destroy the alliance I was about to make with Dijobuli. I signed a marriage contract. Sheikh Ahmad is going to be furious. In fact, I think I will join him in that emotion."
She chewed on her lower lip, utterly distracting Nasim. She had lush lips, plump, and he wanted to be the one nibbling.
Dragging his stare off that mouth, he met her uncertain gaze. He stuffed one hand into his jacket pocket. "Bloody hell, do you realize this prank's put my country, our oil business, and possibly even my family's throne in jeopardy? Now there’s no bloody deal for bloody access to Dijobuli's bloody harbor. What in all the heavens were you thinking?" He bit out the words, clipped and short, and heard his old Oxford accent creeping in.
Instead of being cowed, his bride stood, brushed her robe as if dusting herself, and faced him, chin up, her stare direct, and that smooth, sweet voice of hers trying to work some kind of charm on him.
"I'm thinking I've got you an offer from Leeland Enterprises that'll be a lot more attractive. In fact, I'm Virginia Leeland—Ginni to friends—and I hope we'll become very great friends indeed." She stuck out her hand to shake it. "Partners, as we say back home."
He glanced down, saw she had on the ring he had given to Jasmine, a solitary, square-cut emerald, which meant Jasmine was well aware this Ginni had stepped into the role of bride to a sheikh of Zahkim.
Nasim crossed his arms and looked Ginni Leeland over from her sandaled feet—no heels, but she had painted her toenails gold—up to her rather curly-haired head. Her stare faltered. She pulled back her hand but didn't look away. He had to give her credit for more courage than sense.
He shook his head and lifted one eyebrow. "No, Ginni Leeland, we will not be friends…or partners, as you say back home. We are far more. You are, in fact, now my wife."
Chapter Two
Ginni almost burst out with a laugh. "Married? You got that wrong." She looked for some humor glinting in those tawny eyes of his. She didn't see it. She kept eyeing him. Was he pulling her leg?
She'd timed her faint just like Jasmine wanted, so Ginni would interrupt the ceremony before anything got cemented but late enough that Jasmine had time to elope with the guy she'd met in Paris. Jasmine had fallen madly in love with Eric Welle, some guy from Germany. Right now, Ginni was having a hard time seeing why Jasmine would want skinny Eric with his Hipster-tight clothes and his couldn't-quite-grow beard when she could have had this hunk.
The hunk had a stare fixed on her that looked one part mad as a cat with his tail in a knot and one part hot—very hot—smolder. She liked that second part.
He looked good in a suit with his tie askew, all swarthy with his hair curling and rumpled from that dishcloth a lot of guys here wore, probably to keep the sun off their heads. She'd been broiling in her veils, covered up to her eyeballs and hardly able to breathe.
"That faint hadn't been good acting so much as a need to get into some shade—this place could beat New Orleans in July for its heat and humidity, and here I always figured on the desert being dry." She bit off the words. She'd slipped from thinking into talking, a habit her daddy kept saying she needed to break if she was ever going to be any good at business.
She tugged at the robe she was wearing, wishing it had more business in it, and lifted her chin. She was here to prove she was ready to take over Leeland Enterprises, and she'd taken the first step by finally getting face time with Sheikh Nasim Said. Now she just needed an agreement from him to show to her daddy.
"You're a hard man to get a meeting with."
His mouth flattened. He had a face made for sin, all interesting angles with dark eyebrows flat over tawny eyes that would do him well at a poker table. The corner of his mouth twitched.
"That would be due to my having spent the last six weeks trying to negotiate a deal with Dijobuli—the deal you just destroyed." He took two steps closer and loomed over her.
At five-ten—six-two in designer heels—she wasn't used to looking up at anyone. She cursed the flat sandals and put on a smile. Her daddy had always said she could charm birds out of the sky, if she put her mind to it. But he'd also said she'd never shown she was responsible enough to take over the business.
"I've got a better proposition for you," she said. One of those flat, dark eyebrows lifted. He slipped a hand around her waist and pulled her to him. She flattened her hands on his chest—and—oh my, did that man have muscles on him. Her heart skittered up to pound in her throat, and she had to swallow before she could get the words out. "Not that kind of proposition."
"You've cost me not just a deal, but a bride I was promised. That would include a wedding night and a honeymoon."
"Well, I—" She didn't get any more words out than that. His mouth took the rest of them. He stole her breath, and then she lost track of what else he was doing, other than flicking that tongue of his across hers. She put a hand around his neck to keep him busy doing what he was doing, which seemed to be setting her lower parts into a tingle. She couldn't get enough of him. He smelled of leather and male arousal and tasted of mint. His beard and mustache—short and trim—rasped over her skin. He pulled back at last, and she let him. But she hung onto his neck, her breath coming in short gasps. She didn't trust her dizzy head right now.
Looking up at him, she managed to untangle herself from his arms. She got a hand under her robes, pulled her cellphone out from her bra where
she'd tucked it, and dragged her mind back to business. That was hard, because what she really wanted to do was slip that tie off him and get her hands on some skin.
But…first things first.
Pulling up the spreadsheets on her Android, she showed him the numbers she'd worked out. "Leeland Enterprises could be a good deal for Zahkim oil transport. Over ten years, you'd spend half of what a pipeline would cost, and we're able to expand to handle imports. Plus you're not locked into oil. You can diversify. Get into solar and wind to make sure you're not dependent on oil prices that like to drop all of a sudden."
He glanced at the spreadsheets, looked away, and glanced back again, the thick, dark eyebrows flattening. His eyes warmed with what she hoped might be a touch of interest, but he looked back at her with his mouth pulling down, and that wasn't good.
"This might have been of interest two months ago. But you overlook the current political ramifications. This is not just a deal. This was to be an alliance between Zahkim and Dijobuli. This mess you’ve bloody well landed me in might well upset regional stability. There was a marriage contract involved."
Ginni propped a fist on her hip—trimmed into shape with Aikido classes. "You're thinking I haven't been thinking, but I have. This deal's gotta work for everyone, and so I'm including Leeland picking up the cost for expanded infrastructure with improved roads for Dijobuli instead of a pipeline that could lead to spills. Just give me a chance to walk through a presentation with you and Sheikh Ahmad. As to the marriage, well, guess you'll have to talk to Jasmine—she's the one who tossed that in the trash."
Nasim cursed under his breath in something other than English. She liked his accent—something not quite proper Englishman mixed with a touch of exotic. She also liked how he scrubbed a hand through his hair, leaving the shaggy curls tumbled. Her fingers twitched with the urge to touch that dark hair, see how soft it felt.
He looked at her, his stare unsettling and direct. "Sheikh Ahmad…how do I explain you to him?"