The Sheikh's Wedding Contract

by Andie Brock

  But now it was as if they were strangers. Cold and remote, he handed her a cup of coffee, his posture stiff, the sharp planes of his cheekbones hollowing to the angular line of his jaw, held firm beneath its close-cropped, dark beard. The anger had gone, replaced with an unspoken, chilling authority.

  ‘So...’ Nadia said, replacing her rattling coffee cup back on the table. ‘What do you want to see me about? Because if this is some sort of farewell gesture, then you needn’t bother. You might think you can assuage your conscience, justify your actions with a few mealy-mouthed words to make yourself feel better, but let me tell you it won’t make any difference—’

  ‘Nadia!’

  ‘—because ultimately you will be answerable to your own conscience.’ Her diatribe suddenly lost its momentum beneath the searing intensity of Zayed’s glare.

  ‘Have you quite finished?’

  Nadia opened her mouth but quickly closed it again, Zayed’s raised-palm gesture making it quite clear he didn’t want to hear the answer.

  ‘I have brought you here to tell you that I am going to allow you to stay.’

  ‘Stay?’

  ‘Yes, stay here in Gazbiyaa. For the time being at least. You will not be returning to Harith.’

  ‘Oh.’ Nadia felt a tidal wave of relief wash over her. But her pride refused to let it show. ‘And supposing I don’t want to stay?’

  It was only the smallest of movements, but the way Zayed leaned forward and narrowed his eyes sent a chill of alarm through her. She had poked an already angry tiger, and he looked as if he was about to pounce.

  ‘Let’s get this clear, shall we? I have zero interest in what you want. It would give me the greatest pleasure to remove you from Gazbiyaa, to get you out of my life once and for all. But your actions have placed our two countries in the most tremendous peril. If the news gets out that the sheikh of Gazbiyaa has married a Harithian princess, it will mean certain war. My urgent priority now is to find a way to minimise the damage.’

  ‘But it was never my intention to...’

  The blaze in his eyes stopped her in her tracks.

  ‘I need to buy some time to try to establish diplomatic relations with Harith. So this is what is going to happen now. Listen carefully.’

  Nadia nodded mutely.

  ‘First, no one must ever know that you are from Harith. Ever. Do I make myself clear?’

  She nodded again.

  ‘We have to keep your identity hidden for as long as we can. I have ordered that the official wedding photographs be “mistakenly” destroyed, and personal photography was banned, so with luck we can keep any images out of the press. No one seems to know who you are as yet, but this is a secret that we must guard with our lives.’

  ‘Of course, I understand.’ Beneath the smouldering hostility she could see the worry etched across his handsome features as he tried to tackle the enormity of the problem. A problem that at the moment she had simply exacerbated. If only he would let her in, let her help, she was so sure she could. ‘I won’t breathe a word to anyone about who I really am.’

  ‘You had better not. For your own sake, as well as for the sake of your country.’

  ‘I know that.’ Pushing back her shoulders, Nadia fought her corner. ‘You hardly need to spell that out to me.’

  ‘Well, maybe there are some things that I do need to spell out.’ He gave her a punishing stare. ‘From now on, Nadia, you and I are going to be playing the part of the perfect couple. To the outside world, the sheikh and his new bride are madly in love, totally devoted to one another, publicly displaying the sort of happiness that will soon produce a royal heir and the stability that this country so desperately needs.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Something about the tone of his voice suggested that there was more to come.

  ‘Privately, however—’ his voice lowered with chilling authority ‘—privately things will be very different. This will be a marriage in name only. A marriage that will be terminated as soon as it is safe to do so. Behind closed doors there will be no relationship between us. Do I make myself clear?’

  Nadia tossed back her head, the blue-black waves of her lustrous hair rippling down her back as she took a moment to arrange her features, to banish any sign of emotion.

  ‘Yes, Zayed.’ Her voice was cold and steady. ‘Perfectly clear.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ‘HERE YOU ARE.’

  Nadia looked up as Zayed strode into the library, his presence immediately dominating the room. He was wearing jeans that sat low on his hips and a plain white T-shirt that stretched across the broad expanse of his chest, flexed biceps bulging beneath the tight sleeves. Nadia looked back down again.

  ‘You haven’t forgotten we are dining with the foreign affairs minister and his wife this evening?’

  ‘No, I haven’t forgotten.’ Nadia closed the beautiful illuminated manuscript on her lap. She could spend hours here in the library, carefully leafing through their priceless pages, the brightly coloured paintings and meticulously handwritten text. Which was just as well, because there was precious little else for her to do in this gilded cage she found herself in.

  ‘It’s informal, but obviously you are going to need time to change.’ His gaze raked over her figure, dressed in a simple pale blue shift dress, her long legs tucked under her as she had made herself comfortable in the high-backed leather armchair.

  ‘Obviously.’ Placing the book reverentially on the table beside her, Nadia unfurled her legs and sat up straight, raising her watchful eyes to his once more. ‘And presumably you are, too.’

  Zayed took a step towards her, then stopped. ‘Look, Nadia. There is no point in being like this.’

  ‘Like what?’ Busying herself with untucking her hair from behind her ears and casually flicking it so that it tumbled over her shoulders, Nadia pointedly didn’t return his gaze. ‘I wasn’t aware that I was being like anything.’

  ‘You know exactly what I mean.’ Zayed was right in front of her now, looking down on her. His height towered over her, solid, powerful, sexy, and Nadia felt her limbs weaken, the way they always did when she was close to him, a feeling she had been battling to control ever since this so called arrangement of theirs had begun.

  It had been three weeks now, three long, torturous weeks, each one worse than the one before. Far from settling into her fake role as the adoring young bride, Nadia was finding it more and more frustrating, more and more impossible to cope with. Her relationship with Zayed was already strained to breaking point. How on earth was she supposed to carry on with this ridiculous charade until he decided he had solved the problem of Harith? And what would happen to her after that? The powerlessness of her situation kept her awake at night, churning round and around her sleepless brain.

  And her sense of isolation was growing every day, too. Totally cut off from her own country and virtually ignored by her husband, she was starting to wonder if she had fallen into some sort of parallel universe where she didn’t really exist at all. That the real Nadia was somewhere else, living her boringly restrictive life, while this one, the one who spent her lonely days wandering the echoing corridors of this vast palace or shut away here in the library, was just a cardboard cut-out of the real thing.

  She might just as well be for all the good she was doing. Any hopes that she would be able to influence Zayed’s decisions, play a part in the peace process, had been dashed at the onset. The sheikh had made it quite clear that her opinions were of no interest to him, that her role was solely to keep quiet and look decorative whenever the occasion demanded it. The role, in fact, that she had always had mapped out for her by her father. An irony that wasn’t lost on her.

  But along with this huge frustration was the other thing, the thing that Nadia had tried so hard to ignore but which kept coming back to slap her in the face. Zayed. Just that. Him. The night they had spent together, the things they had done, haunting her with their vivid images, greedily pervading her consciousness at any time of th
e day or night, no matter how often she expressly forbade herself from going there.

  Being in the same room as him was agony. Just the sound of his voice was enough to set her heart rate pounding, her skin tingling with a thousand skittery pinpricks if he so much as stood beside her or brushed past her. And when he pulled her to him, slipping an arm around her waist in a show of affection for the benefit of whoever it was he was trying to convince at the time, her traitorous body leaped into full take-me-I’m-yours mode, jelly legs, clenching stomach muscles, the lot. Even though she knew that his gesture was totally fake. Knew that in reality, rather than pulling her closer to him, he would have liked to push her far enough away so that he never had to see her again. To the edge of a cliff, maybe. One with a crumbling edge...

  And it was happening again right now, that hollow yearning feeling creeping over her as she stared at the chest of this man, at the breadth of his shoulders, the defined muscles of his neck. Nadia hated herself for it, for her pathetic weakness where he was concerned, a man who had nothing but bitter contempt for her. And that made her as spiky as a cactus, which was presumably what Zayed was referring to now.

  ‘D’you know what, Nadia?’ He jammed a hand into his jeans’ pocket, his thumb pushed through the belt loop as his dismissive gaze raked over her. ‘Your manner baffles me. Bearing in mind that you got us into this mess, I fail to see why I’m being treated like the bad guy. Quite frankly, in your position I thought you would be doing everything you could to try to make this arrangement work.’

  ‘I do as I’m told.’ Nadia pouted back at him. ‘That’s what you want, isn’t it?’

  ‘I want you to lose the attitude.’

  ‘Then, maybe you should try changing yours.’ Immediately on the defensive, Nadia rose to her feet to challenge him, only to realise that they were too close together now, far too close. She edged back as far as the chair would let her. ‘If you would listen to what I have to say rather than treating me like some sort of pariah, if you would let me—’

  ‘Stop right there, Nadia.’ Zayed’s forceful words were accompanied by a dark scowl and raised palm as he moved in closer. ‘The sooner you wise up to the fact that you are here on my terms, the better it will be for all concerned. While you are living under my roof here in Gazbiyaa, you will do as I say. You have no rights, no bargaining power, your opinions count for nothing. So you can keep them to yourself until you are back in your precious Harith, back where you belong.’

  His vituperative words simmered between them, momentarily silencing Nadia with their deliberately wounding attack. She swallowed, looking away from him, lowering her lashes as she waited for the stinging pain of the rebuke to recede.

  Meanwhile she heard Zayed clear his throat. ‘I take it you haven’t heard anything from your family?’

  ‘No,’ Nadia answered petulantly, taking another step back until the chair was pressing into her bare calves. ‘How would I? They have no way of contacting me.’

  ‘But they must be searching for you?’

  ‘I assume so.’

  ‘Do you think they might have any idea where you are?’

  ‘Well, I haven’t exactly been sending them postcards.’ Her acerbic reply was purely a defence mechanism, an attempt to deflect the dreadful thought that her family were probably scouring the length and breadth of Harith and beyond in order to try to track her down. Or, more surprising, the hollow emptiness that they might not. But as she raised her eyes to the sight of Zayed’s jaw visibly clenching she quickly backtracked. ‘No, I don’t think they have any idea. If my family had discovered where I was we would know about it by now. Gazbiyaa is the last place they would be looking for me.’

  ‘Well, that’s something, I suppose,’ Zayed said. ‘But it’s only a matter of time before they figure it out. You need to make sure that word doesn’t get out before I find a solution to this fiasco.’

  ‘I know that. You don’t need to keep reminding me.’

  ‘Perhaps I wouldn’t have to if you started to show a bit more gratitude.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard.’

  ‘Gratitude?’ Nadia repeated the word with disgust. ‘Is that what you want from me, Zayed?’

  ‘Maybe. Yes, why not? I don’t think that’s unreasonable. Given the circumstances.’ He shot her a laser stare. ‘You ought to be very thankful to be allowed to stay here in the palace where you have the security of twenty-four-hour protection, not to mention every comfort. Especially when you consider what the alternative might have been. I would say I have treated you with remarkable tolerance.’

  ‘Well, thank you so much for that.’ Sarcasm leeched from Nadia’s words. ‘Forgive me for not realising that simpering gratitude was in order. Presumably your other women were only too happy to grovel on their knees for your favours.’

  She faltered. Where had that come from? The last thing she wanted was for him to think she cared about his past relationships. That she cared about him at all, in fact.

  ‘My “other women”, as you put it, have never tricked and lied their way into my life, into a marriage with potentially disastrous consequences for all concerned.’ Zayed had immediately pounced on her indiscretion, as she’d known he would. ‘I think that puts you into a different league altogether, wouldn’t you say?’

  Nadia scowled back at him. She was sick and tired of being reminded of what she had done, of being told that she was the villain of the piece but refused any opportunity to justify her actions.

  And what was more, she hated the way he had said ‘other women’, even though she had started it. Said from his lips, it made his past seem more real, and it was a past she was trying to blot out. Which was difficult when her image of a woman on her hands and knees in front of him refused to go away. An image that now saw them both naked.

  She needed to focus. Get back on track. ‘Maybe if you spent more time thinking about how I could help with the situation and less time blaming me for it, we could make some progress.’ This was more like it. ‘All the gratitude in the world won’t make any difference to that.’

  ‘Fine.’ Zayed squared his shoulders. ‘As you are so keen to help, you can start by playing the role of the perfect hostess this evening, by being the devoted wife. No matter how much that pains you.’ He glared at her pointedly. ‘Hassan Rouhani is an important political figure on the world stage and I need to make sure that he is on side. Handled correctly he will be a useful ally, but only if I can impress upon him that Gazbiyaa is safe in my hands. That I have the situation with Harith under control.’

  Nadia made a small noise in her throat, but the warning flash in Zayed’s eyes halted its escape.

  ‘Your job is to entertain...Fatima.’

  ‘Salema. His wife is called Salema.’

  ‘Whatever. You need to make sure she thinks our marriage is rock solid, that the future of the royal line is assured.’

  ‘Certainly, sire. Perhaps you would like me to stuff a cushion up my dress.’

  ‘That won’t be necessary.’

  Zayed turned away, biting down hard on his bottom lip to stop the smile from forming. How could he even think about finding this situation amusing? Nadia was the most exhausting, infuriating, exasperating woman who he had ever had the misfortune to meet. And yet he seemed to keep coming back for more. Here he was, trying to convince high-ranking dignitaries that he had everything under control, when, truth be told, he couldn’t even control his wife.

  * * *

  ‘Well, I must say it does my heart good to see a young couple so much in love.’ Perhaps stupefied by the several courses of rich food, Salema Rouhani leaned back in her chair and surveyed her companions around the table. ‘Don’t you think so, Hassan? Don’t they make a lovely couple?’

  ‘Quite charming, my dear.’ Hassan Rouhani was small in stature, but his lack of height was compensated by sharp, inquisitive eyes and a keen mind. Nadia had immediately sensed that their acting skills were going to have to ramp up a notch for
this man, that he wouldn’t be as easy to fool as the many other dignitaries she had had to entertain in her short time here. Beyond casting an eye over her very obvious attributes, they had appeared to take little interest in her. ‘And no doubt the people of Gazbiyaa are happy to see their sheikh married. It shows commitment, investment in the future.’ His eyes twinkled knowingly, as if he understood exactly why Zayed had taken a bride so suddenly. ‘Especially now, during a period of such instability.’

  Nadia looked away from his direct gaze and picked up her glass of water. Hassan might have thought he’d sussed them out, but he only knew part of the story.

  ‘That reminds me,’ Hassan continued. ‘I have heard a rumour that Azeed is in Harith. Has he been in contact with you, Zayed?’

  At the name Harith Nadia started, the gulp of water she had just taken going down the wrong way, leaving her spluttering and choking.

  Salema was up on her feet in a second, thwacking Nadia completely unnecessarily between the shoulder blades while Nadia raised her hands in what she hoped was a semaphore version of ‘I’m perfectly all right, thank you.’ When she had finally recovered enough to breathe again, she raised her mascara-smudged eyes, only to be faced with the twin stares of the men at the table. Hassan’s bird-like focus conveyed a distinct interest in the little scene that had just been played out before him, while Zayed had narrowed his to darkly lashed weapons of mass destruction, leaving Nadia in no doubt that she was spluttering her way into very dangerous territory.

  ‘No, I’ve heard nothing from Azeed.’ With calm restored, Zayed returned to Hassan’s question. ‘He has completely ignored my attempts to make peace, to get some dialogue going between us. I’ve decided if that is his final decision I will have to respect it.’