The Sheikh's Christmas Conquest

by Sharon Kendrick

  An hour must have passed before she realised that she hadn’t moved and was sitting in total darkness and that Peppa was mewing plaintively by her feet and Stella had long gone. She ought to do something. She ought to feed the cat and...

  And what?

  Sit there for the rest of the evening thinking about what a devious bastard Saladin really was?

  Her eyes skated down the rest of the emails. There were two tentative booking enquiries, plus one of those round-robin jokes that one of her school friends always insisted on sending and that she didn’t find remotely funny. And a ‘Singles Nite’ being offered by the local pub. She screwed her eyes up as she looked at the date. Tonight’s date.

  Print out this voucher for free entry to the Five Bells ‘Singles Nite’. Music, karaoke and so much more!

  A sudden new resolution flooded through her as, impetuously, she pressed the print button, fed Peppa and then went upstairs to get ready.

  She told herself that she was going to stop acting like a startled hermit and get out there and put everything Saladin had taught her into practice. No longer was she going to live like a nun. There was no reason why she couldn’t have other relationships—in the same way that there was no reason she couldn’t have another career. Defiantly, she applied more make-up than usual, fished out a sparkly top to wear with her jeans and piled her hair into an elaborate topknot so that it wouldn’t get wrecked by the wind on the way out to the car.

  When she drew up outside the pub, she almost turned around to go home because music was blaring out at a deafening pitch. Inside it was crowded, but at least the noise became less loud when a woman started swaying around on a small stage, tunelessly singing about her intention to survive. There were a few people Livvy recognised from the village, but not well enough to sit with—so she bought herself a tomato juice, told herself that she would drink it up and then go. Baby steps, she thought. Baby steps. You’ve come out on your own and it hasn’t killed you. And although it’s pretty dire—next time might be better.

  She found a corner seat and sat there smiling as if her life depended on it. She tapped her feet to the music and tried to look as if she was having a good time and eventually a man about her age wandered over, with a half-drunk pint in his hand. He had thick hair and crinkly blue eyes and he asked if he might join her.

  But before she could answer, a silky and authoritative answer came from behind him.

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  Livvy didn’t need to hear the deeply accented voice to know it was Saladin. She should have realised he’d walked in because the pub had suddenly gone quiet and even the woman doing the karaoke had stopped singing as she stared at him incredulously. But who could blame her? Powerful olive-skinned sheikhs wearing dark cashmere weren’t exactly at a premium around these parts.

  Livvy put her tomato juice down on the table with shaking fingers as the conversation all around them took on a sudden roar of interest.

  ‘How did you get here?’ she demanded, her heart starting to race. ‘You’re in Jazratan.’

  ‘Obviously, I’m not. I flew in today and came here by helicopter,’ he answered.

  Her face remained unwelcoming, but she kept it that way. Why had he followed her and why was he here on her territory, when she was just starting out on a long journey to forget him? ‘What do you want?’

  ‘There are three things I want,’ he said grimly. ‘And the first involves having a conversation, which won’t be possible with all this noise going on. So can we go outside, Livvy? Please?’

  She opened her mouth to say that she didn’t want to go anywhere with him, except that was a blatant lie and she suspected he would see right through it. And he was asking in the kind of voice she’d never heard him use before. But even so...

  ‘It’s raining,’ she objected.

  ‘You can sit in my car.’

  ‘No, Saladin,’ she said fiercely. ‘You can sit in my car, and you can have precisely ten minutes.’

  He didn’t look overjoyed at the suggestion but he didn’t object as he followed her into the blustery and rainy night. Outside an enormous limousine was parked with a burly bodyguard standing beside it, but Livvy marched straight past it towards her own little car, feeling inordinately pleased at the almost helpless shrug that Saladin directed at the guard.

  But the moment he removed a sock from the passenger seat—what was that doing there?—and got in beside her, she regretted her decision. Because the limousine would have been better than this. It was bigger, for a start, and there wouldn’t be this awful sense of the man she most wanted to touch being within touching range...and being completely off limits.

  ‘So what’s the second thing?’ she questioned, in a voice that sounded miraculously calm. ‘How did you know I was here?’

  ‘I had someone watching your house who was instructed to follow you,’ he said unapologetically. ‘When I arrived, they told me you were still here. It was at that point that a ball of fur hurled itself out of nowhere and decided to start attacking my ankles.’ He grimaced. ‘Your cat doesn’t like me.’

  ‘Probably not. I got her from the rescue centre.’ She shot him a defiant look. ‘She was ill-treated by a man as a kitten and she’s never forgotten it.’

  There were plenty of parallels between the woman and the cat, Saladin thought. Livvy had been ill-treated by a man, too, and it had made her wary. And he hadn’t exactly done a lot to try to repair her damaged image of the opposite sex, had he? He had treated her as if she was disposable. As if she could be replaced. And wasn’t it time he addressed that?

  He looked at her in the dim light of the scruffy little car, his gaze taking in an unremarkable raincoat and the fiery hair, which the wind had whipped into untidy strands that were falling around her face. She was wearing too much make-up. He’d never seen her in such bright lipstick before and it didn’t suit her, and yet he couldn’t ever remember feeling such a raw and urgent sense of desire as he did right now. Was that because she had shown the strength of character to reject him—to walk away from the half-hearted relationship he’d given her? Because by doing that she had earned his respect as well as making him realise that they were equals.

  ‘I miss you, Livvy,’ he said softly.

  He saw a flicker of surprise in the depths of her eyes before her face resumed that stony expression.

  ‘The sex, do you mean?’ she questioned sharply. ‘Surely you can get that with someone else?’

  ‘Of course I miss the sex,’ he bit out. ‘And I don’t want to get it with anyone else. There are other things I miss, too. Talking, for one.’

  ‘I’m sure there are many people who would be only too happy to talk to you, Saladin. People who would hang on to your every word.’

  ‘But that’s the whole point. I don’t want someone hanging on my every word. I want someone who will give back as good as she gets.’

  ‘I want doesn’t always get,’ she responded, infuriatingly.

  ‘I miss seeing the magic you worked on my horse,’ he continued resolutely. And on me, he thought. And on me. ‘I want you to come back to Jazratan with me.’

  It was as if that single sentence had changed something. As if she’d removed the stony mask from her freckly face so that he could see the sudden glitter of anger in her amber eyes. ‘And how far are you prepared to go to get what you want?’ she demanded. ‘How many people are you prepared to manipulate just so that Saladin Al Mektala can get his own way?’

  His eyes narrowed. ‘Excuse me?’

  Angrily, she punched her fist on the steering wheel. ‘I’ve just had an email from Alison Clark, who you probably don’t even remember. She was the woman who was due to spend Christmas here with her polo friends, before you decided you needed me in Jazratan. The group who miraculously decided not to come at the last minute and to spend their Christmas in a
fancy London hotel instead. A trip financed by you, as I’ve just discovered in an email written by the grateful Alison. So what did you do, Saladin—have your people track down these guests of mine and offer them something they couldn’t resist, just so that you could whisk me away from Derbyshire?’

  He met her accusing stare and gave a heavy sigh. ‘They seemed perfectly happy with the arrangement.’

  ‘I’m sure they were. All-expenses-paid trips to five-star hotels don’t exactly grow on trees! But it was a sneaky thing to do and it was manipulative,’ she accused. ‘It was just you snapping your powerful fingers in order to get your own way, as usual.’

  ‘Or a creative way of getting you to come to Jazratan, because already I was completely intrigued by you?’ he retorted.

  ‘You just wanted me to fix your horse!’

  ‘Yes,’ he admitted, in a voice that suddenly sounded close to breaking. ‘And in the process, you somehow managed to fix me. You found a space in my heart that I didn’t even realise was vacant. And you’ve filled it, Livvy. You’ve filled it completely.’

  ‘Saladin,’ she said shakily. ‘Don’t—’

  ‘I must.’ He reached out then and took one of the hands that was gripping the steering wheel and pressed it between the sensuous warmth of his leather gloves. ‘Every word you spoke was true,’ he said quietly. ‘I was using my early marriage and my guilt as a block to forming a meaningful relationship with someone else. But I’ve realised that what I have with you transcends anything I have known before. That we have a truly adult relationship and we are equals. Yes, equals,’ he affirmed as he saw her open her mouth to object. ‘I’m not talking about the trappings of my kingdom, or the division of wealth. We are equals in the ways that matter. Or at least, I hope we are because I love you, Livvy Miller. And I’m hoping that you love me, too.’

  His words were so unexpected that for a moment Livvy thought she must have imagined them and she tried to ignore the excited leap of her heart—shaking her head with a defiance that suddenly seemed as necessary to her as breathing. ‘You’re still in love with your dead wife,’ she said.

  ‘I will always love Alya,’ he said simply. ‘But what I had with her was so different from what I had with you. She was very young and in complete thrall to me. I was her king, not her equal. And you were right. She was taken at a time when she was perfect, and that’s what her memory became to me. My single status became a kind of homage to her, as well as being a safety net behind which I could hide. When I spoke so disparagingly about romantic love, it was because I didn’t believe in it, but now I do. I didn’t think it could ever happen to me, but now it has.’ His black eyes burned into her steadily. ‘There are many different types of love, but believe me when I tell you that my heart is yours, Livvy. That I have found my equal in you. And that even though your stubbornness and refusal to do exactly as I say sometimes frustrates the hell out of me, I love you passionately and truly and steadfastly.’

  And then Livvy did believe him, because it was too big an admission for a man like Saladin to make unless he really meant it. The passion that blazed from his eyes was genuine and the conviction that deepened his voice crept over her skin like a warm glow, but still something held her back.

  ‘And I love you, too,’ she said. ‘Very, very much. But I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to be the kind of lover you need.’

  ‘And what kind of lover is that?’ he asked gently.

  ‘I’ve pretty much decided that I’m going to sell up and use the money you gave me to start my own stables,’ she said. ‘I don’t have a clue where that might be. And you’ll want a mistress, I suppose. I thought I wouldn’t be able to tolerate that kind of relationship, but now that I’ve seen you again I’m beginning to have second thoughts.’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘But when I start imagining the reality—I don’t know if I can see myself being set up in some kind of luxury apartment so that you can come and visit.’

  He frowned. ‘So that I can come and visit?’ he repeated, in a perplexed voice.

  ‘Whenever you’re in the country. Isn’t this how these things usually work?’

  His answering laugh sounded like the low roar of a lion as he gathered her into his arms and tilted her chin very tenderly with the tip of his thumb. ‘I was hoping you might return with me to Jazratan, as my queen. I was hoping you would marry me.’

  Her cheeks burned as she met his eyes, remembering the accusations he had thrown at her.

  ‘I know,’ he said ruefully. ‘But maybe I accused you of being matrimonially ambitious because already it was playing on my mind. Because I’ve realised there is no alternative scenario that I am prepared to tolerate.’ He drew in a deep breath. ‘So will you, Livvy? Will you marry me?’

  And suddenly Livvy had run out of reasons to keep telling herself that this couldn’t possibly be happening and that there must be a catch somewhere. Because there wasn’t—and when it boiled down to it, Saladin’s past didn’t matter and neither did hers. Because right then he was just a man with so much love in his eyes, which matched the great big feeling that was swelling up inside her heart and making it feel as if it were about to burst with joy.

  ‘Yes, Saladin,’ she said, putting her arms around his neck and holding on to him as if she would never let him go. ‘I’ll marry you tomorrow if you want me to.’

  EPILOGUE

  THEY MARRIED TWICE. Once in the quiet stone chapel where Livvy’s own mother and father had been wed, and once in a lavish ceremony in Jazratan, attended by world leaders and dignitaries—as well as a sizeable hunk of the horse-racing fraternity.

  At first it felt weird for Livvy to see her photo plastered all over the papers, with Saladin holding tightly on to her hand, her filmy veil held in place by a crown of diamonds and rubies and her golden dress gleaming like the coat of a palomino horse.

  She settled happily in the country she had quickly grown to love, determined to learn to speak the Jazratian language fluently and to see Burkaan winning the famous Oman Cup. And if people ever asked her how she had managed to adapt so comfortably from owning a B & B in Derbyshire to being the queen of Jazratan, she was able to answer quite honestly. She told them that the grandness of her husband’s palace never intimidated her, because wherever Saladin was felt like home. He travelled less than before, and everywhere he went he took Livvy with him—for he was eager to show off his new bride to the world.

  Livvy started working in the stables, whenever her royal role permitted it, and quickly earned herself a reputation among the staff of being gifted and reliable and never pulling rank. She liked to go riding with Saladin when the sun had started to sink low and the sting of the heat had left the day. Sometimes they rode to ‘their’ oasis, where they made love beneath the shade of the palm trees.

  After a gentle campaign she persuaded Saladin to have a ceremony declaring the beautiful rose gardens officially open—and invited Alya’s parents, along with her two brothers and their wives, as guests of honour. It wasn’t the easiest of meetings—not at first, for there were tears in Alya’s mother’s eyes as she tied a small posy of flowers to one of the intricate silver coils on the Faddi gates. And yes, Livvy saw tears in Saladin’s eyes, too. But Alya’s parents were persuaded to bring their grandsons to play there at any time, and afterwards they all sat beneath the shade of a tree, drinking jasmine tea and laughing as the two sturdy little boys toddled around among the scented bowers.

  It would be several years before Burkaan would triumph in the Oman Cup and many more before he was put out to stud, and a new foal—the image of his father—was born. But Peppa the cat grew grudgingly to accept Saladin’s presence in her mistress’s life and found herself happily living in the royal palace, enjoying the way that the staff fussed around her. There was a bit of a shock when it was discovered that she had sneaked out and mated with a stray tom who had been seen lurking around
the back of the stables—but she proved herself an exemplary mother of five kittens.

  Wightwick Manor was never sold. Saladin decided that the house should be kept as a base for them whenever they wanted to escape the desert heat to enjoy a spell in the English countryside.

  ‘And it is important that any children we may have will grow up knowing and loving their mother’s inheritance, because your roots are just as important as mine, habibi,’ he said, tenderly stroking Livvy’s head, which was currently resting upon his bare chest. ‘Don’t you agree?’

  Livvy wriggled a little, changing her position so that she could prop herself up onto her elbow and stare into the enticing gleam of her husband’s black eyes. She trailed a thoughtful path over his chest with her finger, circling lightly over the hard muscle and bone covered by all that silken skin, and it thrilled her to feel him shiver. She liked making him shiver.

  ‘I agree absolutely,’ she said as he began to brush his hand against her inner thigh and now it was her turn to shiver. ‘And in fact, that brings me very nicely to some news I have for you.’

  His hand stilled and she knew he was holding his breath—just as she’d held hers when she’d surreptitiously done the test that morning. They hadn’t actively been trying, but she knew that Saladin longed for a child of his own, and she’d been wanting to have his baby since the moment he’d slid that wedding ring on her finger.

  ‘I’m pregnant,’ she whispered. ‘I’m going to have a baby.’

  And suddenly he was laughing and kissing her and telling her how much he loved her, all at the same time. And it was only after a little time had passed that she noticed that his hand was no longer making its tantalising journey up her thigh.