by Penny Jordan
A CELEBRATION OF PENNY JORDAN
Two favorite stories in one collectible volume
The lives of two sheikhs are changed forever...when they each meet the woman of their dreams.
One Night with the Sheikh
The searing attraction between Sheikh Xavier Al Agir and Mariella Sutton is instant and all consuming. When a storm leaves Mariella stranded at Xavier’s desert home, desire soon takes over, leading to a night neither will soon forget—for more reasons than they can imagine!
The Sheikh’s Blackmailed Mistress
Life has taught Prince Vereham al a’Karim bin Hakar to control his emotions. But an unexpected encounter with the enchanting Samantha McLellan shakes Vere’s steely reserve. Though love is not an option for the sheikh, he knows that somehow he must have Sam.
Praise for New York Times bestselling author
Penny Jordan
“Women everywhere will find pieces
of themselves in Jordan’s characters.”
—Publishers Weekly
“One Night with the Sheikh is a deliciously wonderful
tale with blazing sexual chemistry, a warm and
engaging romance and two larger-than-life characters.”
—RT Book Reviews
“Jordan’s record is phenomenal.”
—The Bookseller
“The Christmas Bride by Penny Jordan is a well-told
love story...The beautiful settings and sensual love
scenes add charm and zest to this holiday romance.”
—RT Book Reviews on The Sheikh’s Blackmailed Mistress
“[Penny Jordan’s novels] touch every emotion.”
—RT Book Reviews
Penny Jordan, one of Harlequin’s most popular authors, sadly passed away on December 31st, 2011. She leaves an outstanding legacy, having sold over 100 million books around the world. Penny wrote a total of 187 novels for Harlequin, including the phenomenally successful A Perfect Family, To Love, Honor and Betray, The Perfect Sinner and Power Play, which hit the New York Times bestseller list. Loved for her distinctive voice, she was successful in part because she continually broke boundaries and evolved her writing to keep up with readers’ changing tastes. Publishers Weekly said about Jordan, “Women everywhere will find pieces of themselves in Jordan’s characters.” It is perhaps this gift for sympathetic characterization that helps to explain her enduring appeal.
Penny Jordan
The Sheikh’s Baby
One Night with the Sheikh
Contents
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
EPILOGUE
PROLOGUE
‘YOU won’t forget your mummy whilst I’m away working, will you, my precious baby girl?’
Mariella watched sympathetically as her younger half-sister Tanya’s eyes filled with tears as she handed her precious four-month-old daughter over to her.
‘I know that Fleur couldn’t have anyone better to look after her than you, Ella,’ Tanya acknowledged emotionally. ‘After all, you became my mother as well as my sister when Mum and Dad died. I just wish I could have got a job that didn’t mean I have to be away, but this six-week contract on this cruise liner pays so well that I just can’t afford to give it up! Yes, I know you would support us both,’ she continued before Mariella could say anything, ‘but that isn’t what I want. I want to be as independent as I can be. Anyway,’ she told Mariella bitterly, ‘supporting Fleur financially should be her father’s job and not yours! What I ever saw in that weak, lying rat of a man, I’ll never know! My wonderful sexy dream fantasy of a sheikh! Some dream he turned out to be—more of a nightmare.’
Mariella let her vent her feelings, without comment, knowing just how devastated and hurt her half-sister had been when her lover had abandoned her.
‘You don’t have to do this, Tanya,’ she told her gently now. ‘I’m earning enough to support us all, and this house is big enough for the three of us.’
‘Oh, Mariella, I know that. I know you’d starve yourself to give to me and Fleur, but that isn’t what I want. You’ve done so much for me since Mum and Dad died. You were only eighteen, after all, three years younger than I am now, when we found out that there wasn’t going to be any money! I suppose Dad wanted to give us all so much that he simply didn’t think about what would happen if anything happened to him, and with him remortgaging the house because of the stock market crisis.’
Silently the sisters looked at one another.
Both of them had inherited their mother’s delicate bone structure and heart-shaped face, along with her strawberry-blonde hair and peach perfect complexion, but where Tanya had inherited her father’s height and hazel eyes, Mariella had inherited intensely turquoise eyes from her father, the man who had decided less than a year after her birth that the responsibilities of fatherhood and marriage simply weren’t for him and walked out on his wife and baby daughter.
‘It’s not fair,’ Tanya had mock complained to her when she had announced that she was not going to go to university as Mariella had hoped she would, but wanted to pursue a career singing and dancing. ‘If I had your eyes, I’d have a ready-made advantage over everyone else whenever I went for a part.’
Although she knew how headstrong and impulsive her half-sister could be, Mariella admired her for what she was doing, even whilst she worried about how she was going to cope with being away from her daughter for six long weeks.
Whatever small differences there might ever have been between them, in their passionate and protective love for baby Fleur they were totally united.
‘I’ll ring every day,’ Tanya promised chokily.
‘And I want to know everything she does, Ella... Every tiny little thing. Oh, Ella...I feel so guilty about all of this...I know how you suffered as a little girl because your father wasn’t there; because he’d abandoned you and Mum...and I know too how lucky I was to have both Mum and Dad and you there for me, and yet here is my poor little Fleur...’
Holding Fleur in one arm, Mariella hugged her sister tightly with the other.
‘The taxi’s here,’ she warned, before releasing Tanya and tenderly brushing the tears off her face.
* * *
‘ELLA! I’VE GOT the most fab commission for you.’
Recognising the voice of her agent, Mariella shifted Fleur’s warm weight from one arm to the other, smiling lovingly at her as the baby guzzled happily on her bottle. ‘It’s racehorses, dozens of them. The client owns his own racing yard out in Zuran. He’s a member of the Zuran royal family, and apparently he heard about you via that chap in Kentucky, whose Kentucky Derby winner you painted the other year. Anyway—he wants to fly you out there, all expenses paid, so that you can discuss the project with him, see the beasts in situ so to speak!’
Mariella laughed. Kate, with her immaculate designer clothes and equally immaculate all-white apartment, was not an animal lover. ‘Ella, what is that noise?’ she demanded plaintively.
Mariella laughed. ‘It’s Fleur. I’m just giving her her bottle. It does sound promising, but right now I’m pretty booked with commissions, and, to be honest, I don’t really think that going to Zuran is on. For a start, I’m
looking after Fleur for the next six weeks, and—’
‘That’s no problem—I am sure Prince Sayid wouldn’t mind you taking her with you and February is the perfect time of year to go there; the weather will be wonderful—warm and mild. Ella, you can’t turn this one down. Just what I’d earn in commission is making my mouth water,’ she admitted frankly.
Ella laughed. ‘Ah, I see...’
She had begun painting animal ‘portraits’ almost by accident. Her painting had been merely a small hobby and her ‘pet portraits’ done for friends, but her reputation had spread by word of mouth, and eventually she had decided to make it her full-time career.
Now she earned what to her was a very comfortable living from her work, and she knew she would normally have leapt at the chance she was being offered.
‘I’d love to go, Kate,’ she replied. ‘But Fleur is my priority right now...’
‘Well, don’t turn it down out of hand,’ Kate warned her. ‘Like I said, there’s no reason why Fleur shouldn’t go with you. You won’t be working on this trip, it’s only a mutual look-see. You’d be gone just over a week, and forget any idiotic ideas you might have about potential health hazards to any young baby out there—Zuran is second to none when it comes to being a world-class cosmopolitan city!’
One of the reasons Mariella had originally bought her small three-storey house had been because of the excellent north-facing window on the top floor, which she had turned into her studio. With Fleur contently fed she looked out at the grey early February day. The rain that had been sheeting down all week had turned to a mere drizzle. A walk in the park and some fresh air would do them both good, Mariella decided, putting Fleur down whilst she went to prepare her pram.
It had been her decision to buy the baby a huge old-fashioned ‘nanny’ style pram.
‘You can use the running stroller if you want,’ she had informed Tanya firmly. ‘But when I walk her it will be in a traditional vehicle and at a traditional pace!’
‘Ella, you talk as though you were sixty-eight, not twenty-eight,’ Tanya had protested. Perhaps she was a little bit old-fashioned, Mariella conceded as she started to remove the blankets from the running stroller to put in the pram. Her father’s desertion and her mother’s consequent vulnerability and helplessness had left her with a very strong determination to stand on her own two feet, and an extremely strong disinclination to allow herself to be emotionally vulnerable through loving a man too much as her mother had done.
After all, as Tanya had proved, it was possible to inherit a tendency!
She frowned as her fingers brushed against a balled-up piece of paper as she removed the bedding. It could easily have scratched Fleur’s delicate skin. She was on the point of throwing it away, when a line of her sister’s handwriting suddenly caught her eye.
The piece of paper was a letter, Mariella recognised, and she could see the name and address on it quite plainly.
‘Sheikh Xavier Al Agir, No. 24, Quaffire Beach Road, Zuran City.’
Her heart thudded guiltily as she smoothed out the note and read the first line.
‘You have destroyed my life and Fleur’s and I shall hate you for ever for that,’ she read.
The letter was obviously one Tanya had written but not sent to Fleur’s father.
Fleur had always refused to discuss her relationship with him other than to say that he was a very wealthy Middle Eastern man whom she had met whilst working in a nightclub as a singer and dancer.
Privately Mariella had always thought that he had escaped far too lightly from his responsibility to her sister and to his baby...
And now she had discovered he lived in Zuran! Frowning slightly, she carefully folded the note. She had no right to interfere, she knew that, but... Would she be interfering or merely acknowledging the validity of fate? How many, many times over the years had she longed for the opportunity to confront her own father and tell him just what she thought of him, how he had broken her mother’s heart and almost destroyed her life?
Her father, like her mother, was now dead, and could never make reparation for what he had done; but Tanya’s lover was very much alive, and it would give her a great deal of satisfaction to tell him just what she thought of him!
Blowing Fleur a kiss, she hurried over to the telephone and quickly dialled her agent’s number.
‘Kate,’ she began. ‘I’ve been thinking...about that trip to Zuran...’
‘You’ve changed your mind! Wonderful... You won’t regret it, Ella, I promise you. I mean, this guy is mega, mega rich, and what he’s prepared to pay to have his four-legged friends immortalised in oils...’
Listening to her, Mariella reflected ruefully that on occasion Kate could show a depressing tendency to favour the material over the emotional, but she was an excellent agent!
CHAPTER ONE
ZURAN had to have the cleanest airport in the world, Mariella decided as she retrieved her luggage and headed for the exit area, and Kate had been right about Prince Sayid’s willingness to spare no expense to get her to Zuran. In the first-class cabin of their aircraft Fleur had been treated like a little princess!
Arrangements had been made for her to be chauffeur-driven to the Beach Club Resort where she would be staying along with Fleur in their own private bungalow, and, thanks to the prince’s influence with the right diplomatic departments, all the necessary arrangements to get Fleur a passport, with Tanya’s permission, had also been accomplished at top speed!
Craning her neck, Mariella looked round the busy arrivals area searching for someone carrying a placard bearing her name.
Behind her she was vaguely aware of something going on, not so much because of an increase in the noise level but rather because of the way it suddenly fell away. Alerted by some sixth sense, Mariella turned round, her eyes widening as she watched the way the crowds parted to make way for the small phalanx of white-robed men. Like traditional outriders, they carved a wide path through the crowd to allow the man striding behind them to cross the marble floor unhindered. Taller than the others, he looked neither to the right nor the left so that Mariella’s artist’s eye was able to observe the patrician arrogance of a profile that could only belong to a man used to being in command.
Instinctively, without being able to substantiate her reaction, Mariella didn’t like him. He was too arrogant, too aware of his own importance. So physically and powerfully male, perfect in a way that sent a hundred unwanted sexual messages skittering over her suddenly very sensitive nerve endings. He had drawn level with her, and, whether because she sensed her antagonism or because Mariella had gripped her just a little bit more tightly, Fleur suddenly broke the silence with a small cry.
Instantly the dark head turned in their direction whilst the equally dark eyes burned into Mariella’s. Mariella registered his gaze as her body gave a small, tight shudder.
The dark eyes stripped her, not of her clothes, but of her skin, her defences, Mariella recognised shakily, leaving them shredded down to her bones; her soul! But his gaze lingered longest of all on her face. Her eyes, she realised as she returned his remote and disdainful look of contempt with one of smouldering fury.
Fleur made another small sound and immediately his gaze switched from her to the baby and stayed there for a while, before it switched back to her own as though checking something.
Whatever it had been it brought a sneering look of contempt to his mouth that curved it into an even more dangerous line, Mariella noticed as her body responded to his reaction with a slow burn of colour along her cheekbones.
How dared he look at her with such contempt? She didn’t care who or what he was! Once she imagined her father must have looked so at her mother before walking out on her, before leaving her to sink into the needy despair and dependence that Mariella remembered so starkly from her childhood, until her stepfather with
his love and kindness had come to lift them both out of the dark, mean place her father had left them in.
As swiftly and as silently as they had arrived the small group of men swept through the hall and left. As a production it had been ridiculously overdone and theatrical, Mariella decided as she found the chauffeur patiently waiting for her and allowed herself to be carefully driven along with Fleur in the air-conditioned luxury of the limousine.
* * *
THE BEACH CLUB Resort was everything a five-star resort should be and more, Mariella acknowledged a couple of hours later when she had finished her exploration of her new surroundings.
The bungalow she had been allocated had two large bedrooms, each with its own bathroom, a small kitchen area, a living room, a private patio complete with whirlpool, but it was the obvious forethought that had gone into equipping the place for a very young baby that most impressed Mariella. A good-sized cot had been provided and placed next to the bed, the bathroom was equipped with what was obviously a brand-new baby bath, baby toiletries had been added to the luxurious range provided for her own use, and in the fridge was a very full selection of top-of-the-range baby foods. However, it was the letter that had been left for her stating that the Beach Club’s chef would prepare fresh organic baby food for Fleur on request that really made Mariella feel she could relax.
Having settled Fleur, who fell asleep as easily and comfortably as though she was in her own home, Mariella checked her watch and then put a call through to her sister. Tanya’s cruise liner was on an extended tour of the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico.
‘Ella, how’s Fleur?’ Tanya demanded immediately.
‘Fast asleep,’ Mariella told her. ‘She was fine on the flight and got thoroughly spoiled. How are you?’
‘Oh...fine... Very busy...we’re doing two shows each evening, with no time off, but as I said the money is excellent. Ella, I must go... Give Fleur a big kiss for me.’