Bought by the Sheikh

by Diana Fraser

  Bought by the Sheikh

  Diana Fraser

  Bought by the Sheikh

  by Diana Fraser

  * * *

  © 2020 Diana Fraser

  978-1-927323-91-5 (epub)

  She was bought once, he’ll buy her again…

  —The Sheikhs of Havilah—

  The Sheikh’s Secret Baby

  Bought by the Sheikh

  The Sheikh’s Forbidden Lover

  Surrender to the Sheikh

  * * *

  —Desert Kings—

  Wanted: A Wife for the Sheikh

  The Sheikh’s Bargain Bride

  The Sheikh's Lost Lover

  Awakened by the Sheikh

  Claimed by the Sheikh

  Wanted: A Baby by the Sheikh

  For more information about this author, visit:

  https://www.dianafraser.net

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is co-incidental. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the US Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior permission of the author.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  The Sheikh’s Forbidden Lover

  Also by Diana Fraser

  Prologue

  “I can’t go to Gharb Havilah,” Gabrielle Taylor repeated, this time with more emphasis. “I simply cannot go.” She cleared her throat and sat up straighter, eyeing her professor directly, willing her to accept her refusal without explanation. But one look at her narrowing gaze, and she knew it wasn’t going to be so easy.

  Not for the first time, Gabrielle wished that her head of department was a stereotypical Oxford University professor—absent-minded and with a less than firm grip on the college’s finances. Instead, it had been her luck to have someone intent on turning her Oxford college into a profitable institution.

  “Gabrielle, I’ll do you the courtesy of speaking plainly. If you don’t take this consultancy at Gharb Havilah, if you don’t go to the palace and do what’s required, you will no longer have a place at this college. In fact, not only will you not have a place, nor will precisely four of your colleagues. We cannot afford to keep our present number of staff without this funding. Very generous funding, I might add.”

  Gabrielle swallowed, trying to moisten her suddenly dry mouth. “There must be some mistake.” As her professor leaned forward across the desk, she realized it was her who’d made the mistake.

  “No mistake, Gabrielle. The college has been running on empty for years, supported by the coffers of other more prosperous colleges. We need this grant, and you will get it for us.”

  She nodded, realizing she’d been cornered. She had nowhere else to turn. This college had been her home, her savior, her whole life, since well, she never thought of what went before—it was still too painful. And to return to that? She leaned forward, gesturing impotently. “But you don’t understand.”

  The professor shook her head impatiently. “You’re right, I don’t. You’ve told me nothing that would suggest a return trip to Gharb Havilah wouldn’t be appropriate, no, wouldn’t be ideal at this point in your career. You lived there for the first eighteen years of your life and on and off since. You know its culture, its artifacts first hand, as well as the people.” She sat back in her chair and threw her hands in the air. “Come on, Gabrielle, what could prevent you from returning there?”

  She should tell her. Now. She sucked in stuffy, over-heated air, and tried to grasp at reasons, at words, but only one thing entered her mind and refused to leave—the image of a man, a man who she’d loved so much that she’d walked away from him. She looked up into the gray eyes of this Oxford don and knew that there was no point in telling her. There was no way that those eyes would be swayed by love. But, apparently, although she couldn’t convey the truth, she’d managed to convey her resignation to her professor.

  “Good. Then we won’t hear any more about the matter. Make your travel arrangements with my secretary, sort out your personal life, and be in Gharb Havilah in one month.”

  “A month? Is that all the notice I get?”

  “And how much do you need?” The professor’s sarcastic tone was barely concealed. “Your rooms at the college will still be here when you return. You have no pets, no dependents. Maybe you have a man, or woman, to whom you’re close?”

  Gabrielle shook her head vehemently. She’d made sure she had no ties, especially of the heart. Because you couldn’t love someone if your heart was broken. It was as if the edges of her heart had cracked and sealed over, never to heal—cooled by her academic work, cauterized by her loneliness.

  “Good. Then that’s settled. You’ll fulfill the requirements of the contract to the letter.”

  “But I’m an archaeologist. What do I know about public relations?”

  “They obviously believe you know something.” The professor scrolled through the contract on her laptop. “Here it is. They want stories, apparently. Stories around the artifacts about which you are the foremost expert.” She crossed her arms and turned her steely gaze upon Gabrielle once more.

  “Stories?”

  “Stories. Make them up if you have to, but fulfill this contract because otherwise there won’t be a job for you to return to.”

  “And it’s for only a month?”

  “One month. The contract ends on the day of the country’s bi-millennial celebration. I’m sure you’ll be able to make up stories for one month?” She snapped her laptop shut—a cue for Gabrielle to leave. “There’s money at stake, and there’s the future of the college at stake. It depends on you. Don’t let me down.”

  Gabrielle’s mouth was dry with fear as she left the office. It wasn’t until she was the other side of the office door that the full force of her repressed emotions washed over her. She leaned back against the closed door, suddenly feeling faint.

  “Are you okay?” the professor’s secretary asked. “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

  Gabrielle nodded. “Yes,” she replied ambiguously. She walked past the secretary, who was apparently reassured that Gabrielle was okay. But Gabrielle was far from okay, because she’d been confronted with a ghost—a ghost from her past, a ghost she’d hoped she’d never see again, a ghost she’d had no choice but to leave twelve months earlier.

  Chapter 1

  King Zavian bin Ameen Al Rasheed checked the clock, picked up another report from the pile, and continued to dictate to his secretary. But his mind refused to focus completely on his paperwork. A part of it drifted to the image of a woman—long blonde hair, and eyes that could wound at a thousand feet. But now, instead of imagining her amid the spires and steeples of Oxford, wondering what she was doing, he knew what she was doing. She would be putting away her laptop—he knew there was no way Gabrielle would miss working on an uninterrupted twelve-hour flight—and doing up her seat belt as the plane prepared for its final descent into Gharb Havilah.

  He fell silent and turned his head to look out the window, up into the white-hot sky of a June morning, and imagined he could see her plane. And her on it, her eyes moving to the window, seeking out her first glimps
e of Gharb Havilah after twelve long months.

  “Your Majesty?”

  He turned back to his secretary. “Yes?”

  “Did you wish to complete your response to this report?”

  He looked down at the papers and tried to refocus. He had no idea where he was, which was exactly why he needed Gabrielle in Gharb Havilah.

  His secretary prompted him with the last words he’d dictated, enabling him to continue. When he’d finished, he gestured with his hand. “You may go.” As soon as his secretary had left, his gaze returned to the clock, and his vizier quietly entered the room.

  “Ah, Naseer, it’s time, then.”

  The vizier’s hooded eyes narrowed with disapproval. Zavian knew his vizier’s thoughts on his plans, but, for once, wasn’t prepared to discuss them. They were nonnegotiable. There was no way he could continue with half his mind on Gabrielle and half on running his kingdom. No, he wanted her here, and he wanted her out of his system. The reality of being with her must surely reduce his need for her, bring it back into proportion. Because if there was one thing he’d learned from his vizier, it was that familiarity bred contempt. But he didn’t require contempt. He needed only to slacken his obsession, and slake his thirst, so he didn’t need her anymore.

  Zavian walked toward the door, but before he could leave, Naseer coughed. Zavian swallowed back his impatience. He respected Naseer. He’d been his father’s advisor and got the job done, and done well. But one thing he wished his vizier wasn’t, was so subtle. It made him impatient. “What is it, Naseer?” He tapped his fingers against the door handle, wanting to get going, to see the person who’d consumed his every waking and sleeping moment for the past twelve months.

  “She isn’t on the flight.”

  Zavian ground his teeth. He’d been precise about the contract. Nothing had been left to chance, let alone the travel arrangements. “Get that professor on the phone and demand to know why.”

  Again the deceptively obsequious bow of the head—his vizier was anything but submissive. “There is no need for that.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I have tracked her movements. She’s traveled overland. She’s still arriving today, but by a different entry point.”

  Zavian drew in a jagged breath. He’d done everything to bring her to him, and she was close now, and yet she still managed to change his plans without his knowledge. Nothing had changed. Catching Gabrielle was like trying to hold water in the palm of your hand, like trying to contain starlight on an oasis. You think you have it for a few satisfactory moments only to find that it’s left you, following a course of its own devising, leaving you all the more obsessed with retrieving it again.

  “She cashed in her first-class ticket and is journeying through neighboring countries and entering through the desert border control. No doubt reminiscing about growing up with her ridiculous grandfather.”

  Zavian decided to overlook his vizier’s slur on Gabrielle’s grandfather—the result of an old feud that went back far beyond Zavian’s time. Zavian had always liked Gabrielle’s grandfather. More than liked—he’d been there for Zavian when his own family hadn’t. “Take me there.”

  “What is the point? She’ll be arriving at the palace later today as arranged.”

  “The point is, Naseer, that I wish to see her arrive. I wish to see her walk into my country with my own eyes. I need to know she’s here.”

  His vizier shook his head. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  “Of course. As you, yourself, have said, obsessions result from a lack. I intend to make sure I have no lack, and then the obsession will ease.”

  “It may not ease completely.”

  “It doesn’t need to. Anything less than an obsession I can deal with, anything less than an obsession can be buried deep.”

  Naseer nodded, his mouth twisting as he resisted vocalizing his doubts, which Zavian could read in his eyes. “I have a car waiting.”

  As Zavian strode through the old palace, along the secret corridors constructed by his great grandfather for security, his thoughts were still of Gabrielle. He knew what she was doing. He’d made sure she had to come, and she was trying to arrive incognito, trying to resist his command. She surely couldn’t have forgotten what life was like here. How he controlled everything, just as his father had done before him, and his before him. She’d always thought she was better than him, that she could outwit him. She was an innocent still. An innocent with whom he was obsessed. But not for much longer.

  It was a half-hour winding drive to the border crossing, up through the narrow mountain range which divided the high desert from the plain upon which the city lay. A cluster of palm trees indicated the site of what was once a small village centered around a well. The village was long gone, cleared by his unscrupulous great grandfather, replaced by utilitarian buildings for the border guards.

  “Stop here.” They parked some distance from the other cars—one, a taxi, the others no doubt belonging to the border control officers—and watched from the shade of the palm grove. He glanced at his driver, who’d pressed his earpiece closer to his ear.

  “Five minutes,” said the driver, knowing what his king required—accurate information at all times.

  Zavian stepped out of the car and stood under the tree beside the oasis, filled after the recent rains. He looked out to the quiet, sun-bleached desert where nothing moved. Immediately in front of him was his own border control hut. Shimmering in the distance he could see the hut of the border control belonging to the neighboring country, Tawazun, with whom the three countries which comprised the ancient lands of Havilah hoped to unite through marriage. But Zavian had no thoughts of the Tawazun princess, with whom his marriage was being brokered at this very moment.

  Between Tawazun’s border and his own was an empty no-man’s-land, broken only by the barest of tracks. This was a place where Bedouin had lived for centuries, their movements ebbing and flowing with the seasons. Trust the arrogant Gabrielle to imagine she could use the route undetected. No, Zavian reflected. Not arrogant. Gabrielle was many things, but she wasn’t arrogant. Her decision was more likely a result of a naive sentimentality.

  A radio crackled with the jarring guitar riff of an American pop song, its electronic whine incongruous in the setting. His eyes watered as he concentrated on the white light of the far checkpoint. His eyes narrowed as he found what he was looking for—a swirl of sand that filled the bright blue sky and sent a jolt through his body. He sucked in the hot, dry air to calm his response to the merest suggestion of her presence.

  She emerged from the shadows of the lone building to walk the five-hundred-yard stretch through no-man’s-land, the details of her form slowly becoming visible beneath the moving cloud of sand. She was wearing a full-length gray abaya with a long scarf around her head, which the desert breeze lifted until it became one with the cloud of sand which punctuated each step. Finally, she stopped to speak to border control, her hand pressed to her chest, trying to keep her scarf in place while presenting her passport documents.

  She could have been anyone. Large sunglasses covered her eyes, and her robes were cheap, the sort a common Bedouin woman in the market might have worn. She wanted to pass unnoticed. She’d failed. There was nothing about her movements, or figure, that would ever allow her to pass unnoticed, not to his eyes anyway. She had a grace, a swaying feminine gait, which was entirely her own, altogether seductive, even if she was completely unaware of it. It was natural, he knew that much. Undesigned. And he felt it all the more keenly because of it.

  The land through which she’d just walked was stony and barren—a fitting entry—belonging not to one nation or another, displaced, just like she’d always been. He turned his back on her and returned to the car. He nodded to his driver, and the car purred into motion, leaving behind the lone woman as she re-entered his country. He glanced into the wing mirror and saw a long strand of blonde hair fly out of her abaya, teased by the wind, as she turned at the
sound of his car leaving. He remembered the texture of her hair, like silk. He rubbed his fingers together as if reliving the feel of it between his fingertips. He swallowed and looked away.

  * * *

  Gabrielle was beginning to regret her impulsive desire to enter Gharb Havilah from the desert. Somehow she’d forgotten the intensity of the heat. Even the short walk between countries, through no-man’s-land, had been challenging, the heat scorching her throat, the wind drying her eyes. She’d forgotten how inhospitable the desert was, how alien, how unforgiving to the people who made their home there. But more than that, she’d forgotten how much she loved it—not in an intellectual way, but at a deep visceral level which clawed at her gut. Its beauty wasn’t picture postcard perfect but as raw and uncompromising as its ruler.

  She grabbed her scarf and swept it around her face, as she walked the last few yards across the stony, barren land to the Gharb Havilah checkpoint. Both guards were outside watching her approach, which alone indicated how infrequently the border crossing was used. She wasn’t even entirely sure why she’d decided to come overland through the mountains where there was no internet. A desire to be incognito, perhaps? Maybe. But also an instinctive need to take things slowly, to re-acquaint herself with the country a little at a time, to let it seep into her being. Far better this than to be offloaded into Gharb Havilah’s modern airport where she’d have trouble adjusting from her English world to the country in which she’d been raised.