The Sheik's Unsuitable Bride

by Liz Fielding

  She choked and the water took the only available exit and shot out of her nose.

  Gasping, shaking her head, completely unable to speak, she leapt to her feet and rushed off in the direction of the washroom.

  Now what was he playing at?

  Since she had no possible way of knowing, she concentrated on the practicalities of mopping the water from the front of her shirt while she regained her breath and her composure. Took her time about refastening the unravelling mess of her hair. Groped in her pocket for lipstick and came up empty. Remembered, too late, that she’d left it in her jacket pocket. Just as well; her lips had got her into enough trouble already without drawing unnecessary attention to them.

  Finally, unable to put it off any longer, she returned to the terrace, where the two men were deep in a conversation involving boats.

  Zahir looked up. ‘Okay?’

  ‘Fine. Thank you,’ she said primly.

  His only response was one of those quiet smiles that undid all the hard work of the last five minutes. At least with regard to breathing and composure.

  It was all very well saying that he’d be in Paris tomorrow-and no, she couldn’t possibly go with him-but she had the rest of today to get through before then.

  And no escape.

  The rest of lunch, however, proved uneventful since Zahir was more interested in what Jeff had to say than in winding her up. And, like an idiot, she actually found herself missing their dangerous exchanges.

  Just how stupid could one woman get?

  Afterwards, the two men set off to tour the marina and it was Jeff, not Zahir, who glanced back and said, ‘Can we tempt you to join us, or are you more interested in the shops than boats?’

  Freddy, Diana thought, would have been in his element amongst the boats. He loved going on river trips. And that was what they’d do this half-term. A jaunt up to Greenwich on the river to look at the Cutty Sark and the Maritime Museum. They could even take a ride on a narrow boat along the Regent’s Canal to the Zoo.

  She realised that they were waiting for her answer.

  Or had she been waiting for Zahir to add his voice to the invitation? Encourage her to join them?

  ‘The shops have it, every time,’ she replied quickly, taking the wiser course and putting as much distance between them as possible.

  The way things were going, he was bound to say something, give her one of those ironic looks that would leave her with an uncontrollable desire to push him into the harbour-and how would she explain that to Sadie?

  ‘How long have I got?’

  ‘How long do you need?’ Zahir replied. Then, with a smile that suggested he knew exactly what was going on in her head, said, ‘An hour should do it.’

  She collected her wallet from the glove box, stuffed it into her trouser pocket and set off for the town centre. Although the possibility that she’d be able to afford anything in the small, exotic boutiques they’d passed on their way down to the quay was totally nil, she’d enjoy the window-shopping. She might be short of spare cash, but she could dream.

  But Sweethaven, she discovered, had more to offer than just designer boutiques and when she saw a real old-fashioned bookshop she pushed open the door and went inside.

  She browsed for something for her father. Found a paperback thriller that she knew he’d love. Then she spotted a circular stand containing the small children’s books that she’d loved as a child and, as she spun it, looking for something that Freddy would enjoy, she found herself face to face with a familiar title in the fairy tale series.

  She took it down, flipping through it, smiling at the remembered pictures, including the Prince, no longer a frog but respectably buttoned up to the neck in a fancy uniform as he stood beside the astonished princess.

  On an impulse she picked it up, found another with every kind of nautical knot for Freddy, before realising that time was running out and hurrying back to the quayside car park. Zahir and Jeff were already there.

  ‘I’m sorry…’ she began as Jeff shook hands with Zahir, raised a hand to her and returned to his office.

  ‘No problem. We’ve only just got here. Did you find anything exciting?’ Then, seeing the name on the paper carrier she was holding, ‘Books?’

  She’d been going to give The Princess and the Frog to him, just to make him laugh. Quite suddenly, it didn’t seem such a bright idea. ‘They’re children’s books,’ she said.

  ‘Oh? Whose children?’

  Tell him…

  Tell him and see that look? The speculative You’ve-got-a-kid? look. The one that says, Whoa! Easy…

  While she stood there, frozen, he took the carrier from her, opened it and took out the thriller and held it up. ‘This is what you give children to read?’

  She snatched it from him. ‘That’s for my dad.’

  He took another look in the bag and this time came up with the book of knots that she’d bought for Freddy. ‘He’s a sailor?’

  ‘He was a taxi-driver. He had a stroke.’

  That set him back. ‘I’m sorry, Diana.’

  ‘He’s not an invalid.’

  ‘But he can’t drive?’

  ‘No.’

  He gave her a long measuring look, then took out the last book. And that made him smile. ‘Oh, I get it. You wanted to check your version against the original.’

  She shook her head. ‘I was close enough, but when I saw it I thought of Ameerah,’ she said, fingers crossed. ‘Maybe she’d like it to go with her snow globe?’

  ‘I’m sure she’d love it.’

  ‘Good.’ She reclaimed the bag, put the books away. ‘I’ll wrap it for her,’ she said, tucking it beneath her seat. ‘You can give it to her on Saturday.’

  ‘Why don’t you give it to her yourself?’

  ‘She doesn’t know me,’ she said abruptly.

  ‘You can remedy that while we chug down the Regent’s Canal.’

  She wondered if he’d be as eager for her company if she suggested she bring her five-year-old son along for the ride. The one whose father had been a villain.

  ‘I don’t think so. Are you ready to go?’

  He nodded but, as she backed out of the car to open the rear door for him, she discovered that he’d walked around and opened the front passenger door.

  ‘If I sit in the back, Jeff, who’s watching us from his office window right now, might just get the impression that you’re no more than my chauffeur,’ he said in response to her obvious confusion. ‘You wouldn’t want that, would you?’

  ‘I don’t actually give a damn what he thinks,’ she replied. Definitely not a response out of the perfect chauffeur’s handbook, but then he wasn’t the perfect client. ‘But you’re the boss. If you want to sit in front, then sit in front.’

  ‘Thank you for that. I was beginning to wonder for a moment. About being the boss.’

  ‘Making me responsible for contract negotiation must have gone to my head,’ she replied, before replacing her sunglasses and sliding in beside him. Bumping shoulders as he leaned towards her as he pulled down the seat belt, so that she jumped. Smiling at her as he slid it home with a click.

  He was much too close. It was more than the physical effect of his wide shoulders, overflowing the seat beside her. His presence was invading her space, along with some subtle male scent that made him impossible to ignore and, despite her determinedly spirited, in-your-face response, her hand was shaking as she attempted to programme the SatNav with their next destination.

  Five years and she hadn’t once been tempted. Had never taken a second look at a man, no matter how gorgeous. Particularly if they were gorgeous.

  Pete O’Hanlon had head-turning good looks. His only ‘good’ characteristic, but when you were eighteen and deep in lust you didn’t see that.

  Since then, she’d never felt even a twinge of that lose-your-head, forget lose-your-heart-desire that she’d read about. Had heard her girlfriends talk about. Hadn’t understood it.

  Not that she was t
aking any credit for that. Her life was complicated enough without making things even more difficult for herself. Motherhood, guilt had drained every scrap of emotion she’d had to spare. Add a full-time job and who had time?

  And then…wham. Out of the blue there it was. The pumping heart, the racing pulse, something darker, more urgent, that was totally different, indescribably new, that she didn’t even want to think about.

  Making a pretence of double checking the address, she said, ‘Do I get an explanation for what happened back there? The real reason you took me into your meeting with Jeff?’

  He shook his head. ‘It was-nothing.’

  ‘Pretending that I was what? Your tame number-cruncher querying his figures? That was nothing?’

  ‘Jeff was always going to agree to those changes-they were fair, believe me-but, since you were there I realised I could cut short the haggling.’

  ‘Really?’ The question was rhetorical. Ironic.

  ‘Really. What man could resist flattering a pretty woman?’

  ‘Remind me never to do business with you.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have any reason to regret it, Diana.’

  Was that a proposition?

  She glanced at him and then just as quickly turned away as the tremor affecting her hand raced through the rest of her body so that she had to grip the steering wheel.

  It sounded horribly like one.

  ‘I’ve got nothing to offer you,’ she managed, ‘other than entertainment value and, just once, a short cut to a signature on the dotted line.’

  ‘Diana-’

  ‘I hope you both had a jolly good laugh when I snorted a mouthful of water down my nose.’

  ‘It was an interesting reaction to my invitation to visit Nadira.’

  Without meaning to, she looked at him. He was not laughing. Far from it.

  ‘That was an invitation?’ she asked disparagingly, as she tore her gaze away from him.

  ‘You want a gold-edged card? Sheikh Zahir al-Khatib requests the pleasure…’

  ‘I want absolutely nothing,’ she said, furious with him. Furious with herself for letting him see that she cared. ‘I just want to do the job I’m paid for.’

  ‘It’s no big deal, Diana,’ he said carelessly. ‘There’ll be spare room on the media junket.’

  ‘Oh, right. Now I’m tempted.’

  How dared he! How damn well dared he invite her to his fancy resort for a week of sex in the sand-including her as a tax write-off along with the freebie-demanding journalists-and say it was ‘no big deal’! That she would have no reason to regret it.

  Too bad that the first man she had looked at since Freddy’s father was not only out of her reach, but a twenty-four carat…sheikh. Her judgement where men were concerned was still, it seemed, just as rotten…

  Zahir had actually been congratulating himself on his self-control as he’d climbed out of the car on their arrival at Sweethaven.

  There had been a difficult moment right at the beginning of the journey when he could have easily lost it. He only had to look at Diana Metcalfe for his mind to take off without him. But he’d got a grip, had jerked it back into line, forcing himself to concentrate on what had to be done. Ignore the possibilities of what he deeply, seriously, wanted to do…

  Had managed, just about, to keep his tongue between his teeth and his head down-mostly-for nearly two hours and since, like him, Diana had, after that dangerous first exchange, taken avoiding action and hidden her expressive eyes behind dark glasses, they’d travelled from the heart of London to the coast in a silence broken only by the occasional interjection of the navigation system offering direction.

  It should have made things easier but, without the oddly intimate exchanges through the rear-view mirror that were driving this unexpected, unlooked for, impossible connection, he’d found himself noticing other things.

  The shape of her ear-small and slightly pointed at the tip.

  A fine gold chain around her neck that was only visible when she leaned forward slightly to check that the road was clear at a junction.

  The smooth curve of her cheek as she glanced sideways to check her wing mirrors. He’d found himself forgetting the document he was holding as he’d been captivated by the slow unwinding of a strand of hair.

  It was scarcely surprising that when, on their arrival at Sweethaven he’d been confronted by her standing stiffly, almost to attention, as he’d stepped out of the car-he’d lost it so completely that he’d found himself issuing not an invitation, but an order for her to join him.

  Actually, on reflection, he hadn’t got that bit wrong. The order part. An invitation would never have got her. An invitation offered her a choice which she would have had the good sense to decline.

  She knew, they both knew, that there was, or at least should be, a barrier-a glass wall-between them. It had shattered, not when he’d kissed her, but with that ridiculous antique snow globe.

  Diana, trapped in her role, was doing her best to repair the damage and he knew that nothing other than a direct order would have brought her into the yacht club. If he’d left it at that it might, just, have been okay, but he’d had to throw in that comment about her hat…And he refused to fool himself about the reason for it.

  He’d wanted to see her hair again, the way it had been last night, when she’d stood by the river with the breeze tugging strands loose from her pins. Softly curled chestnut silk that had brushed against her neck, her cheek, his hand…

  And it had been downhill all the way from there.

  He’d stepped way beyond anything that could be considered acceptable behaviour when she’d challenged him and first his body, and then his mouth, had bypassed his brain.

  He knew it would be a mistake to look at her now.

  Could not stop himself.

  She was staring straight ahead, the only movement the flicker of her eyes as she checked the mirror. If he’d been bright enough to sit in the back, he could have used that to catch her attention…

  But then he’d have missed this profile. Missed her stubborn little chin, her mouth set firm, almost as if she were fighting to keep it shut. There was not a sign of that sweet dimple, just a flush to her cheeks that gave a whole new meaning to the old ‘you look magnificent when you’re angry’ cliché.

  The strange thing was, he couldn’t remember ever having made a woman angry before. But then he’d never felt like this about any woman and maybe that was the point. To feel passionately, it had to matter. To her as well as to him.

  Maybe that was why he was angry with himself. He didn’t do this. Had never, in all his thirty years, lost his head over a woman, no matter how beautiful, elegant, clever. His detachment-and theirs-had been a safety net, an acknowledgement that no matter how enjoyable the relationship, it was superficial, fleeting. Because, even though he’d deferred the inevitable, putting it off for as long as possible, he’d always known that his future was, as his cousin had suggested, written.

  That his choice of bride was not his alone, but part of a tradition that went back through the ages as a way of strengthening tribal bonds.

  His head understood, accepted that kind of power-broking, but then he’d walked out of the airport into the sunlight of a May morning and, in an instant, or so it seemed now, he’d been possessed by a girl who had nothing to commend her but an hourglass figure, a dimple and a total inability to keep her mouth shut.

  And it was that mouth, her complete lack of control over it, rather than her luscious figure, that had hooked his attention. Had somehow enchanted him.

  Diana slowed, signalled, turned into the boatyard. Gravel crunched beneath the tyres for a moment and then she drew up in the lee of a boathouse and the silence returned.

  She made no move to get out, open the door for him, but remained with her hands on the wheel, looking straight ahead. He unclipped his seatbelt, half turned towards her and when that didn’t get her attention either, he said, ‘I’m sorry.’

  He found the rar
ely used words unexpectedly easy to say. Maybe because he meant them. He was sorry. Wished he could start the day over. Start from where they’d left off last night.

  If it hadn’t been for that damned email, reminding him that, while he’d escaped one future, there were some duties he could not escape…

  Diana’s breath caught on a little sigh, her lips softened, but still she didn’t look at him, still held herself aloof, at a distance.

  ‘If I promise that I will never embarrass you in that way again, do you think you might just deign to come down off your high horse and talk to me?’

  ‘High horse!’ She swung round and glared at him. ‘I’m not on any high horse!’

  Indignant was better than silent. Indignant, her eyes flashed green. Indignant might so easily spill over into laughter. She laughed so easily. Made him want to laugh as no woman ever had…

  ‘Eighteen hands at the very least,’ he said, pushing it.

  She shrugged, spread her hands in an ‘and that means?’ gesture.

  He responded by raising a hand above his shoulder.

  She swallowed. ‘Good grief, we’re talking carthorse, here.’ Then, when he didn’t respond with anything more than a twitch of his eyebrows, ‘I might-might-just admit to a slightly overgrown Shetland pony.’

  ‘One of those small, plump creatures with the uncontrollable manes?’ he enquired, encouraged by the fleeting appearance of that dimple.

  ‘They’re the ones,’ she admitted, doing her best to swallow down the smile that was trying very hard to break through. Then, having, against all the odds, succeeded, she added, ‘Much more my style than some long-legged thoroughbred, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘A perfect match,’ he said.

  For once she had no swift comeback and for the longest moment they just looked at each other, neither of them saying a word. But smiling was the furthest thing from either of their minds.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ‘D ON’T you have an appointment to keep?’

  It was Diana, not him, who finally broke the silence after what might have been an age, but was nowhere near long enough.