The Sheikh’s Blackmailed Bride (Sheikhs of Al-Dashalid Book 2)

by Leslie North

  “You do?” Daisy’s face brightened, but then she narrowed her eyes. “Not something drastic, I hope.”

  “You know what they say about desperate times.” Then she gave Daisy a wink. “Get out of here. I’ve got it handled.”

  “See you tomorrow,” called her friend, and Catelyn listened as her footfalls grew quiet and the front door of the little office building opened and closed.

  She drained the rest of the wine and poured herself another glass. Fortifications were indeed necessary. Business was so slow that she’d had to cancel her international cruise.

  What she needed, she thought as she swiveled her chair gently back and forth, was a miracle. Was…a celebrity. The closest she’d come to a celebrity in forever was….oh.

  It was Sheikh Rami. A month ago at that party.

  It hadn’t mattered that she’d been in a hurry to leave. His face was burned into her memory. The royal, elegant lines of his cheekbones and chin. The dark eyes that held her in thrall.

  “If I could plan his wedding,” she said to no one, draining half her wine glass, “that would catapult us straight to the top.” It really would. All of New Jersey’s nouveau riche—the crowd that had limitless budgets for wedding planning and the weddings themselves—would be in awe of her if her little Elite Occasions put on an event for a member of Al-Dashalid’s royal family. Not that they’d know him specifically. The look of him was royal enough.

  While she was thinking it through, she tapped in a Google search of his name and was handsomely rewarded.

  The royal family of Al-Dashalid was well-photographed, and Rami appeared in the most photos of anyone. Many of them were from business meetings, but it was the official royal portraits that caught Catelyn’s eye. She brought up one of Rami sitting confidently upright, leaning slightly in to the camera. Even in black and white, his eyes gave her a flutter of desire.

  Or maybe it was the wine.

  No, definitely his eyes.

  He might be less awkward away from events like that cocktail party. He might be…

  The perfect groom.

  Catelyn sat bolt upright, clicking furiously through all the available photos of Rami. She clutched the glass tighter in her hand until she realized she was doing it, then set it down on the desk, carefully out of her own reach. The last thing she needed was a cascade of wine over her keyboard. It would be a distraction from the idea making its way through the pleasant buzz she was feeling. It was so close to the surface…so close.

  She found what she was looking for.

  A photo of Rami, standing alone in what looked like an outdoor garden, though—who knew?—it could have been some kind of indoor studio. It didn’t matter in the end. What mattered was that the light that shone on his face, playing over his dark hair, was golden and pure. And it came from the perfect angle to make a match.

  She saved the photo to her desktop and went hunting in another folder.

  There.

  Catelyn opened the folder and browsed through a collection they’d had photographed last summer at the sumptuous Ashford Estate in Allentown. They’d sweet-talked the management company into letting them shoot a faux ceremony early one morning so they could pitch the story to a bridal magazine for some exposure. She laughed to herself when she flipped through the photos. They’d had no budget to speak of, so Catelyn herself had posed as the bride, and Daisy had done her hair. Laura, their other partner and the third member of their trio of friends, was good at makeup, and she’d transformed Catelyn into a blonde vision. As for the groom…

  He could be replaced.

  He could literally be replaced in the photos. Catelyn had a knack for Photoshop, and if she kept the posed photos to a minimum, they’d look real enough. She went back to the photo gallery that Rami appeared in. There were several of him in the garden.

  “Yes.” Catelyn pumped her fist in the air. “I’ll just see how it looks,” she said out loud. “I don’t have to use these for the blog.”

  She set to work on combining the photos.

  He was so sexy in his dark suit. And muscled, too, as if he paid particular attention to his fitness. He must need the activity, what with all his jet-setting around the planet for business deals.

  It was probably a bad idea, what she was doing, but the hell with it. The fantasy was gorgeous. And the more she clicked and cut and pasted, the more it came to life in front of her eyes.

  It was past midnight and Catelyn’s eyes were burning by the time she finished the last photo. It had taken several hours to process all six of the ones she was thinking of using on the blog. She was committed now.

  There she stood on the left, head tilted prettily down, eyes lowered toward her bouquet. And there was Rami on the right, beaming down at her. The angle of his gaze made it seem…real. Almost completely real. She squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again.

  It could have been real.

  The wine—a third glass, now—buzzed through her veins, and her heart pounded with excitement. The photos looked gorgeous. She looked gorgeous. And Rami looked good enough to take to bed. Heat rose to her cheeks at the thought of it.

  “Oh, stop,” she said to the computer screen. She’d never see him again. He’d never see these photos. Truly, what was the risk? She’d read in an article not long ago that Al-Dashalid had certain internet restrictions put in place by the government. What were the odds that someone would come across her little blog? All of it would be entirely harmless. At worst, someone from the estate’s management team might recognize the location, but…would they even care? It was free publicity for them, too.

  Catelyn yawned in spite of her jittery excitement. It was late. Too late, honestly, to be doing this. But they needed a new blog to be live in the morning, and she needed to post those pictures before she lost her nerve.

  It was easy enough.

  She loaded the photos onto Elite Occasions’ website and typed up a cheeky bit of text to accompany them. "A royal wedding?" she wrote. "The Ashford Estate is fit for a prince, and they’ve found one in Sheikh Rami!"

  There.

  She read over the words and deleted the bit about the prince.

  Then she added it back in.

  He was never going to know about this. To most people in New Jersey, he was a handsome model. They wouldn’t recognize him as part of Al-Dashalid’s royal family. And most people in New Jersey wouldn’t recognize her, either. Not until they booked her to hire their weddings. Catelyn’s job was to make people’s fantasies come to life. They’d understand if she’d created one of her own.

  She hit publish on the blog and stood up. The wine was quickly wearing off, which was good—she’d be alert on her walk home from the office. It was only three blocks.

  Before she could bring herself to leave, she looked at the live version of the blog post.

  God, those pictures…they were stunning. She’d done an excellent job.

  And, she decided once and for all, it was all going to work out. At best, those photos would garner them some quick business. At worst, nobody would notice and the business would fail.

  She grabbed her purse from a hook by the door and slung it over her elbow. That wouldn’t happen, she thought as she locked up the office and started down the street. The business would survive. It was all going to work out.

  Really, it was.

  3

  Issam couldn’t stop laughing.

  Rami’s normally stoic and serious youngest brother, who took his responsibilities regarding the country’s security both at the borders and at the palace seriously, leaned against the mahogany desk, bracing himself with one hand so he could wipe away tears with the other.

  “Stop,” said Rami, who could not tear his eyes from the computer screen.

  “I’ll stop,” agreed Issam, straightening up and taking a deep breath. “I’ll stop.”

  There was a moment of silence and then a choked snort from Issam.

  “Oh, for god’s sake. Let it out,” said Rami irrita
bly. He didn’t know if he was irritated. Or rather—he didn’t know if he was only irritated. The blog post Issam had just shown him was utterly baffling.

  It was a blog post about his own wedding.

  A wedding he had never attended. He’d certainly never arranged it. And yet—there he was, standing in the photographs. He zoomed in on one, expanding it to fill the screen. At full size, the photos on TMZ blurred—they weren’t high resolution—and the edges around his body…well, it could go either way. Someone could easily make the argument that he’d had a secret wedding in the States.

  And someone had.

  One Catelyn Wolf.

  He sat back in his chair. How much had she paid someone to photoshop these images? They’d done a hell of a job. Rami recognized himself from a shoot they’d done in the garden for some profile or other. But the positioning had been masterful. He’d been happy in the original photos, but arranged like this, his expression could be interpreted as barely contained love.

  Rami wasn’t about to admit to Issam, who had doubled over again with his glee, that the sight of Catelyn in a white dress had him hard as a rock. It didn’t matter at all that they hadn’t seen each other or spoken since that god-awful event at Lydia’s house. The photos of her in that dress, with the sun sparkling in her blonde hair, set his heart beating in a frenzied rhythm.

  He took a deep breath and tried unsuccessfully to shove those memories of her at the party out of his mind. He’d found her breathtakingly attractive then, with that black dress hugging her curves. He’d wanted to drag his fingers across the line of her collarbone. He’d wanted to do more than that, given a quiet room with a lock on the door.

  But a fake wedding? That was beyond the pale. Especially since it made him cringe to think of how horribly awkward he’d been the moment Catelyn’s mother joined the conversation. Of course, the woman had been interested in all the ways Catelyn’s upcoming solo trip could go wrong, but Rami had been so taken with Catelyn that he hadn’t been able to muzzle himself. And the way Lydia had approached her…

  The two were closer than he’d thought, despite Catelyn’s hurry to leave.

  “I’m sorry,” said Issam, finally getting control of himself. “I had to show it to you. I probably shouldn’t have, but look at those photos. I couldn’t help it.” Rami heard another bout of his brother’s laughter bubble up, but he managed to contain it.

  “I have a right to know who I’m married to,” Rami quipped. Issam’s laughter was starting to needle him.

  “But her?” Issam jabbed a finger at the screen. “A wedding in a place like that? She might as well be American royalty.”

  “She’s not. She only looks that way in the photos.” It was true. Catelyn did look regal in that pure white dress, with the shimmering veil flowing from the sleek bun at the back of her head.

  “Never in a million years.” Issam’s voice was full of awe. “I’m shocked at how real it looks, when it could never—”

  “And why not?” Rami stood, pushing his chair back from the computer.

  Issam grinned at him, raising one eyebrow. “Are you being serious?”

  “Yes.” The brothers looked at the TMZ page again. There was Rami, looking down at bridal-queen Catelyn as if he were utterly in love. “Why couldn’t it happen?”

  “Well,” Issam began. “She’s American, for one—”

  “I’d say that makes very little difference in this family. Or are you suggesting that Kyril and Hannah don’t have a legitimate marriage?”

  “I would never,” Issam said quickly. “He’s head over heels for her. There’s no doubt in my mind. And little Inan is the perfect combination of them both.” He laughed, kindly this time. “He’s going to give Kyril a run for his money.” Kyril was their eldest brother and shouldered the burden of ruling Al-Dashalid in the wake of their father’s retirement. He’d had a whirlwind romance with a woman named Hannah, who had quickly become a treasured member of the family.

  “Maybe too much of a run,” mused Rami.

  “What does that mean?”

  “You don’t think he’s a little too—” He motioned vaguely in the air. “In over his head with all this fatherhood and marriage business?” Rami had no doubt that Kyril loved Hannah as deeply as he’d ever loved anything, but he wondered if the domestic life was really that enchanting. It was equally possible that Kyril had been so swept up in the romance of it all that he didn’t know what he was getting into. What if he woke up one day and realized it had all been a mistake?

  “No,” said Issam slowly. “Anyway, we’re talking about your big wedding celebration, not Kyril’s. You’d never make it with an American woman.”

  “Oh, so you’re trying to insult me. Why don’t you go find something else to do? Maybe a trip around all the borders.”

  “I’m not.” Issam’s tone softened. “You’re the most serious one of us all, Rami. American women—they’re spitfires. They’re not interested in men who hardly ever smile, who hardly ever have a good time.”

  “I resent that.”

  “Look at your face right now.”

  “I can’t. It’s my own face.”

  “If I took a picture, all you’d see is your frown.”

  Rami shrugged it off. “I have fun. I can’t help it if it’s not your idea of a good time.” They both silently looked at the monitor again. The American TMZ homepage wasn’t viewable by the general public in Al-Dashalid, but the palace Internet wasn’t restricted. “How did you find this, anyway?”

  “A Google alert.”

  “You have a Google alert for me?” Rami looked at Issam out of the corner of his eye. “Why?”

  “I have them for everyone in the family. Our security isn’t only a physical matter.” Now an edge crept into Issam’s voice. He took his work seriously, even as he laughed at Rami for doing the same.

  “No,” Rami agreed. “It would be nice to have some more business security than I currently do.”

  “Did a deal fall through?” The two brothers angled themselves away from the computer, facing each other now.

  “Not yet.”

  “That doesn’t sound encouraging.” Issam was looking for more information, and Rami found himself wanting to get it off his chest.

  “I got an invitation to another weekend of negotiations with Morris International in Texas.”

  Issam cocked his head to the side. “That sounds like a positive.”

  “I thought it was. But a man I met at the last party, a friend of Lydia Morris, sent me a private message. Apparently she didn’t think we were friendly enough.”

  “That’s…odd.”

  “It’s her way of doing business,” Rami offered. “Her friend did me a favor by warning me. I need a better connection.”

  The idea hit him like a bolt of lightning.

  “A…closer connection.”

  Lydia Morris might not be Rami’s biggest fan, but she loved Catelyn. She’d badly wanted her to stay at the party, and it made Rami think there was a history between the two women. A friendship at least, and maybe a stronger bond than that.

  The wedding between Rami and Catelyn hadn’t been real. But if it were…

  “What’s that look on your face?” Issam said suspiciously. “You look like you’re plotting.”

  “Maybe I am,” Rami was being cryptic, and he knew it. But Issam had spent long enough laughing at him today. He’d let him in on the plan when it was fully formed. Or…when it was a fantasy turned reality. “Don’t you have work to do?”

  Issam raised both hands in the air. “I know when I’m not wanted.”

  “See you at dinner.” Rami wanted his plan set in stone before then. Issam left him to his own devices, and he went back to the computer.

  It didn’t take long to discover why Catelyn had done what she’d done. Her wedding planning business—Elite Occasions—was in need of clients, if their blog was any indication. She wanted to use those fake photos to give them “a royal reputation.” He chuckled t
o himself. She’d probably thought he’d never see these photos.

  It made perfect sense.

  And honestly, so did the wedding.

  If he were married to Catelyn, he’d become—he sensed it—a close contact of Lydia’s. The next Google search revealed that Lydia had mentored Catelyn, confirming his hunch. Catelyn had only left Morris International to start her own business. On top of it all, ancient laws in Rami’s country required him to marry by the age of thirty in order to wield his power as a member of the royal family. He was twenty-nine.

  Best of all, Catelyn needed him, too.

  The wedding was out in the open, being reported by the tabloids. The news that Rami was married to a gorgeous, well-connected American woman would be marred if people found out it wasn’t real.

  There was a simple solution to that: make it real.

  He’d turn Catelyn’s fantasy into a reality.

  He’d get a negotiation partner to win over Lydia Morris.

  And she’d get a real royal wedding.

  4

  “It’s not right.” Laura twisted her red hair behind her, looping it into a bun that tumbled down her back the moment she let it go. “Accepting all this coverage for content that’s not entirely truthful? It doesn’t seem right.”

  “I don’t know.” Daisy looked down at the notepad in front of her. She hadn’t written down anything. What was there to take notes about? This entire meeting had been about the TMZ coverage. Tipsy Catelyn’s blog had gotten a lot more attention than she’d bargained for.

  Out in the main office, the phone rang again. Catelyn studied her friends gathered around the little round table in their conference room. She didn’t like the looks on their faces.

  “I’ll get that.” She jogged out to the front office. It had been like this for four days solid. Three days after the blog post, TMZ had discovered that Sheikh Rami of Al-Dashalid had had a secret wedding in New Jersey to a wedding planner named Catelyn Wolf. Since then, the phones had been ringing off the hook. They’d booked more weddings in the past four days than the past four months combined. Catelyn snatched the phone out of the cradle on the third ring.