CHAPTER ONE
“WHAT ARE YOUR requirements in a bride, Sheikh Al-Ghamdi?”
Sheikh Zayn Al-Ghamdi stared unseeing at the flat-screen monitor that was attached to the wall in his office. Words came to his lips and fell away.
He had known for a while now that this final step of settling down and marrying was coming at him. It had been drilled into him since childhood that he would one day marry a woman who would serve him well as a wife and his country as sheikha.
Of course she would be mostly an image that would be carefully cultivated and supervised to please the people of his country. He had also been taught, by example of his own parents, that her role even in his life would be very minor. Having his children and continuing the legacy of the Al-Ghamdi family was going to be her primary duty.
Last week when Benjamin had invited him and two other men to confab, following the exposé in Celebrity Spy!, he had been the one to suggest that all his problems would be solved if he married and started producing heirs.
All three men, his rivals for years, turned reluctant allies—Benjamin Carter, Dante Mancini and Xander Trakas—had looked at him as if he’d grown two horns and a tail. Until they had seen the sense in his idea after their initial grumbling and posturing.
But faced with the question asked by Ms. Young, the billionaire matchmaker recommended by Xander, he found himself bewildered.
In the little slice of his life that he was actually the master of, Zayn resented being brought to heel like a dog by some bottom-feeding, trashy tabloid.
But thanks to the dirty exposé on the four of them, his image was utterly besmirched. His parents, even though retired from public life, still had lectured him over his image, the effect of every small minutia of his life over the political climate of Khaleej. Even worse, his sister Mirah’s fiancé’s family was talking about canceling the match.
Conservative to the core, they didn’t believe he had a right to any kind of life, much less the kind of reckless debauchery the article hinted at. But that was not acceptable.
Ten years younger than he was, his sister had been a ray of sunshine in an otherwise solitary life. From their parents’ aloof, almost cold, upbringing, to the rigors of preparing for a political life, if not for Mirah, Zayn would have known no true joy. No companionship at all.
“Sheikh Al-Ghamdi?”
“My bride needs to be attractive and young. Attractive enough for me to be able to look at her for the next five decades. And healthy enough to have children. Someone not approaching or close to thirty.”
Ms. Young made scrupulous notes but Zayn saw the vertical frown between her brows. “Is there a problem, Ms. Young?”
Her gaze couldn’t quite hide her judgment. “Women are known to have children even at the advanced age of thirty, Your Highness.”
“Yes, but women reaching thirty have stubbornly decided ideas, Ms. Young. They will not be malleable. I might not meet their expectations of an ideal man, either.”
The woman didn’t quite snort but Zayn had a feeling she wanted to. “A woman ambitious about her career will not do. She’ll have to understand that her role in life is to complement me.”
“So beautiful but not really smart.”
“Yes. She will have to come to me as a virgin.”
Outrage flared in Ms. Young’s expressive eyes. “That’s barbaric.”
“That’s the only way I can ensure there’s no future scandal or shame attached to her name.”
“Virginity need not be required. We check their backgrounds very thoroughly before we make matches based on your requirements.”
“Ex-boyfriends and old lovers have a way of showing up in one’s life to make the most trouble. I would like to avoid any future scandals concerning my Sheikha and her past. This ensures it.”
“Beautiful, young, malleable, not particularly smart and a virgin. I don’t know whether to say this is the easiest or the hardest match I’ve ever made, Your Highness.”
“Are you saying you cannot find me a woman to match those requirements, Ms. Young?”
“Of course I can, Your Highness. But I just wondered if love was going to be a part of the equation.”
“You run a matchmaking business for billionaires, Ms. Young. Has love ever been part of it?”
“I was curious about your opinion.”
“Some foolish, fantastic notion will not make my marriage a success. I require a wife who will yield to my superior judgment in all areas of our life and be an asset to my political life.”
“A kind of accessory?”
“The perfect accessory, if you will,” he finished, amused at the flicker of anger in Ms. Young’s eyes.
He had known for a long time that was all a wife could be for a man like him.
Two weeks later
In all her carefully mapped-out adult life, Amalia Christensen had never imagined that one bright, hot-as-Hades day she would be waiting in the administrative offices of the ruling sheikh, Zayn Al-Ghamdi. In the spectacularly grand palace of her father’s homeland, Khaleej, she stared at the breathtaking domes and ornately lavish halls decorated in pure gold.
In the time that she’d lived with her mother in Scandinavia, a lot of things had changed in Khaleej, and for the better.
With infrastructure improved to rival any western nation, and its meteoric entry into the global finance world, Khaleej was now a flawless blend of artistry, tradition and technology.
If not for the constant knot of worry in her gut about her twin, Aslam, she’d have been clicking pics and Instagramming left, right and center. The rust-colored palace with its turrets and domes, sitting in the center of hundreds of acres of landscaped gardens and a golden sandy beach corralling it on one side was a visual feast.
But in all the years that she’d yearned to visit Khaleej, she hadn’t imagined doing it this desperate way. The beauty of Khaleej and her reconnection with her roots was empty, meaningless, without Aslam by her side.
If only she’d visited last year; if only she’d understood how restless and angry Aslam was...
It had taken her two months after arriving in Sintar, the capital city of Khaleej, to get this meeting with a palace official. After one short visit with Aslam, who had poured out the entire story to her in the jail; several tense, monosyllabic conversations with her father over the phone—Amalia had no interest in addressing the decade-old silence that still stood between them—followed by endless reaching out to friends of Aslam and learning about the instigator of the whole escapade; and finally, asking her boss Massimiliano to use his connections and arrange this meeting for her.
Massi had laughed and asked if it would bring back the best executive assistant he’d ever had to work for him. Glad that he hadn’t written her off during her long-term leave, she’d promised to return soon. Much as she missed her career and cringed at the dent in her savings, she couldn’t leave until Aslam was free.
The sound of the glistening blue waters of the gulf gently breaking onto the pristinely white sandy beach, visible to the right of her, added a background score to the pregnant silence of the corridor.
She’d been told the palace was usually a beehive of activity. Instead a sort of hush reigned over the scarcely occupied hall.
Neither did she forget the diatribe that had flown out of the official’s mouth that Amalia’s appointment had been scheduled on that particular day.
There was hardly any staff around, either.
What was going on?
She’d never been a royalist and yet the recent exposé on the four bachelors, one of whom was Sheikh Zayn, had drawn her interest. Apparently, the sheikh led a very colorful and inventive private life away from the highly conservative media of the country and the grueling lifestyle of his powerful position.
Amalia had seen the numerous articles that had mushroomed following the exposé, questioning Sheikh Zayn’s dedication toward the governing of Khaleej, the conservative ideals of most of the cabinet and his very image in the eyes of his people.
She glanced at her watch one more time and stood up from the comfortable sofa. Her thighs groaned from sitting for far too long.
Gold piping in the mosaic tiles winked at her. A quick glance behind her showed no hovering security guard, and she slipped through a grand archway into a long corridor that looked like it belonged in a fantasy novel.
A blast of heat hit her and she realized that the corridor opened into a courtyard on the left. Pristine white marble gleamed for a mile or more in front of her. In a moment of uncharacteristic impulsiveness, Amalia slipped her feet out of her pumps.
With the cold marble kissing the overheated soles of her feet and a soft breeze coming in from the bay touching her cheeks, the sheer beauty of her surroundings calmed something inside her.
In the three and a half hours since the harried-looking official had asked her to wait, if you didn’t count the hour she’d spent standing at the reception, waiting for the said official to appear in the first place, Amalia had begun to see a pattern emerge. Guests were being shown into this wing of the palace with the utmost secrecy and security for there would be a sudden rise in the activity around the reception area every half hour or so.
And with each group, there had been almost always one designer-clad, elegantly coiffed woman in the center, quite like a queen bee in the center of her hive.