Shackled to the Sheikh(23)

‘He’s the only desert brother left,’ added Amber, ‘and now he will need a woman by his side, more than ever.’

Tora said nothing, just bounced Atiyah on her knee, silently cursing this stupid marriage and the position it put her in, because it wasn’t her place to say anything. Just then the peacocks put in an appearance and distracted everyone and the conversation changed direction and Tora could breathe again and enjoy being in the company of other women.

They drank honey tea and laughed and talked of their children and their husbands. They were bright and beautiful like butterflies in the garden and Tora found herself wishing she could be one of them, but that would mean marrying Rashid for real.

‘Forgive me for interrupting,’ Kareem said, appearing at the doorway to the pavilion with a gracious bow, ‘but His Excellency would like to see you privately, Sheikha Victoria.’

Aisha’s ears pricked up first. ‘Sheikha?’

‘I thought that’s what he said,’ Marina said.

Amber was staring at her strangely. ‘But wouldn’t that mean...?’

Tora shook her head, excusing herself as she swept past them, her face ablaze with heat. ‘It’s not what you think...’



‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Rashid a few minutes later, rubbing his chin as he paced the Persian rug in his big study, ‘now that my friends are here with their wives and families, we need to be careful about them getting the wrong idea about us.’

He paced the other way. ‘I know my friends and they’ll blow it out of all proportion so I’ve decided it’s best if I ask Kareem to be careful how he addresses you and I tell them that you’re simply filling in for the role of my consort for the coronation. I think it’s better that they don’t know about the marriage at all.’

He suddenly stopped pacing and looked up at her, his eyes panicked. ‘What do you think?’

Tora swallowed as she stood there, her fingers tangling as she selected her words carefully. ‘I think it might actually be a bit late for that.’





CHAPTER TWELVE

‘WHAT?’ ZOLTAN’S HEAD swivelled from Aisha to Rashid when the women joined them before lunch. ‘You’re already married? You sly dog! And you made out like it was the furthest thing from your mind.’

‘But it is!’

‘So how does that work when you’re already married?’

‘Because it’s not a real marriage!’

‘I want to know how come you didn’t invite your best friends?’ demanded Bahir.

‘Yeah,’ Kadar said. ‘We invited you to our weddings.’

‘Right, you really want to know why I didn’t invite you to my fake marriage? Maybe it’s because Kareem married us in the plane on the way over here. Sorry, but when you’re flying at forty thousand feet it makes it a bit awkward to get the wedding invitations out.’

‘But when we were talking before, you acted as if you weren’t married at all,’ said Zoltan. ‘Like anything like that happening was years away.’

‘Did any of you guys hear me? It’s not a real marriage!’ He gave a long sigh. He’d known this would happen. He’d damn well known it. ‘Look, I had to marry someone, in order to adopt Atiyah.’

‘Why did you have to adopt Atiyah?’ asked Marina. ‘She’s your sister, isn’t she?’

‘Yes, but our father was supposed to have died in a helicopter crash thirty years ago and the people believe that and— Oh, what the hell does it matter why? Kareem said she had to be adopted and in order to do that, I had to be married. End of story.’

‘Hardly!’ snorted Bahir. ‘We’re just getting to the good stuff. So this woman volunteered to marry you to get you out of a tight spot, did she?’

‘Tora,’ said Aisha. ‘Her name is Tora. I like her.’

‘Me, too,’ said her sister. ‘And she’s gorgeous.’

‘She’s Australian,’ chimed in Amber with a grin. ‘What’s not to love?’

‘Agreed,’ said Kadar, giving his wife a squeeze as he kissed her cheek. ‘This Tora must be some kind of a masochist to volunteer to marry you. What was in it for her?’

‘What do you mean, what was in it for her?’

‘What, she did it out of the goodness of her heart?’

‘I bet it wasn’t for his bedside manner.’

‘Maybe it was,’ suggested Kadar.

‘Okay, okay,’ said Rashid, who’d had enough, holding up one hand to silence his friends. ‘So there may have been a financial inducement involved. We made a deal. So what?’

‘Alas, poor Rashid,’ Zoltan said with his hand over his heart. ‘Unloved and unwanted, left on the shelf, the only one of the desert brothers who actually had to resort to paying a woman to get her to marry him.’

‘Give me a break,’ growled Rashid. ‘Don’t you guys make out you wrote the guidebook on romance—we all know that’s a lie.’

‘But none of us had to break out the chequebook.’

Aisha looked around. ‘Why isn’t Tora here? You did invite her to have lunch with us, didn’t you?’

He rolled his eyes.

‘You didn’t!’ said Marina, eyes wide with accusation. ‘Don’t tell me you treat her like the hired help?’

‘She is the hired help.’ But that wasn’t true either, he had to concede. She was more than that. Much more. He just didn’t know what to do about it. ‘Anyway, I did invite her to lunch and she declined—said she didn’t want to get in the way of a desert-brothers-and-their-families reunion  . Is that good enough for you?’

Nobody else thought so, which was why one minute later he was on his way to insist Tora join them for lunch.



Tora turned off her tablet still smiling. Sally had emailed with the news that Steve was installed at the clinic and that treatment had commenced and to keep her fingers and toes crossed.

Good news. She sent up a silent prayer. At least something was going right at last.

‘Excuse me, Tora,’ Yousra said. ‘His Excellency is here to see you.’

Tora braced herself. She’d known there’d be a fallout from his friends discovering about the marriage, although for the life of her she couldn’t believe how he had ever thought he’d manage to keep them from finding out.

She expected anger. What she didn’t expect was him insisting she join him and his desert brothers and their wives for lunch.

‘Are you sure?’ she said. ‘It won’t give them the wrong idea?’

‘They’ve already got the wrong idea. How about we prove them wrong and show them there’s nothing going on? Besides,’ he added, ‘it seems you’re a hit with the women. They threatened that if I failed to bring you back, then they would come and bodily drag you to lunch themselves.’

She laughed. ‘In that case, how can I refuse?’

‘Did you want to bring Atiyah?’

Tora shook her head. ‘Yousra will have no problem. Atiyah had so much fun with the children this morning, she’ll probably sleep for a week. I think the children coming is the best thing that could have happened.’

‘Speaking of Atiyah,’ he said as they walked down the passageway, past fabulous treasures, brightly coloured urns and dishes set in recesses in the walls, ‘have you thought any more about staying on? At least until you can give me some more lessons in handling her.’

Tora sucked in a lungful of air. She hadn’t for a moment believed he’d been serious when he’d suggested it and no, she hadn’t given it any more thought. She couldn’t stay longer and he couldn’t expect her to. It wasn’t fair on Atiyah and it certainly wasn’t fair on her.

As it was, she was struggling to remember all the reasons she shouldn’t care about Rashid. She was only a temporary fixture but the longer she was here, the more she liked him. And she didn’t want to feel that way, not when it would make it harder to forget him when she was gone.

Not when it would be easier to resist him...

‘Rashid—’

‘No,’ he said, stopping her just shy of the doors beyond which his friends waited, ‘don’t say anything now. Take your time to think about it. I do want the best for Atiyah, even if it doesn’t seem like it. I’m learning, Tora, what she needs. Maybe too slowly for your liking, but I am determined to do right by her.’

He took her hand then, wrapping it between his own, warming her skin as his eyes were warm and tugging on her heart.

‘Just promise me you’ll think about it. I know it’s asking a lot but I won’t expect you to stay for nothing. We can work something out.

‘What I want now is for Atiyah to feel secure, and she feels secure with you. So will you think about it? Will you think about what it would take to make you stay—even just a little longer?’

Tora looked up at this man, who once she thought was hard and unflinching, arrogant and overbearing, but who she knew to be trying his best.

‘I’ll think about it,’ she promised, although she knew that whatever it would take to make her stay was nothing to how much it would ultimately cost.

‘Finally,’ came the cry from inside when Rashid opened the door. ‘We were about to send out a posse.’