Shackled to the Sheikh(27)

As it happens, I won’t need to mortgage my home to help you out—we’ll never have to mortgage anything ever again!—as I’ve stumbled on the mother lode: a rich petroleum billionaire who has royal connections. I know! The dollar signs in my eyes lit up too! I am confident I will be able to send you at least half a million dollars in one or two days.

Hang in there and keep watching that trust account—and keep listening for the ka-ching!

It’s coming!

Your cousin

Victoria

PS Yes, blood really is thicker than water.

Rashid’s blood ran so thick and cold it was practically curdling in his veins. A rich petroleum billionaire who has royal connections. The dollar signs in my eyes lit up too!

Something new and fragile threatened to crumble inside him then, his faith in her wanting to shatter into tiny pieces to scatter on the desert winds.

‘You see, Excellency,’ said Kareem, ‘why I thought you might be interested in reading the contents.’

He could see all right, but no, this was Tora they were talking about. ‘It cannot be true.’ No way could it be true. This could not be Tora writing this. And even if it was... He flicked the paper in his hand. ‘Surely this is some kind of joke?’

‘I am sorry, sire, we thought the same, but there is more. It seems this Matthew Burgess and a solicitor colleague are both being investigated by the financial authorities for misappropriation of client funds.’

‘There must be a misunderstanding, then. If this is the cousin Tora told me about, she doesn’t have anything to do with him.’

Kareem bowed his head.

‘What?’ demanded Rashid.

‘I wish I could say there had been some kind of mistake, but the solicitor’s account at the heart of the fraud case—it is the same account the sheikha had us transfer the quarter of a million dollars to.’ He paused. ‘And there is evidence that the sheikha had repeated visits and phone calls to her cousin’s office in Sydney before she came to Qajaran.’

‘But she told me that she has nothing to do with the cousin who lives in Sydney. Is there another cousin?’

Kareem bowed again. ‘I am sorry, sire. There is only the one.’

And Rashid’s fragile new world splintered around him, leaving him shell-shocked and raw again, just as he’d been when he’d learned of his father’s three-decade deception. But Tora’s deception cut still deeper, because she’d played him for a fool.

‘It’s not about money,’ she’d told him, after sending this message to her cousin.

It wasn’t about money?

Liar.

‘So her cousin is a crook,’ said Rashid tightly. ‘Which is no doubt why she needed the quarter of a million dollars so urgently, and another half million besides, so she could try to bail him out.’

‘So it would seem, sire.’

And Rashid closed his eyes and turned his head to the ceiling. He had to hand it to her—all that talk that money couldn’t fix things. All that holding out on him while all the time comforting him, reassuring him, making herself indispensable to him. All the while making out that she cared for Atiyah when it appeared now that all she had been concerned about had been riches.

His riches.

Betrayal wrapped its poisoned arms about him. There was a reason he didn’t get close to anyone. There was a reason he preferred to wander this world alone.

‘Kareem, as soon as the desert brothers and their wives have left today, I want you to remove Atiyah from Tora’s suite and place a guard on her door. From then on until she leaves here, the sheikha is under house arrest.’

Kareem inclined his head. ‘It will be done. I am sorry, sire.’

‘Why are you sorry?’

‘For pressing the urgency of your marriage to adopt Atiyah.’

‘God, Kareem, it wasn’t your fault I got lumbered with Tora. I chose her. I should have waited for you to find me a proper wife.’

‘I did think, for a time, that she would make a good sheikha.’

Rashid ground his teeth together. He’d been thinking along the same lines. More fool him.



Tora took coffee and yoghurt with fruit on the terrace feeling happier than she’d felt for what seemed like ever. She ached in all kinds of places she hadn’t known could ache and she didn’t mind a bit because every twinge reminded her of why she ached and how she’d earned it, and every memory made her smile anew.

Because she’d spent a night making passionate love with Rashid.

Not sex. Love.

It was mad. She’d known Rashid for such a short time, but what she felt for him was special. Love? She didn’t know, but she felt the bloom of warmth every time she thought of it. It was a new discovery, shiny and pretty and wondrous, and she wanted to take it out and examine it and hold it close to her heart.

Beside her on a rug under a sun shade Atiyah practised her push-ups, gurgling happily, and all of a sudden flipped herself over. She lay there on her back, looking totally surprised at her different view of the world.

 ‘Oh, you clever girl,’ Tora said, clapping her hands at this early milestone, and Atiyah broke into a gummy grin, suddenly delighted with herself.

And Tora couldn’t wait to tell Rashid.

Surely this day could not get any more perfect?





CHAPTER FOURTEEN

THE WEATHER HAD turned humid and oppressive, the kind of day that made your clothes stick to your skin and made you want to stay in the cool inside the thick palace walls, and it was late afternoon before the two remaining women had a chance to venture outside to sit and drink tea by the pool in the courtyard before Aisha had to depart.

They had bade goodbye to Marina and Amber and their families earlier in the day and now Tora and Aisha sat in the shade, baby Atiyah lying sleeping in a cradle that Tora set swaying with a gentle push every little while, while Aisha’s two-year-old twins ran around chasing each other. Jalil was bigger, and faster on his feet, but Kadija was more agile and would dart away at the last moment, shrieking in delight as her brother lunged for her and snatched only handfuls of air.

‘Your children are beautiful,’ Tora said, more than a little wistful that they would soon be gone. It had been hard for her to say goodbye to Marina and Amber, who had both hugged her and said they hoped to see her ‘next time’. She hoped to see them again, too, but she couldn’t afford to imagine herself a permanent place in Rashid’s future on the strength of one night and a mere request to stay longer. No matter what this new-found emotion centred at her heart wove into wanting. It was all too new and there were too many unknowns, and what Rashid felt and wanted was the biggest unknown of them all.

Aisha beamed suddenly beside her, unable to suppress a smile. ‘Thank you,’ she said, putting her hand low over her belly and looking up at Tora with bright shining eyes as she reached across and squeezed Tora’s hand with the other. ‘I’ve been waiting to share the news with Zoltan ever since I had it confirmed today, but he and Rashid have been so busy. I told Marina and Amber just before they left, and I know we haven’t known each other very long, but I’m bursting with the news and you feel like a friend already.’ She took a breather. ‘Jalil and Kadija are going to have a little brother or sister.’

‘That’s wonderful news,’ Tora said. ‘I’m so honoured that you’d tell me. Congratulations!’

‘Thank you.’ Aisha hugged her hands in her lap as she watched her twins. ‘Zoltan will be so pleased. He thought after me getting pregnant so quickly with the twins that it would happen again just as easily.’ Tora saw a glimmer of pain in her eyes and the words she hesitated over, the words she left unsaid. ‘Of course, it wasn’t that easy at all. But now...’ and Aisha smiled again and looked radiant with it ‘...now he will be so thrilled.’

‘You two are so much in love,’ Tora said on a sigh. ‘You deserve every happiness.’

Aisha nodded, adding a conspiratorial smile. ‘Thank you, but, I have to admit, it didn’t start out that way.’

‘Really? You’re both so perfect for each other, I imagined you two falling in love at first sight.’

Aisha laughed. ‘That’s very funny, given the first time we met I bit him on his hand, although, to be fair, he was wearing a mask so I couldn’t see how handsome he was.’ She seemed to think about that a second. ‘No, actually that would have made no difference, because the second time we met I clawed his face with my nails, though that was after he told me we were to be married. Against my will, as it happened.’

‘You were forced to marry Zoltan? That seriously happens?’

She nodded. ‘Yes. It happens and I had no choice. I wanted to marry for love but my father said I had to marry Zoltan, or both our kingdoms would be compromised.’

‘And so you went through with it.’

‘I did. Zoltan wasn’t happy though, when I refused to sleep with him on our wedding night.’

Tora was so shocked she laughed. ‘You didn’t?’

Aisha smiled and shrugged. ‘How else could I show my displeasure at being forced into marriage? I did not know this man I was expected to fall into bed with. He was a stranger to me and I wanted a love match.’

‘What happened?’