Shackled to the Sheikh(31)

She stared at him. ‘My darling cousin stole my inheritance. All the money from my parents’ estate. All the money I’d promised Sally and Steve. I’d just come from a meeting with him to tell me the happy news that all the money was gone. Why do you think I was so angry that night in the bar?’

He hung his head. ‘God, I’m a fool. I will never make up to you the wrongs I have done you.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t believe you will. Goodbye, Rashid.’ And she turned and fled up the stairs into the plane, knowing she had to get into the safety of the cabin before she lost it completely. Knowing she had to escape while she had the chance, while she still had one last shred of dignity intact, even if her heart lay broken into tiny pieces.



Something was wrong. Tora blinked into wakefulness after a tortured sleep. ‘We’re coming in to land,’ the flight attendant said.

‘Already?’ said Tora, knowing she couldn’t possibly have slept for that long.

‘Yes,’ said the attendant, clearing away cups and plates. ‘If you look outside your window, you’ll see the lights of Cologne ahead.’

Cologne?

‘We’re landing in Germany?’

‘But of course,’ said the attendant. ‘Didn’t you know?’



Sally hugged her friend so tight when Tora reached the hospital that she thought she might snap in two but she didn’t mind one little bit. ‘I couldn’t believe it when I heard you were coming. And now you’re here!’ And she hugged her again.

‘How’s Steve?’ Tora asked, hoping above hope that Sally’s happiness wasn’t solely down to her arrival.

Sally smiled over clenched teeth, a tentative smile of optimism. ‘We thought it was the end—it looked like the end—and the doctors suggested trying something experimental but it was so expensive and I couldn’t give them the go ahead, but then some anonymous benefactor contacted the clinic just last night and asked them to pull out all stops.’ She shook her head. ‘You wouldn’t believe the difference in him in just a few hours. It’s a miracle,’ she said, and fell into her friend’s arms again.

Anonymous benefactor?

Tora had a clue she knew exactly who it was and why he’d done it. And a broken heart made its first tentative steps to heal and love again.



She was punch drunk when she wrote the email. High on life and one life in particular, who was looking more human every day as he made a steady recovery. High on the happiness that her friend radiated constantly.

She hit Send and turned off her tablet and sat back on the lounge chair of the tiny flat she shared with Sally, feeling the rapid beating of her heart.

Well, it was out there. Now all she could do was wait.





CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

THERE WAS A glow coming from the courtyard, coming from inside the Pavilion of Mahabbah. And when a smiling Kareem led her inside, she could see why. The pavilion was lit with a thousand candles, their flames flickering and dancing in the night breeze, and for a moment as Kareem disappeared there was just the croak and plop of frogs amongst the lily pads and the haunting cries of the peacocks as she took it all in.

And then there were footsteps, and he was standing there in the doorway, Rashid—her Rashid—his dark features and golden skin standing out in his snowy white robes. So handsome. So darkly beautiful.

‘Tora,’ he said, blinking as if she were some kind of vision. ‘But how—?’

‘Kareem helped me.’

‘But you came back,’ he said, as if he couldn’t believe it, his eyes full of wonder as his eyes drank her in.

‘How could I not come back?’

‘But after everything I did, after all the wrongs I did you.’

‘You did some right. You helped Sally and Steve when they had nowhere else to turn to. You did a good thing. Steve’s doing well. It’s a miracle and we all have you to thank.’

‘What else could I do? I had to do something.’

‘It was a good thing you did. A generous thing. Thank you.’

‘Thank you for coming to tell me that.’ He gave a small sigh, a brief smile. He was a man at a loss. ‘Did you want to see Atiyah? She’s sleeping now, but you can stay a little while?’

‘I’d love to see her.’

‘That’s good.’ He looked around as if for Kareem, frowning as he seemed to notice for the first time the candles and the decorations. ‘I imagine Kareem’s organised a suite for you?’

‘Rashid.’

‘What?’

‘There’s another reason I came.’

His eyes grew wide. ‘What?’

‘When I left here, I wanted to hate you. You made that harder with what you did for Sally and Steve—’

‘That doesn’t make up for what I did.’

‘I know. But while I sat there supporting Sally, I had time to think. And I thought about all the time that I watched you struggle with responsibilities that had been thrust upon you, struggle with the demands and needs of a tiny child you’d never asked for from a father who’d cast you into the world alone, even if to protect you—I thought about all that time, and how I could see you were a good man.’

‘I was not good to you.’

‘Not then, it’s true, but what man would act differently when he’d been subject to the turmoil of your life, when he’d felt betrayed by the most important of people, his own father? How could he trust anyone ever again?’

‘I should have trusted you.’

She put a finger to his lips to silence him. ‘What’s done is done. Can’t we draw a line under what happened in the past? Can’t we start anew?’

She saw hope swirling in the deep blue depths of his eyes. ‘What are you saying?’

‘I’m saying that, once upon a time, you hinted that you loved me, at least a little. I’m asking if you still do, and if you would do me the honour of marrying me, for real this time.’

‘Marry you?’

‘Yes. Because I love you, Rashid, for better or for worse. But I hope it’s for ever.’

‘Yes!’ he cried as he picked her up in his arms and spun her around. ‘A thousand times yes. I love you so much, Tora,’ Rashid said, his lips hovering over hers. ‘You have turned my life from a desert into an oasis. You have given life where there should be none. I owe you everything. And I will love you to my dying day.’

Tora smiled beneath his lips. ‘As I will love you, Rashid. Aisha told me you desert brothers don’t fall easily, but you fall hard.’

‘I never expected to fall in love. I didn’t think it was possible. But now I can’t imagine a day in my life without you being in it.’

‘That’s good,’ she said, ‘because I don’t plan on going anywhere without you.’

‘You’ll never have to, ever again.’

And they made love there that night, in the Pavilion of Mahabbah, the pavilion of love, the first night in all their nights of for ever.





EPILOGUE

THEY WERE MARRIED for the second time in front of the iconic sails of the Sydney Opera House alongside the sparkling waters of the harbour on which pleasure craft made the most of a perfect sunny day. Overlooking it all sat the magnificent backdrop of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

The bridal procession was strikingly original, a confection of sheer joy, and headed by the combined children of the desert brothers and their wives strewing rose petals and jasmine flowers, the older children holding the hands of the younger ones and guiding them back to the red carpet when they strayed off course or got distracted, to the delight of all the assembled. Behind them came the three stunning matrons of honour wearing gowns in glorious jewel colours, ruby, emerald and sapphire, the Sheikha Aisha and Princess Marina and the blonde, blue-eyed Amber.

And last came Tora, wearing a sleeveless gown of golden silk ruched over her breasts and hips with a sweeping train and with her hair piled high and studded with champagne-coloured pearls and who was walked along the foreshore to meet her groom by the three best men, Zoltan, Bahir and Kadar.

At the very front stood Rashid, waiting as each group made its way to him, waiting impatiently for the moment he would be joined by his glowing bride. Under Qajarese law, he had been a married man for six months, and Tora a married woman. Six months during which the state of Qajaran had grown up, a period full of the necessary aches and pains of change but the benefits were already there, the confidence of the economy picking up, the lacklustre tourism sector finally getting off the ground.

Six months during which he had grown up and changed and become the ruler Qajaran needed, but only, he knew, because this woman had been by his side every step of the way.

Half a year they had been together, but today was the start of their real marriage, he knew. Today what had begun as a hastily arranged marriage of convenience would become a marriage of necessity, a marriage of free choice, a marriage to last until the end of days.

He smiled at the children as they made their way closer, saw Yousra in the throng holding a growing Atiyah in her frothy white dress, a white ribbon tying up her black curls, and he knew life was good.

The three brides of his brothers, their beautiful faces beaming, stepped to his left. How was it possible for his brothers to find such remarkable women, each and every one of them, and yet to leave the pearl of the collection for him? How lucky was he?