Hidden In the Sheikh's Harem Read online

  ‘Then when the laws change we can—divorce?’

  ‘We can do it now.’ He strode through to his office and came back, slapping a document on the table beside her, squashing what remained of the flower of love. ‘This is the legislation that gives you the freedom to apply for a divorce.’ Picking up a pen, he signed it with a flourish before handing it to her.

  Blindly she did so and handed it back. ‘Congratulations,’ he said, ‘you can be the first woman in Bakaan to obtain a divorce. I’m sure you’ll enjoy that.’

  What she would enjoy would be if she had the freedom to go up to him, throw herself into his arms and kiss him. What she would enjoy would be for him to crush her to his hard length as he had done so many times before and tell her that he loved her...that he couldn’t live without her.

  She thought about her mother and the brother she had never known. She thought about her father who had desperately pined for them both and had held on to anger and bitterness when they had been ripped from him so unfairly. And then she thought about Zach who had wanted to marry for love and got her instead and she knew she was doing the honourable thing, the only thing, in walking away. ‘So I think... I think I’d like to go home. If you don’t mind.’ Did she have to sound like such a wimp? ‘To Al-Hajjar.’

  She heard a loud crack in the quiet room and saw particles of the pen she had just held fall to the ground. ‘I’m well aware that you have never considered the palace home, Farah,’ Zach rasped. ‘But unlike a mythical genie I can’t rub a magic lamp and make it happen instantaneously.’

  ‘I know that, Zach,’ she said, struggling to keep the tremors out of her voice. ‘I didn’t mean...’ Her explanation tapered off when she realised how close he was to her, how fiercely he was looking at her.

  Kiss me, she urged silently. Please.

  ‘I’ll have Staph organise your transportation,’ he said.

  Farah pulled herself together. She smiled at him one last time and then, before her pride deserted her altogether, she left.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  WHY DIDN’T ANYTHING work out the way you hoped it would? Zach growled under his breath as he wrestled with the cufflink he was currently trying to force back through his shirt sleeve.

  ‘Would you stop fiddling?’ Nadir berated out of the side of his mouth. ‘You look like a schoolboy.’

  Zach wanted to tell him in no uncertain terms where to go but they were at a formal gathering, waiting for the king of a neighbouring country to take his seat before they all could.

  ‘And where’s Farah? You said she’d be here. We don’t want to insult this crusty old demon before he’s signed the new business treaty.’

  ‘I told you she’s gone home,’ Zach said.

  Nadir frowned at him. ‘That was a week ago. How long will she be gone?’

  ‘How the hell do I know?’ Finally the gold pin made it through the other side and, just when he went to twist the back into position, the damned thing fell out again. Zach swore just as the room held its breath for the old king to sit down.

  All eyes turned his way. Nadir smiled. ‘If you’ll excuse us.’ He nodded at Imogen and gave her a pointed look. Zach rolled his eye and went to take his seat when his brother cupped his elbow. ‘You, outside.’

  Zach nearly laughed as Nadir propelled him out of the room. ‘Hell, I haven’t been treated like a recalcitrant schoolboy since...well, since I was one.’

  Nadir dismissed the nearby guards and walked ahead of him into an antechamber. ‘What do you mean you don’t know when Farah is due back? Didn’t you ask her?’

  No, he hadn’t. He hadn’t needed to ask to know that the answer was never. Instead he’d tried to forget about her and get on with his life.

  Yeah, and wasn’t that working out well?

  He let his head drop back and started counting the small fretwork panels that decorated the ornate ceiling. He hadn’t done that since he’d been a recalcitrant schoolboy either. ‘She’s on sabbatical.’

  ‘Zach,’ his brother said in that tone.

  Zach blew out a breath. ‘Do we really need to have this conversation now?’ Because he was starving and a seven-course dinner was about to be served in the banquet hall.

  His brother eyed him uncomfortably. ‘I don’t know. Do we?’

  ‘Not in my mind.’

  ‘Fine. But first tell me why you look worse than you did when you returned from your kidnapping in the desert.’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps I’m not getting my beauty sleep,’ he quipped, deadpan.

  Unfortunately Nadir didn’t laugh. ‘She left you, didn’t she?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Damn it, Zach, I’m about—’

  ‘Yes, she left me,’ Zach grated. ‘Happy?’

  He stalked away from his brother and vaguely considered hurling an eighteenth-century Persian vase against the wall. It would probably shatter in a very satisfying manner.

  ‘Want a drink?’

  He hadn’t heard Nadir go to the drinks cabinet and he stared down at the two tumblers in his hand. ‘No.’ He didn’t want a drink. He didn’t want much of anything. The feeling of hollowness he’d experienced just after their father had died had returned tenfold.

  ‘Fine. I’ll have them both.’

  Zach nearly laughed. His brother was trying to stage an intervention, and he loved him for it, but he was absolutely hopeless at the task.

  Throwing himself into an armchair that was about as comfortable as a wooden plank, he regarded Nadir moodily. ‘You probably should have told Imogen to come and talk to me instead.’

  ‘Don’t be an ass.’ His brother took the other plank. ‘So, what are you going to do about it?’

  Zach looked at him bleakly. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Well, that’s healthy.’

  ‘Listen, brother, I appreciate this, don’t get me wrong—especially since you’ve ditched the King of Ormond for me—but my situation isn’t like yours and Imogen’s.’

  ‘I don’t know about that but what I do know is that you’ve finally found a woman you love and you’re just going to let her go.’

  Did he love her? This last week he’d convinced himself he didn’t but that wasn’t working out that well for him, either. ‘I promised her I would.’

  ‘Promised her what?’

  ‘If you love something, you let it go. If it comes back, it was meant to be. If it doesn’t, it never was.’

  Nadir looked like he wanted to crack him over the head with one of the tumblers in his hand. ‘If you love something you let it go...? That kind of drivel belongs in fairy tales and greeting cards, not in real life.’

  ‘It was her decision. I’m not going to be like our father and chase her.’

  Nadir sat forward and tilted a glass in his direction. ‘I tell you, if you don’t go to her and tell her how miserable you are without her, I will, because there’s no way I’m losing one of the best regional ambassadors I’ll probably ever have because you’re too screwed up to tell her how you feel.’

  ‘I’m not screwed up.’

  But wasn’t he?

  A long buried memory rose up to taunt him as if it had happened yesterday. It was the day Nadir had argued with his father and left Bakaan for good. Being an eager-to-please thirteen-year-old on the cusp of manhood, Zach had wanted to make things right and had gone to his father and offered himself up as a replacement for Nadir. His father had stared at him for what had seemed like an eternity and then he’d started laughing. And he hadn’t stopped until tears had rolled down his hollow cheeks and onto his white robe. Zach couldn’t remember much of anything after that. The only thing he could remember was the hot ball of shame in his stomach as he’d stood before his father rooted to the spot.

  Hell. He rubbed his hands over his face. He was so m
adly in love with Farah it had been easier to let her go than to open himself up to that kind of ridicule again. He looked back at his brother. ‘Do you need the helicopter?’

  ‘No.’ Nadir shook his head. ‘But take backup this time, will you? If her father doesn’t shoot you out of the sky, your wife might, and with all the changes we’re making we can’t afford to replace it.’

  * * *

  Farah was tossing and turning in bed when she heard the distant sound of thunder.

  Great. A storm was coming. At least she was home in her bed this time, her small, narrow bed that didn’t seem to fit her any more. But then what would after the opulence of the Shomas Palace? Not that she missed the palace, exactly, but right now, when she could feel the coldness seeping in from outside, she missed the prince inside the palace. The prince she wasn’t thinking about any more.

  Slowly she became aware of voices outside her hut and the thunder that seemed to grow exponentially louder with every passing second. Thunder that was so loud it didn’t sound like thunder at all.

  Quickly climbing out of bed, she felt around on her chest of drawers for her trousers and tunic and slapped her boots against the floor before shoving her feet into them. Hopefully she wouldn’t need socks because she didn’t have time to look for any.

  As soon as she stepped outside she had to put her hand up to shield her face from the circles of light surrounding their village—or what she realised were helicopters dropping from the sky like huge, black alien spaceships.

  There was a sense of chaos amongst those who had been woken by the noise and Farah could see her father’s men rallying to ward off any attack.

  ‘Wait!’ She rushed forward and shoved her way to the front of the gathering group. Her father was nowhere in sight but Amir looked set to kill.

  She put her hand on his arm to stay him. They’d had a talk when she’d returned to the village a week ago and had fallen into an uneasy friendship, which basically meant that he avoided her at all costs. Something she completely understood.

  What she didn’t understand was why Zach was striding toward her, backlit by the now silent helicopters, his security team lined up behind him.

  ‘Hello, Farah.’

  Hello?

  He invaded her village with an army and said hello? ‘Zach? What are you doing here? Are you trying to start a war?’

  ‘Not quite.’ He stepped forward directly in front of her. ‘I’ve come to talk to you.’

  ‘At this time of the night?’ Her heart was racing at the sight of him and she gave up trying to steady it. ‘What could be so important it couldn’t wait till morning?’

  ‘Us. The future.’

  The divorce. He was here about the divorce. Feeling completely stupid she took a moment to compose herself. ‘Look,’ she began haltingly, ‘I haven’t put the divorce petition into the court yet, but I will, I’m just—’

  Zach took hold of her hands and she was embarrassed to feel them shaking. ‘I’m not here about the divorce, habiba.’ He squeezed her icy fingers. ‘But what I have come to discuss I’d prefer to do so without an audience—or a line of guns trained on me. Is there somewhere private we can go?’

  Wishing he had just sent a letter—or an emissary—to do his bidding she pulled out of his reach and glanced behind him. ‘If you wanted private you shouldn’t have brought a thousand men.’

  ‘Only fifty.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘Nadir insisted on it.’

  ‘What the blazes is this about, Darkhan?’ Her father’s sleep-roughened voice bellowed from behind them. Farah sighed as he pushed through the growing pack of villagers. So much for hoping her father might sleep through her final humiliation. He stopped in front of the prince. ‘You have some nerve turning up like this.’

  ‘Yes, sir. I’ve come for your daughter.’

  Farah blinked, wondering if she had heard right.

  ‘A man should know how to make his wife happy,’ her father said. ‘I made a promise to her mother many years ago that I would make sure she married well.’

  Farah turned to him. ‘You did?’

  ‘Your mother said it would take a strong man to handle you. She was right. I never could.’ He looked at Zach. ‘That night in your shiny palace I saw something in your face when you looked at my daughter. Was I wrong?’

  ‘No, sir. I love her.’

  A murmur rippled through the crowd huddling together against the cold. Farah couldn’t feel it. Heat was racing through her on a wave of embarrassment. ‘By Allah.’ She turned to her father. ‘He doesn’t love me. He’s just saying that because—’ She frowned, turning back to Zach. ‘Why are you saying that?’

  He smiled. ‘Because it’s true.’

  ‘You love me?’

  ‘With all my heart.’

  ‘But...you were forced to marry me. My father—’

  ‘Thinks you need to take this inside,’ he said gruffly, directing them both towards the hut. ‘And perhaps you should come and see me afterwards, Your Highness,’ her father hesitated, ‘about that other business.’

  Did he mean the kidnapping?

  ‘No, need sir. And the name’s Zach.’

  Her father nodded once. ‘Mohamed.’

  Shaking with the rush of emotions surging through her, Farah let Zach lead her inside her home, part of her desperate to play it safe and send him away and part of her aching to believe him.

  ‘Our marriage was forced on the both of us, Farah, but there is nothing forced about the way I feel about you or how miserable I’ve been since you left.’ He cupped her face in his hands and bent to kiss her with such tenderness it made her heart catch. ‘I love you, habiba. I was just too much of a coward to tell you. And I have to believe that after the way you gave yourself to me, after everything that we shared together, that you have feelings for me, too. That you’ll come back to me and give our marriage another chance.’

  ‘Oh, Zach.’ A lump formed in her throat as she looked up at him. She had tried to avoid the pain of love her whole life, yet that was all she had felt since she had walked away from him. Deep down she knew that if she didn’t take this leap of faith, that if she didn’t fight the insecurities that had made her feel less than her whole life she would never know the joy of truly living. ‘I love you, too. I love you so much I can’t believe it. I can’t—’ She stopped talking and kissed him until they were both breathless and dizzy.

  ‘I love you, Farah. I didn’t know it was possible to love someone this much.’

  ‘But you let me go.’

  ‘You asked me to and I had given you my word that if you ever wanted to leave then I would not come after you.’

  Farah groaned. ‘That would be one of the only times you’ve ever done what I asked.’

  ‘Not true. In Ibiza I did everything you asked. I watched cheesy movies for you.’

  ‘But why were you so distant these past few weeks? I thought it was because you wanted a way out of our marriage. That you were starting to resent it. To resent me.’

  He gathered her close and kissed her again, kissed her until she couldn’t think. ‘I didn’t resent you but I could tell you were holding something back and I didn’t know how to reach out to you.’ He sighed and stroked his thumbs across her cheekbones. ‘The truth is, I wanted you so badly I started to doubt myself.’

  ‘You?’

  ‘Yes, me.’ He gave her a wry smile. ‘Love, I have learned, is not the comfortable, easy emotion I had once envisioned. It’s hot and powerful and it brought me to my knees. You brought me to my knees.’

  Farah stroked her hand over his stubble, revelling in the fact that she could touch him freely. ‘You know, when we first met you annoyed me so much I wanted to do exactly that.’

  He smiled. ‘Is that a fact? You should be careful what you wish for, habiba...’
<
br />   ‘Because you just might get it.’ She laughed. ‘I’m so happy, Zach. I never thought I would feel like this with a man.’

  He pulled her in tighter against him. ‘You don’t feel like this with a man. You feel like this with me.’

  A secret smile formed on her lips. ‘So that self-doubt you were talking about...?’

  ‘A blip on the radar. A blip that you have eradicated.’

  ‘I’m glad,’ she said, suddenly serious. ‘And I’m glad you changed your mind about coming after me. Because without you...without you...’

  Tears formed on the ends of her lashes and he used his thumbs to wipe them away. ‘You are my destiny, Farah.’ He leaned back to look down at her. ‘You’re the reason I returned to Bakaan five years ago and you’re the reason I no longer want to leave. You light up my life, habiba, in a way I’ve been looking for my whole life and never thought I’d find.’

  ‘Oh, Zach, take me home,’ she whispered.

  ‘To the palace?’

  ‘To wherever you are.’ She curled her hands around his neck. ‘I never want to be parted from you again.’

  ‘Good. Because I never plan to let you go again.’

  He sealed his promise with a soul deep kiss that was filled with joy and the promise of a wonderful future, and Farah knew that her mighty prince was truly a man she could rely on for the rest of her life.

  * * * * *

  Read on for an extract from CHRISTMAS AT THE CASTELLO by Amanda Cinelli.

  Christmas at

  the Castello

  Amanda Cinelli

  ‘THERE’S STILL SOMETHING MISSING.’

  Dara stood poised at the top of the staircase, looking over the Winter Wonderland theme that had transformed the opulent grand ballroom below her. Her assistant, Mia, waited patiently by her side. The younger woman had long ago got used to her boss’s obsessive eye for detail. Devlin Events was about creating perfect Sicilian weddings for their high-profile clients. Over the past three years Dara had gained an army of the industry’s most talented people and put them onto her payroll, but she still liked to oversee the final run-throughs at their most prominent venues. There was no one in the industry who could spot the little things better than she. And right now something was off.