The Sheikh Doctor's Bride

A tall, distinguished-looking man, similarly dressed except for black edging on his headscarf, stood beside Ibrahim.

Fareed!

Kate peered at the photo—hoping to read something positive in the shadowed features?

He was as good looking as she’d first thought him, but good looks were usually way down on her list of important manly attributes.

Manly attributes?

What was she thinking?

‘I do wish you hadn’t made such a quick decision about going over there to work,’ her mother said when she saw the documents, and Kate knew her mother suspected something.

Not a marriage something, that was for sure, but she knew something had gone on between Ibrahim and Kate.

‘Mum, it’s a brand-new hospital—look—and I’m only going for a year. It’s not as if I haven’t been away before, and think how exciting it will be. Look at the brochures Ibrahim has sent. What’s more, you’ll be so busy with training and getting the new staff into order, you won’t even notice I’m gone.’

Sally smiled.

‘It is good for us all, isn’t it? Like a gift from heaven, to be able to keep Tippy here for Billy—’

‘And for you to train him, Mum, to show what you can do with a really good horse! It’s time to stop dreaming and get working.’

Sally hugged her hard and Kate swallowed the lump that had formed in her throat.

This is all for Mum and Billy, she reminded herself, and for the future of this family—my family.

Twelve months of her life was a small price to pay for the happiness she was bringing these two people, whom she loved with all her heart.

And there was no way she could think beyond that—except perhaps, from a purely selfish motive, it would offer a chance to put her life back together after Mark …

‘Snow-capped mountains?’

Ibrahim smiled at the disbelief in Kate’s voice.

‘You did not expect them?’

‘I saw the pictures in the brochures, but it still seems strange to see snow in a desert.’

Her host had spent most of the flight tucked away in what he called his mobile office, catching up on business and resting when he could. Perhaps he wasn’t well, the kindly Ibrahim—could this be why he was so anxious to marry off his nephew?

You don’t know enough about any of it, Kate told herself. Just be glad you had a good sleep so you can face whatever lies ahead. She felt fresh and rested, having lazed and slept in first-class luxury until a steward had brought breakfast and opened the blind for her to see Amberach for the first time.

Ibrahim had slid into the seat beside her as she’d blurted out her surprise.

‘Amberach has everything,’ he explained. ‘It is winter now so there is more snow, but on the highest peaks a little snow remains all year round. It is the snow melt that makes the land around the base of the mountains fertile, and has provided a good living for our farmers throughout the ages. But the fertile plain is narrow and on two sides of my country the great desert has encroached more and more—right to the coast, where many of my people have lived on fishing and pearl diving for generations.’

‘Do you still have a pearling industry?’ Kate asked.

‘I am trying to revive it, if only as an added incentive for tourists to visit my country,’ Ibrahim said, as the plane swooped lower, over dark blue sea and yellow-gold sand. ‘Once cultured pearls came on the market, our pearling fleets went out of business. Most turned to fishing, but the fisherman must go farther and farther from shore to get a good catch.’

Kate nodded, remembering the things she’d read, but the plane was coming in to land and a mixture of excitement and apprehension at what lay ahead held her silent.

The plane landed but no one moved and to Kate’s surprise it was then towed into a huge hangar, sumptuously decorated in deep reds and purple and gold.

‘The women of the family prefer to alight in privacy,’ Ibrahim explained, ‘although these days many of them, especially the younger ones, frequent the shopping malls and go with friends to the theatre.’

They disembarked, Ibrahim ushering Kate into yet another sleek black vehicle—into the front seat this time.

‘I have asked Fareed to meet us here. He will take you for a short drive along the esplanade and past the old fort on the way to the palace. It will be an opportunity for the two of you to talk a little but remember, he knows nothing of the wedding plans. It is not necessary for him to know until the wedding night.’

Kate frowned at the man she’d discovered was so devious and felt her stomach knot at the thought of the deception she would have to play.

Or was it deception if Fareed didn’t know?

She heard voices and looked up to see him striding into the hangar.

‘Is this really necessary, Uncle?’ he demanded. ‘Do you not have enough lackeys that one couldn’t be found to show Dr Andrews around this morning? I’m barely back at work and you call me away.’

His face might be a mask, but his eyes glittered with fury.

Kate tried to blend into the car, to pretend she wasn’t there at all, but Ibrahim was unrelenting.

‘It is a small thing I ask of you,’ he was saying to Fareed. ‘Dr Andrews is our guest and all I would wish of you is to show her a little hospitality. Perhaps as a mark of your gratitude …’

‘In that great hulking limousine? If you want me to play tour guide she can ride with me in my car.’

Kate thought she detected a quick smirk on Ibrahim’s face and wondered just how wide his manipulative streak might be.

‘Well, come along!’

Fareed this time, the order curt.

She longed to rebel, to tell the pair of them she wasn’t just a piece of meat to barter over, but she bit her tongue because, sadly, that was exactly what she was—Ibrahim’s pawn.

She forced herself to think of the rewards of the position—the continued success of the family business, her mother’s and Billy’s happiness …

Billy! In her head she saw the tiny scrap of humanity that had been her longed-for baby brother, born twelve weeks early and looking like the living doll she’d been imagining. All tied up with wires, his little eyes taped shut, tiny hands and feet and tubes everywhere.

Billy, who’d fought to live, then battled through one illness after another to survive.

Billy, who’d only really come fully alive when Tippy had been born and the two of them had formed some magical bond.

She shut away the memories and followed meekly behind the angry man who so obviously didn’t want to be stuck with her.

If he only knew …

Fareed’s vehicle was a high-set SUV, black like most of the vehicles she’d seen these people use.

‘Why are all the cars black?’ she asked, as she clambered in, unaided by her husband-to-be.

‘They aren’t,’ he replied—two crisp words cutting off any further conversation.

Kate studied his profile—more stern than arrogant—and shivered inside. Perhaps there was still time to pull out of this arrangement. She could speak to Ibrahim and ask if she could work for two years—even three—instead of marrying this man, but she knew she couldn’t risk the happiness of the two people she loved best in all the world.

And yet if she was going to marry Fareed, shouldn’t she at least attempt to get to know him?

‘I’m sorry you were pulled away from your work. If I had known Ibrahim was going to interrupt your work to take care of me, I could have asked him to call me a cab.’

Fareed’s reply was a derisive snort.

‘Call a cab when he has a dozen vehicles at his disposal and probably twice as many drivers? I’m to take you to the palace where, no doubt, he’ll be happy to organise a car and a driver to be put at your disposal for however long you are here.’

He turned to study her as the traffic slowed.

‘It seems you have bewitched him.’

How to respond?

‘Nonsense! He’s asked me here as thanks for the bee episode and so I could see your country and perhaps work here for a while. I imagine, once I start work, I can live in at the hospital.’

Another snort.

Kate sighed.

If the man was like this when he thought her just a visitor, how much more awkward and dismissive would he be when he discovered she was to become his wife?

She should tell him—let him work it out with Ibrahim—but she had given her word she’d tell no one of the agreement. To all intents and purposes, she was coming here to work, full stop.

And as for seeing sights, so far all they’d seen was traffic. Was this Fareed’s way of disobeying his uncle’s orders? She’d have been better off being shown around by one of the camels wandering across the streets—the cause of the traffic chaos.

‘Are they sacred animals that they are allowed right of way?’ she asked, and Fareed, though he looked momentarily shocked that she had asked a question, did, finally, reply.

‘No, just animals with minds of their own! But they have been essential to the survival of my people for thousands of years, so no one would harm one. We will be out of this traffic soon.’

Kate turned her attention back to her surroundings.

Rows of small shops and businesses gave way to signs of development, boarded lots, some with massive cranes rising behind the fences, and beyond them the outlying residential area of a sparkling new city.

‘How exciting it must be to be able to build a city from scratch,’ Kate said. ‘To try to get it right from the beginning.’

For a moment she thought Fareed wouldn’t answer, but after a swift glance her way, he relented.

‘This city is my uncle’s dream. He had so many plans he needed teams of architects and engineers and builders to implement them. He drew the best from all over the world, told them what he wanted, then made sure he got it. He might appear a charming cosmopolitan man but he has the core of steel all our leaders had to keep the tribes alive in inhospitable places for thousands of years.’

Kate heard the words but also the love this man must feel for Ibrahim. Could a man who loved his uncle be all bad?

The vehicle left the city, the built and unbuilt bits of it, and swung onto a wide road that ran along the shoreline.

‘Oh!’

Kate barely breathed the word, so astonished was she by the wide stretch of golden sound reaching out to the deep blue of a placid sea. Squat palm trees lined the landward side of the road and beyond them, green parklands stretched to the foothills of craggy red-grey mountains.

The road curved gently around the shallow bay, coming to a point where rugged cliffs met the sea, and perched atop the cliffs, like something formed from the land itself, there was a multi-towered building.

The old fort?

‘How do you get to it?’ Kate asked, staring up now at the sheer cliffs.

‘There is a way from the inland side,’ Fareed explained. ‘And a secret way from the sea. Once it was a place of refuge for the fishermen who lived along the shore, but now it is deserted, except for the caretakers and some artisans who are restoring parts that have deteriorated.’

As they rounded the corner, Kate turned back to look again, marvelling at the beauty of the structure and wondering how on earth it had been built on such an impossible site.

But they were passing the fishing village now, the colourful boats tied up along the shore, and beyond the village high mud brick walls—

‘Another fort?’

‘The palace,’ Fareed replied.

She was here!

In Amberach!

With her bridegroom?

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