The Sheikh's Bride

“Shall I tell him to go away again and leave us alone for a couple of hours?” Amer said softly.

“I don’t know what you mean.” Leonora spoke with difficulty.

He was so close she could feel his little puffed breath of frustration. She thought, why doesn’t he touch me? But still he did not.

Instead, he murmured, “That’s the first lie you’ve ever told me,” and she felt a sort of agony at his words.

She held her breath. But Amer rolled aside and sat up. He gave the boatman a few orders. He did not sound annoyed. He did not sound as if he cared much at all.

Leonora smoothed her hair with a shaking hand. She had never been so intensely aware of sensation before, nor of her own sensuality. Never realized so totally that she was a physical creature. Never wanted….

Dear Reader,

Let your imagination take flight as Sophie Weston brings you a truly delicious touch of Eastern promise.

Amer el-Barbary is an Arab prince, a true lord of the desert—every woman’s fantasy man. He’s rich and masterful, living life on the edge of danger. And he’s about to capture Leonora Groom’s heart—and your own—in this most romantic of stories, The Sheikh’s Bride.

The Sheikh’s Bride

Sophie Weston

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

‘WHAT are we waiting for?’ asked the co-pilot.

The pilot looked down from his cockpit at the Cairo tarmac. In the early morning, the dust was tinged with diamond light and the roofs of the distant airport building gleamed. A couple of men in dark suits were doing an efficient sweep of the apron on which their plane had come to a halt.

‘Security,’ he said briefly.

The co-pilot was new to flying the Sheikh of Dalmun’s private fleet. ‘Do they always go through this?’

The other man shrugged. ‘He’s an influential guy.’

‘Is he a target, then?’

‘He’s megarich and he’s heir apparent to Dalmun,’ said the pilot cynically. ‘Of course he’s a target.’

His companion grinned. His girl-friend regularly brought home royalty watching magazines.

‘Chick magnet, huh? Lucky devil.’

The security men had finished their surveillance. One of them raised a hand and a white stretch limousine came slowly round the plane. The pilot, his cap under his arm, stood up and went to shake hands with the departing passenger.

An early-morning breeze whipped the Sheikh’s white robes as he strode towards the limousine. In spite of the entourage that followed, he looked a lonely figure.

The pilot came back into the cockpit.

‘We’re on stand-by,’ he said briefly.

Other cars arrived. The security team swung into them then the limousine drew away, flanked by its guardians.

The pilots sat back, waiting for an escort to the plane’s final parking place.

‘What’s he doing here?’ asked the co-pilot idly. ‘Business or pleasure?’

‘Both, I guess. He hasn’t been out of Dalmun for months,’ said the older man unguardedly.

‘Why?’

The pilot didn’t answer.

‘I heard there was a bust up. His old man wanted him to marry again?’

‘Maybe.’ A second monosyllabic answer.

‘So what do you think? Has he been let out to find himself a bride?’

The pilot was betrayed into indiscretion. ‘Amer el-Barbary? A bride? When hell freezes over.’

CHAPTER ONE

LEONORA pushed a grubby hand through her hair and breathed hard. The lobby of the Nile Hilton was full to bursting. She had lost three of the museum party she was supposed to be escorting; she had not managed to spend time with her mother who was consequently furious; and now this week’s problem client had come up with another of her challenging questions.

‘What?’ she said distractedly.

‘Just coming in now.’ Mrs Silverstein nodded at the swing doors. ‘Who is he?’

A stretched white limousine, its windows discreetly darkened, had pulled up in the forecourt, flanked by two dark Mercedes. Men in dark grey suits emerged and took up strategic stances while a froth of porters converged on the party. The doors of the limousine remained resolutely closed. Leo knew the signs.

‘Probably royal.’ She was not very interested. Her father’s recently acquired travel agency did not have royal clients yet. ‘Nothing to do with me, thank God. Have you seen the Harris family?’

‘Royal,’ said Mrs Silverstein, oblivious.

Leo grinned. She liked Mrs Silverstein.

‘A lord of the desert,’ the older woman said.

‘Quite possibly.’

Leo decided not to spoil it by telling her the man was probably also Harvard educated, multilingual and rode through the desert in an air-conditioned four-wheel drive instead of on a camel. Mrs Silverstein was a romantic. Leo, as she was all too aware, was not.

‘I wonder who he is…’

Leo knew that note in her voice. ‘I haven’t the faintest idea,’ she said firmly.

Mrs Silverstein sent her a naughty look. ‘You could ask.’

Leo laughed aloud. It was what her client had been saying to her for three weeks.

‘Listen,’ she said, ‘I’m your courier. I’ll do a lot for you. I’ll ask women how old they are and men how much it costs to feed a donkey. But I won’t ask a lot of armed goons who it is they’re guarding. They’d probably arrest me.’

Mrs Silverstein chuckled. In three weeks they had come to understand each other. ‘Chicken.’

‘Anyway, I’ve got to find the Harris family.’

Leo slid through the crowd to a marble-topped table where a house phone lurked behind a formal flower arrangement. She dialled the Harris’ room, casting a harassed eye round, just in case they had come down without her catching them.

The limousine party were on the move, she saw. Men, their mobile phones pressed to their ears, parted bodies. Behind them walked a tall figure, his robes flowing from broad shoulders. Mrs Silverstein was right, she thought ruefully. He was magnificent.

And then he turned his head and looked at her. And, to her own astonishment, Leo found herself transfixed.

‘Hello?’ said Mary Harris on the other end of the phone. ‘Hello?’

She had never seen him before. Leo knew she had not. But there was something about the man that hit her like a high wind. As if he was important to her. As if she knew him.

‘Hello? Hello?’

He wore the pristine white robe and headdress of a desert Arab. In that glittering lobby the severe plainness was a shock. It made him look even more commanding than he already did given his height and the busy vigilance of his entourage. His eyes were hidden by dark glasses but his expression was weary as his indifferent glance slid over her and on across the crowd.

‘Hello? Who is this?’

Leo read arrogance in every line of him. She did not like it. But still she could not stop staring. It was like being under a spell.

Mrs Silverstein slid up beside her and took the phone out of her hand. Leo hardly noticed. All she could do was look—and wait for his eyes to find her again.

I’m not like this, said a small voice in her head. I don’t stare blatantly at sexy strangers. Leo ignored it. She did not seem as if she could help herself. She stood as still as a statue, waiting…

A man Leo recognised as the hotel’s duty manager was escorting the party. He was bowing, oblivious to anyone else. As he did so, he brushed so close to her that she had to step back sharply. She hit her hip on the table and grabbed a pillar to save herself. Normally a gentle and courteous man, the duty manager did not even notice.

But the object of all this attention did.

The white-robed figure stopped dead. Masked eyes turned in Leo’s direction.

It was what she had been waiting for. It was like walking into an earthquake. Leo’s breath caught and she hung onto the pillar as if she would be swallowed up without its support.

‘Oh my,’ said Mrs Silverstein, fluttering.

Leo clutched even tighter. She felt cold—then searingly hot—then insubstantial as smoke. Her fingers on the pillar were white but she felt as if the strength had all been slammed out of her.

Then he turned his head away. She was released.

Leo sagged. She found she had been holding her breath and her muscles felt as weak as water. She put a shaky hand to her throat.

‘Oh my,’ said Mrs Silverstein a second time. She gave Leo a shrewd look and restored the phone to its place.

Across the lobby, there was an imperious gesture. One of the suited men stepped respectfully close. The tall head inclined. The assistant looked across at Mrs Silverstein and Leo. He seemed surprised.

Leo knew that surprise. The knowledge chilled her, just as it had in every party she had ever been to. She was not the sort of woman that men noticed in crowded lobbies. She and the man in the grey suit both knew it.

She was too tall, too pale, too stiff. She had her father’s thick eye brows. They always made her look fierce unless she was very careful. Just now, too, her soft dark hair was full of Cairo dust and her drab business suit was creased.

Not very enticing, Leo thought, trying to laugh at herself. She had got used to being plain. She would have said that she did not let it bother her any more. But the look of surprise on the man’s face hurt surprisingly.

The white-robed figure said something sharply. His assistant’s face went blank. Then he nodded. And came over to them.

‘Excuse me,’ he said in accentless English. ‘His Excellency asks if you are hurt.’

Leo shook her head, dumbly. She was too shaken to speak—though she could not have said why. After all, with his eyes hidden by smoked glass, she had no evidence that the man in the white robes was even looking at her. But she knew he was.

Mrs Silverstein was made of sterner stuff.

‘Why how kind of—of His Excellency to ask,’ she said, beaming at the messenger. She turned to Leo, ‘That man didn’t hurt you, did he dear?’

‘Hurt me?’ echoed Leo. She was bewildered. Did he have laser-powered eyes behind those dark glasses?

Mrs Silverstein was patient. ‘When he bumped into you.’

Leo remembered the small collision with the under manager.

‘Oh. Mr Ahmed.’

She pulled herself together but it was an effort. The sheikh was no longer looking at her. Leo knew that without looking at him. She was as conscious of him as if her whole body had somehow been tuned to resonate to his personal vibration.

No one had ever done that to her before. No one; let alone a regal stranger whose eyes she could not read. It shocked her.

She swallowed and said as steadily as she could manage, ‘No, of course not. It was nothing.’

Mrs Silverstein peered up at her. ‘Are you sure? You look awful pale.’

The security man did not offer any view on Leo’s pallor or otherwise. She had the distinct impression that this was not the first time he had carried a message to an unknown lady. But that the messages were normally more amusing and the ladies more sophisticated; and about a hundred times more glamorous.

‘Can I offer you assistance of any kind, madam?’

Leo moistened her lips. But she pulled herself together and said more collectedly, ‘No, thank you. It was nothing. I don’t need any assistance.’ She remembered her manners. ‘Please thank His Excellency for his concern. But there was no need.’

She turned away. But Mrs Silverstein was not going to pass up the chance of a new experience so easily. Not when royalty was involved. She tapped the security man on the arm.

‘Which Excellency is that?’

The security man was so taken aback that he answered her.

‘Sheikh Amer el-Barbary.’

Mrs Silverstein was enchanted. ‘Sheikh,’ she echoed dreamily.

Just a few steps away the dark glasses turned in their direction again. Leo felt herself flush. She did not look at him but she could feel his sardonic regard as if someone had turned a jet of cold water on her.

She shivered. How does he do that? she thought, aware of the beginnings of indignation.

Uncharacteristically her chin came up. Leo was a peacemaker, not a fighter. But this time was different. She glared across the lobby straight at him, as if she knew she was meeting his eyes.

Was it her imagination, or did the robed figure still for a moment? Leo had the feeling that suddenly she had his full attention. And that he was not best pleased

Help, she thought. He’s coming over. The hairs on the back of her neck rose.

And then rescue came from an unexpected quarter.

‘Darling!’ called a voice.

Leo jumped and looked wildly round. The lobby seethed with noisy groups talking in numerous languages. They were no competition for her mother. Years of ladies’ luncheons had given Deborah Groom a vocal pitch that could cut steel.

‘Darling,’ she called again. ‘Over here.’

A heavily ringed hand waved imperiously. Leo located it and counted to ten. She had tried to persuade her mother not to come to Cairo in the busiest week of the agency’s year. Deborah, predictably, had taken no notice.

Now Leo pulled herself together and said briskly to the hovering security man, ‘Thank you but I am quite all right. Please—’ she allowed herself just a touch of irony which she was sure the man would miss ‘—reassure His Excellency.’ Then, more gently to Mrs Silverstein, ‘Give me ten minutes. I have to clear up a couple of things. Then, if you still want to go, I’ll take you to the pyramids at Giza.’

‘You go right ahead,’ said Mrs Silverstein, still entranced by her brush with royalty. ‘I’ll go sit in the café and have a cappuccino. Come and find me when you’re done.’

Leo gave her a grateful smile. Then she tucked her clipboard under her arm and swarmed professionally through the crowd.

‘Hello, Mother,’ she said, bending her tall head. Leo received the scented breath on the cheek which Deborah favoured with a kiss and straightened thankfully. ‘Having a good time?’

Deborah Groom was known for going straight to the point. ‘It would be better if I saw something of my only daughter.’

Leo kept her smile in place with an effort. ‘I warned you I’d have to work.’

‘Not all the time.’

‘There’s a lot on.’ If she sounded absent it was because in the distance she could see Andy Francis trying to herd a group towards their waiting bus. He was not having much success but then he should not have been doing it alone. Roy Ormerod, the head of Adventures in Time, was scheduled to be with the party too.

Deborah frowned. ‘Does your chief know who you are?’

Leo gave a crack of laughter. ‘You mean does he know that I’m the boss’s daughter? Of course not. That would defeat the whole object. I’m called Leo Roberts here.’

Deborah snorted. ‘I just don’t understand your father sometimes.’

That was nothing new. She had walked out on Gordon Groom fourteen years ago, saying exactly that and leaving him to care for the ten-year-old Leo.

‘He thinks it’s a good idea for me to learn to stand on my own feet like he did,’ she said patiently. ‘Look, Mother—’

‘You mean he thinks if he turns you out in the world to cope on your own you’ll turn into a boy,’ Deborah snapped.

Leo’s eyes flashed. But there was enough truth in the accusation to make her curb her instinct to retort in kind. She and her mother both knew that Gordon had always wanted a son. Training Leo to succeed him in the business was just second best. He did not even try to disguise that any more.

Deborah bit her lip. ‘Oh, I’m sorry darling, I promised myself I wouldn’t start that again,’ she said remorsefully. ‘But when I see you looking like death and running yourself ragged like this, I just can’t help myself.’

‘Forget it,’ said Leo.

She cast a surreptitious look at her clipboard. Where was Roy? He should have paid the bus driver for the Japanese party. If he didn’t turn up she would have to deal with it. And what about the Harris family? She had forgotten all about them and the museum tour was leaving.

Her mother sighed. ‘I suppose there’s no hope of seeing you at all today?’

Leo’s conscience smote her. ‘Not a chance unless—’

Mary Harris panted up to her.

‘Oh, Leo, I’m so sorry. Timothy got locked in the bathroom. I didn’t know what to do. The room attendant got him out. Have we missed the tour?’

Leo reassured them and plugged them rapidly onto the departing group. She came back to Deborah, mentally reviewing her schedule.

‘Look, Mother, there’s one more group I’ve got to see on its way. And then I’m supposed to take someone to the pyramids. But it will be hot and she’s quite elderly. I doubt if she’ll want to stay too long. Tea this afternoon?’

Deborah perked up. ‘Or could I give you dinner?’

Leo hesitated.

‘You think your father wouldn’t like it,’ Deborah diagnosed. Her mouth drooped.

Leo almost patted her hand. But Deborah would have jumped a foot. They were not a touchy-feely family.

So she said gently, ‘It’s not that. There’s a conference dinner. We’ve arranged it at an historic merchant’s house and there’s going to be a lot of bigwigs present. I really ought to be there.’

‘If the wigs are that big, why can’t your boss do it?’ Deborah said shrewdly.

Leo gave a choke of laughter. ‘Roy? He doesn’t—’

But then she thought about it. The guest list included some of the most illustrious charitable foundations in the world, including a high royalty quotient. Roy liked mingling at parties where he had a good chance of being photographed with the rich and famous. He called it networking.

‘Mother, you’re a genius. It’s just the thing for Roy,’ she said. She pulled out her mobile phone.

All she got was his answering machine. Leo left a crisp message and rang off.

‘Right, that’s sorted. I’ll see you tonight. Now I’ve got to take a seventy-year-old from New Jersey to Giza.’

Deborah muttered discontentedly.

Leo looked down at her.

‘What?’

‘Surely someone junior could take this woman to the pyramids?’

Leo grinned. Deborah had been a rich man’s daughter when she married rising tycoon Gordon Groom. There had been someone junior to take care of tedious duties all her life. It was one of the reasons Gordon had fought so hard for the custody of his only child.

‘As long as I’m a member of the team, I do my share of the chores,’ she said equably.

‘Sometimes you are so like your father,’ Deborah grumbled.

Leo laughed. ‘Thank you.’

Deborah ignored that. ‘I don’t know why he had to buy Adventures in Time, anyway. Why couldn’t he stick to hotels? And civilised places? What does he want with a travel agency?’

‘Diversify or die,’ Leo said cheerfully. ‘You know Pops—’ She broke off. ‘Whoops.’

In the Viennese café Mrs Silverstein was chatting to an alarmed-looking man in a grey suit. Leo was almost certain he was a member of Sheikh el-Barbary’s entourage.

‘It looks as if my client is getting bored. I’ll pick you up at eight this evening, Mother.’

She darted into the crowd. It was a relief.

Deborah’s divorce from Gordon Groom had been relatively amicable and her settlement kept her luxuriously provided for, but she could still be waspish about her workaholic ex-husband. It was the one subject that she and Leo were guaranteed to argue about every time they got together.

Tonight, Leo promised herself, she was not going to let Deborah mention Gordon once. Leo was beginning to have her own misgivings about her father’s plans for her. But she was going to keep that from Deborah until she was absolutely certain herself. So they would talk about clothes and makeup and boyfriends and all the things that Deborah complained that Leo wasn’t interested in.

One fun evening, thought Leo wryly, after another wonderful day. She went to rescue the security man.

The Sheikh’s party swept into the suite like an invading army. One security man went straight to the balcony. The other disappeared into the bedroom. The manager, bowing, started to demonstrate the room’s luxurious facilities. He found the Sheikh was not listening.

An assistant, still clutching his brief-case and laptop computer, nodded gravely and backed the manager towards the door.

‘Thank you,’ said the Sheikh’s assistant. ‘And now the other rooms?’

The manager bowed again and led the way. The security men followed.

The Sheikh was left alone. He went out to the balcony and stood looking across the Nile. The river was sinuous and glittering as a lazy snake in the morning sun. There was a dhow in midstream, he saw. Its triangular sail was curved like scimitar. It looked like a small dark toy.

He closed his eyes briefly. It was against more than the glare reflected off the water. Why did everything look like toys, these days?

Even the people. Moustafa, his chief bodyguard, looked like a prototype security robot. And the woman he was seeing tonight. He intended quitting the boring conference dinner with an excuse he did not care if they believed or not in order to see her. But for an uncomfortable moment, he allowed himself to realise that she reminded him of nothing so much as a designer-dressed doll. In fact, all the women he had seen recently looked like that.

Except—he had a fleeting image of the girl who had tumbled against the pillar in the hotel lobby. She was too tall, of course. And badly turned out, with her hair full of dust and a dark suit that was half-way to a uniform. But uniform or not, she had not looked like a doll. Not with those wide, startled eyes. The sudden shock in them had been intense—and unmistakeably real.

The Sheikh’s brows twitched together in a quick frown. Why had she looked so shocked? He suddenly, passionately, wanted to know. But of course he never would, now. He grunted bad temperedly.

His personal assistant came back into the suite. He hesitated in the doorway.

The Sheikh straightened his shoulders. ‘Out here, Hari,’ he called. There was resignation in his tone.

The assistant cautiously joined him on the balcony.

‘Everything appears to be in order,’ he reported.

The Sheikh took off his dark glasses. His eyes were amused but terribly weary.

‘Sure? Have the guys checked thoroughly? No bugs in the telephone? No poison in the honey cakes?’

The assistant smiled. ‘Moustafa can take his job too seriously,’ he admitted. ‘But better safe than sorry.’

His employer’s expression was scathing. ‘This is nonsense and we both know it.’

‘The kidnappings have increased,’ Hari pointed out in a neutral tone.

‘At home,’ said the Sheikh impatiently. ‘They haven’t got the money to track me round the world, poor devils. Anyway, they take prosperous foreign visitors who will pay ransom. Not a local like me. My father would not pay a penny to have me back.’ He thought about it. ‘Probably pay them to keep me.’

Hari bit back a smile. He had not been present at the interview between father and son before Amer left Dalmun this time. But the reverberations had shaken the city.

A terminal fight, said the palace. The father would never speak to the son again. An ultimatum, said Amer’s household; the son had told his father he would tolerate no more interference and was not coming back to Dalmun until the old Sheikh accepted it.