Shackled to the Sheikh Page 17

  ‘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 b
y 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?

  She was drawing closer, his brothers cutting in on each other to take turns on her arms. She was laughing at something one of them said and Rashid was struck by her beauty and her joy. She was radiant. She looked up then, and the laughter died on her lips as their eyes locked. He saw the cognac-coloured eyes darken with smouldering need and the smile that she gave just to him and his heart swelled.

  And then she was there before him and his three desert brothers lifted her hand to place in his, before, with a slap to his back, they peeled away to stand on his right.

  ‘You look beautiful,’ he said softly. ‘I love you.’

  ‘As I love you,’ she said, unable to stop the two tears of joy that squeezed unbidden from her eyes. ‘For ever.’

  It was a fairy tale, it occurred to Tora in that moment as she looked up into the dark gaze of the man she loved. A tale of trials and tribulations decorated with palaces and pavilions, peacocks and fountains. A tale of the exotic. And yet a tale of the most basic human needs.

  Like life.

  She glanced towards her friend Sally where she sat beaming alongside Steve in his wheelchair—Steve, who was growing stronger by the day. Sally blew her a kiss and Tora smiled back, before looking up to the sky and feeling her mother and father soaring in the heights and beaming down upon her on her proudest day. They were here, she knew, and it was good.

  Even better when she felt Rashid’s lips on her cheek. ‘You have made me the happiest man in the world,’ he whispered, and she wondered just how much joy it was possible to feel before one exploded with it.

  For together they had conquered the tests put before them, had overcome their own fears and confronted their own feelings, and as their reward they had won the greatest prize of all. Had earned the greatest gift of all, for even life itself was worthless without it.

  Love.

  ‘Dearly beloved,’ the celebrant began then as the gulls wheeled in the sky above and the passing ferry drivers tooted their horns in celebration, ‘we are gathered here today for this very special Christmas wedding...’

  * * * * *

  Keep reading for an excerpt from BOUGHT FOR HER INNOCENCE by Tara Pammi.

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  Bought for Her Innocence

  by Tara Pammi

  CHAPTER ONE

  “I HAVE A proposition for you, Jasmine, that would allow you to pay off your brother’s debt within a year.”

  Fear was a cold fist clamped over her spine, but Jasmine Douglas forced herself to stare steadily into the chilly green eyes of Noah King.

  That word proposition from any other man of her acquaintance, while wholly unwelcome but an awful reality of her life, was something she was used to.

  The clientele of the club where she worked, owned by Noah, was constantly under the impression that her scantily clad, gyrating-around-a-pole body was up for sale. That she was for sale.

  She wasn’t and never would be.

  Only soul-wrenching fear of the consequences of owing a debt to this man who owned three underground gambling clubs in London, and who was even now contemplating her future without blinking, had forced her into it.

  She had barely buried her brother Andrew when she had learned of the debt he had piled up with Noah King, of all people. Desperation to resolve this debt and a need for survival forced her every night to take the stage.

  So coming from Noah, that dangerous word turned the very blood in her veins into ice. “I’ve not missed a single payment, Noah,” she finally said through a dry mouth.

  “Yes, but you’re barely making a dent. You have no assets that you could sell off, either.”

  Her skin turned cold in the comfortably warm warehouse that was the headquarters of Noah’s empire. A couple of completely harmless-looking men had showed up at her flat this morning and very politely accompanied her to see Noah here.

  Sweat pooling over her neck, Jasmine realized how foolish she was to assume that anything related to Noah King was harmless.

  “Am I a prisoner, then?” she said, before she could hold back the reckless question.

  Noah didn’t even blink as he casually peeled an orange and offered her some. “Until we find a satisfactory resolution, yes.”

  Her gut dropped and she fought the instinct to turn around and run. No phrase had ever scared the daylights out of her like satisfactory resolution.

  Why, oh, why hadn’t Andrew thought of where his debt would lead him one day? How could he have left her to deal with this dangerous man?

  How, after all the promises he had made to her, could he have left her even worse than they had already been?

  She had slaved for five years and was still stuck in this man’s power, like a fly stuck in a spider’s web. The more she tried to get out, the more she was ensnared.

  On the heels of that thought came instant guilt. Andrew’s face flashed in front of her, his eagerness shining in his eyes, his expression so kind, lodging a lump in her throat.

  We’ll get out of this dump one day, Jas. You just wait and watch. I’ll get us out of here.

  Her brother had only wanted what was best for her, had only wanted to improve their lot in life. Had watched out for her for years.

  Equipped with no skills, saddled with their mother’s drinking and responsibility for Jas, he had seen no other way out of the hellhole they had been born into except by trying his luck in Noah’s gambling den.

  Not his fault that he had died so suddenly at only twenty-nine in an accident. Not his fault that everyone they had counted on had disappointed them.

  And just like that, as though he was a thorn forever lodged under her skin, like a memory that had been burned into her brain, Dmitri came to mind.

  Dmitri Karegas—godson of Giannis Katrakis, textile tycoon and internationally renowned playboy, collector of expensive toys like yachts and Bugattis and...beautiful women.

  Dmitri, who had grown up along with them on the streets of London after his English father’s business went in
to bankruptcy, whom Andrew had shielded from his alcoholic father numerous times, Dmitri, whom Andrew had treated like a brother, Dmitri, to whom Andrew had gone in need and who had refused to help an old friend while he led a filthy rich life, who had looked at her so coldly at Andrew’s funeral and offered her cash.

  Dmitri, whose exploits she followed with something bordering on obsession.

  Thinking of Andrew would only weaken her; thinking of the man who might have helped was definitely a certain waste of her energies now.

  It was as if there was glass in her throat as she looked back at Noah. “How much do I owe?”

  “Thirty thousand pounds. It would take you another decade to pay it off if you continue as you do. But if you added a little something more personal to your menu at the club, then I see this going somewhere. You’re a huge hit, Jasmine, and I’ve been getting offer after offer...”

  Noah’s words came as if from a distance, as if it was happening to some other person, as if it was the only way her mind could deal with it... Sweat gathered over her forehead and the back of her neck, the pungent odor of alcohol and sweaty bodies that clung to the walls of the warehouse cutting off her breath.

  The only thing that did burn into her mind was that she would be one step closer to selling herself, if not all the way. That was what Noah had decided for her. If she didn’t get out now, she never would.

  But how? Her lungs burned with the effort to draw breath; her knees locked in utter fear.

  “...unless someone offers to buy out your debt, you have no choice.” Noah’s words floated into her mind again.

  That was it. That was all she needed—someone to pay off her debt, to buy her from Noah.

  And that someone had to be Dmitri.

  No, that ashamed part of her screamed. If she went to him for help, he would know how low she had fallen. He would...

  Better to sell herself to a known devil than an unknown one, the rational part of her asserted.