The Sheik's Unsuitable Bride

Well, good luck to him. He could keep it as a souvenir of his trip to London. It wasn’t as if she had any use for it.

What she needed was for the sheikh/chauffeur balance to be restored.

And it was.

Everything was back in balance.

So why did she feel so…bereft? So hollow? As if she’d just been offered the earth, the moon, the stars and had been too stupid, too scared to reach out and take them.

Because she hadn’t been offered any of that.

What she’d been offered was an exotic, thrilling, world-well-lost one-night stand that she would never forget. But it would still just have been a one-night stand and without warning, tears filled her eyes, a lump rose in her throat and for a moment she couldn’t move, but was bent double as the reality, the loss hit her.

She could never do that.

Never seize a moment. Take a chance. Grab at what life offered.

You made your mistakes and you lived with them.

‘Your young lady doesn’t look too hot, Zahir. If an hour sailing when the weather is this calm has that effect on her, it doesn’t bode well for…’

Zahir stopped Alan with a look, then, unable to help himself, he turned to follow his gaze. Diana, arms around her waist and bent double, hadn’t moved from the jetty, where he’d dismissed her, or walked away.

He muttered an oath beneath his breath but, before he could take more than a step, she straightened, swiping the palm of her hand over her cheek as she lifted her head in a gesture that echoed his own pull-yourself-together- and-get-over-it attempts to block out the pain as they’d sailed back to the boatyard.

Maybe her conscience was pricking her, he thought.

Last night, when he’d kissed her, danced with her, she hadn’t been giving her ‘Freddy’ a second thought and today she’d been a heartbeat from giving him everything.

But for a freak wave she would have.

And what did that make him?

Maybe he should be giving his own conscience a wake-up call, it occurred to him, because last night, when she’d returned his kiss, had sung to him as she’d melted into his arms, he hadn’t been giving his own future as much as a first thought. He’d been too busy making a fool of himself over a girl he’d only just met to spare a second or even a third thought for the young women being lined up for him to pick out a suitable wife.

Whatever Diana had been doing, his actions had been far worse…

‘Whatever it was, she’s over it now,’ Alan said, watching her walk swiftly down the jetty until she rounded the building and was out of sight.

‘So it would seem.’ Uncapping his pen, he began to sign a stack of documents. He would do well to follow her example.

Enough. Diana slumped behind the wheel, staring at the car phone. At eighteen years old, mired in a world of guilt as her mother had threatened, her father had looked at her as if he didn’t know her, she’d sworn never again.

She’d got lazy. Complacent.

It was easy to hold off the attentions of boys, men, when there was no attraction, no temptation, desire. Pete O’Hanlon had seen her looking at him as if he were something in a sweetshop window and he’d used that. But she wasn’t blaming him. She’d wanted him, had seized the moment without a thought for the morrow and she had to live with that.

Her solace, her joy, was Freddy and she’d been content. But it had taken just one look from Zahir’s slate-grey eyes, one smile, to let her know what she was missing. Melt the ice-wall she’d built around her heart.

She caught her breath, shaking her head as if to clear away all that romantic nonsense.

Not her heart. Nothing that noble.

What Sheikh Zahir al-Khatib had done with a single look was jump-start a hunger, a need that was so far beyond her experience that she hadn’t recognised the danger until it was too late.

Until she was experiencing feelings that were so strong that for a moment she had been in danger of repeating history…

No. This had to stop now. Now, before she wavered and did something really stupid and told him that Freddy was five years old. That her date was a classroom visit. Because, if she told him that, he’d know…

She reached out to hit the fast dial on the car phone to call Sadie, ask her to take her off this job-what excuse she’d make she didn’t know, but she’d think of something. The phone rang before her finger made contact, making her jump nearly out of her skin, the caller ID warning her that Sadie had got in first. She was no doubt calling to update her on who would be driving Sheikh Zahir this evening so that she could pass on the good news.

She jabbed ‘receive’, but, before she could speak, Sadie said, ‘Diana! At last! I’ve been calling you for the best part of an hour on this phone and your cellphone.’

‘Have you?’ She frowned, rubbing her hands over her pockets. No cellphone. ‘I must have left it in my jacket…’

‘I don’t care where you left it! Where, in heaven’s name, have you been?’

‘Well…’

‘No, don’t bother to answer that. I can guess,’ she said cuttingly.

What?

Diana straightened. ‘Look, I’m sorry, but Sheikh Zahir…’

‘Please! I don’t want to know. I just want you to listen to me. You are not to come back to the yard. You will be met at the car park outside The King’s Head in Little Markham by Michael Jenkins. He’ll drive the Mercedes back from there. Sheikh Zahir’s personal assistant has arranged for another car to be on hand to take him back to the hotel. You…’

‘Whoa! Back up, Sadie. What on earth has happened?’

‘You have to ask?’

Confused, miserable, she wasn’t in the mood for games. ‘Apparently I do,’ she snapped back with uncharacteristic sharpness.

‘You’d like me to read you the diary column from the midday edition of The Courier?’

‘What?’

‘Maybe it will jog your memory if I tell you that the headline is “The Sheikh and the Chauffeur”? Or do you want all the gory details of how Sheikh Zahir al-Khatib was seen gazing into the eyes of his pretty chauffeur as he waltzed her around Berkeley Square at midnight?’

‘How on earth-?’

‘For heaven’s sake, everyone with a camera phone is an amateur paparazzo these days, Di! Even if the snapper didn’t recognise Sheikh Zahir, a man dancing with his chauffeur made it a story. The fact that he looks lost to the world makes it the kind of story that The Courier was always going to run in its diary column. I don’t imagine it took them more than two minutes to identify Sheikh Zahir. He’s not exactly a stranger to the gossip pages.’

‘He isn’t?’

‘He’s a billionaire bachelor, Diana, what do you think?’

Think?

Who was thinking?

‘Oh-’

‘Don’t say it!’

‘I wasn’t going to.’ She swallowed. ‘I was going to say that it’s not the way it must look.’

Not exactly.

‘I’m afraid the way it looks is all people are interested in.’

‘No-o-o-o…’

Sadie just sighed.

‘No. For what it’s worth, I believe you, but it makes no difference. It’s a good story and that’s all the tabloids care about. What does matter is that we’re under siege here.’