Bound to the Sheikh: An ancient debt. A deathbed promise. A marriage of duty and obligation. Desire too strong to control.

by Clare Connelly

  His lips were a grim slash. “Your father is almost bankrupt. He is drinking himself to an early death. And you do not care? You do nothing for his wellbeing?”

  Laurie began to shake, as his words hammered into her heart. “I …” she blinked up at him, and then looked away instantly. Her pain was profound. “That’s not true.”

  “Which charge? I can assure you, all three are accurate.”

  “That I don’t care,” she insisted. “Of course I care.”

  His spectacular eyes narrowed with appraisal. “Care and yet do nothing.”

  “I …” She swayed a little and had to reach for the edge of the sofa for support. She fingered her way around its front and then collapsed onto the cushions. “I don’t have to justify myself to you.”

  The man crossed his arms across his impressive chest, and glared down at her. And though she was furious at him for having stormed into her apartment and put blame onto her shoulders, she also felt guilt. Should she have done more? Or, more to the point, was there something she hadn’t tried?

  “I help as much as I can.” Unfortunately three years of her mother’s specialist appointments had left Laurie with a mountain of debt she could barely hope to cover in a lifetime.

  He waved his hand through the air as though she were offering him a luke-warm cup of tea. Her words were distasteful to him. He made it obvious with every line of his body that he had little time for her explanations. “It is beside the point. It is too late now. Only I can help him.”

  “You?” She stared at him with a mix of enmity and curiosity. “How?”

  His smile was cruel. It turned her insides. “Your father needs money. A lot of it.”

  “It would appear so,” she snapped bitterly, lifting her fingers to her temples and rubbing them in circles.

  “Money I am happy to give him.”

  Laurie jerked her eyes in his direction. “You are?”

  “Of course. I told you, I have known him all my life.”

  She shook her head. “So? I’ve known Mrs Carlisle downstairs all my life but I still wouldn’t give her more than a nod before crossing to the other side of the street.”

  He didn’t allow her flippant comment to earn a smile. He regretted the necessity of what he had set in motion; in fact, it had put him in a foul mood. And yet a promise was a promise, and he valued no promise more highly than those he had made to his father.

  “Your father saved my father’s life.”

  Ghosts of a long-ago memory were breezing through the walls of her mind. A story she’d heard as a child; a tale her mother had delighted in telling, and that her father had plaintively begged to be forgotten. “Your father was Sheikh Adin Masou-Al?”

  His eyes seemed to shift in response to her statement. From a shade of glowing amber, they darkened to almost a burned bronze. “Yes.”

  “You must be Sheikh Afida Masou-Al.”

  “I must be.” He was making fun of her. Or treating her like an imbecile. Either way, she didn’t like it. A shiver ran down her spine and she lifted her gaze to his.

  “My father never considered what he did to be anything special.”

  “Your father was wrong. He certainly saved my father from an horrific death. Your father was brave and courageous and I will forever owe him a debt of enormous gratitude.”

  Laurie pulled her dark hair over her shoulder. She was too emotionally unsettled to notice the way his eyes followed the gesture.

  “Then you should go and speak to him,” she said curtly, standing once more in the hope it would give him a silent hint that he wasn’t welcome any longer.

  Here, in her shabby yet clean apartment, Afida was able to regard her properly for the first time. She was completely different to what he had imagined. The daughter of a prominent British businessman, he had anticipated a degree of finesse and beauty in keeping with such an upbringing. But this creature before him was both unkempt and wild. Oh, her figure was pleasing, he supposed – she was petite with enough curves to hold his interest, but she was not the kind of woman he usually went for. Out of nowhere he pictured May, with her legs that went forever and her mane of silky blonde hair; her skin as smooth and soft as caramel fudge.

  He shifted his gaze back to Laurena’s eyes – they were feline in shape and colour, green with thick black lashes and quite enormous in her small, pixie like face.

  “I have already spoken to your father.”

  “Oh.” She shook her head in confusion, but relief was beginning to spill through her veins. The idea that someone else might be prepared to wade into the catastrophic disaster zone that was her father’s life filled her with new hope. “Are you joining us for dinner?”

  The man’s laugh was a rumble. “No. You will be joining me.”

  Laurie’s emotions were zipping all over the place, and she breathed out with frustration. “I don’t know what the heck you’re talking about. Your highness,” she tacked on as an afterthought.

  “No.” He did a slow three hundred and sixty degree spin, surveying the contents of her lounge area with a thoroughness that sent a tingle through her. “But you will. Sit.”

  And though it was her apartment and she was fast running out of patience for this man, she did as he’d instructed, simply because he had a natural authority that Laurie was finding difficult to disregard.

  “A year ago I offered your father money. He refused.”

  Laurie’s brows knit together. “I didn’t know that.”

  “Your father is very proud.”

  “Yes.” She nodded jerkily.

  “Since then, his business life and personal life have spiralled downhill. Bad investments have led to bad drinking binges …”

  “How do you know this?” She stammered indignantly, thinking guiltily of how little she’d seen her father. Then again, she’d been working herself into a state of exhaustion just to make ends meet.

  “There is not much about either you or your father than I do not know.”

  Again, an uncontrollable fever seemed to send her blood rioting. “I’m … sorry?”

  “Yes. As you should be.” His eyes narrowed as though he was studying not just her appearance but also her soul, and his voice was loaded with derisive condemnation. “You have allowed this to happen. You have let your father slide into this hole without so much as an offer to help.”

  “I …”

  “I am speaking,” he murmured coldly, rejecting the interruption. Laurie was so astounded, both by his accusation as well as his tone, that she snapped her lips closed and glared up at him. “Your salary is excellent. Your accommodations are meagre. Why have you not offered him support? Do you resent him in some way? On what have you been spending your income?”

  Laurie’s cheeks flushed bright pink beneath his scathing glare. “I thought you knew everything there is to know about me,” she muttered with a tartness he might otherwise have found amusing.

  “Mmm.” It was an angry growl of disapproval. “There are some gaps in my research however.”

  “Gaps that will be staying there,” she responded with curt dismissal.

  “Why?”

  “Because none of this is your business!” Her fury was impossible to conceal.

  He stared at her for a long moment before shrugging the argument off. “That is your prerogative. My concern is not the past – for whatever reason you have not aided your sole remaining parent, it does not change his present predicament.”

  “No,” she murmured, pain lancing her. “But he’ll be here soon. You should get to the point you’re trying to make.”

  He dipped his head forward, concealing his expression from her. “A month ago, I again approached your father. He was, however, resolute. He will not accept a penny from me.”

  “Damn him,” she groaned, squeezing her eyes shut.

  “You now claim to care?”

  “Of course I care,” she muttered, rubbing her palms across her knees.

  “Debatable,” Afida responded with
obvious disbelief. He lifted a hand to forestall the objection she was obviously gearing up to make. “But there is a way you can prove it to me.”

  “Not that I feel any desire to prove a damned thing to you. But, for the sake of curiosity, how?”

  His smile was laced with lazy arrogance. “Your father will not take money from me as the son of a man he once helped. But from a son in law? Yes. Then he would regard it as simply a family arrangement.”

  Laurie’s frown was deep. “Son in law?” She shook her head as comprehension failed to dawn. “But you’re not. I’m his only daughter and I’ve just met you.”

  “Your father does not know this.”

  “What? That he only has one daughter?”

  “No. That you and I have just met. He, in fact, believes us to be madly in love and planning a hasty wedding.”

  “What?” She shot off the sofa in time with the screeching question. “You cannot be serious.”

  His eyes were unreadable. “I made a promise to my father that I would help. That I would find a way to repay our family’s debt once and for all.”

  “Great. Give me money and I’ll give it to dad.”

  “Mmm,” he took a step closer to her. “I thought about that. But you’re funnelling an awful lot of money through your bank accounts. I would not feel confident that you would see the money into your father’s hands.”

  Her heart hammered against her ribcage. The accusation stung more than he could possibly have known. “I … you must be kidding.”

  “Must I?” His smile lacked amusement. “I think you’ll find I don’t joke about matters such as this.”

  The money that was siphoning through her account like water was going to the top medical laboratory her mother had spent time in for treatment! But something stopped her from revealing that salient fact to this man. It would have reeked far too greatly of being on the back foot, and that she didn’t quite want to admit to just yet.

  “So let me get this straight,” she said quietly, her brain hurting with sheer incredulity. “You want to help my dad. You want to give him money. So you want me to marry you, because then he’ll take money from you?”

  “Crude, but accurate.”

  “You must be sick in the head.”

  “What is your objection?” He murmured, stepping closer to her. “It can’t be marriage to me, surely?”

  His arrogance made her fingers tingle to strike him.

  “You see,” his eyes traced her face thoughtfully, “I’ve done my research. I don’t know what you are spending your money on, but I do know this. On top of your job as a personal assistant, you work as a highly-paid escort.”

  “Oh, God,” Laurie lifted her fingers to her lips. They were trembling badly. “You didn’t tell him, did you?”

  “Why would I tell your father that my fiancé is engaged in such immoral work?”

  All thoughts of not defending herself flew from her mind. “It’s really not like that.” She swallowed back the anxiety.

  “You are saying you’re not an escort?”

  “No, I am.” She flushed to the roots of her hair. “But not that kind. You make it sound so sleazy!”

  His words were tinged with scathing irony. “How can you make it sound less sleazy?”

  “I’m good with languages,” she murmured self-consciously. “I speak French, Italian, German and Spanish. I go on business meetings and make sure conversation flows. Many of the men I’m hired by are not native English speakers.”

  “I see,” he drawled in a manner which showed that he definitely didn’t.

  Pride kept Laurie from elaborating further. She’d told him the truth, and if he didn’t believe her, then that was his sinister, suspicious mind’s fault.

  “Wouldn’t that present a problem to you anyway?” She licked her lower lip and grasped with hope to the objection. “How can a man such as you marry a lowly escort? What would the gossips say?”

  “No one dares gossip about my life.” His eyes glittered in his handsome face, and Laurie could well believe that he was above such speculation.

  “I can’t marry you,” she said numbly.

  His lips twisted in a sardonic smile. “Even you are not so unfeeling.”

  “Unfeeling?” She crossed her arms across her chest defensively. “How do you figure?”

  “You would see your father continue this downward spiral all because you won’t make a marriage of convenience?”

  “No.” She pulled her lower lip between her teeth once more. “I think there must be myriad other ways to help him, that’s all.”

  “There are not.” His eyes were laced with scorn. “I made a promise to my father, and I am doing something that personally disgusts me simply to satisfy that promise. Do you not think, Laurena Angove, that I would have employed any other tactic at my disposal before resorting to this?”

  His words hurt her far more than they should have. She felt an ache deep in her gut at the distaste with which he viewed this wedding. It was ludicrous given that she’d only heard of this suggested marriage minutes earlier.

  “There’s just no way; I can’t marry you.”

  “Then you will have the misery of seeing your father destitute and in despair, and knowing that it is all because you would not intervene.”

  “Oh, come on,” she groaned. “That’s completely unreasonable.”

  “I speak with honesty at all times.” Laurie watched as Afida crossed back to the front door and yanked it open.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Home. Are you to come with me?”

  “No!” She glared at him mutinously. “You can’t just drop this in my lap and expect me to know what to say.”

  He was immovable. “Your father is currently on board my jet, waiting for us to join him. The champagne will be flowing. The decision now is yours. Do you want to save him, or not?”

  CHAPTER TWO

  In hindsight, she should have known then what kind of man she was dealing with.

  For Sheikh Afida Masou-Al was not ruled by the behaviours most people ascribed to. He was a lethal combination – a man born to power who believed absolutely in his right to rule, and a man who did not care what methods he employed so long as his goal was achieved.

  The palace was an oasis in the middle of the desert, surrounded in every direction by the crispest of white sand, and the most startling blue sky. Laurie stretched her arms over her head and tried to remember what it was like to be bitterly cold. Life in the far north of England had been that. Some days had groaned by with barely a whisker of light. Now? She was surrounded by it. Though it had only been a week since she’d arrived in this wealthy, desert country, she had come to understand its shifting sands and acrid climate.

  A sound behind her caught her attention, but she didn’t move. As well as coming to understand the wrath of the sun, she’d also become used to the constant army of servants. They were everywhere, busy and preoccupied, seeing but unseen, going about their duties with a near-silent efficiency.

  The horizon seemed to crackle with light at this time of day. It was a bizarre result of the sun lashing the desert sands, resulting in a sparkling white line. She leaned forward slightly in her chair, trying to fix her gaze on any detail in the distance. But there was nothing. Just gradients of colour. Bright white to silver to blue. A perfect picture.

  “You are late.”

  Laurie jumped at the sound of Afida’s voice. The book she’d been reading dropped from her fingertips as she stood abruptly and spun to face him for the first time in over a week.

  “What are you doing here?” She demanded, pulling her summery robe tight across her chest. Beneath her hand, she could feel her heart thumping hard and fast.

  His lips lifted in lazy amusement at the gesture, as if to laugh at the very notion that he might be tempted to try to see what the robe was hiding. She hated him for that! His ability to unsettle her was unique and infuriating. She squared her shoulders in an attempt to look braver tha
n she felt. “Late for what?”

  He was wearing a white, gold and cream robe, which only served to draw attention to the darkness of his skin. Her mouth felt dry suddenly, as though the winds from the desert were scratching at it.

  His impatience was a palpable force. It hit Laurie instantaneously. “Oh!” She squeaked, slapping a hand into her forehead. “That’s today?”

  He nodded with deliberate slowness. “Yes. Our guests were expecting you almost an hour ago.”

  “Shoot.” She bit down on her lip. “No one came to me. My attendants …”

  “Would never presume to harangue you into punctuality.” His eyes narrowed. “If you are attempting to put off this wedding by being deliberately difficult, then I should warn you, you will not succeed.”

  “I’m not.” The wedding. Painful slashes of the conversation she’d overheard the day before thudded into her mind. She pushed them away. What had he said that she didn’t already know? Admittedly, she hadn’t appreciated just how hateful the whole idea of marrying her was to him, but nor did she suffer from any fantasy that this was more than a simple business transaction. A merger to save her father.

  “You agreed to this, Laurena.”

  “Laurie,” she implored out of habit. “Truly, those are just spare letters on my birth certificate, not my name.”

  He shook his head. “Laurie is a boy’s name.”

  “It’s my name,” she murmured. “If you don’t like it, call me something else altogether. Not Laurena.”

  His lips twitched at the suggestion. “I can think of several possibilities, zivzel.”

  “What does that mean?”

  He sobered. “Better you don’t ask.”

  She glared at him, and mentally she made a note to check the word later. She hadn’t heard it before. “Fine.”

  “You should consider changing.”

  Her scowl deepened. “Do you think?” She bit sarcastically, looking down at the casual robe. The realisation that this man had seen her wearing first her sweat-stained exercise gear, then a shapeless grey dress that had been stowed on the private jet for her, and now this – a threadbare robe that had been a sixteenth birthday gift from her mother – made her squirm with embarrassment.