Shelter for the Sheikh: A Royal Billionaire Romance Novel (Curves for Sheikhs Series Book 9)

by Annabelle Winters

  “And what was your purpose?” growled the Sheikh, slowly regaining his composure even though he was too relieved to truly be angry. Still, he snapped his fingers and waved all the attendants out of the anteroom until it was just him and his niece. “To drive me insane? I had my best men and women searching for you. I called in every favor I had with the CIA. By Allah, Mala, how could you do this to me?”

  For a moment her eyes softened. “I did not do anything to you, akhw al’umi. I did it to stop you from doing what you were going to do.” She took a breath and folded her arms over her chest, slowly pacing the empty room, running her hand over the gold-trimmed furniture of the lavish waiting area. “Kareem Abdullah,” she said quietly, finally glancing up at the towering Sheikh. “You know who he is. And I know who he is. I also know where he is.”

  The other brother. That was his name, even though the Sheikh had been loathe to even speak it aloud. His body tensed up as a chill ran through him. His head began to spin as he saw the seriousness in her eyes. “What in Allah’s name are you blathering about?! Speak, goddammit! Mala!”

  “Six months after I thought you were dead in that explosion in Canada, Kareem Abdullah, my drama teacher, confessed to me. He told me that his older brother was the man found in the rubble, that they had both been granted refugee status in Canada after their family had been wiped out.” She paused and took a breath, her young eyes flashing for a moment. “Wiped out by you.”

  The Sheikh grimaced and clenched his fist, but his mind was too clouded to focus on what Mala was saying. He began to pace the room, stomping his feet and pulling at his hair. “Where is he, Mala. I do not care what he said to you. Just tell me where he is.”

  Mala’s jaw tightened, and her dark eyes narrowed in a way that reminded the Sheikh that she was eighteen years old, a woman, a woman who’d handled tragedy and heartache and bounced back stronger and wiser. “Why?” she asked, before smirking and waving her hand. “Ya Allah, that is a rhetorical question. I know why. So you can have him torn from limb to limb by your royal camels.” She cocked her head quizzically. “Do we even have royal camels anymore? I mostly see our people riding the desert in Range Rovers and Land Cruisers.” She sighed. “Sometimes I wonder how it is that although our kingdom has stepped happily into the twenty-first century, our great Sheikh still believes he rides a camel through the dusty desert, scimitar by his side, dispensing justice without trial, without facts, without conscience.”

  The Sheikh’s eyes went wide and he roared with laughter. “Trial?! Facts?! Ya Allah, such big words from my little niece! Bring the shriveled bastard to me and I will give him his trial while he is beaten and dismembered and—”

  Mala raised her arms to shut him up, and then she turned and walked towards the ornate eastern gate of the palace. “Almost a year has passed. You have a beautiful queen who has stood by your side as you roamed the world with violence in your heart. Two gorgeous children that are the pride and joy of Khiyani. Twin babies on the way as your pregnant queen cries to be held by you. Your beloved niece back home safe and sound. You are surrounded by love, and yet you crave nothing but violence. If Queen Irene has not been able to move you to understand, then what hope do I have?”

  The Sheikh frowned as his head began to spin again. “What do you mean? Have you and Irene been talking? Is this some conspiracy? Ya Allah, what in God’s name are you talking about?”

  Mala turned just as she got to the teakwood door leading to the outer gate. “Conspiracy? Yes, of course. It is all a conspiracy.” She shook her head and closed her eyes. “There is no conspiracy except in your head. I thought if I returned after so long your relief might allow you to listen to reason. I hoped that with the blessing of two new children your heart would have softened and I could free poor Kareem from the hell into which you have cast him.”

  The Sheikh stopped his pacing and stared at his niece. His body was rigid, his head still buzzing. “What about the hell into which he and his brother have pulled me and my family into? Irene and Sage were kidnapped. Their lives were threatened. Your life and safety was threatened. I thought you were kidnapped too!”

  Mala blinked and looked down at the floor for a moment. When she looked up her eyes were misty. “I know,” she said softly. “I did not wish to make you believe that. I did not want to disappear like that. It was the only way I could think of to protect Kareem. At first I thought you had decided not to pursue him, but when I heard you giving the order to your security men to track him down, I knew I had to go to him. It was the only way to protect him. I did not think I could reason with you, so my only hope was that if your men found Kareem, I would be there to stop them from killing him.”

  The Sheikh cocked his head, his eyes widening as he tried to understand what his niece was saying. “Go to him? You mean you were with this man all these months? With him?!”

  Mala squealed and raised her arms up high, waving as if trying to get the Sheikh’s attention or perhaps stop his head from exploding. “By God, no! Not like that! Akhw al’umi, Kareem and I are friends!”

  But the Sheikh’s face was red and pale at the same time. “Friends! That is what every predator says, Mala! You think you know the world, but you are still a child. You and Irene think love and compassion is the answer to everything, but you have no idea what evil lurks in the shadows! This man is not your friend, Mala. And if he has even touched you, then—”

  But Mala was laughing now, and the Sheikh just stared as she giggled like a child and clapped her hands. “Ya Allah, I thought you knew! Was it not in the CIA files or whatever else you must have had access to?”

  “Knew what? Stop laughing and speak, child! Knew what?!”

  “That . . . that Kareem is gay, Akhw al’umi! That is the reason he was given priority status as a refugee. He had chosen to come out, which put his life in immediate danger. His brother was granted asylum along with him, but they are two very different people. Kareem had been composing poems and writing plays since he was twelve, and he got a scholarship to the London School of Drama within a year of arriving in Canada. His brother became a stockbroker and made a lot of money very quickly, but had been consumed with avenging their father’s death.”

  The Sheikh took a breath as he allowed this to sink in. It did make sense. Refugees from Pakistan were not as high priority as those from Syria or Somalia, unless there was some factor that put them in immediate danger. And although Pakistan was not as strict as some of the Middle Eastern Islamic kingdoms, being openly gay was still dangerous unless you were protected by wealth or status. Was it in the report? Perhaps in the CIA reports, but the Sheikh had never seen the CIA reports on Kareem and Blackbeard because he did not want to involve Benson at the time. He had gone directly to his contact in Pakistani Intelligence, and even then had simply asked for names and locations of all young men in the villages and surrounding areas. If he had known, would it have changed anything? Perhaps. Probably not. A gay playwright is no less likely to murder someone than a non-gay playwright, yes?

  As the Sheikh tried to gather his thoughts, he heard the shuffling of feet at the inside door and turned to see his pregnant queen standing there, Sage by her side, River in her arms, three petrified-looking attendants chasing the royal family, clearly trying to get the about-to-pop queen back to the Royal Infirmary.

  “What are you doing?” he roared at Irene, his mind pushed to the limit, every muscle in his body clenched. “Get back to bed!”

  “Not without you!” said Irene through clenched teeth. “This happens as a family.”

  “Ya Allah, you women and children are driving me to madness!” Bilaal shouted, looking back and forth between his niece and his wife, glancing at his wide-eyed son, his infant daughter, the Hungry Princess of the West, who was already clawing at mommy’s breast. He closed his eyes and took a breath, reminding himself that he was the husband, father, uncle, and goddamn king here. “Enough!” he roared fina
lly. “Back to the Royal Infirmary. All of you! Mala, you will convince me on the way why I should let your gay drama teacher live. Irene, you will do as the doctors say so you and my twin babies do not all die in childbirth.”

  “What?” said Mala, her eyes going wide as she stared at Irene and then at the Sheikh. “You want me in there?”

  “We are all one family,” growled the Sheikh, and he strode over to Irene and lifted her into his arms like she was light as a feather even though she was swollen with two children and enough milk to feed the kingdom. “And we end this together, once and for all.”

  47

  Irene watched through tear-filled eyes as all of it came together in a wave of pain, relief, and overwhelming joy. She watched her husband supervise the doctors as if he were an expert in delivering children. She watched him grab his niece’s arm and refuse to let her leave the room, demanding the full story even as he clenched his teeth in anxiety and stroked Irene’s hair while she grunted and howled through the delivery. It was absolute chaos but somehow still calm and serene, and through the haze Irene understood why all of this needed to happen at once, that there needed to be a convergence of the love and the violence, that the battle in her king’s mind could only be resolved in one violent explosion of love.

  “They are here!” the Sheikh bellowed as Irene felt the pressure suddenly give way as the cries of two healthy newborns ripped through the air. “A boy and a girl! We are blessed yet again, my beautiful queen! You have done it yet again!”

  “I have done it, haven’t I,” Irene whispered through the chaos, perhaps only to herself. Through tear-filled eyes she surveyed the room, took in the sight of her pantless son the prince, her forever-suckling daughter the princess, her husband the king, who was stomping his heavy feet with joy as he cradled his two newborns. Then she caught Princess Mala glancing at her, and in the young woman’s eyes Irene saw a flash of what she swore was gratitude, as if Mala was thanking Irene for something, perhaps acknowledging that in the end it was Irene’s love that had brought them all down this twisted path to what seemed like an ending to something and a beginning to something else.

  Oh, God, I have done it, she thought as the Sheikh placed her two newborns at her breast, brought Sage and River to the bedside, and leaned in for an embrace that somehow captured all of it in one moment. One of those moments that lives forever.

  Love in its many forms. Love in its eternal form. Love in perhaps its only form.

  Family.

  ∞

  EPILOGUE ONE

  Irene watched as the thin, clean-shaven young man stepped forward and took a knee before the Sheikh, who was seated on his seldom-used throne, an ornate chair that looked as uncomfortable as it did lavish. Bilaal was dressed in a shimmering gold traditional sherwani suit, with sandals that curled up at the toes, a diamond-and-ruby studded crown made of hand-woven white silk, a ceremonial sword in its jewel-encrusted scabbard hanging from his thick camel-hide belt.

  “Rise, Kareem Abdullah,” said the Sheikh, and Irene did her best not to smile when she saw Mala’s brown face light up with a stifled giggle. Certainly Bilaal was putting on a show for this occasion, and judging by the way Kareem’s legs were shaking, it was working. Let my husband have at least a bit of his imagined revenge, Irene thought as she shook her head in amusement when she realized that she could change the man a little but never all the way. And she didn’t want to.

  “Great Sheikh,” said Kareem, his voice high-pitched and trembling. “Thank you for granting me this audience.”

  “You do realize that if not for the repeated assurances from my niece, Princess Mala, you would be granted an audience with the hind legs of the royal camels.”

  Kareem almost passed out, and it didn’t help when Mala whispered, “There are no royal camels, Kareem. He would have just beheaded you. But don’t worry. I told him you were gay.”

  Irene could see that the Sheikh’s lips were trembling now as he tried not to burst into laughter. They’d all agreed to this show, even though it was a bit cruel to put Kareem through it. Still, knowing what the Sheikh had planned, the women had gone along with it.

  Bilaal cleared his throat pointedly, narrowing his eyes at his impudent niece and then glancing briefly towards his queen, who sat on a smaller throne by his side, surrounded by their fidgeting children.

  “Kareem Abdullah,” he said after taking a breath. “My niece has vouched for you, but I need to hear you speak. I need to look into your eyes and know that you are not a danger to my family.”

  A wave of seriousness fell across the room as Kareem straightened his back and took a deep breath before looking up into the king’s eyes. “Sheikh,” he said. “It is true that I carried anger in my heart after finding my father and uncles murdered on the side of the mountain. Although I knew you acted in self-defense after they killed your friend and meant to kill you, I still felt the hatred, as any man would.”

  The Sheikh nodded slowly, but did not speak.

  Kareem continued. “But after we were granted refuge in Canada, for the first time I felt free to pursue my dreams, to live the way I want, without fear of violence at every turn. And it changed me. It made me see that sometimes even a tragedy leads to a new beginning, that there is sometimes a blessing in what seems like a curse. And I asked myself, if my father knew that his death would give his son a chance at the life of his dreams, what would he think?” The boy closed his eyes for a moment, holding back tears. “And I do believe that my father would have been overjoyed. In a way, that is why he’d lived his life with violence in his heart: He was a bandit and a killer, but he saw no other way to give his children the lives he thought they deserved.”

  The Sheikh took a breath, and Irene could see that he was moved. Still, Bilaal stayed stoic. “But yet you went along with your brother’s plan, did you not?” he asked. “After all, it cannot be coincidence that you chose to take a position at the very school that my niece attended. Surely with your credentials you would have had a choice of positions across Europe, perhaps the world.”

  Kareem hesitated. Then he nodded, shame clouding his clean face. “I took the position at Mala’s school because of my brother’s urging, yes. But his plan was mad. The scheme of a man who had lost touch with reality.” He shook his head. “Even if such a twisted plan of manipulating Mala into falling in love with me was realistic, how would it work when it would be obvious to her that I was . . . I mean, that I am . . .”

  “He means to say that I have excellent gay-dar,” Mala piped in, forcing Kareem to break a smile as a few in the court murmured in amusement.

  “So then why did you not refuse?” said the Sheikh sternly, folding his arms over his broad chest and raising his chin. “Your brother knew you preferred men, did he not? He would have known you could not carry out your end of the plan.”

  Kareem smiled ruefully. “My brother believed that my homosexuality was a sickness, a result of some weakness in my will. He told me that I simply had to get over it.” Then Kareem went serious. “But yes, I could have refused him. But I did not, because if I had, my brother would have come up with something else. Something more drastic. And then what, great Sheikh? Where would it have ended? He kills Mala? You kill him? Then you kill me? Where does it end?”

  Irene watched as the Sheikh took a breath. She herself held her breath, waiting for his response. A year ago he would have answered by saying, “It ends with you dead at my feet.” But now . . .

  The Sheikh’s reply came slowly. “Are you saying that you went with your brother’s plan and joined Mala’s school in order to . . . what, protect her? Why? After her uncle murdered your family? Surely the free air of Canada cannot change a man’s heart that quickly, yes?”

  Kareem took a breath and closed his eyes, and this time the tears trickled down the sides of his smooth brown face. He nodded and opened his eyes. “The only appropriate response to viole
nce is love, Sheikh. So I decided that it ends with me. With my act of love. I decided that I would protect your niece, a girl I never even knew, and that would be an act of love that perhaps would end the violence. I decided that it ends with me, Sheikh.”

  There was quiet in the court, and Irene felt a lump in her throat as she clutched her children close. Mala had come close as well, and they all watched as the Sheikh’s eyes softened for a moment before he covered up his emotion as best he could. Finally he spoke.

  “It does end with you, Kareem,” he said quietly. “And it also begins with you.” He glanced at his wife and children, then at Mala, finally back at Kareem. “After consultation with my queen and my niece, I have chosen to appoint you to the court of Khiyani. There is a need for more focus on the arts in the schools of Khiyani, and my board of educators have reviewed your work and are enthusiastic about having you as an advisor.” He cleared his throat. “And in my own act of . . .” he cleared his throat again . . . “love and trust, even though it defies all reason and common sense, I am appointing you tutor in the arts to my son, the crown prince.” A gasp rose up from those who did not know of it beforehand, and Irene almost cried when she saw Bilaal flinch.

  He’s feeling it, she realized when she saw her husband actually looked surprised for a split second before regaining his composure. He’s feeling what a simple act of love and trust can do to the person who’s offering it. Oh, God, he’s feeling it!

  “Tutor to my son,” the Sheikh repeated, “under supervision at all times, of course. Trust only goes so far.”

  Kareem was blinking hard and breathing even harder, and he glanced over at Mala as if to ask if it was a trick. She shook her head and then nodded and smiled, and quickly Kareem turned back to the Sheikh and bowed.

  “Sheikh, I . . . I do not know what to say,” he stammered.

  “Say yes, or I will have you tied to the royal camels and dragged through the streets of Khiyani in a sack,” said the Sheikh without hesitation.