by Holly Rayner
THE SHEIKH’S ONLINE BRIDE
By Holly Rayner
Copyright 2016 by Holly Rayner
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part by any means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the explicit written permission of the author.
All characters depicted in this fictional work are consenting adults, of at least eighteen years of age. Any resemblance to persons living or deceased, particular businesses, events, or exact locations are entirely coincidental.
Table Of Contents:
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
ONE
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“Is that her?”
“Who? Where?”
“Don’t look! She’s just behind you, sitting at a table alone. It has to be her.”
Hallie tried to sink even deeper into her coffee house chair. It was a whispered conversation that followed her pretty much wherever she went, and it was horrible. Two girls were sitting at a table just ahead of her, and for all the insistence of the one pointing her out, she was blatantly staring.
One of the pair turned in her seat and glanced back at Hallie before turning back around. “Come on, that can’t be her. Why would she show her face in a place like this?”
Hallie’s blood boiled. For the millionth time, she cursed Joshua Theroux, the ex who’d taken it upon himself to turn the whole world against her.
She heard a throat clearing just above her. Looking up, Hallie saw the curious face of Girl #1.
“Excuse me, I’m sorry to bother you, but are you Hallie Richards?”
Hallie self-consciously pushed a russet curl behind her ear. “No, you must have me confused with someone else.”
“Are you sure? You look exactly like her.”
“You really think I would be confused on what my name is?”
At first when people had come up to her asking her name, Hallie had been honest, but after a few less-than-pleasant encounters with the public, she’d finally stopped owning up to it.
The truth was, Hallie Richards was something of an F-list celebrity. A few years earlier, she’d taken part in The Perfect Couple—a reality dating show, similar to The Bachelor—in the misguided belief that she might be able to find love on national television. The previous season’s winning couple had been paraded around for all to see—still together, unlike so many of the others—and Hallie hadn’t been such a cynical person back then. Her phone had been taken, and with no contact with the outside world, she had been trapped in a house with a bunch of very skinny, very catty women who had made her life a living nightmare. She had stayed on only because the bachelor they were all fighting over had asked her to, and back then, Hallie had been young and naïve.
She had made it pretty far in the competition—enough to travel to romantic Italy, where they had enjoyed plenty of wine and dined in the finest locations, surrounded by candlelight. She had really thought that the guy, Michael, was into her. The producers had even told her that he had asked them to prepare a ring for her for the final “proposal episode,” and she had gushed about it in front of camera after camera.
Then he cut her.
The American public was brutal, calling her Heartbreak Hallie and agreeing in every Twitter hashtag that she was cursed never to find love.
Then Justin had arrived, just as she was holding her bleeding heart in her hands, only to crush it almost instantly.
Usually, when Hallie told people that she wasn’t who she was, they accepted it and walked away. This girl refused to do so.
“Look, I get it if you want to hide, but I was really rooting for you on the show,” the girl said earnestly.
Hallie actually made eye contact with her then, her expression hopeful. “Really?”
The girl’s expression was cold and victorious. “I knew it was you. Sure, I was rooting for you—until the papers came out telling us who you really are.”
Damnit. Hallie would never forgive Justin, ever.
She set down her half-finished coffee and stood, shrugging into a light jacket. It was autumn, but Hallie couldn’t wait for winter to arrive. There were so many more ways to hide in winter clothing.
“Don’t believe everything you read,” she said coolly, turning her back on the girl and walking out.
It was meant to be a nice, quiet lunch break, but apparently Hallie couldn’t get one of those anymore. Justin had ruined her life, in every possible way.
When she’d told him she didn’t want to get back together—that she thought he’d only shown up at her door again because she’d started getting famous—he’d flown into a rage. It was terrifying. Hallie had run out of the room, hoping never to see him again. She’d screamed at him as she did so, but she could hardly remember what was said.
She’d thought that was it. She would put together the tattered scraps of her once-wonderful life, and that would be that. But then people started sneering at her in the streets. At first, she’d figured it was New York, and that wasn’t terribly uncommon, but the hateful looks quickly became more and more pronounced, until one morning when a woman actually spit at Hallie’s feet.
“What did I do to you?” she’d cried.
The woman had glared back at her. “You tried to present yourself as the victim, but you’re really just a trashy little gold digger, aren’t you?”
“What?” Hallie had asked, truly confused.
The woman had tossed a tabloid in her face and kept walking. When Hallie had looked at the first page, she’d gone cold.
It was her image, with the headline: Hallie Richards Seeks Fame, Not Love: Hallie’s Ex Tells All!
Justin had gone to every tabloid in town and sold her out.
Hallie had blinked back tears as she read the article detailing how deceived Justin had felt after he’d realized just “who she really was.”
And the world had taken his side.
Hallie rubbed blurry eyes as she tried to force out the memories of her fall from grace. Before going on The Perfect Couple, she had been working for a respected publishing company in New York. Her boss had been nothing but supportive until the day she walked into work with that newspaper tucked tightly under her arm.
“Hallie, can you come into my office for a moment?”
Hallie had gulped at that. “Of course,” she said, taking a seat in a plush sofa across from the head editor’s desk. Sandy had cat-eye glasses and brown hair tied in a neat chignon. She laced her fingers together as she peered at Hallie over the rims. “You’ve had an interesting couple of months, to say the least,” she said slowly.
Hallie nodded. “I sure have, and I can’t tell you how grateful I’ve been for your support—”
Sandy put up a well-manicured hand. “Don’t thank me, Hallie. It will make this all the more difficult.”
Hallie’s stomach sank into the chair. “Make what difficult?”
Sally’s expression was tense. “Hallie, come on. We’re a publishing house. You think writers want to asso
ciate with us when this kind of garbage is published about you?” She tossed another tabloid on the desk. On the cover was a picture of Hallie in a bikini during her time on the show.
“Come on Sandy. You know those rags are full of lies! How can you base my employment off this crap?”
“I’m sorry, Hallie, but this is the hard reality. If you’re going to aim for the spotlight and it doesn’t agree with you, it doesn’t agree with us either. I don’t want to lose any more clients because of our connection.”
Hallie stared at her hands, twisting her fingers. She was about to lose her job, and there was nothing she could do about it. Why had she been so stupid? Why hadn’t she just tried dating quietly, like a normal person? “You’ve already lost clients because of me?” she whispered.
Sandy nodded. “Two, as of this morning. They’ve said they will come back to us, under one condition.” She lifted an eyebrow, her silence loud as a foghorn.
“I’ll just go clean out my desk then,” Hallie mumbled. She stood to make her exit, feeling a reassuring pat on her shoulder.
“You’ll be just fine, Hallie,” Sandy said warmly. “You’re tough, and the public can be very, very fickle. They’ll forget about you soon enough, and when that day comes, I’ll reach back out, okay?”
“Okay,” Hallie said, not holding her breath.
She’d cleaned out her office and headed back to her apartment, crying the whole way home.
It hadn’t gotten much better from there. She’d applied at several other publishing houses, and though her credentials were stellar, no one would even look at her resume once they saw her name at the top. She was blackballed in New York, and there was nowhere else in the world she wanted to go.
As she’d sat crying on a bench in Central Park, an older woman approached her and sat down. “What could be so bad, that you’re crying here on a beautiful summer day?”
Between sniffles, Hallie had poured her heart out to a complete stranger. The woman was well dressed, in a nice suit, and Hallie found it strange that she would reach out to a reject such as herself. After Hallie finished her story, the woman sat quietly for some time.
“You say you’ve got experience working with computers?” she asked.
Hallie nodded. “Of course I do. I can type two thousand words in an hour!”
The woman reached into her purse and pulled out a card. Hallie took it without looking at it.
“My name is Mallory Jones, and I run the data entry branch at my agency. We just lost someone today and I’m beyond short. Would you like to start with us tomorrow?”
Hallie sniffed. “Data entry?”
It was far and away the last thing she could see herself doing—repetitive, mindless work usually performed in a gray cubicle.
“I know it’s not most glamorous job on earth, but it will keep you on your feet until the world forgets who you are. I consider myself a pretty good judge of character, Hallie, and I also don’t believe tabloids. I know you’re a better person than they say you are.”
Unable to help herself, Hallie hugged Mallory tight as she cried tears of gratitude. She was the first person to look at Hallie like she was innocent—which she was. She had agreed to take the job.
That was a few months before. Much to Hallie’s chagrin, she was still getting stopped in coffee houses, on the street, anywhere she went, really. People had stopped spitting at her, though, so there was always that. With a new season of The Perfect Couple now airing, people had picked other women to hate, and Hallie was free to be only generally disliked by the population at large.
She pushed her way through heavy revolving doors as she made her way to the elevator and pressed the button for the seventieth floor. She swallowed as her ears popped before the elevator doors opened up to a gray, cube farm wonderland. Hallie was fortunate enough to have a cube along the edge, so when she needed a break she could simply look out the window and see the sprawling skyscrapers of New York City.
She plopped into her chair and clocked back in. Checking the queue for work, she found it was still empty.
Great.
As grateful as she was to have a job at all, Hallie had been bored out of her mind most of her time working for Mallory. The job was simple, but it was very “hurry up and wait.” There were times when the company got swamped with data, and then there would be entire days where there was no work whatsoever.
At a loss for anything else to do, Hallie opened up her phone and clicked on one of her dating apps. Another image of a man exposing himself popped across her screen, and she closed the app, sighing.
Dating had been hard enough before she became a reality TV villain. Now it was damn near impossible to find a nice guy. A few weeks after the tabloid scandal started by Justin, Hallie had worked up the courage to put herself out there again. She’d tried all the major dating sites, paying through the nose in her attempts to find love, but none of it had worked. She’d tried several dating apps, but had cancelled out of every one she had tried; once people recognized her picture, the hateful messages started without fail.
Still, the digital world was limitless, and new apps were being created every day.
Hallie rolled her shoulders and got to work googling more dating apps, to see if she could finally find one that worked for her. It was worth a shot. She’d been wallowing in self-pity for far too long, and she refused to give up on herself. There had to be a man who didn’t care what the tabloids said—a man who could love her for who she was.
She just had to find him.
Scrolling down, Hallie skimmed past app after app, but all of them seemingly targeted at different demographics. Unfortunately, she wasn’t Jewish, she wasn’t into sister wives, and she wasn’t a farmer.
Finally, her eyes caught one that didn’t seem to specify a certain religion or profession. She clicked on it, reading the description:
LoveMatch is an app for people who truly want to find love. Warning: if you’re shallow or materialistic, this app isn’t for you. If what really matters to you is what’s on the inside, then download LoveMatch for free and give it a try today. You won’t see the person on the other end, so the only way to see if you’re a match is to talk.
Hallie was intrigued. An app where no pictures were allowed? She clicked on the Download button and pulled out her phone again, filling in some personal information about herself. As she was just about to scroll through potential suitors, her work phone rang, and she set her cell back on her desk.
“This is Hallie,” she said, using her most professional voice.
“Hallie, it’s Mallory. We just got dumped on. I’m going to need your fast fingers for the rest of the day. Keep an eye open for the package.”
Hallie repressed a sigh. This job barely paid the bills, and she had almost no money for things she enjoyed anymore. That all-expenses-paid trip to Italy seemed like a lifetime ago.
“I’ve got you covered, Mallory. Not to worry.”
“You’re the best,” Mallory said before ending the call.
Moments later, a mail cart arrived, bearing stacks and stacks of documents. The young man pushing the cart was thin and wiry, and his lip quirked as he piled the papers on Hallie’s desk.
“See you sometime next week, am I right?” he said, darting a glance to the enormous pile of work he’d just handed her.
“I guess so,” Hallie said, forcing a laugh as she picked up the first stack of paper.
She forgot all about the app as she went to work, toiling away at the only job she could get. At the back of her mind, one thought refused to be pushed away.
There had to be more to life than data entry.
TWO
Sadiq sat with his partner in their elaborate office, bouncing ideas off one another.
“There has to be more to life than looks.”
“You’re crazy.”
Sadiq frowned at his friend’s statement. “How is that crazy? It’s a perfectly reasonable thing to say.”
Fakhir laughed he
artily, his perfectly chiseled chin dimpling as he did so. Fakhir Al-Hazir had been a good friend of Sadiq’s for a long time. Well, at least since he had made his first hundred million; Sadiq had had plenty of friends after that.
Fakhir managed to sound charming even as he looked haughty. “Let’s not be unrealistic, Sadiq. Both men and women need to be attracted to their partner in order to make a romantic connection work. You know this.”
Sadiq shook his head. “I’m not looking to help people make a ‘romantic connection,’ Fakhir. I’m looking to help them fall in love.”
Fakhir scoffed. “We both know love isn’t real. It’s a chemical reaction caused by hormones. We should be playing on sexual chemistry—that’s what people really want!”
