A Cinderella for the Desert King

by Kim Lawrence

  ‘Were you serious about...? Are we really...married?’

  She had hoped he’d laugh, because it was infinitely preferable to be mocked than married to a total stranger.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll sort it out.’

  The acknowledgement that there was something to sort out tightened the tension curling in the pit of her stomach. ‘So, what, you just wave your magic wand and snap your fingers? Or do you have your own legal team on standby?’

  ‘I’ll sort it,’ he repeated calmly.

  She couldn’t hide her scepticism but clung to the hope it would turn out there was nothing to sort. ‘I assume I should report what’s happened to someone.’ The thought of explaining to a foreign and not necessarily sympathetic police force what had happened was pretty daunting.

  ‘I’ll drop you off at the British Embassy. They’ll sort things out for you.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She extended a hand to shake his then was struck by the sheer ludicrousness of the formality and leaned in, the leaning coinciding with the exact moment the restless horse chose to butt her bottom quite firmly with his nose, literally pushing her into his master.

  Zain’s arms opened to stop her falling—strangely the sensation in her head was also exactly like falling as she looked up into his lean, darkly beautiful face. Safe in his embrace, she wriggled her elbows, trying to free herself from the emotions the feelings of his arms around her unleashed. Her arms were squashed between their bodies but the urgency faded as her eyes drifted across the marvellous angles and planes of his face.

  ‘I...’ Her voice faded away as she felt a hard shudder run through his body and excitement sparked, kicking up the volume of her heartbeat. She could hear common sense issuing an irritating prissy whisper at the back of her mind and ignored it. Life was short—a fact that had been driven home today—and if you didn’t take a chance, what was the point?

  She couldn’t take her eyes off the nerve she could see beating through the stubble on his lean cheek.

  She expelled her breath on a long, gusty sigh. ‘I really...’

  * * *

  Zain swallowed; in his head his fingernails were hanging on to the last shreds of his vanishing self-control. He felt like a man walking a tightrope—he wanted to grab on to all that lovely softness and not let go. Her cushiony lips looked so soft and inviting...would they taste as good as they looked?

  She slid her hands up from between their bodies, her fingertips shaking as she touched his face, her expression rapt as she trailed them down his stubble-dusted cheeks.

  Every cell in his body froze. Digging into reserves of control he didn’t know he possessed, he took hold of her wrists and leaned back.

  Zain had never had anything but contempt for men who took advantage of women. The boss who misused a position of power, the guy in the bar who honed in on the woman who couldn’t walk straight, the best ‘friend’ who moved in to offer comfort after a tough divorce. They were weak men who took advantage, men like his brother, who would and had shown contempt for anything resembling scruples.

  The idea of being the man his brother was filled Zain with utter blood-chilling horror.

  But God, he was tempted.

  ‘Abby.’

  ‘I really want to say thank you.’ She raised herself on tiptoe and closed her eyes, tilting her face up to his in silent invitation.

  His head lowered and for a split second their glances connected and the deep, desperate need he felt was reflected in the drowning green of her eyes. Abby gave a tiny sigh as his mouth covered hers and his eyes squeezed closed as he surrendered himself totally to the sensation of the slow, sensuous brush of her lips.

  * * *

  This was insanity but it was a beautiful insanity. It made no sense but it didn’t matter...it was not about logic, just need. A need she had never felt before, a need a million miles from the feelings Gregory’s awkward kisses had summoned.

  The sound of the groan that vibrated in his powerful chest escalated the dizzying excitement swirling through her veins. And when he dragged her in tight, sealing their bodies together and flaunting the hardness of his erection against her belly, Abby felt a primitive thrill sweep through her as she kissed him back.

  And then, as quickly as it had begun, it was over. He had physically picked her up and set her a few feet away from him.

  She blinked like someone coming up for air and then the realisation hit home and a moment later scalding humiliation.

  ‘Sorry.’

  What for? she thought. Not fancying me?

  ‘I know it’s not me...it’s you.’ Papering over her humiliation with pride, she lifted her chin. At least now she had that ability to take control of an awkward situation, unlike in her teens, when her much-anticipated date with one of the cool boys was revealed as a joke... Like kissing a wet fish! he’d told his friends at school. ‘I never thought otherwise,’ she lied.

  ‘You need medical attention, not—’

  ‘A roll in the hay...’ she inserted, having learnt from bitter experience that it was always better to mock yourself before your detractors got the chance. ‘You are totally right,’ she agreed, thinking, The only medical attention I need involves a shrink’s couch!

  What the hell was she doing? She’d never acted like this in her life... The memory of his hands and mouth on her only moments ago made her want to hide from embarrassment, a feeling she remembered from her school days when she had been isolated, become a target for the cool girls and sniggered at by their boyfriends because she was too tall and thin and that swot who put her hand up in class. The situation had culminated in the fake date that had made her retreat even farther into her shell—at least she had got incredible grades.

  It was hard to find an equivalent bright side to this situation.

  ‘I’m ready when you are...oh, and I hope you’re keeping a tab of how much I owe you for your time and...’ She stopped, biting down on her inside lips as her eyes fell from his—what was the going rate for saving someone’s life?

  Zain shrugged off the insult. If he’d taken offence it would have been easier but his understanding expression made her feel even more of a total idiot!

  ‘How about we call it...?’ An expression she couldn’t put a name to flickered across his face before he produced one of his inimical shrugs. ‘Let’s just call it good timing.’

  He could call it anything he liked. She still didn’t have a clue what he really meant.

  ‘Fine.’

  It was hard to project ‘distant and aloof’ when you were sitting in front of someone on a horse going very fast, so Abby was deeply relieved when the walled city with its iconic towers and minarets came into view.

  It was bizarre but after everything that had happened to her it was the humiliation of throwing herself at him like some sort of sex-starved groupie that was eating away at her.

  She was mad at herself, mad for setting herself up for the knock-back and for caring about it, and mad at him. Especially mad at him!

  It wasn’t until the first security checkpoint, some way outside the city limits, came into view that it occurred to her that they might have some difficulty re-entering the city.

  Getting out had been complicated enough and then they had had a stack of stamped and signed documents. Now she didn’t even have her passport and the man with her looked exactly the sort of dangerous character that would ring alarm bells.

  Maybe he was thinking the same because he brought the horse to a halt before they reached the actual checkpoint, dismounting and telling her to do the same.

  She ignored the hand he extended and, though her solo dismount almost ended in disaster, she hadn’t accepted his help, which at that moment was all that mattered, a childish display of defiance but the only defence she had against her humiliation.

  ‘Have you got the right permits? Shall I talk to them?’


  ‘Stay here.’

  It wasn’t clear if he was talking to her or the horse but he didn’t look back, so presumably it never crossed his mind that either of them would disobey his command.

  She watched as he walked straight up to the men in uniform and hoped he wasn’t going to take the same high-handed attitude with them.

  The conversation only lasted a few minutes and the guards’ guns had stayed across their shoulders. That had to be a good sign, didn’t it?

  Her anxiety climbed as the minutes ticked by. Were they grilling him? When he turned and began to walk back towards her she felt a wave of relief that vanished when one of the guards followed him, jogging to catch up with the tall, dominant figure. A telltale flame of desire that Abby wanted badly to deny ignited low down in her belly as she watched him.

  It took for ever for them to reach her and the expression on his arrestingly beautiful face gave her no clues as to how the discussion had gone, but no one was waving any guns, which was a step in the right direction.

  The guard tipped his head to Abby and said something that didn’t sound aggressive—in fact it sounded almost deferential.

  ‘He said he is sorry about your experiences and hopes that it has not given you a bad impression of our country.’

  Abby smiled and nodded at the man. ‘Did he really say that?’

  ‘Word for word,’ Zain responded but the look in his eyes suggested he had missed a few things out in his translation.

  ‘So, what happens now?’

  As if in response to her question a jeep drove towards them stopping only a few feet away. A driver wearing a military uniform got out and walked towards them and for a split second she thought his extended hand held a weapon or at least a set of handcuffs, but then she saw that the metal the sun had glinted off was a bunch of keys attached to a key ring.

  Zain held out his hand for the keys, delivered some sort of instructions to the driver and then sent him on his way.

  Abby hadn’t understood a word of the one-sided conversation and felt her confusion grow as she watched the man lead the stallion away.

  ‘You can’t let them take your horse,’ she protested.

  ‘I thought you did not like horses.’

  ‘That’s not the point—you can’t trade an animal for a...a...’

  ‘The horse doesn’t have air-conditioning. Relax, I am joking.’

  ‘Joking?’

  ‘I have not exchanged my horse.’ His lips twitched at some sort of inside joke she wasn’t privy to. ‘They are merely going to look after him for me.’

  ‘And let you use this in the meantime?’ She continued to regard him with extreme scepticism. ‘Did you bribe them or something?’ she called out as he got into the driving seat.

  Zain leant out of the window. ‘I simply explained the situation. Now get in.’

  Abby did so, not that she was in any way convinced by his story. She knew she was missing something, but what? He started the engine almost before she had closed the door.

  ‘You’re not telling me everything. Have you got connections or something?’

  ‘I have an honest face and they have my horse as hostage. It was a simple negotiation.’

  It sounded plausible but the conviction she was missing something persisted.

  Clearly he knew the city well, as he drove quickly and efficiently, diverting on numerous occasions down side streets when they encountered traffic jams or when some of the parties that still seemed to be going on had blocked entire roads.

  The party atmosphere seemed to have infected the policemen on duty as well because they were waved through the numerous security checkpoints without being stopped once. It couldn’t have gone smoother if they’d been part of the wedding party.

  ‘This is it.’

  He pulled the jeep up outside a building with wrought-iron railings, the only thing differentiating it from the other buildings lining both sides of the affluent-looking but narrow street the small, discreet sign above the door.

  She turned in her seat. ‘I don’t know your name, and you’ve... People say the words “you’ve saved my life” all the time.’ She done it herself when someone handed her a coffee she needed particularly badly. ‘But you really have. You’re a genuine hero.’ For the first time, she saw him look acutely uncomfortable. ‘And just when I thought you didn’t have a weak spot,’ she murmured, half to herself.

  ‘Right place, right time...that’s all.’

  She shook her head and reached for the door handle, inadvertently knocking her injured arm. She clenched her teeth as fighting the pain was a lot easier than fighting the throb of awareness she felt every time she looked at this man. It was so strange because she didn’t normally react this way to men—she never had, certainly not with Gregory, whose appeal had been the fact he seemed safe...turned out, of course, he was anything but!

  Zain was opening the passenger door before she had even registered he was getting out. While Abby nursed her throbbing arm against her chest he took her other and helped her out. ‘Be careful and get that arm checked out straight away.’

  ‘I will,’ she promised, looking at him and feeling the traitorous trickle of heat between her legs. Why did she react to him this way, a way she had never reacted to a man before? ‘It’s actually feeling better, I think.’

  She thought about shaking his hand but remembered how that had turned out the last time and thought better of it, instead tipping her head solemnly in thanks.

  He nodded, turned and strode back to the car. She had the craziest impulse to run after him before he vanished from her life, but common sense prevailed before she had made a fool of herself for a second time—he never had been part of her life so there was no reason to change that now.

  Abby walked to the embassy door, glad he couldn’t see the tears that filled her eyes, unaware that someone else could.

  * * *

  In the basement of the British Embassy a man sitting beside several monitors turned and called out to his colleague, who was dozing in a chair.

  ‘Call Mr Jones; I think he’ll want to see this.’ He scrolled the image back several frames and froze the streamed recording, zooming in on the face of the man that many privately called the man who should be the next sheikh.

  Pity Zain Al Seif was only second in line.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Ten months later

  EVEN IN AN area where conspicuous wealth and status symbols were the norm, the low-slung silver designer car sitting glinting in the afternoon attracted attention and covetous stares, but not as much attention or as many stares as the man who walked along the tree-lined boulevard towards it. Even had he been dressed in charity-shop rejects, the man would have stopped traffic. He had an almost tangible aura, authority mingled with masculinity in its most raw form.

  Zain was oblivious to the swivelled heads and raised designer shades as his attention was focused not on the car, but on its owner.

  He was a few feet away when the crowd of giggling young women that had surrounded the man when he got out of his car parted to reveal someone he didn’t immediately recognise.

  When recognition did strike, his eyes widened behind the darkened lenses of his shades and he made a rapid mental calculation. In the—what?—six weeks since he’d last seen his brother, Khalid, whose dissipated lifestyle, lack of self-control and love of excess had made him pile on the pounds and look older than his thirty-two years, had lost a good twenty pounds.

  Perhaps it was the speed of the dramatic weight loss that was responsible for the drawn look on his brother’s face, and Zain’s jaw tightened as Khalid curved his hand around the bottom of one of the giggling women. The waistline might have improved but clearly his brother’s morals had not, as, for better or most probably for worse, his brother was married.

  So are you. Zain’s lips twiste
d into an ironic half-smile as he recognised the element of hypocrisy in his disapproval—or, at least, it would have been hypocrisy had his marriage existed anywhere but on a piece of paper signed under a desert sky.

  There was an added irony to the situation in that he was the one brother who hadn’t actually cheated.

  Of course, his fidelity was of the purely accidental variety and nothing to do with respecting his marriage vows or the lingering memory of the redhead he had married—that would have been insane. Instead his celibacy had been the consequence of a non-stop work schedule so intense that he hadn’t yet got around to doing something about the marriage certificate still sitting in his safe.

  He had considered the simpler option of burning the offending sheet of paper but after a period of reflection he had opted to retain the document rather than destroy it. Less ‘doing the right thing’ and more the conviction that history was littered with men brought down not by the mistakes they made but the denial of their mistakes—the cover-ups and the lies that turned a minor blip into an earthquake of scandal.

  Zain had never doubted there would be a scandal. The only question was the degree of damage caused by a story, so in the interests of damage limitation it had made sense to find out as much as he could about Miss Abigail Foster.

  But so far there had been no approach from her agents, no tabloid headlines, no talk of book deals, no rumours circulating at all that he had been made aware of. The only reference to a rescue had been at a British Embassy dinner by one of the anonymous suits, who, letting him know he knew, had assured Zain of his complete discretion.

  The man had also made a suggestion that might explain why there had been no attempt to cash in on the story.

  ‘I’m not sure that Miss Foster, a rather naïve young lady, I think, actually knew who you were.’