Hidden In the Sheikh's Harem

by Michelle Conder

  He stormed down the corridor with said woman in tow. How had this happened? One minute he’d been celebrating not only his brother’s wedding but also the fact that Nadir had agreed to take the throne and the next he was...he was...getting married? Any minute now and he was sure doctors in white coats were going to come rushing around the corner looking for him.

  The cause of his immense irritation tugged against his hold. ‘I’m tired of you dragging me around like this.’

  Zach tightened his grip. ‘Not as tired as I am of having to do it.’

  Especially when they were in this predicament because she hadn’t spoken up and admitted that nothing had happened between them.

  Nothing? his conscience mocked.

  A growl rose up in his throat. A few kisses did not require a marriage proposal. In the West they might not, but in Bakaan a man didn’t trifle with a woman unless he was serious.

  But marry Farah Hajjar?

  Zach inwardly cursed himself. All his life he’d ignored the exotic Bakaani girls who had thrown themselves in his path with one purpose in mind. All his life, until this one. And she hadn’t even thrown herself at him. No. She’d done something much worse: she’d kidnapped him. Or her father had.

  He still didn’t know why the old man had done it, although he could guess. With Zach’s father gone, Hajjar had probably hoped to destabilise the country and attempt a coup. The thought was as ludicrous as his suggestion that Zach marry his daughter. And then another possibility hit him and his whole body went still.

  Farah squeaked as she nearly ran into him from behind. Zach stared at her. Was that why Hajjar had done it? To get the two of them together so that they were forced to marry and get a Hajjar on the throne any way possible? His rational side discounted the idea as absurd—the Hajjars had hated the Darkhans since the dawn of time—but he’d underestimated Farah once before and had the scar on his arm to show for it. Had he underestimated her father, as well?

  ‘We need to talk.’ He pushed open the door to his apartment.

  Farah glanced up at him as she swept past. ‘I couldn’t agree more.’

  Dismissing his guards with a nod, Zach followed her inside. He bypassed his sofas, headed straight for his wet bar and grabbed a crystal decanter half filled with whisky. ‘Drink?’

  She eyed the offer disparagingly. ‘I thought you wanted to talk.’

  He downed a finger of Scotch. ‘I’d like to dull the pain first.’

  ‘We’re not really getting married, you know.’

  ‘We’re not?’ He added ice to the glass this time before leaning back against the bar, taking in her rigid stance. ‘That whole thing was just an act back there? Damn, I wish I’d known. I would have organised party music.’

  Her soft lips pinched together. ‘Don’t you know that sarcasm is the lowest form of wit?’

  ‘It’s fitting, then,’ he drawled. ‘Since I can’t remember feeling this low before.’

  ‘You and me both,’ she said on a rush, sinking down onto one of the sofas and removing her heels; her sigh of pleasure hitting him exactly where he didn’t need it to right now.

  ‘You know, if you drop the kidnapping charges I could probably get my father to withdraw his demands that we marry.’ Her pleading look was one of innocence and hope and for a fleeting moment he had to fight the urge to go and comfort her.

  Clearing his head with another dose of alcohol, he cast her a cynical smile. ‘Oh, I’m sure you’d like that,’ he bit out. ‘But it’s not that simple any more.’

  ‘I don’t see why not.’

  ‘Because your lack of a convincing denial that I have dishonoured you has set something bigger than the two of us in motion. But then, maybe you knew that all along,’ he added softly.

  ‘Knew what?’

  Zach paced to shake off the adrenaline that surged through him. Her puzzled expression was either genuine or a good act. His money was on the latter. ‘Marrying me has enormous benefits.’

  ‘Like what?’ She gave a derisive snort. ‘Being close to your enormous ego?’

  Unable to remember another woman who had dared to speak to him with such disdain, he stopped in front of her, forcing her to have to look a long way up to meet his gaze. ‘Money. Power.’ He gritted his teeth. ‘A Hajjar potentially on the throne one day.’

  Instead of being intimidated by him, she just looked annoyed. ‘If you’re implying that my father wanted this to happen...’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘That’s ludicrous. He loathes your family.’

  ‘He loathes that my family is on the throne, and now we’re to be married. A bit opportune, don’t you think?’

  ‘No, I don’t think that at all, and if you thought about it logically you’d know it’s not true. My father is stuck in the past and thinks that all women need a man to take care of them. That’s the only thing that’s going on here.’

  It wasn’t the only thing going on here but perhaps he should have stopped at one whisky because what she said made sense. Not that he wouldn’t put it past Hajjar to capitalise on a situation that had arisen as a result of his own poor judgment in lifting her onto that horse in the first place.

  Zach crushed an ice block between his teeth. ‘Unfortunately I don’t feel particularly logical right now. And your father gets to go free with you as the sacrificial lamb.’

  Her face paled. ‘No, there has to be another way.’

  ‘Why, so you can go off and marry your boyfriend, the knight, instead?’ he asked silkily.

  She frowned. ‘Amir?’ she finally said. ‘No, I don’t want to marry Amir or anyone, and given your reputation I’d think you would feel the same way.’

  Zach stilled. ‘My reputation?’

  ‘We get magazines in the mountains,’ she said loftily. ‘And I think the amount of different women you’ve been photographed with speaks for itself.’

  He gave a rough bark of laughter. ‘You’re making me out to be the bad guy here?’

  ‘Are you saying you want to get married?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, I was nearly married once.’ Or at least he’d contemplated asking Amy to marry him, which was close enough for the purposes of putting this little heathen in her place. ‘So, yes, I do want to get married—just not to you, Miss Hajjar.’

  Her face went even paler before flooding with colour and he felt like an ass.

  ‘I suppose it doesn’t matter to you because you can have a hundred wives if you choose.’

  ‘I admit that I have great stamina in the bedroom,’ he drawled. ‘But even I would struggle with a hundred women. But, regardless, that law is about to be repealed.’

  Farah’s eyes climbed her forehead. ‘It is?’

  ‘Yes. It’s time Bakaan entered the twenty-first century and my brother and I intend to see that happen. By the look on your face, you don’t agree.’

  ‘No. I mean, yes, of course I agree.’ She hesitated. ‘I just didn’t expect...’

  ‘That I would think that way?’ he finished when her words tapered off. ‘Possibly it’s not just your father who is stuck in the past.’ And why her poor opinion of him rankled was beyond him.

  ‘I am not stuck in the past.’ She thrust her hands on her hips righteously.

  Zach eyed her appreciatively as she stood before him in a full snit. ‘Hit a chord did I?’

  * * *

  Yes, he had hit a chord, because she was a forward-thinking person, not a backward-thinking one. But she was so confused right now. His declaration that he’d been nearly married once before, and his adamant statement that he would never want to marry her, had somehow rocked her and she had no idea why. ‘No, you have not hit a chord,’ she denied hotly, staring into his too-cocky, too-handsome face. ‘But I want to hit you and I’m a non-violent person!’

  ‘So says the woman who att
acked me with a sword.’

  ‘Okay, fine—generally I’m a non-violent person. And I’m sure if you could just reach into your heart and forgive my father and let this go—’

  ‘Let bygones be bygones, you mean?’

  ‘Yes, exact—’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Would you stop cutting me off?’ She angled her chin at him. ‘Can’t you see that showing forgiveness puts you in the powerful position? If my father continues to act out against you unprovoked, then everyone is likely to turn on him.’

  ‘Remind me which fairy story you derived that bit of whimsy from.’

  Having him mock her made Farah grit her teeth together. ‘Just because you don’t believe in non-violent methods of communication doesn’t mean you have to belittle ideas that have worked before. Ever heard of Martin Luther King? Ghandi? Mother Teresa?’ She lobbed the names of some of her heroes at him. ‘Perhaps if you open your mind up a bit more you might learn something.’

  The look he gave her was ferocious. ‘You have some nerve coming to me about non-violent methods of communication. Someone in your village started a publication five years ago that nearly incited a civil war. If I hadn’t come home and settled things—in a non-violent manner, I might add—who knows how many people would have died?’

  ‘I didn’t mean to incite anything,’ she countered.

  ‘I didn’t say you did, I said—’ He stopped and stared at her. ‘You started that provincial publication?’

  Farah was instantly flooded with heat at his condescension. ‘My magazine was not provincial, thank you very much!’ She bit her tongue to stop herself from calling him every name she could think of, digging her toes into the soft pile rug beneath her feet.

  ‘That’s not possible,’ he said, the incredulity in his voice beyond insulting. ‘You would have only been a child when that was done.’

  Farah’s hands shot to her hips. ‘I was seventeen!’

  He shook his head, a frown on his face. ‘There were a lot of sharp observations in that paper.’

  ‘If you’re expecting me to thank you for saying so, you’ll be waiting a long time.’ Like, forever. ‘And I hardly think it’s important.’

  ‘Not important,’ he growled, seemingly as angry as she was. ‘It’s the reason I had to return to Bakaan!’

  ‘Something you obviously didn’t want to do, by your tone.’

  ‘Not when I had to give up control of my company and end my racing career, no.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she simpered. ‘How thoughtless of us—your people—to need you.’

  ‘Yes, it was.’ His voice lowered an octave and the skin on the back of her neck prickled with awareness. ‘Although, I’m not completely unhappy that you need me.’

  Attempting to ignore the suddenly charged atmosphere he was deliberately creating, she lifted her chin. ‘I need you to install medical centres in our villages and provide educational materials so we don’t have to sneak them from across the border or—’ She stopped, suddenly aware that yet again he’d got her so incensed she was about to divulge sensitive information to him.

  ‘Or what?’ he asked softly. ‘Get them from a secret source inside the palace?’

  He knew about that! Farah tried to act nonchalant because she had no doubt that whoever had sent those items to them over the past couple of years would be punished. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. But what I want to know is how we get out of this marriage.’

  ‘We’re not.’

  The conviction in his tone chafed her already raw nerves. ‘But we have to.’

  ‘I don’t know why you’re fighting this so much. Your life is about to improve out of sight.’

  ‘Improve?’ She laughed, because what else could she do? ‘That’s because you’re nothing but an arrogant, egotistical, high and mighty prince whose shoe size is larger than his IQ.’

  His slow smile told her that her insults had landed on fallow ground. ‘Careful, habiba, or I might start to think that you like me.’

  Oh, but he had a way of pushing her buttons. ‘That will never happen,’ she assured him loftily.

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But you like my touch.’ He came towards her all long, lean and muscular. ‘Don’t you, Farah?’

  She swallowed hard. ‘No.’

  He paused and cocked his head. ‘Have you forgotten what I said would happen the next time you denied you wanted me?’

  ‘You know you’re redefining the term “egotistical,” don’t you?’

  He laughed. ‘And you’re redefining denial. But I find myself wondering why I’m denying myself something I’ve already been accused of taking.’

  Farah’s hands came up to ward him off, a thrilling sort of fear coursing through her as he kept coming until she was forced up against a wall, his towering body just inches from hers. He planted his hands by both sides of her head, caging her in. ‘Give me one good reason, habiba, one good reason why I shouldn’t unwrap you from that pretty dress and give you exactly what we both want?’

  Feeling as if she’d just run a marathon, Farah could barely breathe let alone speak. All she wanted to do was smooth her hands up over his wide chest and finish what he had started back in the garden. The urge was almost overwhelming but she knew there would be no going back after that and she definitely wasn’t ready for that.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said softly, ‘How far did you and the knight go?’

  Not sure what he was asking, she frowned, and then she caught the suggestive glint in his eyes and she knew. Struggling to get her thoughts in order with him this close, she frowned again. ‘We haven’t... I’ve never...’

  A slow smile spread across his face. ‘He didn’t touch you.’ He shook his head as if in wonder.

  Knowing there was in insult buried in that look, she pushed at his chest, relieved when he let her pass. ‘I won’t do it,’ she muttered, ‘I refuse to marry you.’

  ‘You have to.’ His gaze turned implacable. ‘Have you forgotten that my honour and your reputation are at stake?’

  ‘No, but I don’t care about my reputation!’ she cried. Her vision of a future in which she directed her own life was falling away from her before her very eyes. If she couldn’t do anything about it, she was going to be married, and she couldn’t think of anything worse. Well, her father dying in a prison cell was worse, and perhaps never experiencing the prince’s hot kisses again... But, no, how could that be worse?

  ‘Well, I care about my honour,’ he said coldly. ‘Especially at a time when I need the support of our people. And let’s not forget your father’s small threat of war.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Enough. I find I am exhausted from all the excitement of the past week, not to mention tonight. We will be married, Farah. Perhaps it is fate.’

  A sense of inevitability stole over her at his words. She had always known there would be a price to pay for her father’s actions; she just hadn’t expected that price to be her marriage.

  Shaking her head, she swallowed past a lump in her throat that extended all the way to her stomach. ‘I’ve never liked fate,’ she said dully.

  The prince gave her a faintly mocking smile. ‘While I have never believed in it. But it won’t be all bad.’ His tone softened. ‘I will be gentle with you, habiba.’

  Heat bloomed across her cheeks as she realised how exactly he was going to be gentle with her. ‘I don’t want you to be gentle with me,’ she blazed. ‘I don’t want you to be anything with me.’

  He smiled as if he knew better than she did. ‘We’ll see.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  THREE DAYS LATER Zach found himself a married man. Something he should have felt worse about, given that he wasn’t in love with his bride, but didn’t.

  The w
edding had been small, nothing like his brother’s extravaganza, but everyone had said it was romantic, the way the prince had fallen in love with the daughter of his father’s archenemy thus uniting what had once been the two biggest tribes in the country. Zach hadn’t thought of it that way at the time it was going down, but the advantages were obvious on a political level. On a personal level his mother seemed to take great delight in the ‘love match’ so he had remained silent about the real reason behind their union.

  A union he’d had the power to prevent when Nadir had informed him that he’d come up with a plan to extricate him from it. Zach knew it would have been what Farah wanted. Hell, it was what he wanted. So why hadn’t he done it? Especially with his brother about to become the next king; it would have meant total freedom for him, which he had now firmly denied himself.

  Nothing made sense, not the churning feeling in his gut, nor the way Farah made him feel so hungry for her. As if she was the last woman in the world for him.

  Well, she is, his conscience reminded him, and you will be the first man to touch her.

  Something he found himself increasingly impatient to do. Probably he should be a little worried about his eagerness to bed a woman who so obviously didn’t like him, but he wasn’t. They might not have started this marriage in a conventional way but he had no doubt that she would please him. As he would please her once she stopped being so prickly about everything.

  She was an intriguing personality, his new wife— headstrong and handy with a sword, as well as brave and fiercely loyal, with a keen intelligence all tied up in one delectably feminine package he was straining to unwrap.

  Nadir’s comment about his deliberately choosing the wrong women in the past came back to him. Was it possible? He never would have said so before but he also knew that Amy had never stirred the level of feeling in him that Farah did.

  Scanning the milling crowd he easily located Farah across the room talking with his mother. She looked striking in a long-sleeved cream gown that skimmed her slender frame and ended at the floor. A whiff of something far more insidious than desire curled through him as he watched her. It gave him pause and, as if sensing the swirl of emotion coursing through him, his lovely bride glanced at him from beneath her long lashes.