Sheikh's Marriage of Convenience

by Ella Brooke

  Her memory had not done him justice. His hair was as dark as a raven’s wing, and his blue eyes were lit with a flame that could have burned her alive. She was frozen like a woman who had looked back once too often, but when he started walking toward her, she couldn’t take it anymore.

  With a loud cry, Danielle tore her eyes away from him, sprinting toward the door. She had only gone two strides before he caught her in his arms, halting her mad flight.

  “Danielle, Danielle, please, don’t…”

  “No!’ Danielle raged. “No, you can’t do this to me. You can’t! I’m not some… some toy you can play with and then break when I no longer please you! I’m a person, I have my own life, you can’t do this to me!”

  “I know that,” he said, still holding on to her. There was a note of sadness in his voice that she had never heard before. “God in Heaven, I know that Danielle, but I need you to listen to me…”

  “Why?” she cried. “So you can hurt me again?”

  He flinched at that, but his grip on her was still firm.

  “No. As I told your employer, I have work that I need you to do.”

  She wasn’t sure that anything could have cut her legs out from under her the way that this did. She went still in his arms, staring up at him in shock. Did he truly think that after all they had been through together that he could simply ask her for her professional talents now?

  “You… have some work for me?” she got out.

  “I do,” Faris responded. “Well-paying work. Once you finish it, you will be able to walk out of here with 500,000 dollars.”

  She gaped at him.

  “Are you serious?”

  “Perfectly. But Danielle, all you have to do is to translate the page of paper that you see on the table.”

  “Really. So if I translate that, you’ll wire 500,000 dollars to my account, and I can walk out of here?”

  Faris looked pained at that, but he nodded.

  “If you finish translating the page and walk out of here, you can have all that money, and I swear that I will never try to contact you or confront you again.”

  “You swear?” she asked.

  “On the grave of my parents, yes,” he said. There was something pained in his face, a kind of grief that she had never seen before, but she didn’t dare linger too long. Danielle had the idea that the longer she looked at him, the greater the chance that she would simply break down and throw her arms around him, trying to find any desperate way she could to fix what had gone wrong between them.

  Danielle tried to remind herself of all of the pain she had suffered due to this man, but it was difficult to recall it now in his presence. She knew, though, if she stayed in his presence, her defenses would crumble as if they were candy in the rain, leaving nothing behind but sugar water and air.

  No, she decided, the best way to deal with this was to get it over with, and perhaps after that, she could start to heal from seeing him again in the flesh.

  “All right,” she said coldly. “But after this I am done, and there is nothing that you can do to convince me otherwise. Do you understand me?”

  For a moment, she thought that Faris would refuse, but then he closed his eyes and nodded. He stepped back, as if expecting her to run. She raised her chin disdainfully at him.

  “I’m not going to break my word,” she said, wondering if he was going to make another wild accusation, but he only nodded.

  “The translation, please,” he said.

  She walked toward the table, keeping an eye on him as she did so. He stepped back once it became clear she was not going to run, but it was obvious to see that Faris had no intention of leaving the room while she did the translation job. Instead, he retreated to one of the chairs near the cold fireplace. To her relief, he turned his head away, which made her feel a little less watched, but she knew that he was aware of her every movement the way she was of his.

  All right, she thought. It’s just one page. I can take care of this. I can do this. After that, I’m going to get out of here, and I don’t care if I am getting a million dollars for it or no money for it at all.

  She was used to typing her translations directly into a computer, but instead, this time, she could see that she had been presented with clean paper, a beautiful fountain pen, and a single sheet of writing in Arabic. She recognized Faris’s elegant script right away, and for a moment, she simply stared at it, taking in the crisp and lovely lines. He was an artist as well as a businessman, she knew, and here was the evidence.

  “What do you want this translated into?” she asked, and there was something oddly broken about his voice when he replied.

  “English, for preference.”

  “All right.”

  Danielle took her seat and inhaled deeply. She could do this. She could do this likely in less than thirty minutes. After that, she would be free, and she would be able to leave him and heal herself as best she could. Right now she felt utterly shattered, but she had to believe that she could heal from it…

  She looked down at the script, her pen in her hand, and started to read.

  My darling Danielle…

  She froze, turning to look at Faris. He sat in the chair, his back perfectly straight, staring off into the distance. If she looked closely, she could see a fine tremor that ran throughout his frame. She had been so good at reading him, but now she couldn’t tell what he was thinking one way or another.

  Danielle took a deep breath. She could get through this.

  My darling Danielle:

  I do not have the words to tell you how sorry I am. When I discovered Seif’s lie and your truth, I felt a moment of joy that I was so wrong, and then I felt the weight of the world crushing me that I should have hurt you so much.

  I had to find you immediately, but coward that I am, this is the only way I could find to tell you everything that was in my heart.

  My love, I have wronged you, and I can only tell you that I am sorry and that I will never ever believe so badly of you again. If you only give me the chance, I will make you the happiest woman in the world.

  I love you. I love you. I love you beyond the stars and moon, and I want you to be my wife. Forgive me, marry me, and all my world will be yours.

  Please.

  I love you.

  By the time she got to the end of the letter, tears were in her eyes. She stood up, shaking like a leaf, and stumbling, she made her way over to Faris.

  “Well?” he asked, and she could see that he didn’t know what to expect. In that moment, her heart broke for him, but instead of being painful, it was as if it let in all the love that she had been hiding from, that had hurt her so badly before. The love flooded through her, and she threw her arms around him.

  “You fool,” she sobbed. “You absolute fool, I love you. I love you with everything I have in me…”

  She felt his arms go around her, and then he was kissing her as well. They held each other so tight they could have been one person, and then she heard him talking.

  “I love you,” he whispered over and over again. “I love you, and I will never let you go again…”

  Epilogue

  The Mediterranean sun rode high in the sky, and while most of the Greek natives were off getting a nap in the heat of the day, Danielle and Faris had found themselves a shady spot under the protection of an old ruined wall. They had walked for a short while, but Danielle was already feeling a little tired.

  As they made themselves comfortable on the soft ground, Faris pulled a canteen out of his backpack.

  “You should have some water,” he said, and she grinned at him.

  “Have you ever noticed that the more we travel, the more likely it is that you’re going to start giving me orders?”

  Faris snorted.

  “The only reason that I give you orders is because you are so wretched at taking care of yourself when we leave any area that does not have vending machines and restaurants. Now drink your water before you faint from dehydration.”


  “Sir, yes sir,” she said, rolling her eyes. She drank from the canteen that he provided for her, the water startlingly refreshing. She had to admit that he was right, and she took several light sips instead of one long gulp, as he had taught her to do.

  It probably wouldn’t be a terrible idea to start being more careful anyway, she thought.

  When she finished with the canteen, she turned around to see that Faris was pulling out a cold meal of bread, cheese, and olives. To this meal, she added blueberries and strawberries from her own pack. They ate in companionable silence for a while, the quiet calm and caring. She was just getting up her nerve to tell him when Faris spoke.

  “I do not know if I have ever been happier than I am in this moment,” he said softly.

  Amused, Danielle looked around.

  “Sitting next to a broken wall and eating goat cheese?” she asked.

  “Well, I cannot deny that it is very good goat cheese, but I was more thinking of the company and of the luck.”

  Danielle blinked.

  “The luck?”

  “Yes. In many ways, we are very lucky. We are lucky we met, we are lucky we fell in love, we are lucky that we recovered from my idiocy…”

  “I thought we were going to stop talking about that,” interjected Danielle, and he smiled.

  “I was trying to make a point. The truth is, there are so many things that could have kept us apart. I might not have gone to Transglobal looking for a translator, and even if I did, perhaps you would have been sick, or perhaps we would have missed each other some other way. What we have, it is not something that is so easy to find…”

  He paused, and then he turned his blue gaze to her. For a moment, she felt as if she could drown in him.

  “I love you, Danielle, and this love… it feels entirely new to me. It feels as if the thing that has sprung up between us could move mountains and make the rivers run backward.”

  “I want to practice some French,” she blurted out, and then she blushed as Faris started to laugh.

  “Woman, I just get done telling you what is in my heart, and you want to make sure that I start improving my French?”

  “You know that I love you too, so very much. I might not have the kind of poetry that you have, but I feel it right to the depths of my soul.”

  His laugh gentled, and he gathered her close. When he planted a gentle kiss on the crown of her head, she felt warm and protected. This man made her feel safer and happier than she had ever felt in her entire life, and now she was going to change it all.

  “I know how you feel for me,” he said tenderly. “I can feel it at night when we rest together, and I can feel it now when you look up at me. Only now, you want to hear it in French?”

  “Well, they do call it the language of love,” she offered, and he laughed, shaking his head.

  “My little scholar. All right. Je t’aime.”

  “Well, I am glad that you realize how to say you love me, and I love you as well, but I was thinking of something a little more complicated. Here.”

  She reached into her bag to pull out her notepad and pencil. She had had this plan in her mind all morning, but now that the time came, she felt butterflies in her stomach.

  “All right, translate this into English for me.”

  She wrote on the page in clear dark script, and then she turned it toward him.

  He glanced at the page and smiled.

  “That says, ‘you make me happier than I have ever been before.’”

  “Right! Here’s another one.”

  She wrote again, her script getting less neat.

  “‘When I am with you, I feel as if anything is possible. I feel as if together, we can conquer the world.’ A little more imperial than I thought you would be, honestly, but I’ll take it.”

  She took the paper back with a smile. Inside, she could feel that old nervousness come up again, but she squashed it. Her fears and insecurities were mostly gone these days, but they could still occur sometimes.

  “This one says, ‘I love you more than I have ever been able to imagine loving another person. You complete me in ways that I didn’t even know I was lacking.’” He glanced at her.

  “You know that there is no part of you that is lacking, correct? You are perfect, and you are perfectly mine…”

  “You are very kind, and that was very good,” she said with a smile. “One more. This one is short.”

  Taking a deep breath, she wrote again and handed it to him.

  He frowned, and for a moment, she wondered if she had overplayed her hand, or if his French wasn’t as good as she had thought.

  “You… you’re pregnant?” he asked softly.

  She couldn’t speak. She closed her eyes and nodded.

  With a wild cry, he swept her into his arms, kissing her soundly.

  “You mad, amazing, beautiful woman!” he cried. “You have never made me happier. A child for us! An heir for Aswar!”

  When he finally finished smothering her in kisses, she sat up, blushing, tearing up with joy and smiling.

  “We’re going to be parents,” she said. “And I love you as my husband, but I know I will love you more as my child’s father.”

  He looked at her, and she could see all the stars in the sky in his blue eyes. There was a message there that needed no translation, but he spoke the words anyway.

  “I love you so much, Danielle, and this love is eternal.”

  THE END

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