To Tame a Sheikh / His Thirty-Day Fiancée: To Tame a Sheikh

Before that point, he’d lived a carefree existence where he’d felt his future was limitless. But things had gone from bad to worse since then.

He’d long known that, as a prince, he was expected to make a marriage of state, but he’d always shoved that expectation to the back of his mind, hoping that one or both of his older brothers would make a terrific political match. Then Amjad, his oldest brother and crown prince, had made such a match. And it had ended in disaster.

Amjad’s wife had come to the marriage already pregnant, had schemed to murder Amjad and pass the child as his, to remain forever a princess and the mother of the heir to the throne.

After Amjad had divorced her in a scandal that still resounded in the region, he’d torn through the world acquiring power until he’d become almost as powerful as all of Zohayd put together. No one dared ask him to make another political match. He’d said that, when it was time for him to become king, his brother Harres would be his heir. Failing that, Shaheen. Period.

As for Harres, he would never make a political match, either. It had been agreed that his marriage into any tribe in the region would compromise his position. He’d become the best minister of interior and head of central intelligence and homeland security that Zohayd had ever had, and no one wanted to see the belief in his impartiality tainted. So, if he ever decided to marry—which seemed unlikely, since he hadn’t favored any particular woman of the reported hundreds he’d bedded in his thirty-six years—Harres would nevertheless be free to choose his own wife.

So it fell to Shaheen to make a blood-mixing marriage that would revitalize the wavering pacts between factions. He was the last of the king’s “pure-blood” sons, born to a purely Zohaydan queen. Haidar and Jalal, Shaheen’s half brothers from the current queen, Sondoss, who was Azmaharian, weren’t considered pure enough for the unification the marriage was required to achieve.

For years now, he’d known there was no escape from his fate, but instead of becoming resigned to the idea, he’d hated it more daily. It felt like a death sentence hanging over his head.

Only days ago—the day following his thirty-fourth birthday, to be exact—he’d decided to get the suffocating suspense over with, turn himself in to the marriage pact. He’d announced his capitulation to his father, told him to start lining up the bridal candidates. The next day, the news that he was seeking a bride had been all over the media. As one of the most eligible royals in the world, his intention to marry—with the identity of the bride still undecided—was the stuff of the most sensational news.

And here he was, enduring the party his associate was throwing for him to celebrate his impending imprisonment.

He flicked a look at his watch, did a double take. It had been only minutes. And he’d shaken a hundred hands and grimaced at double that many artificially elated or intoxicated faces.

Enough. He’d make his excuses to Aidan and bolt from this nightmare. Aidan was probably too far gone to miss him, anyway.

Deciding to do just that, he turned around … and all air left his lungs. Across the room, he saw … her.

The jolt of recognition seemed to bring the world to a staggering halt. Everything held its breath as he met her incredible dark eyes across the vast, crowded space.

He stood there for a stretch that couldn’t be calculated on a temporal scale, staring at her. Hooks of awareness snapped across the distance and sank into him, flesh and senses, causing animation to screech through him for the first time in over twelve years.

There was no conscious decision to what he did next. A compulsion far beyond his control propelled him in her direction, as if he were hypnotized, remote-controlled.

The crowd parted as if pushed away by the power of his urge. Even the music seemed to observe the significance of the moment as it came to an abrupt stop.

He finally stopped, too, just feet away. He kept that much distance between them so his gaze could sweep her from head to foot.

He devoured his first impressions of her. Gold and bronze locks that gleamed over creamy shoulders and lush breasts encased in deepest chocolate off-the-shoulder taffeta the color of her eyes, the dress nipping in at an impossibly small waist then flaring over softly curved hips into a layered skirt. A face sculpted from exquisiteness, eyes from intelligence and sensitivity, cheeks from inborn class, a nose from daintiness, and lips from passion.

And those were the broad brushstrokes. Then came the endless details. He’d need an hour, a day, to marvel at each.

“Say something.” He heard the hunger in his rasp, saw its effect on her.

She shuddered, confusion rising to rival the searing heat in her eyes.

“I …”

Elation bubbled through him. “Yes. You. Say something so that I can believe you’re really here.”

“I’m … I don’t …” She paused, consternation knotting her brow. It only enhanced her beauty.

But he’d heard enough of her rich, velvet voice to know it matched her uniqueness, echoed her perfection.

“You don’t know what to say to me? Or you don’t know where to start?”

“Shaheen, I …”

She stopped again, and his heart did, too. For at least three heartbeats. He felt almost dizzy, hearing her utter his name.

A finger below her chin tilted her face up to him, to pore into those eyes he felt he’d fallen into whole.

Then he whispered, “You know me?”

Two

He didn’t recognize her?

Johara gaped at Shaheen as the realization sank through her, splashed like a rock into her gut.

She should have known that he wouldn’t.

Why should he? He’d probably forgotten she existed.

Even if he hadn’t, she looked nothing like the fourteen-year-old he’d known.

That was due in part to her own late blooming and in part to her mother’s influence. In Zohayd, Jacqueline Nazaryan had always downplayed Johara’s looks. Her mother had later told her she’d known that Johara, having inherited her height and luminescent coloring and her father’s bone structure and eyes, would become a tall, curvaceous blonde who possessed a paradoxical brand of beauty. And in the brunette, petite-woman–dominated Zohayd, a woman like Johara would be both a prized jewel and a source of endless trouble. If she’d learned to emphasize her looks, she would have become the target of dangerous desires and illicit offers, heaping trouble on her and her father’s head. Her mother had left her in Zohayd secure that Johara had no desire and no means of achieving her potential and would continue looking nondescript.

Once she’d joined her mother in France, Jacqueline had encouraged her to showcase her beauty and had done everything she and her fashion-industry colleagues could to help Johara blossom into a woman who knew how to wield what she was told were considerable assets.

As Johara became a successful designer and businesswoman herself, she learned her mother had been right. Most men saw little beyond the face and body they coveted. Several rich and influential men had tried to acquire her as another trophy to bolster their image, another check on their status report. She’d been fully capable of turning them down, without incident so far. Without the repercussions her mother had feared would have accompanied the same rejections in Zohyad.

So yes. She’d been crazy to think Shaheen would recognize her when the lanky, reed-thin duckling he’d known had become a confident, elegant swan.

And here he was. Looking at her without the slightest flicker of recognition. That instant awareness, that flare of delight at the sight of her hadn’t been that. It had been …

What had it been? What was that she saw playing on his lips, blazing in his eyes as he inclined his awesome head at her? What was it she felt electrocuting her from his fingers, still caressing her chin? Was it possible he …?

“Of course you know who I am.” Shaheen cut through her feverish contemplations, shook his head in self-deprecation. The flashes from the mirror balls and revolving disco lights shot sparks of copper off the luxury of his mane and into the fathomless translucence of his eyes, zapping her into ever-deepening paralysis. “You’re attending my farewell party, after all.”

She remained mute. He thought she recognized him only because he was a celebrity in whose name he thought she was here having free drinks and an unrepeatable networking opportunity.

He relinquished her chin only to let the back of his fingers travel in a gossamer up-down stroke over her almost combusting cheek. “So to whom should I offer my unending thanks for inviting you here?”

Her heart constricted as the reality of the situation crystallized.

She hadn’t even factored in that he might not know her on sight. But she’d conceded she shouldn’t have expected it. But that there was nothing about her that jogged any sense of familiarity in him—that she couldn’t rationalize. Or accept.

Her insides compacted in a tight tangle of disappointment.

His words and actions so far had had nothing to do with happiness at seeing her after all these years. There was only one reason he could have approached her, was talking to her, looking at her this way. It seemed absurd, unthinkable. But she could find no other explanation.

Shaheen was coming on to her.