The Sheik's Kidnapped Bride (7 page)

Khalil
sat up. “I knew I could make you see sense. Good.”

He bounded to his feet, then reached down and pulled her to hers. Before she had a chance to register her nakedness or be embarrassed, he stepped behind her and gave her a gentle push toward the bathroom.

“Go ahead and shower. There’s much to be done before the wedding. I’ll meet you in the dining room in twenty minutes.”

With that, he was gone. Dora stared after him. Somehow that was not the response she’d expected when she’d agreed to marry
Khalil
. Married? She shook her head. None of this was really happening. Obviously she was caught up in a weird dream or something. Or maybe she’d hit her head in the night. Either way, she might as well shower, if only to get on with the dream and see what would happen next.

The wedding party consisted of
Khalil
, Dora, a justice of the peace and the two bodyguards who served as witnesses. Dora glanced around the large parlor in the beautiful hotel suite and told herself that the management had worked a miracle in a very short period of time.

White roses and baby’s breath had been woven through a narrow wooden arch. Large, pale pink urns filled with white roses, lilies and orchids sat on squat tables, which formed a makeshift center aisle in the room. She and
Khalil
stood on a long, white cloth that had been tacked down from the entrance of the room to the edge of the archway, and soft music played over the suite’s sound system.

Dora clutched her bouquet of exotic flowers more firmly in her hands and told herself that considering there had been less than twelve hours to pull it all together, things had gone surprisingly well. Promptly at two the boutique had delivered a half-dozen dresses for her to look at. She’d chosen a simple ivory lace gown that looked like something from the 1920s. She’d managed to pull her shoulder-length hair up into a French twist so that the delicate pearl earrings
Khalil
had given her at lunch were visible.

She knew she looked pretty good.
Khalil
was handsome and confident in his dark suit. Under the circumstances, they were doing well. And that was the problem. She wasn’t comfortable with the circumstances, nor could she stop shaking. Even now, with the judge talking about sickness and health, she felt as if she were still in her dream. Or maybe she’d gotten trapped in a made-for-television movie. Or maybe it was mental illness. Or maybe it was really happening.

Dora didn’t know which would be more frightening. Was she really marrying
Khalil
Khan, prince of El
Bahar
? She shook her head slightly, trying to clear her thoughts. Maybe it was the wedding that was messing up her brain, she thought frantically, desperate for an excuse. Nothing was the way she thought it would be. With Gerald, their wedding plans had been a little rushed, but they’d had more than two months in which to come up with a plan. There had been guests and a church and a reception at a hall, and she’d had a real wedding dress.

She glanced at
Khalil
who listened attentively to the judge. What was he thinking? She wanted to stop the ceremony and talk to him but she didn’t know what words to use. Perhaps he didn’t think this was out of the ordinary. After all, when she’d emerged from her room after her shower, she’d found him already working in his office. He’d given her little more than an absentminded greeting, then he’d thrust a stack of folders at her and had turned his attention back to his computer. She’d spent the morning before her wedding dealing with last-minute business problems. As if nothing between them had changed.

“Dora?”

She looked up and realized both
Khalil
and the judge were staring at her. “What?”

Khalil
smiled. “I believe the response he’s looking for is more along the lines of ‘I do.”’

I do what? she wondered, then it sank in. “Oh. Sure. I mean, I do.” She gave a little cough that did nothing to ease the tightness in her throat.

“The ring please,” the judge said, taking Dora’s flowers from her and setting them on a nearby table.

Khalil
reached into his pocket and pulled out a diamond ring. Dora stared, first at the glittering piece of jewelry, then at him. Was that for her?

“Fit for a princess,” he murmured and slid it on the ring finger of her left hand.

She opened her mouth to protest. It was too extraordinary, too lovely, too expensive. Then she remembered she was not only marrying royalty, but into one of the richest families in the world. To
Khalil
this was probably as significant a purchase as her buying a nice pair of panty hose.

The judge started talking again, but she wasn’t listening. Instead she found herself captivated by the stunning ring that glittered on her hand. The band was wide, nearly reaching to her knuckle, and the entire ring was a circle of diamonds. Square-cut stones nestled together, each diamond as long as the band was wide. She didn’t know how many diamonds it took to make up the ring, but each had to be at least two carats. It wasn’t a piece of jewelry she would have picked for herself, but it was lovely and felt as if it had been made for her hand.

“You may kiss the bride.”

She looked up in time to watch
Khalil
bend down and press his lips to hers. The kiss was sweet and far too short. Then he squeezed her hand.

“Do you feel any different?” he asked.

“Being married?”

“That, of course, but I was wondering how it felt to be a princess.”

Princess Dora Khan of El
Bahar
, she thought to herself and had to fight back a burst of hysterical laughter. “I don’t think it’s sunk in yet,” she told him, wondering if it would ever sink in.

“Congratulations, Your Highness,” one of the bodyguards said, as he shook her hand.

Dora smiled automatically, but otherwise her body had gone numb. A princess? Yeah, right, that was her. Who was she trying to kid? Reality was she was a secretary from
Los Angeles
who had stumbled into a crazy situation. She had to get out before she said or did something stupid. Like throw up…or worse…believe all this was really happening.

Except she didn’t get to make her escape. Before she’d realized what was going on, the judge was gone and the bodyguards had retreated to their rooms. She was alone with her new husband, watching him pour them each a glass of champagne.

Who was this stranger? she thought warily as she moved to the sofa and settled in the corner. What had she done? Her nervousness increased, as did her shaking, and when he handed her the glass of champagne, it was all she could do to keep from spilling the bubbling liquid all over her lace dress. In an effort to keep that from happening, she swallowed a mouthful of champagne, decided the taste was exceptionally nice, then finished her glass.
Khalil
refilled it without saying a word.

He put the ice bucket on the table in front of her and settled next to her on the sofa. “Are you all right?” he asked.

He sounded kind and sincere, she thought frantically. So normal, as if he did this kind of thing all the time. Except he couldn’t, right? “Isn’t this making you crazy?” she blurted.

He took a sip of his drink. “What? The wedding? I thought things went smoothly.”

“Oh, yeah, sure. Clockwork in motion, or whatever.” She paused. The saying was “poetry in motion,” so where did the clocks come from? She rubbed her temple. Her stomach tingled and she thought it might have something to do with the champagne. Just to be sure, she drank a little more. She hadn’t eaten that day, and she was also thirsty. The
fizziness
tickled her throat. Was it her imagination or did her head suddenly feel heavy?

“I think I should probably eat something,” she mumbled.

“Of course,”
Khalil
told her. “Dinner is waiting whenever you’re ready.”

“Great.” Except the thought of standing up was suddenly too complex. “Maybe in a minute.”

She looked at him, at his handsome face. The lines of his profile were sharp, like a statue of granite. He was dark and dangerous, like the desert at night. Not that she had any personal experience with the desert at night or during the day.

“I know this is unfamiliar,” he said, lightly touching the back of her hand. “We need to spend a little time getting to know each other. Why don’t we talk about our past? After that, we’ll eat dinner, and then we’ll make love until dawn.”

Making love, she thought hazily. Now that would be very nice. Maybe they could skip the other parts and get right to doing it. She hiccuped softly, then took another drink. She wanted to do it again and again until she learned everything about it. She wanted to touch
Khalil
and have him touch her back. She wanted to see him naked, in fact she thought this little chat about their past might be more enjoyable if he took his clothes off right now. She would very much like to see the “it” that made doing it so very enjoyable.

“Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

His question cut through her fantasies and left her confused. Then she remembered that they were getting to know each other. A sensible plan.
Khalil
was right—once they knew more details about each other’s lives this wouldn’t be such a strange situation.

She finished her glass of champagne and started to set it on the coffee table, but
Khalil
filled it instead. She thought about refusing, after all, her head was already spinning, but wouldn’t that be rude? It was his wedding, too, and…What had been his question?

“No, I’m an only child.” She leaned back against the sofa. “My mom never said anything, but I think I was a mistake. She and my dad got married about two months before I was born. After that, he was never around much. They divorced when I was seven.”

“I see. I’m the youngest,” he said. “I can’t imagine what it would have been like to be an only child.”

“It’s lonely,” she said bluntly. “Probably not for some kids, but it was for me. My mom worked a lot to support us, and my dad wasn’t one for regular visitation. Plus, I wasn’t really popular at school.” She shrugged, then rolled her head so that she could look at him. “Too smart. I wasn’t pretty enough to get in with the right girls, and I think I scared all the boys away. Plus I was shy, and I never knew what to say to anyone. It was easier to hide out in the library and read.”

She took another sip of champagne. It tasted tartly sweet and slipped down easily. The tingling in her belly had spread to her whole body, and her brain definitely felt thick, but in a nice way. Like she was protected from anything too scary.

“When did you stop being lonely?” he asked.

She angled toward him and pulled her knees up onto the sofa. “Yesterday, I think. I can’t really remember.”

Khalil’s
features started to blur together. Had she had too much to drink? Or was it just the soft lighting in the suite? Her eyes fluttered closed, and she felt warm fingers brush against her cheek.

“College wasn’t too bad at first,” she said dreamily, getting lost in the past. “I had a scholarship that paid for most things. I liked being in a place where it was considered a good thing to be smart and to work hard. But living on campus cost more than I thought, and I had to get a job to supplement my expenses.”

She opened her eyes and looked at him. “My mom didn’t have any extra money to spare. I don’t suppose that’s ever been a problem for you.”

“No, it hasn’t.”

“Must be nice.”

“Sometimes, but we’ve had other problems.”

“I guess everyone does. Anyway, I started tutoring. I worked with athletes a lot. Mostly because they paid the most. But they weren’t interested in anything but getting by. They didn’t want to learn. Isn’t that horrible?” She blinked and found that her eyelids were extraordinarily heavy. She swallowed a little more champagne to help her stay awake.

“One day I found my study notes missing. I confronted a couple of the guys, and they wouldn’t admit they’d taken them.” She sighed remembering the hurtful things those boys had said. “I refused to tutor them anymore. About three weeks after that, a bunch of the guys were caught cheating. They were going to be expelled, but they weren’t content to go quietly. They said that they were using a cheating system I’d come up with and had charged them for.”

Her words caught in her throat. That had been so long ago, she would have thought it didn’t have the power to hurt her anymore, but it did. She remembered her time in the dean’s office, when it had been her word against theirs.

“Six of them told the same story. Six,” she repeated quietly. “No one believed me, not about the notes or that I refused to work with them, or that I hadn’t had any part of the cheating. So I was expelled along with them. I went home, got a job and saved my money. A year later I started at my local community college, then I received my associate’s degree.”

She pressed her lips together. “This probably isn’t what you wanted to know, is it?”

“I want to know whatever you want to tell me.”

She tried to smile, but her face felt numb. “I don’t think so. I doubt any part of my life is very interesting.”

“That’s not true.” He stroked her cheek again, and the contact felt lovely. “Why didn’t you go back to college and get your four-year degree?”