Sheikh's Castaway

A woman like Noor, vital, beautiful, with a heart now revealed as good and true—how had he left his own heart out of his calculations? What arrogance had blinded him to his vulnerability?

Bari loved her. Fire seemed to burn where his heart had once been.

How could he have imagined himself immune to her?

He shook his head. He had had to learn that he, too, had a heart. And that his heart was a better judge of truth than his intellect.

Could she love him now, when he had imposed such unnecessary suffering on her? When he had ranted at her, blamed her and told her the great lie—that he did not love her?

Such blind foolishness was over now. If only it were not too late….

Dear Reader,

As expected, Silhouette Desire has loads of passionate, powerful and provocative love stories for you this month. Our DYNASTIES: THE DANFORTHS continuity is winding to a close with the penultimate title, Terms of Surrender, by Shirley Rogers. A long-lost Danforth heir may just have been found—and heavens, is this prominent family in for a big surprise! And talk about steamy secrets, Peggy Moreland is back with Sins of a Tanner, a stellar finale to her series THE TANNERS OF TEXAS.

If it’s scandalous behavior you’re looking for, look no farther than For Services Rendered by Anne Marie Winston. This MANTALK book—the series that offers stories strictly from the hero’s point of view—has a fabulous hero who does the heroine a very special favor. Hmmmm. And Alexandra Sellers is back in Desire with a fresh installment of her SONS OF THE DESERT series. Sheikh’s Castaway will give you plenty of sweet (and naughty) dreams.

Even more shocking situations pop up in Linda Conrad’s sensual Between Strangers. Imagine if you were stuck on the side of the road during a blizzard and a sexy cowboy offered you shelter from the storm…. (Hello, are you still with me?) Rounding out the month is Margaret Allison’s Principles and Pleasures, a daring romp between a workaholic heroine and a man she doesn’t know is actually her archenemy.

So settle in for some sensual, scandalous love stories…and enjoy every moment!

Melissa Jeglinski

Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire

Sheikh’s Castaway

Alexandra Sellers

MILLS & BOON

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ALEXANDRA SELLERS

is the author of over twenty-five novels and a feline language text published in 1997 and still selling.

Born and raised in Canada, Alexandra first came to London, England, as a drama student. Now she lives near Hampstead Heath with her husband, Nick. They share housekeeping with Monsieur, who jumped through the window one day and announced, as cats do, that he was moving in.

I would like to thank the following

for their generously given expert advice and help

Pete Godwin, aviator

Mark Hofton, designer

Jennifer Nauss, friend and editor

Geoff Tetley, life raft specialist

Jo and Dennis Wallace, world sailors

and AVON LIFE RAFTS

I couldn’t have done it without you

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Epilogue

One

Princess Noor pushed the fold of her bridal veil away from her face with an impatient hand and blinked out the cockpit window, her mouth opening on a soundless breath.

Cloud. A thick, grey-white mass blanketing the distant mainland as far as she could see.

But she had no instrument rating. She couldn’t fly in cloud.

“It can’t be!” she whispered, aghast. Sunlight still glinted merrily from the rich turquoise of the Gulf of Barakat beneath her, but that offered no solution when she had had zero practice putting the little amphibian plane down on water.

Why hadn’t she noticed the cloud building up? She should have taken evasive action long ago. Had the yards of billowing tulle on her head confused her vision? Or had the humiliation gnawing at her stomach distracted her?

As if waking out of a dream now, Noor shook her head and looked around.

What was she doing here?

She hadn’t even stopped to remove her veil before taking off into the unknown. Hadn’t checked the weather. Didn’t have a destination. Her only thought had been to put as much distance as she could between herself and marriage to Sheikh Bari al Khalid.

She gazed out at the cloud again, her heart beating fast. She might have put a very permanent distance between them. If that cloud caught up with her, she wouldn’t be marrying anyone. Ever.

It had begun—when had it begun? When her parents’ families fled their beautiful country in the aftermath of Ghasib’s coup thirty-odd years before and both chose Australia? When the two young expatriate Bagestanis who became her parents had fallen in love and married?

Or had it begun only months ago, when the royal family’s long struggle to regain the throne had at last been successful, culminating in Sultan Ashraf’s now-legendary ride to the gates of the Old Palace through streets crammed with cheering, delirious multitudes?

“We loff heem!” the populace had cried, dancing, singing, laughing and crying, and even a jaded television reporter had unashamedly wiped a tear from her cheek.

Yes, perhaps that was the real beginning. For that was when Noor Ashkani’s comfortable, predictable life had been tumbled into a disorder so shocking and startling she seemed to herself to have become a different person.

That was when her father had made his world-shattering announcement. When the family, like so many other exiled Bagestanis around the world, were watching events unfold on television, weeping and hugging each other in a powerful combination of hope, fear and joy, her father had pointed at the image of the stern, noble face of Sultan Ashraf al Jawadi on the screen, and said, “Now it can be told. You are not what you think. He is your cousin.”

Cousin! That man on the white horse soon to be crowned Sultan of Bagestan! And not a distant cousin, either. Noor’s mother was the daughter of the deposed Sultan Hafzuddin and his second wife, the French-woman named Sonia. Her father was descended from the old Sultan’s sister. They owned palaces and property, seized by Ghasib, which would now be returned to them. They were titled.

So no longer was she Noor Ashkani, daughter of a wealthy Bagestani exile who had made good in his adopted country. She was Sheikha Noor Yasmin al Jawadi Durrani, granddaughter of the deposed Sultan of Bagestan, cousin to the present Sultan-to-be, and related to the royal family of the neighbouring kingdom of Parvan, too.

And to prove it, not long after, the new Sultan’s invitation to attend the coronation in Bagestan arrived, printed on heavy white paper, with the royal seal that hadn’t been seen on official documents for over thirty years.

“More of a command than an invitation,” her father had said in satisfaction.

Noor had never in her life seen a sight so moving as that of the royal couple, tall and severely beautiful, glittering with gold, pearls and diamonds, as they slowly paced the red carpet through the halls of the ancient palace past the hundreds of breathlessly silent guests to the throne room.

Sheikh Bari al Khalid had been one of the newly appointed Cup Companions who followed behind the Sultan. Later she learned that he was the grandson of her own grandfather’s friend, both of whom, in a time long gone, had been Cup Companions to the old Sultan.

But then he was just one of the twelve most gorgeous men she had ever set eyes on.

Noor keyed the radio mike.

“Matar Filkoh, this is India Sierra Quebec two six.”

“Indi…not reading…say again.” The radio crackled and spat, giving more static than speech. She must be nearly out of range.

“This is India Sierra Quebec two six,” she carefully recited. “Request your current weather, repeat weather.”

“Runway in…two, surface wind one eight zero deg…teen gusting thirty-five knots. Bro…at five hundred, heavy…with nimbo…rain…”

The signal broke up completely. Her heart beating hard, Noor signed off and sat for a moment taking stock. If the airport had been clear, there might have been a case for running the risk of trying to get to it through the cloud. But the airport was in the mountains. And with cloud, rain and wind gusting to thirty-five when she got there—if she got there—!

The sky had been clear when she took off. The cloud must have been building in the mountains. Or maybe it had just suddenly formed while she wasn’t looking. Cloud could do that, given the right conditions.

Nimbostratus, she was pretty sure he’d said. The really treacherous clouds were cumulonimbus, which carried turbulence, but any cloud was deadly when she had no instrument rating. She didn’t even have minimal experience of flying on instruments. There hadn’t seemed much point when she flew only recreationally.

Cloud was terrifying because in cloud a pilot could so easily become disorientated. She could simply spiral down out of the sky.

The best alternative was an immediate landing on water. But she had never landed on water.

She had watched an expert do it. That counted for something, Noor reminded herself.

Bari. Involuntarily she glanced down at the pearl-encrusted white silk and lace that covered her breasts. Oh, yes, Bari al Khalid was an expert pilot. An expert at many things, including seduction.

Also an expert liar. But thank God she had found that out in time. Her eyes searched the instrument panel and found the clock. An hour! Was that all it was? If she hadn’t heard what she’d heard, hadn’t run, Sheikh Bari al Khalid would now be her husband.

At the grand reception after the coronation, powerfully masculine and fierce in a maroon silk jacket, with a glittering jewelled sword at his hip and a thick rope of pearls draped across his chest, of course Bari al Khalid made his presence felt. You couldn’t be in the vicinity of so much arrogant masculinity and not notice.

But what drew Noor’s attention was the way he kept staring at her, an expression on his face that seemed half passion, half rage. And as if they were attached by an invisible thread that he could not break, he seemed to circle her, so that whenever she looked up, he was always there, at a distance.

Noor was a pretty young woman whose soft, rounded face only hinted at the beauty that would be hers in a few more years, but that day she was stunning. Her parents had called the sky the limit, and Princess Noor was wearing a fabulously expensive Arabian Nights dress in pastel green silk from Princess Zara’s own favourite designer.

A semitransparent bodice with a high halter neck, glittering with pearls and emeralds, clung to her full breasts and neat waist. Beneath, a cloud of multitoned layers of green silk swathed her legs, half skirt, half harem pants. And in a seductive mockery of the traditional veil, transparent tulle cascaded from the back of her head to her feet, caught in as if haphazardly at her waist to cloak her bare arms.

Noor’s makeup was flawless, her dark auburn hair burnished, waving back from her temples and forehead to show small, perfect ears and emphasize the softly rounded chin and smooth, slender neck.

And all around, people were calling her “Your Highness.”

But still, she was a little overwhelmed to think that an oak of a man like Bari al Khalid had taken one look and come crashing to earth.

The shadow of the little plane danced over the bright waves below as Noor grappled with her dilemma. She had put this plane down on land, albeit with Bari in the copilot’s seat. She knew how it handled. If she had to, she would give a liquid landing her best shot.

But if there was another way… She pulled out the chart and tried to estimate her position. With the cloud obliterating all landmarks except the tips of the mountains, it wasn’t easy.

Should she try an immediate landing? It would mean a lot of empty sea for someone to search when she needed rescue afterwards. Should she risk flying closer to land—closer to the cloud bank—before landing? What if the cloud suddenly swept out and grabbed her while she was putting down?

There was another problem: Noor was used to landing only where she had good visual conditions. She would become disoriented with nothing but the altimeter to tell her how close the surface was.

The sea was so deceptive. She might hit the water when she thought she was a hundred feet up. Or the reverse—what she thought was a ripple on the surface might be a ten-foot swell.

Like Bari al Khalid, she thought. I thought I was close to him, but all the time he was miles away.

The Cup Companion was introduced to his lord’s cousin as a matter of protocol. He bowed formally, one hand a fist at his breast, but his expression was anything but formal. The arrogant sexual confidence in his black eyes melted her where she stood.

“Come,” Sheikh al Khalid had ordered, in fine autocratic command, as if she could have no wishes different from his own. “I will show you the gardens. You will admire the fountains.”

Noor had never been swept off her feet before. And she knew it could never happen again with such thrilling panache, such heady excitement. During the weeks she stayed in Bagestan, discovering the homeland of her parents, Bari monopolized her time, and never before in her largely fun-filled life had she had so much fun.

Bari was expert at everything. He played demon tennis, his dark body so lithe and muscled she was watching him when she should have kept her eyes on the ball, took her sailing on the most beautiful and perfectly seaworthy little yacht she’d ever seen, allowed her to pilot his private plane, escorted her to fabulous parties with the rich and famous that until now had been out of her reach, kept her constantly laughing….

And made intoxicating love to her for the first time in that small sailing yacht at the height of a storm. Noor had been a virgin, but that moment had answered all her dreams. Oh, it had been worth waiting for!

“Of course you will marry me,” he told Noor, his voice harsh with passion. “We will make our life and raise our children in Bagestan.”

It was far too soon; of course it was. Her cousin Jalia said it, and Jalia was right. But Noor’s head was whirling. Everything on her personal horizon seemed to have changed in one heartbeat. In the sea of confusion that had surrounded her since her father’s announcement, she had one spar—that Bari wanted her. That Bari was sure, and knew what he was doing.

She had flown home only to make her arrangements and return to Bagestan for the huge wedding, organized with breathtaking speed, that practically all of Barakati and Bagestani society would be attending.

And then, with the ceremony only minutes away, her one spar had been torn from her. She had learned what a fool she was, what a fool he was making of her.

Bari knew what he was doing, all right, but he didn’t love her. He wasn’t marrying her for love. He didn’t even want to marry her.

The islands! her brain suddenly shouted at her. There are islands out here! How could she have forgotten that? She had flown over the scattered group of islands with Bari. Al Jeza’ir al Khaleej, he had called them. The Gulf Islands.

“They have been uninhabited since the forced evacuation,” he had told her. “Except the biggest, which has a luxury hotel complex. The Gulf Eden was one of the ways Ghasib drew foreign currency into his coffers. Built by a huge international hotel chain to cater to very wealthy foreigners.”

His tone had been filled with contempt, and Noor had dropped her eyes and omitted to mention that she had almost gone there herself once. Only her father’s absolute diktat had stopped her.

This looks like my chance at last, she told herself dryly. But where were the islands? How far away? Her eyes dropped to the chart again, searching. Please, God, show me a way out of this.

Two

Sheikh Bari al Khalid lifted his head and watched his runaway bride over the back of the passenger seat separating the cockpit from the luggage space where he was hidden.

How dared she abandon their wedding in such a way? How dared she run away from him like this? Without a word—no announcement, no explanation, not even so much as a blink of apology!

What sort of man did she think he was, to put up with such insult?

The heady mix of fury, shock and disbelief—if that were all!—that had driven his actions was now, however, tinged with grim amusement. So the airport was clouded over. That was a dangerous situation: his bashful bride couldn’t fly in cloud, and she couldn’t land on water.

How richly she deserved this dilemma!

She was a fool to have chosen this method of escape. The weather had been volatile and unpredictable ever since the ending of the drought a few weeks ago, a fact she knew well. As an inexperienced pilot she should never have risked coming up alone.

A sardonic smile stretched his mouth, making him aware of how his jaw was clenched. He would like to leave her longer in this predicament, teach her a sharp lesson. Hell, he’d like to hide here till she was on her last gallon of fuel and begging fate for release. How he would enjoy seeing her desperate with regret and remorse!

But he couldn’t risk it. Her calm might give way to panic without warning. And a few seconds of that would be enough to kill them.

No, Noor clearly couldn’t be trusted to keep her head in the face of adversity.

Her head? She couldn’t even be trusted to keep her word!

Well, she would be made to keep it. Of that he was determined. She would not escape. She had promised herself to him, and she would keep her promise.

He stood up and moved forward between the rear seats. “Caught in your own trap,” he snarled when he was behind her. “What did you expect?”

“Bari?!” Noor’s gasp sounded like tearing silk against the hum of the engine. Her head snapped up and she blankly took in the glaring black eyes, the darkly handsome face, the imposing figure magnificently sheathed in purple silk and draped with pearls. His dress sword hung from his hip.

She frowned. “Damn! I’m hallucinating!”

“I wish you were!” he said between his teeth. “I wish we were both hallucinating! Insanity would be preferable to learning what kind of woman you are!”

He lifted the bundle of her veil that nestled in the right-hand seat and tossed it onto the floor behind her with fierce contempt, as if this symbol of their wedding made his stomach heave. Noor felt its drag against the headdress of fresh white roses still pinned to her hair.

Then, expertly manoeuvring the jewel-encrusted scabbard, he edged into the space and sat. With a deliberation that somehow infuriated her, he buckled himself into the harness.

“I have control,” he announced formally and, with unhurried grace, his actions completely distanced from his vengeful mood, he engaged the secondary controls. The plane responded to its master’s touch with a purr.

“Are you real?” Noor asked, wondering, Am I totally crazy? She had resigned control to what might be only a phantom. Was this why planes fell from the sky without explanation? Because the man flying it existed only in someone’s desperate imagination?

“You will see how real I am,” Bari growled. She had never seen that generous, sensuous mouth so narrowed. He must be real. Why would her mind trouble to conjure up a vision that only terrified her further?

“I guess you’re the answer to my prayer!” she realized with a jerky laugh. “Some sense of humour God has!”

“Do you call this scenario God’s doing? You are fool enough to think that, in acting like a barbarian, you carry out God’s will?”

His tone was scathing, and her flesh shivered as the first delicate tendrils of shame reached through her blind panic to touch Noor’s soul.

Bari’s eyes moved to the instrument panel. Since she was in the pilot’s seat, he had to crane. She felt the plane alter course in a broad arc, out over the sparkling sea. There was no cloud in this direction, but even if it caught up with them, she knew Bari was fully rated on instruments.

“How did you get here? You just materialized?”

His voice whipped her. “Do you imagine it was difficult to trail a white limousine with a bridal veil streaming from the sunroof through the streets? Nor was it difficult to guess that you planned to take the plane.”

He was wrong there. She hadn’t planned it. She had driven to the plane only when she realized that in her panicked flight she had taken nothing with her, neither her handbag nor a change of clothes. She had to have cash, but she didn’t dare go to the palace—it would be the first place they looked for her. And if they found her, they’d take her back to the wedding.

The thought of returning back among the wedding guests, having to explain herself when no explanation would be good enough, had appalled her. Then she had remembered that Bari kept emergency fuel money in a secret compartment in the plane. In the swamp into which she had cast herself, she had grabbed at that one frail straw.

She had discovered the plane fuelled and ready for their honeymoon journey. Only then had the thought of flying away from the impossible problems she’d created suddenly and crazily occurred to her.

“Only the why of such barbarian, uncivilized behaviour escaped me.” The words came at her in sharp, broken shards, as if he chewed up glass as he spoke. “Even a child raised in the streets would hesitate to act as you have done!”

His contempt came out through lips that had practically disappeared. Noor flinched. She had never seen such an expression on his face before. She had never seen anyone so angry, and she had to admit he had some cause. But she couldn’t accept such wholesale criticism, such overwhelming blame.

“You got to the plane ahead of me, and instead of talking to me you hid, and you’re calling me childish?” she snapped.

“No doubt you would have relished a public confrontation, Noor, but I did not. We will return to the house and you will marry me without comment, or any public airing of your unforgivable actions.”

“Return to the house?” Her voice climbed in startled objection as she suddenly realized he had been altering course to fly back to Bagestan. She straightened with a jerk. “What are you doing? Where are you going?”

“We will land at the dock and walk up to the house and apologize to our guests for the delay. Then we will take our vows,” he said with the clarity that only the coldest fury can impart. “A little late. But the bride is allowed that, I believe.”