Sheikh's Woman

Sheikh's Woman
ALEXANDRA SELLERS

She' d awakened in a hospital, confused, to discover she was mother to a newborn…and wife to a steely- eyed stranger. Mere hours after gazing on Ishaq Ahmadi in London, Anna found herself at their desert home, which seemed both hauntingly familiar and oddly foreign. No evidence of a happy marriage existed in the palatial residence. No photographs. No clothes that fit Anna' s slender build. No trust, given Ishaq' s endless questions. There was simply the primal, passionate connection between them…and, of course, the baby.But Anna soon learned that nothing about her marriage was to be believed….

“You’re Awake,” The Nurse Murmured.

A man turned and looked at her, too, his gaze piercing. He was strongly charismatic. Handsome as a pirate captain, exotically dark and obviously foreign. Masculine, strong. Anna blinked. There was a mark on his eye just like her baby’s. A dark irregular smudge that enhanced both his resemblance to a pirate and his exotic maleness.

“Anna!” he exclaimed. A slight accent furred his words attractively. “Thank God you and the baby were not hurt! What on earth happened?”

“Are you the doctor?” she stammered.

His dark eyes snapped into an expression of even greater concern, and he made a sound that was half laughter, half worry. He bent down and clasped her hand. She felt his fingers tighten on hers in unmistakable silent warning.

“Darling!” he exclaimed. “The nurse says you don’t remember the accident, but I hope you have not forgotten your own husband!”

Dear Reader,

Happy New Year from Silhouette Desire, where we offer you six passionate, powerful and provocative romances every month of the year! Here’s what you can indulge yourself with this January….

Begin the new year with a seductive MAN OF THE MONTH, Tall, Dark & Western by Anne Marie Winston. A rancher seeking a marriage of convenience places a personals ad for a wife, only to fall—hard—for the single mom who responds!

Silhouette Desire proudly presents a sequel to the wildly successful in-line continuity series THE TEXAS CATTLEMAN’S CLUB. This exciting new series about alpha men on a mission is called TEXAS CATTLEMAN’S CLUB: LONE STAR JEWELS. Jennifer Greene’s launch book, Millionaire M.D., features a wealthy surgeon who helps out his childhood crush when she finds a baby on her doorstep—by marrying her!

Alexandra Sellers continues her exotic miniseries SONS OF THE DESERT with one more irresistible sheikh in Sheikh’s Woman. THE BARONS OF TEXAS miniseries by Fayrene Preston returns with another feisty Baron heroine in The Barons of Texas: Kit. In Kathryn Jensen’s The Earl’s Secret, a British aristocrat romances a U.S. commoner while wrestling with a secret. And Shirley Rogers offers A Cowboy, a Bride & a Wedding Vow, in which a cowboy discovers his secret child.

So ring in the new year with lots of cheer and plenty of red-hot romance, by reading all six of these enticing love stories.

Enjoy!

Joan Marlow Golan

Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire

Sheikh’s Woman

Alexandra Sellers

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

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 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.

What she would miss most on a desert island is shared laughter.

Readers can write to Alexandra at P.O. Box 9449, London NW3 2WH, U.K., England.

For my sister Joy,

who held it all together in the bad times

and makes things even better in the good

Contents

Prologue

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

Prologue

She crouched in the darkness, whimpering as the pain gripped her. He had made her wait too long. She had warned him, but he’d pretended not to believe her “lies.” And now, in an empty, dirty alley, nowhere to go, no time to get there, her time was upon her.

Pain stabbed her again, and she cried out involuntarily. She pressed a hand over her mouth and looked behind her down the alley. Of course by now he had discovered her flight. He was already after her. If he had heard that cry…

She staggered to her feet again, picked up the bag, began a shuffling run. Her heart was beating so hard! The drumming in her head seemed to drown out thought. She ran a few paces and then doubled over again as the pain came. Oh, Lord, not here! Please, please, not in an alley, like an animal, to be found when she was most helpless, when the baby would be at his mercy.