Christmas Bride For The Sheikh

By Crown Prince Sheikh Ilyas of Zayrinia!

‘I have to tell him.’ Maggie said as they lunched. ‘But I don’t know how to.’

Privately, Flo wasn’t too sure that Maggie did have to tell the father.

Oh, she was all for parental responsibility, but her friend was her main concern and she was pregnant by a future King, no less!

The baby was due just after Christmas. But as well as that, Maggie had recently found out she was having a little boy, and Flo was concerned how that might impact the situation.

Still, it wasn’t for Flo to decide and so she told Maggie what she knew.

‘His brother will be at Dion’s tonight.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because he gets kicked out of there every Friday. Hazin is the reason they’re so popular now!’

Flo knew all about where the rich and beautiful gathered.

Dion’s was a bar set within a very plush hotel. It had once been a sedate place to gather for pre-theatre drinks and dinner.

It was old-fashioned and had become oddly trendy, a sort of retro fifties-style bar that people now lined up to get into.

‘You could go there tonight and tell Hazin that you need to speak with his brother.’

‘Just walk in and tap him on the shoulder?’ Maggie rolled her eyes.

‘Get talking.’ Flo shrugged. ‘Flirt a little...’

‘I’m nearly six months pregnant by his brother!’

‘Oh, yes, I see your point.’

‘And I doubt Hazin would be particularly pleased to see me. I caused an awful lot of trouble for him. No doubt he thinks I was involved in the plan to set him up.’

Maggie had been unwittingly used in a plan to stitch up Hazin and bribe the Palace. She had ended up in Hazin’s cabin aboard his Royal yacht where a camera had been hidden overhead.

But whoever had assumed that Maggie would drop her bikini bottom for Hazin had not known her.

Maggie and Hazin had done nothing but have a conversation.

Not that the Palace had known that at the time. Ilyas had kidnapped Maggie to find out what had happened aboard the yacht.

Yes, kidnapped, Flo reminded her friend. ‘Which, in my opinion, means you’re under no obligation to tell him.’

‘I want to, though.’ Maggie said. ‘Flo, I know I’ve given you an awful impression of Ilyas but he really was wonderful to me.’

He must have been, Flo conceded, because Maggie trusted so few people.

Flo thought for a moment. She didn’t want to go to Dion’s, it was where she had met her ex and he still drank there on occasion.

Maggie didn’t know about that; she’d had enough troubles of her own since she’d returned from Zayrinia, without Flo piling on hers.

That wasn’t the full reason, though. Maggie and Flo were close and usually she would have told her, but the break-up that had happened last Christmas, when Maggie had been away, had hurt Flo deeply.

And Flo was still terribly ashamed.

No, she did not want to go to Dion’s tonight.

In fact, Flo hadn’t really had a night out since last Christmas.

Maggie’s baby was due a week after this one.

She looked at her friend, who had no family and was pregnant and scared, and Flo put on her smile.

She was very good at doing that and keeping her thoughts to herself. ‘I could always come with you to Dion’s after my shift,’ Flo offered.

And so it had been arranged.

* * *

‘I have to go.’ Flo glanced at the time. ‘I’m going to be late.’

She was often late, though not usually for work. It tended to be the other way round—she would stay on at work and arrive late for her life.

Men didn’t seem to like that, Flo had worked out.

At least, not the ones she was used to.

Flo’s shift had been a good one.

She was a midwife on the maternity unit at the Primary Hospital in London. It was a busy, modern hospital but, as much as Flo loved it, sometimes she yearned for more one-on-one time.

She had been rostered to work in Delivery but had instead been moved to the ward. There she had caught up with a mother she had cared for in the delivery unit the previous day. It had been a difficult birth and had ended in an emergency Caesarean.

Tonight, at the end of her shift, Flo had held the outcome in her arms.

Rose.

‘She looks like one.’ Flo had smiled, for Rose was delicate and pink and utterly oblivious to the terrible scare she had given everyone.

‘Thanks for all you did, Flo,’ Claire, the mother, had said.

Flo had smiled as she’d looked down at the tiny baby. Very rapid decisions had needed to be made and the petite, fun-loving Flo had snapped into action and become extremely vocal.

In her private life she did not stand up enough for herself, but at work, when looking out for the mothers and babies, she was very different indeed.

Her job was exhausting.