Sheikh's Captured Bride: The Sheikh's Prize / The Sheikh's Son / Captured by the Sheikh

‘If it’s upset you, it’s not silly,’ Saffy declared staunchly.

Topsy pulled a face. ‘I don’t know if I am upset. I don’t know how I feel about it—’

‘How you feel about what?’ Saffy prompted patiently.

‘A few weeks ago, my dad, Paulo, asked me to agree to a DNA test. I’m eighteen. We didn’t need Kat’s permission,’ Topsy explained as Saffy raised her brows in astonishment at the admission. ‘Apparently Dad had always had doubts that I was his child and since he got married he and his wife have had difficulty conceiving—’

‘Your dad’s got married? Since when? You never told us that!’ Saffy exclaimed.

Topsy sighed. ‘It didn’t seem important. I mean, I’ve only met him a half-dozen times in my whole life. With him living in Brazil, it’s not like we ever had the chance to get close,’ she pointed out ruefully. ‘Anyway, his new wife and him went for testing when she didn’t fall pregnant and it turns out he’s sterile.’

Saffy stiffened at the news. ‘Hence the DNA testing…’

‘And it turns out that I couldn’t possibly be his kid,’ Topsy confided with a valiant smile. ‘So, I went to see Mum—’

Saffy gave her a look of dismay, for Odette was a challenging and devious personality. ‘Please tell me you didn’t!’

‘Well, she was the only possible person I could approach on the score of my parentage,’ Topsy pointed out ruefully. ‘First of all she tried to argue that in spite of the DNA evidence I was Paulo’s kid—’

‘I doubt if she wanted the subject dug up after this length of time,’ Saffy remarked stiffly, cursing their irresponsible and selfish mother and hoping she had dealt kindly with her youngest daughter.

‘She definitely didn’t,’ Topsy admitted with a grimace of remembrance. ‘She just said that if Paulo wasn’t my father, she didn’t know who was. Did she really sleep with that many men that she wouldn’t know, Saffy?’

Saffy reddened and veiled her eyes. ‘There were periods in her life when she was very promiscuous. I’m sorry, Topsy. That was an upsetting thing for you to find out. How did Paulo react?’

‘I think he had already guessed. He didn’t seem surprised. Let’s face it, I don’t look the slightest bit like him. He’s over six foot tall and built like a rugby player,’ Topsy reminded her companion ruefully. ‘Now I’ll probably never find out who my father is but why should that matter to me? After all, you and Emmie have a father who lives right here in London but who still takes no interest in you.’

Saffy groaned. ‘That’s different. Mum and him had a very bitter divorce. She dumped him because he lost all his money. When he built a new life and remarried and had a second family he didn’t want anything more to do with us.’

‘Does that bother you?’

‘No, not at all. You can’t miss what you’ve never had,’ Saffy lied, for that was another rejection that still burned below the layer of emotional scar tissue she had formed. When she and her twin had been at their lowest ebb, their father, just like their mother, had turned his back on them and had said he wanted nothing to do with them.

‘You’re evil…just like your mother. Look what you’ve done to your sister!’ he had told Saffy when she was twelve years old, and even the passage of time hadn’t erased her memory of the look of dislike and condemnation in his gaze.

‘Sorry to land you with all this,’ her kid sister muttered guiltily.

Beyond the door Cameron called them for dinner and Saffy seized the chance to give her kid sister a comforting hug, wishing she had some clever reassurance to offer Topsy on the topic of absent father figures. Unfortunately, not having normal caring parents left a hole inside you and even Kat’s praiseworthy efforts to fill that hole for her sisters had not proved entirely successful. Saffy had simply learned that when bad things happened you had to soldier on, hide your pain and deal with the consequences in private.

Only when Topsy had returned to Kat and Mikhail’s home for the night with her spirits much improved did Cameron turn with a concerned look in his shrewd eyes to ask Saffy suspiciously, ‘What—or should I say who—kept you unavoidably detained in Maraban?’

Saffy visibly lost colour. ‘It’s not something I want to talk about right now.’

‘You know that’s not a healthy attitude,’ Cameron, who was a firm believer in therapy, warned her.

‘Talking about anything personal will never come easily to me,’ Saffy admitted tightly. ‘I spent too many years locking everything up inside me.’

She was extraordinarily tired and she went to bed and lay there with her eyes wide open in the darkness, struggling to suppress the images of Zahir stuck inside her head. Fighting thoughts teemed alongside those unwelcome images. She would get over that little desert rendezvous in Maraban and leave Zahir behind her…in the past where he truly belonged.

Ten days later, Saffy wakened because while she had slept she had slid over onto her tummy and her breasts were too tender to withstand that pressure. With a wince, she sat up, wondering if it was time to use the pregnancy kit she had bought forty-eight hours earlier, but she was still strangely reluctant to put her suspicions to the test. Could she have enjoyed intimacy just one time and conceived when her unfortunate sister, Kat, had been trying without success to fall pregnant for many months? It struck her as unlikely and she had only bought the test in a weak moment of dreaming about what it might be like to become a mother.

Such silly dreams, childish dreams for a grown woman to be indulging in, she scolded herself impatiently, dreams full of fluffy, fantasy baby images and not a jot of reality. Somewhere deep down inside her a voice was telling her that a baby would be one little piece of Zahir that she could have and cherish, but she was intelligent enough to know that the reality of single parenthood was sleepless nights, cash worries and nobody else to share your worries and responsibilities with. Frustrated by her own rebellious brain, she got up and did her morning exercises, desperate to think of something else. When that didn’t work she changed into her sports gear and went out for a run, returning to the apartment drenched in perspiration and on legs wobbly from over-exertion. Stripping, she walked into the shower and washed. She was towelling herself dry when she heard the doorbell buzz. She pulled on her robe and padded across the hall to answer.

She looked through the peephole first and froze, looked again, her heart rate kicking up a storm. Zahir? Here in London? Her teeth gritting, she undid the chain and opened the door.

‘What do you want?’ she demanded sharply.

CHAPTER SIX (#uc6c2b963-afd5-531a-a618-9d4631118a46)

‘INVITE ME IN,’ Zahir commanded.

Saffy was uneasily aware of the two security men standing by the lift, of the status and level of protection Zahir now required as the ruler of Maraban, and the very idea that he was now at risk of becoming a target for attack gave her stomach a sick jolt. She swallowed hard, mustering her defences such as they were. ‘No.’

‘Don’t be juvenile,’ Zahir urged, his handsome mouth tightening, his air of gravity lending a forbidding edge to the smooth planes of his lean dark absolutely gorgeous face. ‘We have business to discuss.’

‘Business?’ Saffy parroted, suddenly wishing she hadn’t opened the door with wet hair and a face bare of make-up for, deprived of her professional grooming, she felt defenceless.

‘I told you that I would investigate the trust fund I set up for you.’ Impatience edged his dark deep drawl, energised his stunning dark deep-set eyes with sparks of gold, and as she watched him her mouth ran dry as a bone. ‘I have now done so.’

‘Oh, the missing money,’ she muttered in weak comprehension, and she stepped back with stiff reluctance to open the door, for she didn’t want him inside her personal space, didn’t want one more memory or association with him to further colour her existence.

‘Yes, the money,’ Zahir said drily, in a tone that suggested that he could have no other reason to roll up on her doorstep.

She studied him, in a split second memorising sufficient to commemorate his image for life, and she turned away, colour crawling up painfully over her cheekbones as she led the way into the living room. He wore a business suit, a beautifully tailored designer effort that showcased his height and breadth and long powerful legs. He had had his hair cut since she had last seen him, jet black hair feathering back from lean strong features to brush the collar of his shirt, the inevitable stubble shadowing his sculpted mouth and stubborn jaw line because he needed to shave twice a day. She felt like a vulture swooping down greedily on every tiny intimate detail of him and her tummy hollowed with a sense of dread, for she had never felt so vulnerable.

Zahir focused on the fluid sway of her hips encased in colourful silk as she moved ahead of him. He guessed she had just stepped out of the shower and was naked beneath those swirling folds of fabric and he was assailed by a slew of highly erotic images that sent a surge of lust shooting straight to his groin. He gritted his even white teeth and flung his arrogant dark head high. He knew what he was doing; he knew exactly what he was doing this time. He might have ditched his sense of honour but he had made a decision he could live with. Nobody was perfect, nobody followed every rule… Imperfection had suddenly become newly acceptable to him.

Saffy turned round and regarded him expectantly, her gaze slanting out of a direct meeting with his shrewd eyes and focusing on his wide sensual mouth instead. Instantly she felt hunger flare like a storm in her pelvis and perspiration beaded her short upper lip as she fought the weakness and tried to crush it out. But her body, it seemed, had discovered a treacherous life all of its own and she was suddenly aware of the heaviness of her tender breasts and the straining, aching peaks.

‘That five million you told me about?’ she prompted with deliberate tartness of tone, keen for him to take his leave again.

‘My London lawyer set up the fund with your solicitor. But five years ago nobody involved was aware that your solicitor was in the early stages of senile dementia and, sadly, he didn’t do his job properly,’ Zahir explained grimly. ‘You were not informed about the fund as you should have been and when your solicitor took early retirement through ill health, his son took over his legal practice. When the son realised that you were ignorant of the money accumulating every month, he committed fraud.’

‘Fraud?’ Saffy parroted, her bright blue eyes widening.

‘He’s been syphoning off the funds for his own benefit ever since. I have put the matter in the hands of the police,’ Zahir informed her grimly. ‘I owe you an apology for accusing you of having excessively enriched yourself since our divorce.’

Saffy lifted her chin. ‘Yes, you do.’

‘In spite of everything, I did intend for you to have that money as security and I am very angry that you did not receive it,’ he admitted shortly. ‘It is possible that you would never have become a model had you known that you were already financially secure.’

Saffy blinked in surprise at that suggestion. ‘I doubt that. Had I known about the fund, I would have refused to accept it. We were married for such a short time that I didn’t feel that you owed me anything.’

‘You were my wife and my responsibility. I felt differently,’ Zahir disagreed with unblemished cool.

‘If you’d still had a large financial stake in my future, I wouldn’t have felt free to put our marriage behind me,’ Saffy admitted with quiet dignity as she began moving back to the door with obvious intent. ‘But since I didn’t know about the fund, it hardly matters now. I’m just relieved you’ve managed to sort it out. Now, if that’s all you have to say—’

‘No, it’s not all. I have something else I wish to discuss.’