Midnight on the Sands: Hajar's Hidden Legacy / To Touch a Sheikh / Her Sheikh Protector

Epilogue

Her Sheikh Protector

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Dedication (#litres_trial_promo)

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Epilogue

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

Hajar’s Hidden Legacy (#ud9346c9b-0e75-5c25-8d42-595b525291a7)

USA TODAY bestselling author MAISEY YATES lives in rural Oregon with her husband and three children. She feels the epic trek she takes several times a day from her office to her coffee maker is a true example of her pioneer spirit.

In 2009, at the age of twenty-three, Maisey sold her first book to Mills & Boon. Since then it’s been a whirlwind of sexy alpha males and happily ever afters and she wouldn’t have it any other way. Maisey divides her writing time between dark, passionate romances set just about everywhere on earth and light sexy contemporary romances set practically in her back yard. She believes that she clearly has the best job in the world. Visit her website at www.maiseyyates.com (http://www.maiseyyates.com) and look for her on Facebook.

For Ellie. There’s nothing quite as special as a friend who has always been there, and who always will be. You’re that friend for me.

CHAPTER ONE (#ud9346c9b-0e75-5c25-8d42-595b525291a7)

THEY called him the Beast of Hajar for a reason. Katharine could see that now. Zahir S’ad al Din was every bit as frightening as they said. He was an entirely different man from the one she’d met so many years ago. Cold, completely forbidding.

But Katharine didn’t have the luxury of being frightened by him. Anyway, she was used to cold, forbidding men.

“Sheikh Zahir,” she began, taking a step toward his expansive desk. He wasn’t looking at her, his dark head inclined, his focus on a paper in front of him. “I have been waiting for you to contact me. You haven’t.”

“No, I have not. Which makes me wonder why you are here.”

Katharine swallowed. “To marry you.”

“Is that right, Princess Katharine? I had heard a rumor about that, but I didn’t believe it.” He lifted his head and for the first time, Katharine saw his face.

Yes, he was every bit as frightening as they said. The skin on the left side of his face ravaged, his eye not as focused or sharp on that side. Yet she still felt like he was seeing all the way into her, as if the accident that had served to cloud his physical vision had made him able to see more than a mere mortal man.

That he was a ghost, or a god of some kind was part of his legend, and looking at him now, she understood why.

“I did call.” She hadn’t exactly talked to Zahir, but she’d talked to his advisor. And she hadn’t really been invited, either.

“I didn’t think you would travel all the way from the comfort of your palace to have your marriage proposal turned down, as I was certain I had relayed my thoughts on the matter.”

She straightened her shoulders. “I thought you owed me a conversation. A personal one, not your relayed response. And I didn’t come to be turned down. I came to make sure the contract was honored. The deal was struck six years ago … “

“For you to marry Malik. Not me.”

Thinking of Malik always made her feel sad. But her sadness was for a young life cut short, nothing deeper. He had been her destiny, her duty, for all of her adult life, and while she had liked him, cared for him in some ways, she had not loved him.

At first it seemed like losing him had changed everything, that her horizons had opened, that she might have a different future before her. It was clear now that nothing had changed.

Instead of Malik, it would be Zahir. But she was still destined to be sold into marriage for the sake of her country. She’d accepted it. Ultimately she hadn’t felt that the change in groom had mattered all that much.

Although, looking at him now it became a whole different matter than it had been in theory. He was … he was something much more than she’d counted on.

This was never about you. Never about your feelings. You have to be prepared to see this through.

“That’s what I thought. But when I examined the documents a little bit closer …” Her father had handled most of the legal portion of the marriage agreement that had been drawn up between her and Malik.

It hadn’t really been of personal interest to her. Her relationship with him had been nothing more than political maneuvering by their parents. She’d only met him on a few occasions. She’d simply accepted that it was what she could do for her country, that the marriage was what she could contribute. She had never personally studied the agreement.

Until recently.

“Well, yes. But really, if you look at the wording, I am promised to Malik. Unless he is not able to assume the throne of Hajar. In that case, it is his successor that I’m meant to marry. That’s you.”

So strange to be standing before him, all but begging him to marry her when a large part of herself wanted to run out of the room. She didn’t want to marry him, not on a personal level, any more than he wanted to marry her.

But her father was dying. Far too soon, and that put everything on a tight timetable. Her marriage had been pushed to some far off, fuzzy future after Malik’s death, and for a while, no one had bothered her about it. For a while she had been allowed to serve in more of a practical manner, visiting the sick in hospitals, doing vital networking to bring more tourism dollars into the country. It had been liberating in a way, to find some use for herself outside of her gender and appearance.