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Chosen As The Sheikh's Royal Bride
JENNIE LUCAS
Swept from her ordinary world… into the royal bedchamber! Amongst the many beautiful, accomplished candidates hoping to be chosen as Sheikh Omar’s wife, shop assistant Beth can’t believe this powerful desert king would even notice her. Yet Omar does select her—and his heated gaze sets her alight, making her innocent body crave caresses she’s only dreamed about! She’s instantly thrown into his world of unimagined luxury, but can this shy Cinderella ever be a queen…?
Swept from her ordinary world...
into the royal bedchamber!
Among the many beautiful, accomplished candidates hoping to be chosen as Sheikh Omar’s wife, shop assistant Beth can’t believe this powerful desert king would even notice her. Yet Omar does select her—and his heated gaze sets her alight, making her innocent body crave caresses she’s only dreamed about! She’s instantly thrown into his world of unimagined luxury, but can this shy Cinderella ever be a queen?
A Cinderella story with a royal twist!
USA TODAY bestselling author JENNIE LUCAS’s parents owned a bookstore, so she grew up surrounded by books, dreaming about faraway lands. A fourth-generation Westerner, she went east at sixteen to boarding school on a scholarship, wandered the world, got married, then finally worked her way through college before happily returning to her hometown. A 2010 RITA® Award finalist and 2005 Golden Heart® Award winner, she lives in Idaho with her husband and children.
Also by Jennie Lucas (#u6ebb7f7b-6485-55a5-a993-3773cf9efb36)
The Sheikh’s Last Seduction
Uncovering Her Nine Month Secret
Nine Months to Redeem Him
A Ring for Vincenzo’s Heir
Baby of His Revenge
The Consequence of His Vengeance
Carrying the Spaniard’s Child
Claiming His Nine-Month Consequence
Secret Heirs and Scandalous Brides miniseries
The Secret the Italian Claims
The Heir the Prince Secures
The Baby the Billionaire Demands
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk).
Chosen as the Sheikh’s Royal Bride
Jennie Lucas
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ISBN: 978-1-474-08760-5
CHOSEN AS THE SHEIKH’S ROYAL BRIDE
© 2019 Jennie Lucas
Published in Great Britain 2019
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.
® and ™ are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
For Susan Mallery, Christine Rimmer,
and Teresa Southwick, in gratitude
for an amazing weekend full of laughter,
food, wine, and brainstorming.
I couldn’t have written this book without you.
Contents
Cover (#ucef31e78-1ccc-5387-821f-5f931dcf0b4a)
Back Cover Text (#u23654f2b-7d10-5db7-a22e-8358e56f4ac2)
About the Author (#u86b15b0a-358e-5751-bda6-d510b031d320)
Booklist (#u33a7203c-c4d8-57cd-a087-1e1bb8c8179a)
Title Page (#u4518d37a-ee26-534c-a165-1b4b5d28121a)
Copyright (#uc92ccae9-f6d0-54b7-bf11-ff3d2598982b)
Dedication (#u7953facf-1af3-555a-94c6-ee5f43cc3c19)
CHAPTER ONE (#u5ee3e9f7-f1ec-50f9-9642-edd2e483396c)
CHAPTER TWO (#u2b4452f4-99d5-5c9f-ae7c-3ce0d92d4c97)
CHAPTER THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#u6ebb7f7b-6485-55a5-a993-3773cf9efb36)
“YOU CAN’T BE SERIOUS!”
Omar bin Saab al-Maktoun, King of Samarqara, replied coldly to his vizier, “Always.”
“But—a bride market?” The vizier’s thin face looked shocked beneath the brilliant light from the throne room’s high windows. “It hasn’t been done in Samarqara in a hundred years!”
“Then it is past time,” Omar replied grimly.
The other man shook his head. “I never thought you, of all people, would yearn for the old ways.”
Rising abruptly from his throne, Omar went to the window and looked out at his gleaming city. He’d done much to modernize Samarqara since he’d inherited the kingdom fifteen years ago. Gleaming steel and glass skyscrapers now lined the edge of the sea, beside older buildings of brick and clay. “Not all my subjects are pleased by my changes.”
“So you’d sell your private happiness to appease a few hardliners?” His adviser looked at him blankly. “Why not just marry the al-Abayyi girl, like everyone expects?”
“Half of my nobles expect it. The other half would revolt. They say Hassan al-Abayyi is powerful enough without his daughter becoming queen.”
“They’d get over it. Laila al-Abayyi is your best choice. Beautiful. Dutiful.” Ignoring Omar’s glower, he added, “Marrying her could finally mend the tragedy between your families—”
“No,” Omar said flatly. He’d spent his whole reign trying to forget what had happened fifteen years before. He wasn’t going to marry Laila al-Abayyi and be forced to remember every day. Shoulders tight, he said, “Samarqara needs a queen. The kingdom needs an heir. A bride market is the most efficient way.”
“Efficient? It’s cold as hell. Don’t do this,” Khalid pleaded. “Wait and think it over.”
“I’m thirty-six. I’m the last of my line. I’ve waited too long already.”
“You’d truly be willing to marry a stranger?” he said incredulously. “When you know, by the laws of Samarqara, once she has your child, you can never divorce her?”
“I am well acquainted with our laws,” Omar said tightly.
“Omar,” his vizier said softly, using his first name by the rights of their childhood friendship, “if you marry a stranger, you could be sentencing yourself to a lifetime of misery. And for what?”
But Omar had no intention of sharing his feelings, even to his most trusted adviser. No man was willing to lay his deepest weakness bare. A king even less. “I’ve given my reasons.”
Khalid narrowed his eyes. “What if all the kingdom united, and begged you to marry Laila al-Abayyi? Then you would do it?”
“Of course,” Omar said, secure in the knowledge that it would never happen. Half of his nobles were Hassan al-Abayyi’s minions, while the other half violently opposed the man and insisted Omar must choose a bride from a competing Samarqari family. “All that matters is my people.”
“Yes,” his vizier said, tilting his head thoughtfully. “So for them, you’d risk everything on an old barbaric tradition.”
Omar’s jaw tightened. “A thousand times and more, rather than risk Samarqara falling back into war.”
“But—”
“Enough. I’ve made my decision. Find twenty women who are brilliant and beautiful enough to be my queen. First make sure they are all willing to be my bride.” Omar strode out of his throne room in a whirl of robes, calling back coldly, “And do it now.”
* * *
Why had she been stupid enough to agree to this?
Beth Farraday looked right and left nervously inside the ballroom of the elegant Paris mansion—hôtel particulier, they’d called it, a private eighteenth-century palace with a private garden, worth a hundred million euros, in the seventh arrondissement, owned by Sheikh Omar bin Saab al-Maktoun, the King of Samarqara. Beth knew those details because she’d spent the last twenty minutes talking to the waitstaff. They were the people Beth felt most comfortable talking to here.
Gripping her crystal flute, she nervously gulped down a sip of expensive champagne.
She didn’t belong with these glamorous women in cocktail dresses, all the would-be brides who’d been assembled here from around the world. Like a modern-day harem, she thought dimly, from which this unknown sheikh king would choose his queen.
The other nineteen women were so incredibly beautiful that they wouldn’t have needed to lift a finger to get attention. Yet they’d all achieved amazing things. So far, Beth had met a Nobel Prize–winner, a Pulitzer Prize–winner, an Academy Award–winner. The youngest female senator ever to represent the state of California. A famous artist from Japan. A tech entrepreneur from Germany. A professional gymnast from Brazil.
And then there was Beth. The nobody.
She so didn’t belong here, and she knew it.
She’d known it even before she’d taken the first-class commercial flight from Houston yesterday, and gotten on the private jet awaiting her in New York, where she’d met the other women traveling from North and South America. She’d known it from the moment her brainiac twin sister had asked her to take her place in this dog and pony show.
“Please, Beth,” her sister had begged on the phone two days before. “You have to do it.”
“Pretend to be you? Are you crazy?”
“I’d go myself, but I just barely saw the invitation.” Beth wasn’t surprised. She knew Edith had a habit of letting mail pile up, sometimes for weeks. “You know I can’t leave my lab. I’m on the edge of a breakthrough!”
“You always think that!”
“You’re much better at schmoozing anyway,” her sister wheedled. “You know I’m no good with people. Not like you.”
“And I’m totally princess material,” Beth replied ironically, as she’d paused in pushing a broom around the thrift shop where she worked.
“All you have to do is show up at this event in Paris, and they’ll give me a million dollars. Just think what this could mean to my research—”
“You always think you can make me do anything, just by telling me you’re saving kids with cancer.”
“Can’t I?”
