Sheikh's Castaway. ALEXANDRA SELLERS

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СКАЧАТЬ powerfully handsome man he was! Noor thought involuntarily. Not conventional, Hollywood handsome—he wasn’t even at handshaking distance with the bland, polished looks that passed for masculinity on a movie screen. No, Bari was one of Saladin’s warriors. Fierce nobility was what shaped his jaw, not pineapple facials and a perfectly judged beard shadow. If only…

      But now was not the moment for such thoughts.

      At last the flowers and tulle began to come loose, and Noor ignored the remaining pins and dragged at the headdress, wincing at the pain as hair came away with it. She tossed it over her shoulder onto the floor behind, where it sank into the nest of itself.

      A faint, delicate perfume floated to her nostrils from the bruised roses. Her senses, it seemed, were heightened. Her fingers unconsciously massaging her protesting scalp, Noor picked out the pins that were still caught, combing through her hair, trying not to remember the excited, happy moment when the hairdresser had set the wreath on her head.

      Without warning, a fierce gust of wind smacked them. The plane rocked, and so did her heart.

      “Ya Allah!” Bari exclaimed, and the grey all around them abruptly turned dark. Another sharp slap of wind.

      Then, much more ominously, a low rumble.

      Horror shivered down her spine. Noor’s heart lurched in frantic denial and her mouth was suddenly dry as the desert. It wasn’t possible! Please, God, let it not…

      Another crack of thunder cut her off. A thunderstorm. And they were in it.

      Three

      There are few things more dangerous than a thunderstorm embedded in cloud, and Noor knew it. It is the pilot’s nightmare.

      She might have chosen death not only for herself, but for Bari. Her heart thudded with useless regret.

      “Are you strapped in tight?”

      His voice was so calm it shocked her, an incongruity her mind couldn’t cope with. It had the effect of setting her building panic at bay.

      “No. My dress—”

      “Damn your dress.” She could feel that the plane was still descending, but there seemed no bottom to the cloud. “Get your harness on. Fast.”

      Though a stubborn part of her resented his autocratic tone, she knew it would be insane to resist. Noor twisted in her seat, groping underneath the swathes of silk for the webbing of her harness.

      The plane was still losing altitude.

      “Are we landing?”

      “We’ll see,” Bari said dryly as another crack of noise drowned him out. She thought she sensed him adjust his heading again, but how he had any idea where they were, she couldn’t imagine.

      She had never seen Bari operating under pressure before. It surprised her that such a passionate, hot-tempered man could be so cool under fire. For a brief moment the thought of her only experience of his—of any man’s—passion flicked across her mind. He hadn’t been cool then…or had he? That must have been faked, too.

      Her fingers quickly found one buckle, but the other eluded her. Noor half stood in the confined space and groped the seat behind her.

      Bari reached across and fielded the buckle of her harness, holding it for her in one strong, well-formed hand. Well, at least I won’t die a virgin! The thought rose unbidden, and a breath of laughter—and something else—escaped her. Her eyes brushed up to his as she took the harness from him with a murmur of thanks, but the look she met was hard and ungiving, and the only passion was rejection.

      “Even in the lion’s mouth,” he mocked her.

      A jolt of turbulence wiped any retort from her mind. She tumbled back into her seat to the sound of tearing. Her arm hit painfully on something, but Noor suppressed the automatic grunt that rose in her throat and buckled herself in. The webbing abraded the delicate white silk across her breast, tearing the clustered pearl embroidery.

      She was sorry about that—it was a beautiful creation.

      A pearl fell like a teardrop. A second followed, landing in her palm. Noor’s fingers involuntarily caught it, massaged the cool little sphere between finger and thumb. How completely her dreams were being destroyed. And yet…

      If they had gone through with the wedding, there would have come a point when they sat side by side in the plane like this. The thought gave her a curious sensation of being in two lives at once. Was there a parallel universe in which they had been married? That other life seemed so close. She could almost feel it, as if she might blink and find everything the same, but different.

      Would she have gone on believing Bari loved her, living her fool’s dream? Would he have kept up the pretence once he had what he wanted, or would she have learned immediately that he had made a fool of her? Would she ever have guessed if she hadn’t overheard the truth…

      “She’s so spoiled! All she cares about is clothes and jewellery and having a good time. She’s just totally frivolous!”

      Noor had been standing at the mirror, layers of silk and lace surrounding her, her tanned skin and auburn hair gleaming like the rich heart of a white rose, when the bitchy malice filtered through from the room beyond.

      “And I don’t believe she’s in love with anyone but herself!”

      And just like a droplet of dew on the rose’s heart was the fabulous al Khalid diamond. Bari’s grandfather’s wedding gift to her had simply taken her breath away. Noor was used to wealth and all its pleasures, but Bari’s family fortune went beyond wealth. The diamond was the biggest single stone Noor had ever seen, and it lay against her hand with a dark fire that almost burned her—like Bari’s eyes, she thought with a delicious flutter.

      “She is young yet.”

      “She’s twenty-four. Why are you making excuses for her?”

      Noor let it wash over her. She had heard it before, directly or implied. The women in Bari’s family were not uniformly delighted with his choice of bride, but what should she care about that?

      “She has been raised by overfond parents, it’s true,” said the more placid voice of Bari’s aunt. “But she is an al Jawadi by blood. She has more depth than she knows yet.”

      Of course they didn’t know she could hear. She was in the large, luxurious bathroom set between her bedroom and another. A moment ago Noor had been at the centre of buzzing activity, the hair stylist and the makeup artist competing with the dressmaker and her personal maid for her attention, but now, with the excuse of one last nervous visit to the toilet, she had stepped in here to be alone for a moment and catch her breath.

      And she had heard voices murmuring together in bitchy comfort in the other bedroom.

      “He’s only known her a few weeks,” the younger one was still protesting, and Noor wondered if this particular cousin, whoever it was, was in love with Bari herself.

      “You are talking like a true Westerner. Why should a man know his bride? It is enough that his family knows her family.”

      In a moment СКАЧАТЬ