To Touch a Sheikh by Olivia Gates Page B

insulated, isolated, doorless cabin he’d built with solitude in mind.
    He was feeling as if it were she who’d taken him hostage.
    He’d just given up trying to work on his computer, gone to stretch out on the settee. He couldn’t concentrate on anything with her singing that medley of sappy songs between asking him about food items and spices she didn’t recognize even with the tags, then about his preferences for dinner.
    He would have prepared the meal himself, but he knew she’d “help.” Her radiation was bad enough at this distance.
    She’d finally decided to make them black-eyed pea stew, hummus tahini and dried-fruit salad. She went all out with the spices and by the time the food was ready, the aromas had turned his hunger to voracity.
    She strolled toward him now, bringing plates and utensils, the flickering lamplight casting her beauty through the prism of its fiery illumination. As always, she hijacked his responses, causing the knot in his gut to travel lower, deeper.
    â€œYou know, we’re quite a pair.” She straightened from setting the table, the swish of her hair—which he shouldn’t have heardover the lament of the storm—tightening his lungs. “People call me Shagaret Ad’Durr while you’re known as Shahrayar.”
    Amjad knew his namesake. He considered hers as he sat up and she walked back to get the food.
    Shagaret Ad’Durr, literally Tree of Pearls, was a historical figure who’d ruled in the region after her husband’s death. After she was pressured to take a husband to rule by her side, she learned his loyalty lay with a first wife and had him killed. She was eventually killed herself, by said first wife and her slave women, beaten to death by their dainty wooden clogs.
    Maram served the food, then sat on a pile of cushions on the floor across from him. He eyed the table.
    So she could make the best of whatever she had to work with. Not to mention the artful presentation. Not a spoiled princess who needed someone to file her nails for her, like Salmah.
    And far more dangerous for it. He’d better never forget it.
    He dipped the sun-dried bread in the tahini. “Very apt likenesses. Only I didn’t kill anyone. Not literally anyway.”
    She didn’t rise to his dig about her fatal activities, grinned at him as she dipped her own bread. “I don’t think they were going for historical accuracy, just the general slanderous connotation. I certainly didn’t rule alone after Uncle Ziad’s death, didn’t dispatch my next husband either, and there are no first wives looking to off me with their footwear.”
    The delicious creamy tahini turned to dust in his mouth. “Do you realize how…creepy it is to hear you call your late-husband uncle?”
    She chewed her food for a while, then sat back, leveling her golden gaze at him, serious for the first time since he’d laid eyes on her. “Okay, so you say you know my whole story. Tell me.”
    â€œMaybe I should wait until you digest your food.” She gave him an imperative gesture. He raised his eyebrows with an it’s-your-funeral nonchalance, continued to eat, talking slowly in between bites and spoonfuls of the cordon-bleu-chef-worthy meal. “You and your father managed to make the widowed, depressed and frail ruling prince of your emirate marry you.The marriage bounced your father over the two men who were before him in line to the throne, making him ruling prince after Ziad’s death. End of story.”
    â€œThat’s all you have? The rumor mill’s version?” She cocked her head, sending her waterfall of luminous silk swaying over one shoulder. He felt his heart veer in his chest in the same direction. “Gotta say, it has the tinge of fact required for its fabrications to be taken as the truth.”
    She continued eating for a while, seemingly deep in unpleasant thought. Then she raised