“Mariella? What is it? What’s wrong?” she heard Xavier demanding angrily. “If you feel unwell…” “No, I’m fine,” she began, and then stopped, unable to drag her gaze away from his mouth, where it had focused with hungry, yearning intensity. She could feel the hot burn of his gaze as it dropped to her own mouth. She was trembling, her whole body galvanized by tiny sensual ripples of reaction and awareness that made her sway slightly towards him. She felt him shudder as he drew breath into his lungs, her body instinctively leaning into his as weakness washed over her. His mouth touched her, but not in the way she had remembered it doing before. Caught up in the shock of what she had experienced, Mariella lifted her hand to touch her own lips, as though unable to believe what had happened…what she had wanted to happen. She had wanted Xavier to kiss her; her body ached for him in a hundred intimate ways that held her in silent shock. She and Xavier were enemies, weren’t they? by Penny Jordan Spent at the sheikh’s pleasure… The Sheikh’s Virgin Bride #2325 One Night with the Sheikh #2332 Welcome back to the exotic land of Zuran, a beautiful romantic place where anything is possible. Experience a night of passion under a desert moon in Harlequin Presents®. one night with the sheikh TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND PROLOGUE ‘YOU won’t forget your mummy whilst I’m away working, will you, my precious baby girl?’ Mariella watched sympathetically as her younger half-sister Tanya’s eyes filled with tears as she handed her precious four-month-old daughter over to her. ‘I know that Fleur couldn’t have anyone better to look after her than you, Ella,’ Tanya acknowledged emotionally. ‘After all, you became my mother as well as my sister when Mum and Dad died. I just wish I could have got a job that didn’t mean I have to be away, but this six-week contract on this cruise liner pays so well that I just can’t afford to give it up! Yes, I know you would support us both,’ she continued be­ fore Mariella could say anything, ‘but that isn’t what I want. I want to be as independent as I can be. Anyway,’ she told Mariella bitterly, ‘supporting Fleur financially should be her father’s job and not yours! What I ever saw in that weak, lying rat of a man, I’ll never know! My wonderful sexy dream fantasy of a sheikh! Some dream he turned out to be—more of a nightmare.’ Mariella let her vent her feelings, without comment, knowing just how devastated and hurt her half-sister had been when her lover had abandoned her. ‘You don’t have to do this, Tanya,’ she told her gently now. ‘I’m earning enough to support us all, and this house is big enough for the three of us.’ ‘Oh, Mariella, I know that. I know you’d starve 5 6 ONE NIGHT WITH THE SHEIKH yourself to give to me and Fleur, but that isn’t what I want. You’ve done so much for me since Mum and Dad died. You were only eighteen, after all, three years younger than I am now, when we found out that there wasn’t going to be any money! I suppose Dad wanted to give us all so much that he simply didn’t think about what would happen if anything happened to him, and with him remortgaging the house because of the stock market crisis.’ Silently the sisters looked at one another. Both of them had inherited their mother’s delicate bone structure and heart-shaped face, along with her strawberry-blonde hair and peach perfect complexion, but where Tanya had inherited her father’s height and hazel eyes, Mariella had inherited intensely turquoise eyes from her father, the man who had decided less than a year after her birth that the responsibilities of fatherhood and marriage simply weren’t for him and walked out on his wife and baby daughter. ‘It’s not fair,’ Tanya had mock complained to her when she had announced that she was not going to go to university as Mariella had hoped she would, but wanted to pursue a career singing and dancing. ‘If I had your eyes, I’d have a ready-made advantage over everyone else whenever I went for a part.’ Although she knew how headstrong and impulsive her half-sister could be, Mariella admired her for what she was doing, even whilst she worried about how she was going to cope with being away from her daughter for six long weeks. Whatever small differences there might ever have been between them, in their passionate and protective love for baby Fleur they were totally united. ‘I’ll ring every day,’ Tanya promised chokily. PENNY JORDAN 7 ‘And I want to know everything she does, Ella... Every tiny little thing. Oh, Ella...I feel so guilty about all of this...I know how you suffered as a little girl because your father wasn’t there; because he’d aban­ doned you and Mum...and I know too how lucky I was to have both Mum and Dad and you there for me, and yet here is my poor little Fleur...’ Holding Fleur in one arm, Mariella hugged her sister tightly with the other. ‘The taxi’s here,’ she warned, before releasing Tanya and tenderly brushing the tears off her face. ‘Ella! I’ve got the most fab commission for you.’ Recognising the voice of her agent, Mariella shifted Fleur’s warm weight from one arm to the other, smiling lovingly at her as the baby guzzled happily on her bot­ tle. ‘It’s racehorses, dozens of them. The client owns his own racing yard out in Zuran. He’s a member of the Zuran royal family, and apparently he heard about you via that chap in Kentucky, whose Kentucky Derby winner you painted the other year. Anyway—he wants to fly you out there, all expenses paid, so that you can discuss the project with him, see the beasts in situ so to speak!’ Mariella laughed. Kate, with her immaculate de­ signer clothes and equally immaculate all-white apart­ ment, was not an animal lover. ‘Ella, what is that noise?’ she demanded plaintively. Mariella laughed. ‘It’s Fleur. I’m just giving her her bottle. It does sound promising, but right now I’m pretty booked with commissions, and, to be honest, I don’t really think that going to Zuran is on. For a start, I’m looking after Fleur for the next six weeks, and—’ ‘That’s no problem—I am sure Prince Sayid 8 ONE NIGHT WITH THE SHEIKH wouldn’t mind you taking her with you and February is the perfect time of year to go there; the weather will be wonderful—warm and mild. Ella, you can’t turn this one down. Just what I’d earn in commission is making my mouth water,’ she admitted frankly. Ella laughed. ‘Ah, I see...’ She had begun painting animal ‘portraits’ almost by accident. Her painting had been merely a small hobby and her ‘pet portraits’ done for friends, but her repu­ tation had spread by word of mouth, and eventually she had decided to make it her full-time career. Now she earned what to her was a very comfortable living from her work, and she knew she would nor­ mally have leapt at the chance she was being offered. ‘I’d love to go, Kate,’ she replied. ‘But Fleur is my priority right now...’ ‘Well, don’t turn it down out of hand,’ Kate warned her. ‘Like I said, there’s no reason why Fleur shouldn’t go with you. You won’t be working on this trip, it’s only a mutual look-see. You’d be gone just over a week, and forget any idiotic ideas you might have about potential health hazards to any young baby out there—Zuran is second to none when it comes to being a world-class cosmopolitan city!’ One of the reasons Mariella had originally bought her small three-storey house had been because of the excellent north-facing window on the top floor, which she had turned into her studio. With Fleur contently fed she looked out at the grey early February day. The rain that had been sheeting down all week had turned to a mere drizzle. A walk in the park and some fresh air would do them both good, Mariella decided, putting Fleur down whilst she went to prepare her pram. PENNY JORDAN 9 It had been her decision to buy the baby a huge old- fashioned ‘nanny’ style pram. ‘You can use the running stroller if you want,’ she had informed Tanya firmly. ‘But when I walk her it will be in a traditional vehicle and at a traditional pace!’ ‘Ella, you talk as though you were sixty-eight, not twenty-eight,’ Tanya had protested. Perhaps she was a little bit old-fashioned, Mariella conceded as she started to remove the blankets from the running stroller to put in the pram. Her father’s desertion and her mother’s consequent vulnerability and helplessness had left her with a very strong determination to stand on her own two feet, and an extremely strong disinclina­ tion to allow herself to be emotionally vulnerable through loving a man too much as her mother had done. After all, as Tanya had proved, it was possible to inherit a tendency! She frowned as her fingers brushed against a balled- up piece of paper as she removed the bedding. It could easily have scratched Fleur’s delicate skin. She was on the point of throwing it away, when a line of her sis­ ter’s handwriting suddenly caught her eye. The piece of paper was a letter, Mariella recognised, and she could see the name and address on it quite plainly. ‘Sheikh Xavier Al Agir, No. 24, Quaffire Beach Road, Zuran City.’ Her heart thudded guiltily as she smoothed out the note and read the first line. ‘You have destroyed my life and Fleur’s and I shall hate you for ever for that,’ she read. 10 ONE NIGHT WITH THE SHEIKH The letter was obviously one Tanya had written but not sent to Fleur’s father. Fleur had always refused to discuss her relationship with him other than to say that he was a very wealthy Middle Eastern man whom she had met whilst working in a nightclub as a singer and dancer. Privately Mariella had always thought that he had escaped far too lightly from his responsibility to her sister and to his baby... And now she had discovered he lived in Zuran! Frowning slightly, she carefully folded the note. She had no right to interfere, she knew that, but... Would she be interfering or merely acknowledging the validity of fate? How many, many times over the years had she longed for the opportunity to confront her own father and tell him just what she thought of him, how he had broken her mother’s heart and almost destroyed her life? Her father, like her mother, was now dead, and could never make reparation for what he had done; but Tanya’s lover was very much alive, and it would give her a great deal of satisfaction to tell him just what she thought of him! Blowing Fleur a kiss, she hurried over to the tele­ phone and quickly dialled her agent’s number. ‘Kate,’ she began. ‘I’ve been thinking...about that trip to Zuran...’ ‘You’ve changed your mind! Wonderful... You won’t regret it Ella, I promise you. I mean, this guy is mega, mega rich, and what he’s prepared to pay to have his four-legged friends immortalised in oils...’ Listening to her, Mariella reflected ruefully that on occasion Kate could show a depressing tendency to fa­ vour the material over the emotional, but she was an excellent agent!