An Ordinary Girl and a Sheikh. Nicola Marsh

It was what people did—talk incessantly about their kids. Their cute ways. The clever things they did.

       Everyone except Miss Motormouth herself; how ironic was that?

       She’d talk about anything except Freddy. Because when she talked about her little boy she knew, just knew, that all the listener really wanted to know was the one thing she’d never told a living soul.

      Sheikh Zahir was waiting. ‘I gave it to a little boy who fell in love with it.’

      ‘Don’t look so tragic, Metcalfe, I wasn’t serious,’ he said, his smile deepening as he mistook her reluctance to speak for an apology. ‘Let’s go shopping.’

      ‘Y-yes, sir.’ Then, with a glance towards the terminal building, ‘Don’t you want to wait for your luggage?’

      She’d assumed that some minion, left to unload it, would appear at any moment with a laden trolley but, without looking back as he finally stepped into the car, Sheikh Zahir said, ‘It will be dealt with.’

      Sadie was right, she thought. This was another world. She closed the door, stowed the remains of the precious glass object out of harm’s way and took a deep breath before she slid behind the wheel and started the engine.

      Shopping. With a sheikh.

      Unbelievable.

      Unbelievable.

      All James’s careful planning—every second accounted for—brought to naught in an instant of distraction. But what a distraction …

      Zahir had walked through the arrivals hall expecting the efficient and monosyllabic Jack Lumley to be waiting for him. Instead he’d got ‘Metcalfe’. A woman whose curves were only emphasized by the severe cut of her jacket. A woman with a long slender neck, against which soft tendrils of chestnut hair were, even now, gradually unfurling.

      And a mouth made for trouble.

      The kind of distraction he didn’t have time for on this trip.

      No complaints. He loved the excitement, the buzz of making things happen, didn’t begrudge a single one of the long hours it had taken to turn a small, going-nowhere company running tours into the desert into a billion dollar business.

      He’d single-handedly taken tourism in Ramal Hamrah out of the stopover business—little more than a place for long-haul passengers to break their journey to shop for gold in the souk, take a sand dune safari—into a real industry. His country was now regularly featured in travel magazines, weekend newspaper supplements—a destination in its own right. Not just for the desert, but the mountains, the history.

      He’d created a luxurious tented resort in the desert. The marina complex was nearing completion. And now he was on the point of launching an airline that would bear his country’s name.

      He’d had to work hard to make that happen.

      Until he’d got a grip on it, tourism had been considered little more than a sideshow alongside the oil industry. Only a few people had had the vision to see what it could become, which meant that neighbouring countries were already light years ahead of them.

      Perhaps it was as well; unable to challenge the dominance of states quicker off the starting blocks, he’d been forced to think laterally, take a different path. Instead of high-rise apartments and hotels, he’d gone for low impact development using local materials and the traditional styles of building to create an air of luxury—something entirely different to tempt the jaded traveller.

      Using the desert as an environmental spectacle, travelling on horseback and camel train, rather than as a rip-’em-up playground for sand-surfers and dune-racers. Re-opening long-ignored archaeological sites to attract a different kind of visitor fascinated by the rich history of the area.

      And a change of attitude to international tourism in the last year or so had given him an edge in the market; suddenly he was the visionary, out in front.

      Out in front and on his own.

       ‘… you don’t have children of your own …’

      Well, when you were building an empire, something had to give. A situation that his mother was doing her best to change. Even as he sat in the back of this limousine, watching Metcalfe’s glossy chestnut hair unravel, she was sifting through the likely applicants for the vacant post of Mother-Of-His-Sons, eager to negotiate a marriage settlement with the lucky girl’s family.

      Make his father happy with the gift of a grandson who would bear his name.

      It was the way it had been done for a thousand years. In his culture there was no concept of romantic love as there was in the West; marriage was a contract, something to be arranged for the mutual benefit of two families. His wife would be a woman he could respect. She would run his home, bear his children—sons who would bring him honour, daughters who would bring him joy.

      His gaze was drawn back to the young woman sitting in front of him, the soft curve of her cheek glimpsed in the reflection of the driving mirror. The suggestion of a dimple.

      She had the kind of face that would always be on the point of a smile, he suspected, smiling himself as he reran the range of her expressions—everything from horror as she’d let slip a word that was definitely not in the Polite Chauffeur’s Handbook, through blushing confusion, in-your-face take-it-or-leave-it cheek and finally, touchingly, concern.

      Glass. For a child. What on earth had he been thinking? What had James been thinking?

      That was the point. They hadn’t been. He’d just ordered the most expensive, the most desirable version of the child’s wish and James had, as always, delivered.

      A wife wouldn’t have made that mistake.

      Metcalfe wouldn’t have made that mistake.

      Nor would she settle for a relationship based on respect, he suspected. Not with that smile. But then she came from a different world. Lived a life unknown to the young virgins from among whom his mother would look for a suitable bride.

      Very different from the sophisticated high-achieving career women who he met in the line of business, who lived their lives more like men than women, although what she lacked in gloss, sophistication, she more than made up for in entertainment value.

      He dragged his fingers through his hair, as if to erase the unsettling thoughts. He didn’t have time for ‘entertainment’. And, with marriage very much on the agenda, he shouldn’t even be thinking about it.

      As it was, he had to snatch this hour to celebrate a little girl’s birthday out of a crammed schedule when he should, instead, be concentrating on the reception for travel journalists and dinner with the men who had the financial power to make his airline a reality.

      ‘Are you a permanent fixture, Metcalfe?’ he asked. ‘Or will Jack Lumley be back on duty tomorrow?’

      ‘I couldn’t say, sir,’ she said, glancing up to look in the rear-view mirror, briefly meeting his gaze, before returning her attention to the road. ‘He was taken ill earlier today.’ Then, ‘I’m sure the company could find you someone else in the meantime, if you insisted.’

      ‘Someone with a beard?’

      ‘Yes, sir.’

      Her dimple had disappeared. She wasn’t smiling now. Not even close. She thought he objected to a female chauffeur?

      ‘And if I did?’ something made him persist. ‘What would you be doing tomorrow?’

      Her eyes flickered back to him. They were green, like the smudge of new leaves in an English hedgerow in April.

      ‘If I’m lucky I’ll be back at the wheel of a minibus, doing the school run.’

      ‘And if you’re unlucky?’

      ‘Back at the wheel of a minibus, doing the school run,’ she repeated, letting loose another of those smiles,