Christmas Bride For The Sheikh. Carol Marinelli

       CHAPTER ONE

      I PROMISE I’LL be good.

      Florence Andrews lay on her side beneath the sheets, with a heavy male arm pinning her, and promised that if the powers that be could possibly reverse the mistakes made last night then she would be good for the rest of her life.

      ‘Morning,’ he said sleepily, and she felt the morning swell of him on the back of her thigh. It was so insistent he might just as well have been prodding her to get up.

      She said nothing, deciding it was far safer to feign sleep.

      Flo was all too used to getting it wrong with men.

      Petite, with blonde hair and china-blue eyes, Flo had found that she attracted a rather specific type of male—ones whose names began with a B and ended with a D.

      Bad.

      Bastard.

      Either would fool her.

      The last man she had dated had practically had to come with written references before she’d even agreed to go out with him, yet he had turned out to be just like the rest.

      A louse.

      In fact, even thinking of him had Flo screwing her eyes more tightly closed in shame.

      She’d sworn off men, so it had been an awfully long time since she’d gone out with anyone.

      Not that she and Hazin had ever been out. It hadn’t even been a date.

      She opened her eyes and the view of a cold, grey London in autumn was as stunning as it had been last night. Big Ben let her know it was just after eight and from the dizzy height of the presidential suite it looked like a black and white photo, except for the rain hitting the vast windows.

      Flo knew she had outdone herself in the rake stakes this time.

      Sheikh Prince Hazin al-Razim of Zayrinia came with warnings attached rather than references.

      She knew his title, not because he had told her but because of her friend.

      Well, she had actually known of him before Maggie had got mixed up with his brother. Scandalous photos of Hazin were plastered over the Internet. His handsome face and naked body—with a generous black rectangle covering the necessary—appeared from time to time in the trashy magazines that the mothers read on the maternity ward where she was a midwife.

      They would sometimes even giggle with Flo about him.

      His reputation was appalling. Hazin was completely irredeemable; in fact, he was bad to the bone.

      Yet he was adored by all.

      And last night he had been, without a shadow of doubt, the best lover of her life.

      Hazin had either fainted from a lack of blood to the head or he was asleep again, because the arm that had been pulling her back was loose now on her stomach and his breathing was even.

      It gave her a pause.

      How long the peace would last, she could not be sure.

      Did she tell him she knew who he was and explain how their seemingly chance meeting had come about?

      Would there even be conversation, given all they had between them was sex?

      How the hell had she got into this mess? Flo wondered as she lay there. She was supposed to have been helping out her friend!

      * * *

      Flo had no intention of going out this evening. Maggie had texted and asked if Flo could stop by at the café where Maggie worked. Her friend had brought a souvenir home from her backpacking trip around the world—she was six months pregnant.

      By Crown Prince Sheikh Ilyas of Zayrinia!

      ‘I have to tell him.’ Maggie said as they lunched. ‘But I don’t know how to.’

      Privately, Flo wasn’t too sure that Maggie did have to tell the father.

      Oh, she was all for parental responsibility, but her friend was her main concern and she was pregnant by a future King, no less!

      The baby was due just after Christmas. But as well as that, Maggie had recently found out she was having a little boy, and Flo was concerned how that might impact the situation.

      Still, it wasn’t for Flo to decide and so she told Maggie what she knew.

      ‘His brother will be at Dion’s tonight.’

      ‘How do you know?’

      ‘Because he gets kicked out of there every Friday. Hazin is the reason they’re so popular now!’

      Flo knew all about where the rich and beautiful gathered.

      Dion’s was a bar set within a very plush hotel. It had once been a sedate place to gather for pre-theatre drinks and dinner.

      It was old-fashioned and had become oddly trendy, a sort of retro fifties-style bar that people now lined up to get into.

      ‘You could go there tonight and tell Hazin that you need to speak with his brother.’

      ‘Just walk in and tap him on the shoulder?’ Maggie rolled her eyes.

      ‘Get talking.’ Flo shrugged. ‘Flirt a little...’

      ‘I’m nearly six months pregnant by his brother!’

      ‘Oh, yes, I see your point.’

      ‘And I doubt Hazin would be particularly pleased to see me. I caused an awful lot of trouble for him. No doubt he thinks I was involved in the plan to set him up.’

      Maggie had been unwittingly used in a plan to stitch up Hazin and bribe the Palace. She had ended up in Hazin’s cabin aboard his Royal yacht where a camera had been hidden overhead.

      But whoever had assumed that Maggie would drop her bikini bottom for Hazin had not known her.

      Maggie and Hazin had done nothing but have a conversation.

      Not that the Palace had known that at the time. Ilyas had kidnapped Maggie to find out what had happened aboard the yacht.

      Yes, kidnapped, Flo reminded her friend. ‘Which, in my opinion, means you’re under no obligation to tell him.’

      ‘I want to, though.’ Maggie said. ‘Flo, I know I’ve given you an awful impression of Ilyas but he really was wonderful to me.’

      He must have been, Flo conceded, because Maggie trusted so few people.

      Flo thought for a moment. She didn’t want to go to Dion’s, it was where she had met her ex and he still