Cinderella and the Sheikh

chapter Nine





Rasyn drove down a road half-covered in shifting sand while Libby stared out the side window.

She had no clue how much her life was about to change. In a few hours, she was going to be his wife. Whether she agreed or not.

As distasteful as he found it, deceiving Libby into marrying him was the best option.

It was unfortunate that there wasn't more time. He was confident he would have been able to overcome her doubts and convince her to marry him of her own free will. But there was no time for that now. Last night's encounter with Waseem and Uncle Anwar's rapid decline forced Rasyn's hand. The threat was too great, the danger too close.

It was best for her as well. Prince Hani wouldn't be able to touch her if she was under the protection of a prince of Abbas.

"You are so quiet, love. It's not like you."

Libby gave him a smile, but it disappeared quickly.

When he had told her that she had to stay in Abbas for another couple of days to meet Prince Hani, she'd gone uncharacteristically silent. It had taken all his persuasive powers to convince her. This time, he hadn't been forced to lie. If she didn’t keep the appointment, Prince Hani might take it as a personal insult.

Seeing her deflate like a soccer ball with a leak had left him with a sour taste in his mouth. At least it had reminded him to send a crate of balls to the orphanage she'd mentioned, in Imaran's name. If he could have spared both of them the public display with the prince of Damali, he would have, but there was no escape.

He reached for her hand and lifted it to his lips. "If I could spare you the meeting with Prince Hani, I would. You must trust me when I tell you I will not allow anything to happen to you."

"Coming to Abbas was a bad idea. I should be home looking for a job."

He attempted to convince her one more time. "Stay with me and you will never have to worry about a job again."

"You don't get it," she said. "I'd go nuts without one. Besides, I like serving people."

The marriage agreement in his pocket seemed to pulse, threatening to burn his skin.

For the people of Abbas, Libby was about to do the ultimate service, preventing a war that would cost hundreds of lives.

And if all went to plan, she would never know it.



***



Libby frowned into the close-packed trunk of the Range Rover, grateful to have a task to take her mind off the dark hatred she'd seen on Prince Hani's face at the reception. A look she remembered too well; it appeared every time she closed her eyes.

"Rasyn, where's the tent?"

He set down the basket of supplies he'd been carrying and crossed over to her with long strides. He stood beside her, and frowned into the car over-dramatically, making fun of her.

"Hmm. I may have forgotten it."

She looked up at him, trying to figure out if he was serious. No luck. The setting sun cast a scarlet glow over his handsome features, but she couldn't read him at all.

"By the way, I forgot something else. There's been a problem with your visa."

"Can I be deported? Please? Before tomorrow?"

"You have to sign this." He pulled a folded sheet of paper from the breast pocket of his loose white shirt and handed it to her, along with a gold pen.

Libby unfolded it and scanned the page, which was covered in intricate, but undecipherable, script. "It's in Arabic. What am I signing?"

"It ends the problem. You will be able to stay in Abbas for as long as you like. You will practically be a citizen."

Despite the warning prickles on the back of her neck, she smoothed out the paper as best she could and signed her name, using the side of the truck as a flat surface. Rasyn took it and signed his own. Probably as a witness to her signature.

"Now about this tent—"

Rasyn interrupted, pulling her tight against his solid chest and tilting her chin up with one hand. The explosive meeting of their mouths sent shivers through every nerve in her body.

"What was that for?" she asked, when she got her breath back.

He shrugged. "It seemed appropriate."

Libby ignored his confusing reply and tried to return to the job at hand, despite the fact that Rasyn kept her trapped in his arms. "Where's the tent?"

"Why do you think we need one?" He put out a hand and looked up at a sky painted gold and ginger by the setting sun. "Does it look like rain?"

"Be serious."

She let Rasyn pull her over to the campsite, where she saw that he'd made a cozy nest of blankets and pillows directly on the sand. "It is just you, me and the stars. As it should be. Nothing else matters."

As he said these last words, he lay down on the pile of blankets, and tugged on her hand to show her she should join him. Libby couldn’t resist. After her meeting with the Prince of Damali, she would leave Abbas and carefully guard her memories of Rasyn.

His preparations reminded her of their first night, back in Hotel Scheherazade. From an ice-filled cooler, he pulled a bottle of champagne and poured her a glass. He fed her cheese and grapes and she licked the juice from his fingers as she leaned against his chest and watched the fiery sunset.

"You're wrong." She watched the last dregs of light disappeared from the sky. "Something else matters. Your country. I heard about the law that parliament passed. If you marry me, you can't inherit the kingdom when your uncle dies."

She felt Rasyn shrug. "It's too late."

She whipped around to face him. He stared past her, at the stars winking into life in the indigo sky. Laying one hand against the raspy stubble of his chin, she turned his face toward her own. "It's not."

"It was too late the moment I saw you. I won't let anything part us now."

"But Abbas—"

"Heaven will see that things work out right." His tone exuded a confidence that Libby didn't share. "I love you. That is all that matters."

He loved her. It hit her with a stabbing pain.

She leaned against him, feeling his strength supporting her. He was an incredible man, standing with her when no one else would. When the world seemed aligned against her, Rasyn took her hand and defied everyone.

Maybe he was right. If his love let him do all this, maybe it was all that mattered. Maybe time would solve everything between them.

She imagined it, a life with Rasyn. A life with this extraordinary man constantly at her side. Maybe time would even let her fall in love with him...

Libby felt the armor around her heart begin to crack.

No. She couldn't let that happen. Immediately she summoned all her internal strength to reinforce the barriers against him. There was no way she could let him in.

"What if I don’t love you?" The words came out in a rush. She looked away so that she wouldn't have to see the pain on his handsome face, drawing her knees tight to her chest.

She felt Rasyn slip his hand under her shirt and begin to stroke the column of her spine. The heat of his touch contrasted with the rapidly cooling night.

"Do you feel nothing for me?"

Libby swallowed. What she felt for him, it definitely wasn't nothing. It wasn't love, either. It seemed insane that she didn't love him. But it was probably for the best. If she did love him, would she be able to walk away for his own good?

"I care for you."

His laugh made her turn. The sexy smile that she loved so much was back. With the night and the shadow of a beard on his face, she'd never seen him so tempting.

"A few days ago, you could barely tolerate me. A week more and you'll be asking me to marry you, Princess."

Heat flashed in her chest, sending her heart rate soaring. "I asked you not to call me that." She slapped his hand away from her back.

"But that's what you are, to me."

Suddenly, that smile seemed more sinister than sexy. A tool that he used to manipulate her. Without knowing where she could run, Libby started to stand, only to feel her wrist caught in his grip.

"Libby. Love." His tone was soft as a cool breeze across the sand. "Did a man betray you? Perhaps the man who called you 'princess'?"

She shook her head, clamping her jaw shut.

"Were you someone else's princess once?"

The silence between them lasted for a long time, but Rasyn seemed content to wait forever. Finally, Libby found her voice. "My father. He died when I was little. I barely remember him, but my mom told me all about their marriage. They fit together so well they could finish each other's thoughts."

"And you want this for yourself."

A deep breath of night air stilled her wild feelings. "We could never be that way. We're too different."

Rasyn put his arm around her shoulders. Her treacherous body relaxed, seduced by the sensation of being protected and cherished. She let him draw her down to rest her head on his chest.

Together, they looked up at stars brighter than Libby had seen in her life. She'd never realized how much the Manhattan lights obscured the night sky. She'd always imagined the Milky Way as a tiny body that you could see through a telescope. In the desert, it dominated the night, a vast white path of millions of stars, slashing through the darkness.

"What makes you think so?" Rasyn's voice was distant.

Libby swallowed. "It's not enough that you love me. Or even if I loved you back. They were totally honest with each other. They depended on each other's strengths. We just don't match each other. Everything about us is different. I'm just a waitress. You're—"

Rasyn waved a hand dismissively. A slight irritation showed in the way the corners of his mouth turned down. "I do not need you to list our differences again. If we cannot be as your parents were, it will be another way for us. In the end, it is not important."

It is important, she thought. And it's important that you don't listen to me. As if my concerns don't even matter.

She gave up trying to talk sense into him and just lay in his arms, fighting the romance of being under the open sky with a desert prince right out of a fairy tale.

As long as she kept saying no to marrying him, everything would turn out fine.



***



As darkness fell the next day, Rasyn guided the Range Rover into Waha with one hand on the steering wheel and the other propped on the driver's door, feeling that the world was going his way. Libby, exhausted by their adventure, made sweet sleepy murmurs as she dozed against the passenger door.

Thanks to Parliament's law and her signature on the marriage license, he'd cleared the path for Imaran without making his cousin feel like second best. He trusted that his relationship with Uncle Anwar would eventually recover. So long as he recovered from his illness.

As for his unsuspecting bride, he could only hope that she'd get over the ridiculous notion they were not well matched. If she only knew that the last thing he wanted was a woman who could help him rule Abbas, she'd understand.

Rasyn wheeled the truck into the narrow alleys that would lead to the palace's private back gate, but he wasn't in a rush to return to the palace and the world it represented. He pulled the vehicle to a stop at the curb and flicked on the overhead light.

Libby's dark lashes rested on smooth cheeks rosy from the sun. Her chest rose and fell in a slumbering rhythm, her full pink lips slightly parted in exhaustion. Even dusty, her auburn hair fell in attractive waves around her face.

What was this ache that made him want to rub his chest? Perhaps pretending to be in love with her was affecting him. True, she was no princess, but he'd stopped thinking of her as a servant a long time ago.

Now, she was just... his. His Libby. She represented a life of peace with his family, and perhaps, he realized with a start, a family of his own. A dark-skinned boy with her green eyes. A black-eyed girl with creamy skin. Children who could take advantage of the best of two worlds without being weighed down in the responsibilities of either.

He couldn't stop himself from lifting a hand to run it down the soft curve of her jaw. She woke with a little sigh, cat-stretching into the leather seat.

"I am sorry. I did not mean to wake you."

She blinked oasis-green eyes at him. "Are we there yet?"

He shook his head. Instead, he ignored the question in her striking eyes and twisted the key, making the engine turn over.

The Range Rover's headlights shot illuminating beams on the cracked plaster of the wall ahead of them. Rasyn's breath stopped at the sight of the posters there.

"Is that—"

But Rasyn didn’t hear the rest of her question. He'd left the vehicle, letting the door slam. The closer he stepped to the wall, the more his heart knocked against his ribcage.

The poster featured a woman frozen in an action shot, her auburn hair pulled into a serviceable ponytail. She wore a plain khaki skirt and a gleaming white cotton shirt. But most noticeable was the wide grin on her face as she kicked a half-flat soccer ball toward a group of dusty, excited boys. A grid of these pictures had been pasted over the entire wall. His mind spun, trying to interpret the meaning of it, but losing the battle.

"Rasyn." He couldn’t lift his gaze away from the poster, not even when he heard a slight edge of panic in Libby's voice. "Oh my God, Rasyn, that's me at the orphanage. I don’t believe it. Why am I on a poster?"

The twist of Libby's hand fisting into the fabric of his shirt broke the spell, leaving him fighting for composure.

"You asked what it felt like to have your face on a wall. Now you know."

Libby folded her arms across her chest, in an unconscious protective gesture. "It's weird. What does it mean?"

He shrugged with a nonchalance he didn't feel. "You are part of the royal family now."

"I'm not marrying you."

He clenched his jaw in irritation at her continued refusal. He had played the part of the besotted lover perfectly. How could she not be completely in love with him after all the attentions he paid to her? She almost deserved what he'd done yesterday.

Almost.

Wrestling his frustration under control, he turned to meet her stunned, green-eyed gaze. "This means that I'm not the only one who loves you. You have won the hearts of the people of Abbas."

What ordinary people thought wasn't important, he told himself. Parliament considered her a liability.

He couldn't even guess what Prince Hani would do to her tomorrow.