Carol Marinelli - Christmas Bride For The Sheikh

His midwife under the mistletoe

This Christmas, midwife Flo is determined to avoid all mistletoe! Though she’s a secret romantic, she’s fed up with only kissing frogs. Until she meets notorious sheikh prince Hazin al-Razim and is enticed into the most sizzling night of her life...

Hazin hides a wealth of pain behind his playboy facade, and beautiful Flo is the first person to warm his frozen heart. So, when she’s hired to deliver his brother’s Christmas Eve baby, it’s Hazin’s chance to claim his own Christmas miracle—Flo as his bride!

Dear Reader,

I’ve been unfaithful!

Sheikh Prince Hazin al-Razim was born as the requisite ‘spare’, and I have to confess I fell more than a little in love with him while writing his brother Ilyas’s story.

Ilyas, the Crown Prince, has the running of the country on his mind—whereas the next in line, Hazin, runs wild and apologises to no one.

He has his reasons, though, and they made me tear up several times while writing his story.

It was clear to me that this bad boy hero needed a very special heroine to tame him. Possibly someone who runs a little wild herself.

Well, along comes Flo, a gorgeous midwife, who attracts all the wrong sorts and has sworn off men. She’s doing very well with that pledge until the night she meets Hazin!

I don’t blame her a bit. :)

Happy reading!

Carol

CAROL MARINELLI recently filled in a form asking for her job title. Thrilled to be able to put down her answer, she put ‘writer’. Then it asked what Carol did for relaxation and she put down the truth—‘writing’. The third question asked for her hobbies. Well, not wanting to look obsessed, she crossed her fingers and answered ‘swimming’—but, given that the chlorine in the pool does terrible things to her highlights, I’m sure you can guess the real answer!

ANNIE O’NEIL spent most of her childhood with her leg draped over the family rocking chair and a book in her hand. Novels, baking, and writing too much teenage angst poetry ate up most of her youth. Now Annie splits her time between corralling her husband into helping her with their cows, baking, reading, barrel racing (not really!) and spending some very happy hours at her computer, writing.

Christmas Bride for the Sheikh

Carol Marinelli

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Books by Carol Marinelli

Mills & Boon Medical Romance

Paddington Children’s Hospital

Their One Night Baby

Desert Prince Docs

Seduced by the Sheikh Surgeon

The Hollywood Hills Clinic

Seduced by the Heart Surgeon

Playboy on Her Christmas List

Their Secret Royal Baby

Mills & Boon Modern Romance

Billionaires & One-Night Heirs

The Innocent’s Secret Baby

Bound by the Sultan’s Baby

Sicilian’s Baby of Shame

The Sheikh’s Baby Scandal

Visit the Author Profile page at millsandboon.co.ukfor more titles.

Praise for Carol Marinelli

‘It had me in tears at the beginning, and then again at the end, and I could hardly put it down. A brilliant emotional read by Carol Marinelli!’

—Goodreads on The Baby of Their Dreams

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Dear Reader

About the Author

Title Page

Booklist

Praise

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

EPILOGUE

Extract

Copyright

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.’