ALEXANDRA SELLERS - Sheikh's Honor

Clio said, finding her voice.

Jalal’s hands stilled their motion. The heat was too much. She felt burned.

“Do you challenge me, Clio? When a woman challenges a man, she must beware. He may accept her challenge.”

She had no idea why Jalal’s words created such sudden torment in her, or what that torment was. Her whole body churned with feeling. She wished he would get away from her so she could breathe.

“Why doesn’t it surprise me that you hear the word no as a challenge?” she asked defiantly.

His thumb tilted her chin, bringing her face closer to his full mouth, and her heart responded with nervous, quickened pulse. He smiled quizzically at her.

“But I have not heard the word no, Clio. Did you say it?”

Dear Reader,

Twenty years ago in May, the first Silhouette romance was published, and in 2000 we’re celebrating our 20 thanniversary all year long! Celebrate with us—and start with six powerful, passionate, provocative love stories from Silhouette Desire.

Elizabeth Bevarly offers a MAN OF THE MONTH so tempting that we decided to call it Dr. Irresistible! Enjoy this sexy tale about a single-mom nurse who enlists a handsome doctor to pose as her husband at her tenth high school reunion. The wonderful miniseries LONE STAR FAMILIES: THE LOGANS, by bestselling author Leanne Banks, continues with Expecting His Child, a sensual romance about a woman carrying the child of her family’s nemesis after a stolen night of passion.

Ever-talented Cindy Gerard returns to Desire with In His Loving Arms, in which a pregnant widow is reunited with the man who’s haunted her dreams for seven years. Sheikhs abound in Alexandra Sellers’ Sheikh’s Honor, a new addition to her dramatic miniseries SONS OF THE DESERT. The Desire theme promotion, THE BABY BANK, about women who find love unexpectedly when seeking sperm donors, continues with Metsy Hingle’s The Baby Bonus. And newcomer Kathie DeNosky makes her Desire debut with Did You Say Married?!, in which the heroine wakes up in Vegas next to a sexy cowboy who turns out to be her newly wed husband.

What a lineup! So this May, for Mother’s Day, why not treat your mom—and yourself—to all six of these highly sensual and emotional love stories from Silhouette Desire!

Enjoy!

Joan Marlow Golan

Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For my sister

Donna.

She knows why.

is the author of over twenty-five novels and a feline language text published in 1997 and still selling.

Born and raised in Canada, Alexandra first came to London as a drama student. Now she lives near Hampstead Heath with her husband, Nick. They share housekeeping with Monsieur, who jumped through the window one day and announced, as cats do, that he was moving in.

What she would miss most on a desert island is shared laughter.

Readers can write to Alexandra at P.O. Box 9449, London NW3 2WH, U.K., England.

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

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

The green-and-white seaplane skimmed the tops of the trees, the drone of its engine loud as it headed for a landing on the next lake. Clio Blake, guiding the powerboat in hard jolts across the wake of a cruiser that had just emerged from the channel ahead of her, heard the sound first. As the plane roared over her head, she flicked a glance skyward and wished that her gaze held some magic that could make it disappear.

She did not want him here. He should not be coming. It wasn’t right.

She cut her speed sharply and guided the boat into the narrow channel that led between two lakes, where signs posting the speed limit warned boaters of the danger of their wake eroding the shoreline. Some of the cottages were still boarded up, but most showed signs of having been opened for the season. At one cottage two men were working to take down the shutters, and Clio exchanged a wave with them as she passed.

Once through the channel and emerging into the larger lake, she reluctantly booted up her speed again and headed across the water towards the airline dock. The Twin Otter was already skimming along the surface, preparing to take off again.

So he was here. No hope left that something would prevent his arrival…. Seeing where her thoughts led, Cliogrimaced self-consciously. Had she been unconsciously hoping for the plane to crash, then? Well, it only went to show how deep her opposition went.

But her parents had simply refused to listen. Her sister Zara had asked, and what Zara asked for, she still got. So Prince Jalal ibn Aziz ibn Daud ibn Hassan al Quraishi, the newly found nephew of the rulers of the Barakat Emirates, was here. For the entire summer.

She wondered if Prince Jalal was remembering their last meeting right now. It is dangerous to call a man your enemy when you do not know his strength, he had said then.

She had disdained to notice the threat, opening her eyes wide as if to say, You and whose army? But that had been a lie. She felt threatened in his presence, and who would not? He was the man who had taken her sister hostage to force his point on the princes of the Barakat Emirates.

Anything could have happened. They were all incredibly lucky that it had been resolved without bloodshed. It was enough to make him her enemy forever. That was what she had told him, that day at the fabulous, fairy-tale weddings, including Zara and Prince Rafi’s. For her the celebrations had been deeply marred by the presence of such a man…even if, in the most outrageous turnaround of all time, he did have the title prince instead of bandit now.

It is dangerous to call a man your enemy when you do not know his strength.

Clio shivered. No doubt she would get to know his strengths—and weaknesses—over this coming, terrible summer. But one thing was certain—she would never forgive him for what he had done to them, the hell he had put them through, the risk he had run.

Whatever Jalal the bandit’s strength was, he would never be anything to her but enemy.

Clio had always half-worshipped her older sister, though there were scarcely three years separating them. Zary was what Clio called her, right from her earliest speech. It was her own special nickname, and as a child she got ferociously jealous when anyone else tried to use the name.

Both girls took after their mother. Both had the black hair, the dark brown eyes, the beautiful bones…but Clio knew full well that she had always been a poor man’s version of her perfect sister. Zara’s hair fell in massed perfect curls, Clio’s own hair was thick but dead straight. Zara was a fairy princess, with her exotically slanted eyes, delicate features, and her porcelain doll body. Clio’s eyes were set straight under dark eyebrows that were wide, strong and level, giving her face a serious cast. Her eyelashes were not long, though lushly thick, and she had inherited their father’s wide, full mouth rather than the cupid’s bow that Zara had from their mother.

By the age of eleven Clio was already taller and bigger than her older sister. And in spite of being younger, she had begun to feel protective of Zara. She had always felt the urge to fight Zara’s battles for her, even though Zara was perfectly capable of fighting her own. Half the time they weren’t even battles Zara thought worth fighting.