Sandra Marton - The Sheikh's Convenient Bride

by Sandra Marton

“This first book of the O’Connell series, Keir O’Connell’s Mistress, vibrates with charismatic characters and a tight, page-turning plot. No one delivers consistent must-reads like Sandra Marton!”

—Romantic Times

“Romance does not get better than a Sandra Marton story. The Sicilian Surrender has power and passion evident in the strength and compassion of an exquisite hero and the heroine’s courage to create a new life. Together they are a formidable couple.”

—Romantic Times

More praise for Sandra Marton

“When passion ignites in the tale it is really hot enough to burn!”

—A Romance Review on Marriage on the Edge

“Powerful characterizations, intense emotions, sizzling sensual chemistry and a flair for the unexpected…Ms. Marton has a unique way of pulling readers deep into the story right from the beginning.”

—The Best Reviews onCole Cameron’s Revenge

“The Pregnant Mistress…has sensational characters, a superb storyline, sensual scenes and an intense conflict.”

—Romantic Times

Dear Reader,

Some images and ideas are impossible to resist. A while back, I read an article about a woman who’d risen to the highest ranks in the corporate world and how difficult it had been for her to get there. She talked about the men who’d insisted on seeing her solely as an unqualified female, and about the one man who’d never viewed her that way…the man she fell in love with and eventually married.

And I thought, what if that man had not been so open-minded? What if he, too, had seen her as nothing but trouble—but trouble in the best possible way? What if he were a sheikh, sexy and gorgeous and arrogant as hell? And what if fate brought them together, despite their initial dislike of each other, and forced them into a marriage neither wants?

Welcome to The Sheikh’s Convenient Bride, and to a love affair hot enough to set the desert on fire.

With love,

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

HE WAS a sheikh, the King of Suliyam, a small nation sitting on an incredible deposit of oil on the tip of the Bezerian Peninsula.

On top of that, he was tall, dark-haired, gray-eyed and gorgeous.

If you liked the type.

According to the tabloids and the TV celebrity-tell-all shows, most women did.

But Megan O’Connell wasn’t most women. Besides, tall, dark, handsome and disgustingly rich didn’t begin to make up for egotistical, self-centered, and arrogant.

Megan raised her coffee cup to her lips. Okay. Maybe that was superfluous. So what? Men like him were superfluous, too. What did the world need with penny-ante dictators who thought they were God’s gift to the female sex? To everybody on the planet, when you came down to it?

She’d never exchanged a word with the man but she didn’t have to, to know what he was like. Her boss—another egotistical jerk, though not a good-looking one—had transmitted the sheikh’s message to her this morning and it had been clear as glass.

She was a female. That made her a second-class citizen in his eyes. He, of course, was male. As if that weren’t enough, he was royalty.

Royalty. Megan’s lip curled with contempt. What he was, was a chauvinist pig. How come she was the only one who seemed to notice? She’d been watching him charm the little group at the other end of the boardroom for almost an hour, tilting his head when one of them spoke as if he really gave a damn what that person was saying.

If only they knew what an SOB like him could do to someone.

She had to admit, he seemed good at what he did. Holding the attention of a bunch of self-important partners and managers of a prestigious financial firm wasn’t easy but then, if you believed the Times, he was the leader of his nation’s cautious steps into modernity and development.

If you believed the Times. It seemed more logical to believe the tabloids. According to them, he was a playboy. A heartbreaker on three continents.

That, Megan thought, was undoubtedly closer to the truth.

The only thing she was sure of was that he was Qasim al Daud al Rashid, King of Suliyam since his father’s death and the Absolute Ruler of his People.

It was a title that would have gone over big a couple of generations ago. Too bad the sheikh didn’t seem to care that such nonsense was a joke now…though it didn’t seem a joke to what passed for the news media, or here in the Los Angeles offices of Tremont, Burnside and Macomb, Financial Advisors and Consultants.

Too bad she’d accepted the transfer from Boston, where nobody would have made this kind of fuss over a walking, talking anachronism.

“Oh, your highness,” a woman said, the words accompanied by a sigh that carried the length of the room.

His Highness, indeed. That was the proper way to address the king, according to the belly-crawling sycophants in his entourage. Megan drank the last of her coffee. No way would she ever call him that. If she had the misfortune to speak with the man—which she surely wouldn’t, after what had happened this morning—she’d sooner choke. His High and Mightiness was more like it. What else would you call a twenty-first century dictator leading a 16th century life? Someone who’d single-handedly set her career back five years?

The bastard.

To think she’d worked her tail off, researching and writing the proposal that had won him as a client. To think she’d spent days and evenings and weekends on the thing. To think she’d dreamed about what handling such a prestigious account would mean to her career, swallowed all those little hints that she’d be named a partner, believed they were soon to become reality.

Every bit of it had gone up in a puff of smoke this morning, when Simpson told her he was giving the Suliyam assignment to Frank Fisher instead of her.

Megan started to refill her cup, thought better of it—she was already flying on caffeine—and poured herself a Mimosa instead. The vintage Krug and fresh OJ were there because the sheikh supposedly liked an occasional Mimosa at brunch, thanks to the influence, some said, of the genes of his California-born mother.

He’d never know it but he was drinking them today, assuming he was drinking them, thanks to Megan’s research. She’d learned about the Mimosas and ordered the champagne and the orange juice.

If only she’d ordered strychnine instead.

Damn, she had to stop thinking this way. She had to stop thinking, period, or she’d say something, do something that would cost her her job.

As if she already hadn’t.

No. Why think like a defeatist? She wouldn’t lose her job. She’d put in too much time and effort at Tremont, Burnside and Macomb to let that happen. She would not let the decision made by The King of All He Surveyed ruin her career. There’d be other big accounts, other career-changing clients.