Sheikhs of Al-Dashalid: The Complete Series Page 12

  “Sheikh Rami of Al-Dashalid,” the prince said smoothly, extending a hand for Catelyn’s mother to shake.

  “Al-Dashalid,” Anna crooned, cutting a glance at Catelyn. “My daughter—Catelyn—will be there in a matter of weeks. She’s taking an international cruise. Shake hands, the two of you.”

  “Catelyn Wolf,” she said. Rami’s palm was smooth, his hand huge. She dropped it.

  “By herself,” her mother pressed.

  Catelyn felt heat rise to her cheeks. Her mother was making her seem like a country bumpkin. Naturally.

  “Is that so,” said Rami, eyes raking over Catelyn again. “Alone?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Anna, pursing her lips. “I told her she shouldn’t go unaccompanied, but you know—”

  “I agree,” Rami said quickly, and Catelyn looked around for a hidden camera. What was he saying? He didn’t know her. He’d just run into her. That’s how invisible she’d been to him. “Unaccompanied women—especially beautiful ones—sometimes find themselves in brand-new lives, never to return to the States.”

  Anna gasped. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “Ask my brother’s wife all about it.” Rami’s eyes flashed with an emotion Catelyn couldn’t identify.

  There was an awkward silence.

  Of course, neither Catelyn nor her mother were going to be visiting with the royal family of Al-Dashalid. The cruise would stop at the port for a few days, and then she’d be gone.

  Catelyn laughed nervously. “It’s not that bad, Mom. I’m sure Sheikh Rami is…exaggerating.”

  “I’m certainly not,” Rami said, and she honestly couldn’t tell by the look on his face whether he was kidding or not. He raised one eyebrow, and—what did that mean? “If you’d like to hear more about it, I’d be happy to meet with you later,” he said to Anna. “With your daughter, of course. She should know what she’s getting into.”

  Catelyn’s mother fluttered a trembling hand near her face. “Oh, I think we should. I think we should,” she insisted. “If it’s that dangerous, there’s no telling what might happen when—”

  “Mom.” Catelyn kept her voice absolutely even, as if her mother were a bride getting cold feet at the last minute. “This is not something to worry about. Al-Dashalid is perfectly safe—”

  “For a woman like you?” Rami’s voice was smooth but pointed. “I’d be surprised if a man didn’t make you his wife.”

  Catelyn snorted. “That’s not going to happen.” She’d been buried in work for a year, and she’d go back the moment her vacation was over. She was not getting married.

  Even if it would put all eyes on her wedding planning business.

  “What’s not going to happen?” Wonderful—Lydia had breezed up behind Rami and put a hand on his shoulder, grinning as if she were in on the conversation.

  Catelyn beamed back at Lydia. “Rami was regaling us with a few…jokes…about Al-Dashalid.”

  “Isn’t he a charmer?” Lydia laughed out loud. Rami relaxed, his shoulders dropping an inch, and Catelyn’s curiosity flared. Why did that make him feel more at ease?

  “Yes,” Catelyn said quickly. “But—look at the time. I’ve got—” She waved vaguely at the exit. “Brides. Brides to take care of. You know how it is.”

  Lydia came forward and embraced her. “I wasn’t finished with you yet,” she said, a pout playing over her lips. “But I understand.”

  Catelyn faced Rami. “It was lovely to meet you.” She stuck out her hand for him to shake again. He took it, and the moment their palms touched an electric delight moved up her spine. She dropped his hand. Nope—no way. Not getting a crush on a sheikh from Al-Dashalid she’d never see again. Not now, not ever. Even if she did love the way his eyes moved over her face, her hair, her body—

  No.

  “Love you, Mama,” she said to Anna, kissing her on the cheek. “I’ll see all of you later.”

  “I hope so,” Rami called after her as she walked away. She gave him one last jaunty wave over her shoulder and kept going, not looking back.

  2

  Catelyn swirled the last of her wine in its glass and considered pouring herself another.

  It had been that kind of day.

  She’d fielded calls for part of the morning, but bookings had been slim. To be honest, they’d been slim for a while now—at least six months. They’d had a burst of attention at the very beginning, thanks to an early endorsement by Lydia, but then winter had come, and spring, and now they were back to summer.

  Catelyn frowned at her computer screen. She needed to put something on the company blog. Something that would, hopefully, drive some traffic. But what? The last wedding they’d worked on had been two weeks ago, and it had been a rush job. The bride had only wanted them to coordinate a small reception at a local restaurant. Catelyn had arranged some last-minute bouquets from a local flower shop and double-checked that the local courthouse had an opening, and that…well, it didn’t make for very exciting photos. The couple had brought along a sister to take pictures of the occasion, and that was that.

  “You gonna sit here all night?” Daisy, one of Catelyn’s business partners and very best friends, poked her head in the door. Her dark hair was piled atop her head in a messy bun that made her look every bit the creative, and she was. She was the one who pulled together decor, color schemes, and fantastic ideas for the couples they served. When there were any to work with, that was.

  “Only until I get an idea for what to post on our blog.” Catelyn gave her a confident grin over her shoulder. “It’ll come to me soon. The wine is helping.” She lifted her glass toward Daisy in a faux toast.

  “I’m headed out,” said Daisy with a laugh. “Don’t drink yourself under the table, okay?”

  “There’s only half a bottle left, so you have nothing to fear.”

  Daisy gave her a wave and hitched her purse up onto her shoulder. “I have confidence in you.” Her voice didn’t sound very confident, and it made Catelyn swivel her chair fully to face Daisy.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It just means…” Daisy shrugged. “I have confidence that we can all…work this out.” Worry flickered over her face, and Catelyn’s heart sank. It had been easy enough to power through the first few months on pure adrenaline, but now that things were still slow and her friends were starting to worry about their livelihoods—

  “We will work this out,” Catelyn said reassuringly. “I’ve got something in the works tonight.”

  “You do?” Daisy’s face brightened, but then she narrowed her eyes. “Not something drastic, I hope.”

  “You know what they say about desperate times.” Then she gave Daisy a wink. “Get out of here. I’ve got it handled.”

  “See you tomorrow,” called her friend, and Catelyn listened as her footfalls grew quiet and the front door of the little office building opened and closed.

  She drained the rest of the wine and poured herself another glass. Fortifications were indeed necessary. Business was so slow that she’d had to cancel her international cruise.

  What she needed, she thought as she swiveled her chair gently back and forth, was a miracle. Was…a celebrity. The closest she’d come to a celebrity in forever was….oh.

  It was Sheikh Rami. A month ago at that party.

  It hadn’t mattered that she’d been in a hurry to leave. His face was burned into her memory. The royal, elegant lines of his cheekbones and chin. The dark eyes that held her in thrall.

  “If I could plan his wedding,” she said to no one, draining half her wine glass, “that would catapult us straight to the top.” It really would. All of New Jersey’s nouveau riche—the crowd that had limitless budgets for wedding planning and the weddings themselves—would be in awe of her if her little Elite Occasions put on an event for a member of Al-Dashalid’s royal family. Not that they’d know him specifically. The look of him was royal enough.

  While she was thinking it through, she tapped in a Google search of his n
ame and was handsomely rewarded.

  The royal family of Al-Dashalid was well-photographed, and Rami appeared in the most photos of anyone. Many of them were from business meetings, but it was the official royal portraits that caught Catelyn’s eye. She brought up one of Rami sitting confidently upright, leaning slightly in to the camera. Even in black and white, his eyes gave her a flutter of desire.

  Or maybe it was the wine.

  No, definitely his eyes.

  He might be less awkward away from events like that cocktail party. He might be…

  The perfect groom.

  Catelyn sat bolt upright, clicking furiously through all the available photos of Rami. She clutched the glass tighter in her hand until she realized she was doing it, then set it down on the desk, carefully out of her own reach. The last thing she needed was a cascade of wine over her keyboard. It would be a distraction from the idea making its way through the pleasant buzz she was feeling. It was so close to the surface…so close.

  She found what she was looking for.

  A photo of Rami, standing alone in what looked like an outdoor garden, though—who knew?—it could have been some kind of indoor studio. It didn’t matter in the end. What mattered was that the light that shone on his face, playing over his dark hair, was golden and pure. And it came from the perfect angle to make a match.

  She saved the photo to her desktop and went hunting in another folder.

  There.

  Catelyn opened the folder and browsed through a collection they’d had photographed last summer at the sumptuous Ashford Estate in Allentown. They’d sweet-talked the management company into letting them shoot a faux ceremony early one morning so they could pitch the story to a bridal magazine for some exposure. She laughed to herself when she flipped through the photos. They’d had no budget to speak of, so Catelyn herself had posed as the bride, and Daisy had done her hair. Laura, their other partner and the third member of their trio of friends, was good at makeup, and she’d transformed Catelyn into a blonde vision. As for the groom…

  He could be replaced.

  He could literally be replaced in the photos. Catelyn had a knack for Photoshop, and if she kept the posed photos to a minimum, they’d look real enough. She went back to the photo gallery that Rami appeared in. There were several of him in the garden.

  “Yes.” Catelyn pumped her fist in the air. “I’ll just see how it looks,” she said out loud. “I don’t have to use these for the blog.”

  She set to work on combining the photos.

  He was so sexy in his dark suit. And muscled, too, as if he paid particular attention to his fitness. He must need the activity, what with all his jet-setting around the planet for business deals.

  It was probably a bad idea, what she was doing, but the hell with it. The fantasy was gorgeous. And the more she clicked and cut and pasted, the more it came to life in front of her eyes.

  It was past midnight and Catelyn’s eyes were burning by the time she finished the last photo. It had taken several hours to process all six of the ones she was thinking of using on the blog. She was committed now.

  There she stood on the left, head tilted prettily down, eyes lowered toward her bouquet. And there was Rami on the right, beaming down at her. The angle of his gaze made it seem…real. Almost completely real. She squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again.

  It could have been real.

  The wine—a third glass, now—buzzed through her veins, and her heart pounded with excitement. The photos looked gorgeous. She looked gorgeous. And Rami looked good enough to take to bed. Heat rose to her cheeks at the thought of it.

  “Oh, stop,” she said to the computer screen. She’d never see him again. He’d never see these photos. Truly, what was the risk? She’d read in an article not long ago that Al-Dashalid had certain internet restrictions put in place by the government. What were the odds that someone would come across her little blog? All of it would be entirely harmless. At worst, someone from the estate’s management team might recognize the location, but…would they even care? It was free publicity for them, too.

  Catelyn yawned in spite of her jittery excitement. It was late. Too late, honestly, to be doing this. But they needed a new blog to be live in the morning, and she needed to post those pictures before she lost her nerve.

  It was easy enough.

  She loaded the photos onto Elite Occasions’ website and typed up a cheeky bit of text to accompany them. "A royal wedding?" she wrote. "The Ashford Estate is fit for a prince, and they’ve found one in Sheikh Rami!"

  There.

  She read over the words and deleted the bit about the prince.

  Then she added it back in.

  He was never going to know about this. To most people in New Jersey, he was a handsome model. They wouldn’t recognize him as part of Al-Dashalid’s royal family. And most people in New Jersey wouldn’t recognize her, either. Not until they booked her to hire their weddings. Catelyn’s job was to make people’s fantasies come to life. They’d understand if she’d created one of her own.

  She hit publish on the blog and stood up. The wine was quickly wearing off, which was good—she’d be alert on her walk home from the office. It was only three blocks.

  Before she could bring herself to leave, she looked at the live version of the blog post.

  God, those pictures…they were stunning. She’d done an excellent job.

  And, she decided once and for all, it was all going to work out. At best, those photos would garner them some quick business. At worst, nobody would notice and the business would fail.

  She grabbed her purse from a hook by the door and slung it over her elbow. That wouldn’t happen, she thought as she locked up the office and started down the street. The business would survive. It was all going to work out.

  Really, it was.

  3

  Issam couldn’t stop laughing.

  Rami’s normally stoic and serious youngest brother, who took his responsibilities regarding the country’s security both at the borders and at the palace seriously, leaned against the mahogany desk, bracing himself with one hand so he could wipe away tears with the other.

  “Stop,” said Rami, who could not tear his eyes from the computer screen.

  “I’ll stop,” agreed Issam, straightening up and taking a deep breath. “I’ll stop.”

  There was a moment of silence and then a choked snort from Issam.

  “Oh, for god’s sake. Let it out,” said Rami irritably. He didn’t know if he was irritated. Or rather—he didn’t know if he was only irritated. The blog post Issam had just shown him was utterly baffling.

  It was a blog post about his own wedding.

  A wedding he had never attended. He’d certainly never arranged it. And yet—there he was, standing in the photographs. He zoomed in on one, expanding it to fill the screen. At full size, the photos on TMZ blurred—they weren’t high resolution—and the edges around his body…well, it could go either way. Someone could easily make the argument that he’d had a secret wedding in the States.

  And someone had.

  One Catelyn Wolf.

  He sat back in his chair. How much had she paid someone to photoshop these images? They’d done a hell of a job. Rami recognized himself from a shoot they’d done in the garden for some profile or other. But the positioning had been masterful. He’d been happy in the original photos, but arranged like this, his expression could be interpreted as barely contained love.

  Rami wasn’t about to admit to Issam, who had doubled over again with his glee, that the sight of Catelyn in a white dress had him hard as a rock. It didn’t matter at all that they hadn’t seen each other or spoken since that god-awful event at Lydia’s house. The photos of her in that dress, with the sun sparkling in her blonde hair, set his heart beating in a frenzied rhythm.

  He took a deep breath and tried unsuccessfully to shove those memories of her at the party out of his mind. He’d found her breathtakingly attractive then, with that bl
ack dress hugging her curves. He’d wanted to drag his fingers across the line of her collarbone. He’d wanted to do more than that, given a quiet room with a lock on the door.

  But a fake wedding? That was beyond the pale. Especially since it made him cringe to think of how horribly awkward he’d been the moment Catelyn’s mother joined the conversation. Of course, the woman had been interested in all the ways Catelyn’s upcoming solo trip could go wrong, but Rami had been so taken with Catelyn that he hadn’t been able to muzzle himself. And the way Lydia had approached her…

  The two were closer than he’d thought, despite Catelyn’s hurry to leave.

  “I’m sorry,” said Issam, finally getting control of himself. “I had to show it to you. I probably shouldn’t have, but look at those photos. I couldn’t help it.” Rami heard another bout of his brother’s laughter bubble up, but he managed to contain it.

  “I have a right to know who I’m married to,” Rami quipped. Issam’s laughter was starting to needle him.

  “But her?” Issam jabbed a finger at the screen. “A wedding in a place like that? She might as well be American royalty.”

  “She’s not. She only looks that way in the photos.” It was true. Catelyn did look regal in that pure white dress, with the shimmering veil flowing from the sleek bun at the back of her head.

  “Never in a million years.” Issam’s voice was full of awe. “I’m shocked at how real it looks, when it could never—”

  “And why not?” Rami stood, pushing his chair back from the computer.

  Issam grinned at him, raising one eyebrow. “Are you being serious?”

  “Yes.” The brothers looked at the TMZ page again. There was Rami, looking down at bridal-queen Catelyn as if he were utterly in love. “Why couldn’t it happen?”

  “Well,” Issam began. “She’s American, for one—”

  “I’d say that makes very little difference in this family. Or are you suggesting that Kyril and Hannah don’t have a legitimate marriage?”