The Sheikh's Priceless Baby
Holly Rayner
The Sheikh's Priceless Baby
Holly Rayner
Contents
The Sheikh's Priceless Baby
1. Faye
2. Aziz
3. Aziz
4. Faye
5. Faye
6. Aziz
7. Faye
8. Faye
9. Faye
10. Faye
11. Aziz
12. Aziz
13. Faye
14. Aziz
15. Aziz
16. Faye
17. Faye
18. Aziz
19. Aziz
20. Aziz
21. Aziz
22. Faye
23. Faye
24. Aziz
25. Aziz
26. Faye
27. Faye
Epilogue
The Sheikh's Surprise Delivery
1. Amber
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Also by Holly Rayner
The Sheikh's Priceless Baby
Copyright 2021 by Holly Rayner
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part by any means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the explicit written permission of the author.
All characters depicted in this fictional work are consenting adults, of at least eighteen years of age. Any resemblance to persons living or deceased, particular businesses, events, or exact locations are entirely coincidental.
Chapter 1
Faye
“So you don’t work for the Al-Sharim family?” the incredibly snotty—and incredibly well-dressed—woman in front of me asked, the sneer on her face so pronounced that I was tempted to tell her that she needed to stop making faces like that or they would stick.
It had scared me senseless when people said that when I was younger, because I’d thought it was true. Would it still work—and on someone other than an impressionable seven-year-old with an entirely too-big imagination? Probably not. Would it get her to at least think about the fact that she looked like she’d just eaten a rotten avocado? Yes.
Would that make her my friend? Definitely not. The truth was, it would probably just get me into even more trouble. Or at least make her like me even less than she evidently already did.
Not that I should have meant anything to her, honestly, since I didn’t even know who she was or why she’d decided to talk to me. A wife of someone important, I was sure—but nothing to me.
Still, I stuffed the comment about her face into the space of my brain where I kept all the smart-ass comments that I managed to keep inside my mouth, and smiled blandly.
“I don’t,” I said, fighting to keep my voice even and my professional expression in place. “But I do work with them quite often, as a journalist.”
Her face cleared a little bit, like maybe that avocado was more like just overripe, rather than rotten. “Oh, what paper do you write for?”
Ah. The problem all freelancers faced at some point. Who, exactly, did they work for? What name could they pull out that would really impress the person who was definitely looking for a big name? One that would allow them to place said freelancer comfortably into a category that said ‘This Person Belongs Here,’ rather than the category most freelancers inhabited: ‘This Person Floats Around Without Supervision and Might Be Dangerous.’
After about half a second of thought, I decided to go for the truth. Mostly.
“Actually, I work for myself,” I said. “I own a company that employs freelance journalists, and I’m one of our top stars.”
Yes, it was stretching the truth more than somewhat. There was no company, really, unless you counted me, myself, and I as a corporate entity. So yeah, it was maybe a little bit unnecessary. What can I say? The woman had annoyed me, and I tended to strike out when I was annoyed.
Still, she looked… well, a little bit mollified, honestly. Like owning a company made me someone who she could actually stand to talk to.
Unfortunately for her, I wasn’t interested in this conversation anymore. Because she wasn’t the one I was here to talk to. And like I said, I didn’t actually know who she was, or why she’d snagged me the moment I walked through the door and decided to start asking me questions. So…
Yeah, I didn’t really have much reason to keep standing around, talking to her.
“I actually have to get going, since I’m due to do some interviews with the Al-Sharims themselves,” I said, plastering a fake smile on my face.
She looked even more impressed and I turned away, thinking that it was better to get out of here while I was ahead rather than tempt fate any further.
The moment I was free and clear of her, I headed for the bar. Once I was there, a flute of the best champagne ordered—thank you, open bar with free drinks—I took a moment to actually look around the room. Ms. Rotten Avocado had grabbed me the moment I walked through the door, for whatever reason, and I hadn’t really gotten a chance to check out the lay of the land. Now I let my eyes roam over the crowded space, ticking off the information I’d walked in with.
It was the biggest party of the construction world in Dubai, and the crowd certainly reflected that. We were in the ballroom of the newest resort in town—one built by the real estate development arm of the famous Al-Sharim family—and there were at least five hundred people in here. Actually, probably more like a thousand, if I’d actually bothered to go around and count them or had even looked at the copy of the invite list the Al-Sharims had sent out with the invitation itself.
With that many people, it should have been crowded, but the space was enormous, all vaulted glass ceilings supported by big steel beams to construct a room so big that I actually didn’t know where the walls were. One entire side of the room was taken up with the bar, and the rest of the place had been cleared out to make space for the party.
And thanks to the sheer size of the room, the massive guest list looked… incredibly conservative. Like they’d only invited the best of the best. Which, I supposed, was the entire point.
The Al-Sharims were nothing if not exclusive. And they definitely knew how to build their reputation.
I didn’t know what sorts of galas they would be having in here once the resort opened or if it was actually some type of rec room, but at the moment it was filled with the international real estate development community’s best and brightest—along with any spare royalty that had been in town. Plus, I assumed, some celebrities.
Everyone was glittering with jewels and dressed to the nines, and the alcohol was flowing freely, music pouring from the live orchestra in another part of the room. Some people were dancing, but most were mingling, either gossiping or doing business, so underneath the music, the place had that hum that happened when hundreds of people were talking in the same place.
And thanks to the class of the crowd, they were all talking in subdued, high-class voices. Those smooth, even tones that only the very rich managed to perfect.
I whistled to myself and took another sip of champagne. This wasn’t my first party in the Middle East, as I’d spent all fourteen years of my fourteen-year-history as a freelance journalist specializing in stories about this region. I’d been at so many parties for resort openings that I’d lost track of where and when and how they’d happened. Who had built them or who I’d been planning to sell my story to after it was written.
But through it all, two things were true: one, the Al-Sharims always threw the biggest parties, because two, the Al-Sharims always built the biggest, most glitzy, and most beautiful resorts.
They weren’t from Dubai, of course
. They hailed from Kayyem. But they built throughout the Middle East and were consistently wildly successful. That was, in part, down to the fact that they were incredibly wealthy as the scions of Kayyem, the isolated city-state built on top of oil wells that the Al-Sharims owned.
So yeah, they were rich beyond anyone’s wildest dreams—which made their real estate business a whole lot more successful. And then there was the guy leading their international arm, who was one of their biggest stars. One of the younger Al-Sharim boys, who seemed to have quite the head for business, to put it mildly.
From everything I’d heard, this particular Al-Sharim was not only incredibly charming but also borderline genius when it came to getting things done, and getting them done under budget—and with over-the-top pizzazz.
I sharpened my gaze on the crowd, wondering if he was here. Wondering who else might be here. Because I needed a big story tonight—something I could sell quickly to one of my contacts. I’d hit a dry patch, which hadn’t been good for me or the family I was quasi-supporting, and I needed a really big, really attention-grabbing article so I could demand a hefty payout.
If I could land an interview with someone really important, that would definitely scratch that particular itch.
Then I saw him. I didn’t know who he was, but with that tousled hair and sharp, hawk-like nose, and those deep-set eyes, he could only be part of the Al-Sharim clan. They all had that same look. Slightly dangerous, like they could be villains just as easily as they could be heroes.
Too handsome to be fair. Too hot to be safe.
I was moving toward him a second later, my phone in one hand and a fresh champagne flute in the other. I needed to write about something—or someone—spectacular, and landing an Al-Sharim would fit that bill quite nicely. If I could get him to actually talk to me.
Chapter 2
Aziz
I wanted to go home. More than that, I wanted to sleep. Sit around and read a book, just for fun. Not an educational one, and not one that had to do with business or building or development or how to make an organization more synergistic, but one that told fanciful stories about dragons and wizards. I wanted to watch one of those TV shows that people were always talking about. The ones where they got so addicted to the show and the characters that they watched five seasons in one weekend.
I mean really, I would have settled for going five minutes without having to answer an email or conduct a meeting or do an interview or think about all the intricacies that came with developing a large property. Figuring out what we wanted to build—and where and how and when. Then figuring out how to match that all up together and make it something that would produce a resort of the quality my family demanded.
Honestly, if I was given a choice, and someone allowed me to get away from all the hassle that I had to deal with on the daily, I might even decide I wanted to take a full-on vacation. Go somewhere exotic and lounge around on the beach for weeks, in a country where they didn’t even know my name or my family. Drink too many margaritas, eat far too many servings of chips and salsa. Live in my bathing suit. Hike through the jungle and see new wildlife in its natural habitat.
Maybe even meet a girl. Have a casual fling.
Though I had made an agreement with myself that ‘casual flings’ never entered my life, and there was a good reason for that. I didn’t like casual. I didn’t like flings. I’d never been good at them, and after a few tries, I’d given them up completely.
Because it had turned out that they made me uncomfortable. I didn’t like how transitory they were. The truth was, I liked things I could count on. I liked things that were… permanent.
Like the buildings I built.
As head of the Al-Sharim Foreign Development Department, it had become my job to take advantage of that particular preference. The man who liked concrete relationships building structures out of concrete.
I snorted quietly to myself. There was some sort of poetic irony there, though I didn’t often stop to look at it.
Mostly because I was constantly moving too fast to have a chance at stopping.
I turned my attention to the party in front of me and tried to focus on that rather than thinking about going back to my hotel room and going to sleep. Because speaking of moving fast…
If I didn’t keep my head in the game at this party, the world of construction would pass me by. And I couldn’t afford that. My family couldn’t afford that. They also wouldn’t forgive me if I allowed it to happen. The company—or this part of it—had always been safe when it was in my hands, and I wasn’t going to let that stop now.
It was quite a party, I had to admit. Even bigger than our usual offering. The live symphony had been a particularly classy touch. We’d also jumped to a larger guest list for this one—partially to fill up the enormous room. But there was another, more hidden reason for all of that glitz and glamor.
It was also the biggest reason for me staying here at the party rather than retreating to my hotel room to spend some much-needed time with myself. Even if I’d thought I could leave this party to my vice president and go rest, I wouldn’t have done it. It was just too important.
See, this resort was the biggest one we’d ever attempted—the biggest one I’d ever attempted—and we wanted to show it off.
And in construction, the best way to show off your new baby is to throw a huge party, invite the press and all the most important people on your contacts list, and make sure the story got splashed all over the papers and magazines and blogs for at least a week.
And also, just by the way, the head of your company had to be there to show himself off as well.
It was a silly part of the whole game, and it was the part of it that I liked the least. Give me the numbers, the logic, the puzzles of development any day. I liked acquiring the land and figuring out what we were going to do with it. Going through plan after plan with the architects and builders and landscape artists, figuring out what would fit where and how we could make it look the most impressive. I liked lists and graphs and items and tasks. I liked being able to see the thing I’d built—not with my own two hands, of course, but through my management.
All this schmoozing that came afterward? The glad-handing and publicity stuff, the photographs, the red carpets? Yeah, I could have done without it. I would have been ecstatic for someone else to take care of it.
Because I wanted to go home. Not to my hotel room, but back to Kayyem. I wanted a break. I was tired of being in foreign countries and always on the move. And I’d been thinking more and more about my mother’s constant wish for me to return to our home, find a wife, and settle down.
I mean, not that I was ready to settle down. Not at all. But a vacation, a few months off? Yeah, that I could do. And if it turned out that I met a girl I wanted to get serious with when I was at home? It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. It wasn’t what I was looking for, necessarily, but it also wasn’t something I’d turn down if the situation—and the girl—fell right into my lap.
Then I saw her. One of the reporters who often covered my family’s events and such—and one I’d specifically made sure was on the list for tonight. She wrote some of the best stories about us, and was in love with our city. Honestly, she wrote about the place like she actually lived there and had never lost her sense of wonder with it. I would have thought she was a local if I didn’t know for a fact that she was actually from LA.
She’d been on my list of potentials for an interview since I’d first decided on throwing this party.
Because she was talented. She wrote really good stories, and I could count on her to give us a fair shake—even present us in the best light possible, if we were in a sticky situation. Besides, she was also careful, and an incredibly good researcher. She’d do us proud on this story.
It didn’t have anything to do with her being drop-dead gorgeous in a casual Southern California, I-just-stepped-out-of-the-water way. All golden hair and matching golden eyes, her skin tanned to bronze, he
r legs and arms long and toned, her—
Aziz! I snapped at myself. What was I doing tonight? One minute I was scanning the crowd, making sure everyone was doing well, and the next I was thinking about not only settling down, but how hot one of my family’s favorite reporters was.
I mean sure, I’d noticed it before. Noticed it every time I saw her, if I was being honest. And I’d thought more than once about asking her out for drinks. Asking her about her life. Getting to know what she liked and what she didn’t. Maybe even sticking around long enough to have a second date.
I mean, I would have done it if I’d had the time—and she’d been willing. But I almost never had the time, honestly, and that had kept me from ever finding out whether she was willing.
Besides, none of that was even remotely possible. Probably.
Because then there was the other thing—the thing that would have stopped me even if I’d had the time to go out for casual drinks with the golden goddess from LA: She was a reporter, and I was pretty sure that dating the reporter who covered my family would be some sort of conflict of interest.
Even if it wasn’t, it definitely wouldn’t look good to the people who liked to criticize us for everything we did.
So I gave myself a mental shake, renewed my promise to myself for a vacation, stat, and then put my game face back on and grinned at Faye Darlow, stepping forward and getting ready to pitch an interview idea I’d been working on for some time.
