Page 27 of Seduced By the Sheikh

Soraiya shook her head. “It doesn’t. No,” she said, more certain. “Maybe it’s just wishful thinking from a woman who has lost the respect of her sons, and her country.”

Sarah nodded. “You know all her gowns are kept locked up in the desert castle?” she said. “They’re exquisite. Kadar told me they’d been forced to agree to keep her things in a palace within the country and so had decided to exile them to the desert castle. I wore some of them when I first came here. I had to. I had nothing else to wear.”

“You’ll have to tell me about it sometime.”

Sarah laughed. “I haven’t got long enough this afternoon. I’ll have to leave soon, or else Kadar will have the guards come looking for me.” She eased herself to sitting, grimaced. “But I wanted to come in person anyway to see how you were. You sounded fine on the phone. But I wanted to see for myself that you were settling into your marriage okay.”

Soraiya smiled, thankful that she had such a solicitous sister-in-law. “More than okay. Zak is… well, he’s…” Just the memory of how he was with her made her blush.

Sarah laughed and held up her hand. “You can spare me the details. I can see he’s making you happy. And from what Kadar tells me, Zak is also happy.”

“Yes, I think he is,” Soraiya allowed.

“Well, thank you for the refreshments and the chat. But I should leave now, before it gets any later.” She pushed herself off the settee.

“Next time we meet, you’ll be bringing your baby with you.”

“Indeed. And I can’t wait,” she said, tapping her stomach.

At the door, Sarah turned to Soraiya and tilted her head as if inspecting her. “You look… Hm…”

“I look what?” replied a startled Soraiya, patting her hair, wondering if it was obvious she’d had sex that morning. She blushed.

Sarah laughed. “Just different somehow. I thought so when we first met, but I’m sure now. You have a glow about you. Are you pregnant?”

“No! Of course I’m not pregnant! It’s not long since our wedding.”

“Long enough to be pregnant.”

“Well, I’m not.” But even as Soraiya said it, embarrassed to talk about such personal matters openly, she was mentally calculating and remembered how her breasts had felt tender under Zak’s embrace that morning. She looked away with a frown. Could she be?

As Soraiya gave one last wave before they took off, she wondered if Sarah could be right. She’d check it out. First thing in the morning.

That night, while Zak finished some late correspondence, Soraiya sat brushing her hair in front of the dressing table, pondering on what Sarah had told her.

“Sarah tells me that all your mother’s beautiful clothes are stored at the Desert Castle. That’s a strange place to store them.”

“What?” he asked distractedly.

“Your mother’s clothes. Being kept at the desert palace. It seems a little odd.”

Zak grunted. “We were required to keep them in a palace. But the particular palace wasn’t stipulated, so we got them out of our way, far from anywhere.”

“Why didn’t your mother take them with her, wherever she is?”

He hesitated. “She’s in Paris, I understand. She took the most valuable, I’m sure. She seemed to think that by leaving some of her belongings here, she’d be able to return at some point. But she won’t.”

“What? Return or be able to return.”

“Either.”

Soraiya sighed. Getting information from Zak about his mother was like getting blood out of a stone.

“Why can’t she return?”

His face darkened perceptibly, but she refused to back down. She needed to know.

“Because my brother and I prefer she live elsewhere.”

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