Shamed in the Sands Read Free

muscular body would have rivalled that of any Olympian athlete.
    She’d seen photos of him collecting awards, dressed in an immaculate tuxedo. There had been a snatched shot of him—paparazzi, she assumed—wearing faded jeans and an open shirt as he straddled a huge motorbike, minus a helmet. On one level she had known that he was the type of man who would take your breath away when you met him for real. And she hadn’t been wrong.
    She just hadn’t expected him to be so...charismatic.
    Leila was used to powerful men. She had grown up surrounded by them. All her life, she’d been bossed around and told to show respect towards them. Told that men knew best. She gave a wry smile because she had witnessed how cruel and cold they could be. She’d seen them treat women as if they didn’t matter. As if their opinions were simply to be tolerated rather than taken seriously. Which was one of the reasons why, deep down, she didn’t actually like the opposite sex.
    Oh, she deferred to them, as she had been taught, because that was the hand which fate had dealt her. To be born a princess into a fiercely male-dominated society didn’t leave you with much choice other than to defer. There hadn’t been a single major decision in her life which had been hers and hers alone. Her schooling had been decided without any consultation; her friends had been carefully picked. She had learnt to smile and accept—because she had also learnt that resistance was futile. People knew what was ‘best’ for her—and she had no alternative but to accept their judgement.
    Materially, of course, she had been spoiled. When you were the only sister of one of the richest men in the world, that was inevitable. Diamonds and pearls, rubies and emeralds lay heaped in jewellery boxes in her bedroom at the palace. Her late mother’s tiaras lay locked behind glass for Leila to wear whenever the mood took her.
    But Leila knew that all the riches in the world couldn’t make you feel good about yourself. Expensive jewels didn’t compensate for the limitations of your lifestyle, nor protect you from a future you viewed with apprehension .
    Within the confines of her palace home she usually dressed in traditional robes and veils, but today she was looking defiantly Western. She had never worn quite such figure-hugging jeans before and it was only by covering them up with her raincoat that she would have dared. She was aware of the way the thick seam of material rubbed between her legs. The way that the silky shirt felt oddly decadent as it brushed against her breasts. She felt liberated in these clothes, and while it was a good feeling, it was a little scary too— especially as Gabe Steel was looking at her in a way which was curiously... distracting .
    But her clothes were as irrelevant as his reaction to them. She had worn them in order to look modern and for no other reason. The most important thing to remember was that this man held the key to a different kind of future. And she was going to make him turn that key—whether he wanted to or not.
    Fighting another wave of anxiety, she opened the briefcase she’d been holding and pulled out a clutch of carefully chosen contents.
    ‘I’d like you to have a look at these,’ she said.
    He raised his eyebrows. ‘What are they?’
    She walked over towards a beautiful table and spread out the pictures on the gleaming inlaid surface. ‘Have a look for yourself.’
    He walked over to stand beside her, his dark shadow falling over her. She could detect the tang of lime and soap combined with the much more potent scent of masculinity. She remembered him wearing nothing but that tiny white towel and suddenly her mouth grew as dry as dust.
    ‘Photographs,’ he observed.
    Leila licked her lips. ‘That’s right.’
    She watched him study them and prayed he would like them because she had been taking photos for as long as she could remember. It had been her passion and escape—the one thing at which she’d