LITMIR.BIZ

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      In the garden, Omar stared after her, still in shock.

      Was it possible that he’d just had an entire conversation with Dr. Edith Farraday without her realizing who he was?

      No, surely. She had to know.

      But if this was a come-on, at least it had novelty value. No woman had ever pretended not to know him before.

      He’d arrogantly assumed that every woman who’d agreed to come to the palais tonight wished to marry him. Was it possible one didn’t even know his identity? That she’d actually had so little interest in him that she hadn’t bothered to read newspapers, gossip magazines, or just look him up online? It seemed incredible.

      But his instincts told him that Dr. Edith Farraday hadn’t been pretending. She truly had no idea who Omar was.

      Just as he himself hadn’t known that Khalid was paying the twenty women to come to Paris. It made sense—as the potential brides his vizier had selected were all so famous and successful—that they could hardly be expected to toss their busy schedules aside, merely for the chance to become Omar’s queen. But still... It might have bruised a lesser man’s ego, to realize that the chance of marrying him hadn’t been enough to make women fly here from the Americas, Asia, Africa and Europe.

      Which was why Khalid hadn’t told him the details, obviously. He’d told his vizier to arrange it, and arrange it the man had. It was Khalid sitting in the ballroom of his Paris mansion right now, meeting each woman personally. His friend was the one who’d winnow the twenty down to the ten whom Omar would meet personally tomorrow.

      Khalid was the one who’d created the criteria for choosing the twenty potential brides, and arranged for them to be brought to Paris. When Omar had first seen the list that morning, he’d been surprised to discover how career-driven and ambitious the women were. But then, hadn’t he himself insisted the women must be brilliant to be his queen? Surely the woman he chose would be willing to give up her career, no matter how illustrious. What greater fate could any woman aspire to than becoming Queen of Samarqara?

      There had just been one name on the list that had immediately displeased him.

      “Why did you invite Laila al-Abayyi?” he’d demanded that morning. “I told you I cannot marry her.”

      “No,” his old friend said cheerfully. “You told me you’d only marry her if all our nobles agreed she should be queen.”

      “Which they will not.”

      “The future is unknowable,” Khalid said.

      “Not this,” Omar replied sourly. “I’m surprised she’d even agree. How can it not be humiliating for her to compete?”

      His vizier had smiled, his dark eyes glinting strangely. “Like you, sire, Miss al-Abayyi puts Samarqara’s needs above her own. Her father was so insulted by your bride market plan that he was threatening to cause trouble. Then Laila announced that she approved of your plan, and that she, too, appreciates the old traditions. That calmed her father down. She accepted my invitation for diplomatic purposes, purely for the good of the nation.”

      For the good of the nation, plus a million dollars, it seemed.

      A million dollars per day.

      Omar set his jaw. So be it. He’d avoided marriage for long enough. He was thirty-six years old, and if he died, there was no one to inherit the throne. His only family left was Khalid, a distant cousin who wasn’t even an al-Maktoun, but an al-Bayn. Omar needed an heir. He couldn’t risk a return to the violent civil war that had nearly destroyed Samarqara during his grandfather’s time.

      Nor could he risk a love match. He’d never be such a fool again.

      No. He was older now, wiser. Marriage was for dynastic reasons only. And in the month since he’d ordered Khalid to arrange the bride market, he’d successfully avoided thinking about it. It wasn’t difficult. Omar was always busy with affairs of state.

      But tonight, after finishing a diplomatic meeting in the embassy, when he’d returned to the residence, he’d found himself on edge, knowing the women were there. The process had begun.

      As king, Omar would only nominally make the final decision. According to the traditions of the bride market, his council would advise him of the woman they felt best suited to be his queen.

      But she wouldn’t just be Omar’s queen. She’d also be his wife. The mother of his children. The woman in his bed and at his side. Forever.

       If you marry a stranger, you could be sentencing yourself to a lifetime of misery.

      Grimly, Omar pushed Khalid’s warning away. The bride market had already begun, and in any event, his vizier and council could hardly choose worse for him than he’d once tried to choose for himself.

      But still...

      Tense and restless as he waited for the women to finish the interviews in the ballroom, he’d paced his private quarters. He’d known he couldn’t meet the brides. Not yet. It wasn’t protocol. But he’d found himself unable to either stay or go. So he’d gone outside in the dark, shadowy courtyard garden, trying not to think of either the future or the past.

      Then he’d been interrupted by a beautiful, sensual, surprising woman. He’d been violently drawn to her, first by her incredible body, lush and ridiculously curvy in that tight dress. Then he’d been drawn by her frank, artless words. For a moment, he’d been distracted, even amused, as well as attracted.

      Until even she had said that Laila, the half sister of his deceased long-ago fiancée, should be his bride.

      Was there no escaping the past?

      Looking up at the moonlight now, Omar felt a new chill. He’d thought the bride market would make it easier to have a clean break. Instead, tonight he was haunted more than ever by the memories of his first attempt at acquiring a bride, some fifteen years before. What a disaster that had been.

      No, not a disaster. A tragedy.

      One that must never happen again.

      A low curse escaped him. Setting his jaw, he followed Dr. Edith Farraday back inside the ballroom. Standing quietly against the wall so he wouldn’t be noticed, he watched her from a distance, as she spoke earnestly to the vizier on the dais. Feeling his gaze, she glanced back, and their eyes met.

      Then her gaze narrowed.

      If she hadn’t known who Omar was in the garden, she must know it now. Her look was genuinely angry—even accusing.

      A hot spark went through him as Omar looked slowly over her curvy figure in that tight dress.

      His relationships of the last few years—shallow, sexual and short-lived—had been mostly with ambitious, cold, wickedly skinny blondes with a cruel wit. The opposite of black-eyed Ferida al-Abayyi, the fiancée he’d lost.

      Dr. Farraday was different from all of them. She was neither a cool blonde nor a sensual, sloe-eyed brunette. Her long, lustrous hair was somewhere between dishwater blond and light brown. She had a dusting of freckles over her snub nose. Her heart-shaped face was rosy, her lips full and pink, and her eyes—it was too far to see the color, but they were glaring at him now in a way he felt all the way to his groin.

      But if her face was innocently wholesome, her body was the opposite. She was a bombshell. That dress should have been illegal, he thought. Clinging to her curvaceous body, the silk whispered breathlessly that, at any moment, it might fall apart at the seams, and leave her incredible body naked and ripe for his taking. In that dress, Dr. Farraday could rule any man.

      Or maybe it was just him. Looking at her in the brighter lights of the ballroom, all he could think about was taking her straight to his bed. Her skin, when he’d briefly touched her shoulder, had been even softer than silk. He could only imagine what the rest of her would feel like, naked against his own.

      He took a deep,

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