Bride Behind The Desert Veil (Mills & Boon Modern) (The Marchetti Dynasty, Book 3) by Abby Green (free e reader .TXT) 📕

than life character, bullish in his ambition to build a global brand from a handful of boutiques in Rome. He’d been a dark, masculine man. Undeniably handsome. But there was something about him that Liyah thought looked cruel.

Then she read about the speculation that he would have been nothing without the vast fortunes of each of the women he’d married. Sharif’s mother was mentioned and pictured—Princess Noor, a stunningly beautiful woman. Liyah recognised her beauty in Sharif’s features. The deep-set eyes. High cheekbones. Proud, regal nose.

She read about how Sharif had rebuilt the company after his father had died, having left it tainted with scandals and rumours of corruption. She read about Sharif’s ruthlessness in going after legacy brands, only to strip them of everything but their name before hiring whole new teams to revitalise them.

She read about his half-brothers. Nikos and Maks. From different mothers. Both were gorgeous. Nikos was being called ‘a reformed playboy’, after marrying and settling down with a young family. There was a picture of him with his pregnant wife and a dark-haired baby that looked to be nearly a year old. Apparently, he hadn’t known about his son until after he was born.

Maks seemed to be much more elusive. But Liyah found a picture of his recent wedding to a petite and very pretty woman with honey-blonde hair. They were coming out of a civil office in London and smiling at each other. They looked as if they were in love, and Liyah felt a flash of envy that she quickly told herself wasn’t envy. It was pity—because their apparent happiness would undoubtedly be an illusion. Even staged for the cameras.

She thought of what Sharif had said about needing to marry to take the Marchetti Group to the next level. Perhaps that was why his brothers had married too. A joint effort to stabilise the brand. That made a lot more sense to Liyah than the fanciful notion that perhaps Sharif’s brothers were different from him and had married for love.

How could they possibly believe in love when they’d all come from broken marriages?

Clearly Nikos had married his ex-lover and the mother of his child only to protect the reputation of the company. What about Maks, though? And how had Sharif become the sophisticated and ruthless CEO of a vast conglomerate if he’d grown up on the other side of the world in a desert kingdom?

Liyah shut the laptop abruptly, not liking the swirl of questions in her head precipitated by the online search. She didn’t need to know about Sharif or his family. She just needed to get through the next year and then she would finally be free to pursue her own goals and her own life.

She waited for a spurt of excitement and joy at that prospect, but she felt nothing except a kind of...flatness.

She scowled at herself and put it down to weariness. In spite of her nap earlier, and the nap on the plane, she was tired, and a lot had happened. It was no wonder she couldn’t drum up much enthusiasm.

However, when she crept past Sharif’s office door a few minutes later, and heard the deep rumble of his voice on the other side, the instant rush of adrenalin and excitement made a complete mockery of any notion that her sense of anti-climax was fatigue-related...

CHAPTER FIVE

TWO DAYS LATER, Sharif waited for Liyah to appear in the apartment’s main reception room. He’d hardly seen her since that first evening—he’d been busy catching up on what he’d missed during his few days’ absence.

The irony wasn’t lost on him that if he was a regular person he would still be on his honeymoon. But before his brain could be flooded with tantalising images of what a honeymoon with Liyah might look like—feel like—he reminded himself that he wasn’t a regular person, and hadn’t been since the moment his father had seduced his mother with one eye on creating an heir and another on stealing her vast dowry.

Sharif put two fingers behind his bow tie and his top button in an effort to loosen them slightly. He felt constricted when he normally never did. There was a hum in his blood too—a hum of anticipation. Something he usually only associated with the prospect of bettering a rival in business or making a spectacular acquisition.

He heard a sound and instinctively tightened his fingers around the small tumbler of whisky he’d poured himself. He turned around slowly to see Liyah standing just inside the door, looking unbelievably hesitant.

And stunning.

Sharif didn’t even realise his breath had stopped until his body forced him to breathe in.

His gaze followed the outline of the satin dress from the thin straps over her shoulders to the line of the bodice that cut across her chest, where the swells of her breasts were just tantalisingly visible. It went in at her slim waist and then curved out again over her hips, falling in a straight, elegant line to the floor.

It was an earthy olive-green, and it enhanced the colour of her skin exactly as he’d imagined. The design couldn’t have been more simple. Deceptively simple, as he knew. He recognised haute couture as soon as he saw it. It could have been made for her, but he knew it hadn’t been as there hadn’t been enough time. But the material moulded to her body in a way that looked indecent enough to be bespoke.

He felt dizzy. Her hair had been straightened into a sleek fall of black silk and tucked behind her ears, where drop diamonds sparkled. But the absence of her usual unruly waves failed to diminish the incendiary memories of that night when she’d been a wild, untamed goddess, emerging from the depths of a black pool. He found this version of her more than provocative when it should be less.

He noticed that the only other jewellery she wore was a simple diamond bracelet. She held a matching green clutch bag in her hands.

She cleared her throat.