Grateful for the Sheikh: A Royal Billionaire Romance Novel (Curves for Sheikhs Series Book 16) Read online

  GRATEFUL FOR THE SHEIKH

  ANNABELLE WINTERS

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  BY ANNABELLE WINTERS

  THE CURVES FOR SHEIKHS SERIES (USA)

  Curves for the Sheikh

  Flames for the Sheikh

  Hostage for the Sheikh

  Single for the Sheikh

  Stockings for the Sheikh

  Untouched for the Sheikh

  Surrogate for the Sheikh

  Stars for the Sheikh

  Shelter for the Sheikh

  Shared for the Sheikh

  Assassin for the Sheikh

  Privilege for the Sheikh

  Ransomed for the Sheikh

  Uncorked for the Sheikh

  THE CURVES FOR SHEIKHS SERIES (UK)

  Curves for the Sheikh (UK)

  Flames for the Sheikh (UK)

  Hostage for the Sheikh (UK)

  Single for the Sheikh (UK)

  Stockings for the Sheikh (UK)

  Untouched for the Sheikh (UK)

  Surrogate for the Sheikh (UK)

  Stars for the Sheikh (UK)

  Shelter for the Sheikh (UK)

  Shared for the Sheikh (UK)

  Assassin for the Sheikh (UK)

  Privilege for the Sheikh (UK)

  Ransomed for the Sheikh (UK)

  Uncorked for the Sheikh (UK)

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  COPYRIGHT NOTICE

  Copyright © 2018 by Annabelle Winters

  All Rights Reserved by Author

  www.annabellewinters.com

  If you'd like to copy, reproduce, sell, or distribute any part of this text, please obtain the explicit, written permission of the author first. Note that you should feel free to tell your spouse, lovers, friends, and coworkers how happy this book made you.

  Cover Design by S. Lee

  GRATEFUL FOR THE SHEIKH

  ANNABELLE WINTERS

  1

  Penelope Peterson filled in the small grave beside the grove of birch trees. This wasn’t a sad occasion. Although she cried each time one of her birds died, her heart was always full because it reminded her of what she was doing and why she was doing it.

  “You run a turkey farm, but you don’t kill or sell the turkeys. You know that’s insane, don’t you? I mean, I get that you’re a vegetarian nutcase, but come on, Pen. How do you earn a living?”

  Pen had taken a breath and stared at her friend Willow, the Goth-styled, heavily tattooed waif of a woman who was almost forty but looked like she was twenty-five. Pen herself was closer to twenty-five than forty, but she looked . . . well, Pen just liked to say she spent a lot of time in the sun. With her birds. And her plants. And her . . . eggs.

  “Turkey eggs. They’re a thing, you know,” Pen would reply to anyone who questioned her decision to take over her parents’ turkey farm and then decide to stop slaughtering the danged turkeys! “They’re gonna catch on. I just know it.”

  “The powerful chicken lobby will shut you down before turkey-egg omelets ever catch on,” Willow had declared the last time they’d talked about it—which was just over a month earlier, when the electric company had turned off the power after sixty days of nonpayment and Willow and Pen had sat on the porch under the North Dakota stars and sipped stove-top brewed tea while pondering the universe and its mysteries.

  “Well, I’ve also been thinking about what I can do with the turkey feathers,” Pen said excitedly as she sniffed her chamomile tea and made a face. “Does this tea smell weird to you?”

  “The only thing that smells weird is your head, because I think your brain is rotting away inside it,” Willow firmly declared, checking her black nailpolish and sighing. “You need to come up with a plan, Pen.” She paused, raising a carefully plucked, jet-black eyebrow. “You also need to come up with a man. How long has it been since David?”

  “David who?” said Pen, putting down her cup and crossing one leg over the other. She hated talking about David, but Willow insisted on bringing up the topic. David, who’d showed up with a fake diamond ring and a marriage proposal that was about as half-hearted as everything David did. David, who’d moved in with her and then decided he wanted to push back the wedding date a couple of years.

  “We’re engaged, so what’s the rush to get married?” he’d told her. “I’ve got a lot going on at work, and I don’t want to be distracted.”

  “You work at the post office in Fargo, and you haven’t been promoted in almost five years,” Pen had reminded him, her tone judgmental in a way that surprised her. She’d never grudged David the choices he’d made: dropping out of high school, running with the wrong crowd for far too long, and then sobering up to find out that he was thirty-two and worked at the post-office—and not as a mailman. He was still working a job where his peers were high-school kids taking a summer off before college. The realization had pissed him off, and it seemed like instead of trying to better himself he dealt with it the way he handled everything: By first ignoring it, then postponing it, and finally directing his frustration outwards.

  “You ever thought about doing your hair and nails real nice for a change?” he’d asked one evening when Pen had returned from burying one of her birds, her fingernails brown with dirt, her hair tied back in a ragged ponytail.

  “You ever thought about finishing high school?” she’d shot back, knowing it was rude but feeling short on patience with her sulky fiancé.

  “Whoa,” he’d said, turning his head from where he was laying on the couch, beer balanced on his soft gut. “How did this become about me?”

  “How did what become about you?” Pen had answered, smiling sweetly and undoing her ponytail so her dark brown tresses hung down over her neck and shoulders. “Is this a thing? Are we fighting? Or are you just sitting on the couch, drinking a beer, and asking me why my hair and nails aren’t perfect when I’ve been out working in the fields.”

  “You mean burying one of those old turkeys. That’s not work. That’s the opposite of work, if anything. Hell, each one of those birds is worth cold, hard cash, Penny.”

  “Don’t call me Penny,” Pen had said. “My mom called me Pen, and I like Pen.”

  He’d ignored her, like he always did when she asked him not to call her Penny. “At least your mom had the sense to know she was running a turkey farm, and turkeys are raised to be slaughtered and eaten.”

  “Mom is gone, and the farm is mine. I’m changing how we do things around here, and you know that. I’m gonna turn this into a different sort of farm. A place of warmth and compassion. And let me tell you, it took something out of Mom every time Thanksgiving came around and she knew her birds were going to end up on dinner tables all over the country. She did it because that’s what Dad left her when he died, and she did it to put me through college so I wouldn’t have to do it.”

  “They’re dumb birds, Penny. Birds that are worth money. They ain’t worth shit if you wait until they die natural deaths and then bury them like they’s people.”

  “Like they are people,” Pen said, knowing David hated it when she corrected his grammar. “They’s is not a word.”

  “There you go condescending me
again,” he’d said. But he hadn’t gotten angry. David didn’t get angry. He got sad and sulky, and he hunched his shoulders and moped about the house in a way that made Pen want to “condescend him,” whatever the hell that meant.

  But Pen kinda knew what that meant, and she knew she was doing it. She hated herself for it sometimes, and she wished she could just tell him the truth: That maybe he needed to get off his ass and improve himself. Not for her, necessarily—she’d already agreed to accept him the way he was—but for himself! She hadn’t really thought through a lot of it until he’d asked to marry her and then promptly given up his apartment and moved into the farmhouse with her. And things had started to go downhill pretty quickly when she realized that spending all day, every day with this man was going to take something out of her . . . something she didn’t want to give up.

  She didn’t know what it was—or perhaps she didn’t want to admit what it was. Self respect? Not really, she’d thought. Although David had a tendency to get passive-aggressive, he wasn’t disrespectful as such. So what was it, she’d wondered? What was it that made her heart almost leap with joy after he’d casually suggested that they push back the wedding and just stay engaged for another year or two.

  “So are we calling off the engagement?” she’d asked him, not sure why she was actually relieved as she glanced at the fake diamond on her finger.

  “No!” he’d said hurriedly, and when she saw the panicked way in which he’d glanced around her living room from his fixed spot on the couch, Pen knew he was more worried about losing his rent-free residence than her big round ass. “I just want to focus on work for now. You know how it is, babe.”

  “I know how what is? Focusing on work? Sure. I’ve been working since I was five. Do you know what focusing on work means?”

  “What’re you saying?” he’d snapped, finally swinging his legs off the couch, letting out a burp as he did it.

  “I’m saying you call in sick once a month to work. You show up late at least once a week. You don’t read. You don’t take classes. You’ve shown no interest in even finishing high-school, let alone anything else.”

  David had shaken his head and rubbed his eyes. Then he’d burped again. “All right, Penny. Forget I said anything. We’ll get married this year, all right? Forget I said anything. Jeez!”

  How fucking romantic, Pen had thought, turning from him so he wouldn’t see the way she tightened her jaw. And in that moment she’d understood that feeling, that hesitation, that moment of relief mixed with sheer joy when she’d realized she had a way out: It was the feeling that she was settling, giving herself to a man way below her standards. There was nothing “wrong” with David as such. He was like a hundred other guys she’d gone to high-school with in Fargo—mostly decent, but without ambition or drive, happy to settle for a life of complacency, beer, and television. Nothing wrong with relaxing with a drink and a good show or the ballgame, but it couldn’t be the only thing that motivated you in life. Nope. She wanted more.

  And she wanted a man who wanted more.

  The only question that bothered her after she’d shaken her head and given David his fake diamond ring back (along with two weeks to move out of her farmhouse . . .) was did she deserve a man who wanted more?

  2

  “Ya Allah! What have I done to deserve this?”

  Sheikh Rafeez Al-Zahaar stared through the window of his private jet as the silver airplane broke through the cloud cover. He could still barely see through the snowflakes plastered on the double-paned windows, but as the plane began its descent he was able to discern the outline of the city of Fargo, North Dakota. It did not look like much, and the Sheikh grunted and glanced at his diamond-studded Patek-Phillipe watch.

  “Five in the evening and already it is dark as night,” he said out loud, shaking his head and sighing as he wondered how long he would actually have to stay in the American Midwest. He’d agreed to attend a college friend’s wedding in Fargo, but already the Sheikh was regretting saying yes. He hated the cold. He hated the snow. And he hated it when the sun set at five in the goddamn evening!

  “I can’t believe you’re actually coming, Raf!” Charlotte Goodwin had gushed over the phone when the Sheikh had finally taken her call after she’d tried to reach him incessantly.

  I cannot believe it either, Rafeez had thought as he fought the feeling that this was a bad idea. Why was Charlotte inviting him to her damned wedding? He’d banged her a few times when they’d met at Oxford a decade earlier. She was a Rhodes Scholar from the University of North Dakota, and they’d only overlapped a few months before the Sheikh took his degree and went back to rule his kingdom of Zahaar. That had always been the plan, and he’d never lied to Charlotte about what they were doing. She’d understood—indeed she seemed almost happy with their arrangement at the time. And that was just fine with Rafeez. He’d never really connected with her, and the sex was no better or worse than what he was getting from a dozen other women who walked the fabled halls of Oxford University. In fact he’d forgotten about Charlotte until she’d sent him an invitation to her wedding and then called about a hundred times to beg him to attend.

  “I’m Associate Professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of North Dakota,” she’d explained when the Sheikh made it clear from his tone that he almost certainly was not going to fly across the world to attend the wedding of some minor fling whose name he could barely remember. “I’m up for tenure this year, and it would look really great if you showed up at the wedding.”

  “Because I am the only Arab you know?” he’d asked, raising an eyebrow as he sighed and glanced at his calendar for November of that year. Strangely enough, he was scheduled to be in New York City at the end of the month for a meeting with his American investment advisors. And he did not have any major commitments in Zahaar the week before, which was when Charlotte’s wedding was scheduled.

  “Oh, I know lots of Arabs,” Charlotte had said, her tone somehow angering the Sheikh. “But you’re the only Arab king in my life.”

  “I prefer the title Sheikh,” Rafeez had said coldly, glancing at his calendar again. He still had that sinking feeling in his gut that this was a bad idea. From what he remembered of her, Charlotte was brilliant and ambitious—both good things—but also prone to justifying behavior that the Sheikh considered borderline unethical. “And I am not in your life, Charlotte.”

  But in the end the Sheikh had agreed—not because Charlotte was particularly convincing or that he particularly wanted to see her, but because he decided it made sense from a perception standpoint. Or at least it might in the future. After all, Charlotte was an eloquent speaker, and her height and looks projected a convincing image when she took the stage. Who knew where she would be in five years, ten years, fifteen years? She had picked Middle Eastern Studies as her academic career, and if the Sheikh knew anything about Charlotte, he knew it was all calculated. Being recognized as a Middle East expert would get you lucrative advisory and consultancy gigs with corporations as well as the U.S. government. In either case, it would be good business and good politics to maintain cordial relations with Charlotte. Do her a favor by gracing her wedding with your royal presence. Make her look like a Middle East expert in front of her colleagues and friends. Then she will owe you favors for years to come. American corporations setting up branches in the kingdom of Zahaar based on Charlotte’s advice? And it never hurts to have an insider who owes you favors when it comes to the U.S. government, yes?

  Yes, the Sheikh had said, but now as he gritted his teeth as his jet skidded to a stop on the small runway of Fargo’s airport, the snow falling like cannonballs from an ashen sky, he wondered if he should have said no. Perhaps he should never have taken the woman’s call. By Allah, he should have his head examined for even being here! Five days in what appeared to be the goddamn Arctic Circle!

  The wedding itself was a surprisingly modest affair, and th
e Sheikh did his bit by playing the Arabian king. He wore a tailored black tuxedo and a forty-thousand dollar Rolex with diamonds that shone brighter than the bride’s wedding ring. He showed off his perfect white teeth and manicured jawline-stubble, demonstrated his firm handshake, made up stories of camel-races and being lost in sand-storms.

  By the end of it he was somewhat on edge, though, and when he finally took a break from entertaining the other guests, a strange feeling of disgust washed over him. Disgust at himself. What in Allah’s name was he doing here? Was this what his life had come to? Playing a stereotype for the amusement of Americans just so he could buy himself some favors from a woman who might someday be in a position to grant them? What had happened to his ambitions of putting Zahaar on the world map? Raising its profile in the eyes of the world? Was he not thinking big enough? Trying hard enough?

  Patience, he told himself. These things take time. Sometimes you have to let things develop at their own pace. It is fine to want more and to want it now, but one must make sure to always—

  “May I get you a drink, sir?” came the interruption, and the Sheikh glanced up at the petite, dark-haired waif of a woman who looked like a boy with her short hair and flat chest. She was clearly one of the caterers, and the Sheikh raised an eyebrow and tapped his knuckles on the empty glass.

  “Club soda. One slice of lemon.”

  “Ice?” she asked.

  The Sheikh gestured with his head towards the window across from them. “Who takes ice in the middle of an ice-storm?” he grunted. He looked at her name tag and glanced up into her eyes. She was older than she looked from a distance, and the Sheikh did not find her attractive. He suspected the feeling was mutual, and it occurred to him that this woman was not into men at all. Perfect. “Are you from the area, Miss Willow?” he asked, glancing at her name tag once more to make sure he was saying her name right.