The Black Sheep Sheik by Dana Marton Read Free Book Online

they reached a waiting room that was lit by the last of the setting sun. There were upholstered chairs stacked on top of each other, dust everywhere. The door to one of the exam rooms was open. He spotted a phone on the wall and went for it. He needed to reach Efraim, needed immediate backup.
    No dial tone.
    Just when he would have banged the receiver against the wall, Isabelle took it gently away from him. “I’m sure they canceled phone service when they closed the office. Would you sit down, please?”
    That he needed to sit and rest annoyed him. In fact, annoyance and frustration seemed to be the main theme of the hours since he’d awakened. “How long before I’m back like I was before?”
    “At least a couple of weeks. You’re doing amazingly well, all things considered. One might almost think you’re too stubborn to be sick.”
    He couldn’t help a small grin. “Stubborn?” Yes, he’d probably been that way with her and worse. Not that she wasn’t impossibly stubborn herself, but he was going to be a gentleman and not mention that again. “You are not seeing me at my best,” he allowed.
    She outright laughed at him. “Really?”
    The sweet sound of her laughter had a way of sneaking straight into the middle of his chest. Her face lit up. Her silky hair had fallen across her forehead in their mad dash, but now she brushed the dark strands out of her face. Her blue eyes shone in the dim light of dusk.
    “You’re beautiful.” The words just slipped out.
    She raised an eyebrow. “I’m still not entering into some arranged marriage.”
    “Nobody arranged anything for us. This is not something set up by our parents. We should both choose this marriage because it’s the right thing to do. It is the only honorable course of action. My country and my people expect no less from me.”
    “Marrying for protocol’s sake? Living some happy royal farce for the media?”
    He rose and strode to her, turned her to face him. Her amazing eyes were wary; her bottom lip was bruised from biting. Her face had been on his mind every day since she’d left him. Her body—sans clothes—had been a major player in his dreams.
    “If I married for protocol, according to the wishes of the Council, I would marry for alliance. I would marry a princess for her father’s wealth and influence,” he informed her.
    Nothing wrong with that. Last he heard, his friend Prince Stefan had been considering just such a marriage to Princess Daria. Alliances were important. Yet, he couldn’t say he was upset by the turn of events that would make Isabelle his bride. He could see them being happy. He could see them doing a great many things. A number of them involved being naked.
    “Sounds good to me. You should try and keep this Council happy. They sound important.”
    “They’ll be happy that I finally secured an heir.” They’d been bugging him about that from the moment he’d taken the throne. “This might not be the marriage they had in mind, but they won’t protest it.”
    “ I protest it. I’m not entering into a fake marriage so you can parade my son around as your heir.”
    “Nothing about our marriage would be fake, I promise you that, Isabelle,” he told her before he kissed her.

Chapter Four
    His lips were firm on hers and warm, coaxing. If the kiss had been the claiming sort, him trying to prove that she would belong to him, she could have resisted. But Amir’s tender seduction had Isabelle’s head spinning.
    His hands came to her nonexistent waist. Probably felt like he was hugging a whale. She shied away, but he pulled her right back, one hand moving to rest on her belly. The baby kicked against his palm. For a second he stilled; then he deepened the kiss with a surge of new emotion.
    Her knees were as shaky as his had to be. She shouldn’t be doing this. Her giving in was bound to give him ideas that she was agreeing to his insane plans about them getting married. It gave the wrong impression altogether, not