The Sheik Who Loved Me by Loreth Anne White Read Free Book Online

she probably could.
    Slowly she unwound the sheet and studied the rest of her body. She had no jewelry. No necklace, rings, bracelets or earrings. No clues. Nothing at all to give her away.
    That didn’t feel right. Something was missing. The sensation niggled away at the back of her brain. And with a start, she realized she was fingering her left hand, exactly where she’d wear a wedding ring…if she had one. She frowned. Why did she feel as if it was missing?
    She ran her hand gently over the cuts and bruising down the left side of her torso.
    Had she been on a boat when the storm hit? Were there others who hadn’t survived? Damn, damn, damn. For the life of her she couldn’t recall a single thing about how she got to this island of David Rashid’s. She scooped up the sheet in frustration, wound it tightly around her body and stomped over to the shutters. She flipped the catch and threw them open wide as if to cast clarity on her situation. But the harsh flare of yellow sunlight exploded against her eyes. She scrunched her face tight in painful reflex.
    As the stab of pain slowly subsided, she became cognizant of the sun’s rays. With her eyes still closed, she lifted her face to meet the light. The warmth on her skin offered a basic animal comfort. She breathed in deeply, feeling tension slowly begin to dissipate as she allowed the warmth to soak through her.
    It dawned on her then—she was like a primal creature. No clothes. No identity. No past. Only the present. Only the sensation of warmth on her face to give her a feeling of being alive, a feeling of belonging in the world. This sensation was the closest she could come to a sense of home, of who she was. Because beyond that, she’d been reduced to nothing.
    She didn’t know if she had a family or if she had kids, though she guessed not—the idea seemed too foreign. Perhaps she had a lover, someone who right now was worried sick about her. Did she have a job? A house? An apartment? Did she have a cat or a dog?
    Is this what it felt like to start from scratch? To have a blank slate and a chance to do things over? Because it sure as hell didn’t feel like fun. It felt formidable. And claustrophobic, as if she was hemmed in by an invisible fortress.
    Panic started to grip again. She pressed the palm of her hand against her stomach, trying to force calm on herself. The doctor had said she might feel like this. He’d said she would also likely experience anger, denial. That was normal, he’d said. But what in hell was normal about this? What in hell was normal about a stranger giving you a new name? A name that means dawn, new beginnings.
    The distant sound of hooves thudding on packed sand registered in her brain, yanking her mind back into the room. Her eyes flicked open. She shielded them against the harsh glare of the sun with her hands and searched for the source of the sound.
    The sight that greeted her clean stole her breath. Through the arched window, the sea gleamed a brilliant turquoise in the distance. Waves rolled relentlessly toward the shore and broke in long ribbons onto a beach of pure white sand, spraying spumes of white spindrift into the wind.
    The beach turned gradually into shades of cream, amber, orange and ochre as the land curved in sweeping, undulating hills toward her. Then the sand gave way to rich vegetation closer to the castle walls.
    She blinked. Castle?
    She leaned out of the window. Yes, she was in some kind of Moorish-style castle. Walls, several stories high, ran off in either direction from her window. Arches were cut into them at regular intervals. At the end of the one wall, the building veered off into another wing and at the end of that she could make out a square tower with turrets along the top. In other parts, the roof was angled over the walls and covered with thick irregularly shaped tiles baked reddish-ochre by the sun.
    The sound of the galloping hooves that had alerted her grew louder, echoing off the palace