Adored By The Sheikh (Book 1 of The Sheikh's Beloved)

By Katheryn Lane

Book 1 of The Sheikh's Beloved

Two people.
Two cultures.
Two completely different sets of expectations.

A volcanic ash storm forces Tassie Fielding to prolong a scheduled stopover on her flight home from Australia and it's not long before she's being offered some local hospitality by a fabulously rich, handsome sheikh. However, what will Sheikh Najid expect from her in return for his lavish generosity?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Katheryn Lane
• Release date: May 17, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301823208

Katheryn Lane

I’m a wife, teacher, author and mother of two boisterous boys, so most of my days are taken up with finding lost school shoes, getting stuck in traffic and wondering why I always join the queue that doesn’t move in the supermarket. However, I try to forget these daily problems (and the fact that I burnt the toast again this morning) by losing myself in a good book and writing novels that give readers a break from everyday life.Open one of my books and escape on an adventure to an exotic location, because it’s easier to buy a book than it is to book an air ticket.Have a break, read a book!

Book preview

ADORED BY THE SHEIKH

Book 1 of The Sheikh’s Beloved romance series

by

Katheryn Lane

Smashwords Edition

Published by:

Katheryn Lane on Smashwords

Adored By The Sheikh

Copyright © 2013 by Katheryn Lane

All rights reserved

Cover art by JD Smith Design at www.jdsmith-design.co.uk

Thank you to The Atwater Group for copyediting this book.

www.TheAtwaterGroup.com

This is a work of fiction. All characters, names, places, and events depicted herein are either a product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously. However, I would like to thank Tassie Jan Van Engen and Mandy Hessong for letting me name the heroine and the heroine’s mother after them. Thank you!

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Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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Also by Katheryn Lane

ADORED BY THE SHEIKH

Two people.

Two cultures.

Two completely different sets of expectations.

On a flight home from Australia, a volcanic ash storm forces Tassie Fielding to prolong a scheduled stopover in the Middle East and it’s not long before she’s being offered some local hospitality by a fabulously rich, handsome sheikh. However, what will Sheikh Najid expect from her in return for his lavish generosity?

Chapter 1

I’m sorry, but all flights out of Kalil have been cancelled.

There must be at least one plane going somewhere, sometime!

I’m afraid that the current weather conditions mean all air traffic has been suspended with immediate effect.

But I have to get back home, Tassie said.

I’m sorry, the airline agent replied and she placed Tassie’s travel documents back on the airport transfer counter.

But what am I supposed to do now? Where am I supposed to go?

You will need to wait until the weather conditions improve. Next, please, the woman called out to the long queue of passengers who were waiting behind the thick yellow line painted across the white concourse floor.

Tassie picked up her passport along with the paper showing her flight details and shoved them into her worn leather handbag. Maybe the customer service staff would be of more assistance. She marched across the departure lounge and found an extremely crowded help desk. After queuing for the better part of two hours and narrowly avoiding a fight with a middle-aged man in a pink Hawaiian shirt when he tried to barge in front of her, she finally came face to face with a customer service representative. He was a young Arab man with a pale downy beard.

How can I help you? he asked. He looked very tired. The dark circles under his eyes were almost as bad as Tassie’s.

I flew in earlier today from Australia. I was supposed to be on a connecting flight to London six hours ago, but the woman at the Kalil Airways desk says that there aren’t any flights. They’ve all been cancelled.

They have, the man agreed, glancing up at a departures screen. Every single flight out of Kalil airport had the word Cancelled next to it in unmistakable red letters.

It’s the volcanic ash, he continued. We can’t risk having planes flying in these conditions.

Through the huge glass wall behind him, Tassie could see a perfectly clear day with the hot white sun blazing over dozens of static planes. I’ve seen the news on the TV screens you have here in the airport and I don’t understand how a volcano erupting in Iceland can stop planes flying out of the Middle East.

Wind. It blows the ash into the plane’s engines.

Tassie thought the whole thing sounded like a load of wind. When will it go away? When can I fly home?

Impossible to say. Two, maybe three days?

Two or three days! Tassie had been thinking of two or three more hours, not days! A murmur went through the crowd that was standing behind her. I was only meant to be here for a two-hour stopover. Where am I supposed to go and what about my luggage?

All the passengers’ luggage has been taken off the planes. You can collect your suitcases from Arrivals. There are some hotel reservation counters there. I suggest you book a hotel in the city.

But who’s going to pay for it? Tassie asked.

I’m afraid the airline doesn’t cover this type of thing, as technically it’s not the airline’s fault.

It’s not mine either.

The young man rubbed his soft little beard and then motioned to the next customer to come forward, signalling that he had nothing more to say to Tassie.

Tassie went off in search of the Arrivals terminal and her luggage, wondering whether her travel insurance would cover the cost of a decent hotel and if her boss would understand if she wasn’t back at her desk first thing Monday morning.

Once she got to Arrivals, she found her suitcase without any problems. In a pile under a sign with her flight number on it, her case was easy to recognise as it was bright purple. Given the choice, she wouldn’t have bought such a vibrant colour, especially as it clashed with her strawberry-blonde hair (some people called it orange, but Tassie always preferred term strawberry-blonde). However, the case was a good brand and the purple one had been on sale at less than half price. The cost of her return flight ticket to Australia didn’t leave a lot of money left for things such as suitcases. Nor did it leave her much spare cash for unexpected stays in foreign countries.

She dug around in her handbag and found her travel insurance documents. She needed to see whether they would cover her hotel costs. The insurance details ran to several pages, but she found the section that said they would cover the costs of flight delays if they were more than five hours. Considering she had already been delayed for more than six and the total delay was going to run to several days, it was clear that the insurance would cover her stay in Kalil. She looked at the maximum amount of coverage they would pay out and felt a small surge of relief. The amount stated would certainly pay for the