Sheikh’s Pretend Engagement: Sheikhs Pact, #3

By Leslie North

This smoldering Sheikh needs a scandal… 



Sheikh Faidh Qadir needs to create a scandal—something so shocking that the senior council will declare him unfit to rule. It's either that or marry a woman of the council's choosing and remain Sheikh for life—the two things he wants least in the world.

 

When Faidh learns that Mina, the palace's new pastry apprentice, is in his country illegally, he makes her a deal. Pretend to be his fiancée, help him create a scandal, and he'll make sure her exiled father is pardoned for his crimes. It's a simple arrangement. But the feelings she stirs in his heart are more complex than he could have imagined…

 

Mina Parks cannot believe she just agreed to a fake engagement. Faidh says the council will never accept Mina because her father is a notorious spy, and they'll remove him from the throne. But first they need to convince everyone that they're truly in love. Maybe all those public embraces and staged kisses were a little too convincing. Because Mina quickly starts to believe the fairy tale herself…

 

Are these two falling head over heels for real? Or is it all a cruel deception…

• Language: English
• Publisher: Relay Publishing
• Release date: May 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201479787

Book preview

1

Faidh stepped into the kitchen, and his presence caused chaos.

The staff closest to the doors rushed to follow protocol, bowing over the food they were preparing. Then they were back up, two of them hurrying away to warn the others. It was like a small electrical fire had walked through the door instead of the sheikh of Nouzar. To be sure, the chaos was controlled—the kitchen was too tight a ship to be completely disrupted by his arrival—but it was chaos, nonetheless.

The volume in the room rose. He would find all the frantic scurrying offensive, honestly, if it hadn’t been literally years since he’d last visited the kitchen. When he was a boy, he’d made frequent visits to sneak treats, but his boyhood had ended long ago.

Today he was not interested in food. He was on a different kind of mission.

The kitchen in the palace could more accurately be called kitchens. There was the large main room, and Faidh steered himself past the prep table. At the back was a smaller kitchen dedicated to baking. This was where all the pastries and cakes and rolls for the palace were created. Faidh was in search of one of the women who prepared them.

Mina Parks, the apprentice pastry chef.

She might be his golden ticket out of a problem that had been nagging him all his adult life. Faidh did not want to be the sheikh.

He had been born for it. Trained for it. But Faidh had never wanted the role, and he’d never imagined he’d have to take it on at the age of eighteen. But when he was sixteen, his parents had died in an accident involving their motorcade. He’d had only two years to finish his preparations. His older sister Meher had served as regent until the day he came of age, and then he’d been installed.

She had been excellent in the role. She had a passion for leadership and a real heart for being the sheikha. But the traditional laws of the land had not permitted her to stay on. It had to be Faidh, the male heir. They would all be better off if he could hand the job off to her—and the only way that could happen was if the council deemed him unfit.

Naturally, getting oneself out of being the sheikh was more difficult than being born into the royal family by chance.

Mina Parks didn’t know it yet, but she was the perfect solution.

He found her at the prep table in the center of the smaller kitchen, her hands working at a batch of phyllo dough. He had seen her in the photo from her visa paperwork.

That photo did not do her justice.

Her honey-brown hair was half-hidden underneath her chef’s hat. Dark eyes gleaming with concentration flicked away from the phyllo dough for only a moment to check the time. The delicate curve of her cheek set his heart racing, which Faidh hadn’t expected. How? His heart beat. How is she here? How, how, how? Intellectually, he knew exactly how she’d gotten here. His pastry chef, Alma, had asked permission to hire an apprentice. He’d paid a pretty penny for Alma, a woman in her fifties, to come and serve in his palace. She was a famed pastry chef in the Middle East, and Faidh had hired her as a gift to Meher, who loved pastries.

If Alma requested an apprentice, Alma got an apprentice. He’d told her to give the paperwork to Elyas, Meher’s husband and head of palace security, to do the background checks.

Mina’s record was stellar. She had Cordon Bleu training and had worked in several high-end bakeries around Pasadena, where she was from.

Alma had already installed her in the kitchen when Elyas had discovered the inconsistencies in the paperwork. She’d made a few creative changes. Instead of sounding the alarm, though, Elyas had suggested that Faidh take advantage of those inconsistencies.

Faidh couldn’t take his eyes off Mina’s hands on the phyllo dough. Her delicate fingers made practiced, expert movements as they worked it over, rolling and stretching it to a paper-like thinness. At that moment she turned to reach for something—plastic wrap, it looked like—and froze.

Her eyes met his, shock written across them. His heart thumped. He’d thought she was beautiful from the photo. He’d thought she was gorgeous when her face was tipped down toward the dough. But when she was looking into his eyes—

Stunning. She was stunning.

He had to clear his throat before he could speak. It had gone tight at the electric sensation of her eyes locking on his. Hello, Ms. Parks.

She blinked at the sound of her name, her hands frozen on the dough. Sheikh Faidh.

Even her voice made him shiver, though not from cold. No—it was a warmth that ran down his spine and pulled toward her. Faidh pushed his reaction to the side. He was not there to assess her beauty or to have any sort of emotion about her.

I came to talk to you. It seems your visa paperwork wasn’t quite accurate, and you’re the daughter of Abbas Hamid.

Mina’s throat bobbed as she swallowed hard.

Abbas Hamid. The Great Enemy of Nouzar. He had acted as a spy for the former sheikh of Larasan, who wanted to expand his emirate’s borders. The espionage had come to nothing, and after it was discovered, Hamid was exiled to the United States. The sheikh who had commanded him to spy abandoned him to his fate.

I know you’re not here legally. He had never been so glad for an empty room. It was just the two of them, which made the impact of his words seem greater.

I didn’t lie, she said, her voice even. He thought he could hear the slightest nervous waver in her tone, but she held her chin high and breathed deep. On my application. I told the truth.

You purposefully hid your parentage on the application. I believe that you have the skills you say you have, otherwise Alma would have sent you off by now. But the paperwork as a whole does not represent a true picture of you, Ms. Parks.

Her fingers jerked, shredding the delicate dough between them. Mina’s eyes fell to the table. The rise and fall of her chest became quicker, more shallow, and pink spread across her cheeks. He wanted to stroke the side of her face. To chase that embarrassed color away.

Perhaps kiss it away.

At that thought, reality crashed back into Faidh’s thoughts. Mina was hardly breathing now, the only movement coming from her hands. He had come in way too hot.

He’d scared her.

That was the last thing he’d wanted.

Faidh put on his most charming smile, raised both hands in the air, and stepped back, creating more space between them. I just wanted to talk to you about all this. I think we could help each other.

Mina’s deep brown eyes snapped to his. How could I possibly help you?

He wanted to tell her the plan. Wanted to tell her the solution he’d come to after too many sleepless nights. But the noise from the larger kitchen surged in. The rest of the staff wouldn’t be able to resist coming closer. There was effectively no way to keep them from hearing—the pastry kitchen was connected to the main space by an open doorway.

What they needed was a door.

Would you step into the butler’s pantry with me for a few moments? It would give us a bit of privacy so I could explain myself. I’d rather your illegal status not become idle palace gossip.

Her eyes went wider, and with a shallow nod, she draped the phyllo dough across the prep table and came around to him.

Faidh led her out and to the right, where they went through another door. He closed it behind them as Mina stepped further into the pantry. The butler’s pantry was a transitional space between the kitchens and the palace’s formal dining room. Its greatest advantage was that it had been soundproofed more thoughtfully than other areas of the palace, so that the staff didn’t have to worry about disrupting meals while preparing dishes for serving.

They were even closer now. The scent of her skin was sweet. Light. Delicate. Almost like the dough she’d been working with. Faidh ignored it and launched into the speech he’d come here to make.

I’ve been the sheikh for more than ten years, but I’ve always wanted my sister Meher to hold the title. She deserves it. She’s the older sibling, and she’d be a better leader than I would.

Mina shook her head slightly. You came down here to tell me you don’t want to be sheikh?

It was too bold, but Faidh was delighted by it. "That’s exactly what I came down here to tell you, Ms. Parks. I don’t want to be sheikh, but a law prevents me from abdicating the throne without facing serious consequences. I would be exiled. On top of that, there’s a deadline coming up that means passing the position to my sister is a top priority."

There was only one way to do it that Faidh could see, and he’d turned this problem over and over in his head until the day Elyas told him about Alma’s new apprentice. I need to push the council into taking away my title, at which point, it would pass to my nearest living relative—my sister. And now, I think I know how to make it happen.

Mina’s face got even redder. What does that have to do with me?

Faidh took a deep breath. He was used to having all his requests honored to the best of his staff’s ability. This was different. It was so very different that his heart skipped a beat. If you become my fiancée, it will enrage the council. They’ll have no choice but to declare me an unfit ruler. It’s the only way to transfer power to my sister without completely losing my home. I love my country—and that’s why it must be done this way. There. That was it. Will you marry me?

The sheikh was out of his mind.

Sheikh Faidh was handsome, with dark curls kept neatly trimmed and bright olive eyes that burned into her skin. He was very tall, muscular, and lean, and when she’d faced him for the first time, the sharp beauty of him had stolen her breath. Look at him, in those neat charcoal slacks and a button-down shirt that obviously went with a jacket. He didn’t need it, though. He’d rolled his sleeves up to his elbows, and Mina had never seen a man look more handsome.

Mina was still struggling a bit for air, her cheeks burning. That’s a wild thing to say, she said,