An Inconvenient Marriage (Married to a Prince)

An Inconvenient Marriage

By

Kat Attalla

ISBN: 978-1-77145-184-0

Books We Love Ltd.

(Electronic Book Publishers)

Chestermere, Alberta

Canada

http://bookswelove.net

Copyright 2014 by Kat Attalla

Cover art by: Jasmin Attalla Copyright 2014

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

An Inconvenient Marriage

Chapter One

Delilah Jordan sat on the battered easy chair in the corner of the small apartment and watched her mother pack. The sight was hardly uncommon.  In her twenty-five years, she’d seen Marissa Jordan perform this ritual at least two dozen times.  Delilah never understood her mother’s need to constantly move, but she had learned from a very young age not to get attached to any person or place.  Consequently, as an adult, she still kept people at an emotional distance.

She unfastened the top button of her blouse. “Mom.  Can you take a break?  I need to talk to you.”

“Hand me that lacy shawl behind you,” Marissa said, as if she hadn’t heard her daughter’s request. 

“Mom?” Delilah said more impatiently. By now her mother’s self-centered ways came as no surprise. At forty-six years old, Marissa could still turn heads when she walked in a room and she used her charms to get what she wanted from men.  She also had a creative ability to weave a tale that would bring tears to the eyes of a cynic.  The lethal combination had made Marissa a siren with a long line of broken hearts behind her.

With a smile the older woman met Delilah’s gaze.  “You’ve decided to dump that stuffy accountant and this cold Jersey weather and come to California after all, right?”

“Wrong!  And Bob is not stuffy.  He is dependable, stable, and faithful.” 

“Kind of like a lap-dog?” her mother asked.  She lit incense, filling the room with a woodsy smell.

“Oh, please Mom.  I don’t want to argue about this.  Especially not today.”  What Bob lacked in excitement, he more than made up for kindness.  So there wasn’t that intense spark of electricity between them.  Delilah had learned from her mother’s many experiences that relationships based on passion burned out too quickly.

“And why is today different?”  Marissa continued to place her possessions into cardboard boxes.

Delilah swallowed hard.  “Bob has asked me to marry him and I’m going to accept.”

The sound of metals clanging together in the box gave her a start.  She glanced at her mother, who had taken on a ghastly pallor.  “You can’t.”

“Why not?”

“You don’t love him.”

“There are more important things in life than love.  We are compatible and good company for each other.”  How could she explain to a free spirit like her mother the attraction of security, stability and roots?  He suited her needs without threatening her emotional control.

“You know, Delilah, if you would let you hair down and take off those ridiculous glasses, you would be very attractive.  I hate to see you settling for less than you deserve.”

“I’m not settling.”

“Please!  The man bought you flannel nightwear and fuzzy slippers for Valentine’s Day.  Where is the romance in that?”

“It’s very practical,” she said defensively, but she had to admit she’d been disappointed in his choice of gift.

Marissa folded trembling arms across her chest. “Anyway, you can’t marry him and that’s that.”

“And why not?” The long pause stretched into an uncomfortable silence.  The older woman fidgeted with the edge of the carton.  “Mom?”

“You’re already married.”  The words tumbled out as if they’d been held in for too long.

Marissa had told some wild stories to her daughter, but she had to see that this one wasn’t going to fly.  Even with her best efforts to look sickly and afraid.

“Married to my job doesn’t count,” Delilah said.

“We need to talk.”  Marissa picked through a steel box that contained family papers until she found what she needed.  “Remember when I told you about your father?”

Delilah thought back to the one and only conversation they’d had on the subject.  And that talk had only come about when she had wanted to get a driver’s license and she learned that her birth certificate was a foreign document.  “I remember you said my father was from
Nadiar.”

“Yes. 
A barbaric little country with even more barbaric customs.”

Delilah tucked in a strand of hair that had come loose from her bun.  “What does this have to do with anything?”

“Well, one of those horrid customs is that a father can write a marriage contract for his daughter while she is still a child.  A contract that is a legal, binding marriage despite her feelings as an adult.”

“And you want me to believe that he married me off to some
Nadiarian man and that in the eyes of the law, it’s legal?  Come on, Mom.  Certainly you can do better than that?”

“Not just any man. 
The son of the king.”

Delilah shook her head.  This had to be a joke. It had to be! 
“Anything else?”

“You don’t believe me?”  She took out an envelope filled with papers.  Several documents were contained within a stack of newspaper clippings. “I assure you.  This is not a joke and it is not a lie.”

Delilah looked through the contents of the envelope.  All the papers had English translations attached to them, but she couldn’t tell if they were genuine.  Obviously, the papers were older.  If her mother wasn’t telling the truth, where did she get these documents?  But if she was telling the truth...

She sprung from the chair.  “How could you keep something like this from me?”

“I meant to take care of it...”  Marissa procrastinated with the best of them, but this was more than waiting until the last minute to pay the electric bill.  “I was going to get it dissolved.  I went to see a lawyer, but the cost of filing the documents and legal fees were beyond my reach.  I kept meaning to do it, but somehow, it just never got done.”

“And now?”

Marissa shrugged.  “Now, you’re an adult.  You would have to take care of it yourself.”

“How?  You tell me I’m legally married and I don’t even know the name of my husband.”  Her life had just gone from safe and comforting to a surrealistic nightmare.

“Prince Samir
A’Del Sharif.”  Marissa thumbed through the envelope to a recent newspaper photo of the royal family.  She pointed to one of the sons.  “That’s him.”

At least her mother had kept up on the family.  Why?  She had obviously tried to block out everything about her life in
Nadiar.  She never spoke of the past, or of Delilah’s father.  After a while, Delilah had learned to stop asking but she never stopped wanting the answers.

She glanced at the photograph.  In the black and white picture she saw a ruggedly handsome man whose smile held a trace of cynicism and whose dark eyes looked as if they could penetrate to the soul. 
A dangerously sexy man.  The kind of man she purposefully avoided. The kind of man she would never want for a husband.  “He has probably divorced me already.”

“There’s always that chance,” her mother mumbled, but Delilah got the feeling there was even more to come.

“What aren’t you telling me?”

Marissa’s eyes darkened in sorrow.  Her most fantastic story to date was ironically the first true one.  “After your father died, I was afraid his family might track us down and try to hold me to the contract so I told them that the marriage had been dissolved in the American courts when it really hadn’t.”

She shook her head.  “I have a husband who doesn’t think he has a wife?”

Could it get any worse?  What had her father been thinking by signing away his daughter’s life to a stranger?  Why had her mother waited until now to tell her?   She was so confused that she couldn’t think straight.

Suddenly she saw her neatly planned future falling apart.  She inhaled deeply.  Focus on the objective, decide on the most effective course of action and follow through.  The words from her freshman business class had proved to be a valuable tool in dealing with life’s problems as well.  Her gaze returned to the photograph.  A man like him would have no interest in a boring insurance actuary from New Jersey.  She grabbed her purse, shoved the foreign documents inside, and headed for the door.

“Where are you going?”

“First to see my lawyer and then to the Nadiarian Consulate in New York to straighten out this mess. I’m sure this man, this Prince Samir whatever, will not want to be married to me any more than I want to be married to him.”   The sooner she took care of this bizarre problem her parents had left her, the sooner she could get on with her life plan.

* * * *

Sami closed the folder and shoved it into his attaché case.  The meeting was over and the representatives for the oil companies filed out of the boardroom.  If only the tension would drain away with them.  When would these foreign corporations realize that Nadiar was no longer a backwards little nation of warring Bedouin tribes?  Twenty years ago the corporations held all the power. But old contracts had expired and the world had changed. As legal counsel to the kingdom, he reviewed all contracts and offers that came before the National Petroleum Reserve Board.  He had yet to find one contract with terms favorable and acceptable to the people of Nadiar.  In his opinion, oil company executives ranked just above the female species in the not- to-be- trusted department.  And he always approached both with the same cautious cynicism.

“That went well, Sami.”

He cast his father, the Emir, a disbelieving glance.  “Well?  If you like being perceived as an illiterate idiot, then yes, the meeting was a success. “

”Ah, but it does not matter what people think of you going into a meeting.  What matters is the opinion they have of you when they walk out.  And I think we can agree they learned a lesson in humility.  Their next offer will be made with considerably more thought and respect.”

“True.”  He grinned when he remembered the point at which it dawned on their lead negotiator that he wasn’t quite as easy to manipulate as they had thought he would be.

He rose from the round table at the same time as his father.  As he turned to leave, the Minister of Tourism knocked on the outside of the open door. 

“Come in, Omar,” the Emir said.

Sami nodded to the minister, who also happened to be his uncle.  “I’ll be going.”

“Please wait, Nephew.”  Omar looked anxious and confused.  After a respectful greeting to the king, he sat at the table with both men.

“What’s wrong,” the king asked. 

“The consulate in New York has informed me that they have received a very strange request for a visa.”

Sami shrugged.  “Why is it strange?”

“Well for one thing, the woman had a Nadiarian father.”

“And this is strange?” the Emir asked.  “Many people wish to travel to the country of their heritage.”

“She also claims to have a Nadiarian husband, and seems to have papers to back this up.”

“I am still not following the problem, Uncle.”

“Well...”  Omar cleared his throat.  “She claims to be your wife, Sami.”

“What?” He chuckled.  That had to be his laugh for the day.  He definitely did not have a wife.  Nor did he want one.  Over the years he had seen a carnival like parade of title-seeking women use every trick in the book to trap him into marriage.  One had even come close to succeeding.  But this woman was by far, the most original in her approach.
“My wife?  And just when did we marry?  Let me think, there was that time when I went in for surgery in my early twenties.  I was unconscious for an hour or two.  It must have been then, because I think I would remember if I had married otherwise.”

“Unless it was an arranged marriage,” his uncle said simply.

His father and Omar exchanged glances and they did not seem amused.  Arranged marriages were still practiced among the Bedouins, but it had been more than twenty years since it had been common in the city.  And even if such an arrangement had been made when he was a child, his father would have told him years ago.

“There was no arrangement, was there?” Sami asked his father.

The Emir massaged his temples.  “What is the woman’s name, Omar?”

“Well her passport says Delilah Jordan.”

“Jordan? No, she is obviously mistaken,” he said.

Sami exhaled in relief.  “She’s unstable as well. Deny the visa.”

“According to her birth record her actual given name was Lilah and her father’s name was Rafik,” Omar cut in.  “Ahmed Rafik.”

The Emir’s eyes widened and he slouched in the chair with a groan.  Sami began to worry as well since the name had significance to him. 
To all of the royal family for that matter.  Ahmed Rafik was a national hero who’d given his own life to save the Emir.

“Father.
  Tell me this woman is wrong.” 

The Emir shook his head sadly.  “If you would excuse us, Omar, I need to have a talk with my son.”

Sami knew before his father even began that he was not going to like the outcome of this conversation.

* * * *

Delilah held onto the overhead strap as the airport shuttle bus made its way to the terminal.  The blazing sun outside rivaled the blazing headache pounding against her temples.  At her lawyer’s suggestion, she came to Nadiar to take care of the unpleasant matter of her arranged marriage.  Because both she and her father were Nadiarian nationals at the time of the marriage contract, it was a legal and binding document.  She could face a long process of divorce from the States or see if her husband would be willing to divorce her, quickly and quietly in Nadiar.  Why would he object?  They were complete strangers.