Sheikh's Unknown Baby Daughters Read online

  Table of Contents

  Sheikh’s Unknown Baby Daughters

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  EPILOGUE

  Sheikh’s Unknown Baby Daughters

  A Multiple Baby Romance

  By Sophia Lynn & Ella Brooke

  All Rights Reserved. Copyright 2018 Sophia Lynn & Ella Brooke

  This story is a work of fiction and any portrayal of any person living or dead is purely coincidental and not intended.

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  CHAPTER ONE

  Adil

  The blinding summer sun slanted through the windows of his Houston office, giving Adil Waseem a thudding headache. The Texas oil men had kept him at the table for hours last night, plying him with enough whiskey to fell a horse.

  He wondered briefly if he had managed to win any respect from them at all, coolly drinking what they had offered and walking out without a single tremor in his step. He doubted it. Behind closed doors, it was probably the same story.

  Of course, it didn't matter. He was only going to be in the United States for another few days or so, and after the trouble he had already taken, he had a feeling it was going to be a good long time before he returned. Europe, especially London and Lisbon, were more to his taste, but more and more lately, he had the urge to stay home. His homeland of Manout, with its dry, high mountains and stunning, broad blue skies, called to him, and he found himself less and less able to resist its call.

  I suppose I must be getting old, he thought. Time, or past it to settle down and have that family my advisers always tell me to start.

  He shrugged. He was a healthy man of thirty-three, lean and muscled from riding, racing, and judicious time at the gym. He had heard his assistants back home talk excitedly about the day he had been named one of the world's most eligible bachelors in some magazine poll, and in amusement, he’d had his assistant frame it and put it in his office next to the humanitarian and technological awards.

  “A little ostentatious, isn't it, sir?” Raheem had asked, and Adil had laughed.

  “Not at all, I find it quite the honor.”

  He smiled a little, thinking of home. Manout was his birthright, and even if it managed to drive him crazy from time to time, he wanted to be home.

  Resolutely, he took a seat at his desk and started to go back through the applications. The sooner he could find a liaison between his own tech company and the companies in Houston that were interested in partnering with him, the sooner he could be gone. The sooner he could be home.

  The position of liaison was one that required someone with very particular talents. They needed to be diplomatic but firm, able to hold their own in negotiations, and aware of just when they needed to walk from the table. Even if he was ready to leave, he knew he needed to leave his business concerns in the right hands.

  Adil worked quickly, separating potentials from the rest, and then his fingers paused on one sheet of paper. It caught his attention first because of the feel, so much thinner and rougher than the other sheets. It was something a high school student would have printed a report on, rather than the high bond, cotton-smooth paper used by people looking for a position at this level.

  When he took a second glance, Adil realized the resume wasn't for a liaison at all. In fact, it was for a secretary's position somewhere in the bowels of the company. He was ready to set it aside when he looked again, and then his heart stuttered in his chest.

  Holly Ainsley.

  The name leaped out at him in stark black and white, and he could almost feel it like a punch to the gut. With fingers that trembled just a little, he touched the letters, and almost as if he had conjured her up with a magic wand, he could imagine her.

  Seven years ago, Holly had been small, blonde, and curvy with vivid green eyes that had looked straight through him. He could remember her smile, tremulous and shy at first, and he could remember how she’d tasted when she’d kissed him, sweet and almost sugary after the cherry candy he had given her.

  The mere thought of her made him shake slightly, like a man confronted with a ghost.

  Just a moment ago, Adil had been set on finding the right liaison so he could go home. Now...home held a fraction less appeal than it had, and he knew he could not let this chance go by.

  Adil thought of himself as a futurist. He was a man who looked ahead rather than back. In some ways, this was because he knew he needed to offer his people the very best, and one did not do that by gazing back lovingly at the past. It was a speech he had given countless times to countless smiling interviewers.

  What they did not know, however, was that he never looked back to the point in his life seven years ago. When he tried, his memory was clouded with sharp pain and jagged glass, painted over with the red and blue of emergency lights.

  For more reasons than one, the beautiful Holly was one of the memories barricaded behind that wall, but sometimes, perhaps more often than Adil cared to think about, she escaped. He would dream of her sometimes, her smile and her sweetness, the pure heat of her.

  What could she be now? Adil found himself musing. She had been so determined and so very lively, passionate about her work with art. Was she married? Did she have children?

  The Holly he knew would have been beyond beautiful in a lovely house with an adoring husband and sweet children around her, but the image brought a pang with it. Adil scowled, banishing it away even as he knew that he had no right to be so angry.

  I should see her, for old time's sake. At the very least, I can likely offer her the job she wanted...

  His human resources manager might have a few things to say to him about making a job offer to a woman he had been intimately involved with years ago, but Adil decided he didn't care. It wasn't as if he was going to do more than talk with her for a short while and catch up.

  Be honest with yourself. Is that all you're going to do?

  The voice that rose up to ask him that was his own, but it wasn't a voice the world had heard for years. It belonged to a younger man, a wilder man, the one that Holly had known. Adil had thought that voice long gone, but there it was. For a moment, he wondered at the power of Holly's mere name to bring that part of him out again, but then he pushed it away.

  I want to see her again. Right now, that is all that matters.

  ***

  Holly

  Holly was grateful that the woman calling about her appointment with IntraGlobal had set the time for the end of the day. It meant she had enough time to rush home, take off her waitress uniform, and put on clothes that might convince a large company that she was receptionist material.

  “Hi,” she muttered to herself, putting a pair of paste pearl earrings in, “I'm Holly Ainsley, and I live for answering phones, bringing a cheerful presence to my workplace, and serving my corporate overlords as if they were the best thing since sliced bread...”

  Of course she didn't. She didn't know anyone who did. There were so many things she would rather have been doing, but right now, the most important thing was the idea of not working at Al's Diner anymore. The hours were long, the clientele was cheap, and the boss was beginning to get a look in his eye that she knew altogether too well. It was time to move on, and if she could move up as well, that would
be ideal.

  Before she rushed back out the door, she sent her sister Haley a text:

  Hey Haley! IntraGlobal is getting back to me a lot faster than I thought they would.

  She was still typing out an explanation when her younger sister sent her a text back.

  Yay! U want me to get the puppies?

  Holly sighed. Sometimes she hated being so predictable, but the truth was that she couldn't even have made it this far without her sister. Haley's husband was a well-paid tech worker in the downtown area, and currently he was paying for her sister to go back to school for law. It sometimes rankled to have a sister in law school while she was waiting tables, but knowing Haley was loving Haley, and she was generally pleased for her sister's good fortune.

  Yes please! Holly replied.

  Ha, u got it.

  Thank God for Haley. She wouldn't have gotten this far without her.

  All things considered, when Holly pulled into IntraGlobal's parking lot, she was feeling fairly positive about life. Life was hard. Life was weird, but life was in general going well.

  She sat with her back straight in the waiting room, eyeing the receptionist as she did so. The woman handed her some forms to fill out without a word and returned to the phone call that she had been on when Haley had come in.

  “Look...look...don't yell at me, all right? I'm sorry. I'm... Didn't you hear me? I'm sorry, I'm sorry you're upset and...no...no. Come on, Charles...”

  Holly winced as the receptionist's voice turned soft and placating. The woman, just a few years older than she was, looked entirely exhausted, rubbing one hand over her eyes. Holly wanted nothing more than to walk over and yell down the phone at the man who was giving her such a bad time.

  Aren't things hard enough in life? Holly thought. Do you really need to be a dick, Charles?

  Holly thought a little wryly that it was a long way from where she had been a few years when she had been too shy to stand up for herself at all. As it was, she kept her hands to herself and remembered that she was here to be on her best behavior and to put her best foot forward.

  I'm going to get this job. I'm going to get this job, I'm going to be awesome, and everything's going to be great.

  The receptionist looked up from her call for a moment, and for a second, Holly thought the woman was going to start to cry. Instead, she shook her head and gestured for Holly.

  “Go on in, Miss Ainsley.”

  “Thank you. And um, are you going to be okay?”

  The receptionist rolled her eyes, as if to say this was just another day in a life that didn't surprise her at all. “Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. Just...men, you know?”

  “I do,” Holly said with a wry grin.

  The first thing she realized when she walked into the office was that it was enormous, the entire rear wall taken up with a huge window looking out over the Houston skyline. The sky above was just beginning to take on an indigo tinge, the lights just starting to come on. The office itself was cavernous with a large desk at the center, two chairs in front. The man who stood behind the desk, his head slightly lowered, was large and broad, and for a moment, Holly was confused.

  She had expected to be interviewed in a far humbler office by a middle-manager type. Either this man had taken over his boss's desk to make an impression, or there was something else going on.

  “Hi,” she said cautiously. “The receptionist told me to come in...”

  “Holly...”

  Her body recognized him before the rest of her did. She felt as if her belly had dropped somewhere to the vicinity of her feet, and her heart raced. She could feel her cheeks heat up, and then her brain fizzled to a stop.

  No, it can't be...

  “Adil?”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Adil

  Adil had finally found the liaison that the company needed that morning. It was a good decision, one he was willing to back up, one that would serve his company the best. However, if he was entirely fair about it, the decision might have been hurried along by the idea that human resources had finally told him that an appointment with Holly Ainsley had been lined up.

  Holly.

  He still couldn't quite believe it.

  She was a ghost, a myth, someone who had touched his life so very deeply that he suspected her fingerprints were laid on his spirit. It had been seven years since they had seen each other, seven years since...everything. He was a different man now; how much could she have changed?

  When he saw her standing in the doorway, dressed in a soft, pale blue sundress and a blue jacket, his heart told him that nothing had changed at all, that she was exactly the same.

  “Adil?”

  If Adil were entirely honest with himself, he had spent the last few hours wondering what he would say to her first. How would he speak to her? Would he be casual, would he try to be charming? However, in the face of the reality of the only woman he had ever thought he had loved, it all went out the window.

  Instead, he came around the corner of the desk, and as she looked up at him with the wide eyes he remembered so well, he pulled her into his arms.

  For a moment, Holly stiffened, and Adil realized what he had done. He hadn't seen her in almost a decade, he had no idea who she might be now or hell, who she might be married to...

  Then Holly melted in his arms the way he remembered so well, so terribly sweet, and so terribly perfect, and her arms came up to loop around his neck. He couldn't help himself then. All he could think about was kissing her, and there was no force in the world that could stop him.

  It was as if no time had passed at all, and the passion that welled up between them had never been stopped for seven years. She tasted like honey and warmth, and at first, he was almost gentle with her, trailing his tongue over the fullness of her lower lip as she all but purred in his arms. There was something torturous about holding back when she was right there, so warm and perfect and real, and after a moment, he couldn't resist.

  Adil deepened the kiss, and when her lips parted for him, he drank from her deeply. When she drew lightly on his tongue, it made a rill of heat spill down his spine, and he held her tighter.

  Who knew what might have happened next, but then Holly was pushing him back.

  For a second, Adil wasn't sure if he could let her go, but then sanity reasserted itself and he released her. She stumbled back, unsteady for a moment, and he grasped her lightly by the shoulder. She allowed it long enough to get her legs underneath her, but then she pulled away again.

  “You can't do that!”

  Adil grinned at her. “Why not? Did you dislike it so much?”

  She didn't even bother to fight him, only glaring. “You know I liked it. Hell, I... I just... Don't do it again.”

  He tilted his head to one side, looking down at her bare left hand. “Why not? Are you seeing someone?”

  “No! It's just that you can't just...just mess someone up while they're waiting for an interview.”

  “I believe I can when I'm the one conducting the interview.”

  “You... It's you? You're the one who's hiring me?”

  “I am. I own IntraGlobal, and I believe as the CEO that I'm completely qualified to run a simple interview.”

  For a moment, he thought she would storm right out. Her face took on a becoming shade of pink, and she glared at him. “I don't know if I agree. Conflict of interest.”

  “I don't think I see one.”

  “You don't? I do! I think that having once been in l— I mean, involved with someone means it is very difficult to be objective about them.”

  “You're underestimating me,” Adil said, a slight grin on his face. “I promise, I am qualified for this. I'll be fair. No special treatment.”

  She wavered for a moment. She looked as if she was being torn in two different directions. Adil almost told her that he was only teasing, that if she wished, he would call for a manager to give her a real interview, but then she nodded.

  “All right. Let's see what happens. But
the minute I think you're doing something inappropriate, I'm gone, all right?”

  Adil nodded with a smile. The Holly he remembered had been shy, sometimes having a hard time standing up for herself even when she truly needed to. Somewhere in the last few years, she had picked up a great deal of spirit, and he could only say that it added to her appeal.

  “Of course, Ms. Ainsley. Come, have a seat.”

  ***

  Holly

  If I were clever at all, I would just run on out of here.

  Holly liked to think she was pretty clever, but the fact remained that she really wanted this job. She didn't need it, but it would make a whole lot of things a whole lot easier. However, when she sat down across the desk from Adil, Adil with his night-dark eyes and perfect mouth and slightly amused expression, she felt as if she were sitting down to the lion's dinner table...on the plate.

  Just stay cool. You can leave if you want to.

  Of course, the problem was that she wasn't sure if she wanted to leave. Even reminding herself that he had left her without a word didn't help. She had always said she was over what had happened between them, but apparently there were large parts of her that weren't, that were in fact ready to simply pick up where they had left off.

  Concentrate!

  It actually started out pretty well at first. Instead of simply calling her in for an interview to start things up again, it seemed as if Adil had spoken the truth. He really did own this company, and he certainly was knowledgeable enough to conduct an interview.

  They went over her qualifications, the hours she wanted to work, and her experience in the field. She was just beginning to think that things were going to be fine when he glanced down at her paperwork.

  “It says here that you went to school for art. Is there a reason you're not working in that field now?” Then, more softly, “You were so good at it.”

  “Good doesn't get you shows, unfortunately. That takes connections I never had.”

  Adil looked at her as if startled, and she remembered all over again the gulf between them, the difference between a rich man who had been born into wealth and a girl who had gone to school on a hefty scholarship and paid for lunch with tips from her work at the coffee shop.