From one desert prison to another…
Jeweled veil weighing heavily on her head, Zoe Martin waits for her sheikh husband-to-be. The shame of her adoptive family, orphan Zoe has endured six years of being kept a slave–now she’s being sold into marriage… to a man known as The Beast!
The stakes couldn’t be higher … or more sinfully pleasurable!
Being discarded to the sheikh has one bonus–this could mean freedom! Zoe must play along with the three-day–and three-night–ceremony, but she isn’t expecting the blazing attraction from just one stolen glance at playboy sheikh Nadir….
Sheikh Nadir ibn Shihab is not thrilled be getting married but he knows he has a duty and he’s willing to do whatever needs to be done to get in the good graces of this tribe. He was engaged to one woman and at the end of the three day wedding he gave her back. He now needs to marry whoever they put in front of him. He’s pretty shocked when he sees an American sitting in the brides spot but doesn’t utter a peep against her. He plans to do his duty and then stick her up in his mountain home so that he’ll never have to see her again.
Zoe Martin wants nothing more than to get back to America and away from her awful relatives. She plans to go ahead with the marriage and then make her escape from her new husband at the earliest possible time. She’s been living a horrid life since her parents died and now she needs to get to Texas so that she can go ahead with her plans for her medical degree.
Zoe and Nadir do end up getting married and much to Zoe’s chagrin, consummating the marriage (he’s just too sexy to resist!). Plans go Zoe’s way, however when she talks Nadir in to taking her on a trip to China with him right after the wedding. She plans to leave over and over but it’s never a good time and she’s constantly watched and guarded. She’s also finding her new husband quite the gentleman and having a great time in his bed. E turns out to be a nice guy and really talks to her about things – even going so far as to get her opinion on several of his business matters. But for all of Nadir’s progressive ideas in business that does NOT go so far as to letting his wife get a medical degree. That is just NOT done and he’s firm on it. Zoe finds herself falling for Nadir but how can she stay with him when all of her dreams will be wiped away.
This was a pretty good category. I haven’t read a story about a sheikh in about a hundred years but I liked this one. He, unfortunately, was stuck in the middle ages, or in this case the middle east, and refused to let a woman hold a position meant for a man. He got advice from Zoe but that didn’t mean she could make decisions on her own. I can’t say I loved the neanderthal thinking but it fit quite well with the story.
Zoe had been supposedly kept by her Jazaari relatives as more or less a slave. She did all the dirty work from what I could glean from the story but it never went in to great detail. Not, did Zoe tell Nadir about the horrible things that she supposedly suffered. I was a frustrated with this as the story is based on the fact that for so long she wasn’t allowed to think for herself or have a life and now supposed it was the same but since we never really got background I didn’t really feel Zoe’s suffering.
Now the love story was more about sex and companionship than really romance but it still worked. The end was quite satisfying and though I thought it a bit unrealistic is was nice to think that it COULD – this is fiction, after all. 🙂
Rating: 3.75 out of 5
So…does Zoe end up being able to go to medical school?
Ok, I read this a while ago but I believe she did…eventually. Definitely not right away though. 🙂