The Sheik And The Virgin Secretary

The wedding of my dreams was only days away...until I discovered my fianc? had a nasty habit of unfaithfulness. So to mend my wounded pride, I turned to the most eligible man I knew: my boss, Prince Rafiq of Lucia-Serrat! Although the dashingly handsome prince had enticed dozens of women, I had just one thing in my mind when I proposed becoming Rafiq's mistress: revenge on the man who'd humiliated me before. It was easier than I'd expected to go from Rafiq's chaste secretary to his lustful lover. What I didn't expect was to fall head over heels for a man who could give me anything I wanted, except his heart....

A fan-favorite from #1 New York Times bestselling author Susan Mallery, originally published as The Sheik and the Virgin Secretary in 2005. The wedding of Kiley’s dreams is only days away when she discovers that her fiancé has been unfaithful. Heartbroken, she turns to the most eligible man she knows: her boss, Prince Rafiq of Lucia-Serrat. Kiley isn’t interested in love—only in getting revenge on her cheating ex. But what she never expected is to fall head over heels for a man who could give her anything she wants, except for his heart...

The wedding of Kiley Hendrick's dreams was only days away ... until she discovered her fiance had a nasty habit of unfaithfulness. So to mend her wounded pride, she turned to the most eligible man she knew: her boss, Prince Rafiq of Lucia-Serrat! Although the dashingly handsome prince had enticed dozens of women, she had just one thing on her mind when she proposed becoming Rafiq's mistress: revenge on the man who'd humiliated her.

It was bad enough being hauled out of bed by palace guards. Now Victoria McCallan had just offered to pay off her father's gambling debts—with herself as the prize! So the palace secretary was shocked when sexy Prince Kateb made her a counteroffer…. When Kateb whisked Victoria off to the desert to be his mistress for six months, the widowed ruler had no intention of falling in love. But the outspoken Texas transplant was soon tempting him to change his royal ways. Duty decreed the El Deharia sheik should wed a proper mate, but Kateb's heart was telling him something else: to claim Victoria as his woman—now and forever.

The Sheik—E. M. Hull’s best-selling novel that became a wildly popular film starring Rudolph Valentino—kindled “sheik fever” across the Western world in the 1920s. A craze for all things romantically “Oriental” swept through fashion, film, and literature, spawning imitations and parodies without number. While that fervor has largely subsided, tales of passion between Western women and Arab men continue to enthrall readers of today’s mass-market romance novels. In this groundbreaking cultural history, Hsu-Ming Teo traces the literary lineage of these desert romances and historical bodice rippers from the twelfth to the twenty-first century and explores the gendered cultural and political purposes that they have served at various historical moments. Drawing on “high” literature, erotica, and popular romance fiction and films, Teo examines the changing meanings of Orientalist tropes such as crusades and conversion, abduction by Barbary pirates, sexual slavery, the fear of renegades, the Oriental despot and his harem, the figure of the powerful Western concubine, and fantasies of escape from the harem. She analyzes the impact of imperialism, decolonization, sexual liberation, feminism, and American involvement in the Middle East on women’s Orientalist fiction. Teo suggests that the rise of female-authored romance novels dramatically transformed the nature of Orientalism because it feminized the discourse; made white women central as producers, consumers, and imagined actors; and revised, reversed, or collapsed the binaries inherent in traditional analyses of Orientalism.

When prim professor Zara Paxton ventures to distant Bahania, she wants only to find the father she'd never known. But her father turns out to be King Hassan of Bahania. The desert king promptly put his "princess" under the protection of a muscular, mesmerizing Sheik, who sets Zara's sense aflame, yet he refuses to quench the fire! Steely security liaison Rafe Stryker scorns lasting love. But before he knows it, the bespectacled brunette sneaks into his heart, making him throb with the urge to taste her sweetness. Clearly, innocent Princess Zara wanted to be his woman, but taking her was tantamount to treason. Rafe knows the consequences, but even he can stand so much temptation.