I
came into the family of Decadent Publishing authors through their 1Night Stand
line, back in 2012. Unbelievable as it sounds, it’s been 2 years of me being
with them and about 8 books published...but none of them stays close to my
heart as my second story with them, again a 1NS offering.
For,
you see, this story reveals a facet of me I was a bit wary of showing the
world, because so much ‘bad’ and ‘wrong’ is associated with this identity...
Psst – reveal time... I’m a Muslim.
And
yes, I wear a scarf... and yes, too – I do write romance.
That’s
when the idea struck that there hasn’t been many romances with Muslim
characters or even on the backdrop of the Muslim faith. In my own way, I wanted
to demystify this aspect of so many people’s lives; Muslims who don’t get to
show what the real life is like for them day to day. I didn’t set out with huge
aspirations to change the world or whatever, but hey, they say ‘write what you
know’, and I know this world, so this is how the plot for Once Upon A Second Chance came to be.
Another
thing about me – I’m a huge soap opera fan. The craziest/most skewed/more
ludicrous plot twists and revelations, the better. No wonder, then, that this
facet of me also made it into the story when I started plotting.
That’s
how I ‘met’ Leila Hassan Al-Nadir. She’s a Muslim woman with a rather
strange/hefty backstory – at seventeen, she was sold as a virgin bride to a
much older man in the United Arab Emirates, her life a complete hell for the
next decade when she failed to produce an heir for her husband.
And
then something happens – her husband divorces her...but another man is waiting
in the sidelines to marry her. His name is Khalid Al-Nadir, and for a perfect
night, he appears to Leila as the true knight in shining armour galloping in on
his white horse.
Then
reality strikes the next morning...when she awakens in a foreign country, in a
stranger’s house, Khalid nowhere to be found. He’s dumped her in this place and
left.
Soapie-esque,
right? You bet! But we’re not done yet, because Madame Eve from 1Nigh Stand is
about to meddle in there, and set this estranged couple up for a blind date on
the island of Mauritius.
Khalid
has a lot of explaining to do. Try as she wants to despise him, Leila cannot
help but see him as the man who saved her from hell, the light that came in the
darkness. Can she ever forgive him...especially when she learns of the true
reasons behind Khalid’s involvement in her life?
The
song that inspired me for this story was Laserlight by David Guetta and Jessie
J. Focus on the lyrics to this one – I had what Leila felt for Khalid, the
reason that kept her from hating him for what he’d done to her.
Take
a listen!
When someone has touched your world in
this way, how do you let go? Will Leila turn over a new leaf after this
night...or will Khalid come through to grant them the hope of a second chance?
Blurb:
Leila Hassan Al-Nadir spent
ten years in a forced, abusive marriage in the United Arab Emirates,
before her husband divorced her...and another man stepped into his place to
make her his wife. But before she can look at a future with this new man, he
abandons her, dropping her off on the island of Mauritius in the care of his
stepmother.
Khalid Al-Nadir wants
nothing more than to be with Leila, his wife. But he hides a deep, dark
secret—his intentions when he made her his weren’t noble. Despite falling in love
with her in the end, he knows she will be better off without him.
Leila craves answers;
Khalid desires salvation. Fate, in the form of Khalid’s stepmother, intervenes
and sets this estranged couple up for a one night stand date with Madame Eve’s
agency.
Can Leila and Khalid have a
second chance, once they both face the truth that brought them together?
A snort escaped her. Her home. More like her prison, the
place she went after her father had sold her off to be a fifty-five-year-old
man’s broodmare. Thank goodness she’d been barren and the old bastard never got
what he sought from her—a male heir. She’d suffered beatings every month when
she failed to get pregnant, his almost-nightly visits to her bed just one step
short of rape…. Ten years and her “husband” hadn’t accepted the fact she would
never give him a child, male or female. He’d made sure to buy her from her
father as a virgin, assured of her being untainted by any other before him,
unlike his two other wives who’d been married previously. The women who should
have given him his heir, since they’d born offspring for their previous husbands.
“Chérie? What’s the
matter?”
Leila tore her thoughts
from the dark memories and stared at the woman who had welcomed her into her
home three months earlier. Before meeting Carole, she had never believed
compassion existed, or peace thrived on a small island called Mauritius in the southern Indian Ocean. She’d known a
life of fear and paranoia in her Arab father’s house in London, and then the United Arab Emirates household of Bashir
Al-Arif, the man who had bought her virginity.
A sliver of remembrance
sliced through her. She did recall something else. Tenderness, caring,
gentleness—all of which she’d found one magical night with the man who saved
her from her painful existence, when her first husband divorced her out of the
blue.
The man who made her his
wife…then drugged her before morning came and transported her all the way from
Abu Dhabi to Mauritius, where he dropped her, still unconscious, into Carole’s
care, before he vanished.
Don’t think of him. If she did, the tears would
threaten to fall, the anguish would come back, as well as the desperation of
knowing he’d saved her only to leave her even more alone than before.
“Ma chérie?” Carole
raised a dainty porcelain cup in her direction.
Tea. The solution to all
woes. The British thought so, and on their former colony of Mauritius, even
French-origin natives needed their three o’clock fix.
Leila sighed and dumped her
tote on a sofa before she stepped out onto the wide terrace facing the clear
blue waters of the Grand Baie lagoon. In what was dubbed the Côte d’Azur of the island, on the
northwest coastal tip, she didn’t stand out with her fair skin and flaxen hair.
She passed for a tourist or even a member of the white descendants of French
rulers who’d stayed despite the British seizing power over two centuries
earlier. She shouldn’t feel like the odd one out here, like the pale foreigner
she’d been in the UAE, but she did.
Leila was on temporary
reprieve before the questions came. Carole poured her a cuppa.
No sooner was the drink in
front of her than the inquisition began.
From Mauritius with love,
Zee
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