by Leslie North
“Yeah, he and Bahir don’t seem to like me very much. Crap. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
Amy waved her hand. “No, please. Our husbands are idiots, so there is no need to protect us. Don’t worry. They’ll come around.”
“Hopefully, I won’t be imposing too much longer,” Danielle said nervously. “Fish tacos, you said? As lovely as that sounds, we had lunch two hours ago, and despite what Riyad has told you, I’m eating fine.”
“Actually, the truth is that I got kind of tired of fish tacos, but when the cook realized there was another American under the roof, and a pregnant one at that, she stocked up on supplies. We might be eating fish tacos for a month. You’re not allergic, are you?” Amy asked in apparent sudden panic.
“No, I’m not. And I would be happy to relieve you of your fish taco burden,” Danielle laughed, relaxing a little. It was hard to miss the way Taslima was staring at her, but the look wasn’t hostile or threatening. Simply curious.
The old woman’s gaze suddenly shifted behind her, and without turning around, Danielle knew what she was looking at. Yesterday, Riyad had left a pair of his pants slung over the back of the chair, and she hadn’t moved them.
“When you do come to leave us, what do you plan on doing?” Taslima asked, moving to the chair and shoving her son’s clothing aside to sit down. Natalie and Amy exchanged amused looks as they started to serve the food.
Danielle was not at all hungry, but she didn’t want to let the girls down in front of Taslima. “I’ll go back to America. I’m trying to decide where. I love the snow, so I might settle down a little more north. I was a good paralegal, so I’m sure I’ll find work again.”
“And your child? Have you thought of any names?”
“My mother and her mother were named Danielle, so if it’s a girl, I’m sort of expected to continue the tradition, but since I’m currently the last Danielle standing, I’m leaning toward naming the girl after my father’s mother. Her name was Genevieve, and I’ve always loved that name. If it’s a boy, I’m thinking of naming him after my father. Joshua.”
“Those are lovely names.” Taslima smiled. “We are more than happy to extend the hospitality of our palace for as long as you need it. I, for one, would adore having a baby in the palace again, and you would have all the support you wanted. Bahir and Iman will come around.”
They weren’t the problem, but Danielle couldn’t very well voice out loud that if she stayed, she was most likely going to become Taslima’s youngest son’s mistress. Despite the woman’s casual reaction to all of this, Danielle had the feeling that particular revelation wouldn’t be welcome at the post-lunch pre-dinner meal.
“I appreciate the offer, but I don’t think staying is the right move for me.” She changed the subject. “Amy, these fish tacos are amazing. Where did you say these were from?” It was a poor attempt at redirecting the conversation, but no one called her out on it. The talk turned to food and pregnancy horror stories.
Despite the light atmosphere, the meal dragged on. Finally, Natalie and Amy cleaned up and left. Taslima lingered.
“Can I make you a cup of coffee or tea?” Danielle asked. “I’m not allowed to drink it, so I just smell and yearn.”
Taslima smiled gently. “You should have said something. I’ll make sure that some decaf is made available for you. But no, I do not require any right now. I’d like to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind.”
“Sure,” Danielle said nervously. “It’s your palace, after all. Ask away.”
“Why is the father of your child no longer in your life?”
Apparently they weren’t going to pussyfoot around the issue. Danielle actually appreciated it. “Well, it turned out that he was married and wanted me to terminate the pregnancy. He has no problems not being in my life anymore, and as it turns out, I don’t miss him, either.”
“Raising a child as a single mother is an admirable feat, and I have no doubt that you’re a strong woman, but what you’re proposing concerns me. You have no family, and it seems that in America, you have no friends. You intend to go through the remainder of your pregnancy and the birth of your child alone. Never mind trying to take care of a newborn on your own. Surely, you understand that it’s not advisable.”
Taslima was obviously once again trying to convince her to stay.
“You do realize that I’m only here because your rebel group mistook me for someone important in Riyad’s life.” Danielle took a jagged breath and hoped her voice wouldn’t crack. “I just met him. The idea of staying here is even crazier than trying to do things on my own, but I do appreciate your wanting to help.”
Taslima blinked at this. “So you don’t think you’re important to Riyad? His clothes are in your suite. My sons tell me that when he’s here, he doesn’t even bother going to his own suite. He spends all of his time with you.” She cocked her head. “Perhaps the only person misreading the situation here is you.”
Danielle’s jaw dropped. “No offense….”
“None taken,” Taslima interrupted quickly as she stood. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go say hello to my grandchildren, and then I’m going to rest before dinner. Perhaps I’ll see you then.”
She was obviously fleeing from the argument, but Danielle didn’t stop her. The truth was that she didn’t want to fight, either. First, she’d had nobody, and now she had a large and wealthy family practically shoving “home” down her throat. It was hard to swallow.
Needing to stretch her legs, Danielle abandoned her suite for a walk outside in the gardens. The palace grounds offered an oasis in the middle of the desert. Big leafy banana trees and small cacti and succulent plants decorated a stone sidewalk. After staring at it from her window for a week, Danielle practically had the path committed to memory.
Sitting on one of the benches, she pulled out her phone to scroll through her social media sites. One of the local blogs caught her attention when she saw a familiar face with his arm around another woman.
Sheikh Riyad Seduces the Seductress.
Her stomach clenched as she checked the dates in the article. They matched up to the days that Riyad had been gone. He’d left her to sleep with this other woman.
This stunningly beautiful woman.
Shutting the phone off, she closed her eyes and tried not to cry. With everyone asking her to stay, a part of herself had begun to entertain the idea. Despite their uncertain future, things had felt good between them, but apparently she was only kidding herself.
Once a womanizer, always a womanizer. She’d been a fool to think she was going to be able to change him.
“Danielle?”
Speak of the devil. Trying to get a grip on herself, Danielle stood and followed the sound. She found Riyad closer to the palace entrance. “There you are. I saw you from your window. The guards said that you’d been here for almost two hours.”
Had it really been that long? “I guess I lost track of time. Sorry. Is it dinnertime?” She tried to brush past him, but he reached out and grabbed her elbow.
“Are you okay? Natalie called me and admitted that she left you alone with my mother. She has a good heart, but she can be a bully.”
“How is it going?’ Danielle asked suddenly. “This mission to finally shut down the rebellion so that I can go home. Can you give me any details? Maybe tell me what you’re doing when you’re not here? Or tell me how long you think I’m going to be here?”
“Whoa.” He held up his hands and backed up a step. “What’s going on, Danielle? If you’re feeling cooped up, I can arrange for more time outside the palace.”
“I’m not a prisoner, Riyad! You shouldn’t have to arrange for me to leave the palace! I want to get back to my life. I need to get back to my life!”
“Your life?” His eyes blazed in anger as he took her arm in a hard grip. “Which life are you referring to? The one where you were dating your married boss, or the one where you were jetting all over the world and sleeping w
ith anyone who seems interested in you?”
He could have punched her in the stomach, and it wouldn’t have hurt as much as his words did. She yanked her arm out of his grasp and stepped away from him. “I’m leaving. Tonight,” she whispered hoarsely.
“Danielle, you can’t leave. You are still in danger. I shouldn’t have said what I did. I’m close to figuring everything out.”
“Really?” Pulling out her phone, she pulled up the blog post. “Because it seems to me that maybe all you’re doing is stringing me along. I’d been entertaining ideas that maybe you’re different. That maybe, with you, I could have everything I wanted. That maybe I loved you.” Blowing out a breath, she continued, “But the truth is that this is all you are. And you’re no better than my married boss. You’re simply another man who doesn’t want anything from me besides sex. ” Shoving the phone into his hand, she turned and ran back inside.
He didn’t follow.
13
“Posting extra guards at the door to ensure that she doesn’t leave isn’t going to fix whatever argument you had with Danielle,” Riyad’s mother commented as she walked into his suite.
“Mother.” Dutifully, he rose and kissed her cheek. “How are you?”
“Unhappy. I thought my sons were worried about my safety, but instead, they were hiding a beautiful, lost soul from me.” She returned the kiss and patted him on the cheek. “And you, my son. You break my heart; you know that?”
“I thought you’d be pleased to know that I’ve been working with Atif,” Riyad grumbled as he sank back down against the couch cushions. “I’m not wasting my life away.”
“I am very pleased that you want to protect your kingdom and your family. I am not, however, happy that you are working with Atif, or that you’ve hurt the woman you’re so clearly in love with. If your brothers weren’t so busy doubting you, then maybe they could have helped you before now.”
“I’m not in love. I just met her. I realize you want to see me married and settled, but I’m not that kind of man.”
“You asked her to stay. I know you did. You thought that she could be your mistress, and you’d be happy with that.” Taslima narrowed her eyes. “I know I raised you better than that.”
“I wanted her as my lover, yes, but I would never call her a mistress. I would also not let anyone else call her my mistress,” Riyad argued. It was absurd that he was even having this conversation with his mother. “I wanted to help raise her child, and this evening, she told me that I was no better than the child’s father, the man who abandoned her.” His mood darkened even more. He’d hurt her with his words, but to hear those words from her mouth had been shattering.
“And why did she tell you that?”
With a sigh, Riyad reached over to the table and handed the phone to his mother. “She saw that and assumed it was true. That I had slept with another woman.”
Taslima glared at him before she turned on the phone. After a few seconds, she pursed her lips. “I know this woman. She’s Miksa Antar’s lover.”
“Wife, now.” Taslima looked up in surprise, and Riyad nodded. “Oh, yeah. Nothing but love between those two. Seeing them together is almost a little sickening.” He held up a hand as if swearing an oath. “I didn’t sleep with her. She’s loyal only to Antar.”
His mother slowly set the phone back on the table. “Is that the only reason you didn’t sleep with her?”
“I had orders,” Riyad muttered, uneasily rubbing his chest. “Seduce Shaia. Get information about Antar. She saw through me from the first moment, but all I could think of was Danielle. The mere thought of being with another woman sickened me.”
“Why on earth would you need to seduce Shaia for information about Antar? The man is the pillar of his community. An open book. All you’d have to do is ask, and he’d tell you anything you wanted to know.”
Riyad was about to explain Atif’s suspicions about Antar when he remembered what his mother had said earlier. He frowned. “Why are you unhappy that I’m working with Atif?”
“The man is a snake. He should never have been reinstated back into the intelligence agency, but Salah wanted a family connection there. After your father died, Salah went over my head.” She pressed her lips into an angry line. “How long have you been working for him?”
“Three years. What do you mean, reinstated?”
“I’m not surprised that he didn’t tell you. When you and your brothers were children, Atif asked your father for a loan for a business venture, but when your father looked into it, he thought it would inevitably fail. He refused to give him the loan, and they fought over it. Atif joined the agency not long after that, and for years, he tried to use its resources to bring down your father. Of course, your father could never prove it, but eventually he was able to use his influence to remove Atif, and he did.”
Riyad tensed. Atif had been his mentor. He’d offered Riyad the chance to redeem himself in the eyes of his family, but now, with what his mother had told him….
Atif knew everything about his life. He knew about the Karawi family. Atif could have easily had him followed and gone on to use Danielle to point him directly at Antar. While Riyad was busy chasing down a false lead, this false cousin could have been gathering more information. Learning how to break him.
“Danielle,” he whispered as he bolted upright. “If he gets his hands on her again, he’ll kill her. Mother, I need you to keep her here. Promise me that you will not let her leave the palace.”
Taslima rose in a panic. “Of course, but what’s going on?”
“I now know who the head of the rebellion is.” Leaning over, he kissed his mother. “Thank you. This is going to end tonight, and then I promise to make things right with Danielle. Let Bahir and Iman know that I’ll back in a few hours, and then we’ll get this settled once and for all.”
“There was the time we took the sailboat out in the middle of the night and got lost,” Bahir offered as he lounged on the car seat. Despite what they were heading out to do, he seemed completely relaxed. Strange, since he’d been the first of them directly affected by the rebellion.
“I knew where we were supposed to go, but you weren’t taking direction very well,” Iman grumbled. He, on the other hand, was tense. Tonight would be a huge victory for him, and he rarely took those lightly.
“There was the time that the two of you came to visit me in college, and we all got stranded on the roof of that club,” Riyad chimed in as he tried to relax. Inside, he was seething.
They were trying to recall the last time all three had done something alone together. Without their mother or father or uncle, and now, without wives or children. The last time they’d done something without fighting.
“This is not your fault, Riyad,” Bahir said quietly. “You couldn’t have known, and maybe if we had been paying better attention, we would have seen it as well.”
Riyad shook his head. “This is my fault, and there’s nothing you can say to convince me otherwise.”
Before his brothers could continue the argument, the car stopped. Taking a deep breath, Riyad grabbed the door handle and wrenched the door open. It was time.
After gathering everything he needed, he’d called Atif and told him that he had urgent information about Antar. They’d agreed to meet at the Rooftop Lounge, and then Bahir and Iman had orchestrated everything so that the Lounge would be filled with palace guards and police. All undercover. All pretending to drink and dance the night away.
Riyad entered by himself and found Atif was waiting for him in a corner booth. “This had better be good,” he snarled. “I had plans for tonight.”
Riyad’s anger only grew as he sat down in front of a man he’d loved. For so long, he’d been lost. He’d had no purpose in life, and Atif had given that to him. Atif had treated him like family…when all along, he’d been using Riyad.
“I think you’re going to find this very good,” Riyad said as he pulled a flash drive out of his pocket and set it gently on
the table. “Although things didn’t go quite the way I had planned. Did you send me after Shaia because you knew it would tear me up inside to cheat on Danielle, or did you really think that she would turn on Antar?”
“Tear you up inside?” Atif chuckled. “What on earth are you talking about? You’ve never had problems seducing women before.”
“Yes, but that was before Danielle, and before you tried to claim not to know how important she is to me. Why don’t I tell you what’s on that drive? You see, it’s the same one you gave me to give to your friend in this very spot a couple weeks ago. It occurred to me that if you’d been working all this time to bring down my family, it probably gave you great amusement to have me deliver the information.”
The older man straightened and started looking around nervously. “Riyad, what are you…?”
“The only problem is that you trained me well. Probably too well.” Riyad tapped the flash drive with his finger. “It was all too easy to track down that man and even easier to get him to return the drive along with a host of other files. Imagine my surprise when I discovered they were all personal photos of me and my family. From the looks of it, you’ve had multiple people tailing us for years. Telephoto lenses. Very stealthy. How much personal information have you given to the rebellion, Cousin? Would you really have harmed two little girls?”
Knowing that he was caught, Atif’s lips twisted in an ugly smile. “The girls weren’t meant to be harmed, if it could be helped.” He shrugged almost delicately as if the lives of children didn’t matter. “The ransom money would have funded the rebellion, and if a bastard child died in the process…” he let his voice trail off, and it was all Riyad could do not to reach across the table and punch him.
“What about Danielle? Did you really think I would denounce my brother and start a civil war over a woman I’d just met?”
“Of course not. I’d planned on killing her and then spreading the news that Iman and Bahir, in their own hypocrisy, allowed their brother’s unborn child to die to hide yet another of your family’s scandals. Your brother would have had to abdicate in dishonor, and the next family member would have risen to power. Me.” The man’s eyes glittered with hatred. “You ruined that when you rescued the woman and fell for her. I had no choice but to point you in the direction of someone else while I tried to get my hands on her again.”
