Innocent In The Sheikh's Palace (Mills & Boon Modern)

by Dani Collins

  The fact that Eijaz’s blood would eventually rule stirred up old feuds, though. Those who had admired Eijaz as dynamic and modern were elated. Those who had seen him as profligate and careless wanted nothing to do with his surprise heir.

  And even though Akin’s interest in such things as gossip, social media and fashion was less than zero, he was forced to sit through a report on how the world was taking the announcement of his marriage to the woman who was bringing that baby into the world.

  “‘I can’t believe Hannah the Hag bagged a prince,’” one of his mother’s minions read aloud while the palace public relations team wore appalled expressions. A handful of his closest advisers frowned with concern. “‘She must have paid someone or switched the samples herself,’” the reading continued. “‘There’s no other way she could get a man to knock her up.’”

  “She is my wife,” Akin said through clenched teeth. “Never repeat those things. Sue them for libel.”

  “We’ve been taking steps, Your Highness, but these sorts of posts have persisted for weeks. We can’t continue to ignore them in hopes they’ll go away.”

  “What do you suggest I do?”

  “Speak to her about making a statement? She’s been refusing—”

  “You told her these things are being said about her?”

  “She was aware. They’re online.”

  “These attacks are aimed at me. They’re an effort to undermine my global standing and authority over Baaqi. But you had the audacity to take that to her doorstep and told her to solve it? She didn’t ask for this! What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “The Queen—”

  He stopped short of dismissing his mother in front of the staff. There were certain lines he refused to cross no matter how ill formed his mother’s views were these days. He walked out on the meeting, though.

  He hadn’t actually seen his wife much. They had dined with his mother twice since their wedding. Both occasions had been painfully stilted affairs where his mother refused to speak English. He couldn’t discount that she was outright forgetting how, so he hadn’t made an issue of it. He’d also traveled more than once, but he had daily reports from Hannah’s nurse. He understood her to be uncomfortable and tired, which was regarded as normal when she was three weeks from delivery.

  She hadn’t emerged in the night again to watch him swim. He had confined his self-help activities to his shower. He was still perplexed—and yes, titillated—by the fact she had watched him. He didn’t want to be tantalized by her. He rarely indulged himself with sexual imaginings. The desire for orgasm was an annoying appetite, like hunger for food. Yes, his body needed it eventually, but he wouldn’t actually die if he went without sex, so he shouldn’t be experiencing a twitch between his thighs right now, picturing an unpregnant Hannah gripping him while he stroked her slippery folds. What would she do if—

  He yanked a halt on those lascivious thoughts as he arrived at her door. He hit the bell in warning and walked in.

  Her maid appeared, widened her eyes in startled recognition, then dropped her gaze deferentially as she hurried to lead him into a small parlor where Hannah was sitting, reading her tablet. She set it aside when he appeared.

  “Hello.” She looked pale. Her eyes were bruised with lack of sleep. She wasn’t smiling, which he suddenly realized she had done every other time she had seen him.

  He found himself at a loss, not certain how to approach what needed to be said when there was no way to avoid hurting her with it. He should have been working through it on his way here, not pandering to explicit fantasies.

  “How are you feeling?” That seemed a safe start.

  “Let’s just say the air conditioning is saving lives right now.” She wasn’t meeting his gaze and he didn’t think it had anything to do with their intimate encounter the night of their wedding. They’d spoken several times since then and she’d confined her reaction to a self-conscious blush. This was shame, but from a different source.

  He sighed and paced, waving the maid from the room.

  “I’m not particularly intuitive, Hannah. Not when it comes to emotions. Dwelling on what someone might be feeling in a given circumstance has never served me in any profound way. I tend to let them deal with things however they wish and focus on taking action.” He turned back to her. “But there are times when I must recognize that a sacrifice has been made. I realize you are giving something to our country at great cost to yourself.” He nodded toward the tablet she’d set aside.

  “I knew it would be awful, I just didn’t expect it to be this awful.” The break in her voice hit his chest hard enough to crack his breastbone. He didn’t know how it hit so dead center, but it did. He quickly shored up inner walls against what felt like a sneak attack.

  “You shouldn’t have been told what people are saying. People in my position are targets. It’s nothing to do with you.”

  She snorted. “It’s everything to do with me. It’s about me.”

  “It’s not. You’re the catapult they’re using to throw stones at me. Dismiss it. Never think of it again.”

  “Oh, okay. I didn’t realize it was that easy.” She looked to the window onto the courtyard. Her throat flexed as she swallowed.

  He might not be intuitive, but he knew intense pain when he saw it.

  “They are strangers, Hannah. Their opinion of you means less than nothing.”

  “They’re not strangers! They’re people I knew from high school and college. People I worked with. The ambassador of my own country, who shook my hand at our wedding, called my pregnancy an ‘unfortunate twist of fate.’ Your people hate me. One of your PR people asked if I could go on a diet. What kind of idiot doesn’t know how pregnancy works? Your mother can’t even stand to look at me. She knows I’m not good enough to carry your brother’s baby. Don’t even try to tell me that’s not true,” she warned hotly.

  “My mother is not in the market for new friends,” he said flatly. “Do not take her cold shoulder to heart. That way lies madness, trust me.”

  Her gaze flashed up from beneath her crinkled brow. Another shift occurred. He had the sense of having revealed too much and reminded himself he had stopped caring about his mother’s indifference long ago.

  However, it was one thing for his mother to hurt him, and quite another that she was hurting his wife.

  “Fire anyone on the staff who speaks to you in a way you don’t like,” he said tersely.

  “I’m not going to fire anyone! That’s not my place. And I’m not like that. I don’t retaliate. It spurs them to act even uglier next time.”

  “There won’t be a next time.”

  “There is always a next time,” she hurled back at him. “And it’s not like I didn’t expect it. I’m just having trouble shaking it off this time.”

  He let that sink in. “You’ve experienced something like this before?”

  “For God’s sake, Akin, open your eyes! Of course, I’ve experienced this before. My entire life has been one bully after another. Except this time, I can’t run home to Grammy or change schools or reinvent myself in a new job. I’ll have to live with this sort of thing the rest of my life and my baby will—”

  She closed her eyes, mouth pinched. A single tear tracked down her cheek and she struck it away before he had absorbed that he’d seen it.

  “I’m the kind of person people want to pick on. I’ve never understood why. I’m nice. I shower,” she defended on a choke. “But I’ve always been Lice Girl and Horseface Hannah and That Frigid Librarian. Why?” she demanded, eyes glowing with a sheen of angry, agonizing tears. “Explain to me why. Then maybe I’ll be able to stop whatever it is that I’m doing wrong. Is it because I’m not pretty?” she asked with a pang in her voice. “Is that all it is? Because I can’t change that.”

  The fractured crack in his chest was turning into a chasm. He knew this
pain. He knew rejection so intimately; he couldn’t see small red cars and snap-together train tracks without reexperiencing it.

  Why was Eijaz exalted for his misbehavior and Akin’s efforts to excel ignored? Why was his brother, who made jokes and pitched tantrums, so much better than he was, when he minded his manners and did as he was told? Akin had been given reasons for it at different times, but none that he had understood. Ever.

  “Ignore me,” Hannah said through a mouth that trembled, swiping impatiently at her wet cheeks. “I haven’t been sleeping and I’m hormonal as hell. I’m not usually so weak.”

  She wasn’t weak. He was having trouble figuring out exactly what she was. She baffled him continuously and put such an ache in his chest he couldn’t speak, but she was the furthest thing from weak.

  “Normally when I get maudlin, I go write a grant or work through the stacks to be sure all the books have been shelved correctly,” she said with a weary sniff. “Got a library that needs cataloging?”

  Don’t do that, he wanted to say of her deflection, even though it was very much his own coping strategy. He would far rather take action than suffer the emotions that were trying to take him over as they stood here.

  “We do have a library,” he said, clearing a thickness from his throat. “It is scrupulously organized, but it contains books in several languages. You might find something that interests you. I can show you if you like.”

  “You’re a busy man. As I’ve been told every time I’ve asked about you,” she said with a faint smile that died on contact.

  Remorse pinched him. She was lonely and struggling and he had had no idea.

  “I’ve seen the library,” she dismissed with another faint smile. “It’s beautiful.” She inched herself to the edge of the cushion. “But right now, I need the potty. Again.”

  He moved to catch beneath her elbows and helped her to her feet.

  “This is why I’m exhausted.” Her mouth trembled between wry amusement and fraying courage. “Making a baby is hard work. Remember this some future day when I’m under your skin and you want to walk me into the desert and leave me there.”

  He did something he couldn’t recall doing outside of a sexual encounter. He slid his arms around her and embraced her. Her belly made it awkward. He felt the small jolt of surprise that went through her as she realized he was hugging her and not letting her escape it, but after a moment, she obeyed his light touch on the back of her head and let her brow come to rest on his chest.

  “It will be okay, Hannah.” He didn’t know if he was telling the truth, and his conscience twisted, because what if it wasn’t?

  “Every time I convince myself you’re a grouch who is avoiding me because you hate that you had to marry me, you do something I couldn’t possibly expect.”

  “I don’t hate that we’re married.” He tucked his chin to look down at the top of her head. Her hair wasn’t a plain mousy brown as he’d thought. There were glints of cinnamon and copper and sable.

  When had he become a poet, picking out strands of color in a woman’s hair?

  “You barely talk to me,” she mumbled in accusation. “I’m pregnant with the baby who will usurp what you thought would be yours. You have to resent us.”

  “Oh, Hannah.” He found himself playing with one little tail of downy soft hair that curled up near the base of her skull. “I barely talk to anyone unless I’m issuing orders. As for coveting that crown... I am filled with pity for your son. My only hope is that together we’ll be able to mold him into a person who is strong enough to bear up under the pressure without being warped by it.”

  His deepest worry was that this baby would turn out like Eijaz, and all his efforts to maintain Baaqi’s independence would be thrown away on a playboy’s impulse.

  “I’m counting on you being a good mother,” he told her, running a hand down her spine, massaging her lower back. “Because I have no idea how to be a good father.”

  She stiffened and jerked back in what he read as rejection, even though he’d only meant his touch as comfort.

  Her face wore shock and panic and the most beleaguered look as she said, “My water broke.”

  Akin called the nurse, who had Hannah transferred to the medical wing. He went back to work. He wouldn’t be any use to her. The closest he’d been to a birth had been a feral cat in the back of a tent when he’d set up a presence near a vulnerable village some years ago. He had called his medic to keep an eye on things and remove the animals to a better home when it was all over. It had taken several hours, so he knew to expect that much.

  But when he woke to a lack of announcements and arrived to an office going about their day, he blurted, “Is there any news?”

  A sea of blank faces stared at him and someone tried to turn on the television.

  “On my wife.” It rolled off the tongue, but he didn’t understand why. He suspected it was a possessive thing. His country belonged to his ruler. Virtually nothing in his world was his alone. Even Hannah would have to be shared with his future king, but he still liked being able to call her his.

  One of his assistants picked up a phone and soon relayed that things were progressing normally. “A transfer to hospital should not be necessary, but they are prepared to do so if need arises. Every precaution will be taken so our next king arrives safely.”

  All the gazes dropped to the screens in front of them, signaling Hannah was forgotten.

  She was actually quite small. Had no one noticed that? She only stood as high as his armpit and she was all belly. His brother had been built like him, an ox of a man.

  She is not disposable, he wanted to shout.

  That rush of inexplicable rage was enough to have him trying reflexively to compress his emotions back into their tightly packed bottle, but it only took an inane question about a political matter to snap his temper again.

  “Who told her to lose weight? Find out who it was and fire them,” he bit out to his assistant and shoved to his feet. “Tell the American ambassador he should go home and get control of his news outlets. He’s not welcome here until he has personally apologized to my wife for the insults they’ve printed.” He jabbed his finger on the table in front of the man in charge of his calendar. “Tell my wife’s secretary that, under no circumstance, is the American ambassador to speak to her, in person or over the phone. If he writes to her, return his letters.”

  “I’m sorry,” his assistant stammered. “I don’t understand. How will he apologize if—”

  “He’ll have to speak to me, won’t he?” Akin said in his deadliest voice.

  Every single person who heard him slunk his head into his shoulders. His assistant, a stalwart servant of more than a decade, swallowed loudly.

  “As you command, Your Highness. I’ll attend to it immediately.”

  Akin was already stalking away, barking at the nearest person that he would be in the palace surgery, where the royal medical staff treated the family for all but the most serious ailments.

  When he arrived, he was halted from proceeding down the hall to the delivery room by the nurse who’d been with Hannah since her arrival from New York.

  “She’s pushing. It’s going well. Fast, which can be distressing. There’s not much chance for her to catch her breath between contractions, but she’s coping.”

  “She’s in pain?” Why did that slice into him like a broadsword?

  “Yes,” the young woman said gently, her smile calling him a dimwit. Of course, Hannah was in pain. It was childbirth.

  He looked past her. “It sounds like a party.” Was that punk rock?

  “It’s her birthing playlist. The staff are enjoying it. But it will take some time,” the nurse said. “I’ll notify you myself the moment there’s news.”

  The nurse hurried back down the hall and he stood there like a chunk of furniture. A thousand priorities danced thr
ough his head, but he found himself cocking an ear, trying to hear the lyrics on the next song and the next. There was a string of angry-sounding “Hey, hey, hey!” and something about a bad movie and another complaining of times like this.

  He pinched the bridge of his nose. What the hell kind of woman had he tied himself to? He had been worried enough to lose his temper and she was in there laboring like the world’s biggest badass.

  An angry scream, the kind he’d only heard in the throes of battle, ripped through the air, stopping his heart. The music abruptly silenced.

  He shot down the hall and burst into the room, hand reaching for the gun he wasn’t wearing.

  She was naked on the bed, a sheet draped over her waist, and an inchworm of a newborn, bright red and mewling, was being settled on her bare chest.

  The music had been switched to a gentle piano over waterfalls and dolphins. It was so surreal he could only stand there in shock.

  “Your Highness,” the doctor said in a scandalized scold, even though he was the one looking up Akin’s wife’s skirt! A nurse draped a towel across Hannah so only the top of her chest and the baby’s head were visible.

  Hannah gently cradled her shaking hand around the damp wet hair of the infant. Her cheeks were tracked with tears. Her hair stood every which way and stuck to her sweaty face. She was florid with exertion, but when she smiled her metal teeth at him, he felt it like a punch in the heart. He had never seen anything so beautiful in his life.

  “Come see him,” she invited in a voice that rasped.

  He was drawn forward as though pulled by a spell.

  “I was convinced the scans were wrong and he would actually be a girl. I always wanted a daughter, but look at him. He’s everything I could ever want or need.”

  The bond between a mother and her daughter was special. Perhaps one day, Akin found himself thinking, he might give her that girl she secretly yearned for. It was a foolish, wayward thought when he was quite sure the last thing she wanted to think about was childbirth again. He brushed his whimsy aside, but he couldn’t resist touching her, gently squeezing her shoulder and letting his hand linger to caress her soft, damp skin.