by Lucy Monroe
Dark color slashed Sayed’s cheeks above his closely cropped beard. “Yes, in fact, there is.”
“What? Really? Where? Show me.” She was perfectly willing to be sidetracked from the discussion they had to have.
He laughed and shook his head. “You are pretty irresistible when you’re all enthusiastic.”
“So, show me.”
“After we talk.”
All anticipation drained away and she turned from him. “Dr. Batsmati called you, too. I thought he would.”
“Actually, I haven’t spoken to the good doctor.” Sayed’s gaze probed hers, stripping her bare if he but knew it. “Is this rather depressed appearance because he told you there was no baby, or that you are pregnant?”
“I’m not depressed,” she lied.
“Uh-huh.”
She flopped down onto the settee, no longer concerned with presenting the best image of the “one that got away” and equally uncaring about the secrets of the palace.
Did any of it really matter? “I’m not pregnant.”
“And you are unhappy about that,” he said, as if feeling his way toward something.
She sighed, tempted to lie again, but the man knew her more intimately than anyone else living. He would be able to tell. “Yes.”
“Because?”
“Does it really matter?”
“Oddly enough, it does. You see, we are in something of a predicament.” He dropped a newspaper onto the open seat beside her. “If you are unhappy at the thought of never seeing me again, all may not be lost. If you’re simply feeling baby fever, that’s another thing. Although it could work to our advantage, too.”
“What in the world are you talking about?”
He indicated the paper with a nod of his head. “Read that.”
“More of the Cinderfella romance between Tahira and her palace aid husband?”
“Not exactly.”
With a huff, Liyah started reading, hope and despair twisting together in a knot inside her with each new paragraph. Not Cinderfella, but a modern-day Cinderella fairy tale. Where Liyah played the role of servant elevated to princess by the love of her prince.
Only Sayed didn’t love her and he had to be furious about this. “Oh, my gosh…what are we going to do? How did they learn my name? Can we get a retraction printed?”
“And what are they to retract? The picture of us in obvious afterglow, or the speculation that Tahira and my stars did not cross because we both had different destinies?”
“Um, well…how furious are your parents about this?”
“Father is surprisingly prosaic and Mother is thrilled all her plans for a royal wedding won’t be wasted.”
Liyah jumped up like there was a spring under her behind. “Married?” she screeched.
Sayed winced, but then he smiled. “Under that buttoned-down exterior, you’re an emotional firecracker, aren’t you?”
“Don’t tease me. This is too serious.”
An arrested expression came over his face. “Yes, you’re right. It is.”
“What do you mean?” Had he changed his mind already?
He pulled her to him and leaned down to kiss her softly. “Think about it, will you do that for me?”
“Marriage?” she asked, afraid to believe.
“Yes.” He kissed her again, as if he couldn’t help himself. “Until tonight.”
“What’s happening tonight?”
“We’re having dinner.”
“Don’t we have dinner every night?” He smiled indulgently like she’d said something sweetly funny. “Tonight’s dinner will be special.”
“Why?”
“I’m going to ask you a question and if you give me the right answer I’ll show you the secret passage and the hidden room my great-great-grandfather built for trysts with his wife.”
“Don’t you mean his mistress?”
“No. He was a romantic and wanted to give her a very special wedding gift.”
“So, he built a hidden room.”
“Yes.”
“No wonder.”
“What?” Sayed asked.
“You’re so incredible.” She smiled up at him. “It’s in the genes.”
“I tried to tell you.”
“So, you’re going to ask me a question tonight?”
“Yes.”
“Even though I’m not a princess?”
“I have told you many times, I esteem you highly. If I mistook what was required of me and that hurt you, I am truly sorry, but I have not wanted you out of my sight since the first time my gaze fell on you.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“I do.”
Man, he really wanted her. Like, a lot.
“You promise?”
“You have my word as emir of Zeena Sahra and your man.”
“Sayed…” She reached up and kissed him with every bit of pent-up emotion inside her.
He picked her up with an arm under her bottom and another against her back for stability, carrying her into the bedroom without breaking their locked lips.
He loomed over her on the bed. “We are not supposed to do this here.”
“You’re better at breaking rules than you give yourself credit for.” His mother had been right. Sayed did have a wide streak of impetuousness.
He gave her that smile again. “It’s you, you’re very good at tempting me to break them, habibti.”
“Well, I may have gone to a little extra trouble with my appearance today.”
He laughed, the sound so free and happy it filled her own heart with joy. “No need, you are always gorgeous to me. But I do like this dress on you.”
“It’s a dishdasha,” she teased.
“Oh, is it? Pardon me.”
She grinned. “It might be just as pretty off.”
“Doubtful. You, on the other hand, will be infinitely more accessible naked and nothing is more beautiful to me than your body.”
“Don’t say things like that.”
“Why not?”
“I’ll believe them.”
He cupped her face in his big hands. “I will never lie to you, on my honor.”
Too choked to speak, she nodded.
They spent the next minutes undressing between drugging kisses.
She made a sound of victory when he was down to his sexy black silk knit boxers.
He laughed, his hands already busy on her skin.
“You wear more layers than me,” she told him. “I think there’s something wrong with that.”
“The challenge will prevent you from becoming bored.”
“Right, because you aren’t challenging enough.”
He proved just how challenging he could be…to her self-control, drawing forth the response her body would only ever give to this man. For the first time, there was no bitter in the sweet of that knowledge, either.
He made love to her with passion that felt as driven by the sense of reprieve as her own. Could that be possible?
He certainly hadn’t seemed to be upset about the idea of marriage. Though they’d barely talked about it.
Rational thought fled as he drove her arousal higher. Unwilling to be outdone, she did her best to touch him in all the ways she knew drove him crazy.
Their coupling was powerful and intensely intimate, their bodies so in tune for the moments leading up to and during her climax, she felt like they were sharing the same soul.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
HAVING LEARNED OF Sayed’s intention to take Liyah out to dinner, Queen Durrah showed up with an ornate crimson dishdasha for Liyah to wear.
“But this is the color of the royal family.”
“Yes, my dear, it is. It is also the gown I wore for the formal announcement of my own upcoming nuptials.”
Liyah put her hands up as if warding off an attack from the dress. “I can’t wear it, what if I tear it or spill something on it?”
“Don’t be silly, Aaliyah,” the queen said with amusement. “If
I had had a daughter, she would have worn this gown to her first formal function when she came of age. It pleases me for you to wear it now.”
Tears burned in Liyah’s eyes.
The queen tsked and patted Liyah’s cheek softly. “None of that now. I’m going to be very happy to welcome you into our family, ya ’eni.”
“Mom used to call me that,” Liyah admitted emotionally.
“Then it will be an honor for you to allow me to do so now. Just as you were the precious in your mother’s eyes, you will always be in mine, as well.”
The endearment literally meant my eye, but it carried more the connotation the queen gave it. And it touched Liyah deeply.
“You should be angry at me.”
“No, Aaliyah,” Queen Durrah said with certainty. “I have seen more life in my son in the past week than for two decades. You are so good for him. How could I be anything but happy at the idea of you becoming my daughter?”
“He hasn’t asked me yet.”
“He will.”
“It’s really special, you know?”
“What?”
“That he insists on asking. For all intents and purposes he’s been trapped into this, but he’s not treating it like a business proposal.”
“All of the men of this family have a romantic streak. They always have had. I should have realized there was a problem when Sayed’s showed no sign of coming out with Tahira,” the queen mused.
“He told me about the hidden room.”
“I always loved that story. I wanted Falah to build me a room, but he told me it had already been done.”
“Not so romantic, then.” But then a king had to have a practical streak, just like a prince.
“Well…actually…”
“Oh, tell me.”
The melecha smiled with obviously fond reminiscence. “He took me to a European castle for our honeymoon.”
“You live in a palace.”
“He bought me the castle and a title to go with it.”
“Being queen wasn’t enough?” Liyah teased.
“It was something that was just for me, not Zeena Sahra.” Queen Durrah smiled softly. “That castle became our refuge after Umar’s death, a place we could take Sayed and simply be a family.”
“A place he could still be a boy and play freely,” Liyah said softly.
The queen nodded. “And in safety.”
*
Liyah was still thinking about her visit with Queen Durrah when Hasiba arrived to tell her the driver was waiting with the car.
“Where is Sayed?” Liyah asked Hasiba with some trepidation, worried the older woman would have decided Liyah took advantage again.
“I believe it is supposed to come as a surprise,” Hasiba said with a conspiratorial smile.
“Okay.”
Hasiba reached for Liyah before she left the suite. “I am truly sorry about before. My emir has never been so happy as since meeting you. Even back in London, though none of us understood his dreamy preoccupation was not with his coming nuptials but the woman that would steal his heart.”
If only that were true. “Thank you, Hasiba. Your support means so much.”
The older woman pulled Liyah into a tight hug. “You will be a wonderful emira.”
Liyah would do her best.
The limo ride into the city only took about twenty minutes, but it was the longest twenty minutes of her life. It ended when they pulled up in front of an elegant hotel.
A man dressed in a dark kameez rushed forward to lead Liyah inside and to an old-fashioned cage elevator.
Sayed was waiting beside a table set on a dais in the center of the large and very full dining room of the hotel’s rooftop restaurant.
He wore a men’s dishdasha in the same crimson shade as Liyah’s. Though with the elaborate gold embroidery on her chiffon outer dress, Liyah’s was a lot fancier.
His black abayah had more moderate masculine embroidery in the same crimson shade. His egal was the ceremonial black shot with gold and his keffiyeh the color of the royal house, as well.
“You look like the emir,” she said in a near-whisper as she took his hand to step up on the dais.
“But you remember always the man underneath the robes,” he said with pure satisfaction.
“Yes.”
His smile was blinding as he helped her into her chair.
Dinner was amazing, Sayed in top form, practically oozing charm.
Though they consumed no alcohol, she felt tipsy on hope by the time dessert arrived. Several photographs had already been taken throughout the evening, everyone at the tables around them smiling and nodding as if they were as much a part of what was to come as Liyah and Sayed.
Maybe they were.
Sayed would always serve his people with his whole heart.
Sayed waited until the dessert dishes had been taken away before he rose from his chair only to drop to one knee beside hers.
Even knowing he was prompted by the need to prevent more scandal, and maybe save some face in the wake of Tahira’s defection, Liyah was overwhelmed with emotion.
“Aaliyah Amari, will you do me the very great honor of agreeing to become my emira and lead the people of Zeena Sahra by my side?”
His words put the weight of reality on this fantasy moment. Sayed was putting more trust in her than she could imagine. He wasn’t just asking because it was expedient.
He had to believe in Liyah as a person to trust her with the position of his emira, much less his wife.
“Liyah?” he prompted softly, typically not sounding worried, but patient.
She smiled, feeling the hot track of tears on her cheeks. She hadn’t even known she was crying. “Yes, oh, yes, Sayed. I want that more than anything.”
“I am so pleased.” Then showing the influence of many years spent living in the States, he leaned forward and sealed the deal with a kiss.
The restaurant erupted into applause, camera flashes going from phones as well as reporters strategically waiting in the wings.
Liyah didn’t care. If sharing her life with Sayed meant sharing it with the rest of the world, too, then so be it.
As he leaned back, she whispered quietly for his ears alone, “I love you. I just thought you should know.”
His dark eyes heated and filled with definite pleasure. “Thank you. I will always treasure that gift.”
She hadn’t expected him to return the words. Liyah knew Sayed didn’t love her, but his genuine appreciation of her feelings gave her hope for the future and certainty that even if he never fell in love with her, she would always have his regard and consideration.
This man would always be faithful―his “three-year drought” proved that―but just as importantly, he valued her affection. He would not take Liyah’s love for granted, even if he never returned it.
*
Sayed waited for the video call to connect. He’d sent Yusuf to London the day before with an envelope to deliver to Gene Chatsfield.
The call connected and Gene’s distinguished features filled Sayed’s screen. “Sheikh Sayed, to what do I owe this pleasure?”
“Yusuf has delivered my package.”
“If you mean this…” The older man lifted the heavy-duty envelope sealed with Sayed’s royal family symbol set in crimson wax. “Yes.”
“Inside you will find several papers.”
Gene’s confusion was apparent, but he seemed too preoccupied to be nervous. “Shall I open it, then?”
“Yes.”
Gene’s face paled as he read the documents in front of him. “You know where she is? My daughter?”
“So now you are claiming her?”
“Denial was a knee-jerk reaction caused by similar situations in the past, none of which ended up being what they claimed.”
“You decided Aaliyah’s was?”
“She left the locket. I’d given it to her mother. Nothing more than a trinket to me, but she kept it all those years and passed it on to her daughter
.” Gene swallowed, as if emotion was getting the best of him. “She’d left my picture behind hers. I looked when I remembered.”
“If you need further proof, Aaliyah’s DNA report is there, as well. Running your own will provide an undeniable match.”
“You know I will, because in my position I cannot afford to take anything on word alone.”
“Yes.”
“But I’m confident of what the test will tell us.”
“As am I.”
“I would like to see my daughter,” Gene said with hope. “Is she working for you now?”
“We are getting married next month.”
“What? How is that possible? Is she pregnant?”
“No, she does not yet carry my child. As to how and why, you do not have a place in her life that affords you personal answers of that nature.”
A practical man of the world, Gene didn’t flinch at the reminder. “I would like to.”
“You will have to apologize,” Sayed warned.
“Of course.”
Sayed wasn’t prepared to let it go at that. “Well enough that she believes you are sincere.”
“Whatever you may think of me, my children matter to me.”
“You will get one opportunity to prove that.”
“And if I don’t to your satisfaction, I never see my daughter again?”
“You are a man of discernment.”
“And you have a reputation for ruthlessness. Does Aaliyah know that, I wonder?”
“She loves me despite my flaws.” The satisfaction he felt saying those words was immense.
“I’m very glad to hear that.”
“Really?”
“I would not like to think my daughter was marrying for anything but honest emotion and hope for a future.”
“Come to Zeena Sahra and tell her that.”
“When?”
“Yusuf is waiting to take you to our jet.”
“You expect me to drop everything and come now?” Gene asked, showing dismay for the first time.
“Yes. You may bring your fiancé.”
The older man waved that off. “She is busy with wedding preparations.”
“Then it is the ideal time for you to make this trip.”
“You don’t lack arrogance, do you?”
