by The Prince
He forced himself to keep walking. Memories flashed through his brain, each more accusing than the last. How he had taken her affection and her love for granted.
How he had never told her what she desperately needed to hear. He’d been so sure he could avoid pain by not admitting his feelings, but the words did nothing to change how he felt inside.
“Cleo.”
He breathed her name. The act of speaking it aloud gave him strength. He knew what he had to do.
He ran through the corridors of the palace. The shortest path to the garage led through the public areas, and he raced through a tour in progress. He heard the surprised tour guide identifying him to the tourists, and the whirring clicks of dozens of cameras snapping his picture.
Once in the rear of the palace, he hurried into the garage and got behind the wheel of his fastest car. There was not much time. Cleo would be leaving on the family jet, so he couldn’t count on an airline delay to keep her in Bahania.
He raced down the circular drive that led into the city. A flash in his rearview mirror caught his attention. Guards in pursuit!
He ignored them and put his foot on the gas. Fifteen minutes later he entered the highway that would take him to the airport.
Hurry. Hurry. Hurry.
The words beat inside his brain, over and over. He tapped his fingers against his steering wheel and willed his car to go faster. In the distance he heard the sirens of the guards after him, but he ignored them. Nothing mattered but finding Cleo.
After five minutes he decided he had better call ahead and see if he could delay her plane. Several frustrating minutes later, he was no closer to getting in touch with the tower than he had been before he had started. His father sought to block his attempts to bring Cleo home. He would have to—
Sadik slammed on the brakes. Tires screamed in protest, the car shimmied, then bounced as he drove it onto the shoulder. His chest squeezed so tight, he couldn’t breathe.
A black car—like the ones used by members of the royal family—lay on its side in a ditch off the highway. Several rescue vehicles crowded around the damaged automobile. It was as if time had bent and circled around itself to bring him back to a moment he had already endured. He had found Kamra in just this way.
Dead on the side of the road.
He brought his car to a stop. Had he been able to speak, he would have screamed out his protest. Indescribable agony tore through him. He wanted to demand justice. He could not live without Cleo. Didn’t anyone understand? How could she be gone?
He did not know how long he sat there. It felt like lifetimes had passed, but perhaps it was only a few minutes before a police officer knocked on the window of his car.
“Prince Sadik? Is there a problem?”
Sadik lowered his window and slowly shook his head. “The accident,” he rasped in a voice that sounded a thousand years old. “The passenger.”
The officer consulted his notebook. “Someone from one of the embassies. He was drunk, of course. Fortunately he only hurt his car and his pride.”
Sadik stared at the man, unable to absorb the words. “He? Not a woman?”
“Just one person in the vehicle, sir.”
Sadik tried to thank him, but he didn’t know what he said. All he knew was that Cleo was not dead. He still had a chance. If he was too late at the airport, he would travel the earth until he found her. He would bring her home—whatever it took to convince her.
He pulled out onto the road. The guards from the palace were much closer now. He could see their cars in his rearview mirror. The police officer jumped back as Sadik sped down the highway, sending gravel flying.
In a matter of minutes the airport was in sight. He circled the main terminals, heading for the private hangar that housed the royal fleet. Up ahead he could see one of the cars from the palace pulling to a stop in front of the small terminal. Behind, the guards gained ground. It would be close.
He floored the accelerator, racing to the terminal. Up ahead Cleo stepped out of the car, then turned toward the noise. Sadik raced as close as he dared, then slammed on the brakes, turned off the engine and sprang from the vehicle.
“Cleo, you must wait,” he yelled as he ran toward her. Behind him a dozen or so guards gave chase.
He was close enough to see the pain on her face and the confusion as she registered that he was being pursued by palace guards.
Cleo stared at the spectacle of her very proper, very princely husband flying toward her as if the hounds of hell were at his heels. Obviously, he’d figured
out she was leaving and expected to stop her. She didn’t know what he wanted, but she knew she was too heartbroken to listen to any logical argument about how they had to stay together for the sake of their child.
“Cleo, please.”
She turned her back on him and headed for the terminal. If she hadn’t stopped by her doctor’s office to make sure it was all right for her to fly, she would have been gone by now. His last-minute theatrics wouldn’t have mattered.
The sound of a rifle cocking caught her attention. Cleo froze, then shifted so she could see Sadik. She nearly stumbled in amazement.
Prince Sadik of Bahania, the king’s second oldest son, stood in the grasp of several armed guards. He put up a good struggle and a fourth man joined the fray in an effort to keep Sadik in place. A fifth man aimed a rifle at the prince.
“We have our orders, Your Highness,” the armed guard said. “You are not to interfere with Princess Cleo in any way.”
Cleo blinked. This couldn’t really be happening. Not to her. Since arriving in Bahania, she’d seen some crazy things, but this was…insane.
Obviously, she wasn’t going to have the clean getaway she’d wanted. Sadik was here and determined. She would have to deal with him.
She dropped her carry-on bag to the ground, then walked toward her husband. The fact that it took four guards to hold him still was fairly impressive, not that she would tell him so. She looked at his handsome face, at the mouth that had kissed hers so tenderly. In that moment she wished with all her heart that things could have been different between them. She would have changed the rotation of the earth for him…if only he had loved her back.
“I’m not going away forever, Sadik,” she said softly, trying to ignore the guards standing so close. “I need time to think and to make peace with my life.
I know that we’re going to have a child together. You and I will have to come to terms with that and with how we’re going to raise our child. The king has given me a reprieve, not permission to disappear.”
He stared at her with an expression she’d never seen before. The intensity of his gaze made her uncomfortable, as did the guards. She turned to the one with the rifle.
“Any chance you’d let him go?”
The guard stunned her by nodding and stepping back. Instantly Sadik was free.
Cleo blinked.
“I did that?” she asked.
Sadik stepped away from the guards and straightened his suit jacket. “Apparently my father gave them orders to follow your instructions. I am grateful you did not ask to have me shot.” He took her hand in his and led her toward the terminal. “If you will permit me a few minutes of your time before you leave?”
She was still too amazed by what had happened with the guards to protest. It was only when she found herself in a small, private room that she realized Sadik was going to try to convince her to stay. She sighed. When would he figure out that all the sensible words in the world weren’t going to work on her? When would he see that—
“You are alive,” he breathed, pulling her close. “I thought I had lost you, both when you left and then again when I saw that car on the side of the road. I could not have lived without you.”
He wasn’t making any sense. She wiggled to get free of his embrace. “Sadik, what are you talking about?”
He cupped her face and rained kisses on her skin. Once his lips brushed hers, it was darned hard to mainta
in emotional distance. She forced herself to push him away.
“I’m not falling for that again,” she told him, taking a step back.
“You do not understand.” He grabbed her upper arms. “I thought you were dead. I thought it had happened to me again. Only this time the horror was greater, so much greater because once you were gone, I knew that I would have lost the most precious part of myself.”
She resisted the urge to shake her head. “You’re not making any sense. Gone where? On the plane?”
He kissed her. She tried to stop him and then, well, she stopped trying. Because as much as she knew she had to leave Sadik, she didn’t want to go.
“I have hidden the truth,” he murmured against her mouth. “I thought if I did not confess it, even to myself, that it could never hurt me. I refused to say how I felt about you. And by not acknowledging my feelings, I planned to keep you at arm’s length.”
His dark eyes brightened with emotion. “Losing Kamra pained me. The discomfort was an inconvenience. Losing you would destroy me, Cleo. You are my world. So I pretended not to care. Because if I did not care and you went away, I should not mind.”
She swallowed hard. “Sadik?”
He stroked her hair away from her face. “I love you, Cleo. I cannot exist without you. This isn’t about our child—it is about you. Only you. From the beginning you have entranced me. Those first few passionate days together changed me forever. But I was determined to resist. I would not be ruled by a mere woman.”
She heard the words and desperately wanted to believe them. Mostly because she didn’t have a choice. “So that’s why you didn’t call or try to get in touch with me when I went back to Spokane? Because I was a mere woman.”
He smiled slightly. “I had something to prove to myself.”
“And did you?”
“No. Spending all my time trying not to think of you is exactly the same as thinking of you all the time. I knew you would return for the wedding, so I vowed to wait. I was also determined to have you.” He kissed her palms. “In my bed and in my life.”
She leaned against him and let his healing words wash over her. “Can you really let Kamra go?”
He sighed. “She has been gone a long time. I used her as a talisman to hold you at bay. The truth, my love, is that she was an arranged match. We came to some agreement between us. There was mild affection, but to compare my feelings for her with my feelings for you is to compare a glass of water with the ocean. I love you.”
She flung her arms around him, burrowing close. It was something of a trick, what with her stomach in the way.
“Please stay,” he begged.
She closed her eyes, as much to hold in the joy of the moment as to try to compose herself.
“I will love you forever,” he promised. “I will prove myself to you every day. I swear on my honor, you are the most important person in the world to me. You belong here, with me. Please, Cleo.”
She could not stand to see her handsome prince brought to his knees. She kissed his mouth.
“I will stay,” she told him, her heart filled with happiness. “And I will love you…one year for each grain of sand in the Bahanian desert.”
Epilogue
Tired but happy, Cleo held her newborn daughter to her chest.
“You see,” Sadik said, ever the proud papa as he strutted through the enormous private room in the hospital. “A girl. I said as much from the beginning, and I am always right.”
Cleo looked at Sabrina and Zara. All three women rolled their eyes.
“You said it was a boy,” Cleo reminded her husband, even as she nearly floated from happiness. “I was the one who kept saying our baby might be a girl.”
“No. You do not remember the sequence of events.” He moved to the side of the bed and touched his daughter’s cheek. “She is lovely. Just like her mother.”
Despite the lingering discomfort from the delivery, Cleo couldn’t remember a more perfect moment in her life. After years of never fitting in—of always being on the outside—she’d finally found a place to belong. Who would have thought that would happen in a palace?
It was all because of Sadik. Not a day went by without him confessing his love a dozen times. He could not be more attentive or affectionate or loving. At times he was still the arrogant prince, but Cleo found that part of him kind of growing on her. Princes were not always easy to be married to, but there were plenty of rewards.
He kissed her forehead. “My wife, you are to be honored among women.”
She laughed. “I’d settle for a soft pillow to sit on and some sleep.”
Hassan burst into the room, trailed by two of the princes. “I have congratulated the doctor on delivering my first grandchild. I believe she was relieved.”
Cleo figured Dr. Johnson had felt just a little bit of pressure when she’d gone into labor.
Hassan approached the bed. “My perfect granddaughter.” He slapped Sadik on the back. “A girl—just as we discussed.”
Cleo settled back into the pillows. “Your father and grandfather are big, fat liars,” she cooed to her baby. “Yes, they are.”
Hassan and Sadik chuckled. Then the king turned to Reyhan, his third son. “Both your sisters are pregnant. Sabrina is due in six months, and Zara the following month. You have not yet taken a wife. I believe it is time. I shall arrange a match.”
Reyhan, as tall, dark, handsome and arrogant as his brothers, cleared his throat. Cleo was surprised to see that the prince actually looked uncomfortable.
“That will not be necessary, Father.”
Hassan frowned. “You must be married. We need more heirs.”
Reyhan cleared his throat again. “Yes. I understand. However, there are circumstances…”
The room grew incredibly silent. Even the baby seemed to be listening. Reyhan shrugged. “There was a young woman in college. While I have not seen her in six years, the truth of the matter is that we are…already married.”
