by Pippa Roscoe
He felt the weight of her gaze on him, could almost hear the words.
That’s not what I mean, and you know it.
He bit the inside of his cheek, torn between wanting to explain everything and wanting to bury it all for ever.
‘Samira was six when her family first visited, I was seven and Faizan was eight. We were inseparable, terrorising the palace staff, climbing trees, wreaking havoc...until Faizan had to start taking lessons to prepare for becoming ruler. Then it was just the two of us. It’s lonely being royal. Even attending a central city school, it’s not that easy to make friends who understand the presence of adult guards, or who don’t want to take advantage of who you are or your position. Samira understood it. She understood the constraints of royal life. But where I found it difficult, she seemed to thrive on it. She wanted to use her position to do great things. She would tease me about shirking my responsibilities and I would tease her about taking on too much.’
He missed the sound of her laughter. The way that it had lightened his heart and soothed the ache he felt there. He’d never found it easy being royal, but Samira had borne it with grace and beauty.
‘I’d always thought, hoped...’ He’d hoped so much. ‘Faizan was due to marry the daughter of an ambassador but she ran out just before the announcement, unable to take the weight of public scrutiny. The palace was in an uproar and Abbad... Abbad offered Samira as a replacement. And everyone agreed.’
Without telling him, they had all agreed. Even Samira. Khalif would never forget the moment he’d been told. The sheer incomprehension he’d felt until he’d seen it in her eyes. The sympathy, the silent apology. Even now he felt the wound deep in his heart throb and ache.
‘Had you never told them how you felt about her?’
‘What do you mean?’ he asked.
‘That you loved her.’ Star’s simple words left vibrations in the room that could have cracked the walls.
He could lie and tell her that he hadn’t, but it would break something within him, and he wouldn’t dishonour either Samira or Star like that.
‘I didn’t have to tell them,’ he replied, like he’d not had to tell Star. ‘I did love her—’ the words were both bitter and sweet on his tongue ‘—but the moment she became engaged to Faizan—’
He shook his head, struggling to find the words to describe just how much he’d fought, he’d wrestled and cursed his feelings. ‘After she had Nadya and Nayla, my feelings changed completely. Everything changed. She was different...a mother. She had two beautiful babies who were her sole purpose for being and...’ Everything really had changed.
‘It must have been incredibly difficult to watch Faizan and Samira marry,’ Star observed.
‘She wanted to marry Faizan,’ he said, knowing the truth of it. ‘She could see how much our parents wanted it. She knew him, liked him. He was...better—’ Khalif breathed ‘—he was the better man.’
‘He was a different man,’ Star stated.
‘You should have met him,’ Khalif replied wryly.
She watched him walk further into the suite, as if somehow dredging up the memories had released the ties holding him back and she was glad. Glad that he’d spoken about Samira. Love should never be something that caused shame or hurt, even if deep down she forced herself to acknowledge a pinprick of jealousy. But it wasn’t as much pain as it was sadness for him.
Because he must have felt so incredibly betrayed. His family couldn’t have missed his feelings for Samira—if she could see them still now. She believed him when he said that his feelings had changed towards her when she had Nadya and Nayla. But even so...her heart ached for him and felt now more than ever that he needed this as much as the girls did. They all needed to come home. To where their hearts had once been.
She took a deep breath and crossed her fingers. ‘I want to finish what they started.’
He stilled, as if he’d been instantly turned to stone.
‘I want to help make this a home for Nadya and Nayla.’
‘I’m really not sure about that,’ he said, turning to face her. She could see the warring in his eyes.
‘I think it would be good for them.’
He nodded reluctantly. ‘I’m not sure what you’re planning to do,’ he said, looking around him as if he wouldn’t have a clue where to start.
‘That’s okay. I have some ideas. Would you like to—?’
‘No. Ask for whatever you need from the staff. Just leave the list in your room.’
* * *
When Star didn’t appear for breakfast the next morning, he had his suspicions. When he reached his brother’s suite she was finishing the white undercoat in the hallway that someone had started over three years ago. Her back was to him and every time she reached upward above her head the sleeveless vest she was wearing lifted and he could see a slash of pale skin between the top and the loose linen trousers she wore. And he turned away.
He found an excuse to be at that end of the corridor a few hours later and was surprised by the extent of work she’d achieved. This time he nearly crossed the threshold, but he didn’t.
By the time dinner came around, Star looked happy but about to fall asleep in her food. She had tried to keep up with his questions.
‘How are you today?’ had been met with, ‘I still don’t feel pregnant,’ which had been delivered with a tired smile. He wondered whether he should just hire a decorator for Star to direct. Even Faizan and Samira had done that. His thoughts flowed with a little more ease than he was used to and he realised then—that had been the first time that he’d thought about them naturally, without that sense of creeping guilt and ache that often accompanied such moments.
The next day he found Masoud hiding in the suite’s corridor, looking as if he were about to have a heart attack, periodically peering around the door frame and spinning back to look to the heavens as if in prayer. Khalif was surprised. So far, the staff and Star had managed to stay out of each other’s way.
Stepping as quietly as possible up to the man he’d known never to break a sweat under any circumstances, Khalif peered over Masoud’s shoulder to see what had made him behave in such a way and nearly choked on his own shock.
He clamped his jaw shut firmly.
For there was Star, without a care in the world, humming away as she painted large brushstrokes of admittedly very expensive undercoat over a nine-hundred-year-old fresco. Masoud was actually fanning himself and looked almost on the verge of tears.
‘We have more, Masoud,’ he whispered, reassuring himself as much as the older man.
‘I know,’ he replied mournfully. ‘It’s just that this one was particularly beautiful. I just didn’t have the heart to tell her...’ He trailed off. ‘She’s doing such a wonderful thing.’
Khalif could only nod, marvelling at the way the head of the palace staff was willing to sacrifice the ancient fresco for Nadya and Nayla, and even for Star.
‘I am a little worried about the drill bits, though.’
‘Drill bits?’ Khalif whispered harshly.
‘She’s asked for a drill and several sizes of masonry drill bits.’ At this, Khalif could completely understand Masoud’s concern. He winced himself at the thought of what she might do.
‘We can fix whatever needs fixing...if it needs fixing,’ he promised, hoping that he was right.
The next day, once again, Star had failed to appear for breakfast and this time Khalif took a small collection of pastries with him when he went to the suite he was beginning to think of as Nadya and Nayla’s.
Through the door to what had once been the girls’ room, he could see that Star was already painting and yet again her hair was worked up into a large woven cloth turban high on her head. She had finished the hallway and had worked her way around the first corner of the suite and if he wanted to see how she was getting on he would have to cross the threshold.
As if she had been waiting for him to do so, she turned and greeted him with such a beautiful smile that his heart missed a beat.
What would it be like to wake to her each morning?
Not to the blare of an alarm, the flick of the coffee machine or the imperious visage of his brother’s acerbic assistant.
‘Perfect timing,’ she said, looking at him with a gleam in her eye.
‘No. Nope,’ he said, shaking his head and holding up the pastries.
She looked at the food he was carrying and her eyes rounded with pleasure. ‘Thank you! I’m starving. And there’s just this little spot...’
He looked over her shoulder to see the stepladder.
‘Tell me you weren’t just on that,’ he demanded, the fury in his tone catching them both by surprise and he bit back a curse.
‘Of course. How else was I supposed to—’
‘Khalas! No. No more,’ he said, slashing the air with his hand. ‘I’m worried about the paint fumes, I can’t trust you not to go up ladders, I’m sure that you’ll be trying to move those beds soon enough—’
When her eyes grew wide, he clenched his jaw. ‘What did you do?’ he bit through clenched teeth.
‘I dismantled them before I moved them,’ she said, as if that would make it any better.
‘How did you—?’
‘Well, they’re not exactly Ikea, but the principle was the same, and the Allen keys were here, so...’
‘Why were Alan’s keys here and what does he have to do with...?’
He trailed off because suddenly Star descended into musical peals of laughter. She was almost bent double and sweeping moisture from her eyes.
‘I don’t understand what is so funny,’ he said, trying hard to keep hold of his anger. She made it too easy to breathe sometimes. Too hard not to laugh with her. And for the first time in three years he questioned why that was a bad thing.
‘Just take the roller and get into that spot,’ she ordered like a military general. He looked down at his clothes. ‘Afraid of getting dirty?’ she taunted.
‘Well, you’re clearly not.’
‘No,’ she said, smiling as she looked down at the splashes of paint across her trousers and forearms. ‘They’re just clothes that prove how much I’m enjoying myself.’
She had a spatter of paint on her cheek and he itched to smooth it from her skin, but didn’t. Instead, he agreed to do the area she indicated, despite the fact that he was already late for a video conference with his staff.
Colour started to appear on the walls over the next few days and Star now had him completely bent to her will. When he’d asked how she knew about dismantling furniture or checking walls for electrics, let alone the mind-boggling range of fillers, sealants, sandpaper sheets and blocks, she’d said something about a man from her sister’s job showing them how to fix certain issues in the flat. And when he’d drilled through the wall and taken out a chunk of plaster he’d been half terrified—not that he would have admitted it on pain of death. But she’d only laughed at him and told him that fixing mistakes was the best and only way to learn.
That evening, Star finally managed to get him to open up about the memorial, but instead of questioning his plans, she asked him more about Faizan and Samira. What they were like, what made them laugh, what made them angry. He was recounting a time when Samira had smoothed over ruffled feathers at an embassy ball, when he remembered the nickname they’d given her that night: jisr. Because she’d bridged the gap between ideas, people, countries.
‘And what do Nadya and Nayla think?’
He looked at her. ‘Think of what?’
‘The memorial.’
‘They’re six years old.’
‘Yes. Six—not three, not one. Six-year-olds can even generally feed themselves.’
He glared at her teasing, feeling angry and awkward.
She paused, the teasing tone melting away. ‘No one asked them?’
He shook his head, not quite sure why he felt so ashamed.
What do Nadya and Nayla think?
It was now almost midnight and he couldn’t get those words to stop spinning in his mind. He hated to think that he might have contributed to a sense that his nieces’ grief was something to be denied, or ignored. As if his own, his parents’ or the nation’s grief was somehow more important than theirs. Unable to shake that sense of overwhelming guilt and shame, he knew that he had to return to Burami. He needed to see his nieces. And at the same time he just might be able to retrieve the necklace for Star. The need became so overwhelming, he felt as if demons were chasing at his heels. He had to leave—now.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE FIRST TIME that Star had made a list of things she needed and left it in her room for the invisible staff to collect, she’d been surprised to find that it actually worked... That within twenty-four hours, forty-eight at the absolute most, her exact wishes were fulfilled. Out in the middle of the desert.
She tried to stay awake one night to see if she could hear the sounds of Jeeps or even helicopters bringing the materials she needed, but nothing. They just appeared as if by Christmas magic when she needed them. Which wasn’t helping Star’s determination not to live in her dream world any more. They were human staff, not fairy godmothers, and she was sure that the spontaneously appearing materials had more to do with Khalif being a prince than the staff having any magical powers.
The fact that Khalif was royalty still didn’t feel real. Yes, he behaved like a prince and there were as many glimpses of spoilt stubbornness as there were of grief and loss, but in the last few days she’d felt as if they’d been talking. Really talking. Building something, so that perhaps if she was pregnant it might not be so terrible. That perhaps having a child with Khalif could be her own happy-ever-after?
After her morning shower, Star crossed to the living area, hoping to find the bronze gold paint she wanted to use for the finishing touches across the girls’ bathroom ceiling, so when she first saw the note that had been thrust under the door she assumed it was from the staff, apologising for not being able to track it down.
She was already thinking of other ways to achieve the look she was hoping for when she caught sight of the scrawled K at the bottom and her heart leapt.
It was only because she was distracted, she told herself later, that the thought that it might be a love letter crept into her mind. That was where her mind had been so that when she opened the thick cartridge paper she had to read it over three times before she could make out the message.
Which essentially boiled down to a quick apology for having to return to Burami. He’d be back as soon as he could.
Unconsciously she rubbed at the ache in her chest, telling herself that she was silly to have got her hopes up. To be thankful for the reminder that although he was a prince he was made of flesh and blood, not ink and paper and imagination. This wasn’t a fairy tale romance. He was important and had been called away, and it wasn’t reasonable to expect that he could have woken her up to let her know.
She arrived in Nadya and Nayla’s suite to assess what still needed to be done. The bathroom was beautiful. Star knew it was a silly thing to get excited over, but it really was. This was where she had seen the touches Samira had planned most, the bronze gold taps and the antique glass panels. It was a faded beauty, but regal. There was an enormous roll top bath, only marginally outmatched by a shower unit dotted with pale pink tiles that matched the soft natural plaster that ran through the entire palace. But it was the midnight-blue that called to her. The depth and richness of the paint that had been chosen by Samira seemed as endless as the night sky. And when the bronze gold paint arrived she would cover the ceiling in stars. Large, small and everything in between. She sighed, hoping that it would come soon.
Star left the bathroom and walked back into the central living area to the project she had en
joyed almost as much, knowing that she could work on this until the gold paint arrived. She had kept Khalif away from this part of the room, wanting it to be a surprise. Wanting to see the look on his face when he saw the tree. When the girls saw...
She swallowed. It was quite likely that she wouldn’t be there when the girls saw all this. Her throat thickened and she blinked back the damp sheen in her eyes.
No matter. It wasn’t about her. It was about them. And they would know and see how much love had gone into this. And knowing that their uncle had helped would make it even more special for them.
She ducked under the sheet protecting the special project from view and picked up her paintbrush, trying to lose herself in the rich browns sweeping up the wall. Despite Khalif’s instruction, she definitely needed a ladder for this, but she had been very careful.
She only had this to finish, and the stars in the bathroom, which was a good thing because in four days they would be returning to Burami for the memorial and to find out if she were pregnant. After one test, she would know whether her life would irrevocably change or go back to how it had been before. For as close as she and Khalif had become in the last few days, she couldn’t deny that he had not spoken of what would happen if she wasn’t pregnant. And she couldn’t shake the feeling that the answer was...nothing. Nothing would happen. She would return to Norfolk as if they had never met.
But, even if that were the case, she knew instinctively that her life would never be the same again. She felt changed. Not just by Khalif, but by Catherine, by Duratra, all of it. It was as if the desert had seeped into her skin and bones and was part of her now.
But, like Catherine, she also knew her duty waited for her back home. She would return to Norfolk with the necklace, they would find the Soames diamonds, sell the estate, her mother would get the treatment she needed and... And then...
For the first time in her life, the thought of returning to the flat she shared with her sisters, and the job she loved so much with the children...it just didn’t seem as exciting as travelling through the desert, or seeing what else was out there in the wide world. Meeting so many different people, all with their own stories.
