who, he realized, he’d never called his daughter before. Not out loud. He would not lose Leyla, no matter who her biological father was. She was his.
She and her treacherous mother were entirely his.
His security chief was muttering into his earpiece. Rihad was unnaturally still.
“The princess remains in the palace, Your Majesty. She is with her nurses even now.”
“Excellent,” Rihad bit out, and he started moving then, belting out orders as he went.
If Sterling had left the baby behind that meant he wouldn’t have to temper his reaction when he found her—though he was sure he would have to think about that, at some point. That she’d taken off without her daughter, which was so unlike her as to be something like laughable.
He might have imagined, once, that Sterling was nothing more than a calculating, callous sort of creature. The kind of woman who would have a child for the sole purpose of tying herself to a man and, more to the point, his fortune.
That he didn’t think that of her now, not even for a moment, told him things he was too furious to analyze just then. There was something seismic inside of him, bigger and bolder than anything he’d ever felt before. It was as massive as the desert, expanding in all directions, and he was not entirely certain he would be the same man when he survived it.
If he survived it.
But he had every intention of sharing the effects of it with his wife while he waited to see. Because he wasn’t letting her go.
Not ever.
* * *
The helicopter landed with military precision on the dusty desert road, forcing Sterling’s driver to slam on his brakes to a fishtailing stop—and putting an end to her escape fantasies that easily.
Sterling sat in the backseat and stared at the gleaming metal thing with its powerful rotors as if, were she to concentrate hard enough, she could make it go away again.
But it didn’t. Of course it didn’t.
For a long, shuddering moment, nothing happened.
The helicopter sat there in the middle of the otherwise empty road. Sterling’s driver, having lapsed into what sounded like frantic prayers as it had landed, was now muttering to himself. And that meant she had a lifetime or two to contemplate the leaping somersault her heart kept performing in her chest, no matter how sternly she told herself that hope was inappropriate.
She wasn’t running away this time. She wasn’t desperate or scared. She wasn’t a fifteen-year-old kid and she was no longer afraid of her best friend’s big, bad wolf.
This time, she was doing the right thing.
The helicopter’s back door opened and Rihad climbed out, his movements precise and furious, and yet still infused with that lethal, masculine grace that made her mouth water. Maybe it always would.
But if so, it would happen from afar. In magazines or on the news.
She was no good for him. She was even worse for her precious daughter. Nothing else mattered
“Stay here,” she told her driver, not that he’d offered to leap to her defense—the man clearly recognized the royal insignia on the helicopter’s sides if not his king himself.
Sterling slammed her way out of the car into the hot desert sun. Memories assaulted her as the hot wind poured over her. Of facing Rihad much like this on a Manhattan street, in what seemed like a different lifetime. Of the dark look he’d worn then and the far darker and grimmer look he wore now.
Sterling didn’t wait for him to reach her.
“What are you doing?” she threw at him across the hard-packed stretch of sandy road that separated them. “Let me go!”
“Never.”
Short. Harsh. A kingly utterance and infused with all his trademark ruthlessness.
She was as instantly furious at him as she was pointlessly, traitorously moved by that.
“It wasn’t a request.”
“You do not give the King of Bakri orders, Sterling.” He was closer then, and she could feel that edginess that came off him in waves, as if he was his own sun. “Your role is to obey.”
“Stop this.” Her voice was a hiss, and she slashed her hand through the air to emphasize it. “You’re not being reasonable.”
He was beyond furious—she could see it in every line of that body of his she knew better than her own now. He was practically vibrating with the force of his temper. And yet he only stared at her for a beat, then another, as if he couldn’t believe she’d said that to him.
And then he tipped back his head and laughed.
He laughed and he laughed.
When he focused on her again, Sterling was shaking, and not from anything like fear. It was need. Longing. Love.
“I am renowned for my reason,” he told her, no trace of laughter remaining in his voice then. “I am considered the most rational of men. My family is filled with emotional creatures who careened through their lives, neglecting their duties and catering to their weaknesses.” He shrugged. “I thought I didn’t have any weaknesses. But the truth is, I hadn’t met you yet.”
Again, she didn’t know how to feel, so she ignored the great, swirling mess inside of her. She balled her hands into fists and scowled at him.
“You’re making my point for me. I’m a weakness and you’re a man who can’t afford any. You need to let me go.”
“Yet when it comes to you, Sterling, I am not the least bit reasonable,” he growled at her. “Why the hell are you running away from me?”
“Why do you think?” she challenged, astonished. “I’m an anchor around your neck, weighing you down. You can’t have this endless scandal and that’s all this is. That’s all I am.”
“You left Leyla behind.”
Sterling couldn’t let herself think about that.
“She’s better off,” she gritted out. She swallowed back the anguished sob that threatened to pour out of her, to tear her open. “Divorced couples share custody all the time. There’s no reason why we can’t. And that means Leyla can grow up here, where she’ll be safe.”
“I can hear the words that come out of your mouth.” His voice set every hair on her body on end. It prickled over her, harsh like sandpaper and a darkness beneath it. “Yet not one of them makes the slightest bit of sense.”
“All I ask is that you find a good woman to help you raise her,” Sterling pushed on, determined, despite the way everything inside of her lurched and rolled as if she was about to capsize herself. She couldn’t let that happen. “Someone who is—”
“What?” Rihad asked brutally. “Not as dirty and ruined
