happen if I am pregnant?” The question was academic as far as she was concerned.
Her body had already started responding as it usually did the week before her period.
“A royal wedding.”
“What? What are you saying? We aren’t getting married.” Considering her feelings for him, she should have been thrilled at his words, but panic made her heart race instead.
She didn’t want him trapped into marriage.
“If you are pregnant with my child, it is the only course of action open to us.”
“But I took the pill. I’m not pregnant.”
He shook his head. “One thing you learn in high-level politics is how real a chance even five percent, much less twenty, can be.”
“But marriage? You can’t be serious.”
“Never more so.” He looked down at her, his expression too shadowed to read in light provided by the moon and stars. “Don’t you want to marry me?”
“That’s not the point.”
“No, it is not. The point is that you will not raise our child alone.”
“Why can’t we share custody? I could move to Zeena Sahra.” There was nothing to return home to. No one who would care if she made her life halfway around the world. “There are hotels there. I could continue to build my career.”
“And be what to our child?”
Was that a trick question? “Her mother.”
“How do you propose to do that without causing a great scandal?”
“And you don’t think marrying me—a chambermaid—would do that?”
“Lead chambermaid,” he said, proving he remembered their first meeting. “And something more when you weren’t taking a job to provide you access to your father.”
“You’re still nowhere near my orbit, you said so yourself.”
“There will be a media furor.” He sounded way less bothered by that than he should be. “But nothing like the ongoing existence of a woman in my son’s life who is not my wife.”
“You can’t want to marry me. I’m not princess material at all.”
“I disagree. You have already proven to have more heart and honorable intent than Tahira ever did—at least where I am concerned. You are articulate and intelligent, self-controlled, as well. Once you have the proper training, the rest of the world will be able to do nothing but admire my choice in emira.”
“Proper training?” she asked carefully, not liking the sound of that at all.
His thumb caressed her palm, sending shivers through her. “Consider it like going to university to get a degree in being a political figure.”
“A political figure’s wife, surely.”
“Make no mistake, as my emira and ultimately melecha of our country, you would have a political role, just as my mother does.”
“How am I supposed to train for something like that?”
“With the teachers who served me best.”
“You had tutors? I thought you went to boarding school in the States.”
He smiled, the expression impacting her like it always did. “I’m referring to my parents. Both have already agreed to do their best to help you learn your new role, should it become necessary.”
“I didn’t think having sex with you was signing me up for a new career.”
Sayed shrugged, his body shifting against hers. “Life is like that, full of curve balls, as one of my old professors was so fond of saying.”
“This is crazy. You know that, don’t you?”
“Difficult? Perhaps. Crazy? No.”
“Stop talking about it.” She wasn’t pregnant and all this talk of marriage was only going to make it harder to leave him.
She couldn’t afford dreams with so little substance.
“For now.” Sayed turned over, pushing her onto her back and proceeded to blow her mind. Again.
If his lovemaking seemed to be tinged with desperation, she figured maybe her own feelings were simply reflecting back on her.
* * *
Sayed stormed into his father’s office and threw the newspaper in his hand onto the king’s desk. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Once the story broke, there was nothing you could do.” His father flicked a glance at the image of Sayed and Liyah in a passionate lip-lock—and not the first one in three days to run in their country’s most widely circulated newspaper. “The only course of action left open was to wait and see how it was received.”
“Pictures of Aaliyah and I kissing were on the Net hours after we arrived at the retreat.”
“You did kiss her outside.”
“In our private gardens!”
“Not that private.” His father seemed a lot less angry than Sayed would have expected. “You know how dangerous a high-powered camera lens can be.”
“How did they know we even left the palace?”
“You know we have media watching us all the time.”
“Not this closely. Someone had to have leaked something.”
His father shrugged. “Perhaps. Our people love the Cinderella angle. Have you noticed? Omar said it’s all over the social media sites.”
“And your fixer did nothing to kibosh it?”
“On the internet? Not going to happen.”
“I doubt very sincerely the border countries looking for an alliance are nearly as caught up in the romance of it all,” Sayed fairly growled.
“You would be surprised.”
“What do you mean?”
“Apparently, none of them wanted us making such a firm alliance with the others. You marrying an outsider with no political agenda will actually work in our favor.”
“Who said anything about marriage?”
“Do you really think anything else will suffice after that?” His father pointed to the second photo in the story.
It was of Sayed and Aaliyah leaving the oasis tent, his arm around her, their expressions and manner clearly that of a couple who had just made love.
“What
