Two
Sheikh Barakah Karif Ramir entered the Palace Lights penthouse suite with the slow and measured step that reflected his life of patience, of waiting, of watching for the most opportune moment and then seizing that moment with both hands.
That was life in Kharmistan, the life of a prince, a sheikh. It was the life his late father had lived, and his father before him, for all of the sheikhs of Kharmistan who had known the feint and jab of politics, of intrigue, while these Americans were still learning how to build log cabins.
The sheikh had been raised at his father’s knee, then sent off to be educated; first in England, later in America. He had not needed the education found in books, for there were books and teachers in Kharmistan. At the age of twelve he had been sent away to learn the ways of the world, of the men who were outside his father’s small but strategically important kingdom.
Having an English mother had helped him, but nothing she had taught him could have prepared him for the lack of respect, mingled with hatred and misunderstanding, that had greeted him when he’d taken his first steps out of Kharmistan and into the world beyond his father’s kingdom. In Kharmistan his family name was revered, honored, even feared. In England he was the outsider, the alien being, the oddity. His clothing was ridiculed, his speech pattern mocked.
That was when the young prince had learned the value of conformity, at least an outward conformity that seemed to put his classmates at ease.
He had forsaken his comfortable tobe and kibr for the short pants and blazer of his classmates, even though his father had gained permission for him to avoid the school uniform.
He had answered insults with a smile until he had found sticks big enough to beat them all down. Those sticks had been his brilliant horsemanship, his skill on the playing fields, his excellence in the classroom.
Within a year he had become the most popular student in the school, as well as its top student. He was invited to large country estates over term breaks, introduced to the sisters of his classmates, both welcomed and welcome wherever he went. His friends were legion, and they believed they knew him well.
They never knew him at all. But he knew them. He knew them very well.
What had begun so encouragingly in England had been equaled and then outdone by the success he had found in America during his years at Yale. He assimilated. He blended. He fit in. He became one of “them,” even though he was not one of them.
He could never be one of them, one of those he met, roomed with, ate with, laughed with over the years.
Because he was Barakah Karif Ramir, only son of the sheikh, heir to the throne of Kharmistan.
All his English and American friends knew him as Ben, the nickname his Yale roommate had given him when he could not remember how to pronounce Barakah.
And being Ben was easier, simpler. Nobody groveled, nobody harassed, nobody bothered to try to impress him or beleaguer him or ask anything of him.
It had been as Ben that he had traveled to Paris in an attempt, years after his return to Kharmistan, to recapture some of that simplicity that had been lost to him in the halls of his father’s palace.
It had been as Ben that he had met Eden Fortune, the beautiful Texan he’d foolishly introduced himself to as Ben Ramsey. And why not? He’d anticipated an innocent flirtation, a Parisian romance, perhaps a mutually pleasurable dalliance.
Most women fawned all over him once they learned he was a prince. They fawned, and they preened, and they asked inane questions, and they got mercenary gleams in their beautiful eyes when they looked at him.
He had not wanted to see that acquisitional gleam in Eden Fortune’s lovely blue eyes. And he had not. He had seen interest, yes. In time, he had seen love, a love he returned in full measure.
Even as he deceived her.
The summons back to Kharmistan had come too soon, before he could confess that deception, before he could ask her to marry him, share her life with him. A hurried note left on a pillowcase, and he was gone, flying back to Kharmistan on his private jet, racing to the bedside of his seriously ill father.
But he had written. He had written several times, little more than hurried notes scribbled between taking care of state business and sitting at his father’s bedside. He had ordered those notes hand-delivered to Paris, with her replies placed directly into his hands.
Nothing.
There had been nothing.
No answer. No response.
And then she’d been gone. By the time he could assure himself of his father’s recovery and jet back to Paris, Eden had returned to America.
He may have let her believe he had never gotten a letter from her, but he had. The concierge at the hotel had handed him a small envelope when he had inquired about Eden at the front desk. It’s better this way. Eden. He had taken that to mean that she’d wanted nothing to do with him once he had told her, in his letters, of his true identity, of the privilege and the burden that he carried as heir to the throne of Kharmistan.
For nearly six years he had believed he had done the right thing to walk away, to not look back. To forget. His father had never fully recovered from his stroke, and Ben had been forced to work night and day to try to fill his shoes, to keep their subjects calm, to eventually step into those shoes completely when his father died.
There had been no time for romance, for fond memories, for much of anything except the work of ruling his country.
He had married Nadim’s daughter because it had been a politically advantageous move that had solidified the populace. But neither Leila nor Ben had been in love. Her death three years later had saddened him greatly, but he had barely noticed a difference in his always busy days. For he was the sheikh, and the sheikh lived for the state, not for personal happiness.
And then he had seen the memo from one Eden Fortune that Nadim had placed on his desk….
“Nadim?” he called out now as he went to the small bar in the corner of the living room of the suite, helping himself to an ice-cold bottle of spring water. “Nadim, are you there?”
A servant dressed in the traditional white linen tobe, his kaffiyeh secured to his head with an agal fashioned of thick woolen cords, appeared in the doorway, bowed to him. “His Excellency will be with you momentarily, Your Highness, and begs your pardon for inconveniencing you by even a moment’s absence,” he said, then bowed himself out of the room.
“Yeah, right,” Ben muttered under his breath as he pulled the kaffiyeh from his own head, suddenly impatient with the formality with which he was treated as the Sheikh of Kharmistan. It was as if he lived inside a bubble, and no one was allowed to approach too closely, speak too plainly, say what the devil was on his or her mind.
He had a sudden longing for that long-ago summer in Paris, for the days and nights he had spent with Eden. That was probably because she had looked today as she had looked then, only even more beautiful, more assured, more amazingly intelligent and independent.
Although not so independent that she could refuse his request—his ultimatum—to come here tonight, to meet with him again. She had been angry with him, certainly, but she had also seemed
