the front door. “Walkies,” she sang again, as she pulled the door open...
And walked straight into the man standing on her doorstep.
The air left her chest in a whoosh, and when she gasped to inflate her lungs again her head filled with the most delectable male scent she’d ever encountered. Firm fingers gripped her upper arms, steadying her as she wobbled.
Quickly stepping back and pulling a now barking Diefenbaker with her, Sara looked up.
And lost her breath all over again.
Dark yet somehow cool eyes stared down at her from a face too pretty to be traditionally handsome and yet too roughly hewn to be beautiful. Toffee-toned skin stretched over an undeniably masculine bone structure. Midnight-black hair waved back from a wide forehead, which was balanced by a strong jawline and ever so slightly hooked nose. And his unsmiling but deliciously shaped lips made her legs suddenly weak.
Her heart started racing, not in fright but with the intense sensation of recognition firing through her body, making her head spin. Although she could swear she’d never seen him before, something in his inscrutable gaze, the set of his head, the scent still lingering in her nostrils called to her primal, feminine core.
Then common sense returned.
Snapping her gaping mouth shut, she tugged Dief close to her side. Looking down at the dancing, yapping Frenchie gave her welcome respite from staring at the man before her.
“Diefenbaker, enough. Sit.”
Giving her a doleful glare, the little dog did as she commanded, his barking replaced by little rumbles in his throat.
Steeling herself, Sara looked back up and stuttered, “C-can I help you?”
Great. Not only was she a bedraggled mess, but she couldn’t even speak to the most gorgeous man she’d ever seen without sounding like a dork.
“Dr. Sara Greer?”
It was only nominally a question. His deep, accented tones made it more of a haughty statement, and Sara just stopped herself from shyly dipping her chin. Instead, she forced herself to look directly into his eyes.
“Yes?”
“My name is Dr. Farhan Alaoui.” He paused almost expectantly, his gaze watchful. “Crown Prince of Kalyana.”
For a long moment the words sounded like gibberish. Of course she’d heard them loud and clear, but they made no sense to her on an intellectual level.
Had she fallen on the way home, hit her head and lapsed into some kind of concussed dream? That seemed more likely than a man claiming to be a crown prince standing on her doorstep.
“Wh-who?”
Obviously sensing her rising anxiety, Dief stood up and growled. Sara bent to scoop him up. The little dog was trembling—or was it her shaking that way?
“Dr. Farhan Alaoui. Crown Prince of Kalyana,” he repeated, tipping his head back so he was looking down that impressive nose at her, and enunciating every syllable as though speaking to a child.
“D-don’t b-be ridiculous.” She could hardly catch her breath, between the pounding of her heart and rising nausea. “Is this some kind of joke? Who put you up to this?”
Her mind was spinning as she tried to figure out what was going on. There were only three people she’d shared her DNA results with, all trusted family members. Would any of them play such a cruel hoax on her?
“No joke, Dr. Greer.” The corners of his lips twitched downward, reminding her of her least favorite lecturer at university. The one for whom she could do no right. “I’ve come to offer you a job.”
“A job?” she repeated, still trying to sort through the chaos in her head. She peeked around his broad-shouldered frame, expecting to see Cyndi or maybe Mariah behind him, holding a camera and giggling. “A-as what?”
His lips tightened, and she actually heard him inhale before he said, “My wife.”
OF COURSE SHE thought he was crazy, although she was intrigued enough to put aside her skepticism and at least listen to what he had to say.
If even two months earlier someone had said her roots lay in the small kingdom of Kalyana, she wouldn’t have had a clue where they were talking about. After getting her DNA results she’d had to look it up online.
Lying on her bed, computer on her lap, she’d fallen in love with the pictures of the country and the faces of the people. A chain of thirty-plus small islands in the Indian Ocean, it was a melting pot, she’d learned from her research. A mixture of Indian, Arab, African and European, which lent her DNA breakdown credence.
The need to understand where her ancestors came from had been growing inside her for a long time, and had become a compulsion. It wasn’t anything she could discuss with her adoptive parents or younger sisters. How could she explain, although they were her family, the yearning to have a biological connection to other people, to an ancestral home, was overwhelming? Although they knew she’d looked up her birth parents’ names and had done the DNA test, it wasn’t something they’d talked about much, as though it wasn’t that important.
Her parents had a commendable, egalitarian outlook on life.
“Everyone’s the same, under their skin,” was one of her mom’s favorite sayings, but knowing that hadn’t helped Sara when she’d been a kid, going to school, trying to field questions about her origins.
With her burnt-caramel skin tone, thick, kinky black hair, dark brown eyes and plump build, she’d stood out, especially when compared to her tall, thin, fair-skinned, blonde sisters. There had been a few other children of color in the schools she’d gone to, but the difference had been that they had all known what their roots were. Sara never had.
It had left a hole inside; empty spots in her soul.
Crown Prince Farhan seemed able to fill in some of those blanks, although she found it difficult to comprehend what he was saying.
“Explain it to me again,” she said.
Sitting in a slightly seedy coffee shop down the road from her house, she was supremely aware of the man across the table, and the avid stares of the other early evening customers. Who could blame them for being curious?
With his beautifully fitting coat, even in jeans and with a silk scarf looped informally around his throat, there was nothing casual about the overall effect Crown Prince Farhan projected.
Everything about him, from his aura of wealth to the bodyguard, who he’d introduced as Kavan, sitting at an adjacent table, was beyond Sara’s, and no doubt the other patrons’, ken.
It made her aware of the slightly rundown aura of her blue-collar neighborhood. Heightened her discomfort and confusion.
With exaggerated patience he replied, “In a nutshell, you’re part of the Kalyanese royal family.
