Page 14 of Sheikh's Secret Love-Child

That Shona might have agreed only made it worse.

“He doesn’t need any nannies,” Shona had told Yadira fiercely, ignoring the fact that Miles, always a joyful boy and completely at ease wherever he went, seemed perfectly happy with all the attention.

“Of course not, mistress,” Yadira had replied mildly. Even deferentially. “They are only here to aid you. And only so much as you wish.”

“I don’t wish.”

Yadira had nodded as if this was perfectly acceptable and, even more, as if it made sense.

“Are you certain you do not wish to refresh yourself after your long journey?” She’d waved a hand toward the nannies, who were sitting on the floor with Miles and making him laugh. “We are all strangers to you, I understand. But you do not need to trust us. What you can trust is that the king would not permit a single hair on his son’s head to be harmed in any way. And that his reaction to such an outrage would be swift and terrible.”

And that, Shona had believed. Or maybe she’d just been too damn tired. Or any of the other maddening and overwhelming things that swirled around inside of her and nearly made her doubt her own name, standing in the middle of the kind of luxury that made her very uneasy indeed.

As if she would...break it. All of it. Or worse, it would somehow break her. Ruin her. Make her soft and dreamy and easily knocked down.

And what would happen to her—and her child—if she couldn’t get back up?

“Miles,” she’d called. “Do you want to come with me while I clean up?”

But Miles had new toys and a father who was a king and more, a group of new friends who found him delightful.

“No,” he told her, without even looking her way. “I’m playing.”

And that was how Shona had found herself alone in that endless, rambling bathroom, also done up in marble and golds and shot through with deep blue tiles. And maybe she was already getting soft—or maybe it was just the long flight—but she didn’t have it in her to deny herself that tub, with the jets and the steps and the window over the beautiful jewel of a garden with the desert looming out there in the distance. And when she was done, she helped herself to the array of cosmetics and products that lined the acres of sink. She spent some time on her hair. She tried to hide the sleeplessness and the worry, until she asked herself who, exactly, she was trying to hide that from.

And when she walked back out into what she couldn’t quite believe was supposed to be her bedroom when it could house half a city, she found her waitress uniform was gone. And in its place, spread out over the vast sea of a bed, were the kinds of clothes that made her feel something a lot more worrisome than simply hollow.

None of this is real, she told herself, her heart slamming into her ribs as she looked at the sorts of dresses girls like her didn’t bother dreaming about, because they were so out of reach.

Or even if it was real, she understood it had to be temporary. Or the kind of test some foster parents liked to set up. Like the one family she’d been with who had made strict rules about mealtimes and then had put out fresh, fragrant doughnuts in the kitchen to see who would fall into the trap.

Shona had never been fooled by such things.

If something looked too good to be true, it was probably put there specifically to hurt her. She’d learned that a long time ago.

Dressed in nothing but a towel and her own uneasiness, Shona walked over to the dressing-room door, which led into what she supposed was meant to be a closet—though it bore no resemblance to any closet she’d ever seen. It was a large room with seating in the middle, as if previous occupants had grown tired in the midst of dressing themselves in endless finery and had required breaks. And instead of wearing the absurdly fancy dress that had been laid out for her as if she was some kind of fairy princess, she dug around until she found something more reasonable. None of her own clothes were anywhere to be found, but she came up with a pair of trousers that fit her perfectly and felt good when she pulled them on, and a kind of tunic in a shade of blue she was forced to admit made her skin seemed to shine from within. Everything fit her and, worryingly, she felt comfortable in these clothes that didn’t belong to her.

She was certain she hadn’t mistaken the way Yadira had sighed when she’d caught sight of her after she’d eventually found her way back into Miles’s playroom—where he hadn’t seemed to notice she was gone.

But she hadn’t changed. And that was how she’d been dressed when she was taken into the private dining room of the king of Khalia for the first time.

Who looked even less like the man she had met on a bar stool five years previously. He’d changed out of that suit he’d been wearing into something that she couldn’t possibly have named, white and flowing, but which seemed to suit him. It made him seem...more. More dangerous. More demanding. More impossibly beautiful without having to waste a single smile.

He was so clearly and obviously a king that it made her stomach somersault around inside her.

“What on earth are you wearing?” Malak had asked her, in an idle sort of way she didn’t believe at all.

He’d been lounging there on a pile of brightly colored pillows in front of a low table laden with trays of food, but she couldn’t really take all that in. Much less the balcony behind him that offered sweeping views all over the city that looked so alien to someone born and bred in the bayou. Instead, she found herself focusing on the laughter she was sure she could see in that dark green gaze of his, glittering at her.

It made her feel things she didn’t want to acknowledge. She’d told herself she didn’t feel anything but anger. “I want my own clothes.”

“You can’t have them,” Malak had replied in that same idle way. As if it wasn’t even a question. “I am sure they served you well in whatever existence it was you carved out in that dreadful place, but you are in Khalia now. None of those clothes are appropriate for the role you must assume here.”

She’d straightened her spine as if she planned to fight him with her hands. As more than a little of her wanted to do, right here and now. Her fingers twitched. “I haven’t agreed to marry you, Malak. I haven’t even agreed to eat with you. I don’t know why you think you can just ignore the things you don’t want to hear.”

His mouth curved a little at that, but he didn’t argue.

Which, in retrospect, Shona found even more alarming.