Читать книгу Sheikh's Secret Love-Child - Caitlin Crews - Страница 10

CHAPTER TWO

MALAK WAS FURIOUS.

That was too tame a word. He was nearly volcanic, and the worst part was, he was well aware he had no right to the feeling because he’d been the one to cause this situation in the first place. No one had asked him to carry on as he had, following pleasure wherever it led.

But knowing his own culpability only made it worse.

He hadn’t believed it when the palace advisors had put the photographs before him. He’d had enough on his plate, with his brother Zufar’s abdication following so soon after their father’s and the bracing news that after a life of being ignored—which he had always quite enjoyed, in fact, as it had meant he could do exactly as he pleased without anyone thundering at him about his responsibilities—he was to be king.

Malak had never wanted to be king. Who would want such a burden? He’d preferred his life of excess and extremes, thank you. But Zufar was happy, a thing that Malak would never have believed possible if he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes, not after the way they’d grown up. And Malak loved both his brother and his country, so the decision was simple.

The decision, perhaps, but not the execution of it. His initiation into his new role had thus far been all that he’d feared and more, starting with a close examination of his entire sybaritic existence. Laying all his exploits bare, one by one, until Malak was profoundly sick of himself and the great many salacious, debauched urges he’d never attempted to curb in the slightest.

He had never been much for shame, but it was difficult to avoid when faced with so many photographs and so many thick dossiers enumerating his indiscretions, one after the next, on into infinity. And particularly when so many of the women in those pages were nothing but vaguely pleasant blurs to him.

And yet he remembered Shona. Distinctly.

How could he not? Of the many beautiful women he’d been privileged enough to sample, she had been something else entirely. It had been his last night in New Orleans after a week of blues and all manner of questionable behavior. He had settled in for a quiet drink in the lobby of his quietly elegant hotel to prepare himself for the trip back home to see his family, who would all have been deeply disapproving of his antics if they’d ever spared him a moment’s notice.

And then there she was. She’d been almost unbearably pretty, with rich, creamy dark skin and a lush mouth that made him feel distinctly greedy at a glance. And her beautiful hair, arrayed in a great halo around her head with springy curls he’d longed to sink his hands into. She’d worn a skimpy little dress that had glittered like gold and had made a delectable poem out of her lean curves.

Better still, she’d walked to the gleaming wooden bar and taken the only empty seat, which had been directly next to his.

Malak was only a man. And not much of one, according to his family when they bothered to pay attention to him and all the newspapers that breathlessly recorded his every salacious move.

Which had made it the easiest thing in the world to smile at the prettiest girl he’d seen in ages, and lean in when she smiled back with what had seemed to him, as jaded as he was, like innocence.

It had been a revelation.

“This is my first time here,” she’d told him, angling her head toward his as if she was sharing a secret. “Tonight is my twenty-first birthday and I decided to celebrate in style.”

It had taken him a minute to remember where he was. And more, recall those American laws he found so strange, that called young boys and girls adults when they were eighteen and wished to head off to war, but restricted their drink.

“And you chose to celebrate it here?” he’d asked. “Surely there are more exciting places to go for such a grand occasion than a subdued hotel bar on a quiet street. This is New Orleans, after all.”

Her smile had only gotten better the longer she’d aimed it at him. “I used to walk past this hotel all the time when I was a kid and I always dreamed I’d come in here one day. This seemed like the perfect opportunity.”

Malak had known full well that he hadn’t been alone when he’d felt that spark between them. That fire.

It had never occurred to him to ignore such things back then, for some notion of a greater good. He hadn’t. He’d bought a pretty girl her first drink and then he’d happily divested her of her innocence in his suite upstairs. He could remember her wonder, her uncomplicated joy, as easily as if it had all happened yesterday.

Just as he was sure that if he tried, he would be able to remember her taste, too.

Because it wasn’t only Shona’s smile that had been a revelation to him.

The pictures his advisors had shown him—his aides bristling with officious dismay as they’d set each one before him—were of the only woman he remembered in such perfect detail. He knew time had passed—years, in fact—but he wouldn’t have known that by looking at the photographs they’d placed before him. Shona was as pretty as ever, whether she wore what appeared to be a server’s uniform or one of those long, flowing sundresses she seemed to prefer that Malak greatly approved of, so perfectly did they showcase those curves he could almost feel beneath his hands again.

Or perhaps she was even prettier because he found he could also remember the wild sounds of wonder and discovery she’d made as he’d explored her, and the sumptuous feel of her silky dark skin against his.

But his advisors had not been primarily interested in reacquainting Malak with his every mistake. Those forced marches down memory lane had become tense for all concerned, since Malak had resolutely refused to apologize or show the faintest shred of regret for the way he’d lived his life as the spare with no hope of ascending the throne. Ever.

It was the child his advisors were interested in.

The child, who was four years old and bore a striking resemblance not only to Malak, but also to every member of his family. And if there had been any doubt, the little boy sported the same dark green eyes that had been a gift from Malak’s great-grandmother. The same damn eyes Malak saw every time he looked at his reflection.

And he had never expected to be king, it was true. He’d never wanted such a burden. But he was a prince of Khalia whether his distant father ignored him while campaigning for his mother’s affections, or his mother ignored him because she’d preferred the son Malak had only recently learned she’d had and given away after falling in love with another man. Royal blood ran in his veins and despite his many heedless years of living down to everybody’s worst expectations of him, Malak had agreed to do his duty and was fully prepared to acquit himself well.

Without the issues that had plagued his parents, thank you, since Malak had no intention of ruining himself for love the way they each had, in their way.

He was getting his head around the constant surveillance, whether from his own security detail or the public that had always wanted a piece of him and now wanted everything. He was getting up to speed on current affairs and was learning to pick his way between competing agendas to find his own opinion on matters of state.

He was no one’s first choice to be king—he recognized that. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t do his best to be a good one.

And that meant that Malak did not have to be told what it meant that a one-night affair had borne such fruit. Not that this spared him numerous lectures on the topic from his affronted advisors, as if, left to his own devices, he would simply ignore the fact that he had a child out there in the world he’d never met.

He knew what it meant. And he was furious that Shona had concealed his son from him—even though he was fairly certain he hadn’t told her who he really was. That didn’t change the fact that he had missed years of his own child’s life.

Or that he was now trapped in a mess of his own making.

A mess that would have to become a marriage, regardless of any feelings he might have on the matter.

Furious barely began to cover his feelings on the topic, no matter how pretty Shona still was or how sweetly she’d surrendered her innocence to him all those years ago. There was not one part of Malak that wanted to marry a woman he hardly knew, or any woman at all if he was honest, simply because he’d clearly made a very big mistake five years back.

But it turned out he liked her horror at the same idea even less.

“I hope you mean your ‘queen’ in a metaphoric sense,” she snapped at him in obvious outrage, as if he’d suggested she prostitute herself on the nearest corner. Her arms were crossed, as if she was trying to ward off one of the many disreputable persons he’d had to step over on the street outside.

As if he was one of said disreputable persons.

New Orleans, it turned out, was a very different city in the light. And while sober.

And perhaps Shona was, too.

He studied her a moment while he fought to keep his temper in check. “You will find I rarely traffic in metaphors.”

“I don’t care.” She shook her head at him, very much as if he was insane. “What you do or don’t do is of no interest to me. You need to leave, now, or I’m calling the police. And believe me when I tell you that I’m not into metaphors, either.”

She pulled her mobile from the pocket of her apron and Malak believed her. If there was a woman alive on this earth who would dare summon the local police to attempt to handle him, it would be this one.

Shona was fierce, it turned out, and his was the blood of desert kings. Fierceness was appreciated—or it would be, eventually, if he could focus it in the right direction. She was threatening him, as if she had no fear at all of the armed men who would die to protect him, and he could appreciate that, too. Theoretically.

But the truth was, he wasn’t at all certain that an American waitress of questionable finances and a “career” in restaurants like this depressing, grotty pit should find the idea of marrying the king of Khalia quite so appalling.

What he found he was certain of was that he didn’t like it.

“I invite you to call all the police you imagine will help you,” he told her, and he could hear that volcanic rage in his voice, humming just there beneath the surface. The faint widening of her perfect brown eyes told him she could, too. “I’m sure they will enjoy a lesson in diplomatic immunity as much as they’ll enjoy discussions with you about wasting their time. But the end result will not change. Perhaps it is time you considered accepting the inevitable.”

She made an alternate, anatomically impossible suggestion that made Malak’s entire security team bristle to outraged attention.

“The disrespect, sire!” the man on his right growled.

Malak merely held up a hand, and his men subsided. Because no one was getting the fight they wanted today.

“I would advise you to remember that, like it or not, I am a king,” he told her softly. “It is possible I might find this irrepressible spirit of yours intriguing, in time, but my men most assuredly will not.”

She let out a short laugh that was almost as offensive as the off-color suggestion she’d just made. “The only thing I care about less than you is the opinion of your babysitters.”

Malak did not respond to that bit of impudence the way he wanted to do.

Because this was not Khalia. This was America, where, diplomatic immunity or not, people would likely take a dim view of him tossing a screaming woman over his shoulder and then throwing her into his waiting car.

Besides, that was no kind of strategy. Allowing her to think she could speak to him in this way was setting a dangerous precedent, but he could handle disrespect. He could think of several enjoyable ways to do just that even as he stood here in this distressingly dank hole that called itself a restaurant, the last place on earth he would ordinarily find himself feeling so...needy.

But he didn’t want to kidnap Shona and his own son. He would certainly do it if it came to that, but he knew that would do nothing but make him her enemy. Neither one of them wanted this unavoidable connection and the marriage that had to follow, that was plain enough, but it would be far better for him if she surrendered to the inevitable rather than fought him every step of the way.

At the very least it would be better for his relationship with the small child he had yet to meet whom he’d helped create—a notion he still couldn’t entirely get his head around.

After all, he knew more than he needed to know about what it was like to grow up in the shadow of a terrible marriage. He had no intention of passing on that feeling to his own child—even one he’d only learned existed a week ago.

“I will wait for you outside,” he said, with great magnanimity, as if he was bestowing upon her a tremendous favor. It made her eyes narrow. And then he could see the thoughts that spun through her head, so he addressed them. “My men are already at every exit, Shona, so escape is out of the question. What you need to ask yourself is if you want me to pay your boss to fire you, too. Simply because I can. With ease. And because it would suit me to speed up this process.”

“Of course you’d threaten me with losing my livelihood,” she replied, shaking her head at him as if he disgusted her. He found he did not enjoy the sensation. “After all, what’s a job to you? You don’t have to put food on any tables. You probably think it all just appears there, like magic.”

Malak did not dignify that with a response. He turned on his heel and went outside instead, where night was beginning to creep into the French Quarter, and as it did, as the soupy heat of the day began to ebb.

Outside in the thick, sweet twilight he could wrestle with his temper before he caused an international incident. Something that would not bother him in the slightest, he felt certain, because it would get him what he wanted that much quicker—but would cause the people of Khalia more alarm. And his people had been through enough already in these last few turbulent months.

He expected her to follow after him directly, but she didn’t. She made him wait. She not only did not walk away from her job as he expected she might, but she also worked her entire shift. And on her breaks she tested every single exit he’d told her he was having watched, which his men dutifully reported to him each time.

Malak almost admired her thoroughness and commitment.

Almost.

When she finally walked out of the restaurant and saw him waiting for her as he’d told her he would, she tilted up that belligerent little chin of hers and fixed him with the same scowl she’d used inside.

It took a great deal more self-control than it should have not to object to that...in a manner that involved his hands on her and the horizontal back seat of his vehicle. Malak complimented himself on his own restraint, because he very much doubted Shona would.

“I don’t know what you think is going to happen,” she began, her tone hot.

“I have already told you what’s going to happen.” Malak leaned against the pristine side of the Range Rover his security detail had driven here from the private airfield where his jet waited. The New Orleans night was sultry, just as he recalled it. There had been people around in the daylight, but they seemed wilder and brighter in the dark. Their laughter spiced the air as they wandered down the street and followed the seductive sound of the music that snaked around every corner.

In the middle of it, he and Shona stood there, studying each other with mutual dislike.

You do not dislike her, a voice inside challenged him at once. You dislike the fact she dislikes you, and so openly.

He opted to ignore that. He was unused to being disliked. Ignored or desired, that was what Malak was familiar with. But never this...hatred.

“I am not going to be your queen,” she told him, very distinctly. “I’m willing to let you see Miles, because, like it or not, you’re his father. And he deserves to know you, I suppose.”

He stopped admiring his restraint and forced himself to use it. “You suppose.”

“All you are to me is a man in a bar,” Shona said quietly, her dark gaze on his. And there was no reason that should have slammed into Malak like a blow when it was no more than the truth. “I don’t want anything from you. I never did. I never expected to see you again.”

“Clearly.” Every line of her body was defiant, but as Malak studied her, it wasn’t her defiance that got to him. It was that other thing. That spark that had bloomed between them in that bar long ago. The same fire still licked through him, and he didn’t like that at all. Wanting this woman would only complicate matters further. “But now I have returned. What I can’t understand is why you care so little for your own child you would consign him to a life of hardship rather than involve me.”

She let out a crack of laughter that felt a little too much like a slap. “Hardship? Did you just open your mouth and say something to me about hardship? What would you know about it?”

“You must know that I can provide for him in ways that you can only dream about. What mother wouldn’t want that?”

“My son wants for nothing.” Shona’s voice was quiet again, but certain. Absolutely certain. “He’s a happy kid. A good kid. And he’s mine.”

“What good is it to be yours if it means child care?” He nodded at the shoddy restaurant behind her. “A mother who must scramble for tips in a place like this?”

“Because an honest day’s work is beneath you, obviously.”

“Is this about honesty, Shona? Or your own bloody-mindedness?”

She rolled her eyes. Actually rolled her eyes, which Malak was not sure anyone had ever done to him in all his life.

“He’s four years old because guess what? Sometimes when people have sex, babies come of it. I’m surprised a worldly man like you didn’t know that.”

“I used a condom.” He had always used condoms. Always.

“They are not one-hundred-percent guaranteed. Apparently. And I dealt with the consequences of that all this time, all on my own. Except now you roll back into town talking about thrones and kings like I’m supposed to drop everything and what? Be grateful that you discovered we exist? I don’t think so.”

What bothered Malak the most about her words wasn’t her tone of voice, which bordered on scathing. It was the fact that nothing she said was untrue.

He hadn’t looked back when he’d left. He’d remembered her and her charming innocence, but had it not been for his father and brother’s abdications from the Khalian throne, something no one could possibly have predicted and Malak himself still did not quite believe, he would never have returned here.

But he didn’t say that. He found he couldn’t.

Because he didn’t like what it said about him—and wasn’t that funny? He had spent his whole life gleefully embracing the worst of his impulses. Was it his ascension to the throne that made it all seem squalid now?

Or was it the way Shona looked at him, as if squalid was all she saw?

“You could have reached out when you discovered you were pregnant,” he said stiffly.

The way she looked at him then was not exactly friendly. But Malak preferred that to the quiet certainty with which she’d dismissed him as nothing but a man in a bar.

Maybe that was the real lesson here, he thought with entirely too much sharp self-awareness. He could stand anything save anonymity.

“How would I have done that?” Shona asked coolly. “You never told me your full name. You didn’t leave me your telephone number. I discovered who you were entirely by accident.”

“You mean tonight?”

“I mean I saw a picture of you in a magazine about six months later.” She shook her head. “And no, before you ask, it did not cross my mind to try to chase down the Playboy Prince drowning in models across the world who came from some country I’ve never heard of. Why would I?”

Malak straightened from the side of the Range Rover. There were too many things competing inside of him for dominance, and he didn’t know quite what to do with any of them.

He settled on fury. It felt cleanest.

“If you knew who I was, then you had no excuse.”

“It was a one-night stand,” Shona replied, still with that same damn cool. That—more than anything—told him how different she was from that smiling, bright girl he’d met on the bar stool next to his. And he refused to ask himself if he was to blame for that change, because he was fairly certain he wouldn’t like the answer. “And as far as I could tell, you had those every night of the week. Why would you remember me?”

Why, indeed? And why was that a question Malak suddenly didn’t want to answer?

“I remember you now,” he told her with soft menace. “And even if I did not, the palace investigators found you all on their own. They informed me, in case I’d forgotten, that I was in New Orleans exactly nine months before you gave birth to a little boy who looks a good deal like me. And I might be tempted to believe in coincidences, especially because I’ve never gone without protection in my life, but they do not. It was simpler than I suspect you wish to know to get a sample of the child’s DNA to prove what is already obvious at a glance.”

Her brown gaze met his in a steady sort of challenge that no one else would dare. He told himself it was one more problem with this woman—her obvious inability to recognize her place—but that was not how it felt. “I thought you were supposed to be the king. Don’t you tell your people what to do?”

Malak didn’t want this. He had never really thought much of marriage at all, not for himself. Not after a front-row seat to his parents’ miserable one. And he had certainly never planned to find himself shackled to a woman he’d known for a single night long ago. He had not been raised to worry about continuing the bloodline. But from the moment Zufar had abdicated, Malak had found advisors in his ear, throwing out the names of eligible women of royal blood—Princess Amara of Bharathia, the Lady Suzette, and so on until it was all a blur of names and titles—and demanding he start thinking about his heirs.

Until it appeared he already had one.

And that reminded him who he was. He was no longer the Playboy Prince, the smirking star of a thousand tabloid articles. He was the king, with commitments to his people and their future whether he liked it or not, and it didn’t matter what had happened in the past few years. The only thing that mattered was what happened now.

“I understand your reluctance,” he told her, though he could tell that his tone was more cold than concerned by the way she stiffened. “But I am only here as a courtesy. I thought it would be better if I came to collect you myself instead of sending my men.”

“You can’t collect me. I’m not something you can pick up—”

She stopped, and the air changed between them. Something dark and dangerous seemed to loom there, just out of reach.

Malak did not state the obvious. That she was indeed something he could pick up, and he had.

But he might as well have yelled it.

“I should warn you that I have a limited amount of patience as it is,” he said softly, though not particularly carefully. “While I am aware of my own culpability in this, the fact remains that there is no possibility that my son and heir will be raised apart from me. The kings of Khalia are raised in the palace, under the care of the traditional tutors, the better to prepare for their eventual role. That is how it has been for centuries. That is how it will remain.”

She stood tall and still, her gaze on his and her hands in fists at her side. “My son is not a king.”

“No, he is a prince.” Malak gazed down at her, every inch of him the royal he had always been, though he had largely ignored it. But here, now, it was as if his ancestors roared in his blood. “The crown prince of Khalia, in point of fact. All that remains is to give him legitimacy. What that means, I am afraid, is that you will have to marry me. Whether you like it or not.”

Her breath left her in a kind of laugh. “I’m not going to marry you. I’m not going to hand my child over to you for random tutors to raise. You’re delusional.”

“That would make things easier for you, I’m sure. But I assure you, I am nothing of the kind.”

“Does everyone in Khalia marry a complete stranger? Is that also how it’s been for centuries?”

“As a matter of fact, many of the marriages in my family were arranged.” Malak didn’t think this was the time or place to comment on how those arrangements had worked out over time. His parents’ stormy marriage being the premiere case in point. “We are royal, after all. My brother was raised as the crown prince and was betrothed to an appropriate princess since her birth.”

Malak decided not to share how that had worked out, either. For either Zufar or Amira, the woman he’d been promised to but had not married, in the end. To say nothing of the half brother he’d never known he’d had, Adir, who had appeared from nowhere at their mother’s funeral and had spirited Amira away with him on the day of her wedding to Zufar.

None of those inconvenient truths would help him make his point here, to Shona. “Marrying strangers isn’t the barrier for me you might imagine.”

“Well, it’s a barrier for me,” she threw at him. “Because I’m not completely insane.”

“You have a choice before you, Shona. You can fight me all you like, but you will lose. And either way, I will be returning to Khalia with my son.” Malak let that sink in. He watched the way her chest rose and fell, too fast, and knew his edicts weren’t exactly landing well. “You can stay behind, if you wish. But I cannot tolerate any trouble or scandal. The kingdom cannot survive any more turmoil. So you need to ask yourself—are you willing to give up your child? To sign away all your rights and never speak of this again?”

“I would rather die,” she gritted out at him.

Malak felt that his smile was much too thin, but he aimed it at her, anyway. “Then again, let me offer my congratulations. For your only other choice is to return to Khalia with us and take your place as my queen.”

“I would rather—”

“Careful,” Malak warned her, his voice hardly more than a growl. “What I’m offering you is a great honor, whether you see it that way or not. Be very, very sure that you want to offend me. Be at peace with the inevitable consequences.”

Shona did not look anything like peaceful. “I’m not marrying you, Malak.”

“You will,” Malak said pitilessly. “Or you will remain behind, legally separated from your child and muzzled by a thousand contracts that ensure your silence, forevermore. Those are your choices.”

“You can’t force me to do any of these things,” Shona threw at him, as if amazed he thought otherwise. As if she expected the dirty streets of New Orleans to rise up on her behalf. “You can’t make me do anything!”

But Malak only smiled, and this time, it was real.

Because his patience was finally at an end.