Читать книгу The Sheikh's Reluctant Queen - Оливия Гейтс - Страница 18

For years, Rashid had considered returning to Zohayd an impossibility. Now he wasn’t just back in the country, he was in a limo heading to Zohayd’s royal palace, a place he’d sworn never to tread again.

But then he was sitting right next to another impossibility. Laylah. Who loved him. Who wanted him. Who believed in him.

Having her by his side made returning to Zohayd… bearable.

This was the land where he’d spent too many years watching Laylah from afar, unable to return her glances or reciprocate her interest. Where he’d found and lost those he’d thought of as brothers given to him by fate in exchange for taking everyone else away from him. Where he’d suffered the betrayal that had left him mutilated.

Then, claiming the kingship of Azmahar had become his life’s goal, and he’d known he’d be forced to return to Zohayd one day. But even when he’d started his plan, he hadn’t imagined this would be how he’d return. With Laylah as his world, not his pawn.

The supple hand entwined with his tugged him out of the darkness of his memories and worries to the sunniness of her smile and reality. “So who’s waiting for us at the palace?”

“I informed King Atef. I assume he’ll tell everyone else.”

Her grin widened. “Word of advice. Don’t use the word king around Uncle Atef. He hurled the title at Amjad and seems to want to forget the decades when he was one.”

“He’s been King Atef to me since I can remember. It’ll be very difficult to think of him as plain Sheikh Atef now. And of Amjad as king.”

“I know what you mean. Amjad is such a virtuoso in infuriating everyone and pulverizing rules and protocols, I thought he’d bring Zohayd down in a week when he became king. But though he’s taken being outrageous to a new realm, he’s now head-to-head with Aliyah’s Kamal for the position of best king in the region’s history.” She snuggled deeper into him, her smile catching the fire of adoration that he now felt he needed to sustain his vital functions. “Of course, the region hasn’t seen you as king yet.”

His heart trembled at how he’d come to depend on her esteem and belief. At how he felt he didn’t deserve them. “You always talk as if becoming a king is a sure thing for me.”

“I can’t see how it isn’t. You’re the absolute best man for the role, ever. Apart from my opinion, you’re a pureblooded Azmaharian, a decorated war hero and your success in business has surpassed even Haidar’s and Jalal’s. And you’re an Aal Munsoori.”

“Azmaharians hate that name now.”

Her expression became adorably serious. “They hate only one branch of the family, but still think of the Aal Munsooris at large as their rightful monarchs.” Her smile dawned again as her eyes devoured him. “And if anyone ever looked the part, it’s you.” Her hands strayed all over his shoulders and chest… and lower. “They must have coined the adjective regal for you.”

He caught her hands, his gaze shooting to the partition between the limo’s compartments. Even though he knew Ahmad couldn’t see or hear them, he didn’t want to start something he might not be able to stop. And he’d made a decision that, while in their region, he wouldn’t do anything to compromise her image.

It was still almost beyond his ability to deprive them both of the needed pleasure. He was almost panting when he said, “You’re clearly not in the least biased.”

She lay back against him, her hands captured in his, her eyes gobbling him up. “I am the essence of impartiality. If Azmaharians know what’s best for them, they’ll choose you.”

“If they do, how do you feel about becoming their queen?”

Her blink was surprise itself.

Would she ever stop surprising him? “You didn’t think of it?”

She sat up, her smooth forehead furrowing. “Uh… thinking wasn’t among my priorities this past month. But then I not only didn’t connect the dots between you becoming king and me becoming queen, I never contemplated being one, when it was all my mother thought of making me, too.”

His heart contracted at what he hadn’t contemplated. “It would be an unwelcome burden? A life you wouldn’t want for yourself or our children?”

The eyes that always shone with appreciation and humor grew somber. “It would be a huge responsibility and a radical change. It would take as drastic an adjustment.” Before he could blurt out that he would never disrupt her peace, that he would forget his kingship ambitions, her eyes glowed with conviction. “But I’ll share your choices and your life’s developments no matter what they are. If it’s your destiny to become king, then it’s my destiny to become your queen.”

And he forgot his abstinence resolution. His arms convulsed around her, his lips mashing to her forehead, to her cheeks, her lips, his heart overflowing. “Habibati…”

A rap on the limo’s window jerked him out of his surrender to poignancy. It had Laylah starting out of his embrace, too.

They both turned to find Amjad Aal Shalaan, Laylah’s oldest cousin and the infernal king of Zohayd, smirking down at them through the window.

Rashid hadn’t realized they’d been nearing the palace let alone that they were already there.

Shielding her from Amjad’s eyes, giving her time to rearrange anything he’d mussed, he opened the door and glared up at the man whose alliance he was supposed to court.

Even before Amjad’s transformation into a manipulative, borderline insane son of a bitch after his first wife had nearly poisoned him to death, he’d always rubbed Rashid the wrong way. There’d always been something about Amjad that reminded him too much of himself.

Against all expectations, Amjad had married again. Maram Aal Waaked, the daughter of the ruling prince of a neighboring emirate, Ossaylan. Amjad had tried to use Maram to force her father to return the Pride of Zohayd jewels, which, according to Zohaydan law and legend, conferred the right to rule the kingdom. It had turned out Maram’s hapless father had been blackmailed by the ex-queen of Zohayd, Sondoss, Laylah’s aunt, into helping her steal the jewels. Reportedly, Amjad had fallen flat on his face in love with Maram. Now after he’d been dubbed the Mad Prince, he’d become the Crazy King—crazy in love with his new wife.

That Rashid had to see to believe.

All he saw now was Amjad’s provocation as he met those startlingly emerald eyes on the same level. Not that he needed more than Amjad’s rude interruption of his tender moment with Laylah to guarantee his hackles wouldn’t subside for the foreseeable future.

“King Amjad,” he gritted between clenched teeth in lieu of a punch in the nose.

“Sheikh Rashid.” Devilry danced in Amjad’s eyes as he inclined his head. “Rumor has it you’re here on a bid to cure my cousin’s chronic spinsterhood.”

Before he could respond to that insolence, Laylah squeezed his arm, no doubt to stop him from putting his fist through her cousin’s and king’s smirking face. He’d been insane if he thought he could ally himself with this incorrigible creature.

“It’s so good to see being a harassed king and a henpecked husband hasn’t defanged you, Amjad,” Laylah said merrily.

Amjad continued talking about her as if she wasn’t there. “But then she’s been trying to catch your eye since she could toddle. Oh, yes, we all noticed. And cringed. It was excruciating watching her pant after you. Made me hyperventilate. So how did she suddenly succeed in curing your blindness to her splendor?”

The wily wolf was skeptical. Rashid had known he would be. Amjad had suspicion for blood. It was why he’d originally hatched this whole plan. To pass Amjad’s maximum-distrust inspection.

Amjad continued, “It was weird, how determined you were in not noticing her. It got so fishy, I asked Haidar and Jalal if they knew which team you played for.”

Against his better judgment, Rashid said, “There were years when speculation about your team loyalties ran rampant, too.”

Amjad’s grin grew more goading, delighted that he’d gotten a rise from him. “I didn’t have a smitten angel hero-worshipping me for years.”

“I hear Queen Maram did just that before you rethought your… predilections.”

Amjad’s eyes blazed greener. The bastard loved this. “Those were only put on hold after my monster bride slathered me in arsenic. That’s a good enough reason to swear off women for a few years, don’t you think? What was your excuse?”

It was no use. This would develop into a full-scale war.

So be it. And to hell with his alliance. “While you were getting over your self-pitying and preserving neurosis, I was serving my country and putting my life on the line for the region’s safety. I didn’t think it fair to involve a woman in a life that could end prematurely.”

Laylah’s convulsive dig into his arm transmitted how horrifying she found the what-if scenario.

He squeezed her hand, warding off the imaginary dread, reassuring her that he was here, would always be here, with her.

Amjad, not missing a thing, continued his inflammatory interrogation. “But that heroic existence came to an end a few years ago. What reminded you of my worshipping cousin all of a sudden? And made you not only look her way this time, but decide to take her off the shelf, and in record time, too?”

He decided to tell both of them the truth about this at least. “The reason I never looked at you—” he turned his eyes to Laylah, whose eyes filled with tears and wonder as she heard his confession for the first time “—wasn’t because I didn’t notice you, or wasn’t interested. I was, painfully so. But I wasn’t worthy of looking in your direction then.”

Amjad let out a deriding guffaw. “And you think you are now?”

Laylah stepped between them. “Are you two gigantic boys done chest-thumping, or do you need to release some more testosterone? Why don’t you just beat each other black and blue and get this ‘who’s the bigger, badder alpha’ thing out of your systems?”

Rashid watched as Amjad looked down with extreme amusement at Laylah, who cared not a bit that he was one of the most powerful men in the world, smacking him in chastisement, as if he was only her exasperating—and younger—relative and not her king.

Jealousy radiated up Rashid’s spine. Cousin or not, he wanted her to smack no other male, wanted no other male to revel in being smacked by her.

Amjad gave her a mock bow. “For knock-down, drag-out fights, and any other physically expressed stupidity, I’ll refer you to Harres. Or Jalal. Me, my wit is my lash, my tongue my sword.”

Fighting the need to shove him away from Laylah, Rashid said, “You imagine you wield such weapons, when it’s your status that stops people from showing you their real worth in a fair fight.”

Amjad pretended shock. “You mean you’re holding back in respect for my status?” He wiggled his eyebrows at him. “I hereby decree you’re free to do your best. Or is it only your worst?”

Again Laylah came between them, this time one palm flat on each of their chests, keeping them apart. “Down boys. In your corners.”

Amjad sighed. “Okay. Just because Rashid is an endangered species and we need him alive and able to breed. I don’t think we’d find you another mate if he expires.”

Laylah dug her elbow in Amjad’s gut, her smile so radiant as she looked up, asking Rashid to share the joke. He only wanted to poke Amjad’s green eyes out.

Turning to Amjad, she asked, “Is my father here?”

“You expected him to be?” Amjad scoffed. “That deadbeat? And I thought you were above such sentimental tripe. If you haven’t yet, it’s time to face it already, Laylah. In that generation only one apple didn’t turn out rotten. My father is all we got in the way of a parent around this place.”

An incensed step brought Rashid slamming into Amjad chest-first. “Even if she knows the truth about her father, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t still hurt her. You don’t have to be cruel.”

“Oh, I assure you, I have to.” Amjad’s eyes suddenly smoldered with something besides mockery. Fury. “It’s called tough love, and she’s better off considering both her parents as dead as my mother or your parents. Just remembering my uncle makes me want to kick his useless ass, or anyone’s who mentions him.”

Before he could punch Amjad’s lights out, Laylah growled, “I swear, one more word out of either of you, and I’m putting each of you in a corner at the ends of this palace. Ya Ullah—now I remember why I left. I was drowning in male posturing and hormones. Are there any buffering women around here?”

“All the women who’ve invaded the Aal Shalaan male maze will be here tomorrow,” Amjad said. “For today you can seek the feminine amelioration of my Maram, of course, and Johara.”

She whooped. “I can’t wait to meet the phenomenon who’s put a collar around your neck. And see Johara again. And the children. You know, some sensible, age-appropriate-behaving individuals.”

Amjad pulled another of those inciting expressions in his arsenal and shooed her away. “Skip along, then. Rashid and I have more juvenile silliness scheduled before we’re through. I have to drive him to within an inch of his sanity before I even look into his application to acquire our last remaining—if long-stored and fraying around the edges—Aal Shalaan treasure.”

Laylah grinned up at Rashid. “Guess you were right about my code name here.” She turned her best demolishing glance on Amjad. “Not that anyone can accuse you of knowing how to hang on to your treasures, as evidenced by what happened to the Pride of Zohayd, your foremost one. So hang on to your sanity, Amjad. Rashid is a world-renowned authority in sanity extraction, among other… extractable things. I leave you to his not-so-tender mercies, taal omrak.”

Amjad let out a spectacular snort at her tagging the king’s hail of “may you live long” to her irreverence. Then she stood on tiptoe and pressed a clinging kiss to Rashid’s lips.

Before he forgot Amjad and the watchful eyes of the palace dwellers and crushed her to him, she drew away with a smile that lit his existence before almost dancing away.

Feeling bereft already without her, his gaze clung to her as she receded. And he registered where they were for the first time.

The royal palace of Zohayd was right up there with the Taj Mahal in splendor and intricacy of design, and even more extensive. The mid-seventeenth-century palace that had taken more than three decades and thousands of artisans and craftsmen to build had once been his playground and domain along with Haidar and Jalal from age eight to twenty. He’d taken as much pride and pleasure in it as they had before his stays here had declined until they’d stopped altogether, around ten years ago.

It felt so strange to be back after everything that had happened since to pollute his memory. Nostalgia was like a wave that crashed down on him as he walked through this place again, felt its history and the grandeur saturating its walls, permeating his senses with bittersweet memories. On account of its being Laylah’s home, not the stage where chunks of his life had been played. It had been mostly here where he’d seen her and dared not dream of her. Now she was here with him. It made being here again so… poignant.

Amjad, the self-appointed poignancy disperser, flicked a hand at Laylah as she disappeared around a bend. “Are you as viciously intelligent as you look? Did you latch onto Laylah when you thought you were ‘worthy’ of her for the right reasons? Do you realize what a miracle she is? The product of Medusa and Narcissus should have been a man-eating gorgon, not the most sensitive, selfless being to walk the earth. That she’s female, too, makes her a veritable impossibility.”

Now that Amjad was singing Laylah’s praises, Rashid no longer felt like wiping the palace floor with him face-first.

Still looking where Laylah had disappeared, as if to bask in her echoes, he sighed. “Just what I was thinking. Before your insufferable, inflammatory intrusion on our privacy.”

“Insufferable, inflammatory intrusion? Can you say that five times in quick succession?” Amjad suddenly slapped him on the back. “So how did you do it?”

Struggling not to rearrange the king’s well put-together face, Rashid gritted, “Not choke you for all the insensitivities you poured on Laylah’s head? You’re only still breathing because I need you to do some talking on my behalf.”

Amjad’s guffaw was all enjoyment now. “I may like you yet.” Another back slap. “And by do it, I mean Laylah.” At Rashid’s growl, Amjad held up his hands. “To quote Laylah, ‘down boy.’ I mean—apart from her sharper-than-I-remember tongue—that was a woman fathoms deep in love. I know the symptoms well. My Maram looks and sounds like that around me.”

“It must be the era of impossibilities.”

Amjad laughed again. “Yeah, I still can’t figure out why Maram loves me. But I always figured Laylah’s obsession with you stemmed from your unavailability. Now you’re all over her, not to mention a far deteriorated version of your younger self. What’s keeping someone like her interested in someone like you?”

“If you mean my scar…”

“Please. That’s your one interesting feature. Provides you with character. Also proves you’re human, since there have been major doubts about that. Nah, it has nothing to do with what you look like, and everything to do with what you are like. You’re one dour, ruthless, unstable son of a bitch. Don’t get me wrong, it makes you my kind of guy, but how can Laylah, that perpetual ray of sunshine, stand you?”

He forced out a breath. “How does your Maram stand you?”

“She does because we’re alike. When you take away all the human traits I lack, she’s got a razor for a mind and a scythe for a tongue, too. I don’t believe in this opposites attract thing.”

“Laylah and I are not opposites. We’re very much alike, too.”

Amjad snorted again. “Now I’ve heard it all.”

“Think about it. As you pointed out, she is practically as parentless as I am. She has felt alone and out of place all her life, as I have. She’s felt responsible for other people’s crimes and punished herself for them.”

“Her mother’s crimes and your guardian’s, huh? Now that you point it out, yeah, I can see the resemblance in all the major stuff.” Amjad gave him an assessing glance. “So what’s your real plan?”