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She looked like sex appeal incarnate. Her light brown hair gleamed, tumbling down her shoulders. Her lips were scarlet red. Her hips swayed as she walked in on six-inch heels. Her curvaceous body was lathed in a tight, totally inappropriate tube dress in red.
But she greeted the family with quiet dignity, with her young maid following her. And though Omar ordered the queen’s chair brought beside his, she didn’t come to sit on the dais as was proper, as Laila certainly would have.
No. Beth walked directly to the mother, taking the woman’s hands in her own. As her maid lifted up the child in her arms, they all spoke together, with the maid translating. They embraced each other, laughing. The parents handed Beth a rough, handmade plaster tile with a tiny handprint in it, and the mother kissed both Beth’s cheeks, as the father bowed his head and wept. At the end of it, they were all crying.
Not just the family. Not just Beth. Everyone in court looked teary-eyed, except for Khalid, who grimaced in irritation, and Hassan al-Abayyi, who tapped his foot impatiently. The two men were trying to hurry the end of the court day, so they could return to the small council chamber to begin discussions for a business deal.
Omar realized his eyes were wet, as well. He touched the corner of his eye in amazement, trying to remember the last time that had happened.
Watching Beth, he looked at the kindness and compassion and warmth radiating from her lovely face.
And then—he looked again at the tight red dress over her bombshell curves. He saw the outline of her nipples and realized she wasn’t even wearing underwear.
Was she trying to make him lose his mind?
Beth hugged the family one last time, then turned and left the throne room. Without so much as looking at him.
Omar rose abruptly from his throne.
“Court day is over,” he said.
“Sire,” his vizier said in alarm, “you’re not leaving? We still have the small council—”
“We have much to discuss,” Hassan al-Abayyi said heavily. “Oil companies are waiting to hear if we’ll auction the right to drill on our western border—”
“Later,” Omar bit out. Hurrying down the steps from the dais, he left the throne room. People took one look at his face and cleared a path. Following Beth down the hall, he soon caught up with her with his longer stride.
Catching her elbow, he turned her to face him.
“You cannot,” he ground out, “dress like that.”
Still clutching the plaster tile of the child’s handprint, Beth looked up at him in surprise. “I know I look hideous. I’m doing it to make everyone hate me, just as you wanted.”
Having her sashay into his throne room looking like a sex goddess, when he was already tempted by the thought of her every single moment of the day, hadn’t been exactly what he had in mind. “This is unbearable. Are you pregnant or not?”
She stared at him incredulously. “I still don’t know.”
“When will you?”
“Any day now.”
He looked at her breasts, the outline of which were sharply revealed in the tight dress. Were they swollen? He couldn’t tell. And just looking made him want to take her, right here in the palace hallway, right outside the throne room on court day. His heart pounded as he clenched his fists at his sides, resisting the temptation. “Go change your dress.”
“Why? Isn’t it working?”
It was working too well. That was the problem. Everything she was doing was making him want her more. In his bed. As his wife.
And in spite of her efforts, his people didn’t seem to hate her. At least not the regular people of the city. He could still remember how they’d chanted her name that very first day. “Beth! Beth!” They loved her now, more than ever.
It was just his nobles who disliked her more. Samarqara’s aristocrats watched her scandalous behavior and communicated their scorn to each other, not in open words, but with delicately raised eyebrows.
But that was nothing, compared to the way they’d react once they discovered that Beth Farraday wasn’t a prodigy or world-famous scientist at all, but an ordinary shop girl.
If they discovered he’d been tricked, and had chosen such a woman over Laila al-Abayyi—
His hands tightened. He could imagine Hassan al-Abayyi going to war. The man had almost done it fifteen years ago, after the death of his oldest daughter. How would he react to another insult?
If only—
