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Regardless, she wasn’t completely buying the story he’d never been so mad. “Not even when you realized your former lover with a seriously questionable reputation was threatening to out your liaison to the press?”
The slightest movement that could have been a wince showed on his features when Angele said the words seriously questionable reputation, but other than that, Zahir didn’t show any further emotion to the words. Certainly he didn’t exhibit that latent anger he had in regard to Angele’s actions.
“You knew it was Elsa?” he asked with just a tinge of surprise. “Your letter was careful not to point fingers.”
“I didn’t know if you still cared for her.” And she hadn’t wanted him hurt any more than he would be by knowledge of the pictures and blackmail itself.
“She’ll never attempt to hurt you again.” The flat truth in his voice didn’t allow Angele to doubt it.
She nodded. “I assumed you neutralized the threat to your good name.”
“My name and reputation were a secondary consideration in this instance.”
She found that hard to believe, but didn’t call him on it. They had more important things to discuss. “So, when are we getting married?”
He didn’t blink at the change in topic. “Since you are already six weeks along, there is no hope of a quick marriage stifling future rumors.”
“Hence your insistence on announcing my pregnancy before our official engagement?”
“The announcement will be a joint affair.”
“How lovely.” The entire world would think he was marrying her because she carried his child and potential future heir.
But then, was that any different than the knowledge they were marrying as the result of a political contract between two kings? Probably not. It was her own fault that she’d always considered the other as less important because of her feelings for Zahir.
Talk about burying her head in the sand. “I’d make a fine ostrich,” Angele muttered.
Zahir gave her a quizzical look, but she waved it off and said, “We could do something small fairly quickly.”
Lou-Belia was going to pitch the fit of a lifetime when she realized her only child’s wedding plans had to be rushed and scaled back.
“Small?” Zahir said the word as if doing so pained him. “For the Crown Sheikh of Zohra? I think not.”
“Everything doesn’t have to be done on a world leader scale.” Really, really, it didn’t.
Only the look on his face said it did. “Learn to accept the inevitability of it. We are political leaders, not celebrities to indulge in a secret ceremony on some private island. Our people will expect and deserve the opportunity to celebrate our joy with us.”
“Not to mention assorted world leaders and their hangers-on,” she grumbled as the reality of her change in circumstance began to make itself felt.
“It is inevitable.”
“So, what do you suggest? I would prefer not to waddle down the aisle nine months pregnant.”
“Be assured, it will not be that bad.”
“How bad are you proposing it be?”
“You would be best past this nausea.”
“Agreed.” Fainting on her walk down the aisle was not the impression she wanted to leave with dignitaries and world leaders, much less her future family.
“We are in luck. Usually trying for any event of this magnitude with any less than an entire year of planning would be impossible. Two years would be preferable, but my father is hosting a summit to discuss world oil reserves in two months time. Were we to coordinate the wedding celebrations to coincide with the summit, the important political guests would already be in Zohra.”
There was no room for sentimentality in that scenario, but she accepted that was her own fault. She couldn’t help wondering if they had followed the contract and a regular schedule of engagement and marriage, if it would not have been the same, though.
“Our wedding is a political event.” Which she’d known somewhere in the back of her mind, but had not really given thought to what that meant in the grand scheme of things.
She’d always looked at the Zohra-Jawhar connecting, never considering the further implications to her life.
