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She looked up at him. ‘I was on my way to.’
He raised a disbelieving eyebrow.
‘I truly was. I’m supposed to be meeting...’ Maggie let out a yelp and then she leapt from his arms and off the bed and raced for her purse and phone. ‘Oh, I was supposed to be meeting Flo...’ She felt terrible at the thought of her standing outside Dion’s alone.
‘Your friend?’ he checked. ‘So what happened to telling me?’
‘Flo was going to help get me into Dion’s. It’s a bar—apparently your brother is there tonight...’
The fear of never knowing about his son left him then, for he would have been told tonight.
Perhaps even by Maggie herself!
‘I arranged to meet Hazin there tonight too,’ Ilyas admitted. ‘I need to speak to him and I thought it would be less formal to do so there.’
‘You were on your way there too!’
He nodded.
‘I would have died if I’d walked in there and seen you!’ Maggie smiled in delight at the thought, and then worried as she read through Flo’s texts. ‘She says she’s left my name at the front and to meet her inside...’
Maggie looked at the time and then she looked at Ilyas, who was wearing a lot of her red lipstick on both his face and shirt. She could only hazard a guess how she must look!
‘What do I do?’
‘Text her and tell her something came up,’ Ilyas suggested, and reached over and pulled her back to the bed. ‘Tell her you are sorry but Ilyas proposed and you hope she understands...’
‘Proposed?’
‘Will you marry me, Maggie?’
She had thought a part-time lover might be the best she could hope for.
‘Do you have to marry me because I’m pregnant?’
‘No.’ Ilyas shook his head. ‘I could have the palace deal with all that. I want to marry you. Why do you think I’m here?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Do you really think I came all this way for sex?’
‘Maybe,’ she admitted, for she wouldn’t put it past him. ‘You really came here to ask me to marry you?’
‘And for sex,’ he said, and watched her start to laugh, but then midway it faded. His Maggie was wise, and instantly she saw the impossibility of it happening in the land she had, a few months ago, left.
‘Your father would never agree.’
‘I don’t need him to. I make the decisions now.’
‘But he is king.’
‘And I have told him that unless there are changes—big ones—I shall take it to the people.’
It was daunting but Ilyas seemed incredibly calm.
‘Maggie, I have been planning this for a long time. Many years ago, I knew that change was required. At first I thought I would have to wait until I was king, but, as the years passed, I knew it was not fair to the people. I have been waiting until the time was right to step up. You—’ he smiled ‘—expedited the process.’
‘Me?’
