AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Her eyes flew to his face.
‘You can’t,’ he repeated. ‘If news gets out then...’
‘I trust my sisters.’
‘I’m glad. But I don’t.’
‘You are cutting me off from a support that I need right now,’ she warned.
‘Then allow me to be that support.’ His words were at odds with the grim determination on his features.
She turned away from him.
‘Star.’ She halted without looking back. ‘If you are pregnant—’
‘We’ll cross that bridge when it comes to it,’ she interrupted, not wanting to hear the rest of his declaration. Because she knew it would erase all the good that they had shared up to that point, all the moments of connection and how she’d feltseenby him.
‘I need you to understand that while Duratra is a peaceful, inclusive and diverse country, even we balk at unmarried sheikhs with illegitimate heirs. Family is incredibly important to us. It comes first.’
‘I appreciate that,’ she said, still facing the door to the bedroom.
‘Star. I need you tounderstandthat if you are carrying my child, wewillmarry.’
No.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. She was supposed to come to Duratra, find the necklace and return home to Norfolk, where they could find the jewels, sell the estate and get the treatment their mother needed.
Spinning to face him, ‘But I can’t be what you’d imagined as a wife?’ she said.
‘No. You’re not.’
She pressed her teeth into her lip to stop the hot ache in her throat from escaping.
‘But if you are carrying my child that won’t matter.’
‘So you’d marry me for the sake of our child?’ she demanded.
‘Yes.’
‘But not love. You’d notwantto marry me.’ Star rubbed at her wrists, trying to soothe away the impression of shackles that her mother—that Catherine—had seen marriage as.
‘No royal marries for love, Star.’
‘That is very sad indeed.’
‘It’s just the way it is,’ he said as if it were a tenet to live by. ‘If you are pregnant, we will marry.’
Less than two hours later the Jeep jerked a little to the right as they skirted the base of another impossibly tall sand dune and he cursed. Usually Khalif was a much better driver than this. He loved this drive. Not that he’d taken it in the last three years. No one had been back here since Faizan and Samira’s accident—as if distance alone would help stave off their grief.
Khalif was hit by an overwhelming need to speak to his brother right now.
You’re a fool, Faizan would have said.
And Samira would have looked at him with her large, deep brown eyes, accepting, understanding and hopeful that he’d found happiness at last.
He braced himself against the wave of loss that hit as inevitably as the tide.Thatwas why he didn’t like thinking of them. The pain that always followed was too much to bear.
He gripped the steering wheel and turned to check on Star. She had regained a little of the colour in her face. He resisted the urge to lift his sunglasses and rub his eyes, instead pushing forward with focused determination. As if the distance between them and the palace was something to be beaten into submission.
