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Five hours.
Five wasted hours he’d sat in that room, while fifteen people stared back at him as coffee grew cold, sweets grew stale and the room had become so stuffy they’d needed to open a window.
Stalking down the corridor, he told himself that he just needed air. Fresh air. He wasn’t running. He just needed a minute to himself. Which was why he was taking the staff routes through the palace, not the main ones. He wasnothiding from Amin, his brother’s—no, hisown—assistant. He was simply ensuring the longevity of the bespectacled man’s life.
Through the window, across the courtyard, Khalif could see the tourists leaving the exhibition housed in the public areas of Duratra’s palace. The sound of two boys laughing as they were chased affectionately by their mother cut through Khalif like a knife, transporting him back to a time when he and his brother had run rings around the palace guards.
Grief was like a punch to the gut. Swift, harsh, hot and angry. An emotion he could not allow to be seen now that he was first in line to the throne. Three years on from the terrible accident and he still caught himself noting something to tell his brother, wondering what Faizan would think, would advise. But Khalif wasn’t sure what was worse, to do that, or for that to stop.
It was a visceral sense of wrongness. As if that day the world had shifted a few degrees. Grief felt like trying to push the entire world back into place, millimetre by millimetre. And nothing worked. Not even pretending that he didn’t feel like an imposter. A substitute for his brother’s throne, as if Faizan would just appear from around the corner, laughing at him, telling him it was all a joke and taking back the responsibility that he, unlike Khalif, had been taught to manage. But Khalif knew better than to believe in fairy tales and daydreams.
The urge to find the nearest bar and wash away the acrid taste of resentment and grief with a drink was strong. But he’d not touched alcohol or a woman since he’d received the news about his brother. He might have once been the spare, the Playboy Prince loved internationally and equally by women and newspapers alike, but he was now next in line to the throne. And each and every day had been a battle to prove his worth as he forged himself into a ruler that honoured his brother, his father and his country.
He skirted the corridor that ran parallel to the rooms that housed the large public exhibition on Duratrian history and rounded the corner to where the security suite for the public areas was located and came to a halt. All five security staff, two in uniform and three in plain clothes, were huddled round the monitor as if their lives depended on it. Adrenaline crashed through him, his body preparing for fight.
‘What’s going on?’ he demanded as he entered the room, searching the bank of monitors lining the back wall for any sign of threat or danger to the royal family.
The way the men all started and looked as guilty as schoolboys would have been funny if his heart hadn’t still been pounding in his chest, his pulse throbbing painfully in his neck as the adrenaline receded.
‘Nothing.’
‘Sorry, Your Royal Highness, Sheikh—’
‘I know my name, Jamal,’ Khalif ground out. ‘What is it?’
A few more denials hit the air, too many shaking heads and hands, and even if that hadn’t piqued his curiosity a flash of red caught his eye on the central monitor. The one that the men had all been staring at.
‘What is...’
A tourist stood in front of one of the large paintings in the Alsayf Hall. Khalif cocked his head to one side as if that would make the image easier to see. The female figure was respectfully dressed, despite the relaxed attitude towards attire in Duratra, with a sage green headscarf that...
Again, there was the flash of red. The scarf had fallen back a little and a long, thick curl of fiery red slipped forward before the woman quickly tucked it back behind the folds of her hair covering. All this was done with an economy of movement and without taking her eyes from the painting. Without the distraction of the bright red hair, Khalif took in the rest of the woman.
The denim jacket she was wearing covered her arms and was folded back at the cuff to reveal a series of gold and bronze bangles that hung around a delicate wrist. The jacket was cropped at the waist so that the white and green striped dress that dropped all the way to the floor should have been perfectly modest had it not hinted at the mouth-watering curves of her—
He forced his eyes from the screen and looked to the men in charge of his family’s security.
‘Jamal, you’re a married man,’ he scolded as if he hadn’t just been staring at the very same thing. ‘I expected more from you.’
‘It’s not that—’ the guard tried to justify.
‘No, of course not,’ Khalif interrupted with a half laugh, ‘because your wife would have your balls if—’
‘No, Your Highness, it’s really not that... She’s been there for an hour.’
‘And?’ Khalif demanded.
‘No, she’s beenthere, in front ofthat painting, for an hour,’ Jamal clarified.
‘Oh.’
Khalif returned his attention to the monitor, where the tourist still stood in front of the painting of Hatem Al Azhar, his great-great-great-grandfather. He frowned, wondering what it was about the painting that had enthralled her foran hour.Given that, on average, it took one harassed school teacher to ferry a group of unfocused seven-year-olds a total of fifty-four minutes through the first section of the exhibition on the history of Duratra—a fact he knew only too well since his father had deemed it necessary for him to spend his teenage summers working at the exhibition in an attempt to instil in him a respect for their country’s history and an awareness of the importance of tourism. Instead, all it had done was broaden his pick-up lines to include several more international languages. That aside, itdidseem strange that this tourist had spent so much time in front of one painting.
He felt a prickle of awareness across his skin as he realised that the men had regrouped around the same monitor as if drawn by a siren call. He turned to stare at them until they moved out of his personal space, some clearing throats and others grabbing pens to make useless notes on unnecessary bits of paper.
Khalif gave her one last look, trying to ignore the twinge of disappointment as he took his leave. At one time she would have been just his type.
Star looked up at the large painting of the man who had ruled Duratra over one hundred and fifty years ago and smiled. The patrician nose was broad and noble, the jaw line masterful. Even allowing for artistic integrity, Star was thrilled to see the handsome image of the man Catherine Soames had met after her doomed love affair with Benoit Chalendar.
