Midnight at the Oasis: His Majesty's Mistake

“Not if you aren’t truly sick,” he said flatly. “In that case, you’d be taking personal days, not sick leave.”

Although pale, she sat tall, chin tilted, channeling an elegance, even an arrogance, he’d never seen in her before. “I wasn’t well,” she said imperiously, her back so tall and straight she appeared almost regal. “I’m still not well. But you can think what you want.”

His eyebrow lifted a fraction at her attitude, even as something in him responded to the challenge. Hannah had never spoken to him like this before and he grew warm, overly warm. His trousers suddenly felt too tight, and his gaze dropped to her legs. They were endless. Slim, long, bare, crossed high at her knee—

He stopped himself short. He was not going to go there. This was Hannah.

“I don’t appreciate the attitude,” he ground out. “If you’d like to keep your job, I’d drop it now.”

She had the grace to blush. “I’m not giving you attitude. I’m merely defending myself.” She paused, considered him from beneath her extravagant black lashes. “Or am I not allowed to do that?”

“There you go again.”

“What?”

“Insolent, brash, defiant—”

“I’m confused. Am I an employee or a slave?”

For a moment he was silent, stunned by her audacity. What had happened to his perfect secretary? “Excuse me?” he finally said, his tone so deep and furious that she should have been silenced, but tonight Hannah seemed oblivious to any rebuke.

“Sheikh Al-Koury, certainly I’m allowed to have a voice.”

“A voice, yes, provided it’s not impudent.”

“Impudent?” Her laugh was brittle. “I’m not a disobedient child. I’m twenty-five and—”

“Completely out of line.” He leaned toward her, but she didn’t shrink back. Instead she lifted her chin, staring boldly into his eyes. He felt another raw rush of emotion, his temper battling with something else…curiosity…desire… none of which, of course, was acceptable.

But there it was. This was a new Hannah and she was turning everything inside-out, including him.

And he didn’t like it. Not a bit.

“You disappoint me,” he said brusquely. “I expected more from you.”

She tensed, pale jaw tightening, emotion flickering over her face, shadowing her eyes.

For a moment she looked fierce and proud and rather bruised.

A fighter without arms.

A warrior taken captive.

Joan of Arc at the stake.

He felt the strangest knotting in his chest. It was an emotion he hadn’t felt before, and it was hot, sharp, uncomfortable. He didn’t like it. He didn’t want to feel it. She worked for him, not the other way around. “I don’t know what game you’re playing, but it’s over. I’ve chased you from Palm Beach to South Beach but I’m not chasing anymore. Nor am I negotiating. It’s my way, Hannah, or this is where it ends, and you can begin looking for a new job tomorrow.”

He saw her chest rise and fall as she took a swift breath, but she didn’t speak. Instead she held the air bottled in her lungs as she stared at him, a defiant light burning in her intensely blue eyes.

How could he have ever thought Hannah so calm and controlled? Because there was nothing calm or controlled about her now. No, nothing calm in those mysterious lavender-blue eyes at all. She was all emotion, hot, brilliant emotion that crackled in her and through her as though she were made of electricity itself.

Who was this woman? Did he even know her?

He frowned, his brow furrowing with frustration as his gaze swept over her from head to toe. At work she was always so buttoned-up around him, so perfectly proper, but then, she hadn’t dressed for him tonight, she’d dressed for Alejandro, her lover.

The thought of her with Ibanez made his chest tighten again, as something in him cracked, shifted free, escaping from his infamous control to spread through him, hot, hard, possessive. For reasons he didn’t fully comprehend, he couldn’t stand the idea of Ibanez with her, touching her.

She was too good for Ibanez. She deserved so much better.

His gaze rested on her, and it was impossible to look away. Her satin dress was a perfect foil for her creamy skin and the rich chestnut hair that tumbled down her back. The low square neckline accentuated her long neck and exquisite features. He’d known that Hannah was attractive, but he’d never realized she was beautiful.

Incandescent.

Which didn’t make sense. None of this really made sense because Hannah wasn’t the sort of woman to glow. She was solidly stable, grounded, focused on work to the exclusion of all else. She rarely wore makeup and knew nothing about fashion, and yet tonight she appeared so delicate and luminous that he was tempted to brush his fingertips across her cheek to see what she wore to make her appear radiant.

The tip of her tongue appeared to wet her soft, full lower lip. His groin hardened as her pink tongue slid across and then touched the bow-shaped upper lip. For a moment he envied the lip and then he suppressed that carnal thought, too, but his body had a mind of its own and blood rushed to his shaft, heating and hardening him, making him throb.

“You’re threatening to fire me, Sheikh Al-Koury?” Her incredulous tone provoked him almost as much as that provocative tongue slipping across her lips.

“You should know by now I never threaten, nor do I engage my employees in meaningless conversation. If I’m speaking to you it’s because I’m conveying something important, something you need to know.” He was hanging on to his temper by a thread. “And you should know that I’ve reached the end of my patience with you—”

“Not to be rude, Sheikh Al-Koury,” she interrupted, before making a soft groaning sound. “But how far away is the airport? I think I’m going to be sick.”

For Emmeline, the rest of the short drive to the executive airport passed in a blur of motion and misery. She remembered little but the limo pulling between large gates and then onto empty tarmac next to an impressively long white jet.

She was rushed up the stairs, aided by a flight attendant, and then escorted into a bedroom and through a door to a small bathroom.

The flight attendant flipped on the bathroom lights and then closed the door behind her, leaving Emmeline alone.

Thank God for small mercies.

Perspiration beading her brow, Emmeline crouched before the toilet. Her hands trembled on the pristine white porcelain as she leaned forward, her stomach emptying violently into the toilet bowl.

The acid that burned her throat was nothing compared to the acid eating away in her heart. This was all her fault … she had no one else to blame. She’d been weak and foolish and insecure. She’d reached out to the wrong man in a moment of need, and to make matters worse, she’d approached Hannah, dragging her into this.

Remorse filled her. Remorse and regret. Why wasn’t she stronger? Why was she so needy? But then, when hadn’t she craved love?

Gritting her teeth, she knew she couldn’t blame her parents. They’d done their best. They’d tried. The fault was clearly hers. Apparently even at an early age she’d been clingy, always wanting to be held, needing constant reassurance and affection. Even as a little girl she’d been ashamed that she’d needed so much more than her parents could give.

Good princesses didn’t have needs.

Good princesses didn’t cause trouble.

Emmeline did both.

Emmeline’s stomach churned and heaved all over again, and she lurched over the toilet, sick once more.

Tears stung her eyes. How could anyone call this morning sickness when she was ill morning, noon and night? She flushed the toilet again.

A quiet knocked sounded on the door. “Hannah?”

It was Makin Al-Koury. Emmeline’s stomach performed a wild free fall which didn’t help her nausea in the slightest. “Yes?”

“May I come in?”

No. But she couldn’t say it. She was supposed to work for him. That meant she answered to him. Emmeline’s eyes stung. “Yes.”

The door softly opened and a shadow fell across the floor.

Blinking back tears, Emmeline glanced up as Makin filled the doorway. Tall and broad-shouldered, his expression was grim. There was no sympathy in his light gray eyes, no gentleness in the set of his jaw or the press of his firm mouth. But then, there’d been no gentleness earlier when he’d yanked her through the nightclub, pulling her onto the street, his hand gripped tightly around her wrist.

Even now, with her knees pressed to the cold tiled floor, she could feel the unyielding grip of his hand on her wrist, the heat of his skin against hers.

He’d been furious as his limousine traveled from the nightclub to the airport, and from his expression as he towered above her, he still was.

“Can I get you something?” he asked, his deep voice a raw rasp of sound in the small space.

She shook her head. “No. Thank you.”

“You are sick.”

She nodded, fighting fresh tears. “Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Her brow creased, eyebrows knitting. “I did.”

His jaw tightened. He looked away, across the small bath, his lips flattening, making him look even more displeased. “Have you seen a doctor?”

“No.”

“Why not? You said you can’t keep anything down. You should have tests run, or see if the doctor could prescribe something that would help.”

“It won’t help—”

“Why not?”

She winced at the impatience and roughness in his voice. For a moment his mask slipped and she glimpsed something almost savage in his expression. “Because…”

Her voice faded as she got lost in his light eyes, and it crossed her mind that he might be the world’s richest sheikh, but he wasn’t entirely modern. Beneath his elegant, tailored suit and polished veneer was a man of the desert.

Because Sheikh Al-Koury wouldn’t employ a pregnant, unwed woman, not even if she were American. It was a cultural issue, a matter of honor and respect. Emmeline might not be able to type quickly or place conference calls or create spreadsheets, but she’d spent enough time in the United Arab Emirates and Morocco to be familiar with the concept of hshuma, or shame. And an unwed pregnant woman would bring shame on all close to her, including her employer.

“It’s just stress,” she said. “I’m just … overly upset. But I’ll pull myself together. I promise.”

He looked at her so long and hard that the fine hair on Emmeline’s nape lifted and her belly flip-flopped with nerves. “Then pull yourself together. I’m counting on you. And if you can’t do your job anymore, tell me now so I can find someone who can.”

“But I can.”

He said nothing for several moments, his gaze resting on her face. “Why Ibanez?” he asked at last. “Why him of all people?”

She hunched her shoulders. “He said he loved me.”

His jaw hardened, mouth compressing, expression incredulous. “And you believed him?”

She hesitated. “Yes.”

Sheikh Al-Koury choked back a rough growl of protest. “I can’t believe you fell for his lines. He says those lines to everyone. But you’re not everyone. You’re smart. You’re educated. You should know better.”

“I didn’t.”

“Couldn’t you detect a false note in his flattery? Couldn’t you see he’s fake? That his lines were too slick, that he’s as insincere as they come?”

“No.” She drew a swift breath, making a hiccup of sound. “But I wish I had.”

Makin battled his temper as he stared down at Hannah where she knelt on the floor, her shoulders sagging, her long chestnut hair a thick tangle down her thin back.

Someone else, someone soft, might be moved by her fragile beauty, but he refused to allow himself to feel anything for her, not now, not after she’d become a temptress. A seductress. A problem.

He didn’t allow his personal and professional life to overlap. Sex, desire, lust … they didn’t belong in the workplace. Ever.

“I respected you.” His deep voice sounded harsh even to his own ears, but he’d never minced words with her before and wasn’t about to start now. “And I’m not sure I do anymore.”

She flinched, visibly stung, and his gut tightened, an uncomfortable cramp of sensation, and then it was gone, pushed away with the same ferocious intensity he’d applied to the rest of life.

He didn’t cater to anyone—male or female. It went against his belief system. Makin had been his parents’ only child and they’d been a very close, tight-knit family. His father, a powerful Bedouin ruler and Kadar’s royal prince, was nearly twenty years older than Makin’s French mother, Yvette.

When he was growing up, his parents had rarely discussed the past, being too focused on the present, but Makin had pieced enough details together to get a picture of his parents’ courtship. They’d met when his mother was just twenty and a film student in Paris. She was beautiful and bright and full of big plans, but within weeks of meeting Tahnoon Al-Koury, she’d accepted his marriage proposal and exchanged her dreams for his, marrying him in a quiet ceremony in Paris before returning to Kadar with her new husband.

Makin had only met his maternal grandparents once, and that was at his father’s funeral. His mother refused to speak to them so it’d been left to Makin to introduce himself to his French grandparents. They weren’t the terrible people he’d imagined, just ignorant. They couldn’t understand that their daughter could love an Arab, much less an Arab confined to a wheelchair.

Makin had grown up with his father in a wheelchair and it was neither terrible nor tragic, at least not until the end. His father was beyond brilliant. Tahnoon was devoted to his family, worshipped his wife and battled to maintain as much independence as he could, despite the degenerative nature of his disease.

Makin was twenty when his father died. But in the years Makin had with him, he never heard his father complain or make excuses, even though Tahnoon lived with tremendous pain and suffered endless indignities. No, his father was a proud, fierce man and he’d taught Makin—not by words, but by example—that life required strength, courage and hard work.

“You don’t respect me because I wanted to be loved?” Hannah asked huskily, forcing his attention from the past to the present.

He glanced down, straight into her eyes, and felt that same uncomfortable twinge and steeled himself against the sensation. “I don’t respect you wanting to be loved by him.” He paused, wanting her to understand. “Ibanez is beneath you. He’s self-centered and vulgar and the women who chase him are fools.”

“That’s harsh.”

“But true. He’s always at the heart of a scandal. He prefers married women or women recently engaged like that ridiculous Princess Emmeline—”

“Ridiculous Princess Emmeline?” she interrupted. “Do you know her?”

“I know of her—”

“So you can’t say she’s ridiculous—”

“Oh, I can. I know her family well, and I attended her sixteenth birthday in Brabant years ago. She’s engaged to King Zale Patek, and I pity him. She’s turned him into a joke by chasing after Ibanez all year despite her engagement to Patek. No one respects her. The princess has the morals of an alley cat.”

“That’s a horrid thing to say.”

“I’m honest. Perhaps if others had been more honest with Her Royal Highness, she might have turned out differently.” He shrugged dismissively. “But I don’t care about her. I care about you and your ability to perform your job with clarity and efficiency. Don’t let Ibanez waste another moment of your time. Nor my time, for that matter. Everything about him bores me.” His gaze held hers. “Are we clear?”

“Yes,” she said huskily.

“Then pull yourself together and take a seat in the main cabin so we can depart.”

Using the vanity kit provided in the bathroom, Emmeline washed her face, brushed her teeth and ran a comb through her hair. The thick dark hair still looked strange to her. Emmeline missed her golden-blond color. Missed her wardrobe. Missed her life.

This is how Hannah must have felt when thrust into Emmeline’s life.

Lost. Confused. Angry. And Emmeline knew she was the one who’d put Hannah in that position. Changing places with Hannah had been Emmeline’s idea. There was no benefit for Hannah. Nothing to be gained by masquerading as a princess. It was Emmeline who’d benefited. She’d been able to slip away from her attendants to seek out Alejandro and tell him about the pregnancy. Only in the end, when she had confronted him, it hadn’t mattered. He’d still rejected her.

Emmeline sucked in a slow breath, sickeningly aware that her selfishness and foolishness had impacted so many people. Hannah. King Patek. Sheikh Al-Koury.

What she had to do was fix things. Not just for her, but for everyone.

Once tidy and outwardly calm, she took the seat the flight attendant led her to, a seat not far from Makin’s, although he was at work typing away on his laptop.

Emmeline tried to block him from her peripheral vision as the jet taxied down the runway, unnerved by the sheer size and shape of him.

He was tall, solid, muscular. As he typed, his arms flexed and she could see the distinct shape of his thick bicep press against the taut cotton of his shirt. His fine wool trousers silhouetted the hard cut of his quadriceps. Even his hands were strong, his fingers moving easily, confidently, across the laptop keyboard.

She watched his hands for a moment, fascinated by them. His skin was tan and his fingers were long and well-shaped. They reminded her of the hands on Greek statues—beautiful, classic, sculptural. She wondered what his touch would be like, and how his hands would move on a woman’s body. Would his touch be light and gentle, or heavy and rough? She wondered how he held a woman, and if he curved her to him or held himself aloof, using her like a piece of equipment.

Emmeline had never wondered about such things before, but her night with Alejandro had changed all that. It changed the way she viewed men and women, made her realize that sex had been romanticized in books and movies and the media.

Sex wasn’t warm or fun or intimate. It hadn’t been beautiful or something pleasurable.

She’d found it a soulless, empty act. It’d been Alejandro taking her body—no more, no less than that.

Emmeline knew now her expectations had been so silly, so girlish and immature. Why hadn’t she realized that Alejandro would pump away at her until he climaxed and roll off to shower and dress and leave?

Her eyes stung, hot, hot and gritty. Even seven weeks later she felt betrayed by her need for love and affection, and how she’d turned to Alejandro to give her that affection.

She’d imagined that sex would fill the hollow emptiness inside of her, but it had only made it worse.

Squeezing her eyes closed, she pulled the soft blanket even higher on her chest as her late grandmother’s voice echoed in her head, “Don’t cast pearls before swine.” But that’s what Emmeline had done out of desperation that no one would ever love her.

Emmeline shivered beneath the blanket, horrified all over again by her poor choices.

“Would you like me to turn the heat up?” Makin asked.

She opened her eyes and saw he was watching her. She didn’t know how long he’d been watching. “I’m fine,” she said unsteadily.

“I can get you another blanket.”

“I’m fine,” she repeated.

“You’re shivering.”

Heat crept into her cheeks. He was watching her closely, then. “Just my thoughts.”

“Ibanez isn’t worth your time. He’s a liar, a cheat, a scoundrel. You deserve a prince of a man. Nothing less.”

How ironic. Hannah deserved a prince of a man, but she, Emmeline, deserved only scorn.

Emmeline swallowed around the thick lump in her throat, wishing that she could be the smart, capable Hannah he admired instead of the useless spoiled princess he despised.

His disdain for her wounded. It shouldn’t. He didn’t know her, and she shouldn’t let one person’s opinion matter, but it did. He’d touched a nerve. A powerful nerve. It was as if he’d somehow seen through her elegant, polished exterior to the real Emmeline, the private Emmeline who felt so unworthy and impossible to love.

She’d always wondered why she felt so insecure, so alone, and then, on her sixteenth birthday, a half hour before her big party, she’d learned that her parents weren’t her birth parents after all. She’d been adopted. Her birth mother had been a young unmarried woman from Brabant, but no one knew who her birth father was.

She’d gone to her birthday party absolutely shell-shocked. She didn’t know why her adoptive father, King William, had felt compelled to break the news before her party but it had spoiled the night for her. Instead of dancing and celebrating with her guests, she’d found herself wondering about the mother who’d given her up, and if she looked like her, and if her mother ever thought of her.

It had been nine years since that revelation, and yet Emmeline still wondered about her birth parents. Could the fact that she’d been adopted have anything to do with her sense of emptiness and fear of abandonment? Could she have missed that mother who gave birth to her?

“What did you hope to accomplish tonight at the Mynt?” Makin suddenly asked.

She drew the blanket even closer to her chest, trying to capture more warmth. “He said he loved me—”

“Yes, I know,” he interrupted impatiently. “You already told me that.”

“—and I thought if he saw me tonight, he’d remember how he felt about me,” she pressed on as though he hadn’t spoken. “I thought he’d remember he’d asked me to marry him.”

“He asked you to marry him?” he repeated, incredulous.

Her chin tilted defiantly. Why did he find that so impossible to believe? “Yes.”

For a long moment Makin said nothing, absolutely nothing. He just sat there, looking at her as if he felt sorry for her. Just when Emmeline didn’t think she could take his pitying silence another moment, he spoke. “Alejandro’s already married. Not just married, but a father to five children. The oldest is twelve. The youngest just nine months old.”

“Impossible.”

“Have I ever lied to you about anything?”

She couldn’t answer and, jaw flexing, he looked away, dropping his gaze to the bright screen of his laptop computer.

Blanket pressed to her collarbone, Emmeline’s stomach heaved. Alejandro, already married? Father to five? Things just kept getting worse.

CHAPTER THREE

HOURS later, Emmeline was woken by the vibration of the jet’s landing gear unfolding, wheels in position in preparation for touching down. Half asleep, she glanced out the window but could see nothing below but pale gold … or was it beige? Maybe a little of both. No buildings, no lights, no roads, no sign of life. Just sand.

Emmeline groggily sat taller. Far in the distance she could see a spot of gray color. Or was it green? She didn’t know what it was but it couldn’t be a city, and there was no sprawling airport, either, and yet here they were making a sharp, steep descent as if they were about to land.

Just moments later, they touched down, the landing so smooth it was but a bump of sound and then the swift application of brakes. They hurtled along the black asphalt runway bordered on both sides by a vast reddish-gold desert. In the distance, in the same direction she’d spotted the gray-green patch, she could see a ragged range of mountains, but even those were copper and gold in the morning light.

She didn’t know why, but she’d expected a city. Most of the royal princes she knew in Dubai and the UAE lived in cosmopolitan cities—glamorous centers filled with fashion boutiques and deluxe hotels and five-star restaurants. Sheikhs today were modern and wealthier than the rest of the world, including their European counterparts. They could afford life’s every luxury, and they owned jets, yachts, rare cars, polo fields and strings of expensive ponies.

That was the world Emmeline had expected Sheikh Al-Koury to take her to. A sprawling urban city. But instead there was just sand. Sand and more sand. A virtual sea of sand in every direction, all the way to the rough-hewn mountains.