Protecting the Desert Heir Read online

  Life-altering, she thought in a kind of awe.

  But the only thing she could let herself think about right now was her baby, so she shoved all the confusing sensations away as best she could—and tried to get into the car and get away from him before her legs simply gave out beneath her.

  Or before she did something she’d truly regret, like moving closer to this strange man instead of away.

  * * *

  There were a number of things Rihad al Bakri—reigning sheikh, Grand Ruler and King of the Bakrian Empire—did not understand.

  First, how his late brother had neglected to mention that he had impregnated his mistress and quite some time ago, if her current condition was any guide. Or how this one delicate American woman had managed to elude his entire security force and was now sashaying out into the city as if she was still on the sort of catwalks she’d frequented when she’d been, by all accounts, a feral teen. Finally, he was arrogant enough to wonder how on earth she could possibly have mistaken him—him—for a livery driver, of all things.

  And that was not even getting into his unending grief that his brother was gone. That after wasting so many years of his life gallivanting about with this unsuitable woman, Omar could have disappeared so senselessly in the space of a single evening.

  Rihad could not come to terms with it. He doubted he ever would.

  Yet all of that faded when Rihad took her hand, meaning only to help her into the SUV as any decent servant might. He had enough of them. He should know.

  The loud, brash, concrete city all around them seemed to skip its groove like an old-fashioned record, and go still.

  So still it was like a quiet agony, reverberating inside of him.

  Her hand was delicate and strong at once, and Rihad didn’t like that. Nor did he like the way her mouth firmed as she looked at him, as if she was pressing her lips together to disguise the way they trembled, because he had the wild, nearly ungovernable desire to taste that theory.

  Surely not.

  Her strawberry blond hair should have appeared messy, twisted back in a riot of smooth gold and copper strands, but instead made her look fresh. She wore a stretchy sort of tunic dress over skinny jeans and absurdly high heels, quite as if she wasn’t so heavily pregnant that it looked as if she’d shoved a giant ball underneath her clothes. Worst of all, she was remarkably graceful, moving easily from the sidewalk into the vehicle, making him wonder exactly how she might move when not pregnant.

  Or better yet, beneath him.

  Rihad did not want to wonder about this woman in any capacity at all and much less that one. He’d wanted nothing more than to eradicate the stain of her from the memory of his brother’s life, erase her taint from the Bakrian royal family once and for all. That was why he’d come here himself, straight from Omar’s funeral, when he could easily have sent agents to eject her from this property.

  Enough scandal. Enough selfish, heedless behavior. Rihad had spent his life cleaning up his father’s messes, Omar’s messes, even his half sister Amaya’s messes. Sterling McRae was the emblem of his family’s licentiousness and Rihad wanted her—and all the remnants of his brother’s lifetime of poor decisions—gone.

  So naturally she was pregnant.

  Hugely, incontestably, irrevocably pregnant.

  Of course.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “YOU ARE WITH CHILD,” Rihad said grimly as his brother’s mistress settled herself in the SUV, pulling her hand from his as she sat—and perhaps, he thought, with a certain alacrity that suggested that simple touch had affected her, too.

  He opted not to consider that too closely.

  “You are very observant.” Was that...sarcasm? Directed at him? Rihad blinked. But she continued, her voice now coolly imperious. “And now if you’ll close the door and drive?”

  She was giving him orders. She expected him—him—to obey these orders. To obey her.

  That was such an astonishing development that Rihad merely stepped back and shut the door while he processed the situation. And thought about how to proceed.

  All Rihad could hope for was that the child this woman carried was not Omar’s—but he was not optimistic. His brother’s obsession with his regrettable mistress had spanned the better part of a decade. Omar had famously scooped her up when she’d been a mere seventeen. He’d installed her in his apartment within the week, not caring in the least that she was little more than an ignorant guttersnipe with a made-up name who wasn’t even of legal age at the time.

  The paparazzi had all but turned gleeful cartwheels in the streets.

  “Omar will tire of her,” their late father had said after scanning one such breathless and insulting article, back in the Bakrian palace.

  The old sheikh had been a connoisseur of flagrantly inappropriate women. He’d stopped marrying them after the mercenary Ukrainian dancer—the mother of the deeply disobedient Amaya, who was chief among Rihad’s many problems these days while she evaded her responsibilities and the fiancé she’d decided she didn’t want on the eve of her engagement party—had taken off and proceeded to live off the telling of her “my life in the evil sheikh’s harem” story for decades. The old man had gone off matrimony after that, but not women. If anyone knew how men treated their mistresses, it would be his father.

  “Perhaps a refresher course in your expectations of Omar might not go amiss,” Rihad had suggested drily. “His time in New York City appears to have affected his memory, particularly where his duties to this country are concerned.”

  His father had only sighed, as Rihad had known he would. Because while Rihad was his father’s heir, he had never been his father’s favorite. And no wonder. Omar and the old sheikh were peas in a deeply selfish pod, stirring up scandals left and right as they did exactly as they pleased no matter the consequences, while Rihad was left to quietly clean it all up in their wake.

  Because somebody had to be responsible, or the country would fall to its enemies. That somebody had been Rihad for as long as he could remember.

  “No man is without his weaknesses, Rihad,” his father had said, frowning at him. “It is only regrettable that Omar is making his so public.”

  Rihad had no idea if he had weaknesses or not, as he’d never been given any leave to indulge them. He’d never kept mistresses, inappropriate or otherwise. He’d known full well that as his father’s successor he’d been promised in a political marriage since birth. And he’d dutifully married the woman picked out for him when he’d finished his studies in England, in fulfillment of that promise.

  Tasnim might not have been a flashy model type, with masses of shining copper-blond hair and a sinful mouth like the woman Omar had holed up with all these years. But she’d been as committed to their marriage as Rihad had been. They’d worked their way to something like affection in the three short years before she’d been diagnosed with cancer at a routine doctor’s appointment. When she’d died five years ago this past summer, Rihad had lost a friend.

  Maybe that was what moved in him then, on the side of a New York City street as his brother’s worst and most public embarrassment sat waiting for him to drive her away from the comeuppance Rihad had planned to deliver upon her, in spades. Fury that Tasnim, who had kept all her promises, was gone. The same old mix of fury and bafflement that Omar had broken all the rules, as usual, and gotten this plaything of his big with child anyway—and then abandoned a Bakrian royal child to fate, its mother unmarried and unprotected.

  That or the fact her hand in his, her skin sliding against his in even so simple and impersonal a touch, had made him burn. He could feel it now. Still.

  Unacceptable.

  If he’d been anyone else, he thought, he might have been shaken by that astonishing burst of heat. Altered, somehow, by that fire that roared through him, making him feel bright and needy, and sugge
sting all manner of possibilities he didn’t wish to face.

  But Rihad was not anyone else. He did not acknowledge weakness. He rose above it.

  He pulled out his mobile, made a call and snapped out his instructions as he climbed into the driver’s seat, his decision made in an instant. Because it was the most expedient way to handle the crisis, he assured himself, not because he could still feel her touch as if she’d branded him. He could see Sterling in the back via his mirror—such a fanciful, ridiculous name—and the frown she aimed at him. It had nothing to do with the things that coursed through him at the sight of her, none of which he’d expected. He was a man of duty, never of need.

  “You can’t talk on your phone while you drive,” she told him. Scolded him, more like. “You know that, don’t you?”

  As if he was extraordinarily dim. It occurred to Rihad then that no one he was not related to by blood, in all his years on this earth, had dared address him with anything but the utmost respect—if not fawning deference.

  Ever.

  For a moment he was stunned.

  He should have been outraged. He couldn’t understand why instead there was a part of him that wanted only to laugh.

  “Can I not?” he asked mildly, after a moment, his tone an uneasy balance between the two. “I appreciate the warning.”

  “Aside from the fact it’s against the law, it’s not safe,” she replied in that same irritated way he’d never in his life had directed at him before, her voice tight. Annoyed, even. He saw her shift against the leather seat and put her hands over her swollen belly, in a way that suggested she was not quite the soulless, avaricious harlot he’d painted her in his head. He ignored that suggestion.

  “I don’t think I’d care if you ran this car into the side of a building if it was only me, but it’s not.”

  “Indeed it is not.” Rihad slid his phone into the interior pocket of his jacket and then started the vehicle. “Yet your husband would miss you, surely?”

  He was needling her, of course, and he couldn’t have said why. What could he possibly gain from it? A glance in the rearview mirror showed him her profile, however, not that cool frown he found he very nearly enjoyed. She’d turned her head as if to stare back at the building as he pulled the car into traffic. As if leaving it—this place she’d lived with his brother, or off his brother if he was more precise—was difficult for her.

  Rihad supposed it must have been. It would be much harder to find a patron now, no doubt. She was older, for one thing. Well-known—infamous, even—for her role as another man’s prize possession, across whole years. Soon to be a mother to another man’s child, which the sort of men who regularly trafficked in mistresses would be unlikely to find appealing.

  Because you find her so unappealing even now, when she is huge with your brother’s child, a derisive voice inside chided him. Liar.

  Rihad ignored that, too. He could not find himself attracted to his brother’s infamous leftovers. He would not allow it.

  “The father of my child is dead,” Sterling said, her voice so frozen that if he hadn’t stolen that glance at her, he’d have believed she really was utterly devoid of emotion.

  “And you loved him so much you wish to follow him into that great night?” He couldn’t quite keep the sardonic inflection from his own voice, and her head swung back toward him, her lovely brow creasing again. “That seems a rather desperate form of tribute, don’t you think? The province of the cowed and the cowardly, in my opinion. Living is harder. That’s the point of it.”

  “Am I having an auditory hallucination?”

  That was obviously a rhetorical question. Still, Rihad shrugged as he turned onto the narrow highway that clung to the east side of the city and led out of town, and replied, “I cannot answer that for you.”

  “Or are you quizzing me—in a snide manner—about the death of someone I loved? You’re a driver.”

  And her tone was withering, but there was something about it that spoke of repressed emotions, hidden fears. Or perhaps he was the one hearing things then.

  “I don’t care what you think about my life or my choices or my feelings, in case that’s not clear. I want you to drive the damned car upstate, no more and no less. Is that all right with you? Or do you have more unsolicited opinions to share?”

  Rihad smiled as he merged onto a different highway and headed toward the top of the island and the stately bridge that would lead to the airfield where his jet should be waiting, refueled and ready, upon his arrival. Or heads would roll.

  “Where are you going?” he asked her with deceptive casualness. “Upstate New York is lovely in the summer, but it is not possible to outrun anything in your condition. Surely you must realize this.”

  “My condition.” She repeated the words as if, until she sounded them out, she couldn’t believe she’d heard them correctly. “I beg your pardon?”

  “You look as if you’re used to being kept well,” Rihad continued. Mildly. “That will be hard to replicate.”

  She swiped those huge, concealing sunglasses off her face, and Rihad wished she hadn’t. She was nothing less than perfection, even in a quick glance in the rearview mirror of a moving vehicle, and he felt as if he’d been kicked by a horse. Her eyes were far bluer than the sky outside and she was more delicate, somehow, than she appeared in photographs. More vulnerable, he might have thought, had she not looked so outraged.

  “Does it make you feel good to insult people you don’t know?” she demanded, also in a tone he’d never heard directed at him before. This woman seemed to be full of such tones. “Is that the kind of man you are?”

  “What kind of man I am or am not is hardly something you will be capable of ascertaining from the backseat of this vehicle.”

  “Yet you feel perfectly comfortable shredding my character from the front, of course. What a shock.”

  Rihad didn’t like the tightness in his chest then. “Were you not kept well? Please accept my condolences. Perhaps you should have found a better patron before you permitted such a shoddy one to impregnate you.”

  He didn’t know what he expected. Floods of tears? But Sterling sat straighter in her seat, managing to look both regal and dignified, which only made that constriction around his chest pull tighter.

  “Let me guess,” she said after a hard pause, her tone so scathing she was clearly nowhere near tears of any kind. “This is some kind of game to you. You intrude upon people’s lives, insult them, and then what? Is causing pain its own reward—or are you hoping they’ll do something crazy to get away from you, like demand you leave them by the side of the road? Exactly what do you get out of being this nasty?”

  Rihad’s teeth were on edge, his body tense. He left the bridge behind him and headed west, wanting absolutely nothing at that moment but to get to his plane and get the hell out of here, back to his own land. His throne. The familiarity of his country, his rule. Before the tension in him exploded into something he couldn’t control.

  That such a thing had never happened before—that he had never been quite this tense in the whole of his life before he’d laid eyes on this woman—did not bear thinking about.

  “I have no intention of leaving you by the side of the road,” he assured her, and there was possibly too much dark intent in the comment, because she scowled at him in response. “Not yet anyway.”

  “You’re a true gentleman. Clearly.”

  And Rihad laughed then, because it was funny. All of this was funny, surely, however little familiarity he had with such things. He was a king pretending to be a driver. She was the mistress who had ruined his dead brother’s life. And he felt more alive trading insults with her than he had in years.

  In fact, he couldn’t recall when he’d ever felt quite like this, for any reason.

  He’d obviously gone mad with guilt and grief.
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br />   “I want us both to be very clear about who you are,” Sterling said then, leaning forward in her seat, and her scent teased at him, honey and sugar with the faintest hint of a tropical bloom beneath. It made his hands clench into fists against the steering wheel. It made him hard and needy.

  It made him feel like a stranger to himself. Like the hungry, selfish man he’d never been.

  Rihad couldn’t bring himself to analyze it. He concentrated on the road instead.

  “I am perfectly clear about who I am,” he told her.

  Or perhaps he was telling himself—because he had been. When he’d exited his private jet mere hours before. When he’d arrived at Omar’s apartment building, dismissed the driver who waited there and sent his team inside to secure this woman so he could have the pleasure of evicting her himself. He’d known exactly who he was.

  And nothing has changed since then, he told himself harshly.

  Or would.

  “You are a man who thinks it’s appropriate to mock and insult a woman, first of all,” Sterling said in that precise way of hers that he really shouldn’t find so fascinating. It was only that no one had ever dared use a tone like that in his presence before, he assured himself. He was intrigued intellectually, nothing more. “Congratulations. Your mother must be proud.”

  He laughed again, with significantly less mirth than before. “My mother died when I was twelve years old.”

  “A great blessing, I think we can agree, so that she might be spared the knowledge of who you’ve become in her absence,” Sterling said, so matter-of-factly it took Rihad a moment to realize how deeply she’d insulted him. And then she kept going, unaware that no one spoke to him like that without consequences. No one would dare. “You are also a man who finds it amusing to speculate about the lives of strangers. Openly and repulsively.”

  “Are you not a kept woman?” he asked, making no attempt to soften his tone. “My mistake. What is it you do, then, to support yourself?”