rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_4aeb07dd-3be9-5f95-b5bf-6a3586548e32">CHAPTER THREE
“HAPPY,” DAKAN SAID INSTEAD. “They both look happy. I’m guessing things went downhill after that picture if your mother isn’t giving you other information.”
“That’s my guess as well.”
His Big Emotion warning system started to become more insistent. She wouldn’t carry around her unidentified father’s picture for no reason, but continuing to poke at this situation—when he already knew nothing he could say would make it better for her—was a bad idea.
But the familiarity of the man bugged him.
“Do you know where that was taken?”
“No. She never told me what country she was in. I assume it was his country, but I really don’t know. Maybe he was living abroad.”
“So she came here somewhere, had a fling, got pregnant, and went home?”
“I guess.”
She grew stiffer the longer they spoke about it, no trace evident of the smile she’d returned earlier when he’d found himself flirting. Instead, her shoulders stretched this way and that as she spoke, trying to dispel tension.
“I’d like to tell you more, but I really don’t know anything.” She placed the photo back on the desk, though a little further back this time. “I used to ask her all the time, but she’d never answer. And she always shut down any attempts I made to learn about that aspect of my heritage when I was growing up. Burned a book or two, even! One was from the library...”
The housekeeper informed them dinner was ready, and Nira gestured to the guest bathroom. “Would you like to meet in the dining room?” She darted off like someone wanting to escape.
He really shouldn’t pry into her background. He liked people. He was good with people. But big, sticky emotions weren’t really his thing. Definitely Zahir’s territory. He’d know what to say to her to make her feel better—good leaders were like that—but he just didn’t.
There was one thing he could do very well, which he was pretty sure would make her feel better. Kissing her had been in his mind since he’d dragged her out of the market and marched her back home. Which was weird, and probably some kind of side-effect of being stuck where he usually avoided showing interest in women out of fear his father would start beating the marriage drum again. She might be British, but she looked like those princesses he and Zahir had been threatened with for years. So, exactly opposite from his type.
Dakan went for pretty much anything he could only really get abroad—blond or red hair, pale skin, pale eyes...
She had the eyes. Green and gorgeous, they stood out—not that she wouldn’t have otherwise. One thing the scarf always did wonderfully was focus attention on a woman’s face. Even without the long silky dark hair she’d been hiding, she was something to look at.
She didn’t belong in Mamlakat Almas, and theirs was a progressive kingdom if you ignored the archaic medical system.
When Zahir had rebelled and gone back to England to marry Adele, it’d been because of their father’s refusal to change, but somehow their father had given permission for the hospital project to continue as they desired—something he hadn’t even mustered the energy to ask about when he’d heard. He was still more than half-certain that whatever work they did on the hospital would be for nothing once the King strapped the sword back on. Another reason he needed Zahir to come home and take over, because if he managed to get a system set up that allowed for healers and then left his father to run it? Bad things would happen.
He was probably doing this all wrong anyway, but the project had been passed and even if he wasn’t the one born to lead, he had to make an effort. Taking his frustration and questions to Zahir would not only put pressure on his brother to come home and get on with leading before Dakan lost his mind, but it would also upset his brother’s newfound marital bliss and further prompt the King to start foisting brides and selection ceremonies onto him.
His problems couldn’t be fixed any time soon. Nira didn’t know how lucky she was with her background, despite feeling the absence of her father’s presence in her life. Dakan knew all about feeling trapped. Freedom was important, people often didn’t realize just how important it was until they no longer had it. And the only place he had it was in her country.
They both emerged from washing up at the same time and he waited for her to sit before joining her. “So, how is it you’ve become an expert in our architecture at your age when your mother burned your books?”
“She ignored the books on art and architecture, or maybe she didn’t realize they’d have chapters devoted to Middle Eastern art and architecture. Plus, they were from the library. After she had to replace that one book, she got a lot less fire-happy.”
He shouldn’t smile at that—really, who burned books these days? But the phrase “fire-happy” tickled him. “That’s the contraband you smuggled into your house as a teenager? Art books?”
“What did you smuggle in? Page Threes?”
Flirting. Sexy teasing, he loved sexy teasing, and the innocent look she gave him over her water glass brought an urge to escalate it. “I didn’t have to smuggle in anything. I was at an all-boys school. Others smuggled. I just enjoyed the fruits of their labor.”
“Lazy.”
“Smart,” Dakan countered. He could hardly keep from staring at the sexy architect but he forced his mind to focus. Stick with the facts. “Is your mother still living?”
She didn’t quite flinch, but a fleeting grimace told him the situation wasn’t good, whatever it was.
“She’s alive. Healthy. Very unhappy that I’m here.”
“Is she ringing you daily and demanding you come home?” He would be.
“We’ve moved past Official Anger Level. We’re now at the Not Speaking stage. I never pressed her too hard for information about my father—she didn’t want to talk about him and I knew it hurt her. But I haven’t had that same consideration from her. I email her daily so she knows I’m still alive—she has wild theories that I’ll be kidnapped and sold into some kind of sex slavery here. She probably thinks... Wait a minute, do you have a harem?” Her voice went up so comically at the end Dakan had to concentrate not to choke on his drink.
“It was disbanded before my mother and father married. One of mother’s stipulations to agree to the betrothal.”
“Good for her!” Nira relaxed after her near shout hadn’t drawn the servants, and settled down again. “But, sorry, no, we don’t actually exchange words.”
“Are you emailing pictures?”
“There’s a thought, but my emails or texts all say ‘Still alive.’ Probably pretty bratty of me to phrase it that way, but I’m kind of out of words where the situation is concerned.”
No matter the snappy way she described it, he could see the situation bothered her immensely. She fidgeted with her cutlery, pushed food around her plate... “Does she know you’d been learning Arabic prior to coming here?”
“She knows now. I didn’t tell her at the time.”
“More smuggled textbooks?”
Her smile returned, though only at half-strength, and she shook her head. “I only started learning Arabic after I left university, about a year and a half ago. I bought all the units of an immersion language system, but turns out it takes a long time to do a unit. You can’t just sit down and become fluent in a weekend.”
He switched over to his native tongue, testing her. “So you’ve learned how to say hello and ask for directions?”
She’d just taken a bite, but paused to listen as he spoke, not even allowing herself to chew before he’d finished speaking. Still at the extreme-attention-paying