to the questioning of his honor.”
“Then a man should act as if he has some,” she snapped.
“Yes, of course,” Rihad snorted. “And how would I prove that I am an honorable man to one such as you, do you imagine? Will you be the judge? A woman who—”
“Is pregnant?” Her voice was icy then, so cold he almost overlooked the fact that she’d interrupted him. Something no one had done since his father had died, and no woman had ever done, as far as he could recall. “So scandalous, I know. It’s almost as if every single person walking this earth came about their presence here some other way.”
“I must have mistaken you for someone else,” Rihad murmured as he made the final turn that would lead them to the airfield, which was just as well, because he thought his temper might flip the damned SUV over if he didn’t put some distance between the two of them, and soon. “I thought you were the mistress of Omar al Bakri.”
“If I were you—” and her voice was very soft, very furious then “—I’d be very, very careful what you say next.”
“Why?” Rihad realized he was taking out his aggression on the gas pedal and slowed as he arrived at the gate to find his men already there, which was lucky for everyone involved. They waved him through and he was glad, he told himself, that this little farce was almost finished. He wasn’t one for subterfuge, no matter how necessary. It felt too much like lies. “He is dead, as you say. You remain. Is that child his?”
“Ah, yes. Of course.” She sounded bored then, though he could still hear the fury beneath it, giving it a certain huskiness that he felt in all the wrong places. “I must be a whore. That’s the point of these questions, isn’t it? Are you trying to determine whether or not I’m a terrible, no-good, very bad harlot or have you already rendered your judgment?”
“Are you?”
She laughed. “What if I am? What is it to you?”
But Rihad glanced at her in the mirror and saw the truth of things in the way her hands clasped on the shelf of her belly, her knuckles white, as if she was not as blasé as she was pretending.
It would be easier if she was. Easier, but it wouldn’t do much for that thing that still held him in its grip, that he refused to examine any closer.
“I’m only using the proper terminology to describe your role,” he said mildly as he pulled up beside his plane out on the tarmac. “I apologize if you find that insulting.”
“You decided I was a whore the moment you saw me,” she said dismissively. Or he assumed that was what that particular tone meant, having never heard it before. “But virgins and whores are indistinguishable, I hate to tell you.”
“It’s a bit late to claim virginity, I think.”
“Whores don’t have identifying marks to set them apart.” If she’d heard him, she was ignoring him—another new sensation for Rihad. He was beginning to feel each of them like blows. “Purity isn’t a scent or a tattoo. Neither is promiscuity, which is lucky, or most men like you who love to cast stones would reek of it.”
“I am aware of only one case of a virgin birth,” he pointed out as he put the SUV into Park. “Everyone else, I am fairly certain, has gone about it the old-fashioned way. Unless you are on your way to notify the world’s religious leaders of the second coming of Mary? That would explain your hurry.”
“How many people have you slept with?” she asked, sounding unperturbed.
He laughed as much to cover his astonishment at her temerity as anything else. “Are you petitioning to be the next?”
“If you’ve slept with anyone at all and you’re unmarried, you’re a hypocrite.”
“I am widowed.”
A typical female might have apologized for his loss, but this was Sterling McRae, and she was not, he was already far too aware in a variety of increasingly uncomfortable ways, the least bit typical.
“And you’ve never touched a single woman in your whole life save your late wife?”
He should not have brought Tasnim into this. He was furious with himself. And Sterling, of course, correctly interpreted his silence.
“Oh, dear,” she murmured. “It appears you are, in fact, a hypocrite. Perhaps you should judge others a bit less. Or perhaps you’re no more than one of those charming throwbacks who think chastity only matters when it’s a woman’s.”
“The world has turned on its ear, clearly,” Rihad said in a kind of wonder, as much to the tarmac as to her, and he told himself that what surged in him then was relief that this was over. This strange interlude as a man people addressed with such stunning disrespect. “I am being lectured to by a blonde American parasite who has lived off of weak and foolish men her entire adult life. Thank God we have arrived.”
He turned in his seat, so he saw the way she jolted then, as if she hadn’t noticed the SUV had come to a stop. She looked around in confusion, then those blue eyes of hers slammed back to his.
“What is this? Where are we?”
“This is an airport,” Rihad told her, in that same patronizing, lecturing way she’d ordered him not to use his mobile as they’d driven out of Manhattan. “And that is a plane. My plane.”
She went so white he thought she might topple over where she sat. Her hands moved over the round swell of her belly, as if she was trying to protect the child within from him, and he hated that there was some part of him that admired her for so futile a gesture.
“Who are you?” she whispered.
He suspected she knew. But he took immense satisfaction in angling closer, so he could see every faint tremor on those sinful lips. Every shiver that moved across her skin. Every dawning moment of horrified recognition in her deep blue gaze.
“I am Rihad al Bakri,” he told her, and felt a harsh surge of victory as her gaze went dark. “If that is truly my brother’s child you carry, it is my heir. And I’m afraid that means it—and you—are now my problem to solve.”
THE SUV SEEMED to close in around her, her heart was a rapid throb in her throat and it was only another well-timed kick from the baby that broke through the panic. Sterling rubbed a hand over her belly and tried to calm herself.
He won’t hurt you. He can’t. If this is the heir to his kingdom, you’ve never been safer in all your life.
The man she should have realized wasn’t the slightest bit subservient to anyone threw open the driver’s door and climbed out of the SUV, then slammed it shut behind him. She could hear the sound of that voice of his outside on the tarmac, the spate of Arabic words like some kind of rough incantation, some terrible spell that he was casting over the whole of the private airfield. His men. Her.
And she couldn’t seem to do anything but sit there, frozen in place, obeying him by default. She stared at the back of the seat he’d vacated and tried to convince herself that despite the panic stampeding through her veins, she really was safe.
She had to be safe, because this baby had to be safe.
But the truth was, there was more than a small part of her that was still holding out hope that this was all a terrible nightmare from which she’d bolt awake at any minute. That Omar would be there, alive and well, with that wry smile of his at the ready and exactly the right words to tease away any lingering darkness. He’d tell her none of this could possibly have happened. That it never would.
And this would be a convoluted, nonsensical story she’d tell him over a long, lazy breakfast out on their wraparound terrace with views of New York