It was more than she’d expected and she felt a sharp jolt of connection forge between them.
“Do you regret our marriage?”
The question was asked softly, and she jerked her eyes to his, seeing pain in his face, and a sense of concern that had her almost doubling over with surprise. “Why would you ask that?”
Did he regret their marriage? Was this a prelude to a conversation she simply couldn’t bear to have?
“No.” The smile was grim. “Our marriage makes as much sense now as ever.”
Talk about being damned with faint praise. She was so much more in love with him than she’d been when she’d first agreed to this. Then, he’d simply been an enigmatic, sexy King – and a way to earn her father’s praise, and please Malik. But now? She was in love with all of him.
How could she explain that without sounding crazy?
A loud voice came from outside the palace. In the native language, she heard,
“Your highness! You must come at once.”
The look he threw her was laced with exasperation. “Excuse me.” But as he stood, he reached for her hand and lifted it to his lips, the gesture so sweet and so sensual that her stomach was laced with knots.
He crossed the tent, his stride confident. He pulled the flap aside, and she saw two servants beyond.
They spoke quietly, so she couldn’t catch even one of the words in the hushed conversation. But a moment later, Raffa had spun around and fixed his gaze on her. “We must leave. Immediately.”
“What do you mean?”
“The helicopter is on the way. There are clothes for you in the box over there.” He pointed across the room. She stood a little uneasily, doubts plaguing her. What had happened?
Her dress was torn; she couldn’t wear it out of the tent, and so she did as he’d suggested, stepping out of it, her fingers shaking a little. As she reached into the box, she happened to look over her shoulder only to find her husband staring at her. Staring at her near-naked body with a look that was impossible to interpret.
“What is it, Raffa?”
He blinked, clearing his thoughts, meeting her eyes then but guarding his inner-most thoughts.
“What’s happened?” She lifted out a black gown with gold beading and detailed stitching, and pulled it over her head. It fit perfectly, though she’d never seen it before. She ran her hands over her hips, molding it into place, and then finger-combed her hair, all the while her eyes never leaving his face.
“It’s Goran,” he said after a moment, spinning away from her and planting his hands on his hips, staring at the wall of the tent.
“The man I met that night?”
Raffa’s stiffening shoulders was all the confirmation she needed. His fury was a wall between them.
“What about him?”
“He’s at the palace. He’s come to see Amit.”
“Amit?” She moved across the tent, worry marring her own features now. “Why? Why does he want to see your son?”
Sympathy curdled inside of her. How worried Raffa must be, his child back at the palace and a man he clearly despised intent on visiting the boy!
“Try not to worry,” she soothed, when Raffa didn’t answer. “You have security at the palace. They’ll stop him from hurting Amit.”
“He doesn’t want to hurt Amit,” Raffa said, and something in the words filled her with ice. “He wants to take him away from me.”
Chloe’s jaw dropped. “But that’s outrageous! How can he? Amit is your child and you are the Sheikh! Goran has no business going near Amit!”
“I am Sheikh,” Raffa agreed with a dangerous softness to his words. “But Amit is not my son. He’s Goran’s.”
“What?” She stared at Raffa with all her confusion apparent on her face. “You can’t be serious?”
Raffa spun his head, to face her. “Perfectly.”
“But you’ve told me he’s yours. He lives in the palace. He’s…”
“Amit is my nephew,” Raffa said gently. “But I have raised him as my son almost from birth. I care for him as I would my own son – he holds that place inside of me.”
The rotor blades of the helicopter were whirring overhead, loud and insistent as it droned closer and closer. The sides of the tent flapped faster as it came lower, finally setting down outside.
“I don’t understand any of this. How can he be your nephew? Elena wasn’t your sister…”
“No.” Raffa reached for Chloe’s hands, and the grip he had on her palm was tight and insistent. “Goran is my half-brother.” He pulled her beside him, out of the tent, but her mind was ten steps behind.
He handed her up into the helicopter, and then followed, but her brain was furiously trying to absorb what he’d just said. It didn’t make sense.
“Your half-brother?”
“Yes.” He reached across Chloe and buckled her into place. It was a clinical, purposeful movement but that didn’t stop her body from responding instantly, it didn’t stop her from experiencing a jolt of pleasure. But urgency pushed that aside.
“Explain this to me?” How was it possible? His father and mother had been married- happily enough? She’d never heard talk of anyone else. Surely Raffa was mistaken. Or perhaps he was using the term ‘brother’ liberally, to describe someone who was raised as his brother but wasn’t biologically.
His eyes were tortured. “Later.” He gestured towards the helicopter and sure enough, the blades began to spin faster and faster, the noise almost unbearable until he reached across with a set of earphones. She put them on, but her look was beseeching. She needed answers, answers only he could provide. Yet, in a noisy machine with a pilot and co-pilot behind the controls, he was obviously not going to speak, regardless of the bombshell he’d just dropped on her lap.
Amit wasn’t Raffa’s son.
He was Goran’s.
Raffa hated Goran. She shivered, remembering the way her husband had exploded after the sight of Goran speaking to Chloe. Why did he feel that enmity towards his own flesh and blood? What had happened between them?
Her eyes sought Raffa’s, but he was staring resolutely ahead, his face a mask of cold composure even when she knew he must be flooded with panic. She’d seen it in him, the moment he’d heard the news.
Whatever had happened between Goran and Raffa, this news changed everything for Chloe, for Raffa, and for their future.
Amit wasn’t simply the illegitimate child Raffa refused to acknowledge. She couldn’t ‘work’ on her husband until he saw the foolishness in excluding the boy from the line of succession. Amit didn’t belong in it – he was not Raffa’s son.
If Goran was Malik’s son also, though, Amit was third in line to the throne – behind Raffa, and then Goran.
Ice ran down Chloe’s spine as Raffa’s desperate, obsessive need for an heir shifted into a new gear, as it began to make more sense to her. If anything happened to Raffa, heaven forbid, Goran would be Sheikh? Or at least be in a position to challenge for the title?
But his lineage had never been announced; she’d never even heard of him until the party at which they’d met.
I’ve heard so much about you.
From Amit? That was the only explanation. They saw one another; they were close. At least, close enough to talk.
If she provided Raffa with an heir then the line of succession was secured as Raffa wanted. There was no alternative – Amit couldn’t simply leap-frog his own father to take up the place she’d imagined he might.
Panic overtook her body in the guise of nausea. She gripped the side of the helicopter, and that had Raffa jerking his gaze to her.
“Sheikha?” He unbuckled and, uncaring for the helicopter’s stability, he crossed to Chloe, taking the seat next to hers. “What is it?”
“Motion sickness,” she lied weakly, sitting back in the seat and closing her eyes. It didn’t help. Wave after wave of dizziness made her want to be ill.
Raffa put an arm around her shoulders. “Drink this.” H
e handed her a bottle of water. She took it, had a sip, and then closed her eyes anew.
“Thank you.” It didn’t help; nor did his proximity.
Because everything was shifting into focus for Chloe, and the result was somewhat terrifying.
There was no ‘get out of jail free’ clause. If she didn’t conceive a baby, she had to leave him. She couldn’t stay with Raffa when he so desperately needed an heir. And she understood now how real his need was – how pressing. What if this month failed again? And the next?
She clamped her lips together. Her forehead was beaded in sweat, and she felt perspiration pooling between her breasts. Raffa watched her the entire journey. Only once they touched down on the roof of the east wing of the palace did he remove his hand from her shoulders.
“Come,” he said, stepping out of the sliding side door to the helicopter. When she would have done the same, he shook his head, reaching for her and holding her to his waist, cradling her against his chest and staring down at her with a frown.
“You’re ill.”
“Just travel sickness,” she reassured him once more.
But his eyes lifted in a way that spoke of disbelief. “Are you sure?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
Was he hoping there was another reason? It almost made her laugh – a brittle sound that she swallowed.
“You can put me down,” she said, calm on the surface. “I’ll be fine now we’re at the palace. Go and deal with this situation.”
He frowned. “I will handle my brother…”
“After you’ve handled your wife?” She intentionally invoked that long ago night, the night when Raffa had said those words to Amit and then to Chloe.
She wasn’t angry at him, she was terrified of them – of what they were and what they’d become – but it expressed itself as anger and rage. She pushed at his chest so that he let her go, sliding her to the ground.
“Thank you,” she said, stiffly. “Please come and explain this to me later.” She turned before he could say anything, but as she stalked towards the door that would lead to the wide sweeping steps of the east wing, she heard him command a servant, “Go with Her Highness. Make sure she is comfortable and resting.”
It put Chloe in half a mind to do something foolish, like go play tennis or golf, instead of doing as he’d suggested.
But she was shaken and exhausted, mentally drained, and the heat from the day played havoc with her senses. The sun was on the wane now – somewhere out in the desert, far from the palace, the tent was there, ready for the night, the night she had imagined spending with her husband. Far from all this, far from his duties and responsibilities and the constraints of their royal marriage.
It was dusk when he appeared at her room, looking as though he’d run a marathon for three days straight. There was an utter exhaustion about him that she instantly ached to wipe clean, to fix.
But she didn’t. She stayed where she was, sitting at her desk, reading emails. Only her head shifted, turning towards him.
“Well?” She asked, cocking a brow. “What’s happened?”
“He’s gone.” He ran a hand across the back of his neck.
“Amit?”
“Goran.”
“I meant, how is Amit?”
“He’ll be fine. He didn’t want to go. He knows what his father’s like.”
“And what’s that?” She asked, standing now, but keeping a careful distance.
“A bully. A drunk. Someone he is better off not having in his life.”
Chloe swept her eyes shut. “I don’t understand any of this. You were in a relationship with Elena, yes? You told me she loved you. And she’s Raffa’s mother?”
His nostrils flared and she could see him weighing his words.
“When I was a child, my father had an affair. It was brief. Foolish. Tempestuous and ill-thought-out. It broke my mother’s heart.” He said the words with obvious condemnation, easily invoking his disdain for the idea of love without needing to speak the words anew. “Goran was the result of that affair. My father allowed him to be raised in the palace – and it destroyed my mother. She rarely came here.”
“Even to see you,” Chloe murmured softy.
“Even to see me.” The confirmation was cold, without the emotional pain Chloe knew her husband must feel. “Goran and I barely spent any time together. I knew who he was, and vice versa, but he was nothing to me.”
Chloe frowned. “He’s your brother.”
“As Apollo is yours,” he pointed out smoothly.
“But Apollo and I… Apollo hated me…”
“And Goran hated me,” Raffa said, his jaw clenched. “I didn’t realise that, of course, until it was too late.”
“What do you mean?” A frisson of apprehension crossed her whole body.
“He – wrongly – perceived Elena to be my intended bride. He believed I loved her, enough that stealing her from me might wound me. That he might triumph over me at last.” He said the words with thick fury. “She fell pregnant to him and when he realized, then, that I didn’t care, he left her. He left the country.”
Chloe’s gasp was one of utter outrage. “How dare he?”
“She was not much better,” Raffa said. “She had Amit, and when he was only two weeks old, she too disappeared, leaving only a note.”
“What did it say?”
“She didn’t want to be a mother. She didn’t want to be in the palace and know she could never have me – obviously I couldn’t have married her, even if I’d wanted to, after she’d carried my brother’s baby. She knew it was the death knell to any future with me, and so she left.”
“You mean she’s out there somewhere and just choosing not to be in Amit’s life?”
“Yes.” His eyes sparked with Chloe’s. “As you know, biology does not a mother make. He is unwanted by his mother, and his father uses him only in so much as he hopes it might hurt me.”
“Oh, poor Amit,” she sank into a comfortable chair, curling her knees beneath her. “I’m so sorry to hear this. That dear boy – and so sweet.” She shook her head sadly, and her heart was thumping with the importance of that moment, of the moments that were to follow. Adrenaline charged her veins. “So Amit is not your son, and you cannot acknowledge him as your heir?”
“No.”
She nodded slowly. She saw it all so clearly, and yet she wanted his stark confirmation of her assessments. She needed him to spell it out for her, so she understood the imperative of her decision.
“And you need a legitimate heir because otherwise Goran would be next in line to your father’s throne?”
Raffa’s eyes darkened. “Something that didn’t matter until recently.”
Chloe’s eyes swept shut. “But when Malik succumbs to his illness, you think he’ll challenge you for the throne?”
“Yes.”
“And you think he’ll be successful.”
Raffa expelled an angry laugh. “No. But he will cause a lot of damage in the meantime. Our freedom and prosperity are hard-fought. We cannot afford a civil war.”
He seemed to push the unpleasant thoughts away, standing straighter and looking at her with renewed intent. “None of this matters, Sheikha. We will have an heir, and from the moment your pregnancy is announced, Goran’s prospects will die.”
Chapter Fourteen
THE CALL CAME THE next morning. And she’d been expecting it, so the words Doctor Schultz spoke solicitously down the line were hardly even a shock. Hadn’t Chloe known, in her heart of hearts, that something was wrong?
Hope was a damned fine fool, and she’d cherished a foolish hope right up until the last, but despite the doctor’s final reassurance, she finally let go of hope. She accepted reality.
“The condition is unusual, on its own. But combined with other factors, it’s very unlikely that you will ever be able to conceive, let alone carry a pregnancy to term. There are things we can try, but even with medical intervention, I do not wish to excite your hope
s. More than likely, your Highness, you will never be able to have a biological child of your own.”
She’d been unable to speak, and so he’d continued. “That’s not to say it’s impossible. The universe, God, call it what you will, works in mysterious ways. There is always a chance, you know, but I think you should prepare for the fact that this might not be the case for you.”
“Not impossible?” Chloe had asked breathily, her heart thumping.
“But highly, highly, truly unlikely.” The words were a soft, gentle rebuke. A call to reality.
“I see, Doctor. Thank you.”
Chloe disconnected the call, numb in a way she’d never known. Numb, and aching, all at the same time. She stared around the room, the palace suite that was so perfect for a princess, decorated with her in mind, she stared at the bed she and Raffa had used each night, making love to one another with dreams of babies in both their minds, and she squeezed her eyes shut on a wave of illness, cloying at her insides.
She wasn’t to be a mother. This wave of nausea was nothing more, it was panic, just like in the helicopter. She’d deluded herself into seeing symptoms that weren’t there, when her brain had known what her heart hadn’t wanted to accept.
She couldn’t give Raffa the baby he needed.
She couldn’t give him the baby the Kingdom needed.
She wrapped her arms around herself, staring out at the sky without seeing.
The marriage she had entered willingly and found herself clinging to was insupportable. It was a trap. A prison.
There was no way she could remain in Raffa’s life – she couldn’t do it to him.
If she told him the truth, what would he do? It was easy to imagine – he would support her. He would insist on remaining married to her. She was his wife, and the sister of his friend. She was Malik’s friend’s daughter. All these things would matter to Raffa – duty, friendship, loyalty. But it was loyalty to another, friendship to another, and duty to his Kingdom. There was nothing in his potential actions that would be a reflection of how he felt for Chloe, nor what he wanted from her.