Sheikh's Scandal(37)

Sayed should have been working strategy the whole plane ride, but he’d spent hours talking with Liyah and then making love.

He had to put distance between them, or he wasn’t going to be able to do what he needed to when the pregnancy test came back negative.

Let her go.





CHAPTER ELEVEN


QUEEN DURRAH ESCORTED Liyah to her quarters in the palace harem herself.

Even the melecha’s personal attention could not mitigate Liyah’s feeling of abandonment upon Sayed’s nearly instant disappearance after their arrival to the palace, however.

Sayed had barely taken the time to introduce her to his esteemed parents before excusing himself to speak to his father privately. The monarchs had been surprisingly gracious, but Sayed’s desertion had stung.

Coming on top of the way he’d been acting since they made love, it was doubly hurtful.

He’d walked into the bathroom a man and came out one hundred percent emir, focused on affairs of state.

Sayed had dressed in silence and then turned to her, his gaze set firmly somewhere beyond her left shoulder. “Nap now. I’ll have the cabin attendant knock on the door in time for you to shower and dress for landing.”

She might have argued if her eyes hadn’t already been drooping, her body seconds from sliding into sleep regardless.

As he’d promised, she’d been alerted in time to shower and dress in clothes miraculously ironed while she’d been napping. However, even though she’d returned to her seat, Sayed had spent the entire descent and landing talking to Yusuf, who had joined them in one of the empty seats across the table.

Then Sayed had been fully occupied the drive to the palace with his smartphone.

Liyah knew he had important issues that had to be dealt with, but that hadn’t diminished her sense of the growing distance between them.

A distance that should never have been bridged in the first place, her brain tried to remind her. Her emotions foolishly balked at that truth.

Liyah had never warred so much within herself as she had since meeting Sayed, not even when she’d been deciding about going to England to meet her biological father.

No matter how unreasonable, how hopeless, how ridiculous, her growing feelings for Sayed were, Liyah could not deny them. However, she had no intention of sharing them with anyone else, especially the man himself.

Not by word, or deed.

Which meant she maintained her outward dignity and self-possession with particular care as she kept pace with the queen.

She led Liyah up a grand staircase that made the one at the Chatsfield London seem simple and unassuming in comparison. A strip of plush red carpet ran up the center of the mahogany steps shined to a glasslike finish. The matching elegantly carved banisters were held up by over a hundred ornate three-foot-high crystal newels.

Everything about the stone palace complex located on the shore of Zeena Sahra’s Bahir Sea was over the top and yet not in the least tacky.

After several turns and traversing a distance easily equal to a couple city blocks, they approached an imposing set of double doors. Liyah wasn’t even surprised to find a man dressed in the manner she’d come to associate with Sayed’s security detail standing to the left of the doors.

The queen nodded to him, but made no verbal greeting.

The guard opened the door on the right and Queen Durrah led Liyah through it, only the softest swishing sound indicating it closing behind them.

Queen Durrah smiled at Liyah, her amber gaze reflecting an impressive determination and confidence of spirit. “For the next five days, you will stay here as our honored guest, but your name and relationship to my son will not be revealed.”

She did not ask if Liyah understood, or even agreed. Somehow that assumption of agreement was more intimidating than Sayed’s bossiest moments.

“Five days?” Liyah asked.

“Perhaps six.”

Liyah nodded, though not entirely sure why that exact length of stay was necessary.

“The definitive blood test can be performed five days after the event at the earliest.” The queen waved her hand as if referring to something she would prefer not to address directly.

The pregnancy test.

“Do you want me to stay in my room?” So much for Sayed’s promise to be her tour guide.

“My goodness, no.” The queen opened a door on her right to reveal a lovely sitting room done in champagne with burgundy accents. “You are not a prisoner here.”

Just a guest who had to remain anonymous.

Liyah could not quite suppress how impressed she was by her accommodations. They could have put her in the servants’ quarters and she would not have minded at all. “This is the size of the living room in our old apartment.”

“Our?” the queen asked in a way Liyah found she could not refuse to answer.

Not that she would have regardless. “I shared an apartment with my mother until her death four months ago.”

Liyah managed to speak of her mother’s loss without revealing what it cost her to do so, but she turned away to give herself a moment. Though she hoped her intent was not obvious. Liyah would not have Queen Durrah thinking she was some weak emotional mess.

“I am very sorry to hear about your mother.” There was no mistaking the sympathy in the older woman’s tone. “I remember losing my own mother. I miss her to this day.”