“But—she hasn't seen them in years, they've only just reconciled—”

  “She thinks that they're the only people she can rely on.” Maryam gave her son a sharp look. “Don't you think you'd better change that thought?”

  “We've all loved Rose since she started working with the children,” Ziad said, almost gently. “And even if we didn't, it's beyond clear that she's not at fault here. The blame lies with Bright. Of course we would protect her. I don’t know how she might have gotten the impression that she was on her own.”

  Fahim tried to catalog the emotions running through him, and finally, he shook his head and started cleaning up the desk. It was one of the first things he had learned; good lawyers never left important documents lying about.

  “Fahim,” Maryam said, and he nodded.

  “A car,” he said. “I need a car to the airport, and then, if necessary, I need to have flights to the US grounded until I can speak with Rose.”

  Rose thought she was doing pretty well at first. She made it out of the palace and to the airport with a minimum amount of fuss. No one had followed her from one place to the other, and in her experience with Rive, that was when celebrities were the most vulnerable to being discovered: leaving one place and going to another.

  She put on a large pair of sunglasses that covered half her face, she covered her hair with an old knit beanie, and her large and shapeless coat concealed her shape. Old tricks, and she was both dismayed that they came back so fast and grateful that they still served her so well.

  I'll be fine. I'll go home. I'll…I'll be with my parents. My baby can have a real family. They deserve a real family even if I don't, and I need to make sure they have one.

  She had to shut down that thought very quickly, because it would bring her too close to Fahim again, and she couldn't afford it. If she did, she would start to tear up, and then maybe she'd cry all the way across the Atlantic.

  Things were going so well that Rose thought she could stop for a drink at one of the vending machines at the entrance of the airport, and that was where they found her.

  “Hey, is that Rose Adams?”

  “Can't be—”

  “It is, it totally is. She's in Yeni to teach, right?”

  One moment, she was just registering the first hints of trouble, and the next, she was surrounded by five or six reporters, all getting too close, all with recorders to push in her face and cameras to capture her response.

  “Rose! Rose, what are you doing at the airport? Are you going back to Darius?”

  “Rose, Ms. Adams, over here! What are you doing with Fahim Khalid, the prince? Is he sending you on a trip? Will he be joining you?”

  When she was younger, Rose had had no problem answering with enough swears that the reporters couldn't use the footage at all, or simply cutting and running for it. Now, though, with her clunky luggage and her baby feeling so precious and fragile in her, she was frozen.

  Come on, one step and then another. She walked slowly but steadily through the crowd.

  “I'm really just going on a trip,” she said as they followed her through the lobby. “No, really. I'm due some time off, and the royal family has been so very kind to me. I'm officially on a leave of absence—”

  “But where are you going?” demanded one reporter who was getting closer than the others. “Where does a rock star go when she's tired of playing teacher?”

  She quashed the sudden burst of temper at the man's question, and instead smiled at him brightly, moving faster through the lobby.

  “As a matter of fact, I'm seeing family,” she said, and another reporter took it up.

  “Seeing family? Are you meeting Darius Bright? He seems devoted to the idea of a family with you now.”

  “Will Fahim Khalid be there with you? Is he coming with you? You're in the lobby for public departures—do you not rate the family jet?”

  There was something turning in the tide of questions, and though all the reporters smiled at her, she could only see how those smiles were full of teeth, like sharks scenting blood in the water.

  She came around the corner only to find a long line between her and the security check to enter the terminal, and her heart sank. She couldn't bulldoze her way through without being stopped by security, and for a moment, she almost went ahead and did it anyway. Getting questioned by security was better than this hounding mess, wasn't it?

  “As a matter of fact, I was wondering why Rose wasn't in the private departures lounge myself.”

  The voice, calm and slightly amused, made everyone turn, and Rose almost gasped to see Fahim striding towards them, dressed as casually as she had ever seen him in dark jeans, a charcoal T-shirt, and a well-cut jacket. There was a smile on his face, but his eyes, as he scanned the reporters, were cold, and they drew back, letting him come to put an arm around Rose's shoulders. She could have cried from how warm he was, and she straightened up as quickly as she could.

  “To answer your question, of course Rose rates the family jet. She has had the charge of my brother's children for months now, and with her passion and knowledge, she has become a firm part of the royal family. As a matter of fact, we are leaving now. Rose?”

  It cannot really be this easy. But apparently when you were the prince, it was. The reporters melted away like snow in front of the sun, and Fahim, not taking his arm from around her shoulders, led her towards the private departures gate.

  “Blasted vultures,” Fahim growled. “They were here to see that actress from that soap opera off, apparently. I suppose you just got unlucky.”

  Rose winced, because yes, she was.

  “I'm sorry,” she began, and he shook his head.

  “You have nothing to apologize for,” he said forcefully, and he drew her into the private lobby for the royal jet, turning her to face him.

  “I'm sorry,” he said. “I'm sorry if I have ruined things between us. You don't deserve…well, any of this. But I am going to tell you right now, I am here for you. We are going to get you what you need, no matter what that is.”

  You, her heart cried out. Only you.

  She swallowed, because she knew that way lay a kind of heartbreak she wasn't sure that she could take.

  “I need my family,” she said quietly. “My mom and dad. I need them, and they need me. They told me so. They need to meet their grandchild when they're born.”

  Fahim sighed softly and nodded.

  “Of course. The family jet will take us there quickly, and you'll be more comfortable than—”

  “Wait, us?” She kept a rein on the hope that sprang up in her chest.

  Fahim smiled, a little crooked but real.

  “Of course,” he repeated. “Rose, even if we're not together anymore, I want the best for you. I'll play escort. I'll keep the reporters away, and I'll be around to provide the royal family's response to anything that Bright pulls.”

  “Oh, of course,” Rose echoed, but she couldn't help a feeling of warmth deep within her.

  19

  Three Weeks Later

  Fahim paused just outside the door, a sheaf of papers in his hand. He listened for a moment, but he couldn't hear the telltale sniffling that would alert him that Rose had locked herself away to cry in private again.

  “She's never realized how thin that door is,” her mother Angie had confided to Fahim a couple weeks ago. “It was something of a saving grace when she was a teenager and starting to pull away from us.”

  After a somewhat tentative beginning, both of Rose's parents had accepted him into their home in Massachusetts as easily as they had their errant daughter. He often felt that no one among the four of them had any idea what to expect. Angie and Roger Adams were normal people, happy to see their daughter again, nervous of the weakened bonds between them and ready to accept just about anything if they could keep her in their lives. Fahim wasn't sure he had ever spent this much time in a family home that didn't belong to one of his relatives. And Rose…well…

  Rose was still recovering from the rift that Darius Bright had deliberately put between her and her parents. She couldn't remove overnight all the poisonous things he had said, all the times he told her they were trying to control her or take her away from him, but she was working on it, for her parents’ sake, for her baby, and possibly, Fahim hoped, for herself.

  He heard her stir beyond the door, and he knocked lightly, answered by her soft voice telling him to come in.

  The sunroom was one of Rose's favorite places in her parents' house, and Fahim could see why. It was glassed in on three sides, giving the plants her father kept plenty of light, and the old, well-padded wicker couch was charmingly antiquated. Rose curled up at one end of the couch now, an old quilt wrapped around her shoulders against the fall chill, and she looked up at him with a smile.

  “How's it going?” she asked as he took a careful seat beside her. They were still working things out, but right now, it seemed mutually agreed that distance was safer.

  “He agreed,” Fahim said, and he watched with sympathy as Rose's face went through a number of different emotions in the space of a moment.

  Darius Bright wouldn't leave her alone. He wouldn't take a payoff. He wouldn't shut up on social media, and the only reason he hadn't shown up at her parents’ house in Massachusetts was because Fahim had threatened to sue him for trespassing the moment he set off one of the security alarms that Fahim had also seen installed.

  He had been prevented from reaching out to Rose directly, but that hadn't stopped his interviews. Rose had refused to watch them after the first, but Fahim felt duty-bound to see what the enemy was up to, and he watched them in the guest room, all the while combating his own fury.

  He saw straight through Bright's appeals to love and family, and in every good thing Bright claimed he had done for Rose, Fahim could see control. He winced at Bright's accounts of taking care of Rose's finances when she went on shopping sprees or bailing her out when she ran wild at a hotel. Rose had been little more than a teenager when those things happened, and yet Bright spoke about them as if Rose were still that child, as if she couldn't live without his guidance.

  That was the way things had stood until just this moment, and Rose took a slow deep breath.

  “He really agreed to mediation? There's a chance this could all be over?”

  Fahim nodded, because the way things were going—how frail Rose seemed, how tired she was—he was going to see this ended one way or another, and he was going to do it soon.

  “What if the mediation goes his way? We can't fight for custody before the baby is born, but is what happens at the mediation going to affect that? What if I have to share custody with him? What if I lose custody, what if—”

  She stilled when Fahim took her hand in his. He only meant to comfort her, but the electric charge that had always existed between them sparked again, rendering them both silent. The longing there was as deep and sweet as it had ever been, but they couldn't admit it. Fahim recovered first, kissing her hand gently.

  “We won't let that happen,” he promised. “No judge is going to look at you and look at him and decide that he deserves a damned thing.”

  To his surprise, Rose smiled, looking a little stronger. She started to say something, but then her parents knocked, coming in with a plate of cookies and steaming cups of tea for all of them.

  “Rose has always liked tea more than coffee,” her father said as they settled on the chairs opposite the couch. “Even when she was old enough for coffee, she always preferred tea.”

  “Especially from these mugs,” Rose said with a real smile, showing Fahim the cheerful penguins emblazoned on them. “Mom, do you remember—”

  “That you tried to kidnap a penguin when you were seven?” Angie laughed. “How could I forget?”

  “You…tried to kidnap a penguin?” asked Fahim, trying to maintain a polite expression and failing.

  “She did,” Roger agreed. “It was a living environment exhibit. We could walk in and sort of mingle with the wildlife, you know, birds and bugs and all that good stuff. Rosie loved it, but she was awfully quiet as we were leaving, and we hadn’t gone far before a zookeeper started yelling at us—”

  “And Rose starts running!” Angie exclaimed. “She'd put one of the little penguins in her coat, and she almost made it to the doors before we grabbed her.”

  “And after I was grounded for a week for trying to make off with an exotic animal, Mom got us these mugs,” Rose said, taking a sip of her tea. “Sort of a happy ending, though you know, wouldn't mind that penguin.”

  Fahim laughed at the story, suddenly warmed by the image of a tiny Rose making friends with a penguin and deciding that it should of course come home with her. The Adams kept talking, and as he looked at them, he realized that he wanted them for his family as well, just as he wanted Rose to have his for hers.

  “It was the cutest thing,” Roger said with a small warm smile, but Rose snorted.

  “Sure, it was for you because you're my parents,” Rose said lovingly. “I bet it was just the worst for the poor zookeepers who thought they were going to get fired because some little kid wandered off with a fairy penguin. They must have thought that I was the worst brat.”

  “No, no one would ever think that,” Angie protested, but something about Rose's statement captured Fahim's attention.

  Dueling perspectives. He said, she said—the mediation sounded like it was going to be a long process with a lot of back and forth. What if they could get some corroboration that would tell the truth once and for all?

  “Rose,” Fahim said slowly. “I think I have an idea…”

  “—and there, that's how you slur those notes together. See, how smooth it makes the change from one to the other? Pretty neat, huh?”

  Rose smiled at her tablet, imagining that instead of the recording app, she was actually talking to Jamila. Just thinking about her student gave her a little pang. Would she ever get to teach her again? Even if Fahim's plan to get rid of Darius worked, there was still a lot up in the air.

  “Well, that's what I've got for tonight,” she said to the blinking red light. “Jamila, you're always so much fun to teach, and—”

  In the preview screen, the door to her bedroom, left half open, opened a little further, and Fahim looked in. He started to move away, but Rose turned to him.

  “Hey, Fahim! I'm making a tutorial video for Jamila. Want to say hi?”

  Fahim came into the room, handsome even dressed for bed in a T-shirt and pajama bottoms.

  “Hello, Jamila,” he said, and to Rose's amusement, he automatically put on some of the formality and dignity he wore when making public statements for the royal family. “I hope you are studying hard and that you are enjoying your studies. They are both equally important. Just always remember that your family, wherever we are, love you very much, and we are very proud of how hard you work and what you have accomplished.”

  Rose turned to smile at the camera one last time, waved, and turned it off with a small sigh.

  “Thanks,” she said. “I've been doing some video sessions with Jamila, and I thought I would record some extra given that the next little while is going to be kind of hectic. I don't think this is as good as my being there, not by a long shot, but it's better than nothing.” Then, almost without thinking, “I miss the palace and teaching Jamila a lot. It was…it was really beginning to feel like home before I left. Everyone was so kind…”

  “You're worth being kind to,” Fahim said. He looked around for a place to sit down, but since Rose was in the only chair at her desk, he had to take a seat on her bed. It would be funny if there wasn't something so strange about it, Fahim in her childhood bedroom, running a lean hand over the stitches of the quilt her grandmother had made for her before she was born.

  “You are,” he repeated. “Everything you think we have given you, you deserve, a thousand times over.”

  “Thank you,” she said, but Fahim apparently wasn't done.

  “We ended things badly,” he said. “I regret that. It was…it wasn't something I am proud of. I look back on the things I said with regret.”

  Rose quashed the hope that leaped up in her throat at his words, because she knew better. God, she had better know better after everything that had happened.

  “It's fine, Fahim,” she said, even though it wasn't. “Seriously…”

  “It was…I was not giving due consideration to what you were going through, and for that I will be eternally sorry. It's something I have found myself thinking about a great deal lately.”

  Rose felt something break in her. Not a snap like what had made her run away from Darius, but something small and essential, something that she barely knew was load-bearing before she realized that it had gone and she was metaphorically on the floor.

  She shook her head, because whatever relationship recap and wrap-up that Fahim wanted to do, she was absolutely, positively not up for it.

  “Fahim, I'm sorry, but I really can't do this right now. I'm…I'm just tiring out so very fast, and—”

  With only a twinge of guilt, she put her hand on her belly, and Fahim gave her a concerned look.

  “Is everything all right?”

  “It is, it is, I promise. I'm just tired, and with all the prep for the mediation coming up, I really should be getting all the rest I need. That we need.”

  Fahim nodded, perhaps a little reluctantly but agreeable as he rose to his feet.

  “Get your rest, Rose. I hope that soon enough, this is all just going be a bad memory for you.”

  Fahim left, closing the door behind him, and Rose shut her eyes tight to prevent the tears from falling. She had learned that lately, if she let them start, they would take what felt like forever to stop, and she didn't want to deal with that tonight.

  They weren't all bad memories, she wanted to protest, but of course, there was nothing to be done about that.

  20

  The day set for the mediation dawned a pearly gray, and by the time Fahim and Rose left for the law firm where it was going to be held, a soft drizzle gave everything a melancholy look. Beside Rose in the back of the limousine, Fahim couldn't quite muster the armor of cold professionalism that he usually wore for these events. He felt as if his heart was beating too fast, exhausted, as if he had not slept for days.