Another turn, another left, another right. She would have checked the palace's locator app, but she'd left her phone in her room. It was a thing that professional people did, right? She shouldn't be checking her texts while she was trying to teach children about music.

  A right, a left. She wasn't sure she remembered that garden.

  The truth was that Fahim was handsome in a way she wasn't used to. She knew plenty of handsome men working in music, but they all made sure you knew how handsome they were. Fahim would never have to put himself forward like that. He looked calm, as if you could take him or leave him, and Rose stopped herself from wondering if anyone had taken him yet.

  A left. All right, she knew she had never seen this picture gallery before.

  Abruptly, Rose realized that she was lost, and for a moment, she wanted to crumple in on herself.

  My first day. They're trusting me with their children, and I can't even figure out how to find them…

  Darius's words echoed in her mind, uttered so often that the least failure summoned them. Music was the only thing she was good at, of course she couldn't navigate in the real world. Of course she needed him to—

  She shut off his voice because he wasn't there to help her now, was he? No.

  A maid passing by gave her a curious look, and summoning all her courage, Rose approached her.

  “Hi, I was wondering if you could help me…”

  It turned out that she had gone in the completely wrong direction, and she was almost twenty minutes late by the time she reached the breakfast nook. They called it a nook, but it was really a glassed-in solar, all in white wood with glass arching overhead to let in the morning sunlight. It was a gorgeous room, something out of a magazine, but the people sitting around a table still holding some breakfast leftovers were easy there, very much at home.

  She recognized Fahim, who smiled at her encouragingly, and Ziad, who was frowning at his phone. The handsome young man who was playing a counting game with the two little children could be none other than Imran, the youngest brother of the royal trio. The older woman in a stunning azure dress gazing at her with a sharp, dark gaze must be Maryam, the trio's mother, and the smiling woman to her right, obviously pregnant, was likely Laura, the sheikha and Ziad's wife.

  “Hi,” Rose said, suddenly shy. “I'm…I'm here to take the children if that's okay.”

  Inwardly, she cringed because that wasn't how you were supposed to introduce yourself to your new employers on your first day on the job, but the awkwardness was suddenly shattered by a shriek of joy.

  “Oh, you're Rose Adams!” the little girl shouted. “You're really her, and you're here to teach me music!”

  “Oh! Yes, that's me…”

  Before Rose could say anything else, the little girl—it could be no one but Jamila—launched herself out of her seat and threw herself at Rose with a reckless courage and joy that took Rose's breath away. Hasan, the little boy, came toddling after his sister, and the next moment, Rose had two children staring up at her, delight on their faces.

  “Are you going to teach me to play guitar?” demanded Jamila. “Will you teach Hasan drums? Uncle Imran says that Hasan is a natural on the drums, as hard as he hits his toys, and I want to play with Hasan someday. Are you going to teach us both? Are you going to play as well?”

  Rose couldn't help bursting into laughter. If only all the interviews she’d given had been this joyful, this honest.

  “I'm going to teach you to play whatever you want,” she promised. “And I'm not here to perform, but I'll play for you if you want me to, and—”

  “Drums!” shouted Hasan, apparently catching on. “Want drums!”

  Rose grinned because, well, that was every drummer she had ever known, but then she remembered herself.

  She wasn't on tour messing around with some roadie's children come to visit. She was at her job for some of the wealthiest and most important people in the region, and she froze, slowly looking up at them. To her dread, she realized that they were all looking at her as well, and she started to stammer an apology, though this time, she didn't even know what she was apologizing for.

  The men looked at her quizzically, but the women exchanged a look, and Laura rose with a grunt, moving carefully due to her large belly.

  “Jamila. Hasan. Come here. Ms. Adams won't be able to teach you anything if you jump all over her.”

  “Please, Rose is fine,” Rose said, but Laura pulled the children back to the table, helping them both calm down.

  “Would you like something to eat?” asked Maryam kindly. “We can send to the kitchen if you like, or perhaps you'd like some of the fruit here.”

  “Oh, thanks.” Rose reached for one of the apples on the table.

  “Tsk, look at you,” Laura said, looking down at Hasan. “Egg all over you. Rose, do you mind if your lesson starts a little late? I'd like to get this little hooligan cleaned up. How about if I bring both of them to the music room in just a sec? I can meet you there.”

  Maryam and Laura left with Jamila and Hasan in tow, and now Rose was left with the three royal brothers watching her curiously.

  “I am so sorry,” she said. “I thought…Well, I thought I knew where I was going, but apparently I didn't. Guess I'm lucky I didn't just end up in the royal dungeon or something.”

  Ziad gave her a kind look, waving her apology off with an easy hand.

  “No dungeons here, though Fahim might argue that the old garden shed was—”

  Fahim cleared his throat, a startlingly irritated look on his face. She hadn't thought he was a man who got irritated easily, but Ziad cut himself off with a shrug.

  “Regardless,” Ziad continued, “good luck on your first day. The children can be a handful, but as you saw, they are eager to learn.”

  “Very much so,” added Imran with a grin. “I'm suggesting you pick the loudest and most irritating instrument you can. My older brother certainly deserves it.”

  “And you are only saying that because you want to get out of helping me hammer out that trade agreement,” said Ziad, shaking his head. “Speaking of which, come on, we both have some work to do before we can knock off for the day. Rose, it was a pleasure.”

  Ziad and Imran left, and suddenly, almost breathlessly, she was alone with Fahim, who watched her with a calm gaze.

  “I'm sorry again—” she began, but he shook his head.

  “One of the best parts of being a member of the Khalid family is that we are mostly very blunt people,” he said with amusement. “If Ziad finds fault, and believe me, sometimes he really does, he's not shy about letting you know. The children were enthusiastic about what you have come to teach them. That's not a bad thing in the least. Don't worry about it.”

  Rose started to smile, but then Fahim looked a little more serious.

  “Though I might suggest that you could dress up a little. Jeans are fine when you are off duty, but the staff that deals with the children are usually a little more formal. My mother says that it helps foster the right kind of seriousness for Jamila and Hasan when it comes to their studies.”

  “Oh,” Rose said, biting back her protest that music was fun, not formal. “Thank you. I'll remember that.”

  She excused herself, wondering what else she could get wrong on her first day.

  3

  It was almost dusk before Fahim had the time to go looking for Rose. He told himself it was because he wanted to see how Jamila and Hasan's first lesson had gone, but there was more to it than that. He was deliberately not thinking about that more right now, and so he was just checking on his niece and his nephew.

  A helpful maid pointed him towards the garden, where Rose had been seen just an hour ago, and he found her on a stretch of lawn next to the enormous koi pond. After what was likely a stressful first day, many people would be simply sitting and soaking in the quiet, but to Fahim's amusement, the ground in front of Rose was scattered with papers and pieces of blank sheet music scrawled with notes. Her laptop was open and connected to her headphones, and as she busily wrote in a notebook, her entire body bobbed in time with the music he couldn't hear, her face wrinkled in concentration.

  Artist at work, Fahim thought in amusement, and he circled around in front of her, stopping a few feet short to wait for her to notice him. He didn't want to startle her, but she still jumped when she finally noticed him, tearing her headphones off her head in a guilty way.

  “Oh man, did I miss the Keep Off the Grass sign?” she asked looking around, and Fahim laughed, shaking his head.

  “No, this is a private garden, designed for the palace residents. You should feel free to enjoy it when you aren't working, though I will say it hardly looks like you are relaxing now. What are you doing?”

  Rose's reticence disappeared in an instant, and she waved him down next to her. Bemused, Fahim took a seat, aware of how long it had been since he had sat with a woman in such easy companionship.

  “I was hammering out a lesson plan that would let Jamila and Hasan learn at the same time.”

  “Won't that be too hard on Hasan and bore Jamila? They're both very bright, but there's several years between them.”

  “It might be if I was teaching them something like math or reading, but this is music,” Rose said enthusiastically. “This is all about feeling and hearing and responding, and they can both do that, in their own ways. Jamila's response will be more sophisticated than Hasan's, but that doesn't mean that he can't contribute and that she can't see his contribution as important. Have you ever heard of the Toy Symphony?”

  “No.”

  “It's a beautiful fast piece by Leopold Mozart—some say Haydn wrote it—and throughout, there are parts written for noise-making toys. It's incredibly charming when you hear it, but if you want to play a noisemaker, you don't need years of experience like you would for a trombone or a harp. You just blow or bang or twirl or whatever. I think this is going to be a good introduction for how music is as much a response as a call, and I think it'll be nice for them to do together.”

  “That sounds fascinating,” Fahim said, imagining the possibilities. “That's very well done of you, and Ziad always likes to see his children working together.”

  He paused, considering.

  “And that is a rather lot of work for your first day. How are you getting on?”

  Rose laughed, ready to shrug him off, but when Fahim only waited patiently for her response, she sighed, fiddling with her headphones.

  “It's kind of a lot,” she admitted. “I got lost twice already. I thought the phone app would help, but I kept getting turned around. My directional challenges aside, however, the children are excited about their lessons, and your family…”

  Fahim tensed, because he loved his family, but they could be a touch overwhelming sometimes, especially if Ziad had grilled her with questions about her lesson plans.

  “Your family's great,” she said, almost as if she was embarrassed to be caught feeling so fond. “I had lunch with Laura after the lesson, and you know, it's just really cool to have another mother-to-be around to talk with. I don't have many girlfriends—well, hardly any, really—and I don't want to, like, overstep or anything, but she was just so great.”

  “Laura is great,” Fahim said with a laugh. “She's wonderful. The rest of us, eh, I suppose we do our best to measure up.”

  “Oh, no, nothing like that,” Rose said, but she was laughing too. “Just seeing the sheikh rib you at breakfast, it felt like, well, it felt like being at home. What was that thing about the garden shed, anyway?”

  Fahim did his best to keep his face still, because if there was one thing he did not want to talk about with the brilliant, beautiful musician next to him, it was that.

  “Awful, smelly place,” he said with a casual shrug. “First chance I got, I had it torn down. Ziad's not used to me taking such a grudge against something like that, and I suppose he thinks it's funny. It used to be right over there as a matter of fact, and believe me, this pond looks much better without it.”

  “Hm, can't say I blame you, there are a few places I wouldn't mind having torn down myself. Good choice—it's gorgeous out here. This is—”

  She cut herself off, biting her lip, and Fahim looked at her more closely.

  “Go on,” he said as gently as he could.

  “Well, it's the first time I've felt safe enough to really enjoy the outdoors since I left Rive. Other parks, you know, full of…of paparazzi, their cameras. It was awful.”

  Somehow, Fahim didn't think that was all, and a surge of protectiveness came over him. The idea of Rose, whose greatest wishes seemed to be to keep her child safe and to make music, being afraid was infuriating, and he shook it off before noticing something else.

  “You really haven't been outside very much, have you?”

  “Hm?”

  He gestured to her shoulders, careful to avoid touching. Under her sleeveless blouse, her shoulders were bare, and they had gone a delicate pink in the sunlight. She must have been in the garden for hours.

  “You're going to get burned. Here.”

  He took off his suit jacket and draped it carefully over her shoulders. He was doing his best to make it as light and as casual as possible, but his fingers brushed against the bare skin of her arm, sending a shiver through him he was quick to hide. She was so beautiful, so very beautiful, and his usually quiet temper rose up at what kind of monster might try to take advantage of her.

  “Thank you,” she said, pulling the edges of the jacket a little more snugly around herself. “I hadn't noticed. I'll have to put some lotion on when I get back inside.”

  There was a pause that could have become awkward, but then Rose perked up, reaching for her laptop.

  “Here, this is the Toy Symphony, you have to listen to it.”

  She pulled the headphones out of her laptop and cued up the video. Fahim listened to it with her, smiling at the sounds of the noisemakers she had told him about. He realized in a vague sort of way how long it had been since he had listened to any piece of music like this, considering and with an ear towards truly understanding it.

  How strange. It was such an important part of my life…

  “So it was the violin for you, wasn't it?”

  Fahim blinked as the music ended.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The violin. It was yours. You keep nodding when the first violin line comes in. Mostly people only get that intense when it's an instrument with which they have some personal affinity.”

  “Ah, well. I played some in school,” he said vaguely. It was rather more than that, but he figured Rose didn't need his high school transcripts.

  “You should take it up again,” Rose said earnestly. “It's so good for you.”

  “A professional musician would say so, I suppose,” Fahim said dubiously, but she only shook her head.

  “Being a professional has nothing to do with it. I don't miss the crowds or the endless touring or anything like that. All of that…well, I guess it was the price for being able to do my favorite thing in the world all day, every day. It was the music itself I wanted, even when—”

  She cut herself off, looking down.

  “It's all right,” Fahim said gently. “Keep going.”

  “Even when things got bad with Darius—and they could get really, really bad—I always felt…well, powerful when I played. As if there was nothing in the world to be afraid of, as if nothing else could matter when I was playing music that I really loved.”

  She looked up at him anxiously. Suddenly, she looked almost heartbreakingly vulnerable wrapped up in his jacket, sheltering from the sun.

  “Do you think that sounds dumb?”

  “Of course not.” Fahim shook his head. “Absolutely not. That was how I felt too.”

  The sun was beginning to set, and as Rose looked down, this time with a slight smile on her face, Fahim noticed how the setting sun glinted in her hair, picking out strands of copper and gold in the brown. He had a sudden, unacceptable urge to reach out and to touch her, to smooth the hair behind her ears, to see what she might do if he tilted her face up for a gentle kiss.

  Fahim swallowed hard, fisting his hands by his sides.

  What kind of monster are you? She just told you that she very recently got out of an abusive relationship. She is alone in a foreign land, she is going to have a baby, and she is still finding her way in this job. What kind of monster would take advantage of that? She surely isn't thinking of such things.

  As Rose, distracted, looked through some of her notes, Fahim reminded himself that though she was beautiful, there was far more to her than that. She was his niece and nephew's music tutor. She wasn't a woman he could have an affair with, something that would end easily when they were both tired of one another. They would be seeing each other very regularly, potentially every day. This wasn't a relationship he would risk making rocky or even awkward.

  She's already more than so many of the women I've seen in recent years, he thought. She's clever and sweet, and she's a good listener. I can't remember the last time that I had someone around who wanted to talk about music with me. I shouldn't so heedlessly jeopardize that, either.

  Imran had met Sarah while she was watching Ziad's children, and Ziad had only known Laura a couple weeks before he married her, looking for someone who would look after Jamila and Hasan. Those romances still struck Fahim as incredibly risky, for all that they had worked out. He had never been like his brothers. He wouldn't risk the chaos that might come with an employer-employee romance, no matter how pretty the employee.

  He climbed to his feet, making Rose look up in surprise.

  “I have work I need to get back to,” he lied. “Keep up the good work.”

  If she thought it was abrupt or strange, she didn't have time to say, because he was gone.