She put both her hands up, cutting him off. “I’m not looking for another shot at you, I promise.” Her heart sank to say it out loud. Of course she wasn’t looking for another shot at him. Piper only wanted to tell him the truth, and yes, a part of her had hoped he’d be happy to see her. But that was neither here nor there.

  Camil kept his gaze on hers. “What are you here for, then?”

  For the thousandth time since she’d heard the news herself, Piper searched for a way to soften the blow. To make it seem not as life changing as it was. A completely impossible task.

  Because this was not a fairy-tale love story.

  It had been attraction at first sight. A deep attraction, yes. One that made her thrill to be in his arms. But not love. It wasn’t the picture-perfect story she’d always dreamed of, and now…

  Now she had to say it.

  “I’m pregnant,” she said.

  The prince of Al-Fahr blinked. His eyes went wide and white, and he shook his head a little—no. No. His mouth dropped open as if he were going to speak to her, but he closed it again and said nothing. He looked curiously pale.

  Piper couldn’t help but speak into that heavy silence. “The clinic calculates that I’m at about six weeks. And you’re the father.”

  Camil swallowed hard and came around the table. Not close enough to touch her, though Piper wanted him to. What she wanted, in fact, was for him to wrap her in his arms and hold her there without saying anything.

  But that wasn’t the kind of relationship they had. They didn’t have any relationship, because they hadn’t wanted one. Now her lungs were working overtime to get enough air while she watched his absurdly handsome, chiseled face. Everything about Camil was perfect as he processed the news—his expensive, tailored suit, the way he held himself like a prince. Everything but the way he looked at her. Suspicion flickered through his eyes but disappeared a moment later, as if he could see she wasn’t lying, as if he came to the quick conclusion that she wouldn’t lie about this.

  “What do you want, Piper?” His tone had softened, but his gaze had only grown more intense. She felt the gravity of this moment a hundred times more powerfully than she’d felt the adrenaline rush of running to meet him that very first time.

  “I just wanted you to know the truth.” And now he knew the truth. Piper took a big, deep breath. There. She had done it. He knew. “However you want to be involved, you’re welcome to be.” After a heartbeat, she smiled at him. It was a relief to smile. A relief to feel it on her face. “Also, you never gave me a yes or no about accessing palace materials for my book. We got a little distracted last time.”

  The thick tension between them was swept away on the words. Camil laughed, and the sound chased away some of her nervousness. Not all of it. She was pregnant with the prince’s baby, after all, and Piper had no idea what that might mean for the future.

  Camil had never appreciated a moment of levity more in his life.

  He was not going to throw up. It was simply not dignified for someone in his position. The tentative light in Piper’s eyes settled his stomach.

  A baby. He didn’t even know where to begin with that.

  Camil had always known a child would be in his future. He was his father’s son and heir to the sheikhdom of Al-Fahr, and he would one day have to secure the Abadi line as part of his responsibilities to his family. It was true that he and his closest friends, Amare and Faidh, had formed a pact not to fall in love. For his part, Camil knew that love was a fool’s errand—it was never as good as it pretended to be, and usually ended in disaster. But they all understood that they’d have to marry. They had all understood the necessity of producing heirs.

  He’d just never thought about it in such stark terms. Even when Amare had become a father himself. Even when that same friend had been the first to move on from the pact. Amare had found Nadia, and now—

  What was he thinking? Piper was pregnant, and they were not married. They weren’t even in a relationship.

  Maybe that was for the best.

  It dawned on him all at once. He could fulfill his responsibility to Al-Fahr and the Abadi family without all the added hassle and fuss of a marriage.

  Camil shook himself out of it. Piper stood not five feet away, watching him with her huge blue eyes, waiting for him to speak. Piper, who had smiled at him and flirted with him and held his arm all the way through the gardens. Piper, who had let him twirl her in an empty ballroom and who had been the first to suggest that it was only an hour or two of fun, nothing more. She understood. She would understand.

  He still needed to sort out the fact of her pregnancy in his mind. Camil was going to be a father, and it was too large a consideration for this conference room. He would need time. More than the few minutes they had now.

  “I would be happy,” he began, and words almost tumbled out of him then—I would be happy to discuss the pregnancy—but it would have been rushed and uncertain, and Camil didn’t want that. “I would be happy to allow you to use the archived materials for your project. In fact, you might be able to help me as well.”

  Piper’s eyebrows lifted, and he saw genuine surprise in her eyes, and genuine relief. She’d obviously thought this had the chance to become a disappointing scene.

  “Really?”

  “Yes. I’ve been wracking my brain over a task my father gave me to bring in more tourism to Al-Fahr, and your book pitch gave me an idea. I want to convert a small desert palace where my great-grandparents resided into a hotel built around their story.”

  Piper wrinkled her nose. So she didn’t like that idea. He pressed on anyway.

  “But I need to make sure the story is something I can actually work with. Any big skeletons could derail the whole thing.”

  There was more to tell her, certainly. The scope of this project would be beyond a book written about the two lovers. Camil had a grand renovation in mind for the desert palace—lights and a Vegas-like atmosphere with celebrity entertainment—but that wasn’t for Piper to worry about. All she wanted was access to the archives, and he could benefit from that same research.

  “The work you’ll be doing in the archives would be mutually beneficial,” he continued. “I could show you the archives now, if you’d like. It’s a bit of a maze to get there, and we didn’t visit on the tour.”

  Her smile made a place around his heart squeeze. That wasn’t typical for Camil—he’d made a promise to his best friends, and he knew how love stories ended—but he couldn’t deny the strange mixture of relief and attraction he felt at her smile.

  “I would like that, yes.”

  Camil offered her his arm, and she took it. Her hand on his arm felt less casual, less flirtatious than it had the day they’d met, but it still felt natural. Far more natural than holding himself away from her.

  He led her through the lobby to an elevator they took down to the lower level of the palace. Piper shivered at his side.

  “It’s a bit cooler down here.” He laughed. “The temperature control system is top of the line to protect all the materials.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.” She leaned closer. “Next time, I’ll bring a sweater.”

  “Next time, I’ll have one down here for you.”

  Piper glanced up at him, a question in her eyes as they went through the doors to the palace archives. The large space looked like a cross between a museum and a library. Bookshelves lined both sides, with sturdy filing cabinets interspersed throughout them. Glass cases held various artifacts that were too priceless or precious to be on display in the public areas of the palace. Camil glanced down at Piper. Her eyes were wide, lips parted in excitement, and the color on her cheeks made him want to surprise her like this every day.

  At the front of the room, the chief archivist sat behind a rounded desk. The ancient man greeted them with a smile. Camil had always liked him. He imagined he’d make an excellent grandfather, what with the hundreds of stories he had to tell.

  “Prince Camil,” he said, the shakes in his voice giving away his advanced age. “You’ve brought a guest.”

  “This is Piper McCarthy, my personal guest and a researcher who will be working with me on a project.” Piper nodded her greeting, but he had more to say. “She is to be allowed access to any materials she likes.”

  “I was also wondering if I could check out some of the materials and take them to my flat for my research. The travel between my flat and the palace might be—”

  “Unfortunately,” wheezed the archivist, “none of the material can be taken out of the palace. It is forbidden, not only for the safety of the material, but for the protection of the royal family.”

  Piper’s face fell and Camil’s heart dropped along with it. He would say anything for that devastated frown to disappear from her face. “You can come to the palace every day if necessary. I’ll give you permanent clearance so you can come through any time you wish.”

  Her blue eyes came up to his, hopeful and bright. “Are you sure? I don’t want to be a bother to anyone.”

  “You will not be,” he reassured her. “Come and go as you please. And if you need anything, anything at all, you come to me.”

  3

  He couldn’t stay away from her.

  Two weeks into the project, and Camil was finding every excuse under the sun to visit Piper in the archives. The archivist had become used to seeing him down there with an unheard-of frequency and had even relaxed the rules so that he and Piper could eat lunch at one of the desks in the front of the room. Not at a table with any books, of course—Camil would never dream of bending the rules that far or of endangering the materials in that way. But he brought lunch as often as he could.

  Then the two of them would sit together, Piper’s face lit up with anticipation. It was for the food, he was sure. She was ravenous, and usually looking a bit peaked by the time he arrived along with the meal. The color came back to her face as soon as they started eating.

  They’d even fallen into a bit of a routine. After a few quiet moments tasting the food, he would ask her what she’d learned in the archives that morning, and Piper would tell him. Camil had never been so glad for something to focus on. Otherwise, he found himself completely consumed with trying not to think of her naked in his bed. It was an impossible task. Whenever her eyes lit up, it reminded him of that day in the palace and how quickly she’d followed him to his private rooms, her grip tight on his. How quickly they’d taken off their clothes. And how it seemed to him that almost no time had passed between his invitation and the moment she tumbled into his sheets.

  “The material today upholds the original story,” she told him, day after day. “But so far, all I’ve found are secondary sources.” Outside accounts of his great-grandparents were useful, of course, but what Piper wanted was a journal or love letters. It was too difficult to substantiate the story as real if they didn’t have a firsthand account. Camil wanted something firsthand, too. Nothing would be better for marketing.

  Today, he would try something different. His heart kicked up as he rode the elevator to the basement level, nodded to the archivist, and searched out Piper at the same table he always found her at. It was tucked in the back, close to a corner of the bookshelves, and always covered end-to-end with her research.

  Camil watched her a moment from the shadows.

  Gorgeous. She was gorgeous, with the blonde hair held loosely in a ponytail at the nape of her neck. Piper liked to take out the elastic and shake it loose over her shoulders. The elegant curve of her neck as she bowed over the books made his palms ache with the need to run his hand over the soft skin there. Perhaps thread his fingers through her ponytail and tug so he could look into the bright sea of her eyes. A smile spread over his face. Camil didn’t bother to stop it.

  “If you’d like to see the sun for a bit, there’s somewhere I’d like to take you.”

  She startled as his voice broke the silence but laughed a little along with it. Her smile warmed him through the air conditioning of the archives. “Where are we going?”

  “It’s a surprise.” He nodded toward the front. “Follow me.”

  Piper hurried out of her seat, abandoning her books where they lay. The archivist knew better than to reshelve anything she was looking at, and Camil knew for a fact that the man took special care to guard her work while she was away.

  “You’re really not going to tell me?” she wheedled as they went back up in the elevator, her elbow nudging him gently in the side.

  “I really won’t,” he confirmed. Camil offered his arm, and she took it, a broad grin on her face. It was a joke. A game they played. He was the gallant prince, and she was his lady, being escorted through the palace. Never mind that they had an agreement not to become the thing they were pretending to be.

  They wound through the halls, then took another elevator. This one let them out into a sunny garage.

  Piper took in the neat rows of cars. “The palace collection?”

  “My personal collection, and not nearly all of it.”

  Her eyebrows went up. “No?”

  “I would never keep my collection so close to the sun. Don’t be silly.” She laughed at him, but Piper quickly turned back to the cars, looking each one over as he took her around the garage. “They’re stored in an underground, temperature-controlled level, like the archives. I had a few of my favorites brought up so you could choose.”

  At the other end of the garage, they met with Camil’s security detail, a crew of six led by a man named Adnan. “A requirement of my father,” Camil murmured into Piper’s ear as they approached the group. “We’ll meet with them, and then we’ll be off.”

  “Introduce me,” Piper insisted, and he did, giving her the names of each of the men in turn. He and Adnan had a brief check-in, and the team piled into two separate SUVs that idled in the exit lane of the garage.

  Camil turned Piper to face the cars again. “Which one would you like to take today?”

  She glanced at the SUVs. “They’re not driving us?”

  “No.” He smiled, his muscles already easing the tension of the day. “I love to drive. Security will follow.”

  “Exciting,” she breathed, and then she pointed. “That one. Easy choice.”

  “An excellent choice,” he said, and Piper beamed. Camil helped her into the Rolls Royce Wraith she had chosen. It was a shiny beetle blue, and one of his personal favorites.

  Camil climbed in, fastened his seatbelt, and slid his palms over the steering wheel. For the first time he could recall, he wanted to reach out and take the hand of his passenger. Hold it all the way to their destination. But he resisted. It was one thing to escort her through the palace on his arm, in full view of any staff and visitors. It was another entirely to reach for her hand as if there were something more between them.

  There was something more between them. True enough. Not, however, a romantic tie.

  So Camil only turned to where Piper sat, her seatbelt already buckled, and waited until her stunning blue eyes met his.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she answered, sounding breathless and excited. It sent a shiver of pleasure over his skin. Yes, he could imagine her saying as he was down on one knee, asking for her to become his wife. Piper would sound just like this, only her voice would be more resonant. Richer with tears of joy.

  He tore himself away from that fantasy and shook it out of his head. “We’re on our way.”

  The drive through the city took them through several different neighborhoods, their boundaries demarcated by the age of the buildings. They got older gradually until they reached the oldest districts at the edge of the city. Here, the buildings were much older—sandstone creations that didn’t have the shine of modernization that the buildings in the city center did. The palace and the district surrounding it had been the first to undergo the extensive renovations Camil dreamed of extending throughout the region.

  He’d been new to his position as the crown prince when the process had begun, but he’d successfully argued for a number of changes that made the space around the palace more accessible to the people. Wider sidewalks. Slower speed limits. Public squares that were surrounded by shining buildings and permanent gardens.

  Out here, he saw only room for improvement. Especially as they pulled up in front of a sandstone building with tall, narrow cutout windows and ornate designs carved into the stone.

  Piper craned her neck to look at it from the passenger seat. “Are we here?”

  “We are,” he told her. “This is a museum dedicated to Al-Fahr’s history. My grandfather commissioned it, and my father maintained it. I’m slightly ashamed to say I’ve never been here, but I thought you might find something useful inside.”

  She grinned at him, her cheeks flushed. “I love museums,” she said, and he could tell from the sincerity that rang in her voice that she meant it. “I’m excited to visit this one with you. Shall we?”

  “Of course.” Camil went around to her door and opened it for her, then gave her his arm, just the way they did in the palace.

  “Will you do this everywhere?” Piper joked, patting the crook of his elbow.

  “Any place you’re an honored guest,” he said solemnly. “So, yes. Everywhere.”

  The museum staff had lined up to greet them in the cool, dark lobby of the museum, each of them meticulous in their uniforms. Dark pants, dark vests, and white shirts.

  “Prince Camil,” they said.

  Piper wanted to know all their names, and he felt a pulse of pride in his chest. She wasn’t his fiancée, or even his girlfriend, but she had a way with people that put him at ease. It put them at ease, too. He couldn’t help but think of the first day they’d met, when she’d charmed him from the moment she’d walked into the conference room.

  Camil smiled through the introductions and tried not to think too deeply about it. These feelings that kept banging around in his chest—they were a result of the time they were spending together and Piper’s news. That was all. Dwelling on them wouldn’t help the situation, and neither would talking about those feelings incessantly.