“I agree with the sheikh,” Alma said a few moments later.

  Mina let out the breath she’d been holding, relief singing through her along with the heat left behind from sitting with Faidh.

  “The design is thoughtful. Well-balanced. Almonds are a good choice. The royal family will be very pleased with this.”

  “Thank you,” Mina said, though she wanted to jump up and punch the air. Wanted to celebrate with a bucket of champagne poured over her head or something equally extravagant.

  “We’ll start baking tomorrow. And I think I can delay my search for a new assistant. Goodnight, Mina. Get some good rest.”

  “Goodnight,” Mina called after Alma. As soon as her footsteps receded through the main kitchen, Mina allowed herself to lean on the prep table, her hands in her hair.

  She couldn’t abandon her drawings here. Couldn’t leave until the entire thing was finished. If they were going to start construction the next day, every detail had to be finalized.

  Mina picked up her pencil and scanned the sketch with new eyes. She’d leave the design largely how it was, but she’d make certain it was perfect, from the notes to the measurements to the decorations. It might be another hour or two before it was finished. Fine—more than fine.

  It seemed so quiet in the kitchen without Faidh. So lonely. Almost as if he belonged here with her.

  7

  A note arrived for Faidh the next evening.

  Meet me in the kitchens? –Mina

  Well. Of course he would.

  When he arrived, he found her standing near the prep table in a dark, simple dress. The table was crowded with ingredients. Mina beamed down at them, her dark hair pulled up into a bun that made him want to tug it out of her hair. Her dark eyes glinted with pleasure at the sight of him. “Hi,” she said. “I wanted to thank you for your help-not-help yesterday.”

  He had no idea what she was talking about. “What did I do?” He couldn’t help cracking a smile at her. “Or not do?”

  Mina’s cheeks pinked. “Alma was impressed with my cake design. She said she wouldn’t look for a new student just yet.”

  “A new student?”

  “Yeah, it was just—” Mina waved a hand in the air, and he recognized the gesture—it was one he’d made the night before. “Don’t worry about it. What matters is, without you coming down here and keeping me focused, the design wouldn’t have come out the same way.”

  He sensed she was leaving something unsaid—a new student for Alma? She didn’t need two students. But Faidh didn’t press her on it.

  “So.” Mina’s smile grew wide and bright again, and she motioned to all the ingredients. “I wanted to show you my favorite recipe.”

  “If you really wanted to thank me, you could just make the dessert for me,” he joked, but she only rolled her eyes and pointed to the hook of extra aprons.

  “You’re going to need one of those,” she said.

  After Faidh had put on the apron and washed his hands, he joined her at the prep table. Being this close to Mina was a pleasure. She smelled sweet, almost like a baked good, and the scent of her made him feel at home.

  “Today,” she began, “we’re going to make baklava. The first thing you need to know about baklava is that—”

  Faidh couldn’t hear what she said. His body had frozen, his heart stopping for a moment, and it took an effort to bring himself back. He rolled his shoulders once, then twice, trying to clear that heavy, cold feeling from his body.

  “Are you okay?” Mina looked up at him, dark eyes questioning.

  “Yes,” he said quickly. “Yes. Go on.”

  “Okay.” A lingering glance at him. “Baklava both is and isn’t a difficult recipe. The phyllo dough is probably the most difficult part, because it requires a light touch.”

  Faidh had never been particularly gentle. He’d come into his full height as a teenager. He was tall and strong—a big man with a big personality to match—but as Mina rolled out the dough and stretched it, he studied her movements. The sound of her voice washed over him as he set about rolling his own section of dough. It felt so soft and insubstantial in his hands. He could ruin it with one false move. He did not want to ruin this with Mina, or for himself. A light touch, a light touch.

  “I don’t think you’ve ever looked so serious,” Mina said softly.

  “I am serious. This is my mission for the evening,” he said. He winked at her, but it was less of a joke than he let on.

  Mina nodded. “Mission it is,” she said, and together they built the baklava.

  It took forty-five minutes to bake, and Mina lifted it carefully out of the oven when the timer rang. She slid the hot pan onto the stovetop to cool, and they both stood back to look at it.

  “It’s ugly,” Faidh said. “The layers don’t line up properly.”

  Mina burst out laughing. “Alma would say we couldn’t serve it, but that doesn’t mean we can’t eat it.”

  Faidh’s shoulders tensed as Mina cut it into diamonds and plated two pieces, each of them sliding into a heap of nuts, honey, and pastry. She got two forks and they pulled up two stools. He tried to ignore the tight feeling in his throat.

  He took the first bite. It was good. “You’re right. It does taste good, even if it looks like a sheikh with no kitchen experience made it.”

  “People have different skills,” she pointed out. “I knew pretty early on that I wanted to be a baker. There was this baking competition in middle school, and—” She stopped herself, shaking her head a little. “My parents didn’t exactly want me to enter, but I did anyway, and I won. I made baklava.”

  Mina lifted a forkful of the dessert and held it up, her eyes soft, and a little sad. It was a good memory for her—he could tell. But there was more to it. Faidh didn’t press. Because his own history was bubbling up to the surface. He took another bite of baklava, and he couldn’t stop himself any longer.

  “My mother—” He didn’t talk about her often, and the words stuck in his throat. Hello, mother. He would never say that to her again, and even now, even after all these years, it still shocked him a little. “My mother’s favorite dessert was baklava. Meher won’t eat it now because it makes her sad, but I order it all the time. I can’t help myself.”

  He could hardly bring himself to look at Mina. Faidh didn’t want to see pity in her eyes. Everyone in Nouzar knew what had happened to his parents, and it had been almost unbearable to go out in public for years afterward. Faidh couldn’t stand to see that sorrow on their faces. It had always been so skin-deep. Something they offered to him because they’d heard a story, not because they knew what it was like. Some of them did. Of course they did. But far more people were only offering their sympathy as a way to ease the conversation into what they wanted.

  Still, he brought himself to look at her. Mina watched him with her dark eyes, and he didn’t find any pity there, only compassion.

  “I can tell you miss her very much.”

  A knot he hadn’t known was there eased behind his heart under a cascade of relief. The last thing Faidh had wanted to hear was that she was sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry. It didn’t mean anything. It wasn’t Mina’s fault that his parents were dead, and he’d run out of patience for hearing it years ago. Her words, though, were a balm.

  “I do,” he admitted.

  They ate baklava in silence, but it didn’t feel weighted down with feeling, it didn’t feel too heavy to bear. It felt right to be sitting by Mina, eating the dessert that his mother loved.

  Into that softness, he said, “After ten years, it feels like I’m losing parts of her.”

  Mina considered him. “But you keep this.”

  “I keep this,” he said. “I’ll always remember her saying that baklava was the only way to start the day. She liked to have it with her morning coffee. That was the sound of my mornings—her crunching on phyllo dough and sipping coffee from her mug. If I hold on to baklava, I’m holding on to her, in a way.”

  Mina let out a breath that wasn’t quite a sigh and leaned her head onto his shoulder.

  Oh, she was perfect. Faidh pressed his nose into her hair. Mina smelled like pastry dough and something syrupy sweet. Intoxicating. He wanted to breathe her in for hours. Days. Faidh put down his fork and took Mina’s chin in his hand, lifting it gently so she was looking at him. Yes—that was desire in her eyes.

  He kissed her.

  He kissed her deeply, licking into her mouth like everything they’d shared together was real. Was always real. Mina let out a little moan into his mouth, and he was off the stool, taking her into his arms and putting her on the prep table. She opened her legs to him, and he pushed his body between them so he could hold her closer and kiss her harder. Mina melted into his arms, and it wasn’t enough. It was not enough for him. Faidh slipped his palms under the skirt of her dress and pushed it up to her thighs. He dipped his fingers into the waistband of her panties, still tasting her sweet mouth, and found her wet.

  Hot.

  He pushed two fingers inside of her, and her muscles tensed around him. The noise she made then was pure want. Pure need. “Faidh,” she said in a low voice as he pumped his fingers in and out. “Come to my room.”

  Faidh did not argue. Mina’s room was down several hallways in the staff quarters, and he could not get there fast enough. He slammed the door behind them with one swift movement and took her in his arms again.

  Yes, yes, yes. He put her on the bed and stripped down her panties, and then Faidh took her hips in his hands and looked into her eyes. Mina had propped herself up on her elbows, her cheeks pink, breath shallow.

  “I want to taste you,” he said. “May I?”

  “So polite.” A hazy smile. “Please, Faidh. Please.”

  He bent his head between Mina’s thighs and took a long lick. The groan he let out against her flesh was a sound he’d never anticipated making, not with anyone. It was just that she tasted so good. The best, sweetest thing he’d ever had on his tongue. And nothing was sweeter than the way her hips rocked into his mouth and her hands slipped into his hair and all of her dropped back onto the bed. He had to hold her tightly by the hips to keep her still enough to devour her, and Faidh’s every muscle got behind the work.

  He was painfully hard, bordering on desperate, by the time he could bring himself to climb over her on the bed. Mina was deliciously red-faced and reached for him, pulling him against her, between her legs. He paused only to roll on a condom. The head of him nudged against her opening. One change to the angle of her hips and he was thrusting in, taking her deep, and Mina’s legs went around his back and locked on tight.

  Everything poured out of him in a frenzy of motion. The tension of maintaining a fake relationship for the benefit of the council. The need to get out of his position as sheikh. His want for her, which had grown every minute since he’d first walked into the kitchen and proposed to her. The pure, piercing feeling near his heart.

  It was a physical cascade that seemed to bring him closer and closer to her with every second. Her body was warm underneath his, delicate compared to his strong frame, but resilient, too. She could handle this. Handle him. Handle all the things that came with their arrangement, and the sheikhdom, and everything else. Faidh didn't have to hold back.

  Her little noises sounded like begging as he took her, begging and begging until he worked a hand between them and brushed his knuckles over her clit. “Yes,” Mina gasped. “That. Do that. Please, do that.”

  He laughed, the sound sheer pleasure, and did it again. And again. And again, until Mina’s arms closed tight around his neck, her hips rocking against his so hard the bed shook. She came with a gasp and a soft cry that he wanted to hear every day, every single day. Her muscles fluttering around him took his pleasure past the peak, and Faidh came too, his face buried in the side of her neck.

  It blocked out everything else, except the perfect sensation of being with her. Of being inside her. Nothing else existed. No stress, no pain, no fake engagement. This was real, real, real.

  “Faidh,” he heard Mina say, her voice soft and distant. “Faidh—”

  He hauled himself out of the sea of pleasure. “Yes?”

  Her eyes were huge and dark and wanting. “Let’s do that again. Right now. Please. Right now.”

  8

  He’d fallen asleep.

  At some point, Faidh had fallen asleep, and he knew when he opened his eyes again that he wasn’t in his own bed. He stretched carefully, trying to get his bearings. Where? When?

  And then he felt her next to him. Her warmth in the narrow bed.

  Mina’s bed.

  He was far too tall for this bed. Faidh rolled over carefully. Silently. Mina slept on the pillow next to his in a tangle of sheets and messy dark hair that squeezed at his heart. He couldn’t bear to disturb that peace.

  Not empty-handed, anyway. He felt around for his phone, finding it in his pants pocket on the floor. He’d shucked those off after Mina begged him for round two. It was still early enough that he could make her breakfast and bring it to her in bed. Yes—that was it. He wouldn’t order it and have it brought to her room. He’d cook it himself.

  Faidh got up and tugged his clothes on. Mina didn’t so much as stir, and part of him was glad for that. Another part was foolishly hopeful she’d sense his absence and come looking for him.

  Well, she could discover him with a hot breakfast instead. That would be better.

  He made his way down to the kitchens. It was already busy at this hour of the morning, and the staff nodded to him. He’d made frequent enough appearances lately that he’d managed to convince them not to stand on ceremony. At least not all the ceremony. And it would be better if they didn’t pay attention to him at all this morning. Technically, he’d never cooked breakfast. It had always been done by the staff. He went to the big refrigerators at the back of the room and took out what he thought he might need for scrambled eggs and toast.

  Mina’s pastry kitchen would be better than the main room, where there were too many prying eyes.

  He laid things out one by one on the prep table. The eggs. Butter. Milk, though he wasn’t sure how much milk to put into the eggs—he’d heard somewhere that milk made them good, but what was the ratio? He had bread, at least. Faidh spent several minutes searching for a pan.

  With everything assembled, it hit him.

  He had never done this.

  He had no idea what to do, which steps to follow, and it felt like waking up on another planet. Faidh knew the eggs had to be whisked or stirred, but was it a splash of milk or an even amount to balance out the eggs? Once he’d come up with a mixture that felt close, he poured it into the pan and watched. The other issue was one of timing. When was he supposed to—stir them? Whisk them? He’d never had lessons in making scrambled eggs. He hadn’t eaten them very often, either. They weren’t a mainstay at palace breakfasts.

  Too late, he realized he hadn’t put butter in the pan.

  Fifteen minutes later he had achieved nothing but a pan of burned eggs. He was at the sink scraping the fresh charcoal out with a spatula when his sister walked in.

  Faidh saw her out of the corner of his eye and groaned.

  His sister looked over the scene, her eyes huge and bright, and her hand went to her mouth, not really hiding her smile.

  Meher burst out laughing. Faidh couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard her laugh like that. It had been years and years. She gasped with it, struggling to get it under control, and wiped at the corners of her eyes with a knuckle.

  “Faidh,” she finally managed. “You need help.”

  He wanted to argue. Faidh shouldn’t need help from his sister to make eggs. “Fine,” he grumbled. “The Nouzarian palace is, what, over a hundred years old? I shouldn’t burn it down over my pride.”

  “Your pride,” she scoffed. “What pride do you have when it comes to eggs?”

  Meher took his place at the stove, and within a few minutes she had the eggs in a new pan with the correct ratio of milk and a dash of salt and pepper mixed in. She whipped them with a whisk as the gas flame burned underneath the pan.

  “Toaster,” she said to Faidh. “You should be able to handle that, right?”

  He jumped to put the toast in, and Meher laughed again. It was so good to hear her laugh that Faidh didn’t care that they had argued over Mina. This moment was a ceasefire. An apology of sorts.

  The toast popped, and Faidh buttered it while Mina finished the eggs. She tipped them onto a plate and covered it with an upside-down bowl.

  “Where’s the sausage?” she asked. “I can make it in the same pans as the eggs.”

  He brought it to her, and Meher cooked it while he filled her in on what he’d been up to. “The trip to Ski Dubai was a success,” he said. “Mina loved the indoor skiing. It was a complete novelty, and one we should offer to the people of Nouzar and our visitors.”

  “The racetrack?” Meher arched an eyebrow at him.

  “Not as much of a success,” he admitted. “There were problems with the track I didn’t know about until we had the cars out there. It’ll take some fixing.” Meher finished the sausage, put it on the plate with the eggs, and stuck the toast into the warmer under the oven. For this one moment, it felt like they were just Faidh and Meher again. “What do you think about all my plans?”

  She leaned against the countertop and narrowed her eyes. “I’m not sure what I think about all your plans. What about my future sister-in-law?”

  Faidh scoffed. “Mina is one of those brash Americans our father always warned us about.”

  Meher stared him down. Why did she have to be like this, always looking right through him? She’d always been able to do this, ever since they were children, and he resented her slightly for being able to do it now.