Faidh kept her close for the rest of the tour. He kept her close for the ride home, and when they arrived at the palace, he took her directly to his suite. Mina launched herself at him as soon as the door closed behind them, her hands locking around his neck, and he only put her down to strip off her sundress. Her bra. Her panties.

  His own clothes.

  Faidh lifted her in his arms and took her to his bed, where he spread her out for him, kissing down to her belly, kissing down to the soft flesh between her legs. Licking there. He teased her clit with his tongue, slowly, slowly, until her hips rocked toward him with a frantic pace and her hands tugged at his hair.

  “Faidh, Faidh, Faidh,” she said. She couldn’t stop asking the question with his name.

  And he answered it with his body.

  He flipped her over and pulled her hips up into the air, Mina moaning at his possessive touch, and climbed onto the bed behind her. She couldn’t help but be slick for him, dripping wet, and he teased her some more. Dipping the head of him into her opening, then pulling back. She clenched around him every time he did it. And Faidh did this until she was begging, openly begging, for more.

  “Please,” she said. Please give me more of you. Please give me more closeness in the balloon basket and breathtaking views of your face as we soar above the city. Give me more of your heart.

  “For you,” he said, and he thrust home. It felt so good to lose herself in the sensation of being taken. All of the pressures fell away under his strong thrust. Mina arched her back for him, her fists digging into the sheets, and tossed her head back.

  “Faidh,” she said urgently, and he knew what she wanted. His fingertips, her clit. He reached around in front of her and circled those nerves until she came all over him in a burst of hot wetness.

  It felt so good.

  Faidh agreed, based on the quickening thrusts and the way his hands moved possessively over her body. All of her nerves felt hot and alive, and she had never felt this way before, for anything. Mina shuddered around him, gasping as he came.

  He laughed as they came down, then pulled her out of bed with him. Faidh had one of the nicest bathrooms she’d ever seen in her life. Enormous, with a shower big enough to hold five people. Mina shivered and smiled while he held her under the stream of water and washed her hair for her.

  “You’re good at this,” she murmured.

  “I want to be good at this,” he said back, and he took such care with the rinsing and washing and running the cloth over her skin until she was clean. She returned the favor, lingering on his hard muscles for as long as he would let her.

  Faidh brought her a soft nightgown and a robe, and when she was dressed and her hair was brushed, he led her back to the bed with him and pulled her straight to the pillows. Took her in his arms again. She rolled onto her back and kissed his bicep. “I could—” She was breathless from the shower and from the silky nightgown and him. Pink. “I could get used to this.”

  “The sex?”

  She flicked her eyes toward Faidh’s. “You have a really nice room. I don’t think I’ve ever touched sheets with a thread count this high.”

  It was a joke, just teasing, but it felt like a bucket of cold ice water over his shoulders.

  Faidh wanted her to have that. He wanted her to have a palace bedroom and lovely things and tall windows. Everything he had, he wanted to give to her, too. He wanted her to get used to it.

  That couldn’t happen. They couldn’t do that for real. If he married her, the council would go along with it. They wouldn’t take away his title. And he’d be married—a state he’d vowed never to enter.

  Getting rid of his sheikhdom, which had been a weight on his shoulders for so long now, was the entire point of this. He wanted his freedom, and he wanted her father’s clemency. Freedom for both of them.

  He stroked a hand absently through her hair, and when he looked back down at her, Mina was watching him.

  “I was just kidding,” she whispered.

  Faidh nodded, giving her the smile he should have when she made the joke, but the mood was lost.

  She seemed to recognize that, the joy in her eyes dimming. Mina pushed herself up on one elbow and kissed his cheek. “I should make sure there’s nothing waiting for me in the kitchen.”

  No, he wanted to say. Stay here with me. We can forget all of this in the bed, we can forget everything but how good it feels to be together. His heart ached with how much he wanted it. But Faidh only stretched and grinned at her, trying to tell her with his eyes that he had enjoyed this time with her. That it meant something to him, even if it couldn’t mean forever.

  Mina slipped her clothes back on and left, closing the door softly behind her.

  12

  “Yes,” Faidh said into the phone. It shouldn’t be this tedious to set up meetings, but at least this one was for something that interested him. “Thursday is fine. I want all the engineers there.” The voice on the other end of the line confirmed. “Good.”

  As he wrapped up the call, a sharp, rapping knock sounded at the door. He’d been scheduling a meeting with his racetrack engineers to go over the specs of the track before he put cars out there again. He wanted to have a second exhibition, but the track had to be as safe as it could be.

  “Come in!” Faidh rose to greet his guest. The door opened, and one of the eldest council members entered. “Hello, Nibal.”

  “Sheikh Faidh. I will get straight to the point.” Faidh gestured to a chair, but Nibal shook his head. “Your thirtieth birthday approaches. Is a wedding likely before then? If not, the council will need to start looking for a suitable alternative.”

  The implication was clear. If he really did intend to marry Mina, they might not let him wait until after his birthday.

  “Meher and Mina are planning the wedding.” An outright lie. “I’ll be able to tell you the dates soon.”

  Nibal nodded, his eyes boring into Faidh’s. “Soon,” he repeated.

  “Next week at the latest,” Faidh promised. Another lie.

  “Good.” Nibal gave him a shallow bow and shuffled toward the door. “I look forward to hearing when the ceremony will be. And, Sheikh Faidh—” He turned back to look Faidh in the eye. “I’m pleased that you have finally chosen to settle down. While your choice of bride isn’t quite what I or the council had in mind, it’s hard to argue when you are so good together.”

  Faidh put on a smile to cover his rising panic. “Thank you, Nibal.”

  The door closed.

  This couldn’t happen. The council agreed with him marrying Mina, and it could not happen. Desperation filled his chest. Faidh was used to uncomfortable, high-stakes situations. That was what he had to deal with as sheikh. But this was too far. He was too torn between making Mina happy and gaining his freedom, and it was going to ruin them both. He had to put the nail in the coffin of his position once and for all.

  He called for his secretary, who came in quickly at the tone in his voice. “Sheikh Faidh?”

  “A press conference. Twenty minutes. In the media room. Assemble everyone.”

  “Right away.”

  His heart pounded. Faidh should talk to Mina. He should talk to Meher. He should run this by someone, anyone, but the rush of adrenaline was too strong. A small voice at the back of his head told him he was being foolish, but who cared? He had been foolish for too long already.

  He opened the top drawer of his desk and pulled out the document that had been waiting there for weeks. With the stroke of a pen, he filled in the final line and made it official. Then he put on his jacket and went into the bathroom adjoining his office. He looked fine. A little wild in the eyes, but fine.

  He set out for the media room.

  A few reporters ran in just ahead of him, and he slowed his pace. Let them get settled, but not too long. Faidh forced himself to take even strides all the way to the podium at the front of the room. For once, he didn’t have a folio with a prepared speech. This would be all him, and it would be the most shocking press conference in years.

  The room buzzed with whispers and speculation. Reporters scrambled for their digital recorders and their notebooks, digging pens out of their bags, their eyes bright with anticipation. Faidh never did unscheduled press conferences. This was about to be a huge story, and not a single one of them knew what it was.

  He took the final step to the podium.

  All the sound in the room died except the errant clicks of a few cameras and pages flipping on notepads.

  “Good morning,” he said. “I have an announcement to make. Have your pens ready, because this is going to be quick. I won’t take up much of your time.”

  They laughed. It did nothing to settle his nerves.

  “As the sheikh of Nouzar, I am granting a full and public pardon to Abbas Hamid, the spy. As many of you recall, Mr. Hamid spied on Nouzar for one of our neighbors. When he was discovered, he was exiled from both countries. The day has come to pardon him as a fitting gift for my future father-in-law.”

  He had never heard such a dead, frozen silence in the press room. Faidh’s own pulse was the loudest sound.

  They were staring at him. Staring, wide-eyed, like they’d never stared before.

  After an eternity, a reporter in the third row looked slowly around behind him. He cleared his throat. Raised his pen in the air. No one else was going to say a thing, other than this brave man.

  “Yes,” Faidh prompted. “A question?”

  “Does that mean…” The man faltered. The whole room held its breath. “Does that mean Mina Parks is Abbas Hamid’s daughter?”

  “Yes,” Faidh said, with a tone that said of course she’s his daughter. And now—now he needed an explanation for how he’d met Abbas Hamid’s daughter. The closer to the truth, the better. “Mina came to Nouzar to study under a world-class pastry chef, and we fell in love. Plain and simple.”

  “So you’re pardoning him in anticipation of your wedding day?” someone else called out.

  “It would be difficult to have a wedding without the father of the bride.”

  “Did you know when you met her that—”

  “That’s all for today,” Faidh said, and then he stepped away from the podium under a barrage of camera clicks. He kept his neutral sheikh expression on his face. Not quite a smile, definitely not a frown, only the concentration required of someone who was running the country.

  If this worked, his reign as sheikh would be over very soon. The noise rose behind him as he left. Faidh glanced back over his shoulder. A reporter had grabbed a member of the staff and was speaking quickly to him—after a few moments, the staff member ran off.

  The council would be meeting soon.

  Faidh went back to his office to wait.

  It took less than an hour for them to send a message. Would the sheikh please visit them in the council chamber?

  He would.

  Faidh felt vaguely sick as he made his way there. Not because he was afraid to lose his title. No, that had been the plan all along. Get rid of the title he didn’t want. But this, he could see, would have a cascade of effects. He might not like all of them. Faidh hadn’t spent much time considering the real fallout of his decision. He had acted decisively, as a sheikh should do.

  But perhaps too hastily.

  Too late now.

  He entered the council chamber and remained standing. The rest of the council stood, too. It was Nibal who spoke for all of them, his voice ringing with betrayal. Not even a day had passed since Faidh lied to him about the wedding. Not even three hours.

  “The council agrees,” Nibal said. “By a unanimous vote, you are officially stripped of your title. It will pass to your sister Meher, as she is your next living relative. We are—” Nibal gripped the edge of the table so tightly his knuckles turned white. “We are horrified that you would do this without consulting us. Horrified that you would announce such a pardon without so much as a warning. Your behavior is not only unbefitting a sheikh. It is dangerous for Nouzar. You are relieved from duty.”

  Faidh put his hands to his chest. “I’m sorry, gentlemen.” He did not ask to be reinstated. He didn’t want to be reinstated. “You’ve made the best decision for Nouzar, and I’ll abide by it.”

  Silence.

  “Was there anything else?”

  They couldn’t want anything else from him, he realized. He was no longer the sheikh. He had no power to direct them anymore. He would always have standing as a member of the royal family, and they might call him before them to account for his actions, but for now—

  Nothing.

  “Thank you for all your hard work,” he said, and left the room.

  What he needed to do was find Mina. He had explaining to do. Apologizing to do. The fallout would affect her immediately, and he should have warned her. He should have warned her about so many things.

  In the pastry kitchen, Alma shook her head. “She’s in her room.” Her voice was flat. Filled with disappointment. She said nothing else to him, and Faidh turned on his heal without a word.

  Mina was a flurry of motion in her rooms, throwing things into suitcases and bags. The ski wear he had bought her on their first date lay abandoned on the floor of her closet. Faidh stood in the doorway, watching the scene for several heartbeats before he could bring himself to interrupt.

  “Where are you going?”

  Mina rounded on him, her face red with fury, her eyes red with tears. “You betrayed me,” she snapped. “This is over. Whatever foolish game we were playing is over. I’m going home.”

  The words hit him like tumbling boulders. “It was the only way, Mina. The council wanted—”

  “I don’t care what the council wanted.” Furious tears slipped down her cheeks, and she wiped them away with the back of her hand. “You have no idea what my family will go through. What we’ve already been through. My father is a good man. He doesn’t deserve to be harassed or threatened by his neighbors and the US government. Homeland Security—” She took a breath that was very nearly a gasp. “Homeland Security will come to interrogate him, Mom, me. That’s what happened last time the media discovered where we lived.”

  Faidh stepped forward, a hand out to touch her. To comfort her. Any way he could. “I can help you,” he said. “Just let me explain, and I can—”

  “Get out.” He had never heard her voice so sharp. “I need to make arrangements to get home. I have no time to spare.”

  He dropped his hand.

  All Faidh wanted in the world was to take her in his arms and offer her a refuge from these awful feelings. From this moment. But it was too late for all that, wasn’t it? He’d wanted freedom so much that he’d hurt Mina and destroyed what they’d had.

  His entire chest ached with what he had done. He hated to see her upset like this. Hated the frantic way she tugged clothes out of the dresser and shoved them into her bags. Mina’s steady hands, which had made so much phyllo dough with the lightest touch, shook as she moved from dresser to bag and back again. Shook as she picked up her phone and scrolled through it.

  She looked over her shoulder at him. “Get out, Faidh,” she said again.

  Faidh opened his mouth to make one last argument.

  There was no argument to be made.

  She would never believe him if he said that his chest ached to be near her. She would never believe him if he said that he hadn’t wanted to be forced into a marriage with her, that he wanted to be with her because of her, not because of the council’s dictates. Mina wouldn’t care that he was free now. Free to be with her, if that’s what they wanted. They could do this for real.

  “Do you need anything?” he asked. “A car to the airport?”

  “I’ll find someone else in the palace to arrange it.” She was dialing a number on her phone. “Yes. I need the first available flight to the United States.”

  Mina had turned her back on him.

  It was over.

  “Yes,” she said.

  Faidh stepped out into the hall.

  “Pasadena, California,” she said, and he heard her sigh as she sat down heavily on her bed. “The first flight back to California. I have to get out of here.”

  13

  Living in her childhood bedroom was Mina’s version of hell.

  She got up every day, tiptoed around her parents, and tried to find a suitable job.

  It took almost a week and a half, despite having experience in the kitchens of an actual palace. The new job? Teaching cooking classes on the weekends. She’d enjoyed teaching Faidh about baklava. She could pass on so much more from Alma.

  “I got the position,” she told her parents as the two of them sat at the kitchen table, having coffee. Her father put down his paper, and her mother put down her book.

  “Good for you, Mina.” Her mother’s smile was genuine. Proud.

  Her father’s, less so. “You could’ve had a job already if you’d just kept up with the plan. It wasn’t a very complicated one.”

  “Really?” Her anger rose until it finally snapped. “Really? You wanted me to stick with the plan? I wouldn’t have needed a plan if you hadn’t caved to that rotten sheikh.”

  “Mina!” her mother gasped. “You had your own entanglement with a sheikh. Do you not remember? You let him talk you into such a foolish thing, and now we’re in the news again. What have we gained from making headlines, ever?”

  “I did it for you.” She couldn’t keep her voice under control and barely wanted to. But she fought and fought until she could speak without yelling. “I just wanted one thing that was well and truly mine. That’s why I went to Nouzar. I wanted someone to realize I had talent. And once again—”

  She cut herself off from saying once again, your history came back to haunt me.

  Mina faced her father. “I’m sorry for the pain I’ve caused you. I went to Nouzar to master Middle Eastern pastries. I went to be taught under a master pastry chef who acknowledged my skills. I’ve never been truly seen before, and she saw me. Faidh—he also saw me.” Admitting out loud made it true. She had avoided thinking about it for these ten days. Had tried to push it away. But she couldn’t do it anymore. “I might have walked away from a man who saw me for everything I was and everything I wanted and he—” Had he loved her for it? It had felt like it. “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forgive him for what he did. But that hasn’t stopped me from missing him every day.”