What she needed—

  Well, she wasn’t going to admit that she wanted him. Wanted him more than she was supposed to. And Nadia wasn’t going to admit she wanted Amare to snap out of his funk and tell her what truly bothered him. But—she wasn’t being completely honest with him, either. She couldn’t hide her project from him forever.

  “No,” she answered softly, after a too-long pause. “There’s nothing else I need for now.”

  They lapsed into silence, moving past market stalls alive with conversation and haggling and the kind of playful back and forth Nadia wished she was having with Amare. It was so quiet between the two of them. Too quiet. Against the noise of the market, the silence seemed oversized.

  “Would you like to see what I’ve been working on, when we get back to the palace?” Nadia offered the invitation with what she hoped was a bright, casual tone.

  “I would.” Amare’s brow furrowed. “Are you sure there’s nothing you need?”

  “I’m sure.”

  Amare didn’t ask any more questions about her work, or anything else. They looped through the market with that same silence pulsing between them. It was like a third person in the room. A third, awkward, unwanted person. Nadia’s stomach knotted. It would be better once she told him, once everything was out in the open.

  It would be better as soon as they got back to the palace.

  Nadia had genuinely wanted to visit the market while she was in Kirisil, but now she wanted nothing more than to leave. She forced herself to take in the sights as they strolled through the last row of stalls. Did Amare know something wasn’t right? Did he know she was keeping something from him? She tried several times to get up the courage to break the silence but never did.

  Relief swept over her when they got into the car, the air conditioning cool and silky after the heat of the market. It would be uncomfortable, showing Amare the new project. But it was necessary. Taavi loved her. She and Amare were growing closer. It was time.

  She worked to accept the silence on the ride back to the palace. Amare sat close to her but went through messages on his phone, sending a few emails and responding to requests. Nadia’s heart pounded. No matter the reaction, it would be information. Once Amare had seen it, she could decide what to do.

  Nadia led the way to Amare’s rooms. Her belongings had migrated there after they started sleeping together regularly, and one morning she came back from spending time with Taavi to find that her clothes had been moved into his closet. Her laptop rested on the breakfast table where they’d met after her very first night in the palace.

  “Sit, sit.” She gestured Amare into one of his own chairs.

  He arched an eyebrow and went along with it. It wasn’t the moment she had been anticipating since the two of them had first talked about the project. The air seemed tense. Amare was wary. She’d imagined him excited to read her first draft. That was partially her fault. She’d kept her new idea to herself, and this was the outcome.

  Once she’d positioned the laptop in front of him, she opened it and clicked to her first file. The outline and first chapter of the manuscript Amare had helped to envision popped up on the screen.

  “This is what I started with.”

  Amare read. A line formed between his eyebrows. “The work is excellent.” Pride bloomed at his tone, which said of course the writing is excellent. He scrolled through the file and looked up when he—quickly—reached the end. “I expected you to have more done at this point.”

  Nadia hesitated. “I’ve been working on another project as well. Something a little more personal.”

  She held her breath and clicked over to the outline and first three chapters of her travel memoir. Nadia stepped back to give Amare space. To give herself space. One deep breath, then another. She couldn’t take her eyes off his face.

  Amare’s eyes scanned. He would reach the portion about her kidnapping. Any second now—

  His face went slack. Nadia’s heart stopped. The way his expression went dead was almost scary to see. Amare shook his head a little, then looked up at her with two twin torches of anger in his eyes.

  “You can’t possibly be thinking of publishing this. It would set back everything I’ve been trying to do in Kirisil by another decade.”

  “I—” She’d rehearsed this conversation a hundred times in her head. Nadia had done her best to map out in advance what he might say and how she would respond. Now the words were failing her. No. She wouldn’t let them. “I have nothing but respect for Kirisil. It’s been one of the loveliest places I’ve ever visited. But my personal account of the trip has just as much merit as the version you want me to write.” Her mouth had gone dry. “Maybe even more merit, because it actually happened to me. I did experience being held captive. And you—you rescued me. That should count for something.”

  Amare got to his feet, as if he couldn’t bear to sit so close to her laptop. “Delete this.” His eyes were wider with disbelief and fury. “You have no idea how hard I’ve fought against these types of narratives. Putting this in front of the public will ruin everything.”

  Her hands shook. Just like that, he’d decided. One read, and his mind was made up. He didn’t want her experience out in the open because it would be counter to the image he wanted for Kirisil. Nadia hadn’t even decided on publishing. She hadn’t made a final plan for either project. There was no publisher lined up. No publisher even interested. But she wasn’t going to close herself off to all those possibilities at his demand.

  “I’ll think about it,” she managed. Before Amare could sit down again, before he could try to delete the files himself, Nadia closed the laptop and picked it up in her arms. She folded it in front of her chest like a precious object. She opened her mouth to say more. This wasn’t how she wanted to leave things. And now...

  Amare waited, looking shaken. Shaken. Betrayed. As if she’d come into his palace uninvited and laid out all his personal secrets on paper. Part of her wanted to comfort him. Make him understand that she wasn’t trying to damage his reputation or hurt Kirisil. She was only trying to tell her story. It was what had brought her on the trip in the first place. It was the reason they’d crossed paths.

  It might be the reason they parted ways.

  Her heart broke at the prospect, but it wasn’t a clean break. It was a jagged one. Nadia understood Amare in a truly physical sense. She knew intimately how their bodies moved together and worked together. Sex couldn’t solve this. It couldn’t soothe the pain on his face or the pain in her heart.

  Their physical connection couldn’t help Amare understand what she was trying to do, if he didn’t want to understand.

  Nadia had no words. Nothing else to say. She turned on her heel and left the room.

  Outside in the hall, she turned toward the guest suite on instinct and started walking. Nadia had only gone a few steps before she realized she was straining to hear him. Straining to hear footsteps. Amare leaning out into the hall to call her back and talk about it.

  That’s exactly what he’d do if they were really engaged. They weren’t. They never would be.

  She reached the door of the guest suite, which held none of her things, and went through. Nadia closed it behind her with the quiet decorum expected of everyone who was a member of the royal family, though she was not. She and Amare could pretend to be engaged until they had real feelings, but those wouldn’t result in a wedding. A relationship wasn’t in the cards, but now Nadia feared that a friendship wasn’t, either.

  What now?

  12

  Two days after the manuscript incident, Amare worked in his office, using every bit of his willpower to keep his attention on the myriad tasks involved in running the kingdom.

  He could not spend any more time thinking about Nadia. He couldn’t spend any more time thinking about her project. She wouldn’t talk to him about it. Wouldn’t talk to him about much of anything, in fact. Nadia spent her days with Taavi, Samira, and his mother, coming up with activities for Taavi and talking to his mother about palace protocol and how to fake wedding plans.

  She hadn’t been sleeping in his room.

  Two nights, and it felt like an eternity. Amare rolled his shoulders at his desk and tried to shake off his frustration. Nadia wasn’t ever going to sleep in his bed forever. Their arrangement had always been temporary. So why was it so hard to sleep without her?

  Today. They would talk about this today. Amare would convince her to shelve the projects—both of them, if that’s what he had to do—and they could move past the lingering hurt that formed an invisible barrier between them.

  Amare had several emails waiting by the time he made up his mind about Naida.

  One of them was from his friend Camil.

  “Bad news,” it read. “Haatim is taking steps to reestablish his dominance over you after the ‘embarrassment’ with Nadia. I think he’s behind this.”

  “This” was a link at the bottom of the email. Amare clicked. The link led to a TMZ-style blog post on a website that hurt Amare’s eyes, screaming with a color scheme he couldn’t look away from.

  He read the headline, and his heart sank.

  KIRISIL’S PARTY-GIRL QUEEN

  Amare scrolled down through the post with horror freezing his gut. They’d published photos of Nadia partying with a group of people in a pub. A flag on the wall gave Amare the impression it had been in England.

  Toward the end there was a video.

  Anger licked at the insides of his ribs before he had the video open.

  Watching it did not make things any better.

  The video showed Nadia—clearly Nadia, clearly her face—doing body shots in the same pub, with its same flag. Nadia laughed and licked some man’s bare chest.

  He felt like his ribs were collapsing. Crushed under the grip of this new and terrible situation. This video ran counter to the clean image she’d created for herself on her YouTube channel. The computer seemed hazy, and his vision heated.

  How could Haatim do this? How? Who did he think he was dealing with?

  Ignoring the pulse thundering in his ears, Amare went looking for Nadia. She worked at a table in the guest suite, typing away on her laptop. She glanced up at him as he entered the room. A flash of wariness in her expression broke Amare’s heart.

  Nadia snapped her laptop shut as he approached the table and held out his phone, the blog post already loaded. “You need to see this. All of it. Down to the end.”

  At first, she scanned his phone screen with professional detachment. It was her job to be an influencer. Amare knew she dealt with nasty comments and people who got pushy.

  But this—this was different.

  Nadia’s face went red, then stark pale. When she reached the end of the page, tears filled her eyes. An answering ache unfurled in his chest.

  “This video was for me and me alone.” Her fingers trembled around his phone. Nadia fumbled for the switch and turned off the screen, then shoved it into his hands like it had burned her. “This could ruin my career. Who would do this?”

  “Where was the video stored? Any website? Any social media profile?”

  He’d thought she couldn’t lose any more color in her cheeks. He was wrong. Nadia gasped, her hands flying up to cover her mouth. “My phone.”

  Amare’s blood was on fire. At a rolling boil. Haatim had gone too far. He’d hacked into her phone to make him feel like a man again? Really? As a sheikh himself, he didn’t want to believe a sheikh would do something so petty. So wrong.

  The memory of his father hitting his mother at that dinner swam forcefully into his mind. Amare couldn’t block it out. He couldn’t dismiss it. Of course he wanted to believe that sheikhs were good people. He wanted to believe that he was good. But his own father had been dangerous when he was embarrassed.

  “I just—I didn’t have it locked down. There’s a simple password to keep the screen from unlocking in my purse. That’s it.”

  Horror wrestled with anger in the pit of his gut. Horror and anger and a fresh, cutting frustration.

  “How could you be so foolish?” Amare couldn’t keep the edge out of his voice. “Do you not have any sense? Haatim has access to everything now. Your finances. Your medical bills. Your career. Your personal life. Did you never think to protect yourself?”

  Nadia rose to her feet, graceful as a queen. “I think it’s best if I leave.” She wiped away tears from her red cheeks. “No one would blame you for breaking up with me after this bombshell.”

  “Ridiculous. The press will move past it.”

  “I don’t see the point in staying,” Nadia pressed on. “This stunt has blown our engagement to hell, and we haven’t been getting along anyway. If I go, it will be better for all of us, including Taavi.”

  “Nadia—”

  Even his most commanding tone didn’t stop her. Nadia brushed past him, hurrying for the door with long, confident strides. She was gone before he could finish his sentence.

  Nadia’s face was never going to stop burning. She would always feel overheated. This humiliation would leave a mark. A brand. An ache.

  She had never been so talked down to before in her life. It hurt her. It made her furious. The two emotions cycled around each other, making her hands shake and her head hurt. She had taken a long, angry walk to give Amare time to leave before she returned to the suite. Now back in the guest room, Nadia pulled down her suitcase and started shoving clothes into it.

  There had been times, out there in the world, when she’d had to make a hasty departure. This was one of those times. Not as urgent as some of the others, but still, Nadia was fully packed in six minutes flat. She settled on the edge of the guest bed and took out her phone.

  Making plans would calm her. Getting to the next thing on her list would calm her. Nadia fell easily into one of her oldest routines—booking a flight. It took a little over an hour to manage the process. It wouldn’t be pretty. Nadia had twenty-four hours’ worth of connecting flights. But in two days, she’d be home in New York City. She put her phone in her pocket, double-checked her passport, and hauled her suitcase out of the room.

  On the way out of the palace, she found Samira in the dining room lingering over lunch. Samira’s face brightened—and dropped.

  “What’s wrong? Are you leaving?” Concern etched itself across her face. “Is there an emergency at home?”

  Her friend stood up and came around the table to talk to Nadia. “No. Everything’s fine at home.” The emergency was here—she’d gone too far with Amare, and she’d gotten hurt. She hadn’t told Samira about the disagreement she’d had with Amare, and she wasn’t going to tell her on the way out of the palace. If she opened up like that, she’d end up sitting down with Samira and talking until they’d solved it. Nadia’s feelings about Amare were too complicated to risk sitting down with his sister. “I have to go. It’s not working out, and it’s better if I leave before things get worse.”

  “Get worse?” Samira’s eyebrows shot up. “How could things be bad in the first place? The two of you can’t get enough of each other.”

  That was the problem. That was a huge part of the problem, wasn’t it? Nadia couldn’t get enough of Amare. But Amare didn’t want Nadia the way she was. Amare needed someone who could be the perfect sheikh’s wife.

  “Mistakes were made.” She tried for a joking tone and failed. “In my experience, it’s better to move on before you make a mistake you can’t fix.”

  “No, you have to stay.” Samira patted Nadia’s shoulder. “You’re engaged to my brother. And I’ll miss you too much if you go.” She delivered the line lightly, but Nadia could tell she meant it. “Whatever mistakes you’re talking about, I’m sure you won’t improve the situation by leaving.”

  “I have to make my flight.” Nadia had scheduled the first flight out. “I wish I could stay and talk. But it’s just not working with Amare. It’s getting too painful.”

  Samira waved this off. “We all want to avoid heartache, but to say it’s not working?” She gave an incredulous laugh. “It’s so obvious you’re in love with each other. Anyone who sees the two of you together knows it. Are you telling me you don’t see it or feel it? You really don’t believe it?”

  “It isn’t meant to be.” Why couldn’t Samira see that? “Love can only get people so far. The fact that I love Amare won’t overcome the rest of our lives being so incompatible.”

  Her friend got an odd look on her face. Nadia couldn’t begin to interpret it, especially not now, with her suitcase and her aching heart weighing her down. She gritted her teeth and waited for Samira to press the issue. It was one of the things Nadia had admired about her when they first met—Samira didn’t back down.

  But the other woman only shook her head, her face softening. “What’s next?”

  A hard knot behind her heart loosened. If Samira had pushed, Nadia might stay. She might allow herself to be persuaded. She couldn’t. “I’m going home for a while to recharge my batteries. Make some plans. But then I’ll be traveling again. I won’t stop traveling.”

  Samira nodded, a sad smile curving her lips. “That sounds like a lonely plan.”

  “I’ll be fine,” she said brightly. “I’ve always been fine before, and I’ll be fine now. We’ll all be fine.”

  Her friend pulled her into a hug. The brief embrace wasn’t long enough for how long Nadia intended to be gone. Who knew if she’d ever come back to Kirisil? Who knew if she’d see Samira again?

  Nadia took a palace car to the airport, and the next hour was consumed with waiting in lines and standing at check-in desks and saying over and over again that she would be leaving Kirisil, that she was an American citizen, that yes, she was ready to depart the country. Would she be back? No. Probably not.

  Samira’s words—that sounds like a lonely plan—stuck in her head like a song the entire time. As Nadia bought a magazine at a stand outside her gate. As she pulled her carryon behind her down the walkway and found her seat. She’d once been used to traveling alone. Being by herself meant that Nadia never had to run her plans by anyone else, or worry about pleasing another person, or fret about whether they were happy.