Laura winced.

  “I remember that.”

  “God, I felt just…out of my head for weeks. I didn't know what to do or what I was thinking. And then there was Ziad, who didn't tell me what to think, but instead in his kind and stable way, just gave me room to get my own head together. I trust him.”

  “And you think I should too.”

  “No, I think that you already know how you feel about him. That's not going to change no matter what you do, and I would rather you be happy while you're figuring things out, if that makes any sense.”

  “I think it does,” Laura said with a sigh. “But what do I do with all of this? He can't keep picking at the kids like this, and honestly, he can't keep picking at me like this either. Something's going to snap, and if we let it get that far, we're all going to be in a world of hurt.”

  “Hm. I think that Ziad needs to see how well the kids are doing. Maybe a get-together without all the press. They've always set him a little on edge. The whole family likes their privacy, and I think that Ziad is no different. Turn down the pressure, give him some room to relax himself.”

  “And I guess I could maybe work on a few of the measures on his list,” Laura said with a sigh. “I don't agree, but maybe if I just showed him I was willing to compromise a little.”

  “That's the spirit,” Sarah said, pleased. “You are both smart and reasonable humans. There is no reason to think that you can't work this out.

  15

  It was a perfect day at the beach property that Imran had clued her in to. The sun was shining, the blue water was rolling up on the white sands of the beach, and the small pavilion between the beach house and the waves was swathed in white gauze, keeping off the worst of the sun while still letting in the cool breeze.

  “It's one of Ziad's favorite places, whether he will admit it or not,” Imran had said with a grin. “It should help him relax a little.”

  Indeed, when Laura had told Ziad that Jamila wanted to throw him a tea party on the beach, he had looked pleasantly gratified.

  “I've not been there in more than a year,” he said in surprise. “That would be a good break.”

  Things weren't quite normal with them yet, but Laura realized with a pang that there had never been anything normal between them. They were married because he needed a wife so he could adopt his children, they had devastating sexual chemistry, and lately, they had been butting heads over their kids' behavior more than anything else.

  Still, there had been something wonderfully relaxing about going out to the beach as if they were just a normal family, something soothing about seeing Ziad relax as the children cheered about going someplace new.

  “And how are you finding your tea?” asked Jamila in a tone Laura suspected Jamila had gotten from her grandmother. “Is it what you were hoping for?”

  “It's lovely, thank you,” Ziad said with a smile. “Very good. May I have some sugar to go with it?”

  “Of course,” Jamila said brightly, reaching for the sugar bowl, but Ziad shook his head.

  “Two hands, Jamila,” he said. “It's impolite to offer someone older than you anything unless you are giving it to them with two hands.”

  Laura flinched as Jamila drooped briefly, but then the little girl straightened again, putting her bright smile on and giving Ziad the dish with two hands as he told her to.

  “And Laura, would you like another orange section?” she chirped, and Laura was relieved that she had not been upset at Ziad’s words.

  “Of course, I would love some more oranges,” Laura said.

  Jamila grinned and reached for the small dish of citrus wedges, but Ziad stopped her again.

  “Don't reach over your brother,” Ziad said. “It's rude to reach over people.”

  Jamila frowned.

  “But Hasan is too small to pass the dish,” Jamila said. “I can't ask him to give me the oranges, and there's no other way for me to get it.”

  Ziad lifted an eyebrow, and Laura felt a low pulse of frustration in the back of her head.

  “Really?” Ziad asked. “Are there no other ways? Think about it for a moment. What else could you have done?”

  Before Jamila could answer, Hasan, sensing a change in the air, banged on his sippy cup with Laura's spoon, and Ziad shifted his attention to Hasan.

  “Hasan, stop,” he said firmly, taking the spoon away from him and setting it by Laura's plate again. “Don't take things from people.”

  “You just reached over Laura to get her spoon from Hasan,” Jamila objected. “You're not supposed to do that.”

  “It was a special situation,” Ziad said, an edge of frustration coming into his voice. “You won't be taking spoons away from your guests when you are hosting a dinner party.”

  Laura could feel the tension running through Jamila's small frame, and she cleared her throat.

  “Jamila, remember, Ziad is our guest, and—”

  “He's a bad guest,” Jamila exclaimed, standing up from the table. “Guests are supposed to be polite, too, and all he's done is pick on me all day!”

  Laura was torn between trying to calm the waters or supporting Jamila whole-heartedly, but before she could decide which she wanted to do, Ziad glared.

  “Jamila, I can see you are trying, but this simply isn't where you need to be. There are expectations.”

  “I wish we had invited Imran instead of you,” Jamila said loudly. “He would have been a better guest!”

  Just at that moment, Hasan slammed his small pudgy hands on the table, upsetting one of the teacups and sloshing tea straight over the sandwiches. Laura yelped, and Ziad looked dismayed, but Jamila's reaction was much more direct: she jerked off her shoes and socks and started for the water.

  Laura flinched, ready for Ziad to burst into another tirade about the children's actions, but instead he was still, staring off after Jamila who was kicking sand angrily.

  “That was my fault, wasn't it?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said, and then at his saddened look, she nodded towards the beach. “You should go to her and apologize. She's mad right now, but she's forgiving.”

  Ziad looked as if he might like to argue, but then he nodded.

  “Do you have Hasan?” he asked, and she smiled a little, nodding.

  Carrying Hasan in her arms, she watched as Ziad and Jamila talked on the beach. It struck her that even if they had no blood in common, they were very similar in some ways. They both stood straight with a confident attitude, both sure of their own way, but both so full of love that needed to be expressed.

  It took less time than Laura would have thought before Ziad kicked off his own shoes, wading into the shallows with Jamila's hand tucked firmly in his.

  Thank goodness, Laura thought with a sigh, going down to join them with Hasan. I think we all need a break.

  It was as if the universe had heard her. The rest of the day passed peacefully, the water and the natural beauty of the beach calming them all. A pelican came by to visit them, regarding them from a safe distance away out of first one eye and then the other, and then they all went on a walk down the beach to find out how many sandpipers they could see.

  It was only when they were driving back to the palace, Hasan and Jamila sleeping in the back, that she realized that they weren't on the same wavelength at all.

  “That was a good day,” Ziad said quietly. “I can see how far you have come on teaching Jamila manners and correct behavior. She is much improved from even a month ago.”

  Laura started to smile, but then she tensed again.

  “Why do I feel as if there's a big but coming?” she asked, and he nodded.

  “But surely you see that she is not where she needs to be yet. She doesn't have the poise and the control befitting a princess of Yeni. Now, I don't blame you—”

  “Thank you,” Laura said with some asperity, even as she simmered under his words. Ziad didn't seem to notice her anger, instead only nodding and continuing.

  “I blame the fact that Jamila is a good six years behind on royal training. She was not born to this, and this will always be to her disadvantage.”

  Laura's head spun at the idea of bright and clever Jamila being considered behind in any way, shape, or form, but Ziad kept talking.

  “Surely you saw this yourself today,” he said earnestly, watching the road. “She was loud and rude, and when she did not get her away, she simply ran away to the beach. It was inexcusable.”

  Laura had a mouth full of words she wanted to say to him. Any host would run away if the guest they had invited had kept picking at them and telling them they were doing everything wrong. She wasn't the one who spoiled the picnic, and she showed as much self-control as a child her age could be expected to!

  Instead, all she offered was a sound that could be lukewarm agreement if Ziad chose to take it as such. This was hardly the right time to be getting into a full-scale fight about the children, since said children were sleeping in the backseat. She prayed that Jamila hadn't woken up to hear any of that, which could be crushing to a girl who was obviously trying as hard as she could to please her parent.

  We need to talk about all of this. But not now.

  Instead, they drove through the dusk, and at some point in the trip, Laura fell asleep. When she woke up, they were pulling up to the palace, and she knew that challenges awaited all of them.

  16

  Things had been quiet for a few days, and then Laura logged in Sunday evening for her call with her parents. It was the one night she made herself unavailable for the kids or Ziad, and they all understood how important it was for her to closet herself away and just be with her family for a short while. A few times now, Jamila had been allowed to get on the call as well, so excited to meet Laura's family that she was practically vibrating with energy, but she knew that it was Laura's time with people she could no longer see every day.

  Sometimes the calls were cursory check-ins with just her mom or dad, and sometimes the whole family got involved and it turned into a raucous event where she laughed so hard she cried. At the end of the week, it was the perfect time for her to just be herself, and this week, she needed it more than ever.

  Her first clue that things were going wrong was that her parents were late.

  They're never late on Sunday calls, Laura thought uneasily. They're always on time.

  She tried to call them twice, and just as she was planning to give up and call Emily, the call connected, and the kitchen she had grown up in popped up on the screen, her father and mother sitting at the kitchen table.

  “Mom! Dad! I'm glad I got through. I—”

  She paused, taking in their strained faces and the way they held hands tightly on the tabletop.

  “Mom, Dad, have you been crying…? What's going on, what happened?”

  Her mother tried to speak, but she couldn't, not around the raw and tired sob she uttered. Instead it was her father who took it up, swallowing hard as he squinted at the camera.

  “Some bad news, kiddo. Andrea collapsed again last night, and we took her to the hospital. Now, I don't want you to get too worried.”

  “Tell me,” she said, fighting the urge to scream it. She knew they were trying to spare her and that the only thing they wanted was for her to suffer less than they did. But she could feel that tension racking up inside her, and if she didn't find out what was going on right now, she thought she would start crying out of sheer frustration.

  “Pneumonia,” her mother said. “She's got pneumonia. She was having some…some fluid build-up in her lungs, and they had to take that out, and…”

  She shook her head, sobbing again.

  “It could be worse,” her father said with a rather half-hearted attempt at cheer. “It could be worse, but, Laura, she's in intensive care. It's…it's not looking good.”

  Laura swallowed hard, her head spinning. Andrea, little Andrea, in the intensive care unit. Andrea suffering, Andrea in pain, her parents crying. She swallowed against the nausea in her belly, and the whole room seemed suddenly unreal and far away. She put her hand on the desk next to her tablet, and she couldn't quite recognize it as her own hand.

  How strange this all feels. She shook her head hard. She could not allow herself to be lost or confused, not when her sister needed her. Not when her family needed her.

  “Tell Andrea to hold on. I'm coming home.”

  There were a few more words, but Laura kept it short. She would be seeing them soon, and they could speak then. Every moment she wasted was another moment keeping her from being with the little sister she loved so much, the one she had cared for for so long.

  She was halfway through packing her bag when she remembered her contract. According to the papers she’d signed, she was allowed trips to see her family, but she was meant to give a week's notice for any time she spent away, and before that, she was supposed to find a substitute caregiver for the kids. It was a reasonable stipulation, but she had not expected her little sister to take this sudden and downward turn.

  Is he going to cut me off if I leave against his wishes? What is he going to say? What is he going to do?

  For a moment she wavered, but then she shook her head hard, resuming her packing.

  I don't have time to worry about this. The only person I should be thinking about right now is Andrea. I have no other choice.

  She was almost done with her packing when she heard a knock at her door. Working on autopilot more than anything else, she went to answer it, only to find Ziad himself standing on the other side.

  “We were planning to have dinner together—” Then he took a closer look at her face.

  Before Laura could say a single thing, he had gathered her into his arms, bringing her over to the small couch in her sitting room.

  “Come here,” he said softly. “Come sit down before you fall.”

  She started to protest—that there was no time, that she could not be slowed—but then she started to shiver. The tremor went through her, soft at first and then more powerfully, and a few moments later, it was as if she had shaken to bits, sobbing into Ziad's arms, her hands fisting the fabric of his T-shirt. She buried her face in his chest, and for what felt like both an eternity and a heartbeat, she couldn't do anything but cry, all the stress coming out of her at once.

  “Poor darling,” Ziad crooned. “I am here. It is all right. Breathe for me. That's all I need you to do right now. Only breathe for me.”

  She obeyed, taking long breaths rather than the short, rabbit-quick ones that she wanted to take, and after a few tries, she was able to speak without gasping.

  “It's Andrea,” she said, her voice trembling. “She's taken a turn for the worse. My parents just told me that she's in the intensive care unit at the hospital. She's collapsed.”

  “Oh, sweetheart…”

  “And…and now that I'm thinking about it and talking about it, I think they might have been hiding worse from me. God, all those calls when we talked about unimportant things, when we laughed. Were they just hiding Andrea's condition from me so I wouldn't worry? Why would they take something like that on themselves? Why would they avoid telling me something so important?”

  “Because they care about you as well,” Ziad said, brushing a strand of hair back from her tear-dampened face. “Because it is the nature of people to protect their children. They were trying to be kind, even if you would not prefer the way they did it.”

  Laura managed a rather soggy chuckle.

  “That sounds just like my parents. They just…they just care so much, and they don't always know what to do. You mustn't think that they don't care about me or that they love any of us any less. They've gone through a really rough time on their own, with all of us and how the money never really stretched far enough and how tired they all were…”

  She was rambling, but somehow it felt as if it all had to come out, and it all had to come out now. She needed to tell Ziad, to explain to him, to make sure he understood who her parents were, how loving they were.

  Ziad listened to her for a few moments, and then he shushed her.

  “I understand,” he said softly. “They have raised a wonderful young woman who loves them. They have raised children who care about their family and the world around them, and that will eternally be to their credit.”

  “I just don't want you to think—”

  “I never would,” he said firmly. “Never. They are good people who have produced a good person. They will always have my respect for that.” The kindness and understanding in Ziad's tone and face made Laura go limp with relief. It was as if an enormous boulder had been rolled off her chest. She wondered, leaning against Ziad's comforting bulk, how long she had been afraid of his contempt. She didn't know what she might do if it turned out he looked down on her family, and to find out that he did nothing of the sort made her want to cry again.

  “Thank you,” she whispered against his shoulder, and his large warm hand came up to cradle the back of her head.

  “Sweetheart, it will be all right,” he murmured. “I promise you.”

  It was tempting to simply remain with her face pressed against Ziad's chest forever, but of course she knew she couldn't do that. Instead she sat up, wiping her eyes.

  “Thank you,” she said again, a little more herself. “I just need to get on a plane. Once I'm on my way, I'll feel a lot better. I need to see Andrea, to…to say goodbye, if this turns out to be the end. I just need to go.”

  She started to stand up, but Ziad's hand closed around hers, holding her still. She looked down to see him looking puzzled.

  “Go?” he asked blankly, and she blinked.

  What in the world did he think I was saying?

  “Home,” she said. “To New Jersey. I have to be with Andrea, with my family. I thought you understood that.”

  Ziad's frown deepened.

  “I understand that your sister has taken a turn for the worse,” he said slowly. “I understand that you are very worried about her, and that your family misses you. But Laura, what in the world can you do to help?”