But she had been alone.

  No one took the seat next to hers on the flight. It should have been a happy surprise. A gift from the travel gods. But it only made Samira’s words seem like a prophecy.

  Nadia put her head back on the headrest as the plane taxied down the runway. It sounded like a lonely plan because it was lonely. She wished for someone to take the seat beside her.

  No. Not just anyone. Not some random businessman or a lady on vacation. She wanted Amare to take the seat next to her. To lean down and whisper in her ear while they flew. She wanted his laughter and his handsome face and his confidence.

  It was the loneliest she’d ever been.

  13

  He did what he could to forget Nadia.

  It was impossible.

  Worse, all his attempts to forget made it hard to focus on his work, or on his life. Amare threw himself into his duties as sheikh, spending long hours in meetings making plans for the future of Kirisil. He pushed people harder. Moved up timelines. Had more council meetings. He hired more tutors for Taavi, and a second nanny to fill the time with more activities, and they ate dinner together every night, like they always had done.

  None of it rid him of the sensation that something was terribly wrong.

  It was still wrong days later as he passed by his son’s room on the way to his own. Amare was a few steps past the threshold when a scream rose from inside. The sound stopped his heart. He wheeled around, rushing for the door, the words landing one by one.

  “I know I make too many mistakes,” Taavi shouted, his voice curling into another scream. “I know I need to do better. I know I messed up. I’ll do better.”

  He burst into the room. Whoever had done this to his son—whoever was inside—

  Taavi’s tutor didn’t look at Amare when he threw open the door. She was crouched next to the small table where she and Taavi worked, speaking to his son in a low, trembling voice. “Please, Taavi. It’s all right. I know you’re upset. It’s okay to be upset. Talk to me about it. We can talk.”

  The little boy sucked in a huge gasp, his dark eyes meeting his father’s.

  “What’s going on?” Amare thundered.

  “We’re working on penmanship,” the tutor stammered. He couldn’t remember her name. “We were only working on penmanship.”

  Taavi dissolved into tears and ran for his father. Amare scooped him up in his arms and Taavi clung to him, sobbing into his shoulders. The pounding of Amare’s pulse reminded him of how he’d felt when Taavi had first moved in and he hadn’t known what to do to soothe him. Now he did those things automatically—shushing him, rubbing his back, trying to communicate a calm love to the boy, though Amare didn’t understand what had happened. How could penmanship have upset him this much?

  He took a deep breath and felt the boy echo it, but Taavi couldn’t stop crying. He only cried harder.

  “Let me see the work,” Amare asked the tutor. She picked up a sheet of paper from the table and brought it to him. Amare looked it over while he rubbed at Taavi’s back and swayed. “This is exactly what I would imagine a five-year-old’s penmanship would look like. What’s the problem?”

  Taavi was in no position to answer. The tutor shrugged delicately. “Taavi pushes himself very hard, and he—” She glanced at the upset little boy in Amare’s arms. “When a skill takes more practice to master, he finds it very upsetting.”

  Amare shifted his hold on Taavi, who turned his tearstained face into his father’s neck and sobbed, “You made her go away because she made mistakes.”

  A bolt through the soul. He was talking about Nadia. Horror spilled over him like a wave off the sea. “We’ll break for the day. Thank you.”

  The tutor nodded, obviously relieved to be dismissed, and patted Taavi’s back. She left the room with quick steps and pulled the door closed behind her.

  Amare’s stomach turned over. He’d done this. He’d given Taavi these ideas, because they were his own. All his fears about mistakes, all his fears about not living up to the ideals of his people—he’d handed them all down to his son and magnified them a hundredfold.

  He carried his son to the bed and sat him down on it, crouching in front of him so they were face to face. Amare reached out and wiped the tears from Taavi’s cheeks. New tears fell, though he wasn’t crying quite so hard. “I love you very much, Taavi, and I will love you no matter what you do. No matter how many mistakes you make. Mistakes are part of life. We all make them as we learn.”

  Taavi sniffed, leaning his face into Amare’s hand. “Do you love Nadia too?”

  He couldn’t lie to Taavi. The love he felt for Nadia had only expanded the longer she was gone. Amare couldn’t get a full breath because his chest felt so full of feeling for her.

  “Yes,” he admitted.

  Taavi’s eyes welled with fresh tears. He folded his arms over his stomach and pulled away from Amare’s touch. “If you loved her, why did you make her leave?”

  Amare heard the fear beneath the words. “Nadia left because she thought it would be best.” She thought that because he had made her think so. He would not tell Taavi that part. “No matter what you do, I will not be sending you anywhere. You don’t have to worry about that. Put it out of your mind.”

  Taavi threw himself into Amare’s arms again, resting his head on his shoulder. “Never?”

  “Never,” he confirmed. He held Taavi for a long time. “Are you hungry? We could go down to the kitchens and see if they have any ice cream.”

  “I want ice cream,” sniffed Taavi. “A lot of ice cream.”

  “Let’s make that wish come true.”

  Amare stood and offered Taavi his hand. The boy took it, sadness still pulling down the corners of his mouth. Amare put a smile on for Taavi, though he didn’t feel like smiling. He felt sick. Sick with wonder. Sick with disgust at what he’d done to Nadia. And to his son. Taavi was more observant than he thought.

  Ice cream first. And then he would figure this out.

  Amare could not solve the problem of Nadia on his own. He tried for a few more days, wrestling with the emotions, trying to get them into a manageable row. They wouldn’t cooperate.

  On the third day, there was a mild commotion outside his office. His secretary laughed, and then she told someone outside that Amare was busy. Two familiar voices boomed in the outer office, and then the door was flung open.

  Camil and Faidh came in together. His two best friends. Brothers, really. Both were sheikhs in their own emirates. Camil had light eyes and a preference for remaining clean-shaven, while Faidh’s darker eyes shone with his usual playfulness. He was the most muscled of the three of them and the one who chased the most women. Amare hadn’t seen them in person since they’d backed him up at Haatim’s palace.

  “I knew we’d find you moping,” Camil said. “Look at you. At your desk. Nothing better to do?”

  “It’s my job,” Amare scolded, going around his desk to embrace both of them and slap their backs. “Why are you interrupting it?”

  “Your sister called,” said Faidh, dropping into a chair by Amare’s desk. Camil stood with his hands in his pockets, and Amare went back to his own chair and fell back into it. “She said we had to talk some sense into you.”

  “About what?” He mustered a laugh. “I’m fine. I’ve been spending a lot of time with Taavi and keeping busy with the kingdom.”

  Camil cocked his head to the side. “How long have we known each other?”

  Amare groaned. “A long time.”

  “That’s right.” Camil steepled his fingers underneath his chin. “We’re as close as brothers, and you’re going to sit here and lie to us?”

  “We can tell you’re having a hard time,” Faidh sang. “We want to help.”

  “Please. Spending time with Taavi is not a sign that—”

  Faidh waved him down. “It’s wonderful that you’re spending so much time with your son. But you’ve been off. You missed the last regional meeting with the other sheikhs.”

  “We covered for you,” Camil pointed out. “We let them know about the demise of your engagement.” He sneered. “Haatim seemed particularly happy about that one.”

  “Samira’s concerned.” Faidh met his eyes with a steady gaze. “And so is your mother. You’ve been letting things slip, and people are noticing.”

  Amare swallowed one more deflection after another. He couldn’t hide this from them. It was probably written all over his face, no matter how hard he tried to keep his feelings to himself.

  He couldn’t just brush his friends and his feelings off and move on. If he continued dwelling on his failures and pushing for perfection, he would only fail more.

  And...he wanted her back. The palace felt empty without Nadia. His life felt empty without Nadia. Off-balance, as if the whole world had been tilted to the side. Would she even entertain the conversation? He might not have lost her forever, but another old fear snagged at Amare’s mind.

  “Thank you both for coming. I have to apologize.”

  “For what?” Suspicion grew in Faidh’s eyes, and his two best friends shared a glance. “We came here of our own free will.”

  “I might be breaking our pact.”

  The three of them had a long-standing pact that they’d made as young men, an agreement that they’d remain unmarried as long as humanly possible. It had played into his relationship with Kamaria. She had known about it, and for the rest of Amare’s life, he would wonder if that was the reason she hadn’t told him about Taavi.

  Camil nodded. “You don’t have to be a wreck on our account. We’ll forgive you eventually.”

  Amare laughed. “You flatter yourself. It’s Nadia who has me in knots.” He rubbed both hands over his face. “All I can think about is finding her, marrying her, making her my wife. She should be here with me. I should have already apologized for pushing her away. That’s why I’ve been so distracted.” It lifted a weight from his shoulders to admit this to his friends.

  “Do you need help with your duties here?” Faidh asked the question with a serious tone that let Amare know how much he meant it. “If you need us to keep things on track, we can do that.”

  “No. No.” He wouldn’t let anything else slip. Amare knew, deep down, that the days of being dishonest with himself were over. “I have plenty of people here, and you’re needed in your own homes.”

  “Tell the truth,” Camil warned. “If we leave here and find out that everything’s fallen to pieces—”

  “That won’t happen,” he promised. “I’ll let you know what’s going on soon. I just need to make a plan for how to get her back.”

  All three men stood up, and Camil came over to clap a hand on Amare’s shoulder. “No matter how it goes, you’ll tell us.”

  “I will,” Amare agreed.

  They talked a few minutes more about things in their respective emirates, about how Amare had better show up to the next regional meeting, and then he sent his friends away. Amare was sorry to see them go. Life would have been easier if they could have ruled an emirate together, but that wasn’t how the world had seen fit to divide their talents.

  Quiet settled back over his office. He had to find Nadia. He had to be honest with her. It might not end happily for him—he knew that. Life had taught him that even a passionate love didn’t guarantee forever. But that didn’t mean he could give up. He wouldn’t.

  14

  Nadia dove headfirst into her manuscripts and didn’t intend to come out again.

  For the first few weeks back in New York, it was a struggle. Reading the pages brought back so many memories of Kirisil and of Amare and the nagging feeling that she had done the wrong thing by leaving. Her progress was agonizingly slow. It seemed like an insurmountable project. When she finally hit on a solution, it felt like waking up after a long, restless sleep.

  She would combine the two books.

  It came to her one early morning in the same two-bedroom apartment she’d grown up in. Nadia hadn’t been able to sleep the night before. But standing at the window, looking down at the street with the day’s first cup of coffee in her hand, the answer suddenly became clear.

  Nadia hurried back to her bedroom, opened her laptop, and began. The third time would hopefully be the charm.

  Though Nadia had twice as much material to work with, it was still difficult. First she had to weave the existing pieces together, and then she had to add to them. Two unfinished projects didn’t make a whole without quite a bit of elbow grease. So it was nearly two months after she arrived in New York City that Nadia printed out the first portion to show her mother.

  Her mom was in the kitchen, tapping at something on her own laptop. After Nadia’s parents had split up, her mother had started the most intense networking project Nadia had ever seen. She got to know as many of the other mothers at Nadia’s new school as she could. Through them, she gathered the support to start a small business out of their apartment. It didn’t make them rich. Sofia, Nadia’s mother, wasn’t interested in being rich. She was interested in being happy, and happiness meant being able to help Nadia with college.

  She looked up from her laptop and closed the lid as Nadia entered the room. “I have something to show you, Mama.”

  “Let’s see it.” Her mother held out a hand with an enthusiastic grin. She’d always been proud of Nadia, but not pushy. Available whenever Nadia had wanted to share. Happy to let her roam the world, and happy when she came home. Nadia had missed her deeply while she was traveling, but she wasn’t homesick—not really. She had always been chasing a new feeling. A new sense of the world. And she knew her mother and the apartment would always be waiting.

  Nadia handed over the sheaf of papers and took the other seat at the kitchen table. Excitement thrummed through her as her mother flipped one page after the next. If her book ever got published, it would be a million times more nerve-wracking to know that other people were reading it. Nadia took cleansing breaths and tried to keep her cool.

  Her mother read and read, and finally she turned the last page. Sofia closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, she was wearing a broad grin.

  “I can tell you really love that part of the world. You’ve described it down to the last pebble. You took the time to get to know it.”

  “Thank you,” Nadia said, surprised. “I’ve never thought about it that way. It’s true, though. I do love it. I’ve never felt more at home while I was traveling than I did when I was in Kirisil.”

  And that was because of Amare. It was because the emirate and the sheikh were inextricably linked, both in the real world and in her heart. She wouldn’t have loved Kirisil half as much if she didn’t also love Amare. Her heart squeezed. It hurt to think of him. A deep-down ache that Nadia felt as soon as she woke up—and even in her dreams.

  She’d certainly taken the time to get to know him. Enough to get hurt. Not enough to repair what had gone wrong between them.

  “Oh, honey. You look so sad.”

  She took her printout back from her mom and forced herself to smile. “Just tired. It’s been a lot of work, figuring everything out.”

  And grappling with the fact that none of her feelings mattered. It had been two months with no word from Amare. All the time Nadia had spent wondering if she should have pushed harder with him, if she should have dug deeper into who he was—it meant nothing. He hadn’t wanted to pursue her. She had no right to be angry about it and no reason to be hurt. It was what they’d promised to each other.

  Nadia went back to her favorite place to work—the couch in the living room—and lost herself in the day’s pages. She was writing new material now, and it was harder than she’d anticipated. Nadia spent a lot of time choosing the perfect words to paint a picture of Kirisil and an equal amount of time trying not to let her imagination carry her away. She was in the middle of describing the sunrise over the coast when a knock sounded at the door.

  Her mother got up to answer it. A neighbor, probably. Or a delivery. She would finish this sentence, then this paragraph, and then—

  A little shriek from her mother startled her out of her work. Nadia looked up from the sofa just as her mother entered the living room.

  With Amare.

  With Amare, Sheikh of Kirisil, looking tall and heart-shatteringly handsome and sun-kissed. Looking completely out of place in the tiny two-bedroom apartment in New York City. Her heart was a bird fluttering in a cage. He was even more gorgeous than she remembered. His close-cropped beard skimmed his sharp jaw and his dark eyes glittered. His suit was as impeccable as ever, and—what was that around his wrist? A gleaming gold cuff she’d never seen before. The bracelet was simple and perfect, but the pearl at its center…it was the lumpy one she’d dug out of an oyster.

  Her whole body heated at the sight.

  “What are you doing here?” Nadia shut her laptop and stood to face him. Whatever was happening, she wasn’t going to meet it sitting down.

  Amare stepped closer, and she breathed in his scent for the first time in two months. “I would have come sooner, but I’ve been negotiating something for you.”

  He held out a cell phone.

  Her cell phone.

  “How did you get this?” She took it from him with shaking hands, but the phone didn’t interest her as much as his eyes. Nadia couldn’t stop studying his face, his mouth—the heat there.

  “I sat down with Haatim over several lengthy negotiations about some stalled business agreements between our two emirates. I agreed to lower tariffs on goods that come through Kirisil’s docks if Haatim gave me your phone and signed a contract stating he would leave you alone from now on.”

  She had no words. Amare had done this for her. He’d negotiated with Haatim for her, knowing that it was a risk to Kirisil and to his own reputation. She could not just stand here with her mouth open, she couldn’t.