Majesty, Mistress...Missing Heir

Majesty, Mistress...Missing Heir
CAITLIN CREWS

Her royal baby secretAs treacherous and formidable as the desert he wishes to rule, Sheikh Tariq bin Khalid Al-Nur is furious that he cannot take the throne until he marries. But he cannot wed until he’s rid his dreams of the ordinary but bewitching Jessa Heath…Jessa knows she and Tariq have unfinished business, but she is treading on shifting sands! What if she were to take control and allow herself the one night he’s offering? However, that’s all it would take to reveal the secret she has so desperately kept hidden…

He did not look up at her. His fingers smoothed against her skin, tracing patterns from her hipbone to her navel, then back. Bemused, and not unaffected by his touch even now, Jessa blinked down at him.

He looked up then, and as their gazes met Jessa suddenly knew, with searing, gut-wrenching certainty, exactly what he was doing.

Tariq was not touching her randomly. He was not caressing her. He was tracing the faint white lines that scored her belly—the stretchmarks she had tried to rub away with lotions and creams. The lines were more visible now in the bright morning light than she remembered them ever being before. They were the unmistakable evidence that she had been pregnant.

The world stopped turning. Her heart stopped beating. His eyes bored into her as his hands tightened. He only waited.

And then, when he had stared at her so long she was convinced he had ripped every last secret from her very soul, his mouth twisted.

“I have only one question for you,” he said, every word like a knife. “Where is the child?”

Caitlin Crews discovered her first romance novel at the age of twelve. It involved swashbuckling pirates, grand adventures, a heroine with rustling skirts and a mind of her own, and a seriously mouthwatering and masterful hero. The book (the title of which remains lost in the mists of time) made a serious impression. Caitlin was immediately smitten with romances and romance heroes, to the detriment of her middle school social life. And so began her life-long love affair with romance novels, many of which she insists on keeping near her at all times.

Caitlin has made her home in places as far-flung as York, England, and Atlanta, Georgia. She was raised near New York City, and fell in love with London on her first visit when she was a teenager. She has backpacked in Zimbabwe, been on safari in Botswana, and visited tiny villages in Namibia. She has, while visiting the place in question, declared her intention to live in Prague, Dublin, Paris, Athens, Nice, the Greek Islands, Rome, Venice, and/or any of the Hawaiian islands. Writing about exotic places seems like the next best thing to moving there.

She currently lives in California, with her animator/comic book artist husband and their menagerie of ridiculous animals.

Majesty, Mistress…Missing Heir

By

Caitlin Crews

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

CHAPTER ONE

JESSA glanced up from her desk automatically when the door to the letting agency was shoved open, and then froze solid in her chair.

It was like a dream—a dream she had had many times. He strode inside, the wet and the cold of the Yorkshire evening swirling around him like a great black cape.

She found herself on her feet without knowing she meant to move, her hands splayed out in front of her as if she could ward him off—keep him from stepping even further into the small office. Into her life, where she could not—would not—allow him to be, ever again.

“There you are,” he said in a deep, commanding voice, as if he had satisfied himself simply by laying cold eyes upon her—as if, unaccountably, he had been looking for her.

Jessa’s heart thudded against her ribs as her head spun. Was he an apparition, five years later? Was she dreaming?

“Tariq,” she said, dazed, as if naming the dream could dispel it.

But Tariq bin Khaled Al-Nur did not look like a dream. He was nothing so insubstantial, or easily forgotten in the light of day. When she had known him he had claimed to be no more than a wealthy, overindulged member of his country’s elite class; she knew that he was now its ruler. She hated that she knew—as if that knowledge was written across her face and might suggest to him that she had followed his every move across the years when the truth was, she had wanted only to forget him.

But she could not seem to pull her gaze from his.

Jessa found that all these years later she could remember every detail about Tariq with perfect, shocking clarity, even as the evidence before her made it clear that he was far better—far much more—than she had allowed herself to recall. His features were harder, more impenetrable. He was more of a man, somehow. It seemed impossible, but her memories had diminished him. The reality of Tariq was powerful, alive—dazzling.

Dangerous.

Jessa tried to concentrate on the danger. It didn’t matter that her heart leaped when she saw him, even now. What mattered was the secret she knew she must keep from him. She had foolishly begun to hope that this particular day of reckoning would never come. She looked at him now, clear-eyed thanks to her shock, though that was not the improvement she might have hoped for.

He was hard-packed muscle in a deceptively lean form, all whipcord strength and leashed, impossible power beneath skin the color of nutmeg. Time seemed to stop as Jessa stood in place, cataloging the harsh lines of his face. They were more pronounced than she remembered—the dark slash of his brows beneath his thick black hair, the masculine jut of his nose, and the high cheekbones that announced his royal blood as surely as the supremely confident, regal way he held himself. How could she have overlooked these clues five years ago? How could she have believed him when he’d claimed to be no one of any particular importance?

Those deep green eyes of his, mysterious and nearly black in the early-evening light, connected hard with a part of her she thought she’d buried years before. The part that had believed every lie he’d told her. The part that had missed, somehow, that she was being toyed with by a master manipulator. The part that had loved him heedlessly, recklessly. The part that she feared always would, despite everything.

When he was near her, she forgot herself.

He closed the door behind him, the catch clicking softly on the doorjamb. It sounded to Jessa as loud as a gunshot, and she almost flinched away from it. She could not allow herself to be weak. Not with so much at stake! Because he must know what had happened. There could be no other reason for an appearance like this, here in the forgotten back streets of York at an office that was surely far beneath his imperial notice.

He must know.

With the door closed, the noise of the evening rush in York’s pedestrian center disappeared, leaving them enclosed in a tense, uncomfortable silence. The office was too small, and felt tinier by the moment. Jessa’s heart hammered against her chest. Panic dug sharp claws into her sides. Tariq seemed to loom over her, to surround her, simply by standing inside the door.

He did not move, nor speak again. He held her gaze with his, daring her to look away. Challenging her. He was effortlessly commanding even in silence. Arrogant. Fierce.

He was not the easygoing playboy she remembered. Gone was his quick smile, his lazy charm. This man was not to be trifled with. This man was the king who had always lurked within the Tariq she’d known, who she’d but glimpsed in passing here and there. A shiver traced cold fingers down her spine and uncurled in her belly.

He must know.

Her pulse sounded too loud in her ears. She could feel their tangled history and her secrets all around her, dragging at her, forcibly reminding her of the darkness she’d fought so hard to escape back then. But she had more to protect now than just herself. She had to think of Jeremy, and what was best for him. Wasn’t that what she had always done, no matter the cost to herself?

She let her eyes travel over Tariq, reminding herself that he was just a man, no matter how fierce. And for all his regal bearing now, back then he had disappeared without so much as a word or a backward glance or a forwarding address. He was as treacherous and formidable as the exotic desert that was his home. The exquisitely tailored clothes he wore, silk and cashmere that clung to the bold, male lines of his body, did nothing to disguise the truth of him. He was a warrior. Untamed and wild, like a shock of brilliant color in the midst of grays and browns. He was a predator. She had known it then, on some deep, feminine level, though he had smiled and joked and concealed it. Her body knew it now, and horrified her by thrilling to it even as she fought for control. Her lungs felt tight, as if he sucked up all the air in the room.

She had never thought she would see him again.

She didn’t know how to react now that he was in front of her.

“No,” she said, astonished to hear that her voice sounded calm even when the world around her seemed to shimmer and shake. It gave her the courage to continue. It didn’t matter how compelling he was. His being so compelling had been the problem in the first place! She squared her shoulders. “No. You cannot be here.”

His dark brows rose, haughty and proud. His hair, thick and black and a touch too long for civility, seemed to sparkle with the autumn rain from outside. He kept his impossible, haunting eyes trained on her face. How she had once loved those eyes, which had seemed so sad, so guarded. Tonight they seemed to see right through her. His expression was unreadable.

“And yet here I am.” His voice was low, husky, and held the barest hint of the foreign lands he’d come from, wrapped in something both chocolate and smooth. Dangerous. And once more—a blatant, unmistakable challenge. It hit Jessa like a fist to the midsection.

“Without invitation,” she pointed out, pleased her tone was just this side of curt. Anything to seem stronger than she felt. Anything to look tougher than she was. Anything to protect Jeremy.

“Do I require an invitation to enter a letting agent’s?” he asked, unperturbed. “You must excuse me if I have forgotten British customs. I was under the impression places such as these encourage walk-in clientele.”

“Do you have an appointment?” Jessa asked, forcing her jaw to stop clenching. It was what she would ask any other person who appeared off the street, wasn’t it? And really, why should Tariq bin Khaled Al-Nur be any different?

“In a manner of speaking,” he said, his tone hinting at some significance that was lost on Jessa, though she sensed he expected her to understand his meaning. “Yes.”

His eyes traveled over her, no doubt comparing her to his memories. Jessa felt her cheeks flame, in some combination of distress and fury. She had the sudden worry that she fell short, and then could have kicked herself. Or, preferably, him. Why should she care about such things? Nothing would change the fact that she was an ordinary girl from Yorkshire and he was a king.

“It is nice to see you again, Jessa,” Tariq said with a dangerous politeness that did not conceal the ruthlessness beneath. She wished he would not say her name. It was like a caress. It teased at the back of her neck, swirled through her blood, and traced phantom patterns across her skin.

“I’m afraid I can’t say the same,” she replied coolly. Because she had a spine. Because she needed to get rid of him, and make certain he never returned. Because their past was far too complicated to ever be brought out into the present. “You are the very last person I would ever wish to see again. If you go away quickly, we can pretend it never happened.”