Carrying The Sheikh's Baby

‘No one has seen them for several hours.’

Several hours.

His thundering heart crashed into his throat.

Anything could have happened in that time. Catherine was a stranger here—how well did she even speak the language? He should never have left her to her own devices. The panic tightened around his heart, reminding him of being a boy in LA and waking up in the middle of the night to find himself alone in his mother’s apartment. A gaping hole opened in the pit of his stomach, the very same one that had appeared every time he’d had to scramble out of bed and track down his mother in one of the neighbourhood bars.

Not the same thing, damn it.

Zelda had been fragile, mentally and physically, and a chronic alcoholic. Catherine Smith was none of those things.

But still the gaping hole refused to disappear as he marched down the walkway towards the palace’s stables.

He had to get her back before she got hurt, or worse.

‘Why wasn’t I told about this sooner?’ Zane demanded, channelling the old fear into anger at his major-domo.

‘I am sorry, Your Divine Majesty,’ Ravi panted, breathing heavily as he raced to keep up with Zane.

‘Get me a robe and have Pegasus saddled,’ he shouted at one of the stable boys as he arrived in the equine palace, the comforting scent of hay and manure doing nothing to stem the fear gripping his insides.

‘Your Excellency? There is no need for you to venture o-out...’ Ravi stammered. ‘I have the palace guard ready to search the marketplace on your orders.’

‘I’ll lead the search party,’ he said.

Ravi returned with his robe. Zane shrugged it on, then took the keffiyeh. Securing the traditional headscarf with an agal rope, he covered his mouth and nose. It was almost noon, so it would be a hot dusty ride in searing heat. But he’d be damned if he’d let the palace guard conduct the search without him.

Pegasus arrived, stamping his hooves, his nostrils flaring as he shook his head against the bridle. Taking the reins from the stable boy, Zane grabbed the pommel on the horse’s saddle, stuck his boot into the stirrup and leapt onto the highly strung stallion as the horse charged out of the yard.

The hooves of the guards’ horses clattered behind him as the palace gates were rolled open.

The sun blinded him as Pegasus flew out of the grounds, and past the palace’s walls. The horse took the unpaved road down towards Zahari. People scattered, many dropping to their knees as they recognised him and his guards.

As they approached the labyrinth of streets leading to the old town and the women’s spice market, the colourful silks on the clothing stalls waving like flags, anger rose up to cover the gaping hole.

When he found Catherine, she was going to feel the full force of his fury, for defying his orders. And putting herself in unnecessary danger.

If he found her.

‘She says Tariq was a cruel Sheikh.’ Kasia relayed the information in English as Cat nodded, scribbling on the notepad she’d brought with her.

They had been at the market for over two hours, she’d taken photos of the amazing sights and sounds, had absorbed the workings of the place and revelled in the chance to finally see a side of Narabian society without close supervision. But speaking to Nazarin, an elderly stallholder, was the first opportunity she’d had to talk to anyone specifically about Tariq Ali Nawari Khan’s forty-year reign.

Nazarin’s hands were gnarled and stained from years spent dying cloth to sell at the market. Her accent had been far too thick for Cat to decipher, but with Kasia’s translation help she had been a font of knowledge about the Nawari family thanks to her experiences going to the palace to deliver cloth.

‘She says he was very cruel to his son,’ Kasia added.

Cat’s head jerked up from her notes. ‘Are you talking about Zane?’ she said in Narabi to Nazarin.

The woman stared for a moment, obviously taken aback by the informal address. Then she nodded and rushed off a torrent of words, but the guttural inflections were impossible for Cat to understand.

She had to wait patiently for Kasia to finish listening to the woman’s words. Eventually her friend turned to Cat, her eyes round with shock. ‘She says, yes, the new Sheikh. The one from America. When the boy came to the palace, she says he tried many times to escape and he was punished harshly for this disobedience.’

‘Punished? How?’ Cat whispered, shocked. Why had Zane tried to escape? Had he been brought to Narabia against his will?

Cat had wondered about the circumstances of his mother’s decision to give up custody of her son. Zelda Mayhew Khan had fled Narabia not long after Zane’s birth and taken him with her—the fairy-tale romance with the Sheikh obviously not living up to the media hype. The actress had never spoken publicly about her marriage and it seemed once she had faded from the public eye, she’d struggled to find work and had a string of arrests for DUIs and disorderly conduct when Zane was in his teens. So it had made sense Zane’s father had assumed custody, but Cat had never been able to find a formal custody agreement—or a court order declaring Zelda an unfit mother—during her initial research. And she had wondered what it must have been like for a teenage boy, who had probably had minimal supervision while living with his mother, to suddenly find himself in a place like Narabia, where the customs and culture were a lot more constrained... But she hadn’t suspected anything like this.

She was trying to formulate a question, keen to discover more about Zane’s relationship with his father, when one of Nazarin’s teenage granddaughters rushed into the tiny room at the back of her shop where they were talking.

‘You must leave—the Sheikh, he comes on horseback with his men,’ she beseeched Kasia and Cat in the native language.

‘We should go,’ Kasia said. ‘He has come to find you.’

Cat’s heart pummelled her chest.

Why had he come looking for her? And why did she have the feeling the answer to that question could not be good?

She didn’t want to leave. There were so many questions she still had for Nazarin. But she could feel her granddaughter’s fear and see Kasia’s concerned expression. The last thing she wanted to do was cause any trouble for Nazarin, her family or Kasia. This could only be a misunderstanding. Yes, Zane had told her not to go anywhere unaccompanied, but she had Kasia with her. And anyway, she would have told him of this trip if he hadn’t been so reluctant to talk to her.

Thanking Nazarin, she and Kasia left the room and hurried through the stall to the courtyard.

She pulled on her headscarf and shielded her eyes against the midday sun, which was blisteringly hot now. The spice market had closed an hour ago, the heat becoming unbearable, and the stalls had been packed away. Only a few people still milled around. But some of the citizens came out of their dwellings at the thunderous sound of hooves approaching.

Cat’s breath clogged her lungs as six horsemen appeared on the ridge above the marketplace. Their shapes became distinct through the heat haze as they galloped into the courtyard. Out in front was a monstrous black stallion, the rider handling the powerful horse with consummate ease, his robes flying out behind him. He led the riders to a skidding stop in front of Cat and Kasia.

The stallion reared before his hooves crashed down only a few yards from Cat’s toes. She scrambled back. Even with the traditional face and head covering she would have recognised Zane Khan anywhere.

It seemed the locals did too, because they were already falling to their knees in his presence, Kasia included. Cat stayed upright, her whole body rigid with stunned disbelief, and something that felt suspiciously like awe.

Ripping off his face covering, Zane Khan leaned down towards her. His blue eyes glittered with temper, shocking Cat to her core.

Why did he look so furious?

The stallion pawed the ground as if mimicking its master’s agitation as he held out a gloved hand. ‘Up. Now.’

She probably should have taken his hand and done as he asked. She hadn’t come to the market intending to anger him. She certainly hadn’t thought he would come to fetch her back—after all, he had been too busy to even speak to her for over a fortnight.

But something inside her snapped at the autocratic command. She was here to do a job; what exactly was his problem with that?

‘I’m not finished. I still have work to do here,’ she said, clasping her hands behind her back.

Zane’s curse was like a missile shot in the afternoon quiet and Cat cringed.

What was she doing? Perhaps she should do as she was told, and discuss this later, in a less public place? But before she’d had a chance to reconsider her position, he swung his leg over the saddle’s pommel and jumped down.