Sheikh's Desert Desire: Carrying the Sheikh's Heir

“And this is how you behave when you don’t get your way?”

Her gaze didn’t waver. In fact, he thought it flickered with anger. Or maybe it was fear. That gave him pause. She had no reason to fear him. Daria would be ashamed of him for scaring this woman.

He tried to look unperturbed. He didn’t think it was working based on the way her throat moved as he stared back at her.

“In fact, I realize that we can’t always have our way,” she said primly. “But this is my first time as a prisoner, and I thought perhaps the rules were different. So I decided to do something about it.”

Rashid blinked. “Prisoner?” He spread his hands to encompass the room. It was plush and comfortable and feminine. He remembered it from when he was a child, but he’d not entered these quarters in many years. They hadn’t changed much, he decided. “I’ve been in exclusive hotels that lacked accommodations this fine. You think this is a prison?”

A small shard of guilt pricked him even as he spoke. His rooms with Kadir had been opulent, too, and he’d always thought of them as a cage from which he couldn’t wait to escape. Beautiful surroundings did not make a person happy. He knew that better than most.

And she looked decidedly unhappy. “Even the cheapest hotels tend to have televisions. And computers, radios, telephones. There are plenty of books here, I’ll grant you that—but I can’t read them because they aren’t in English.”

Rashid’s brows drew down. He turned and looked around the room. And realized that she was correct. There was no television, no computer, nothing but furniture and fabric and walls. When the women left, they’d taken their belongings with them. Clearly, they’d considered the electronics to be theirs, too.

“I will have that corrected.”

“Which part, Rashid?”

He nearly startled at the sound of his name on her lips. He hadn’t forgotten that he’d told her she could call him by name, but he somehow hadn’t expected it here and now. Her voice was soft, her accent buttery and sweet.

He suddenly wanted her to speak again, to say his name so he could marvel at how it sounded when she did. Deliciously foreign. Soft.

He shoved away such ridiculous thoughts. “I will have a television installed. And a computer. Whatever you need for your comfort.”

“But I am still a prisoner.”

He clenched his jaw. “You are not a prisoner. You are my guest. Your every comfort is assured.”

“And what if I want to talk to people? Have things to do besides watch television all day? I’m a businesswoman, Rashid. I don’t sit around my home and do nothing all day.”

“I will find a companion for you.”

She sighed heavily. And then she went back to dabbing the cuts on the back of her hand. His anger flared hot again.

“You could have hurt yourself far worse than you did,” he growled. “Did you even consider the baby when you behaved so foolishly?”

Her head snapped up, guilt flashing in her gaze. “I’ve already admitted it was a mistake. And yes, I considered what I was doing before I acted. But I didn’t expect the glass to shatter everywhere like that. I threw the tray from a distance, but I guess I threw it harder than I thought.”

She’d thrown the tray. At the window. She could have been seriously hurt, the foolish woman. But she sat there looking contrite and dejected—and yes, defiant, too—and he wanted to shake her. And tell her he was sorry.

Now where had that come from? He had nothing to apologize for.

Don’t I?

He had brought her to Kyr against her will, but what choice did he have? She could be pregnant with his child. Until he knew for certain, he was not about to let her stay in America, living alone and working. What if something happened? What if her store was robbed or someone broke into her apartment?

He’d seen how flimsy her door locks were. Oh, she thought they were state-of-the-art, no doubt, but he’d hired some of the best lock pickers in existence when he’d been building his business from scratch. He’d wanted to test his security, and he knew how easily locks could be breached.

If someone wanted to get to her, they could. And if it became known that she might carry an heir to the throne of Kyr? He shuddered to think of it.

“You will not do anything so foolish again, Miss Sloane.”

“I don’t intend to—but I also don’t want a companion. I want my freedom to come and go from this room, to talk to whomever I want to. And I want to talk to you from time to time. If there’s a baby, then I want to know its father as something more than an arrogant stranger. And if there isn’t, then I’ll go home and forget I ever met you.”

Rashid stood stiffly and stared down at her sitting there like some sort of tiny potentate. She had nerve, this woman. But it was absolutely out of the question. He wanted nothing to do with her. If she was pregnant, he’d deal with it when the time came—he could hardly think the word wife—but for now she was safely stowed away and he could go about business and forget she existed.

“You may come and go if that is what you wish. But you will have a servant to guide you, and you will do what you are told. You will not wear that clothing, Miss Sloane. You will dress as a Kyrian woman and you will be respectful.”

Her chin lifted again. “I am always respectful of those who are respectful of me. But I refuse to be swathed head to toe in black robes—”

His anger was swift as he cut her off. “Once more, you make dangerous assumptions about us. I will send a seamstress to you and you may choose your own colors. This is nonnegotiable.”

Her mouth flattened for the barest moment. And then her lips were lush and pink again as she nibbled the bottom one. “And am I to see you, too? Have conversations with you that aren’t about what I’m wearing or where I plan to live?”

He almost said yes. The word hovered on his tongue and he bit it back. Shock coursed through him at that near slip. Why would he want to spend any time with her? Why would he ever do such a thing? It was not in him. It was not what he did, regardless that he’d thought of that kiss for half the night during the flight home. He’d told himself it had simply been too long since he’d been with a woman and that was why he kept thinking about it.

But this woman was not the one he was going to break his fast with. That road was fraught with too many dangers. Too many complications.

“I think that is unnecessary,” he said curtly. “I have a kingdom to run and very little time.”

“I think it is necessary.” Her voice was soft and filled with a hurt he didn’t understand.

He refused to let her get to him. She was a stranger, a vessel who might be carrying his child. He did not care for her. He would not care for her.

“Yet this, too, is nonnegotiable,” he told her before turning and striding from the room.

CHAPTER FIVE (#ueec0312f-d437-581c-a9ee-84c6e712effb)

SHERIDAN DIDN’T KNOW why it hurt so much to watch him walk out, but it did. She didn’t care about him at all—she actively disliked him, in fact—but his rejection stung. She might be carrying his child and he didn’t even care about who she was as a person. He didn’t want to know her, and he didn’t seem to want her to know him.

She didn’t move when the workmen came back inside to continue cleaning the glass, or when Fatima—the woman who’d brought her food and had returned after Sheridan broke the window—came over and took the cloth from her to wipe the remaining cuts. They were small, but they stung.

Oh, she’d been so stupid. So emotional. She’d behaved crazily—but it had worked because he’d come. And he’d promised her a small measure of freedom. That had to be a triumph. Fatima dabbed some ointment on her cuts, and then disappeared into the bathroom to put everything away.

How had it come to this? Sheridan was a nice person. She was friendly to everyone, she loved talking to people and she’d never met anyone she didn’t like. Until yesterday when Rashid al-Hassan had shown up, she hadn’t even thought it was possible to dislike someone.

There were people she got mad at, certainly. She got mad at Annie for not being stronger, but that only made her feel guilty. Annie hadn’t had all the advantages that Sheridan had—she wasn’t as outgoing, she hadn’t been popular, she didn’t know how to talk to people and make friends and now she couldn’t even have a baby—so it was wrong of Sheridan to get angry with her. Sheridan could hear her mother’s answer when she’d been a teen complaining that it wasn’t fair she had to stay home from the party because her friends hadn’t invited Annie, too.

Annie’s not like you, Sheri. We have to be gentle with her. We have to watch out for her.

Not for the first time, Sheridan wondered if maybe Annie would be tougher if everyone in her life hadn’t coddled her. If she’d had to stand up for herself, make her own friends, fight her own battles.

Sheridan clenched her hand into a fist and sat there as still as a statue for what seemed the longest time. Even now, she felt like she should be calling Annie to ask how she was instead of worrying about her own situation.

She looked up to see yet more men arriving in her room. They chattered in fast, musical Arabic, dragging out measuring tapes and writing things down on paper. Then they disappeared.

Everything transpired quickly and efficiently over the next couple of hours. Sheridan didn’t see the new glass going in because by that time she was in her bedchamber—seriously, it was a chamber, not a bedroom—with three seamstresses, several bolts of fabric and ready-made samples hanging from a portable rack. A young woman who spoke English had come along to translate.