Crowned For The Sheikh's Baby: Crowned for the Sheikh's Baby

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

Tamsyn shrugged. ‘You’re the one who was always so good. Who never put a foot wrong.’

Hannah didn’t answer, just stared up into her sister’s bewildered face. It was true. She’d been the model child. The peacemaker. The quiet one who had learnt that saying as little as possible and pretending the bad stuff wasn’t happening was the best way for things to get back to normal. Whatever normal was. But this was one situation where pretending it wasn’t happening wasn’t going to work.

‘So who’s the daddy, Hannah?’ continued Tamsyn. ‘I didn’t even realise you were in a relationship.’

Because she wasn’t in a relationship, that was why. Hannah leaned back in the armchair and closed her eyes, not wanting to betray her fear, knowing that sooner or later she was going to have to come clean. To say the words out loud. Because words would make it real. They would confirm what up until now had just been a nagging fear.

She was pregnant.

She was carrying the desert King’s child beneath her thundering heart.

Her mind took her back to that crazy night when Kulal had laid her down on that narrow single bed, his black eyes full of intent as he had run a careless thumb over her thrusting nipple. What had happened next had seemed inevitable—but that wasn’t really true. She could have stopped him. He’d given her every opportunity to do so, but she had just carried on regardless. She had broken every rule in the book—and she wasn’t just thinking about the Granchester’s strict policy of not fraternising with guests. Hadn’t she clung onto her virginity as if it was something very precious? Hadn’t it been a big deal for her, having seen what the fallout from casual sex could be? While most women her age seemed content to be free with their bodies, Hannah had been the opposite—as prim as a woman from a different age.

And she had surrendered all that innocence to a man who had simply taken it as his due! Who afterwards had looked at the ceiling with a reflective look on his hawk-like features.

‘I’ve never done it in such a narrow bed before,’ he had observed thoughtfully, his fingers sliding between her thighs and easing them apart. ‘I think it adds a certain something.’

But even that arrogant boast hadn’t been enough to kill her hunger for him. Instead, she had just turned to him with silent invitation in her eyes and he’d done it to her all over again. And again. She remembered the intensity of feelings which had seemed to explode inside her, like a bomb which been waiting a long time to be detonated. Was that why she had responded like someone she didn’t really know—showing a side of herself she hadn’t realised existed? Like a wildcat, she thought guiltily. Like...

She remembered what he’d said, just before the first time.

‘You want this, Hannah?’

‘Yes.’

‘And so do I. But it’s one night only—do you understand? Not just because I am a king and you a chambermaid, and our positions in life are so incompatible. The truth is that I’ve just come out of a relationship and I’m not looking for another one. If you want more than that, I cannot give it to you and I’ll walk out of this room right now and leave you alone, no matter how hard I might find it.’

But Hannah had been powerless to resist him. How could she have resisted him when just looking into those gleaming black eyes had made her want to melt?

‘One night is fine with me,’ she had whispered back.

‘So who’s the daddy?’ repeated Tamsyn, cutting impatiently into Hannah’s uncomfortable thoughts.

And that was when Hannah realised that the tables were turned for the first time in their lives. That Tamsyn, for all her wildness, had never presented with a problem as big as this. A problem which seemed insurmountable. Which had made her thoughts spin with increasing desperation, ever since she’d first seen that blue line on the pregnancy test.

‘You won’t be able to keep it a secret for ever, you know.’ Tamsyn poured boiling water into the teapot before looking up. ‘Is it that bloke who works in the accounts department—the one you got off with at the Christmas party?’

Hannah shuddered. No way. That particular encounter had ended humiliatingly when he’d shoved his hand up her jumper and she’d jumped away and told him she didn’t want sex in the stationery cupboard, and he had sneered and told her she was fat and frigid.

She certainly hadn’t jumped away in horror when Kulal had touched her, had she?

But she knew Tamsyn was right. She couldn’t keep it a secret. She had no right to do that. And wasn’t the truth of it that if she disregarded her thoughtless and stupid behaviour... She swallowed again. If she thought about the reality rather than the repercussions—then she couldn’t deny the unexpected sense of excitement which was bubbling away inside her. She was going to have a baby and she would love and protect that baby with all her heart, just as she’d done for her little sister—no matter what obstacles lay ahead.

‘His name is Kulal.’ For the first time since she’d lain in his arms she said his name out loud and even as she uttered it, she thought how bizarre it was that her very first lover should have been the influential desert King.

‘Nice name,’ said Tamsyn approvingly. ‘What’s he like?’

And here it was—in all its unvarnished and frankly unbelievable truth.

‘He’s...well, he’s very powerful and dynamic.’

‘Really?’

She heard the doubt in Tamsyn’s voice which she couldn’t quite disguise and, for the first time in her life, Hannah wasn’t sure how to respond. Because she had always been the one who came armed with words of wisdom. Words to soothe and comfort. There hadn’t been a single bad situation during their growing up which she hadn’t felt equipped to deal with.

Until now.

Had she been guilty of thinking she was so clever—so invulnerable—that she would never find herself in a situation like this? Well, here was reality—about to teach her the hardest lesson of all.

‘He’s a sheikh,’ she said.

Tamsyn screwed up her face. ‘What are you talking about?’

Hannah swallowed. ‘The father of my baby. He’s a...’ She cleared her throat because not only did it sound unbelievable—it also sounded slightly grandiose. ‘A desert king,’ she finished quietly.

She could see that Tamsyn was trying not to laugh, but then the gravity of the situation must have hit her and the smile was wiped from her sister’s wide mouth. ‘This is no joking matter,’ she said crossly.

‘I’m not joking—he is a desert king.’

‘Hannah.’ Tamsyn glared. ‘You’re not experienced. You don’t realise what men are like. They say all kinds of things when they’re trying to get a woman to—’

‘He is!’ declared Hannah, with an uncharacteristic burst of fervour because usually, she trod carefully where Tamsyn was concerned. ‘He’s called Sheikh Kulal Al Diya and he’s the King of Zahristan.’

‘Good...grief.’ There was a pause and then, the tea-making forgotten, Tamsyn slumped against the sink, her eyes wide. ‘Not...not the one in the papers who was described as—’

‘One of the world’s most eligible bachelors?’ supplied Hannah. ‘Yes, that’s him.’

‘But...how? I mean, how?’

The question was well-meant, but it hurt. Because Tamsyn’s incredulity said a lot. It said: how could someone like Kulal have possibly become involved with a woman like her? Yet Hannah was in no position to criticise her sister’s disbelief, when she felt pretty much that way herself.

‘He needed a partner to take to a fancy party.’

‘And he chose you?’

Hannah drew her shoulders back and spoke to Tamsyn with uncharacteristic coolness. ‘Yes, he did. I was working for him.’

‘As a chambermaid?’

‘As a chambermaid,’ Hannah agreed tightly. ‘I was assigned to work solely for him. Sometimes we used to chat about stuff. We got on quite...well.’

Tamsyn gave a raucous laugh. ‘I’ll say. So you went off to a party with him and...?’

‘I’m not going to spell it out for you, Tamsyn—it’s pretty obvious what happened.’

Tamsyn looked momentarily surprised—as if this new and rather bolshie sister, who usually trod so carefully, was taking a little getting used to. She nodded. ‘So what are you planning to do?’