by Leslie North
Nina’s eyes searched his. She pushed herself upright and ran a hand through her hair. It didn’t matter that she’d been sleeping. The way those sandy waves fell over her shoulders struck him as sheer perfection.
“What would you think about going out? You haven’t been here in a long time. Are there any restaurants you’ve been missing? A favorite place, maybe?”
Her gentle prompting was a string tugging at the center of his ribs. Why did he feel like she was opening some far-off door? She’d never been here, as far as he knew, and yet it seemed like Nina was reminding him of what he loved about Damarah. He hadn’t thought about it in those terms—in terms of loving a place for what it was—in years, if ever. He opened his mouth to say no.
“Al Sarab.” The name took him by surprise. It would be easier and safer to stay in the palace, but even saying the words had his mouth watering. Al Sarab. His favorite restaurant. It had been his favorite for as long as he could remember. “If I could go anywhere in Damarah, that’s where I’d go.”
“That sounds great.” Nina swung her legs over the side of the bed and stretched. “I’ll be ready to go in a couple of minutes.”
A competing impulse pulled at him, wanting him to stay put, wanting him to stay behind the palace walls. But he couldn’t start thinking that way now. There wouldn’t always be palace walls—not after his contract in Damarah was over. And he wanted to eat at Al Sarab.
Nina sauntered toward the bathroom, hips swaying, and Matek bit back the urge to scoop her up and haul her back to bed. Instead, he fired off a rapid series of texts. At least six members of his security team would need to be there ahead of time. Matek was news now, and if he wanted to avoid being swarmed...
“How do I look?” Nina winked at him from the bathroom door. She’d changed into a flowing dress that rippled off the lines of her body. She was a vision. “Good enough to go to your favorite restaurant?”
“Good enough to go anywhere.”
Matek sat with his back against the wall at his favorite table at his favorite restaurant in the country. No—the world. If it weren’t for the paparazzi outside, he could be right back in his childhood again, sitting across from his grandfather. Before he’d been separated from his mother for training. Before he’d been taught to keep his mind on his job and his heart suspicious. Before he’d had to look for threats everywhere.
He could see no threats now.
“You’re smiling,” Nina said. “What are you remembering?” She smiled back at him, cheeks pink. They’d been sharing a plate of warm flatbread, and Nina perked up with every bite.
“Being here with my grandfather,” he said. The words came easily. The truth came easily, more now than ever before. “When I was very young, he used to bring me here.” A thousand conversations rushed through his brain in a whispered hum. “It was good.”
“The food?”
“My childhood.” He looked into her blue eyes and saw a fresh understanding reflected back at him. “It was better than some people can dream of. But...” The next thought came up from the depths of his soul. “It’s not what I want for our baby.”
“I understand that.” Nina took his hand and squeezed it. “I didn’t grow up in a royal household, but it was close.”
She’d hinted at this on a few of their dates, but those times had been about passion and bedsheets and drinks, not the mundane details of the past. “What is your family like?”
“Too big.” Nina looked him straight in the eye. “Too rich. So much money, so little feeling.” The corners of her mouth turned down.
“How many people make a family too large?” His own family was a sprawling group, taking up most of the palace.
“I’m the youngest of eight siblings.” Nina pursed her lips. “They all had their own ideas about what it meant to use my parents’ wealth. I chose another path. I wanted—” Her small, fleeting smile twisted his heart. “I wanted someone to see me.”
Matek couldn’t quite square what she was saying with his own reality. He was the second son, so the expectations were different. He had no doubt his family saw him. Whether they saw him how he wanted to be seen was another story. But how could Nina have gone overlooked in a family without any royal obligations? He opened his mouth to ask but closed it again. That was in the past. They needed to focus on the future. And the future...he was starting to see that it could include his own family. Yes, they needed to focus more on their security, and yes, there was work to be done when it came to their national policy and media presence. But in the end, they were his family.
And with the family set to grow, perhaps he didn’t want to leave Damarah when the contract was up.
They worked their way through dinner—kebabs that tasted so good he could have ordered them twice more—and Matek dropped his napkin onto the table. “Let’s go back to the palace.”
Nina leaned back in her chair and ran a hand over her belly. It was still flat—no sign of the baby yet—but the motion made him want to surround her with a phalanx of security until they were back inside palace walls. He put an arm around her shoulders and hustled her out onto the sidewalk, moving quickly toward the SUV.
“Oooh, wait.” Nina stopped and sniffed the air. “It’s so warm out, and—what is that delicious smell?”
He took a big breath and smelled it too—chocolate and pastry coming from a bakery down the street. “We should get back.”
“Let’s go see what they have.” Nina tugged on his hand. “We’ll stop at that ice cream shop, too. It’ll be a dessert tour.”
She looked so excited by the idea that he heard himself saying, “All right.”
He kept her close while they wandered down the street to the ice cream shop, where Nina bought the smallest available serving of a rich chocolate ice cream that made her moan when it hit her tongue. Want surged through him, new and fresh and ancient all at the same time. “This is so good,” she said. “How’s yours?”
Matek’s was vanilla with pecans, sweeter than he usually allowed himself. “Almost as sweet as you,” he told her, and Nina’s face lit up.
“You’re pretty sweet yourself,” she said as they strolled to the bakery, her eyes glowing in the lights from the shop windows. “I’m surprised you’d do something so spontaneous.”
“I’m skilled enough at protecting people to make it all right. This once,” he insisted. “We can’t make a habit of this, you know.” They passed a narrow alley that had been home to a tiny, manicured garden for as long as Matek could remember. “My grandfather and I used to sit there after dinner. He was so proud of the way the city cared for these spaces.” And to his surprise, pride flared in Matek’s mind, all wrapped up with love and a certain homesickness that hit him even though he was home again. It stole his breath.
“Are you Nina Frank?” The voice coming from behind them was high and excited and too close. Matek moved on instinct. He put his body between Nina and whoever it was before he had time to register that it was a teenage boy, rocking onto his heels with excitement. “You’re the nanny from Hamari, aren’t you?”
A growl rose in Matek’s throat, but Nina’s hand on his arm brought him back down. “It’s okay,” she said softly. “Yes, I am. Who are you?”
“My name’s Zaim, and I just wanted to say that you’re inspiring.” The boy shoved his hands into his pockets. “I’m studying to work with children. Going into university next year, and then I’ll get my master’s, just like you did.”
Matek had known that Nina had a graduate degree, but distantly.
“I’m so happy to hear that,” Nina said. She stood straight and tall, not leaning in toward the young man. She kept an even smile on her face. And that smile had a regal quality to it, something he couldn’t quite describe but could identify in a heartbeat. “It was a pleasure to meet you. We have to be going now.” She nodded to Zaim and turned away, kind but firm, and the security team fell back into place around them. They tightened the boundary and all of them headed back to the S
UV, abandoning their path to the bakery.
Regal. Nina had fit right in. How many surprises did she have up her sleeve? Matek was torn between a grin and a frown. He’d find out soon enough.
9
Nina tipped her head back and laughed, the light streaming in the cafe window catching in the sandy waves. “You did not send back all that food.”
“I did,” Matek admitted, laughing along with her. “It was my first experience with rock salt. I was too young to know any better.”
“I can picture it.” Nina leaned forward and covered her mouth with her napkin, eyes shining above the fabric. “I can just picture a five-year-old you discovering rock salt for the first time. I’m almost sorry I missed it.”
“I’m certain I’d seen it before, but it never made an impression on my mind until that moment.” Matek sighed, satisfied and happy. They’d lingered over lunch in the cafe, exchanging stories about growing up in Connecticut and Damarah respectively. Every day for the past week, Nina had caught him at some point during the day with another suggestion. All of her suggestions had to do with restaurants and food, and he couldn’t explain it. Sometimes her morning sickness was so powerful she didn’t get out of bed in the morning, but by afternoon there she was, ready to eat with him.
And Matek couldn’t argue with her plans. Nina relished all the food they shared, and he learned more and more about her. How she’d gone to high school overseas, where she’d met Kishon. How she’d fallen in with the sheikh during the time her parents were ambassadors to Hamari. How she got the call to interview for the nanny job and dropped everything.
The more she laughed and ate and lowered her voice to tell him stories, the more stories he wanted to hear. And Nina was an endless well of them. She’d worked as a nanny in college and regaled him with tales about the children she’d cared for. “I was so young then. I took it seriously, but I still made mistakes.” She leaned her chin thoughtfully on her hand. “Hopefully it’ll all translate to being a great mom.”
“You’re worried about being a parent?” He side-eyed her across the table. “I’m the one with no experience.”
“No experience? I don't believe it. The palace is full of children. Have you really been gone that long?”
“I have,” he confirmed. “I’ve spent the last several years in Hamari. When I left, there weren’t nearly so many toddlers in the family wing.”
Nina considered him. “Are you nervous?”
“Who wouldn’t be a little nervous?” He flashed her what he hoped was his most winning smile. “I’m a quick learner. When the baby is born, I’ll figure everything out.”
His phone buzzed in his pocket. Matek took it out and glanced at the screen, then looked harder. A series of text alerts had come in. The new security system for the palace had arrived.
“Dessert?” Nina was perusing the menu when he put his phone down again. “Any favorites?”
Stay with her. The little voice inside his head was persuasive enough that at first he didn’t think to argue with it. It would be so easy to put off the installation. He could just sit here with Nina in a charming restaurant. The system would be there when he was ready.
The smile fell away from his face as the aftershock hit him. What was he thinking? He couldn’t put off security upgrades—badly needed security upgrades, no less—because he wanted to sit here and drink her in. That could never happen. Emotions couldn’t get in the way of safety. Not now, not ever.
“Not today.” He stood up and tossed some money onto the table between them. “We have to get back.”
Nina was on her feet in an instant, brow furrowed. “What’s wrong?”
“What’s right is more like it. The new security system’s here. It’s time to bring the palace into this century.”
Matek spent the rest of the day and part of the night installing the new, top-of-the-line system himself. HIs father came by more than once to ask him if he was sure he needed to be this hands-on. Matek paused in the middle of tightening the screws on one of the many cameras that would keep watch over the palace. “If I’m not hands-on, someone will take advantage,” he said pointedly. His father shrugged and left. Matek would have to do something about his father’s lack of concern.
But not today.
Today, with the light of morning beating down the door to the control room, it was time to test the system. Matek watched morning at the palace play out on his bank of screens. As staff settled into their routines and family emerged more lazily into the day, he stretched and sipped his coffee. A cold shower while Nina slept deeply in his bed hadn’t been enough to shake all the tiredness from his system, but he could focus anyway.
This was not a job for a guard who would get lax, who would let things slip by him because he wasn’t paying attention. By the time Nina came out of their room at ten, he was beginning to sense where the cameras needed to be adjusted.
They followed her as she made her way through the halls. The light caught in her hair, and she glowed in the full-color relay from the camera. He reached out and brushed a fingertip against the screen. Matek had the powerful urge to be beside her. Then he could ask her what she was smiling about. If he knew that, he could replicate that smile again and again.
The system picked her up again in the private dining room that the women of the family liked to use as a communal home base. He had installed a camera high up in one corner of the room. His sister Devra had pushed for it when he announced that he’d be coming through every wing of the palace to install and adjust the system. She wanted it there in case. She’d said this darkly, as if she were remembering an old story of a child taken from the plain sight of several mothers and aunts. Matek didn’t question it. Maybe she was.
On the screen directly in front of him, Nina greeted the other women in the dining room. She swayed gently from foot to foot as they spoke, but before long she had turned away from the clutch of women and knelt down next to one of the children playing on the floor. They were drawn to her as strongly as Matek was—it was obvious, even without the sound on. One by one, they brought her toys or took her hand to coax her into playing some game or another with her. At one point she had them all sitting in a circle and playing a clapping game together. He wished painfully that he could hear what she was singing. Watching her was a distraction he shouldn’t allow himself.
Matek tore his attention away from the dining room and checked the cameras through the rest of the palace. There was the kitchen crew, cutting and paring and boiling for the day’s meals. There was his father, pacing slowly down the hall in front of his study. Jaleel was in his private tennis court, nestled near the back palace wall. He was engrossed in his game. Jaleel had only shrugged and nodded when Matek told him about the new system. Was he the only one who thought about these things? Probably.
He swiveled methodically back across the screens, scanning each one for people and their movements. Matek took out his phone and tapped out a note to himself—the camera at the intersection of the main hall and the private wing needed to be angled slightly differently.
Nina laughed with her merry band of companions, and a sharp twist of jealousy corkscrewed around his ribs. She’d clearly been spending a lot of time with the children—they were familiar with her in a way he hadn’t expected.
He had to stop lingering on the dining room. Matek began his virtual rounds again. At some point, he’d have to train someone else to take this over. But now the reach of the cameras pulsed through him like his own blood. He examined each one of the screens in front of him again and again.
Which was how he lost track of Nina.
One minute she was there, beaming in the dining room, playing with the children. His own heart warmed. She looked genuinely happy, there on the screen. That made him happy.
But the next time he looked back at the dining room camera, she wasn’t there. The women were still there. They congregated around the dining table. The children played with the toys. But where was Nina?
&
nbsp; He forced himself to stay in his seat and look at every camera in turn. Nothing was out of the ordinary, but where was she? He took out his phone to text her. Somewhere in the palace, no doubt. His own team would have told him if she’d gone out. Matek started at the beginning. Screen to screen. She was nowhere in the halls.
Matek pushed his chair back from the desk. Behind him, one of the men who would watch over the cameras straightened up. “Sheikh Matek?”
The list of things to do to have the system fully online was still packed with items. For one thing, he needed to test the different features of each of the cameras to make sure they were all functioning correctly. But not today.
“I’m taking the rest of the day off.” The man’s eyes widened in shock. Matek gave him a bracing pat on the shoulder. “Anything seems off, text me directly. If it doesn’t, I’ll be back in the morning.”
“I’m on it.” With a determined set to his jaw, the man slid into Matek’s seat.
The rest of his list would have to wait. His blood was superheated with the need to be with Nina, right now, right now. The fluttering pulse at his temples wasn’t because he thought she was unsafe. No, the men he’d brought with him from Hamari—and the men he’d hand selected in Damarah—wouldn’t let that happen.
Matek moved swiftly through the palace. There was one area he hadn’t installed cameras in: the private wing. Except for one, at the end of the wing closest to the palace entrance. He could only demand so much change from his family, and installing cameras in what were essentially private homes wasn’t going to happen anytime soon.
He pushed open the door to his rooms. Something different was in the air. “Perfect timing.” Nina rushed out from the hall that led to the master bedroom, cheeks pink and eyes bright. “I thought you might stay with your new security system all day. Or leave it too early. You came at just the right time.”