by Leslie North
“I don’t. My mother is from the States—she lives there now, in fact, so she’s not here to help me with—” Aisha waved her hand between the two of them. “The search, or the selection. We talk pretty regularly, so she’s heard all about how it’s gone so far.” She stopped by a bench nestled close to the gap between two palm trees. On the other side of the trees, the creek burbled quietly, flowing down into a cool pond. She could picture herself sitting here, her husband’s arm wrapped around her shoulders. It could be Nadim, a soft voice said in the back of her mind, but she brushed it away like a buzzing insect. It could not be Nadim. He’d said so himself.
He came to stand beside her, the two of them looking out together at the glimmer of the water through the trees. After a moment he moved around the bench and took a seat. Aisha’s heart pounded with a strange, heady mix of suspicion and recognition. Had he read her mind? Impossible. Nadim folded his hands and leaned forward, his body still. The other men who had visited hadn’t bothered to stop and look at the park, which Aisha was still very proud of. She loved this place. It felt like a living connection to her father and to success at the same time. She’d been able to make the park a reality. She’d make her husband a reality, too.
She sat next to Nadim, leaving plenty of space between them. He didn’t turn his head, only kept looking out at the landscaping.
“You put a lot of thought into this.” His eyes did turn to her then, dark and impressed. “It’s obvious from how well all the elements go together. This is a wonderful place to sit and think.”
“I did,” she said, sounding a little surprised, even to herself. “I wanted all kinds of people to be able to enjoy the space. Almost everyone needs to use a bench from time to time.”
Nadim’s voice dropped, soft and contemplative. “Both of my brothers got married in a rush.” The hairs on the backs of her arms stood on end. He was confessing something, letting her in on something private. It changed the air around them. Charged it. “Maybe I’m taking a risk by telling you the truth, but it’s because my middle brother Yaseen—he got his girlfriend pregnant. And he couldn’t marry her until my oldest brother got married. That’s the law in Raihan. So Zayid found himself a wife.” Nadim shook his head. “It turned out well for them in the end. They’re very much in love. But it was one wedding after another, in a big hurry to satisfy the law.”
So, exactly her situation.
“After those rushed marriages, my parents want me to do something more traditional.”
“I have a timeline, too.”
“Yes.” His eyes met hers, searching. “To take the throne—I know. My parents would consider that much more of a traditional situation than either of my brothers. A marriage between royals, for royal purposes? What could be better?” He laughed ruefully. “They’re hoping a wedding comes from this. But I’m not in a hurry to settle down. I have so much I want to do.”
He was being real with her, raw. She could tell.
“Like what?”
Nadim’s face softened, and he looked back out over the water. The warm evening air caressed her skin, filling the space between them with something alive and hopeful. The palm trees and the flowers hummed with the lives of errant insects, and Aisha felt like her lungs were full, then overfull. Too much air, too much breath. They were alone, utterly alone—their security teams had been instructed to keep their distance around the perimeter of the park for a bit of privacy. She couldn’t see any of their shadows from here. It was like they were the only two people in the world.
Nadim reached out and took her hand. He took it easily, as if they’d held hands a hundred times before, and rubbed the pad of his thumb over her knuckles. His eyes met hers again with an electric buzz that raced down to meet the place where their hands joined. She should pull away, slip her hand delicately away from his and pretend it had never happened. But she didn’t. Aisha couldn’t bring herself to let go. It had been so long since someone touched her this way. Since anyone, other than Sanaa, touched her at all.
He raised his other hand to her cheek, and an expression flashed into his face, startling her. Sadness. It looked almost like sadness, though she couldn’t picture the easygoing Nadim as being sad about any of this. Could he really feel that way?
Nadim stroked her cheek, the gesture so soft and gentle that her heart broke. Aisha held her breath, afraid to move. She didn’t want to give herself away and didn’t want to shatter the moment into a hundred pieces.
“I have to figure that out before I do anything else,” Nadim said, that same note of sadness in his voice.
His eyes lingered on her face, and for a wrenching heartbeat Aisha thought he might lean in and kiss her. Then she’d have to put a stop to things. She’d have to stand up, push him away, keep her head held high. She could not let the playboy from Raihan make her another notch on his belt. Not for anything.
But Nadim dropped his hands to his lap and took a deep breath. Then he stood, the movement graceful and strong. How could he be so handsome, so built, that even standing up was a work of art? He reached down and offered her his hand.
“I’m sure we should be getting back,” he said.
She put her hand lightly in his, barely using it to get to her feet.
“Yes,” she agreed, and they went back to the path, heading back to the entrance where the SUV waited to whisk them to the villa, where they would sleep in separate rooms. If she could fall asleep tonight. “It’s time we moved on.”
4
They rolled into the city of Basik and up to another royal villa—it could have been the sister to the first one and looked like it had been built by the same hands—in the late morning. Nadim got out of the car and stretched, watching Aisha repeat the same routine with the staff from this house. She knew all their names, kept up on all the goings-on of their lives, and asked at least one question of each of them.
She was very good at being the sultana.
And beautiful, too.
He shook hands with the butler and the cook, hardly registering their names after the long quiet of the car ride from Liddah. Aisha had stared out the window with a thoughtful look on her face. She’d said very little. And everything he thought to say sounded ridiculous, even in his head. Small talk was something of Nadim’s specialty. He had no problem approaching women at various bars and parties around the world. But alone in the car with Aisha, he couldn’t think of anything to say. Not with the memories from the previous night rushing through his head like the sound of the creek.
He thought of the curl of her fingers in his and the moonlight in her hair. He thought of how it had felt to touch the soft skin of her cheek. For one breathless instant, he had considered kissing her. But he hadn’t. He’d spent the ride to Basik regretting it. When he finally pushed aside the regret, he’d moved on to shoving his attraction for Aisha down where he could safely ignore it.
Once again, he found himself sitting across from her on the villa terrace, this time for brunch. The table was laden with fruit, pastries, and yogurt. Aisha filled her plate with a rainbow of fruits and a cinnamon roll.
“May I ask you a question?”
Her dark eyes flicked up to his, eyebrows perking up. “About what?”
“Do you dislike yogurt?”
Her eyes opened wider, and she cocked her head to the side. He knew that look. She was debating the answer.
Nadim raised both hands in the air, then pressed one to his chest. “I, for one, love yogurt. But I noticed that at the brunch in Liddah, you only ate a tiny amount, and now you’ve pushed it toward the center of the table.”
“I detest yogurt.” Aisha looked at him across the table, wearing a solemn expression. “Honestly, I can’t stand it. But I took a little at brunch so as not to offend anyone.” Her hands had frozen above her plate.
He laughed, and her face relaxed. “Not liking yogurt isn’t a crime. I only wondered.”
“Maybe detesting yogurt is a crime. I don’t know every local law in the country,
” she said primly. “But I’ll remain polite. If you give away my secret to anyone, I’ll have to feed you to the wolves.”
“Oh, you wouldn’t hurt a fly. I’ve seen you with your staff. You’re the kindest, gentlest sultana there ever was.” The realization washed over him: he knew something about her. After only a few days together, he knew her a little. He knew her more and more every minute, it seemed. Aside from his brothers, he’d never paid much attention to other people. And aside from very few of his friends over the years, he’d never been so...easy with another person. If he were ready to settle down, he would choose Aisha.
But he wasn’t ready. He repeated it to himself again for good measure. He was not ready to get married.
After brunch they got back into the SUV and rode to the fortress of Basik. The fortress sat high on a hill above the city at the end of a long and winding drive that must have mimicked how people had to approach the fortress centuries before. It wouldn’t be an easy walk up to the massive gates in the front. Today, the gates stood open, and the black SUV deposited them at the center of a courtyard. Nadim was perhaps more excited than he should have been. These tours didn’t offer the adrenaline rush of a party on a private yacht or a sultry connection with a woman at a bar, but he had a fondness for them all the same.
A uniformed tour guide greeted them stiffly at the doors to the medieval fortress. Sweat beaded on the man’s forehead in the heat of the day. After their greetings, he launched into his prepared speech for the tour. They were off and running in a matter of minutes.
“This fortress was manned at all hours,” the tour guide told them, leading them into the building and up a set of stairs to where the watchmen would pace back and forth, ready to fire their weapons through crenellations in the outer walls. “They were prepared for everything, even unexpected sieges. The guards themselves, and the inhabitants of the fortress, could escape through these hidden trap doors.” He indicated one with his foot. Nadim could almost imagine it—an advancing army, torches blazing at night, and the hurried rush to get to safety.
Together, he and Aisha followed the guide around, looking at original doorways designed so that only one person could go in and out at a time. “To prevent ambushes,” said the tour guide. They saw underground tunnels that led back into the city. Finally, the tour guide brought them back to what would have been the great hall. He looked eminently relieved. “If you’d like to take a walk up to the lookout by yourself, you’re more than welcome.”
Aisha caught his eye, and he was surprised to see that she looked excited at the prospect. Hadn’t she visited this fortress before, with the other suitors at least, if not many times throughout her life?
“Let’s go,” she prompted, and the two of them went to the staircase leading to the lookout point.
It was narrow and ancient and smelled dusty, though Nadim knew it would have been cleaned in advance of their arrival. They had to climb single file. And that was very nearly the death of Nadim. Aisha climbed ahead of him, her hips swaying with every step. Try as he might, he couldn’t take his eyes off her. The movement of her hips seemed sinful and sweet all at once. He wanted to put his palms on the sides of her hips and feel it for himself. The old Nadim would have welcomed that kind of desire. He’d have tried to capitalize on the situation.
Now? He didn’t breathe a word of it. Don’t look, he commanded himself, though the stairs were angled in such a way that avoiding the sight hurt his neck. So be it. He’d rather have a sore neck than drive himself wild looking at her. It wouldn’t do either of them any good, in the end. He needed to walk away from the tour without any attachments, and so did she. She needed to be able to move on to the next prospect without looking back.
They reached the top of the stairs and burst out into the golden afternoon sunlight. Aisha’s loose locks caught the light like a spray of jewels, and he stifled a gasp, then climbed out behind her.
The view from the lookout—at the very top of an ancient tower, on the corner of the fortress—was breathtaking. The city of Basik sprawled out below them, and the countryside went on for miles and miles, blending eventually into the desert. It would have been an even more incredible sight back when the fortress was originally constructed. The buildings below looked small to him now, but they would have looked even smaller to a medieval watchman—smaller and farther apart, because the city had grown in leaps and bounds around the fortress. His heart thrummed with an echo of that same protective instinct.
But it wasn’t necessarily the fortress or the city Nadim wanted to protect. Up here, alone with her, Nadim was taken by another, more astonishing view. Aisha in the sunlight. Her hair whipped around her face in the breeze. She turned her head as if it tickled her skin, and she gathered up the long locks behind her. From out of nowhere she produced an elastic hair tie and twisted her hair into an elegant bun. Raising her arms had the effect of nudging the neckline of her dress so that his attention was drawn to her breasts. He forced himself to look away, but then she moved again, and the motion drew him back in.
She tipped her head back and smiled, the sun kissing her cheeks. When she opened her eyes again, the light danced in them, playful and relaxed. Now he saw why she’d wanted to climb these stairs. She belonged up here—a queen surveying her kingdom in the bright light of day.
“The views never cease to amaze me.” She took in one deep breath after another as if she could drink the sun out of the air. “No matter how many times I come up here...” Aisha shook her head. “It never gets old. I’m never less...stunned.”
“The views are gorgeous indeed.”
Aisha looked at him, tendrils of hair already escaping from the bun. Even her hairpins were no match for the wind. Her eyes glinted with amusement.
“You’re not looking at the countryside, Nadim.” The words were loud enough to be heard over the wind, but soft enough to stoke a flame that already burned at the base of his gut. Desire. It was desire and lust and a pulsing want.
“No.” He took a step closer, the wind tugging him into position. “I’m looking at you.”
Aisha’s face lit up, brighter than the sun had ever been, and something snapped inside of him—a gate flying open. The wind rushed in his ears along with the sound of his own heartbeat. They were high above the city, alone in the windswept beauty of the moment.
Nadim leaned in for a kiss.
Faintly, in the far reaches of his mind, a voice called out for him to stop, that it wasn’t a good idea, that he would regret it, no, no—
But he dismissed the voice.
His lips brushed hers.
It was hardly a kiss. Barely a kiss. Their lips made a light, glancing contact. He felt the heat of her breath against the cool of the wind.
The warning got louder, like a courtier rushing into the great hall to sound the alarm. Danger, it cried. Danger, danger, danger!
Nadim stepped back at the same time Aisha did, her cheeks pink, eyes shining, biting her lip. The wind whipped between them, and he had the distinct sensation that the breeze now attempted to pull them apart instead of pushing them together. It was utter nonsense, but it felt real enough. He took a big breath in and tried to get a hold on himself. Kissing her. What had he been thinking? He knew, more than anyone else, how quickly a kiss could complicate matters. Even the whisper of a kiss.
“I can’t—” She ran a hand over her hair, hope chasing surprise through her eyes. “The country has to come first.”
“I can’t,” he echoed. Aisha was right. Her duty to her country had to come before everything else. She needed a political alliance, not a romance. And he could not get involved with a woman—even a woman like Aisha—before he’d found his true calling.
5
The home of Haya Hedayat perched at the edge of a wide square in the center of Basik, and the noise from the square spilled in through the open front doors along with the morning breeze. People called to each other on the sidewalk, a vendor hawked fruit and drinks, and traffic rumbled throug
h at a leisurely pace.
Aisha hugged Haya, the widow who owned the house. She’d been fostering orphaned and neglected children since her own young adulthood. Haya didn’t have any children with her husband, but through the years, she’d become the de facto children’s social services provider in the small town. The elderly woman hugged Aisha back with a strong grip. She still fostered children when the need arose but was otherwise retired. She’d put decades into the community. Aisha wished the country had a hundred more of Haya.
“It’s so lovely to see you.” Haya took a step back and put her hands on Aisha’s face. “You didn’t have to pay a visit. Your letters make me happy enough.”
“This place is important to me. You’re important to me.” The two women had bonded years before at an event Aisha’s father had hosted for the pillars of the community. Since Aisha’s mother had gone back to the States, she thought more about women like Haya. It gave her a stronger sense of family. Of belonging. “How are things? You haven’t taken any children in, have you?”
Haya’s eyes crinkled. “Don’t you think you’d better introduce me to your companion first?”
Aisha’s face heated. “Of course, of course.” It was a rare slip in protocol. She’d relaxed, walking into Haya’s house, and completely forgotten herself. “This is Sheikh Nadim of Raihan.”
Haya gave him a sly grin as she shook his hand. “It’s a true pleasure to meet you, son.” She reached up and felt his biceps. “You’ll have to forgive an old woman—I wanted to be sure you were as strong as you looked.”
“There must be a better way to test my strength,” Nadim joked. “Do you have any heavy boxes for me to lift? I could do it slowly, so you’d have the best view.”