The Royal House of Karedes: Two Crowns: The Sheikh's Forbidden Virgin / The Greek Billionaire's Innocent Princess / The Future King's Love-Child

Yet sleep, for now, eluded her. Outside her window the moon hung like a silver sickle in the sky, and the gardens beckoned, fragrant and cool. Kalila thought of stealing out there, wandering along the winding stone paths, but she decided against it. The garden could be explored in the light of day.

Yet she refused to be shut up in her room like a prisoner. Aarif might prefer it, but at this point Kalila was not inclined to make things easier for him.

She checked her appearance in the wide mirror and then softly so as not to disturb—or alert—Juhanah in the next room, she opened the door and tiptoed down the hall.

The palace was quiet, deserted. Kalila remembered Juhanah’s words about it being ‘shut up like a box’ and thought now that was an apt description. Where was everyone? Aarif had brothers and sisters; were they all searching for treasure? Had she really been left alone for nearly two weeks to await her errant groom?

Kalila sighed, then shrugged. She didn’t mind being alone. In fact, considering everything that had happened, she actually preferred it.

Yet right now, in the darkness and the quiet, she felt just a little bit lonely.

She tiptoed gingerly down the main staircase into the front foyer. Even down here everything was quiet and dark. She peeked in a few ornate reception rooms; they all looked formal, unwelcoming. For receiving dignitaries, not for living.

She wandered down another corridor, towards the back of the palace, where the private quarters were more likely to be. It wasn’t until she saw the spill of lamplight from a half-open door that she admitted to herself she hadn’t just been exploring; she’d been looking for Aarif.

And as she peeked round the door she saw she had found him.

He sat in a comfortable, silk-patterned chair, his spectacles perched on his nose, his head bent over a book.

She took a step into the room, but Aarif was too engrossed in whatever he was reading to notice. What weighty tome was he perusing now? Kalila wondered with a wry smile. The current market prices for diamonds? Some boring business text? It wasn’t until she was only a few feet from him that he saw her, and by then she’d read the title of his book, a bubble of laughter rising in her throat and spilling out before she had a chance to suppress it.

‘Agatha Christie?’

Aarif closed the book, a look of guilty irritation flashing across his face. ‘Occasionally I enjoy a respite from the cares of work,’ he said stiffly. ‘And fiction provides it.’

‘Undoubtedly,’ Kalila agreed, smiling. The fact that he read light mysteries made him seem more human, more real. Warm. ‘I like Agatha Christie too. Tell me, do you prefer Poirot or Miss Marple?’

A smile flickered and died, but even that tiny gesture gave Kalila some hope. Hope of what—? She wouldn’t answer that question, but she knew she was glad for whatever link had been forged between them.

‘Poirot, of course,’ Aarif said. Again the smile, like sunlight breaking through the shadows. He paused. ‘And you?’

‘Poirot. I always thought Miss Marple a bit stuffy.’

He chuckled, little more than a breath of sound, and then the smiles died on both of their faces as the silence between them stretched into tension, memories. Aarif glanced away.

‘Is there something I can help you with, Princess?’

‘Are you going to take that tone with me all the time?’ Kalila demanded, and Aarif turned back to her with a cool smile, his eyebrows raised.

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘That indifferent tone, like you don’t know or care about me,’ Kalila snapped, goaded into more honesty than she wished to reveal.

Aarif hesitated. ‘I think, perhaps,’ he said quietly, ‘it is better for both of us. Safer.’

Now it was her turn to challenge him with a cool smile of her own. ‘I think the time for safety has come and gone.’

Aarif’s expression hardened. ‘Perhaps, but just because I made one mistake does not mean I wish to repeat it. I think it is wiser for us to maintain our separate existences in the palace, Kalila. At least until my brother returns.’

Kalila pursed her lips. ‘And what shall I do for the next two weeks?’

For a moment—a second—Aarif looked discomfited. ‘Do…?’ he began, and Kalila cut him off with a sharp laugh.

‘Other than languish in my bedroom, eating bonbons,’ she filled in for him. ‘There’s no one here, Aarif. I’m alone, and I’m sure there are things I should do before my wedding. You told my father there were preparations, it was why I had to leave so suddenly! Yet now I’m supposed to wander this palace like Bluebeard’s bride?’

Aarif’s mouth twitched in an involuntary smile even though the rest of his expression remained obdurate. ‘It is not my job to entertain you.’

‘Isn’t it?’ she challenged. ‘What would your brother say if he knew you were ignoring me? Didn’t he instruct you to take care of me?’

‘He instructed me,’ Aarif bit out, ‘to protect you, and I failed. I prefer not to do so again.’

Kalila took a step back at the savagery of his words, his tone. She’d been enjoying their verbal sparring for a moment, had found a freedom in words. She was restless, edgy, unfulfilled, yet release would not come this way.

‘Where are you brothers and sisters?’ she asked after a moment, and Aarif shrugged.

‘Busy.’

‘Will they return for the wedding?’

‘Undoubtedly.’ He did not sound concerned.

Kalila sank into a chair across from him, gazing blankly around the room, a library she realised distantly, taking in the shelves of leather-spined books, the comfortable chairs. It was a room to curl up, to lose yourself, in, amidst many of the stories housed here.

Her gaze found its way back to Aarif, his face still hard, unyielding, and she felt a stab of wounded disbelief that she’d held this man in her arms, had kissed him, touched him. It seemed so incredible now, as if the entire episode were a dream.

Perhaps it was, or as good as.

‘I didn’t expect it to be like this,’ she confessed quietly.

‘Nor did I,’ Aarif returned, and she thought she heard a current of sorrow in his voice, underneath his carefully neutral tone.

She sighed. ‘Aarif, I know—considering what has happened between us—things are difficult, but couldn’t you at least extend your hand to me these next weeks? I would like to see this island, the city.’ She swallowed, feeling vulnerable and needy and not liking it. ‘I want to know the country where I am to be queen, and I can’t explore it on my own.’

Aarif was silent, but she saw the reluctance in his eyes, in the tightening of his mouth. She knew the battle warring within him: the desire to serve his brother best, and the duty to stay away from her. And perhaps, with that, a desire to spend time with her? To get to know her, the real her, whoever that was?

She wasn’t sure herself; she only knew she’d felt more real and sure and right when she’d been in Aarif’s arms.

‘Yes, I could do that,’ he finally agreed, the reluctance pronounced now, the words drawn slowly out of him. ‘I could take you round Serapolis tomorrow if you like.’

Kalila smiled, suddenly feeling light. It was silly to feel so hopeful, as if he’d given her far more than an unwilling tour of the town, yet she did. She had time with Aarif…only hours, and who knew what could happen?

What did she want to happen?

The question unsettled her, made her uneasy.

You’re thinking you’ve fallen in love with me. Aarif’s warning, an ever present, insistent echo in her heart. She hadn’t, she knew she hadn’t.

But she could.