"Tell me you are joking."
Alim's voice was hard, and not the least bit amused, as it came over the line. But Zaid had expected no less from the man whose job it was to keep him out of situations such as these. To keep him from exposing himself, and his country, to scandal and ridicule.
The sedan slowed, merging onto an off-ramp, up a sloping drive and into the bi-fold mouth of a private hangar. "I am not joking," Zaid said. "We are to be married. As soon as possible. And you are responsible for the planning."
Planning in this sense entailed laying the groundwork for a believable story to feed the press. Timing was crucial, especially if he was going to pass the child off as his own. There would have to be photo-ops, write-ups in all the international news outlets. Anything to lend credence to the idea that their union was legitimate. A whirlwind romance leading up to a royal wedding.
And the eventual birth of an heir.
It wouldn't be hard to concoct such a fabrication. Ever since his enthronement, the media had been nothing but vociferous about their desire to see him settled down. And there had been no shortage of women looking to fill that position. Looking to fill his bed.
But he had learned from his father, from his brother, not to ally himself with those kinds of women, no matter how badly a certain part of his anatomy wanted to.
A heavy silence, far longer than it should have been, stretched across the line.
No doubt Alim was not happy about Zaid's pending nuptials, or the heightened security measures his engagement to Harper would require. But Alim was nothing if not loyal. Whatever reservations he had, he would deal with them privately, say nothing to anyone but Zaid, himself. Zaid was certain.
"Whatever you have to say, do it now, and do it quickly," Zaid said. "This is the only opportunity you will get."
Alim didn't hesitate. "There are other ways to secure the line of succession. Ways that are less complicated than marriage."
Zaid laughed at the distaste in Alim's voice. "And what would you know about marriage?"
"Enough to avoid it at all costs," Alim said. "What do you know about this woman?"
The answer hit Zaid hard and fast, like a shot of stiff liquor. Barely a week had passed since that night at Club Envy, yet already she had become inexplicably familiar. He had memorized her, the sound of her voice and smell of her hair. The high-voltage current that traveled through their touch, the way it had lingered on his skin, buzzed inside him long after he had pulled away from her that first night at the club. It settled like dust on the bottom of his soul, exposing every weakness, dragging him to the brink of sanity.
None of which he could tell Alim. None of which he could tell anyone.
"The decision is made," Zaid said, exiting the sedan. "We will arrive in Gulzar tomorrow morning, by which time I expect you to have a plan in motion."
He ended the call just as the hangar door opened once more, giving entrance to an identical black Town Car. It slowed to a stop, and Harper emerged, her hands clenched around the handle of a tattered blue carry-on. Her well-worn jeans and faded purple sweater looked absurdly out of place beside the gleaming six-figure sedan from which she'd emerged.
Still, Zaid's breath caught when he saw her. Beyond her aged clothing and no-frills ponytail, she was captivatingly beautiful. Her dark, wild eyes shone sharply in the sparsely lit space.
He turned to her security detail. "Were you followed?"
"No, sir."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, sir."
"Good."
To keep the press at bay, they had limited their contact while in Boston. All the necessary arrangements had been worked out through secure channels, including the four decoy sedans that were currently diverting the press away from the hangar housing Zaid's private jet. With any luck, he and Harper would be out of the United States and in Gulzari airspace before they were the wiser.
Zaid dismissed all but those necessary for their flight to Gulzar, and turned his attention to Harper.
"I trust you are well," he said, refusing to greet her as though he had missed her. Weak though he may be, he would not feed that weakness. Would not give her any more power over him. Would not acknowledge it at all if he could help it.
Harper nodded. "As well as can be expected." Zaid slid her a sideways glance, urging her to continue. "My goodbye lunch took an unexpected turn when Kate got plastered and tried to stage an intervention. She's convinced you're going to drag me to Gulzar and keep me there against my will."
"You seem awfully calm for someone soon to be the victim of international kidnapping."
A defiant glint lit up her dark eyes, betraying her attempt at bravado. "I can take care of myself."
The pilot lowered the rear air stairs, and Zaid put a hand to the small of her back, guiding her forward. "Where are the rest of your bags?"
She gestured to her carry-on. "This is it."
He stopped. "These are all of your things?"
"Well, yeah," she said. "There wasn't much left once I excluded scrubs from my wardrobe. And I didn't figure I would be needing those in Gulzar. At least not right away."
Zaid frowned. "I'll arrange to have your wardrobe updated once we get to Gulzar."
"I'm sure there are plenty of people who think that's romantic, but for future reference, I am not one of them."
"Romance was hardly my objective," Zaid said. "There are certain expectations that come with being a royal consort, none of which include sweatpants."
"People don't wear sweatpants in Gulzar?"
"People do. Queens do not."
Reality settled like dense fog in the pit of Harper's stomach. Agreeing to go along with Zaid's plan to legitimize her child had been an uncharacteristically snap judgment. Between work, medical school, and the baby, she'd been too exhausted and stressed to think rationally. It had seemed so pragmatic at the time. The only way to protect her son or daughter, to make something out of her life. It wasn't until the next morning, when she'd been greeted by a laconic Bond-esque security guy standing guard by her front door, that she'd begun to feel the creeping awareness of her decision.
But she felt the full weight of it now. Acutely. An unknown fear that was rivaled only by the frisson of attraction that lingered between she and Zaid. A tension she dared not acknowledge.
And now they were to be married. Man and wife. King and queen. A sobering realization that echoed inside her, leaving feeling hollow.
So unlike how she felt with his hand pressed against the small of her back guiding her towards the plane, the heat of his body seeping into hers.
Much sooner than she would have liked, he pulled away and began tapping a text message into his phone. "I've arranged to have Lunah meet us when we arrive in Gulzar. She will help you."
Harper pursed her lips. "You asked your assistant to take me shopping?"
"Lunah is not my assistant," Zaid said. "She is yours. I hired her to serve in your retinue."
She stared at him for a long moment, unable to make sense of his words. "You did what?"
"I assure you, she's more than qualified. You will meet with the rest of your staff in Gulzar."
"Staff?" Harper gave him a palm-out gesture with her free hand. "I don't need a staff...servants helping me buy clothes, get dressed in the morning...No."
"Lunah is not a servant," Zaid said. "She is an employee. And you need her more than you think."
A strange, uneasy feeling settled over Harper. Anxiety and dread wound tightly in a large ball.
She'd lived half her life on her own. After her mother had gotten sick, Harper had been left with the task of making sure they were both fed and clothed, that they had a roof over their heads. It had become a source of pride for her. Now the responsibility of providing for herself and for her child belonged to Zaid. A prospect she found unnerving, more than she ever thought possible.
She followed him up the narrow clamshell staircase and into the main sitting area, trying hard not to stare.
Zaid's private plane was far more luxurious than anything Harper had experienced. More opulent, even, than any of the luxury homes she'd seen on TV.
A swell of unease wrapped itself around her. She had never been exposed to such wealth, such excess. Traveling via private plane was as foreign and confusing to her as trying to decide which fork to use for the fish course, and she found herself wishing she could forego the extravagance altogether. Employ a more traditional means of transportation. Fly business class, even coach.
Zaid rested his hands on her shoulders. "Looking for an escape route?"
"I–" She stiffened, unsuccessfully shrugging away from him. "No. Of course not."
His hands were firm and warm, her favorite purple sweater the only thing depriving her of skin-on-skin contact.
Not that she cared.
"So...this is it." She stepped away from him, folding her arms over her chest as she casually walked through the space. The design was traditional, decorated in ornately-carved dark wood and smooth leather. She paused, running a hand over one of the seats, taking in the exquisite softness even as uncertainty creased her features. "Where do I sit?"
"Wherever you like," Zaid said. He strode across the cabin, in the direction of the bar. "Would you like a drink?"
"Ginger ale, if you have it" Harper said, choosing a seat near what appeared to be some sort of advanced sound system.
Zaid poured a drink and handed it to her, taking in the softness in her eyes, the exhaustion that plagued them. He had noticed it before, the dark circles that had formed under her eyes, the paleness of her complexion. "I thought the morning sickness was getting better."
"It is. But the fear of flying is as bad as it's ever been."
He took a seat beside her. "Fear of flying indicates an obsession with control."
"There are worse things to be obsessed with."
"Perhaps, but that doesn't make it healthy."
She lifted an eyebrow at him. "You really want to go there, Mr. Abandonment Issues?"
"While I'm sure the two weeks you spent shadowing a psychiatric professional were life-changing, you are hardly qualified to diagnose any of my issues, abandonment or otherwise."
Harper scoffed, sipped her ginger ale. "I'm the product of a deadbeat dad and an alcoholic mother. I don't need three years in some fancy psych fellowship to be able to recognize abandonment issues. I can identify them all by eyesight."
"And I suppose since you are so knowledgeable in these afflictions, you consider yourself immune?"
"Nope. Still afflicted." She pulled a cracker from her bag, broke it apart and popped a piece into her mouth. "Just more...resigned to it by now, I guess. Hence the control issues."
Her tone was flip, almost jovial. But a darker truth lay buried underneath. One he dared not disturb.
Zaid stood, returning to the bar to refill his still quarter-full water glass.
Abandonment issues. Well, she was half right. His father hadn't been around enough for Zaid to feel sufficiently abandoned by him. Bullied by him, tormented by him, physically and emotionally scarred by him...that was another story. But not abandoned. Abandonment would have been a luxury where his father was concerned.
As for his mother, well, he'd done the abandoning there. He'd been the one to leave her behind to suffer at the hands of his abusive father. The fact that she had begged him to go did little to ease his conscience. It was the only moment in his life he felt he needed to atone for, and the only one for which he knew he never could.
The plane began moving down the runway, and Harper tensed, clenching the armrests in a death grip.
Zaid instinctively put his hand on hers, the heat of her skin warming his palm from the inside out. "Relax."
"I am relaxed," she said. "Perfectly relaxed."
"The indentations in the armrest you're gripping tell a different story."
Harper pulled her hand away, opting instead to fold her arms tightly across her chest. "There are a lot of things I'm good at," she said. "Relaxing is not one of them."
"You don't say."
She narrowed her eyes on him. "It's easy for you. You have everything. The only thing I have, the only thing I can depend on, is me. And you want me to give away my control? Do you even know what it is you're asking?" She shook her head. "You wouldn't understand."
"I understand more than you think, rohi."
Harper resisted the urge to ask for a translation, the tension between them assuring her that she didn't want to know the answer. He reached for her again, and this time she didn't shy away.
"You're shaking," he said.
"One of the byproducts of having the crap scared out of you, I imagine."
"You have nothing to worry about. Flying is still the safest way to travel."
But it wasn't the take-off that had sent her heart into overdrive, made her head spin, her stomach twist. Zaid's touch was intoxicating. She wanted to lace her fingers with his, revel in the feel of his touch, the way their hands entwined.
And at the same time, she wanted to pull away, distance herself from him. From the tension that stretched between them, the longing that seemed to lure her away from any and all sensible thought.
She was too old for this. Too old to be taken in by her hormones like some lovesick schoolgirl. Because she was not in love with Zaid. Nor was it conceivable that she ever would be. It was out of the question. Love was not something she did. It wasn't even something she believed existed.
So it seemed pointless to make good on those desires her body so desperately wanted. Not here, not ever. And definitely not with him. Even if it was just sex, she refused to let herself go there. Her engagement to Zaid was complicated enough, what with the political scandal it was sure to induce, not to mention the baby. She wasn't about to muck it up even further by surrendering to her base urges. Surrendering to him.
"You fly a lot, then," she said, keeping with the topic at hand, hoping it would diffuse the situation.
"Yes," Zaid said. "Though not as much now that I am officially installed as King."
"Right. Can't rule a country from five thousand miles away." She trained her eyes on a small speck of lint barely visible on the tan carpet. "But before...before you returned to Gulzar...you traveled a lot?"
"I suppose that depends on your definition of a lot."
"At all," Harper said, feeling oddly as though she needed to apologize, or at the very least, explain. "I've never been out of the country. Except for my medical licensing exams, which hardly count as a vacation, I've never even been out of New England. Don't you get lonely? Homesick?"
"No," Zaid said. "Never."
Harper drew her mouth into a tight line, Zaid's answer leaving her wistful. As a kid, her life had been a personification of Newton's First Law of Motion. Thanks to her mother's inability to hold down a job, they had moved around a lot. Between the eviction notices and deadbeat boyfriends, Harper had scarcely slept under the same roof for more than a few months at a time. There had been some relief once she'd gotten old enough to get a job of her own, but even those funds had sometimes gone inexplicably missing, cashed in for losing scratch-off lotto tickets and bottles of cheap wine.
Money wasn't an issue for Zaid, obviously. But it was evident in the way he spoke of Gulzar that the prospect staying in one place for any length of time made him anxious.
Hardly the reassurance she had been looking for.
Zaid's mobile chirped from where it lay on the small side table. He checked the read out, his expression faltering, illuminating the fine lines around his eyes. He was handsome, for sure. She had noticed it that first night. But observing him up close, she found herself seeing things that didn't show through on the surface. Behind the perfectly sculpted bone structure and male model-esque genes, he was also intelligent and disciplined, caring and compassionate.
All things that made her want to run away, as far and as fast as she could.
"Alim has finalized our itinerary," Zaid said.
"That was fast."
"I asked him to make it a top priority. Matthias didn't make the best impression on the people of Gulzar. The position of the monarchy is now tenuous at best, which is why it's imperative I stabilize the line of succession. And why we must do everything we can to ensure the press, the people, believe our marriage is legitimate."
He gave her a lingering look that she had seen way too many times growing up. One that was usually followed by a plea to not screw things up this time.
She threw up her hands. "Hey, I'm here, aren't I? I showed up. I got on the plane."
"Yes. You did. But it won't be enough to go through the motions," he said. "You are soon to be my wife, my queen. If anything should happen to me, you would share regency with Alim over Gulzar, until the child comes of age."
A war of conflicting emotion played out in Harper's mind. She'd known all along that by accepting Zaid's offer, she was accepting the roles of wife and queen. But until now, she'd thought of them as largely peripheral. Personas she could slip in and out of at will, the same way one slipped on a wedding ring, a tiara. But Zaid's expectation of her went beyond appearances. He intended for her to be his queen, his wife, in every sense of the word.
All the moisture in her throat evaporated, turned to dust. "I don't know anything about ruling a country," she said. "I'm not even sure I can find Gulzar on a map."
"You will learn," Zaid said. "Alim has arranged for all of your necessary training. You will be briefed in history, politics, economics, culture, public relations...whatever you need to help you endear yourself to my people, to the media before the press conference next week."
She stared at her hands. "I didn't realize I would be talking to the media so soon. Public relations isn't really my thing."
Though that was foolish on her part, now that she thought about it. While Gulzar wasn't experiencing nearly the tourism boom as some other, more notable Middle Eastern countries, Zaid was still royalty, and his presence didn't often go unnoticed. Neither would hers once when news broke of their engagement.
"You won't be talking to anyone at first," Zaid said. "Not until you've had sufficient public relations and media training. We'll start with a press release announcing our engagement, then arrange for a few photo-ops. Alim is working on the details now."
Harper nodded, numbly, her expression laced with panic.
The same panic that Zaid had experienced himself, long ago, when the pressure of being his father's son had become too much for him.
Only there had been no one to save him from his father, no one to protect his mother, to rescue her from the confines of the home that had become her prison.
No one to set things right again.
He couldn't take away Harper's fears, her anxieties about her new life. But he could spare her the pain of having those fears realized. Provide her with a home, a family.
If she would let him.
Zaid set his attention on the flat screen TV on the far wall, currently displaying their flight statistics. "We've reached our cruising altitude," he said. "You're welcome to move around the cabin."
"I think I'll stay right here, thanks."
"It's a twelve hour flight to Gulzar. And there will likely be press waiting for us on the tarmac. You should get some sleep. The bedroom is at the end of the hall."
Harper shot a curious glance toward the rear of the cabin. "You have a bedroom? On your plane?"
Zaid slid a mischievous look at her. "I do," he said. "Would you like me to show you?"
"Absolutely not."
But unmistakably, her cheeks had tinged, lending much-needed color to her dull pallor. And he had only just used his words. Had only teased her, not touched or tasted her. The thought ricocheted in his mind, how else he could make her body react. What it would take to make her sweat. Make her squirm. Make her beg. Moan. Cry out for him.
He allowed his gaze to linger, tracing her features. The soft angles of her face, the intensity of her eyes and gentle pout of her mouth. He wanted to taste her there, wanted to press his mouth to hers, to kiss her in such a way that there could be no doubting his desire.
And then, as he allowed her to catch her breath, he would rid her of that silly purple sweater, of every stitch of clothing that dared separate her body from his, and savor the rest of her, too. Her neck, her breasts, working his way down her body until he'd reached the apex of her thighs.
"Why are you looking at me like that?" Harper's voice caught him off-guard. Soft and breathy, and unimaginably erotic. The pink tinge to her cheeks was now a full-on flush, her eyes liquid and dark. No doubt reading into every illicit fantasy he'd just played out in his imagination.
It had never been his intention that their marriage be anything more than a facade, a way to secure the line of succession. But there was no denying their attraction to one another. A complication he hadn't anticipated, but one solved easily enough.
He inhaled a deep breath, hoping that if he could control his breathing, he might also be able to control his blood flow, ensure it went to his brain and not to a less desirable place. "I was just thinking, it's a shame to have a bedroom on a plane and not use it."
Her eyes widened, her mouth popping open. Which did little to encourage proper neurological circulation.
"I...I..." Harper stammered. Then, collecting herself, she looked away. "Just because you're–"
She trailed off, searching for the right word.
"Your future husband?" Zaid offered.
"--rich, doesn't mean I'm in obligated to put your frustrations regarding your...unused bedroom at ease." She faced him once more. "As I recall, you also have an emergency exit on this plane. And you don't seem at all broken up about not using that."
"You equate being sucked out of an airplane at ten thousand feet with sleeping with me?"
"Not at all," Harper said coolly. "Being sucked out of an airplane would be preferable to sleeping with you."
She stood, and Zaid rose with her, catching her by the wrist as she walked by, an attempt to abate her frenetic energy. She tensed, her eyes widening in shock at the gesture, then relaxed. Her body reacted, her posture softening, leaning into him.
He wanted to pull her to him and hold her close, to rest his head on hers and rid her of the nervous energy that kept bleeding out of her.
Instead, he let her go.
"Sleep, rohi," he said. "There will be plenty of time to enjoy each other's company later."