Maisey Yates – Special Deliveries: Heir To His Legacy: Heir to a Desert Legacy (страница 13)
“I do.” He looked back down at the paperwork on his desk. “Shall I ready the private plane to take you back to the States?”
He heard her take a deep breath in. “No, actually, what I was trying to tell you was that six months is no longer enough for me. I need more.”
“What more do you need?” he asked.
“It’s never going to be enough,” she said. “Ever. I thought it would. I thought if I waited, then I would really start to long for the future I always imagined I would have. And I still want it, it’s not that I don’t, it’s just that… it’s not the most important thing anymore, and no matter how hard I try to make it the most important thing, I can’t.”
“What exactly do you mean?” His patience was getting short.
“Aden,” she said, her voice raw. “I don’t know what I’m doing with him, but at this point, I know one thing. I can’t… leave him. Not in six months, not ever. I tried to be rational about it, and tell myself that he’s not my son. Tell myself I’ve worked too hard for too long to compromise my position in graduate school but I…”
“What are you proposing?” he bit out.
“That I stay.”
“For how long?”
“For… for forever?”
“You intend to stay here in the palace—in Attar—forever?”
“It’s not ideal, I grant you that. I’m much more suited to the climate in Portland, and I was going to school there. And I miss trees, dammit. But… but not nearly as much as I’ll miss Aden if I leave. I can’t leave.”
“This is what you want?”
She shook her head, looking down at the floor. “I don’t know what I want anymore. I spent most of my life wanting one thing, and now it just doesn’t mean what it did anymore. Now I don’t know what I want. All I know is what I can live without, and what I can’t.”
“And how is it I’m to explain to the world that Aden’s life-saving nurse can’t bear to leave him?”
“Sounds plausible to me,” she said. “You know how we women are with our emotions, and other nonsense sheikhs just don’t bear.”
“There’s a chance it will cause suspicion and that’s one thing we can’t have.”
“Why?” she asked, weak. Pitiful. She was showing her vulnerability. He could crush her now, emotionally, as easily as he could crush her if he wrapped his fingers around her soft, lily-white throat.
The showing, so artless, so genuine, sent a shock of anxiety through him. Didn’t she know what people could do with such an open expression of emotion? How much power it gave to others? She had just given him a weapon capable of destroying her, one that would enable him to manipulate her into doing whatever he chose.
She had revealed her biggest weakness to a man who had been trained to exploit weakness in others. To use it with ruthless precision. He both rejoiced in it, and feared for her.
Now the decision he had to make was what he would do with it. If anything.
“You know why,” he said, keeping his tone calm, collected. “It’s not just to preserve the memory of Rashid and Tamara, it’s so that Aden’s right to the throne is never contested. DNA testing is fine and good, but can you imagine what the more traditional citizens of my country would think about you carrying the sheikha’s child? If he is perceived to be illegitimate, or the product of something unnatural, then the way they view their future king could be compromised and I will not allow it.”
“Protect the king,” she said. “At all costs.”
“Otherwise the game is lost.”
Chloe took a shaky breath, feeling outside of herself, as if she was above her body somewhere, watching, rather than living in the moment.
“There has to be a way. There has to be…”
“Six months was the agreement, Chloe,” he said, his voice hard. “Anything beyond that cannot be guaranteed.”
“I see.” She heard herself answer, but she wasn’t sure if she spoke the truth. Or how she’d managed to get the words out past the lump in her throat.
“It is not my intention to hurt you, but I have to think of Attar. Of Aden.”
“I am thinking of Aden.”
“In a sense, yes. But I am thinking of his future as a ruler, not of his need to be tucked in at night. I’m thinking of the essential things.”
She wanted to argue that being tucked in at night was essential. At least, she imagined that it was. Her mother had been too caught up in the husband who used and mistreated her to take time for her daughter. And her father… She had started shrinking away from his touch at an early age, her survival instinct screaming that he was a predator who saw those smaller and weaker as prey. She’d retreated into her mind, found comfort there, because there had never been anything physical for her to find comfort in.
But she imagined it could be essential. That it could be wonderful.
“There’s more to life than duty,” she said.
“Not when you’re royalty,
Her stomach clamped down hard. “I don’t want that for him.”
“It is what he was born for.”
“I know.”
“Then you cannot stand in the way of it.” He looked back down at his paperwork, and she could tell by his posture that he was through with her.
She was through with him, too. For now. She wasn’t letting go of the idea. The certainty that she was asking for the right thing by asking to stay with Aden had only grown when he’d refused her. If there was one thing she knew how to do, it was put her head down and soldier on, no matter how hard things were.
No matter how violently the storm raged around her, she knew how to keep herself safe. How to keep herself from going crazy. Even with everything happening in her home growing up she’d gotten perfect grades in school. She’d learned to insulate herself, to go to her mind, to ignore what seemed like impossibilities and find ways to work around them.
The only absolutes were in the scientific world, and she’d made it her business to discover them all. Everything else had room for negotiation.
She turned on her heel and walked out of Sayid’s office. Yes, she was done with him for now. Until she could formulate a plan. And once she did, heaven help the man that thought he could control her, put her in her place as easily as he seemed to think he could.
It had been several hours since his confrontation with Chloe, and Sayid had spent that time going over the news stories that had been written about Aden and the circumstances surrounding his birth. And the stories written about him. The uncertainty, the doubt in his ability to do anything more than use brute force to get results.
Chloe James was hailed as a hero. The woman who had risked the wrath of the remaining royal family in order to ensure the safety of their miracle child.
There was speculation as well of who would be raising the beloved heir. It was rumored, and it was true, that an army of staff and nannies would be on hand to deal with the child. And concern over what sort of influence Sayid would be able to provide. If he would show Aden anything other than the cold stone wall he presented to the media.
He was a symbol of Attar’s strength. Of its unbending attitude to its enemies. And his country knew it. He made such a success of the image that even his own people feared him.
The media wanted a family for their beloved prince. One that would fill the void left by Rashid and Tamara. And one thing they were certain about: Sayid could not fill that void.
Oh, she was no natural mother, anyone could see that. But there was a need there, a fierce protectiveness that was unlike anything he’d ever seen. Even more than that, the nation recognized her as Aden’s savior, and by extension, theirs.
As dark as the loss of Rashid had been, it had been even bleaker still that he was the one left to rule. There were whispers of his incompetence, even throughout the palace. That he was too hard. Too damaged from his years away from the palace, his time as a prisoner of war.
The second son’s duty was to serve the country. Not simply as a soldier, but as the lead military strategist. Second sons were sent away to learn, to cultivate toughness and strength. Second sons could not afford to be treated with softness or affection.
The need for empathy was a necessary trait for a leader, but not for a man of war. A machine of war.
His uncle, the second son of his family, had raised Sayid for most of his life. A man who had seen much war, a man who had lived through things no man should live through. A man who had emerged with his sanity and who had set out to make sure Sayid was strong enough to do the same.
So he had become more than a man. And in so doing he had lost his humanity. Something that didn’t bother him anymore. That required feeling. Feeling he didn’t have.
It had been Kalid who had taken that final weakness, that final bit of tenderness inside of him, and given him reason to cut it out of his chest on his own. It had seemed a cruelty then. Pain beyond measure. But the man had been showing him his own weakness, and showing him why it must not be allowed to remain in him.