# Heir to a Dark Inheritance

Maisey Yates

They say that Alik Vasin’s heart is carved from the hardest diamond and the coldest ice…Alik is powerful, ruthless, and incapable of love. But when he discovers he has a daughter nothing will stop him from claiming the child as his own. Jada Patel will do whatever it takes to keep little Leena in her life – even if it means a convenient marriage. Though there can never be a future between them, resisting the powerful Alik is impossible.Jada thinks she’s known desire but, catapulted into Alik’s glittering world, she discovers an allconsuming, intoxicating passion that can melt even the coldest of hearts.‘Such intense characters, Maisey Yates just gets better and better for me.’ – Susan, 33, Marketing

He felt as if something was going to burst inside him. As if he was suddenly aware that there was a dam inside him—a great stone wall holding back the potential for torrential destruction.

And he had to stop it. Had to shore it up with something. Something simple. Something he understood. He stood, his hand shaking, his heart thundering.

Jada looked at Alik and froze. She realized in that moment what it was like to be a gazelle, stalked by a predator. Except she wasn’t going to run. She didn’t know why, only that she wouldn’t.

Alik was looking at her as if he wanted her. More than wanted. As if he needed her. There was something dark and deadly in his eyes now. Something desperate. And she liked it, responded to it. It was different than the flat nothingness she usually saw there, different than that blasted false, shallow front he usually put on.

In that moment, as his eyes met hers, everything fell away. Her present, her past. There was nothing but Alik, nothing but the intense, terrible ache he made her feel.

This was frightening. This was real. And it was enticing. A black flame dancing in front of her. So beautiful she couldn’t look away, so dangerous she knew she had to. But she wouldn’t.

Instead she reached out her hand and prepared to touch the fire.

## SECRET HEIRS. OF POWERFUL MEN

Their command is about to be challenged!

Sheikh Sayid al Kadar and Alik Vasin

might not be related by blood, but these

brothers-in-arms forged an unbreakable bond

in the line of duty.

They’ve fought for their countries,

for their lives, but has that readied their hearts

for what could be the biggest battle of them all…?

HEIR TO A DESERT LEGACY April 2013

Sheikh Sayid discovers that his brother

is survived by a son, and he’ll do anything to

recover the true heir to the throne. Even if it means

taking on the child’s aunt; she’s like a lioness

who insists on fighting him every step of the way!

HEIR TO A DARK INHERITANCE May 2013

When Alik’s wayward past comes back to haunt him,

he’ll ensure that his young daughter will grow up

with a childhood nothing like his own.

But one woman is standing in his way,

and there may be only one solution…to marry her!

## About the Author

MAISEY YATES was an avid Mills & Boon® Modern™ Romance reader before she began to write them. She still can’t quite believe she’s lucky enough to get to create her very own sexy alpha heroes and feisty heroines. Seeing her name on one of those lovely covers is a dream come true.

Maisey lives with her handsome, wonderful, diaper-changing husband and three small children across the street from her extremely supportive parents and the home she grew up in, in the wilds of Southern Oregon, USA. She enjoys the contrast of living in a place where you might wake up to find a bear on your back porch and then heading into the home office to write stories that take place in exotic urban locales.

Recent titles by the same author:

HEIR TO A DESERT LEGACY

(Secret Heirs of Powerful Men) HER LITTLE WHITE LIE AT HIS MAJESTY’S COMMAND (The Call of Duty) A GAME OF VOWS

Did you know these are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk

## Heir to a. Dark Inheritance. Maisey Yates


www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Jackie Ashenden,

my writing lifeline and lover of my dark heroes.

Thank you for always encouraging me.

## PROLOGUE

ALIK VASIN DOWNED the last of the vodka in his glass and waited for the buzz to make it to his brain. Nothing. It was going to take a lot more alcohol tonight. To have some fun. To feel something.

Either that, or it was going to take a woman. And since that was next on his agenda, he figured he might as well skip the alcohol.

Alik pushed away from the bar and wove through the crush of bodies on the dance floor. The music was so loud there, the bass so heavy he could feel it in his blood. There would be no way to have a conversation with anyone in here. Which was fine by him. He wasn’t looking for a talk.

It didn’t take long for him to spot a woman who wasn’t looking to talk, either.

He approached the blonde skirting the edges of the dance floor. She smiled. Ah yes, he’d found the evening’s entertainment. No doubt about it.

He moved closer and she extended her hand, her fingers brushing his chest. Forward. He liked that. She might even be the kind who wouldn’t want to wait to get to the hotel room.

His pocket buzzed and he reached inside and wrapped his hand around his phone. In his experience, women didn’t like being thrown over for a phone call, but if his checking it chased her off, another one would come along in just a few moments. If he didn’t want to go to bed alone tonight, he wouldn’t.

He took the phone from his pocket and saw a number he didn’t recognize. Anyone who managed to contact him from a number he didn’t know was important.

He held his finger up, an indicator he wanted the woman to wait. She might. She might not. He didn’t really care.

He answered the call just before pushing the door open and put the phone up to his ear as he stepped out onto a crowded street in downtown Brussels. A group of women walked by and offered him inviting looks. He might keep an eye out for which club they went to, rather than going back to the blonde waiting for him inside.

He put the phone up to his ear. “Vasin.”

And suddenly the cobblestones didn’t feel so steady under his feet. He had to wonder if the vodka had finally started working. If it was the cause of the buildings appearing to close in around him. Of the tightness in his chest. If it was making him hear things. If he was imagining what the woman on the other end of the line was saying.

But no. He wasn’t. Yes, he was Alik Vasin. Yes, he had been in that region of the United States more than a year earlier.

He stood still for a moment, waited for the earth to right itself beneath his feet. Everything fell away in pieces. The clubs. The women. And he could no longer remember why he was there, on a dark street in Brussels.

There was only the phone call.

Adrenaline shot through his veins. The jolt he’d been missing all night. He would not freeze up. He was not that kind of man. He acted.

Alik hung up and stuffed his hands in his pockets, walking quickly away from the club, his steps heavy and loud on the cobblestone. He had to get to the airport. Had to get to a lab so he could get confirmation.

He took his phone out of his pocket, searching for Sayid’s number. His friend would know what to say. Would know what to tell him.

Because it wasn’t the vodka. It was just the truth. He knew it, deep in his bones.

He was a father.

## CHAPTER ONE

“DID YOU REALLY THINK you could keep my child from me?”

Jada stopped on the courthouse steps, the hair on her arms standing on end, the back of her neck prickling with cold sweat. It was the voice of her most dreaded nightmare. A voice she’d never heard before outside of her dreams, and yet she knew that it was him.

Alik Vasin.

A stranger. The man with the power to come in and rip the beating heart from her chest if he chose to do so. The man with the power to devastate her life.

The father of her daughter.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jada said, inching up the stairs that led to the courthouse. But she knew. She absolutely knew, and apparently he did, too.

“You had the court date changed.”

“I had to change it,” she said, defiant, confident in her lie. It didn’t feel wrong, or even like a lie, not when she’d told it to protect her child. Jada had spent her life behaving, following the rules, but there were no rules for this situation. There was no right, no wrong. There was only need. The need to keep Leena with her.

“And you thought that since I had to travel halfway around the world on short notice, I would be forced to miss it. Too bad for you I have a private jet.”

He didn’t look like the kind of man who owned a private jet. He didn’t look like a man ready for a court hearing. He was wearing low-slung jeans, held onto his lean hips with a thick belt. He had a rumpled button-up shirt on that somehow looked all the better for being wrinkled, the sleeves pushed up past his elbows, revealing muscular forearms. And aviator sunglasses. Like he was some sort of rock star or something.

He turned his hand and adjusted the buckle on his watch, revealing a dark tattoo, an anchor, on the underside of his wrist. She wondered, briefly, how much something like that had hurt. She wondered what it said about him. He was danger personified, and just looking at him made a shiver course through her body.

On the plus side, his blatant lack of regard for convention made her feel more and more confident about her chances. She’d had Leena in her custody for a year, after all. And this man, her father, had no claim on her beyond the genetic.

Blood was certainly thicker than water, but dirty diapers trumped blood. And she had changed more than her share of those over the past year.

He looked at his watch. “Looks like I’ve made it with time to spare. I’ll be back in a moment.”

“Don’t rush,” Jada said. She took a seat in one of the chairs that lined the door outside of the family courtroom. She wished she could hold Leena right now, but Leena was with the social worker. Jada’s arms felt empty. She picked her purse up from the floor, her phone out of one of the pockets, opened an app and played it mindlessly. She just needed to keep her hands busy. And her mind vacant.

“Good. I didn’t miss anything.”

She looked up and a swear word rushed out of her mouth. He looked…it wasn’t fair how he looked. He was in a black suit, open at the collar, everything fitted perfectly to his well-muscled physique. The dark fabric poured over him like liquid, flowing with his movements, revealing strength, power. He looked like the sort of man who got what he wanted with the snap of a finger. The kind of man who had women falling at his feet with a glance.

He’d gone from rumpled traveler to James Flipping Bond in ten seconds flat.

Although, Bond was always fighting the Russians, so maybe he was more of a Bond villain.

“I see you decided to dress for the occasion,” she said.

He’d removed the sunglasses, and for the first time she could see his eyes. They were somewhere between blue and gray, like the sea during a storm.

“It seemed the thing to do,” he said, his lips quirking up into a smile. He seemed entirely unruffled, as if the outcome of this didn’t matter to him at all. It meant everything to her. This, Leena, was her entire life. All she had left.

“It seemed the thing to do? Well, I suppose it’s good that going out for Chinese food didn’t seem the thing to do at the moment instead. Is that all she is to you? Just…is this just an experiment for you? Why did you even bother to show up?”

“She’s my daughter,” he said, his tone betraying no emotion, no concern. Just stating a fact. “That means I must claim responsibility for her.”

“Responsibility? Is that what she is to you?”

She caught a hint of steel in his eyes. “She’s my blood. Not yours.”

Jada snorted and crossed her arms beneath her breasts. “I’ve only raised her from the time she was born. What do I matter?” She didn’t know where this strength was coming from. She only knew she had it, and she had to use it. There was no one standing behind her. No one on her side. No one but herself.

“I didn’t know about her,” he said.

“Because her mother thought you were dead. And why did she think that? Did you tell her you were going off on some secret mission? That’s the sort of thing a man like you might say to get a woman into bed.”

“If I told her that, it was true,” he said.

She blinked. “If? You don’t remember?”

He shrugged. “Not specifically.”

And then her brain caught up with the rest of his claim. “And you were on a mission of some kind?”

“How old is the child?”

Jada blinked. “You don’t know?”

“I know nothing about this,” he said. “I got a phone call while I was in Brussels, telling me that if I didn’t come and claim a child I didn’t know I had by a certain date, I would lose my rights to her forever. Then I went and got testing done to confirm that I am in fact the father, and I am, just so you know. Then yesterday I got a letter saying my parental rights would be terminated and she would be adopted to someone else if I failed to come to a hearing that had been moved to today.”

“She’s one. She just had her birthday.” Just the two of them in Jada’s little house, on the same street where she’d lived for eight years. “Where were you a little over a year and a half ago?”

His mouth twitched. “Near here. I was in Portland seeing to some business.”

She put her hands on her hips. “Ah. Business.”

“I can’t talk about the exact nature of it.”

Disgust filled her. He was the sort of man she’d been blessed never to have had any interaction with. She’d married too young and her husband had been completely decent. She didn’t think men like this, men who bed-hopped with zero discrimination, were real outside of terrible movies. “I can guess. I’ve been caring for the results of that business.”

One brow shot upward. “Just an added bonus to my trip. I’m not a sex tourist.”

Jada blinked, heat rushing into her cheeks. “You are direct, aren’t you?”

“And you are prickly. And extremely judgmental.”

And not accustomed to people who were so comfortable talking about their bad behavior. He seemed to wear it like a badge of honor. “You’re here to take my child from me—what reaction did you want me to have to you?”

He looked at their surroundings. They were the only two people in the antechamber. “I didn’t anticipate being stuck in the lobby with you, I have to say.”

“And yet you are. Answer me this…what does a man who travels the world, doing Lord knows what, want with a baby? Do you have a wife?” She hoped not, all things considered.

“No.”

“Other children?”

“Not as far as I know,” he said, a smile that could only be described as naughty curving his lips. “Clearly these things can surprise you.”

“Not most people, Mr. Vasin,” she bit out. “So, why do you want her?”

It was a good question. One Alik didn’t know the answer to. All he knew was that if he turned and walked away, if he never met her, never made sure she was cared for, if he left her to fight her way through life as he’d had to do, then there would officially be no hell hot enough for him.

Forgetting about the phone call had crossed his mind. Not making it to the hearing had crossed his mind. But with each thought had come a twinge in his chest, a brand on a conscience he hadn’t known he’d possessed.

He didn’t particularly want her. But no matter what, he found he couldn’t leave, either.

He gave the only answer he had. “Because she is mine.”

“Hardly a good reason.”

“Why do you want her so badly, Ms. Patel?” he asked, returning her formality. “She is not your child, no matter how you feel.”

“Is that so? Blood relation, even to a stranger, is more important than the care that’s been given? Is that how you see it?”

Alik looked down at the woman in front of him, all fire and passion. Beautiful, and if it was any other situation, his thoughts might have turned to seduction. Black, glossy hair, golden skin and honey-colored eyes, combined with a petite and perfect figure, made her a very tempting package.

Though, at the moment she was also a dangerous one. She was tiny, barely reaching the middle of his chest and yet she did not fear him. She seemed ready to physically attack him if need be.

Not in the way he would like, he imagined.

“It is not an emotional matter,” he said. “It is black-and-white in my eyes. I am her father. You are not her mother.”

She drew back, a cobra preparing to strike. “How dare you?”

“Mr. Vasin? Ms. Patel?” A small woman in a black jacket and slacks opened the door and poked her head out. “We’re ready for you both.”

As Mr. Vasin is here and clearly of sound mind, and, having submitted to a paternity test, has proven to be the father, we have no reason not to release his child into his custody.

Jada replayed the last ten minutes of the hearing in her mind, over and over again. The judge was sorry, the caseworkers regretful. But there was simply no reason why Leena shouldn’t be with her father. Her billionaire father, as it turned out, which she knew had bearing on the ruling regardless of what anyone said.

How could it not? Jada was a housewife with no spouse to support her. Her only source of income came from her late husband’s life insurance settlement and as generous as it was, it wasn’t a billion dollars.

That, combined with the irrefutable proof of his paternity, when it was made clear that he had been wronged, the victim of a misunderstanding, had meant Jada hadn’t had a case. Not in anyone else’s mind. In hers, she had the only case that mattered. But no one else cared.

And now, Leena was with this Alik Vasin, in a private room so the two of them could get to know each other. Have an introduction. They couldn’t let Jada take Leena with her. She was a flight risk. Another thing everyone was very regretful about.

Jada leaned against the wall in the empty hallway and gasped for breath. No matter how much air she took in she was still suffocating. Her chest was locked tight, and she tried to breathe in, but her lungs wouldn’t expand. She wondered if her heart had stopped beating, too.

Her knees shook, gave way, and she slid down the wall, sitting with her legs drawn up to her chest, not caring that she was in a skirt, not caring if anyone saw. She hated that this feeling was so familiar. That it slipped back on as easy as an old pair of jeans. Shock. Grief. Loss.

Losing Sunil had been hard enough. Unfair. Unexpected. No one planned to be a widow at twenty-five. Coming to terms with it, with being alone, when she’d leaned on her parents, and then her husband, for all of her life, had been the hardest thing she’d ever gone through. She was still going through it.

Losing Leena on top of it…it wasn’t fair. How much was one person expected to lose? How long before she was simply gutted, left empty, with nothing and no one to care for her? No one to care for. And then what was she supposed to do with herself?

Her shoulders shook and a sob worked its way up her throat, her body shuddering with the force of it. People were walking by, trying not to stare at her as she dissolved, utterly and completely, in the hall of the courthouse.

And she didn’t care. What did it matter if a bunch of strangers thought she was losing her mind? She might very well be. And if they felt uncomfortable being in the presence of her grief, she didn’t care. It was nothing compared to trying to live inside her body. Nothing compared to contending with the pain she was dealing with.

“Ms. Patel.” That voice again.

She looked up from her position on the floor, and saw the man, the man who had taken her baby from her. There was only one thing that stopped her from going for his throat. Only one thing stopping her from opening her purse, finding her mace and unleashing her fury on those stormy gray eyes.

Leena.

He was holding a squirming Leena in his arms. And she was squirming to try to get to Jada. She could only stare at her daughter for a moment, hungry to take in every detail. To remember every bit of her.

Jada scrambled to her feet and extended her arms. Leena leaned away from Alik’s body, and he had no choice but to deposit the fussing, wiggling child into her arms.

Jada clung to her daughter, and Leena clung to her. Jada closed her eyes and pressed her face into her daughter’s silky brown hair, inhaled her scent. Lavender shampoo and that sweet, wonderful smell unique to babies.

She didn’t feel like she was drowning now. She could breathe again, her heart finding its rhythm.

“Mama!” Leena’s exclamation, so filled with joy and relief. And Jada broke to pieces inside.

“It’s okay,” she whispered, more for her benefit than her daughter’s. “It’s okay.” And she knew she lied. But she needed the lie like air and she wouldn’t deny herself.

“She does not like me,” Alik said, his voice frayed. For the first time since she’d seen him, he was betraying his own discomfort with the situation.

“You’re a stranger,” she said.

“I’m her father.” He said it as if a one-year-old child cared about genetics.

“She doesn’t care if you’re related to her or not. Not in the least. I am her mother as far as she’s concerned. The only mother she knows.”

“We need to talk.”

“What about?”

“About this,” he said, his voice slightly ragged, a bit of that smooth charm of his finally slipping. “About what we need to do.”

She didn’t know what he meant, but she knew that right now she was holding Leena, so the rest didn’t matter.

“Where?” she asked.

“My car. It is fitted with a car seat.”

“Okay,” she said. Going with him should feel strange; after all, she didn’t know the man. But the court had found no reason he couldn’t be a fit father. That meant they were going to send her baby off with this man, by herself. So she was hardly going to hesitate over getting in his car with him, all things considered.

She swallowed hard. There was no one else to do this. She was the final authority here, the only one who could change things. And she would take every second with Leena she could get.

She followed him out of the courthouse and down the steps. He pulled out his phone and spoke into it. She wasn’t sure what language he was speaking. It wasn’t Russian, English or Hindi, that much she knew. A man of many talents, it seemed.

A moment later a black limousine pulled up against the curb and Alik leaned over, opening the back door. “Why don’t you get her settled.”

She complied mutely, putting Leena, who was starting to nod off after her traumatic afternoon, into the seat and then climbing in and sitting in the spot next to hers. She hadn’t wanted to take any chances that he might drive off while she was rounding the car. Paranoid, maybe, but there was no such thing as too paranoid in a situation like this.

She was momentarily awed by the luxuriousness of the car. She’d ridden in a limo after her wedding, but it hadn’t been anywhere near this nice. The seats lined the interior of the limo, leaving the middle open. There was a cooler with champagne in it.

That made her bristle. Had he been planning on celebrating his victory over champagne? A toast to stealing her child away? She wanted to hit him. To hurt him. Give him a taste of what she was dealing with.

“What is it you wanted to speak to me about?” she asked, her voice sharper than she intended.

He closed the door behind him and settled into place. “Drink?”

“No. No drink. What is it you wanted to talk about?”

“How did you meet the child’s mother?”

“Leena,” she bit out. “Her name is Leena.”

“What sort of name is that?”

“Hindi. She’s named for my mother.”

“She should have a Russian name. I’m Russian.”

“And I’m Indian, and she’s my daughter. And really, aren’t you some kind of arrogant, thinking you can come and just take my child away from her home, away from her mother and then, on top of it all rename her?”

His dark brows shot upward. “I will not rename her. It is not a bad name.”

“Thank you,” she said, cursing her own good manners. She shouldn’t be thanking him. She should be macing him.

“Now,” he said, straightening, his posture stiff, like he was about to start a business meeting, “how did you meet Leena’s mother?”

“Just…through an adoption agency. She told me the baby’s father was dead and that she couldn’t possibly raise the child on her own. It was a semi-open adoption. She was able to choose the person she wanted to take her. It wasn’t easy for her.” She remembered the way the other woman had looked after giving birth, when she’d handed Leena to Jada. She’d looked so tired. So sad. But also relieved. “But it was right for her.”

“And the adoption?”

“Normally they’re finalized within six months of placement. In Oregon the birth mother can’t sign the papers until after the birth, which makes it all take a bit longer. And we were held up further because…because while she listed the birth father as dead, it wasn’t something that was confirmed. She had your name, but there was no record of your death, and neither could you be found to sign away your rights. And it hadn’t been long enough for you to simply be declared absentee.”

“And then they found me.”

“Yes, they did. Lucky me.”

“I am sorry for you, Jada. I am.” He didn’t sound it at all. He sounded like a man doing a decent impression of someone who might be sorry, but he personally didn’t sound sorry at all. “But it doesn’t change the fact that Leena is my daughter. I can’t simply walk away from her.”

“Why not? Because you’re just overcome by love and a parental bond?” She didn’t believe that for a moment.

“No. Because it is the right thing to do to care for your children, your family. Leena is the only family I have.”

At another time she might have felt sorry for the man. As it was, she felt nothing.

“Caring for her would mean having her with me,” she said.

“I can understand how you might see it that way.” He looked out the window. “She does not like me. She cries when I pick her up. And frankly, I don’t have the time to be a full-time caregiver to an infant.”

“Then why did you come?”

“Because the other alternative was having nothing to do with her, and that was not a possible solution in my mind.”

“So what does that mean then? You’re just going to hire nannies?”

“That was my thought. I was wondering if you would like to take a position as Leena’s nanny.”

“You what?”

Jada couldn’t believe the man was serious. The nanny? To her own child? An employee of the man who was stealing everything from her?

Leena was her light in the darkness. She was everything to her. Being her mother had become the entirety of Jada’s identity. And her daughter had become her whole heart.

And he wanted her to be an employee. One he could fire at a moment’s notice. A termination he could delay until a later date. A date he saw fit.

“Did you just ask me to be the nanny to my own daughter?”

“As a court ruling just declared, she is not your daughter.”

“If you say that one more time so help me I will—”

“It is up to you. Hang on to your pride if you wish, but I’m offering you a chance to see your daughter. To be a part of her life still.”

“How can you do this to me?” she asked, the words scraping her throat raw. Everything in her hurt. Everything. He had come in, taken her newly repaired life and shattered it all around her again, and she didn’t know how she would reclaim it. It had taken so long to rebuild, to repurpose, to find out what she would do, who she would be.

She’d loved her husband, but he couldn’t give her children. And every time other options came up, he shut down. It was a reminder, he’d told her, of all he could not give her. Of what she would have to get from someone else. No, there would be no artificial insemination. She wouldn’t carry another man’s baby. Adoption had been something he’d said they’d consider, but he never truly had. All the brochures she brought him, all the links to websites she sent him, went ignored.

When the dust had settled after her husband’s death, it had been the thing she’d latched onto. She wasn’t a wife anymore, but she could be a mother.

And now he was ripping it from her hands. Leaving her arms empty.

“I’m not doing anything to you. Leena is my child and I am claiming her, as is the responsible and right thing to do.”

“You have a warped sense of right, Mr. Vasin.”

“Alik,” he said. “You can call me Alik. And my sense of right seems to match that of the justice system, so one might argue that it is you with a warped sense of justice.”

She blinked. “My sense of justice involves the heart, not just laws written on paper, unconnected to specific people and events.”

“And that is where we differ. Nothing I do involves the heart.” She looked at his eyes, black, soulless. Except for that moment in the courthouse when he’d been holding Leena. Then there had been emotion. Fear. Uncertainty. A man who clearly knew nothing about children.

And he wanted her to be the nanny. He wanted to assume the position as Leena’s father and demote her to staff. This man who had been living his life, a full complete life apart from Leena, now wanted to come and take the heart from her.

“She’s all I have,” Jada said, her voice trembling, emotion betraying her now “All I have in the world.”

“So you say no because of pride?”

“And because I am not my child’s nanny! I am her mother. The idea of simply being treated as though I’m paid to be there…” It hit at her very identity, who she was. She had been Sunil’s wife, and then she had become Leena’s mother. She couldn’t be nothing again. Not again.

“I would pay you to be there. I can hardly ask you to forfeit whatever job you might have and come be her nanny for free now, can I?”

“How can you…”

“I will of course allow you to live in whatever house I install her in. It will be simpler that way for all involved. I have a penthouse in Paris and one in Barcelona. A town house in New York, though I suspect you would find it rather too busy… .”

“And what about you? Where will you be in all of this?”

He shrugged. “I will go on as I have. But you have no need to worry about Leena. As the judge pointed out when he opened up my file—I am a wealthy man.”

“Somehow all of your wealth and power doesn’t impress me very much, not when your idea of raising a child is to install her in a house somewhere in the world while you leave her with staff!”

“Not just any staff. You. You would be very well-trusted staff.”

“You bastard!” No. She wouldn’t do it. She couldn’t do it. Couldn’t allow this man who didn’t even want to live in the same home as his daughter to come in and steal everything she had built for herself. For Leena.

“No,” she said, the word broken, just like everything inside of her.

“Excuse me?”

“No. Stop the car.”

She didn’t know what she was doing. Until the moment the car pulled up to the curb and she looked at Leena, and back at Alik. She thought again of the fear in his eyes as he’d held Leena at the courthouse. Of the way Leena had struggled to escape his arms.

And she knew.

“No.” She opened the door to the car. “I am her mother. You can’t simply demand a change of job title. If you think you’re her father because of a magical blood bond then you go and you take care of her.”

Her heart was in her throat, her stomach pitching violently. But it was her hope. Her only hope. And it was all born out of some insane idea that what she’d witnessed in this hard, inscrutable man’s eyes was truly fear.

And if she was misreading him, there was every chance she would lose her child forever.

But if you don’t, he’ll always have the power. He has to know that you’re right. That he needs you.

She closed the door to the limo, the gray sky reflected in the tinted windows, obscuring Alik, obscuring Leena, from view. Panic clawed at her, tore her to shreds inside.

She turned away and closed her eyes, trying to breathe. She couldn’t. A sob caught in her chest. And then Jada started walking away. And she just prayed that Alik would follow.

## CHAPTER TWO

ALIK HAD FACED DOWN terrorists hell-bent on blowing him into pieces and scattering his remains in the ocean. He’d dogged his way across enemy lines, into an enemy camp, to save the life of a friend. He’d spent hours calculating tactical strategies for nations at war, finding the smart way to get in and win the battle.

None of it had shaken him. A welcome burst of adrenaline, the rush of having survived, he got all of that from it. But never fear.

He felt it now. Staring down into the dewy eyes of his child. Her little face crumpled and she let out a wail that filled the inside of the limo.

“Don’t go yet,” he said to his driver. “Don’t go.”

Leena cried, louder and louder, and Alik had no idea what he was expected to do. He looked out the window, and he didn’t see Jada. She was gone. Somewhere into the shopping center they were near, he imagined, but he didn’t know where.

Unless she’d hailed a cab and simply left them both. It didn’t seem like something she would do, but he admitted, willingly, he knew nothing about emotion. About mothers who stayed with their children.

Jada wasn’t even Leena’s mother. But he was her father.

He didn’t know how to comfort a child. He didn’t have a clue as to how to go about it. No one had held him. No one had sung him songs or rocked him until he stopped crying. It was very possible he had never cried.

Leena on the other hand, did. Quite well.

He had always intended to hire a nanny, and when he’d gone out into the hall he’d felt, for the first time in his memory, like he was in a situation he could not control. And when he had seen Jada slumped against the wall, crying into her hands, he knew he’d found the solution.

But then she’d left. She wanted more, and he had no idea what more it was she wanted.

Alik had given up on emotion long ago. His body had put all of that into a deep freeze, protecting him from the worst of his experiences while growing up. And by the time he hadn’t needed the protection anymore, it was far too late for anything to thaw.

He experienced things through the physical. Sex and alcohol, and, in his youth, various other stimulants, had done a good job of providing him with sensation where the frozen organ in his chest simply did not.

It was how things were for him. It was convenient too, because when he had to carry out a mission that was less than savory, whether on the battlefield, as he’d once done, or in the boardroom, as he did now, he simply went to his mind. Logic always won.

And after that, there was always a party to go to. He’d learned how to manufacture happiness from his surroundings. To pull it into the darkness that seemed to dominate his insides and light the way with it, temporarily. A night of dancing, drinking and sex. It created a flash, a spark in the oppressive dark. It burned out as quickly as it ignited, but it was a hell of a lot better than endless blackness.

Except he didn’t feel vacant now. He felt panicked, and he found it wasn’t an improvement. Without thinking, he undid Leena’s seat and pulled her into his lap. She shrieked and jerked away from him, and with that came a punch of something—emotion, pain—to his chest that nearly knocked him back.

As afraid as he was, she was just as scared. Of him.

“Mama! Mama mama mama.” The word, just sounds really, came fast and furious, over and over, intermingled with sobs.

He tried to speak. To say something. But he had no idea what to say. What did you say to a screaming baby? He’d never wanted this. Never imagined it. He truly might have turned away if not for Sayid. If not for the conversation they’d had when he’d left Brussels.

“You have to claim her, Alik. She is your responsibility. You have so many resources at your disposal, so many things you can provide her with. She is your blood, your family.”

“I have family without blood,” Alik had said, a reference to Sayid’s family, to whom he had sworn absolute allegiance.

“A family by choice. She is your family. You are bound to her. To dishonor something so strong would be a mistake.”

“No, my only mistake was coming here for the weekend instead of heading down to Paris or Barcelona to get laid.”

“Running is your specialty, Alik,” Sayid had said, his tone deathly serious. “But you can’t change what is by running. Not this time.”

His friend was right. Alik lived his whole life moving at a dead run. But he was never running from something. Nothing scared him that much. But he wasn’t really running to something, either. He was simply getting through as quickly, as loudly and recklessly, as possible.

He found it was the loud and reckless things in life that offered the most return in terms of what they made him feel. And he was hungry for feeling. For tastes of what years of existing in survival mode had denied him.

Maybe that, more than Sayid’s comments, had been the deciding factor in why he’d come. That or watching the other man’s life, watching all of the change it had brought about for Sayid to acquire a wife and children.

Either way, when he’d decided to come after his daughter, he hadn’t made the decisions hesitantly or lightly. No, there had been no instant bond between them, but he had hardly expected that. Alik had never bonded to people instantly. Sometimes he simply never did.

Sayid was the exception, and then later, Sayid’s family. But he’d been twenty-eight when he’d met his friend, who was more a brother to him than anything else, and it had been his first experience of caring for another human being.

It still didn’t come easily to him. But swearing his alle-giance? That came as simply as seeing whose name was on the check. It always had for him. Even now that he’d moved into the business of tactical, cutthroat corporate raider, rather than tactical, cutthroat mercenary and overthrower of governments, that fact remained true.

His loyalty could be bought, and once he was purchased, he would defend those he was loyal to till death if he had to. And then, when the job was done, he would break the bonds as easily as they’d been forged.

Again, Sayid was the exception. A job gone wrong, turned into a rescue mission to save the life of the sheikh, even when everyone else had given up, had made their bond unbreakable.

He would simply choose to cultivate that bond with his child. She had bought his loyalty with her blood, a check that could never simply be cashed, could never just disappear.

That meant, no matter what, he would defend her. Fight for her, die for her.

Or pound the streets as long as it took, looking for the woman she called mama.

“I will protect you,” he said to her, looking at her red, tear-streaked face. “That is my promise.”

His daughter was unimpressed with the vow.

He pushed the door to the limo open. “Wait here,” he said to his driver.

He got out, holding Leena, who was squirming and screeching against his chest. People were staring at him, at them. He was used to being able to fly under the radar when he wanted to. Used to making a scene only when he wanted to. But he had no control over this scene.

How a tiny child could assume total control over things with the ease most people breathed astounded him. He walked down the sidewalk, cursing the rain, and the knots of kids in skinny jeans smoking cigarettes and blocking his way.

Cursing his total lack of control.

There was a clothing store, a pizza place and a coffeehouse along the main drag of the shopping center, and he was willing to bet that Jada hadn’t gone far.

He pushed open the door to the coffee place and saw her there, clutching a mug in both of her hands, looking ashen and in shock.

He crossed the coffee shop, wiggling baby attempting to impede his progress, and stopped in front of her table.

“Tell me then, Jada Patel, if you do not take the position as my nanny, what will you do?”

She looked at him, the relief that washed over her so strong it was tangible. And yet she didn’t move to take the baby from his arms. Didn’t try to relieve him.

She didn’t respond. She simply looked at him with eyes that conveyed a depth of emotion he hadn’t known was possible to feel.

“You don’t seem to have a very strong sense of self-preservation,” he said, shifting the baby in his arms. “I have offered you a chance to come and live with my daughter, to continue caring for her. You’ve as much as admitted that you have nothing here if you don’t get to keep her. You have no husband. No girlfriend or other sort of lover, obviously. They would have come to the hearing with you, offered support.”

She looked down into her coffee mug. “No. I don’t have a husband.”

“Then you have nothing to leave behind.”

She looked away, her eyes glassy, reflecting the gray sky outside the coffee shop’s window. “Leaving here isn’t the problem.” She looked back at him. “What assurance do I have that you won’t simply fire me one day? Cast me out onto the street without any warning some day five years down the road and put me in the position of losing her then? I couldn’t bear it. I can’t bear it now, so part of me wants to take the chance, but I am giving you all of my power, the power over my life if I take the position, and I don’t like it at all.”

“I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t like it, either, and yet I see very little in the way of other options.”

Jada fought the panic that was rising inside her. Panicking wasn’t going to help. She had to think. Had to figure out what to do.

She wished, so desperately, that there was someone she could ask. Her friends…she could hardly stand to be around them. They just looked at her with sad eyes, touched her like they were afraid she was cracking, breaking like a piece of delicate glass. And they’d all thought her crazy when she’d decided to adopt.

Her parents had been gone for so long now. Her father when she was a teenager, her mother six years after that.

And then there was Sunil. She would have turned to him, would have asked him what to do. After he’d died, she’d felt like she was drifting. Unable to think, unable to make a decision. The only thing that had gotten her out of bed every day was the knowledge that he would have wanted her to. He would have told her that there would be something else for her. Something good. And while he hadn’t been enthusiastic about adoption during their marriage, she knew he wouldn’t have wanted her to be alone.

The something good she’d been waiting for was Leena. From the moment she’d seen Leena, tiny and pink, swaddled in a blanket with her hospital cap fitted snugly over her mop of brown hair, Jada had known she would give her life for her daughter.

Becoming Leena’s nanny wasn’t even close to giving up her life. But it wasn’t the thought of leaving home that frightened her. She had no home without Leena anyway. It was the fact that, at Alik’s pleasure, at his whim, he could still tear her daughter away from her at any moment.

She would have no parental rights. She would be nothing more than hired help, waiting for the ax to fall. Loss, when it came suddenly, was hideous. But living her life knowing that any day could bring it would be unbearable.

“So what you need is more security?” he asked. “Something that would feel legal and permanent?”

“Yes, something that would feel more stable, so that I wasn’t wondering if you were simply going to sweep through one day and decide I was no longer needed.”

She looked at him, into those stormy gray eyes, and a shiver ran through her body. He had a kind of easy grace, a relaxed posture that made him look like he was at ease with the world, with his surroundings.

But what she saw in his eyes just then proved that he was lying to the world. He was ice beneath the exterior.

“You are the kind of woman,” he said, “who would never sell her allegiance.” The way he said it, with a mix of wonder and admiration, surprised her. “You remind me of someone I know.”

“That’s all very well and good, but it doesn’t solve my problems.”

“And I now live to solve your problems?”

“I think we both can see that no matter how tough you play, you have no idea of what you’re doing with a child.”

“I can hire someone else.”

“And you think that would make her happy? Does she not notice when I’m gone?”

That hit him. Square in the chest. A strong, sudden burning of loss. He’d been two or three when he’d been left at an orphanage in Moscow. He didn’t remember his mother’s face. Or her voice. Or where he’d lived before then. But he remembered loss. Loss so deep, so confusing and painful.

“She would notice,” he said, because there was no lying about that. Something had to be done. He knew now he stood in a terrible position. That of abandoning his child, or tearing his child away from the only woman she’d ever known as her mother.

He was trapped.

“You need to come up with a solution we can both be satisfied with.”

Jada didn’t know how she’d kept from bursting into tears. She was on the edge of breaking completely. But she had to be strong. She had to show Alik that he wasn’t in charge. She had to take back control somehow.

This was her life. The life she was creating for herself, and he didn’t get to own it. She’d had enough of being jerked around by fate or whatever it was that had reached down and disordered everything. She was done with that. Done with feeling like a victim. Done with allowing life to make her one.

Alik looked down at Leena, his discomfort obvious, then looked back at Jada.

“What do you need?” he asked, his voice frayed, his expression that of a desperate man.

“I need security,” she said. “I need to be her mother, because no matter whether you understand it or not, that’s what I am, and that’s what a child needs. A mother, not a caregiver, not an absentee father. Someone who is there with her. Always.”

He looked at her for a moment, black eyes completely unreadable, his handsome face schooled into a mask. “You think something of permanence would be best for Leena.”

“Yes.”

He nodded slowly. “I may have a solution to your problems. You don’t like the idea of my simply…how did you put it? Dumping my child off somewhere in the world with nothing but staff. You think she should have a family, a real family.”

“Everyone should.”

“Perhaps, but it is not reality. Still, if I could find a way to make that happen for her…having a family is very important, yes?”

Jada nodded, her throat tightening. “Yes.”

“I would hate to deny my child anything of importance.”

She wanted to scream at him that he was denying his child her mother, and yet she knew it would do no good. He simply didn’t seem to understand the connection she felt for Leena. He didn’t seem to understand love. And losing control wouldn’t win this battle. When he pushed, she had to push back.

“Perhaps then, I should take a wife,” he said.

Pain crashed through her. He still didn’t get it.

The thought of another woman filling her position, of another woman being the caregiver for her daughter, made her see red. And she knew that was selfish, and she didn’t care.

“That easily?” she asked. “That easily you’ll just find a wife? One who will care for Leena like she’s her own child?”

“I’ve already found her,” he said, gray eyes fixed on her.

She felt the chill from his eyes seep through her skin, making her tremble. “Have you?” she asked, not sure what he was going to say, only that she wasn’t going to like it. Only that it was going to change everything.

“You didn’t like my offer of coming to be my nanny. Would you like to be my wife?”

## CHAPTER THREE

“DO I WANT TO BE YOUR…wife?”

He’d said it so casually, so utterly void of emotion that she was certain she must have misheard him.

“Yes,” he said. “As you’ve made it clear, my offer of nanny is unacceptable. And you are right—without you, the child is unhappy.”

“Leena,” she bit out again, frustrated by his insistence on detachment.

“I know her name.” He bent and handed her Leena, a rush of love washing over her as she felt her daughter’s weight in her arms. He started to pace beside the table in front of her. “It’s a simple thing, one that will protect both us and my daughter legally. You will be able to adopt her and, should we divorce, which I have no doubt we will, unless we find each other so unobtrusive that the marriage simply never gets in our way, we will be able to work out a shared custody agreement.”

“I…it is possible for an unmarried couple to work out an adoption. It’s more difficult…there needs to be a clear emotional involvement, but…”

“And why make it more difficult? This will be much more simple. Proving a legal connection is much simpler than faking an emotional one, don’t you think?”

Yes, she did think. She was sure he was right. It would protect her. It would make her Leena’s mother. It would give her the adoption she wanted. But…but there was this man, this stranger. And he was asking to be her husband.

For the second time in her life, everything had changed in one day. She tried, she tried desperately, not to remember the day three years ago when she’d gotten a call from Sunil’s office saying he had been sent to the hospital.

Tried not to remember what it had been like, driving there, feeling shocked, dazed. Then seeing him in the bed. He’d looked so sick. Like he was a man barely clinging to life.

Because that was what he had been. And only a few hours later, he’d lost his grip on it.

And her perfect world had crashed down around her. Three years spent rebuilding, trying to pick up the pieces, and Alik Vasin had come along and broken it all again.

“You can’t just get married for those kinds of reasons,” she said. Her lips felt cold, her entire face prickly.

“Why not? Can you think of a better reason?”

“Love,” she said. It was the craziest thing she’d ever heard. And the worst thing was, she didn’t know if she could say no.

She looked at Leena and her heart lodged in her throat. If she said no, would this be the last she saw of her? Would she never see her grow? Hear her speak in sentences? Watch her go from a baby, to a child, to a teenager and finally, a young woman? All of her dreams, ash at her feet. Again.

Unless she said yes. She was the one who had demanded more. And now that she was getting the offer, could she really say no?

He frowned, one shoulder lifting. A casual dismissal. “Marriage has never meant very much to me. Marriage is a legal covenant, and it protects a lot of legal rights. That to me makes legal issues the most logical reason to marry.”

“I don’t even know you.”

“I’m not asking you to know me, I’m asking you to marry me. Then my daughter will have a mother and a father. She will be cared for in every way that counts.”

Jada blinked, trying to catch up with Alik’s logic. Trying to understand it. He sounded so certain, and he moved so quickly, she could scarcely process one thing he’d said before he’d moved on to something else completely.

“How can you simply suggest something like this so…calmly?”

“Because it doesn’t matter to me whether you’re my nanny or my wife. Nothing will change, and it will offer you the protection that you desire.”

“And why is it so important to you to give me that?”

“Additional stability for my daughter. And…” He hesitated. “Her attachment to you is very strong. She…seems to love you. I would hate to cause her any pain.”

The way he said it was odd, as though he didn’t truly understand either emotion he spoke about. Like he was trying to say the right things, or forcing himself to think the right things, but wasn’t quite managing it.

It was crazy. Totally and completely. But she had nothing left here, not without Leena. No reason not to accept the insane offer.

You don’t know him.

No, she didn’t know him. But if she didn’t go, her daughter would. Without her there to protect her. No. That couldn’t happen. It wouldn’t. No matter the cost.

Unbidden, she thought of her own wedding day, more than eight years ago. She’d been so young. So full of hope for the future. And so very much in love.

Marrying Alik, making him her husband, she felt like it made a mockery of that. Felt like she was putting Alik in a place that should be reserved for another man. The man that she’d loved with all of her heart.

Oh, Sunil, please forgive me.

She didn’t know if he would have been able to. She wasn’t sure if he’d truly understood her desire to have children. If he’d realized how deep it went. Or maybe he had, and he simply couldn’t acknowledge it, because for him, it would mean facing how much he’d failed her. But she’d never seen it that way. She would have been happy, even then, to adopt.

Still, just for a moment, she wished she had him back so she could lean on his strength. Feel his arms around her, in comfort, just one more time.

It was a strange disconnect, though. If she still had Sunil, she wouldn’t have Leena. And she needed Leena.

Truly, marrying Alik was marrying for love. For the love of her child.

Then another thought occurred to her. One that made her feel scared and hot at the same time. She didn’t know if it was angry heat, embarrassed heat, or something else entirely. It was the something else entirely that really worried her.

“You said there would be very little difference between my position as nanny and my position as wife. Were you planning on sexually harassing me as your staff or are you planning on keeping your hands off me if I’m your wife?”

“It is of no matter to me. If you want sex, I’m more than willing to give it.”

The thought made a rash of heat spread over her skin. The way he said things like that, so bald and open, was something she just didn’t understand. She wasn’t a prude, but she wasn’t going to start offering sex to a stranger either, as if it wasn’t a bigger deal than choosing between pizza or dal for dinner.

“If I want sex?”

“You make it sound strange. Don’t you like sex?”

She nearly choked. “I…I don’t…It’s not a recreational activity.”

“Perhaps not to you.” The smile that curved his lips told her he, indeed, thought of it as such, and she felt her toes curl in her shoes. Oh, good grief, he wasn’t that hot. He was inappropriate. “Either way, the choice is yours. If you want it, I am willing.”

“And if I don’t?” she asked.

“As I said, it is of no matter to me. I’m not intending to pledge my faithfulness either way.”

“You’re not?” she asked, annoyed by that for some reason. Perhaps because in this plan, Alik seemed to be giving up nothing, while for her, everything was changing.

“I have a short attention span where women are concerned. My life is not conducive to relationships.”

“I don’t know that anyone’s is. That’s why people work at their marriages, you know?” For all that she’d loved her husband, they’d had their problems, but everyone in a long-term relationship did.

“Do you want my faithfulness?”

She half snorted half laughed. “Hardly.”

“Then why make an issue of it? I won’t demand yours, either. So long as Leena is cared for, I can’t be bothered by what you do or who you’re doing it with.”

“Did you honestly just question whether or not I will care for Leena? I’ve been doing it for the past year—it’s hardly going to change now. It’s all I want to do. She’s what I want.”

“And because of that you have no interest in relationships?”

“I had a relationship,” she said, feeling, for some reason, like claiming Sunil as a husband, considering the conversation, might cheapen it in some way. “He was all I ever wanted in a man, and he’s gone now. That part of my life is gone. Over. Leena is my life now.”

“Very noble of you.”

“Hardly. I just know that I already had what a lot of people spend a lifetime looking for. No one gets that lucky twice.”

He skipped over her words, as though he hadn’t even been listening. “As I said, I don’t care either way.”

She felt numb. Light-headed. There was only one answer she could give.

“I will have to collect my things,” she said, her words detached, as though they were being spoken by a stranger.

“I can send someone to do that for you.”

Of course he could. He was a billionaire and all. “When would the marriage take place?”

“As soon as possible. In fact, I know just the place to have the wedding.”

“Wedding?” she repeated, knowing she sounded dull.

“Of course we will have a wedding. We want it all to look authentic. For Leena’s sake if for no other reason.”

Just like that, she was treated with a welcome burst of anger. She stood from her chair, Leena still in her arms. “And your being seen with other women won’t seem abnormal to Leena? I hope to God it does.”

“She won’t know about it,” he said.

“How?”

He smiled, bright white teeth against tanned skin. “I’m a ghost, Jada. You don’t read about me in the news, and there’s a very good reason for that.”

“You don’t read about me in the news, either, and the reason is that I’m boring.”

“Oh, I am not boring, and if the press ever got wind of me? I would be a headline.” Coming from another man it would have sounded like bragging. Like he was talking himself up. But Alik said it like he was stating the most mundane of facts. And it made her believe him. “As it is,” he continued, “they know nothing about me, and I intend to keep it that way.”

A shiver ran up her back, the hair on her neck standing on end. “You have a high opinion of yourself and your media appeal.”

Granted, he would have media appeal in spades. Even if it was just because he had model good looks. She looked at him harder. No, perhaps he didn’t have a model’s good looks. Models usually possessed some sort of androgynous beauty, while Alik was hard. A scar ran through the center of his chin, one marring the smooth line of his upper lip. His hands were no better. Rough, looking as though the skin on the backs of them had been, at some point in his life, reduced to hamburger, and had since healed badly.

She hadn’t noticed at first. She’d been too bowled over by his presence in general to take in the finer details. And now she was wondering exactly who this man was. This man she’d agreed to marry.

She had a feeling that she didn’t really want to know.

“I’m simply realistic,” he said. “However, anonymity suits me. It always has.”

“Well, that’s good, because it suits me, too.”

“Glad to hear it.” He picked up his cell phone and punched in a number. “Bring the car to the front of the coffee shop. And map the route to the airport.”

“The airport?” Panic clawed at her, warring with despair for the position of dominant emotion.

“There is no need to wait, as I said.”

“So, where are we going then? Paris? Barcelona or that town house in New York?” She tried to feign a bravado she didn’t feel. Tried to find the strength she needed to survive this new pile of muck life had heaped onto her.

“Tell me, Jada, have you ever been to Attar?”

Attar was Alik’s adopted country. The only country he’d ever sworn a willing allegiance to. As a boy, pulled off the streets of Russia, he’d been asked very early on to betray his homeland, his people.

And he had done it. The promise of food and shelter too enticing to refuse. His conscience had burned at first, but then it burned past the point of healing. Singed beyond feeling.

Over the years he’d belonged to many nations. Taken the helm of many armies.

Attar was the one place he loved. The one place he called home. Sheikh Sayid al Kadar and his wife Chloe were a big part of that.

As his private jet touched down on the tarmac, waves of heat rising up to envelop the aircraft, Leena woke with a start, her plaintive wails working on his nerves.

He’d never been especially fond of children. Yes, he tolerated Sayid and Chloe’s children, had sworn to protect them, but he hardly hung out to play favorite Uncle Alik, regardless of the fact that Sayid was the closest thing to a brother he’d ever had.

But then, he didn’t anticipate spending too much time with his own child. The thought made him feel slightly uncomfortable for the first time, a strange pang hitting him in the chest. He wasn’t sure why.

Because you know what abandonment feels like.

He shook off the thought. He wasn’t abandoning Leena. He was shaking up his entire damned life to make sure she was cared for. And he was doing her a kindness by staying away.

“Welcome to Attar,” he said. “We’re on the sheikh’s private runway, so there’s no need to wait.”

“The sheikh?”

“A friend of mine.” His only friend.

“Well, I guess you are sort of newsworthy,” she said.

She had no idea. His relationship with Sayid was only the tip of the iceberg, but he hardly intended to tell her about his past. He had no need to. They would marry, he would install her in the residence of her choice and then he would carry on as he had always done.

He made a mental note to put Leena’s birthday in his calendar. He would attempt to make visits around that time. Failing that he would send a gift. That seemed a good thing to do. And it was a bloody sight better than abandonment.

He put his sunglasses on, prepared to contend with the heat of Attar, a heat he had grown accustomed to over the past six years. He suddenly realized that Jada and Leena weren’t.

He pulled out his cell phone. “Bring the car up to the jet, make sure it is adequately cooled.” It was strange, having to consider the comfort of others. He rarely considered his own comfort. He would have charged out into the heat and walked to where the car was, or walked on to Sayid’s palace himself.

He grimaced. He didn’t especially want to go straight to Sayid’s palace. He would have the driver take him to his own palace.

“Wait until the car pulls up,” he said to Jada.

“Why?” she asked.

“This is not the sort of heat you’re used to.”

“How do you know?”

“Unless you’ve spent years in a North African desert, it’s not the kind of heat you’re used to. I assume you have not?”

“Not recently,” she said, her tone stiff. It almost struck him as funny, but he had the feeling if he laughed vulnerable body parts might be in danger.

“I thought you probably had not.”

When he saw the sleek, black car pulling near the door of the plane, he gave the pilot the signal to open the door. The moment it started to lower, a wave of heat washed inside the cabin.

“You weren’t joking,” she said.

“No, I wasn’t.” The stairs were steep, and he wondered if a woman as petite as Jada could manage a wiggling one-year-old on her way down.

“Give her to me,” he said.

“Why?”

“Do you want to try and negotiate those with her in your arms? If so, by all means.” His discomfort with the situation, with the prospect of holding the child again, made his voice harder than he intended.

“And what makes you think you’ll do better? You aren’t experienced with babies. What if you drop her?”

“I have carried full-grown men down mountainsides when they were unable to walk for themselves. I think I can carry a baby down a flight of stairs. Give her to me.”

Jada complied, but her expression remained mutinous.

“After you,” he said.

She started down the steps and into the car, and he followed after her. There was a car seat ready in this vehicle, his orders followed down to the letter. There should also be supplies for a baby back at his home. Money didn’t buy happiness—he knew that to be true. He doubted he’d felt a moment of true happiness in his life. But money bought a lot of conveniences, and a lot of things that felt close enough to that elusive emotion.

He much preferred having it to not having it. And a good thing, too, as he’d sold his soul to get it.

“Where are we headed?” she asked when the car started moving.

“To my palace.” He looked out the window at the wide, flat expanse of desert, and the walls of the city beyond it. This was the first place he had ever felt at home. The desert showed a man where he was at, challenged him on a fundamental level. The desert didn’t care for good or evil. Only strength. Survival.

It had been a rescue mission in this very desert that had nearly claimed his life. And now it was in his blood.

“You have a palace?”

“A gift from the sheikh.”

“Extravagant gift.”

“Not so much, all things considered.”

“What things?” she asked.

He didn’t know what made him do it, but he unbuttoned the top three buttons on his shirt and pulled the collar to the side, revealing the dark lines of his most recent tattoo. The one that covered his most recent scar.

Her eyes widened. She lifted her hand as though she was tempted to touch, to see if the skin beneath the ink was as rough and damaged as it looked. It was. He wanted her to do it. Wanted her to press her fingertips to his flesh, so he could see just how soft and delicate she truly was against his hardened, damaged skin.

She lowered her hand and the spell was broken. “Is that part of that newsworthiness you were talking about?” she asked.

“Some might say.”

“It looks like it was painful.”

“Not especially. I think the one on my wrist hurt worse.”

“Not the tattoo,” she said.

He chuckled, feeling a genuine sense of amusement. “I know.”

They settled into silence for the rest of the drive. Jada stared out the window, her fingers fluffing his daughter’s pale hair. He wondered if she looked like her mother. Her birth mother. He could scarcely remember the woman.

Based on geography he had a fair idea of who she was, but he ultimately couldn’t be certain. A one-night stand that had occurred nearly two years earlier hardly stuck out in his mind. He’d had a lot of nights like that. A lot of encounters with women he barely exchanged names with before getting down to the business of what they both wanted.

He wondered if a normal man might feel shame over that. Over the fact that he could scarcely recall the woman who’d given birth to his child. Yes, a normal man would probably be ashamed. But Alik had spent too many years discovering that doing the right thing often meant going hungry, while doing the wrong thing could net you a hotel room and enough food for a week. He’d learned long ago that he would have to define right and wrong in his own way. The best way he’d been able to navigate life had been to chase all of the good feelings he could find.

Food and shelter made him comfortable, so whatever he’d had to do to get it, he had. Later on he’d discovered that sex made him feel good. So he had a lot of it. He was never cruel to his partners, never promised more than he was willing to deliver. And until recently, he’d imagined he’d left his lovers with nothing more than a smile on their face and a post-orgasmic buzz.

That turned out not to be strictly true. It made him feel unsettled. Made him question things it was far too late to question.

His palace was on the coast of Attar, facing the sea. The sun washed the sea a pale green, the rocks and sand red. And his home stood on the hill, a stunning contrast to the landscape. White walls and a golden, domed roof that shone bright in the midday heat.

Here, by the sea, the air was more breathable. Not as likely to burn you from the inside out.

“This is my home,” he said. “Your home now, if you wish.”

He wanted to take the invitation back as soon as he’d issued it. There was a reason he’d not mentioned the Attari palace in his initial list of homes Leena might live in. The heat was one reason, but there was another. This was his sanctuary. The one place he didn’t bring women. The one place he brought no one.

Not now. Now he was bringing his daughter and the woman who was to become his wife. For the first time in his memory, he seriously questioned the decisions that he’d made.

## CHAPTER FOUR

JADA COULD SCARCELY take in all of her surroundings. She clutched a sweaty, sleeping Leena to her chest and tried to ignore the heat of her daughter’s body against hers, far too much in the arid Attari weather, and continued through the palace courtyard and into the opulent, cool, foyer.

“This is…like nothing I’ve ever seen.”

“I felt the same way when I first came here. To Attar. It is like another world. Although, it’s funny, I find some of the architecture so similar to what you find in Russia, but with dunes in the background instead of snow.”

“Do you keep a home there?” she asked. She realized suddenly that it was not in the list of places he’d named earlier.

“I do,” he said. “But I don’t go there.”

“Why?” The question applied to both parts of the statement. Why would he keep a home he never went to? And why would he not go there?

“I have no need to revisit my past.”

“And yet you keep a house there?”

“Holding on to a piece of it, I suppose. But then, we all do that, do we not?”

“I suppose,” she said. She flexed her fingers, became suddenly very conscious of the ring that was now on her right finger. She’d removed her wedding ring about a year after Sunil’s death. And then a few months later she’d put it back on, but on her other hand. A way to remember, while acknowledging that the marriage bond was gone.

A way to hold on to a past that she could never reclaim. She knew all about holding on to what you couldn’t go back to.

“I asked that my staff have rooms prepared for you and Leena. Rooms that are next to each other. I will call my housekeeper and see that she leads you to them.”

“Not you?”

“I don’t know where she installed you,” he said, his total lack of interest almost fascinating to her. She wondered what it would be like to live like him. No ties, no cares. Even when it came to Leena, he seemed to simply think and act. None of it came from his heart and because of that there was no hesitation. No pain.

But there was also no conviction. Not true conviction. Not like she felt when she’d made the decision to come here, knowing that, no matter the cost she couldn’t turn her back on her child.

As attractive as his brand of numbness seemed in some ways, she knew she would never really want it. There was no strength in it. Not true strength. It was better to hurt for lost love, and far better to have had it in the first place. Even in the lowest point of her grief she wouldn’t have traded away her years with her husband. Even facing the potential loss of Leena, she would never regret the bond.

“Well, then how am I supposed to find you in this massive palace if you don’t know where I am and I don’t know where you are?” Everything about Attar was massive. The desert stretched on forever, ending at a sea that continued until it met sky. The palace was no less impressive. Expansive rooms and ceilings that curved high overhead. It made her long for the small coziness of her home. For the buildings back in Portland that hemmed them in a bit, the mountains that surrounded those.

Here, everything just seemed laid bare and exposed. She didn’t like the feeling.

“I hardly thought you would want to find me,” he said.

She had thought so, as well, but the idea of not being able to find the only person she knew in this vast, cold stone building didn’t sit well with her at all.

“Better than getting lost forever in this fortress you call a home.”

He looked up, his focus on the domed ceiling. Sunbursts of gold, inlaid with jasper, jade and onyx. “A fortress? I would hardly call it that. I have spent time in fortresses. Prisons. Dungeons.”

“I don’t need to know what you do in your off time,” she snapped, not sure what had prompted her to make the remark.

A slow smile curved his lips. “But what I do in my off time is so very fascinating. I’m sure you could benefit from a little off time yourself.”

Her body reacted to the words with heat, with increased heart rate and sweaty palms. Her body was a filthy traitor. Her mind, on the other hand, came to her rescue. Sensible and suitably outraged.

“I already told you, I’m not going there with you. I’ve agreed to marry you, but I’m not sharing your bed. This marriage won’t be real.” It couldn’t be real. She’d had a real marriage. A marriage filled with laughing and shouting and making love, and this, this union with a stranger, no matter that it was legal, would never be that.

There had been security in her marriage. Even at the low points, there had been an element of safety. Alik possessed nothing even slightly resembling safety. He was a law unto himself, much like the desert she found herself stranded in.