THE TEXAS TATTLER

All the news that’s barely fit to print!

Paternity Shocker!

DNA tests conclusively prove that Matthew Fortune, eldest son of Texas billionaire Ryan Fortune, is the biological father of a child whose identity has plagued and baffled a family, national law enforcement and the entire Lone Star State. Time for a quick “scandal” recap.

One year ago, Matthew and Claudia Fortune’s million-dollar-darling Bryan was snatched by kidnappers demanding a jaw-dropping ransom. FBI agents recovered a baby with the distinctive crown-shaped birthmark identifying him as a Fortune—but the child wasn’t Bryan. Matthew and Claudia agreed to care for little “Taylor” until the mystery of his parentage was solved.

Even in the face of hard scientific evidence to the contrary, husband Matthew claims he’s never strayed. Hmmm…Taylor is about one year old and the newlyweds in question tied the knot a little over two years ago…. Matthew must be using the new, new math for those figures to add up!

And more titillating tid-bits from the Double Crown Ranch… Tattler sleuths report royally gorgeous hunk Sheikh Ben Ramir in the close company of legal eagle Eden Fortune. Sources say these two had a fast-’n’-furious fling in Paris years ago. And Eden’s son, Sawyer, is beginning to look like a prince sized secret!

About the Author

KASEY MICHAELS

is the New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author of more than sixty books. She has won the Romance Writers of America RITA® Award and the Romantic Times Career Achievement Award for her historical romances set in the Regency era.

The Sheikh’s Secret Son
Kasey Michaels

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Meet the Fortunes of Texas

Eden Fortune: The last thing she expected was a reunion with the father of her child. And she never anticipated that her feelings for the dashing and virile sheikh would be stronger than ever.

Sheikh Ben Ramir: He’d lost Eden due to his father’s interference. But now the time had finally come for this lion of the desert to make his move and claim the only woman he’d ever loved—and the princely heir he’d never known.

Baby Taylor: The stunning revelation about his parentage had repercussions for the entire Fortune family, especially his foster parents—Matthew and Claudia.

Wyatt Grayhawk: The rugged lawman knew the prominent Fortune family had weathered its share of scandals, and he was determined to protect his friends at all costs.

To Melissa Jeglinski, one more time.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

One

The wedding had been beautiful. But then, weddings usually were beautiful, wonderful. Eden Fortune’s brother Logan had been handsome and adorably nervous. Emily, his bride, had been lovely and serene. Together, Logan and Emily had taken their vows and become a family to Amanda Sue, Logan’s no longer motherless daughter.

Happy endings were nice.

Not that Eden would know much about that.

The digital clock next to her bed blinked itself past midnight, and Eden knew she couldn’t just lie there and watch as it passed one, then two…counting down the hours all the way to dawn.

Pushing back the soft down comforter, she slipped from the queen-size bed; a bed too large, too lonely. Too cold and empty.

Sliding her feet into her slippers, she brushed a thick lock of dark brown hair behind her left ear, pushed herself erect, and padded to the doorway, led by the light she always left on in the hallway in case her five-year-old son Sawyer woke during the night and she had to go to him.

He was quiet tonight, probably worn out from their long day. But, if he did wake, she knew she could calm his childish nightmares. She could sing him nonsense songs and hold his small body close and rock him back to sleep.

But she couldn’t answer his questions.

Ciara Wilde had heard Sawyer ask the most unanswerable question tonight, at the small wedding reception held at the Fortune ranch after the ceremony. Ciara was a sweet girl, and Eden had been happy to hear that she and her uncle, Jace Lockhart, planned to be married. In fact, Eden had been offering Ciara her best wishes when Sawyer had asked the first question.

The boy’s timing was impeccable.

“Mommy?” he’d asked, tugging at her skirt, looking up at her with those penetrating dark eyes of his, eyes that lived in her memory, in her dreams…and in her son. “Amanda Sue has a mommy and a daddy now, doesn’t she?”

“Yes, darling,” Eden had answered as her stomach knotted. She must have betrayed herself in her tone of voice, or in the quick flush of her cheeks, because Ciara had taken her hand, squeezed her fingers. “Uncle Logan and Aunt Emily are Amanda Sue’s daddy and mommy now.”

Sawyer’s bottom lip had come forward in a pout. “That’s not fair,” he’d protested, glaring past Eden to where Logan was sitting in a chair on the front porch, rocking a sleepy Amanda Sue in his arms. “Why can she have both a mommy and a daddy when I can’t?”

Eden had immediately knelt in front of her son, this five-year-old with questions and heartaches too big for his small body. “Sawyer, I—”

“Not fair! Not fair!” he’d shouted, pulling away from her, running off toward the stables.

Eden had continued to kneel in the dirt, stunned, watching Sawyer’s straight, sturdy legs carry him away from her, and then flinched as Ciara’s hand came to rest on her shoulder.

“Do you want me to go after him, Eden, talk to him?” Ciara had asked, offering her help, her friendship, her comfort.

“No, thank you, Ciara,” Eden had said, returning to her feet slowly, like an old woman whose joints didn’t always cooperate. “He’ll be fine. He’s probably going to visit with his pony for a while. Hercules is quite good at listening to Sawyer’s problems, as long as the carrots hold out. He just needs some time alone, and then he’ll be…fine. Really, he’ll be fine…”

Eden had been right. Logan had brought Sawyer back to the house about a half hour later, and the boy had held his uncle’s hand tightly as he apologized to her for running off without telling her where he was going. Then, as Eden watched, and as her brother had given Sawyer’s hand a small squeeze, her son walked closer, his body stiff and straight, and motioned that she should bend so that he could kiss her cheek.

Always the gentleman, her son, once he was over his temper. Almost princely in his forgiveness of her for his own impolite actions.

Eden smiled now as she opened the door to Sawyer’s room and a wedge of light from the hallway spilled into the room, exposing her son’s outline on the bed. Tall for his age, old for his age. Straight and strong. Oddly formal for a child, with the manners of a much older child, with the sometimes autocratic ways of the man he’d never known.

And yet he was five years old. Only five years old.

Eden tiptoed into the room, stopped, and smiled again. Her big boy. Her great big, brave, wonderful boy. With his thumb stuck in his mouth and his teddy bear, Fred, clutched tight in one arm.

She bent and adjusted the covers over him, then pressed a kiss to her fingers before touching those same fingers to his cheek. He was her baby.

Her baby with the grown-up questions.

And she was his mother, the woman who didn’t have any answers for him.

Eden Fortune had been born to just that. Fortune. There was wealth, yes, but she also had a more important fortune, that of her family. Eden’s was a large family, the sort that swept you up, welcomed you in. Sometimes smothered you.

But she tried to not think about that anymore, about how she had run away when the love and concern had felt more like pity. She’d been young then, young and stupid. Young, and stupid, and pregnant. More than a little worried that, after vowing never to be like her father, she had acted with his same disregard for consequences.

Cameron Fortune was dead now, killed when speed, alcohol and poor judgment had combined to send his car racing out of control on his way back to the ranch from San Antonio, the nubile young woman tucked into the passenger seat dying as well. He’d always been irresponsible and she’d promised herself that, much as she’d loved her dad, she would never be anything like him.

But despite her vow, Sawyer was born…the consequence of an impetuous love, unprotected sex, and no thought at all about consequences.

But if Eden was her father’s child, she was also her mother’s daughter, and she had the same for-better-for-worse character that had kept Mary Ellen Fortune standing at her husband’s shoulder, loving him no matter what.

Eden had made a mistake, but she had owned up to it in true Mary Ellen Fortune style. She’d packed herself up, straightened her spine, her resolve, and done what had to be done. She’d had her baby, kept her baby.

And she’d never regretted her decision.

Buying the house in San Antonio had been one of her best moves, as now she was close enough to the ranch to have the love and companionship of her family yet far enough away to maintain her independence. She had her brothers, Holden and Logan, she had her mother, and the entire Fortune menagerie of loving aunts and uncles and cousins.

And she had her career. Eden thanked the good Lord every night for her career. Her career as an international business lawyer filled her days. Sawyer filled her leisure hours.

Nothing filled her nights….

Eden was running late Monday morning, always a warning sign that the whole day would be one full of glitches and irritating minor problems—beginning with her pulling a hole in her last pair of panty hose. She’d had to run to the local convenience store to pick up a new pair. Worse, she’d come downstairs to learn that Sawyer had awakened with the sniffles, and even though Mrs. Betts had promised to watch him closely and call the doctor if he began to run a fever, Eden had been loathe to leave him.

Which was silly. Mrs. Betts was more than just a housekeeper. She was Eden’s friend, and she loved Sawyer to pieces. He’d be fine, Eden knew that. He didn’t need his mommy hovering over him, feeling his brow and handing him tissues. It had been Sawyer who had told her that, too, and not Mrs. Betts. What an independent little creature she was raising!

Pushing back her jacket sleeve as her high heels clicked against the marble floor of the tall office building, Eden checked her watch one more time, grimaced one more time, and headed for the bank of elevators.

Naturally, her gas gauge had somehow crept all the way to Empty when she hadn’t been looking, further proving her theory that a day begun badly never goes well. The stop at the crowded gas station had taken precious minutes she hadn’t had to spare.

Still fretting over the time lost at the gas station, she tapped one elegantly clad foot on the floor as the security guard checked for her name on the list in front of him.

She looked at her reflection in the golden doors of one of the elevators, quickly running a hand through her shoulder-length dark brown hair, squinting a little as she decided that she probably should have worn more blush with her dark blue suit, for her cheeks looked a little too pale.

“Oh, okay, here you are, Ms. Fortune,” the security guard said after what seemed an eternity of time, pointing to one of the names on his list. “And here’s your security pass. You can just pin it to your suit, okay?”

Eden nodded, took the pass. She had taken three quick steps toward the last elevator in the hallway before she stopped, turned, and walked back to the desk. She was wasting more time, she knew, but she just had to ask.

“Henry, I’ve been coming here for two years now. I know you, you know me. I know your wife packs you meatloaf sandwiches every Thursday, and you’ve met Sawyer a couple of times—enough times that you know he likes those cherry candies you keep in your pocket.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Eden looked at him a moment, shook her head. “So,” she asked, pointing to the badge she’d pinned to her jacket, “what’s all this? The checking the list, the badge—those two goons standing in front of the elevator that goes to the twenty-sixth floor?”

Henry stole a quick look over his shoulder at the “goons,” then motioned for Eden to step closer, as if he were about to tell her some state secret.

“It’s this guy,” he whispered conspiratorially. “I don’t know who he is, see, but he shows up about an hour ago. Big black limousine. Bulletproof, I’m thinking, and with a car in front, another in back. All these guys come piling out of the two cars, come marching in here, demanding all sorts of stuff. I had to clear out the whole lobby before the guy steps so much as a foot out of the limo. And then I could barely see him for all the guys walking with him, speeding him into the elevator, whisking him upstairs. Tall, though. I could see the top of his head. He had one of those things on it, you know? One of those headpieces or what-you-want-to-call-its.”

The guard leaned even closer to Eden and his voice dropped another notch. “You know what I think, missy? I think he must be some government type. And not ours, neither.”

“Sounds intriguing, Henry,” Eden said, trying to sound suitably impressed. She’d only been working in international law for two years, but she’d already seen her share of important people—those who really were and those who only thought they were. “And was he definitely going to the twenty-sixth floor?”

“Like you said, missy, you’ve been coming here for a while now,” Henry said, standing straight once more and nervously beginning to shuffle the papers in front of him, as if he knew he’d said more than he should. “We both know that’s the only elevator that goes all the way to the twenty-sixth floor.”

Eden frowned, thanked Henry, and headed for the elevator once more, mentally reviewing the coming meeting in her head, mentally going over the names of those expected to attend the meeting.

There were all the usual suspects, of course. Her boss; her boss’s boss. Three other lawyers on her level, each one assigned to a particular area of international law. Her area of expertise was international law as it pertained to oil and gas rights.

Today her firm was to represent a triad of American companies hoping to do business in the small oil-and-gas-rich Middle East kingdom of Kharmistan. Which, she supposed, explained all the heightened security and the big-shouldered, dour-faced men standing on either side of the elevator. They had reason to be a nervous bunch, Middle East tensions being what they were.

Eden had a bad moment at the elevator—fearing she was about to be frisked for the first time in her life—before the two big-shouldered “goons” finally let her pass, muttering to each other in their own language.

She kept her smile bright until the elevator doors closed in front of her, then grumbled something that sounded very much like “male chauvinist pigs,” certain that the two had difficulty believing a woman could possibly have anything constructive to do with business. Now there was a prejudice that had no trouble crossing international borders!

She forgot the guards and watched the numbers light up one after the other as the elevator swiftly and silently whisked her to the twenty-sixth floor. One last check of her watch told her she had cut it fine, but would arrive on the dot of nine.

She gripped the handle of her attaché case tightly in both hands, holding it in front of her in an unconsciously defensive posture, took a deep breath, and exhaled slowly as the doors opened. Several men standing in the lobby of the penthouse office suite turned to look at her, then turned away again to resume their conversation.

Eden continued to stand in the elevator. She couldn’t move. Her feet had rooted to the floor, her brain had gone on stun, robbing her of the ability to walk.

The elevator doors whispered closed again and she collapsed against the back wall, her hand pressed to her mouth as she told herself not to scream. Not to scream, not to faint, not to run…run…run. Run out of the building. Run to her car. Run to her house, where she would grab up her son and then run some more.

Run as far and as fast as she could.

Thankfully, sanity returned before anyone summoned the elevator back to the lobby, and she swallowed down hard and pushed the Door Open button so that she could leave the elevator and join the men who had probably already forgotten her.

He doesn’t know, she told herself, repeating the words over and over like a mantra. He doesn’t know, he doesn’t know. And what he doesn’t know can’t hurt me.

Drawing on every resource at her command—her upbringing, her independent nature, her long years of taking care of herself—Eden willed her heart to slow. Willed her lips to smile. Willed herself to remember who she was, where she was, and why she was here.

She was here to explain international oil and gas law to her bosses, to her firm’s clients, and to a Sheikh Barakah Karif Ramir of Kharmistan or his representative.

Which one was the tall guy wearing the headpiece Henry had talked about? The representative? Or the sheikh himself?

Did it matter?

Because she knew this man, if not his true name or position. She’d never forget him.

He was the self-assured gentleman standing smack in the middle of the reception area, holding court over those from her office and the clients her office represented.

He was the devastatingly handsome man she’d known almost six years ago in Paris.

He was the fickle, duplicitous man she’d known as Ben Ramsey…and she’d borne him a child. A boy child, with his same aristocratic features, his same dark eyes and hair, his same elegant posture, his same almost princely air of confidence.

Eden didn’t feel much like humming a chorus of “It’s a Small World After All.”

Jim Morris broke away from the group before the elevator doors had closed, and for once Eden was happy to see the ambitious young lawyer. Jim looked worried, which made her even happier, as that meant he was probably going to grab her by the elbow and quickly drag her into another room so that he could tell her why the universe was about to explode here on the twenty-sixth floor.

“Trouble?” she asked almost eagerly as she kept her head down, carefully avoiding the eyes of the dozen or so men who probably wouldn’t have given her a second look if her hair caught on fire.

“That depends, Eden,” Jim said, hurriedly taking her arm—she’d almost offered it, she was that anxious to be rescued. “Come in here, okay? And tell me, please, please tell me that you know why in hell the sheikh felt the need to be here today?”

Eden tugged her elbow free of Jim’s tight grip and sat herself down in the nearest chair. It was more elegant than falling down.

Her stomach clenched into a tight ball, and she swayed slightly as a wave of panicked nausea hit her. Had she heard Jim right? Ben Ramsey was a sheikh? For crying out loud, Sawyer was the son of the Sheikh of Kharmistan? No. How could that be? Ludicrous. That was simply ludicrous.

Oh, God. Jim meant it. Now she knew. Ben was the sheikh. Sawyer was his son, the son Ben didn’t know existed, thanks to his defection all those years ago in Paris.

How much danger was Sawyer in, now that she knew? If she was to tell Ben…

She cleared her throat, tried to focus on Jim Morris. “So he is the sheikh, then? Mr. Klinger said he might show up, but I thought—but then I hoped…well, never mind. What you’re saying is that the guy in the headcloth—what do they call those things, anyway—is the sheikh himself, and not just his representative? What’s the representative’s name? Wait, I have it in my notes.”

She set her attaché case on the desk in front of her and quickly unzipped it, then pulled out a thick manila folder and began paging through it. She always kept a “cast of characters” in her private notes, just so she could cram for the final exam that was the actual meeting with her firm’s clients. Mostly, however, she was stalling for time, time during which she hoped to put her shattered brain back together.

“Ah, here it is. Nadim. Yusuf Nadim. How could I have forgotten? He’s the one we’ve all been dealing with the most, right? Man,” she said, pressing a hand against her belly, “I’ve got to stop this, calm down.” She put down her notes, looked up at Morris, knowing she must resemble a doe caught in headlights.

She began to pace, trying to burn off energy as an oil well burned off excess natural gas.

“Is he here, too, Jim? This Nadim guy? I only saw one of those headpieces—Lord, what do they call them? I feel like such an ugly American, calling them ‘headpieces.’ I know what a kimono is, Jim, I know what a kilt is—I even know the proper name for those shorts some Europeans wear on special occasions, although the name escapes me at the moment. So why don’t I know what those headdresses are called? Laziness, that’s what it is. Sheer laziness on my part. I should be ashamed of myself.”

Jim rolled his eyes. “I don’t think that’s important right now, Eden. What’s important is that this Nadim fellow is back at the hotel, sick from the flight or something, and that the sheikh is here on his own, and making one hell of a mess out of six months of our hard work. Why couldn’t this Nadim guy just have postponed the meeting? Why do we have to have this big shot, know-nothing Sheikh of Ara-bee here to screw up the works?”

Pulling herself back from the inanity of trying to calm her badly jangled nerves by thinking about headpieces, Eden did her best to slip into her professional role. Jim wasn’t exactly known for his social skills, and he had just crossed the line.

“One, Jim,” she began firmly, “you’re out of line. Two, you’re still out of line. Unless you want to be that redneck ‘y’all’ lawyer from Texas, and I don’t think you like insults any more than anyone else does. Third—how so? How is everything going wrong? Today’s meeting should have been nothing more than a formality. All the bugs were worked out months ago.”

“Got you, Eden. That was stupid. I’m sorry.” Morris raked a hand through his thinning hair, hair he wore three inches too long in the back in an effort to make the world believe he owned more of it. Eden noticed, withholding a grimace, that he’d had his hair permed since she’d seen him last. Talk about someone who could benefit from one of those headdresses!

She mentally shook herself, once more tried to keep her mind on what was important. Tried to pretend her private world wasn’t falling apart.

“All right, Jim. We’ll forget it. Now, as I said, we should be ready for some signing on the dotted line this morning, shouldn’t we?”

“Yeah, you’d think so, wouldn’t you. You thought so, I thought so, everybody in our firm thought so,” Morris grumbled. “But it turns out the sheikh—this Ramir fellow—is a lawyer of some kind himself, educated at Yale, if you can believe that. A Yalie! He’s got, like, a million questions. We need you, Harvard. Harvard always beats Yale, right?”

“What do you want me to do, Jim? Threaten to tackle him? Besides, I saw Klinger out there, right?” Eden protested, feeling the urge to bolt sliding over her again. This was too much. Too much information, too many memories, too many fears. They were all crowding in on her, bearing her down, crushing her.

She could barely think. “Surely Klinger can handle this. We’re just here for decoration at this point, Jim, and you know that. As I said, a few comments, a lot of ego-kissing, some signing on the dotted line, and we’re outta here.”

“How interesting, Ms. Fortune. And who will be kissing my…ego?”

Eden closed her eyes, wishing the action could make her disappear. The way he’d disappeared so many years ago.

“Oh, God,” she breathed almost soundlessly, looking at Jim Morris, whose thin features had turned the color of putty. Then she squared her shoulders, turned around, and looked straight into Ben Ramsey’s eyes. Into Sheikh Barakah Karif Ramir’s dark, mocking eyes.

“I’m sorry, Your Highness,” she said quickly. “As you can imagine, you weren’t supposed to overhear my associate and me talking. I apologize.”

Ben kept looking at her. Staring at her. Staring straight through her. With Sawyer’s eyes, damn him.

“You may go now,” he said rather imperiously. “Closing the door behind you as you leave—something you might have considered earlier.”

Jim Morris knew he’d been the one addressed, even though the “Ramir fellow” was still looking at Eden. He didn’t hesitate in escaping the small room. Rats deserting a sinking ship moved slower than he did as he left Eden alone to face the insulted Sheikh of Kharmistan.

Ben took two steps in Eden’s direction.

She backed up an equal two paces, until she could feel the edge of the table against her hips. She placed her hands on either side of her, holding on to that edge, her posture definitely one of defense rather than offense.

Which was stupid. The last thing she wanted to do was to look in the least vulnerable.

“You are looking well, Eden,” Ben said, touching a hand to the soft, snow-white material that made up his headdress. He should have looked silly, or pretentious, dressed in his gray Armani suit, the headpiece held in place by two coils of something that looked very much like gold-wrapped silk, the edges of the material flowing over his shoulders.

But he didn’t look silly. He looked wonderful. Dark, and mysterious, and somehow larger than life. Peter O’Toole as Lawrence of Arabia, but photographed in sepia tones. His eyes as dark as any Arabian night. His features chiseled from desert rock weathered by desert winds. His tall form muscular but not musclebound. His movements measured, graceful.

His hands…well, she already knew about his hands.

“And you. You’re…um…you’re looking well,” she answered at last, then cleared her throat. Maybe the action would help her to breathe. But she doubted it. “You knew I’d be here today?”

“Yes, Eden, I did. A knowledge you obviously did not share.”

Eden’s temper hit her then, like a sharp slap on the back meant to dislodge a bit of stuck fish bone, or pride. “You’re right, Your Highness. I had no knowledge that you’d be here today. That Ben Ramsey would be here today.”

He bowed slightly, from the waist. A regal inclination, certainly no gesture that her words had impacted him, no sign of any reaction that had even a nodding acquaintance with the word “embarrassed.”

She longed to clobber him with something hard and heavy.

And then he really blew her mind…

“Very well,” he said coldly. “If you wish to play the ignorant, Eden, I suppose I am willing to listen as you tangle your tongue in knots, trying to deny that you did not know who I was—who I am. Or is your memory truly that faulty, that you forgot my letters, my explanations. That you forgot to answer those letters, just as you chose to forget me, forget Paris.”

“Letters? What letters? The only letter I ever received from you was the note you left on the bed. Let’s see, I think I still remember it. ‘Eden, darling. I have been called home. Stay where you are, I shall contact you, explain everything as I should have at the beginning.’ You signed it with love, as I recall.”

She knew very well how he had signed the note, because she had kept it, for all of these years. It was all she could ever give Sawyer of his father.

The anger was back, cold and hard. “Did I know you were really a sheikh, Ben? How in hell was I supposed to know that? By reading between the lines of that note?”

When he said nothing, she stepped away from the table, picking up her attaché case as she headed past him toward the door. “I waited, Ben. I waited for nearly two weeks, long past the time I’d planned to return home, nearly too late to begin my next law school term. I waited, and I worried, and I finally realized that I knew nothing about you. Nothing important—like where you lived, if you had a family. If you had a wife. Finally, I woke up, realized I’d just had myself a Paris fling, and chalked you up to experience. And that’s how I’d like to keep it, Ben. An experience in my past, one I’m in no mood to repeat.”

He took hold of her elbow. Lightly, not really holding her in place, although she couldn’t move. She was too shocked by the sensation his slight touch set off in her body, a warmth spreading throughout her, betraying her.

“I do not believe you have been asked to repeat it, Eden,” he said quietly, his deep tones a seductive rumble low in his throat even as his words cut her, made her bleed. “But we are going to talk. Not here, not at this moment, but later. You will be at my hotel at six this evening, if you please. The Palace Lights here in San Antonio. Do you know it?”

“Oh, sure, like that’s going to happen!” Eden shook herself loose from his grip, using much more force than was strictly necessary. “I wouldn’t cross the street to see you, Your Highness. Put that in your…oh, hell, just stuff that in your headpiece, okay!”

She started for the door—when had the room grown so large?—but Ben spoke again, once more halting her in her tracks. “You will please tell Attorney Klinger and the others that His Highness has decided not to open Kharmistan to foreign investors. You might call them foreign devils, or infidels, if you think it will help prove that this ignorant Arab has no business sense, no concept of the fortune he is turning down.”

Eden whirled back to face him, her blue eyes narrowed as her entire face pinched and blanched at the same time. “You wouldn’t dare,” she said, her heart pounding so loud she could barely hear herself speak.

He turned to her slowly, his dark eyes cold, his face a mask of handsome, deeply tanned, unreadable flesh. “If you have done your research, Eden, and I am convinced you have, you will know that I currently hold the position of twenty-third richest man in the world. I do not have much time for such lists, but they do seem to impress Westerners. So you see, Eden, I do not need your clients. I never did. I would not be here today if I had not seen your name on one of the status reports the faithful Nadim placed on my desk six months ago. He did not remember your name. I, however, have it branded on my heart.”

Eden refused to comment on his last statement. “Six…six months ago? You’ve been planning all of this? Negotiating with our clients for six long months? Putting us all through hoops, acting as if you wanted this deal—all so you could come here today to insult me? Embarrass me? Why? Do you plan to have me lose my job? Is that it? Are you that petty? You’ve ignored me for more than five years. How does that end up being my fault?”

“Six o’clock, Eden.” He walked past her and put his hand on the doorknob. “Now, if you will excuse me? I have a meeting to postpone until tomorrow. It will only be postponed, will it not, Eden?”

Eden chewed on the inside of her cheek, longing to tell him to go to hell, longing to tell him she didn’t give two snaps for the deal her firm had been working on for six long months. “Yes, that’s right. Only postponed, Your Highness,” she ground out at last, then exited the room ahead of him as he held open the door and graciously gestured that she should precede him.

Mary Ellen Fortune poured two cups of tea in the large kitchen of the contemporary Colonial house she and her late husband had built on Fortune land several years earlier.

The house was only two miles from the original homestead that had been expanded to three or more times its size over the years. Not that Cameron had felt the huge, rambling house hadn’t been large enough for he and Mary Ellen to raise their family there, alongside the family of his brother, Ryan.

Cameron had liked elegance, and size, and this house reflected his need for the overtly flamboyant and Mary Ellen’s equal need to make a comfortable and cozy home within the parameters her husband had set up. Now, with the children grown and gone, with Cameron gone, the house she loved was too big, too empty.

“You and Sawyer could come here for a while, darling,” Mary Ellen said as she carried the teacups to the wide butcher-block-topped kitchen table, placing one cup in front of Eden. “Security on the ranch is excellent, as you know. He couldn’t touch Sawyer here.”

Eden ran a hand through her hair, pushing the thick, wavy mass back from her face. She’d driven directly to the ranch as soon as the meeting had broken up, which it had done rapidly once Sheikh Barakah Karif Ramir had regally begged the kind indulgence of those gathered and then departed the room without so much as a word of excuse, surrounded by his phalanx of guards.

Eden had been so distracted that she couldn’t even remember what her boss had said to her, what he had asked her. She’d just sicced him on Jim Morris, and been the first person on the elevator when it returned to the twenty-sixth floor.

Her memory of locating her car in the underground parking lot, the drive to the Double Crown Ranch, to her mother’s house, was equally vague. All she’d known was that she’d had to get to her mother, and she had to stay away from her own home on Edgewood Drive. Just in case she was followed…

“I can’t stay here, Mom,” Eden said, shaking her head. “Thanks to Ben—to the sheikh, that is—we’re all meeting again tomorrow in San Antonio. I’d have to get up before dawn to make it into the city on time. But Sawyer could come here, couldn’t he? He and Mrs. Betts.”

“He could,” Mary Ellen agreed, just as if she hadn’t been the one to suggest the visit from her grandson. “And Mrs. Betts could watch him while I’m working. I have to get the quarterly reports in order soon, you know.”

Eden nodded. Her mother had always been just that. A mother first and foremost, a loyal wife. But she also had a great business head that she’d employed to clean up after her husband’s financial messes over the years.

With Cameron’s death, she had stepped reluctantly into the limelight, and her business acumen had quickly landed her with new responsibilities and a reason to face life once more after her husband had gone.

“He wouldn’t be a bother, Mom. He’s got his pony up at the stables, but Mrs. Betts can drive him there whenever he wants…” Eden began, apologizing before the fact, but her mother waved off her weak words.

“I’m not saying I’m agreeing with you on this, Eden,” Mary Ellen said, a hint of motherly sternness creeping into her voice. “But I know you’ve had a shock. The first thing you need to do is talk with this Ben Ramsey…this Sheikh Ramir. Straighten out what happened between you before Sawyer was born, learn more about these letters he swore he wrote to you, make your peace between you. Only then can you decide if you want to tell him of Sawyer’s existence.”

“You think I should, though, don’t you?” Eden asked, grimacing as she looked at the clock on the wall, knowing she had to begin her drive back to San Antonio in the next fifteen minutes or she’d never be able to meet Ben at six o’clock, as he had ordered.

“He is the boy’s father,” Mary Ellen said, raising her teacup to her lips, then setting it down again. “I don’t know that he deserves Sawyer, or that Sawyer deserves him, but I do know that Sawyer deserves some answers.”

Eden slumped against the back of the large wooden chair. “Oh, God.” She lowered her head, rubbed at her forehead. “I’ll send Mrs. Betts and Sawyer here directly after dinner tonight. That’ll give me some time, and some distance. Unless he already knows…” she said, her voice drifting off even as her head shot up and she looked at her mother.

“He could know, couldn’t he? Once he’d seen my name he probably had someone make inquiries, check up on me, make sure I was the same Eden Fortune. Oh, God, Mom, why didn’t I think of this before—he might already know!”

Two

Sheikh Barakah Karif Ramir entered the Palace Lights penthouse suite with the slow and measured step that reflected his life of patience, of waiting, of watching for the most opportune moment and then seizing that moment with both hands.

That was life in Kharmistan, the life of a prince, a sheikh. It was the life his late father had lived, and his father before him, for all of the sheikhs of Kharmistan who had known the feint and jab of politics, of intrigue, while these Americans were still learning how to build log cabins.

The sheikh had been raised at his father’s knee, then sent off to be educated; first in England, later in America. He had not needed the education found in books, for there were books and teachers in Kharmistan. At the age of twelve he had been sent away to learn the ways of the world, of the men who were outside his father’s small but strategically important kingdom.

Having an English mother had helped him, but nothing she had taught him could have prepared him for the lack of respect, mingled with hatred and misunderstanding, that had greeted him when he’d taken his first steps out of Kharmistan and into the world beyond his father’s kingdom. In Kharmistan his family name was revered, honored, even feared. In England he was the outsider, the alien being, the oddity. His clothing was ridiculed, his speech pattern mocked.

That was when the young prince had learned the value of conformity, at least an outward conformity that seemed to put his classmates at ease.

He had forsaken his comfortable tobe and kibr for the short pants and blazer of his classmates, even though his father had gained permission for him to avoid the school uniform.

He had answered insults with a smile until he had found sticks big enough to beat them all down. Those sticks had been his brilliant horsemanship, his skill on the playing fields, his excellence in the classroom.

Within a year he had become the most popular student in the school, as well as its top student. He was invited to large country estates over term breaks, introduced to the sisters of his classmates, both welcomed and welcome wherever he went. His friends were legion, and they believed they knew him well.

They never knew him at all. But he knew them. He knew them very well.

What had begun so encouragingly in England had been equaled and then outdone by the success he had found in America during his years at Yale. He assimilated. He blended. He fit in. He became one of “them,” even though he was not one of them.

He could never be one of them, one of those he met, roomed with, ate with, laughed with over the years.

Because he was Barakah Karif Ramir, only son of the sheikh, heir to the throne of Kharmistan.

All his English and American friends knew him as Ben, the nickname his Yale roommate had given him when he could not remember how to pronounce Barakah.

And being Ben was easier, simpler. Nobody groveled, nobody harassed, nobody bothered to try to impress him or beleaguer him or ask anything of him.

It had been as Ben that he had traveled to Paris in an attempt, years after his return to Kharmistan, to recapture some of that simplicity that had been lost to him in the halls of his father’s palace.

It had been as Ben that he had met Eden Fortune, the beautiful Texan he’d foolishly introduced himself to as Ben Ramsey. And why not? He’d anticipated an innocent flirtation, a Parisian romance, perhaps a mutually pleasurable dalliance.

Most women fawned all over him once they learned he was a prince. They fawned, and they preened, and they asked inane questions, and they got mercenary gleams in their beautiful eyes when they looked at him.

He had not wanted to see that acquisitional gleam in Eden Fortune’s lovely blue eyes. And he had not. He had seen interest, yes. In time, he had seen love, a love he returned in full measure.

Even as he deceived her.

The summons back to Kharmistan had come too soon, before he could confess that deception, before he could ask her to marry him, share her life with him. A hurried note left on a pillowcase, and he was gone, flying back to Kharmistan on his private jet, racing to the bedside of his seriously ill father.

But he had written. He had written several times, little more than hurried notes scribbled between taking care of state business and sitting at his father’s bedside. He had ordered those notes hand-delivered to Paris, with her replies placed directly into his hands.

Nothing.

There had been nothing.

No answer. No response.

And then she’d been gone. By the time he could assure himself of his father’s recovery and jet back to Paris, Eden had returned to America.

He may have let her believe he had never gotten a letter from her, but he had. The concierge at the hotel had handed him a small envelope when he had inquired about Eden at the front desk. It’s better this way. Eden. He had taken that to mean that she’d wanted nothing to do with him once he had told her, in his letters, of his true identity, of the privilege and the burden that he carried as heir to the throne of Kharmistan.

For nearly six years he had believed he had done the right thing to walk away, to not look back. To forget. His father had never fully recovered from his stroke, and Ben had been forced to work night and day to try to fill his shoes, to keep their subjects calm, to eventually step into those shoes completely when his father died.

There had been no time for romance, for fond memories, for much of anything except the work of ruling his country.

He had married Nadim’s daughter because it had been a politically advantageous move that had solidified the populace. But neither Leila nor Ben had been in love. Her death three years later had saddened him greatly, but he had barely noticed a difference in his always busy days. For he was the sheikh, and the sheikh lived for the state, not for personal happiness.

And then he had seen the memo from one Eden Fortune that Nadim had placed on his desk….

“Nadim?” he called out now as he went to the small bar in the corner of the living room of the suite, helping himself to an ice-cold bottle of spring water. “Nadim, are you there?”

A servant dressed in the traditional white linen tobe, his kaffiyeh secured to his head with an agal fashioned of thick woolen cords, appeared in the doorway, bowed to him. “His Excellency will be with you momentarily, Your Highness, and begs your pardon for inconveniencing you by even a moment’s absence,” he said, then bowed himself out of the room.

“Yeah, right,” Ben muttered under his breath as he pulled the kaffiyeh from his own head, suddenly impatient with the formality with which he was treated as the Sheikh of Kharmistan. It was as if he lived inside a bubble, and no one was allowed to approach too closely, speak too plainly, say what the devil was on his or her mind.

He had a sudden longing for that long-ago summer in Paris, for the days and nights he had spent with Eden. That was probably because she had looked today as she had looked then, only even more beautiful, more assured, more amazingly intelligent and independent.

Although not so independent that she could refuse his request—his ultimatum—to come here tonight, to meet with him again. She had been angry with him, certainly, but she had also seemed frightened. Frightened for her job? No. It had been more than that, he was sure of it.

But what? What?

“Your Highness requested my presence? I ask forgiveness for being unprepared for your seemingly precipitate return. Things did not go so well at the meeting?”

Ben turned to look at his closest advisor. Yusuf Nadim was a tall, extraordinarily handsome man in his mid-sixties. Dark skin, dark hair without a strand of gray, a thin mustache over his full upper lip. Nadim wore Western clothing well, but seldom, and looked quite impressive now in his sheer white silk kibr ornamented with a gold neckband and tasseled cord. He wore the flowing kibr over a fine linen tobe. His kaffiyeh was constructed of the same sheer material as his kibr, and anchored in place with an elaborate agal wrapped in gold thread.

He bowed to Ben, but his dignity did not bow with him.

My third cousin, the man who would be sheikh, Ben thought idly, then dismissed the reflection as it did not give him pleasure. Neither did the subject at hand.

“You would like me to say yes, it did not go well. Would you not, Nadim?” Ben asked, smiling quite deliberately. “That way you could remind me of how very indispensable you are to the Sheikhs of Kharmistan, both to the father before him and now to the son. You could tell me how foolish I was to think I could negotiate a simple business deal without you by my side.”

“On the contrary, Your Highness. I would never presume such a thing. I only ask, as advisor and father-in-law and friend, to humbly serve Your Highness with all of my feeble, unworthy self, in any way I can.”

Nadim bowed again, but not before Ben saw the quick gleam of satisfaction—mingled with dislike?—in Nadim’s dark eyes. He recalled his father’s words on the subject of enemies. It is best to keep them close, where you can watch them.

Ben took another long drink of water, to cleanse his palate after Nadim’s too sweet apology—or whatever the hell the man thought he had been offering. “I postponed the meeting until tomorrow, as something came up. Something unexpected,” he told Nadim, effortlessly massaging the truth, “and unexpectedly personal.”

“Your Highness?” Nadim asked, waiting to seat himself until Ben had lowered himself onto one of the two striped couches in the living room area of the immense suite. The suite had six rooms, not counting those for the servants. Texans, it seemed, took great pleasure in living up to their reputation of “everything is bigger in Texas.”

Ben pushed a hand through his coal-dark hair. Choosing his words carefully, he said, “Do you by chance remember an American woman by the name of Fortune, Nadim? Miss Eden Fortune?”

“A woman?” Clearly, Nadim was puzzled. “You postponed a meeting we have been planning for six months—for a woman? I know our beloved Leila is gone these past three years, Your Highness, but surely if you had need of a woman, there is no dearth of them at home in Kharmistan. If you had but asked, I—”

“There is a saying here in America, Nadim—‘Get your mind out of the gutter.’” There was an edge of steel in Ben’s voice as he interrupted the man. “You would do well to remember it.”

Nadim inclined his head. “My profound apologies, Your Highness.”

“Not that I am not honored by your offer to…um…pimp for your sheikh,” Ben said, unable to hide his smile. “I had no idea that procuring willing females was part of your duties as my advisor.”

Ben now saw the anger in Nadim’s eyes, the fullness of it, the depth of it, even as the man answered with a smile of his own. “Your Highness is being droll.”

“I try,” Ben said, his own humor evaporating. “Now, to get back to Miss Eden Fortune, if I might. Do you recall the name?”

“I do not, Highness. I am sorry. Have I met the woman?”

Ben stood, walked over to stand in front of his advisor, looked down at him as he sat at his ease. “No, Nadim, you have not. Perhaps you remember my father’s illness of some years ago, the time of his first cerebral accident?”

Nadim frowned as he stood, bowed to his sheikh. “Those were such trying times, Your Highness,” he said apologetically. “Your father had been meeting with the various desert chieftains on the delicate matter of water rights when he collapsed, sending everyone into a panic. Fools, all of them, believing that Kharmistan could not survive your father’s death. Our neighbors were looking for a reason to invade our territory, and without the loyalty of the chieftains we faced a turmoil that had to be avoided at all costs. We had to find you, which, I recall, was not an easy task, Your Highness, and then prominently produce you, prove that Kharmistan would go on, no matter what happened to your father.”

“Then you do recall, Nadim,” Ben said, beginning to pace once more. “And you found me. You found me in Paris. Now do you remember the name Eden Fortune?”

Nadim’s eyes were as dark as a starless midnight in the Kharmistan desert. “The woman. Of course. The father on his sick bed, possibly his death bed, and the lovesick son passing notes like a schoolboy, demanding delivery by hand in Paris. How could I forget?”

Ben turned on his heels, looked straight at his father-in-law. “But you did as I said, didn’t you, Nadim? You followed my direct order to have my letters hand-delivered to Miss Fortune in Paris?”

Nadim pulled his robe about him as he lifted his chin, struck a pose caught somewhere between arrogance and servility. “You question my loyalty, Your Highness? You question my vow to serve my prince in every way? I should leave your service at once, Your Highness, if you were to have lost confidence in me.”

“I will consider that an answer in the affirmative, Nadim. You did send a messenger with my letters. They were, as you had promised me, delivered directly into her hands. I must believe that she lied to me this afternoon, for I cannot believe that my most trusted advisor lied to me six years ago, and is lying now even as he looks into the eyes of his sheikh.”

Nadim continued to stare at Ben for long moments, then bowed, turned, and departed the room.

Ben’s suspicions went with him.

Ben paced the living area of the penthouse suite, pretending he did not see the hands on the mantel clock, pretending he had not heard the clock strike six a quarter hour earlier.

She was not coming. He could not believe she would not come. Not because he had demanded her presence, but because of her loyalty to her employer. Even as he had fallen in love with Eden, he had been able to see her finer qualities with a calm and detached eye. Loyalty, he had been sure then, had been sure until fifteen minutes ago, was very important to Eden.

As he, obviously, was not. Had never been.

How strange, how odd, how unprepared Ben was for rejection. From the time he had been a child, he had only to crook his finger, raise his eyebrow, give the faintest hint of what—or who—he wanted, and all that he desired had simply dropped into his lap.

His birth counted for some of this, his personality and will to succeed accounted for more. From his excellence in sports to his conquests with women, he had only ever brushed up against failure, had never embraced it. Failure had never embraced him.

Except for Eden Fortune, in Paris.

Except for Eden Fortune, here in Texas.

And now what was he to do? If he backed out of the negotiations with the American triad, Eden would surely lose her position. Obviously he had not thought through his plan completely. After six long months of planning, he had failed to factor in Eden’s temperament, her stubbornness in the face of his demands.

She was her own person. He had known that in Paris, he should have remembered it before he had presented her with an ultimatum that could only hurt any chance he had of speaking with her, perhaps holding her again. Perhaps loving her again.

“Stupid!” Ben told himself as he reached up a hand to his sheer kaffiyeh with its bold black agal. He had been as stupid, as cowhanded, with Eden as he had been to have dressed himself in the brilliantly striped aba denoting him as sheikh, a move meant to impress her, perhaps intimidate her.

Before he could yank the kaffiyeh from his head, strip off the aba to reveal the more pedestrian slacks and knit shirt beneath it, the doorbell of the suite buzzed once, twice.

“Eden,” Ben breathed, relaxing his shoulders, realizing that he, who routinely stared down princes, had been both anticipating and dreading this meeting. He was on edge, nervous. And that made him angry.

He walked over to stand in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over the city as one of the servants opened the door to the tiled foyer and he heard Eden give the man her name.

“Miss Eden Fortune, Highness,” the servant said a moment later, bowing Eden into the room, then retiring as he earlier had been bidden. Haskim would be back in a half hour, to serve the dinner of Middle Eastern specialities Ben had ordered prepared in the suite kitchen. Ben had, with an inner smile, ordered Dolma—stuffed grape leaves—among other Middle Eastern specialties, just to see how Eden reacted when she took her first bite of the delicacy that was a bit of an acquired taste.

Now he felt petty, and wished he had ordered from the hotel kitchens. Not that Nadim would allow such a thing without making a great fuss out of being his official taster, just in case the hotel chef had tried to poison the Sheikh of Kharmistan. The last person Ben wanted present in the room tonight was his outwardly conscientious, inwardly jealous father-in-law.

Ben watched as Eden walked into the room, her head held high, her posture that of a soldier about to undergo inspection. She was still clothed in the same trim, prim navy-blue suit he had seen her in this morning. Ben considered the outfit to be a deliberate choice, one meant to show her disdain for him, her determination to make this a business meeting and nothing more.

“Your Highness,” she said with a barely perceptible inclination of her head as she stopped, folded her hands in front of her. Glared at him.

Her dark brown hair was still drawn back severely. A French twist, Ben believed the style was called. He wondered if Eden could appreciate the irony in that description. The severe hairstyle helped to accentuate Eden’s high cheekbones, the clean sweep of her jaw, the fullness of her lips. Just as the severe blue suit skimmed over her body, setting off memories, hinting of a promise Ben was sure Eden had no intention of declaring.

She was magnificent. From her pride to her delicious body, she was magnificent. Just as he remembered her. Just as he had never been able to forget her.

Her blue eyes sparkling with anger and a hint of fear he could not like, she gestured to the couches, saying, “If the inspection is over, would it be possible for the two of us to sit down, discuss our problems like adults?”

“I have no intention of reneging on the deal with the clients your law firm represents, Eden,” he said immediately, hoping to see some of the starch leave her slim shoulders. “I can only ask your forgiveness for such a heavy-handed threat, but in my stupidity I could not think of another way to convince you to have dinner with me tonight.”

Eden sat, sliding her hands along her thighs as she did so, smoothing down her skirt. “You could have asked me, Ben,” she said bluntly. “That’s how we do it here. You ask, I answer.”

“In the affirmative?”

Her chin lifted a fraction. “Hardly. I much prefer to keep our association limited to business.”

Ben sat on the facing couch, smiled. “Then I withdraw my apology, for I was determined that we should meet privately. I regret that you only agreed under duress, but I am equally determined to enjoy the evening.”

As if on cue, one of the kitchen servants—Nadim insisted they travel with a full staff—bowed himself into the room, carrying a heavy silver tray laden with a sampling of Middle Eastern appetizers, including the Dolma.

“It all looks delicious, thank you,” Eden told the servant, who bowed to her then asked Ben if he could be permitted to serve them with cold juices freshly squeezed in the kitchen. Ben agreed, and the servant bowed again, backing out of the room.

“I thought he was going to kiss your feet,” Eden said, sitting forward on the couch and picking up a small china plate as her free hand hovered over the assortment of appetizers. “Oh, Dolma. I adore stuffed grape leaves, don’t you? And what’s that?” she asked, pointing to another dish. “I don’t think I recognize that one.”

“A sampling of Maldhoom,” Ben said, watching as Eden popped a grape leaf into her mouth, closed her eyes as she savored the taste. “It is made of eggplant and a variety of seasonings. I can ask my cook to write down the recipe if you like.”

Eden wrinkled her nose. Just the way she’d wrinkled her nose at that small restaurant on the West Bank of Paris as she watched him eat his way through a plateful of snails. “Eggplant? Thanks, but I’ll pass. But these are eggrolls of some kind, aren’t they?”

“Shamboorek,” Ben told her, wondering how he could have forgotten how dedicated Eden could be to good food. “We have many varieties of eggrolls, but these, I do believe, are stuffed with ground lamb, onion, and seasoned with a variety of spices.”

Eden nodded her understanding, wiping her fingers on one of the linen napkins placed on the tray, then dabbing the napkin at her chin, which had collected a bit of the sauce from the Dolma. She took a sip of apple juice the servant had placed in front of her, then reached for the Shamboorek.

She had the eggroll halfway to her mouth before she stopped, looked at him, and a very becoming blush colored her cheeks. “I’m so sorry. I haven’t eaten more than a few bites all day for one reason or another. I can’t believe I’m diving in like this!”

“But understandable. The fuller the mouth, the less one can be made to speak,” Ben said, lifting a glass of chilled apple juice to his own lips.

“What’s that, Ben?” Eden asked, putting the eggroll back on the plate. “Some kind of ancient proverb? If it is, I don’t like it.”

“Again, my apologies. And, please, continue to enjoy the food. I can remember now how much joy food gives you. A woman who enjoys the pleasures of the senses, and is not ashamed to indulge herself. Do you remember the night I fed you fresh strawberries in cream, Eden? How you licked the cream from my fingers, how I kissed the tart juice on your lips? So innocently sensual, so impossible to forget.”

“That’s it!” Eden said, tossing down her napkin. She stood, with only one quick, longing look toward the plate of Shamboorek. “I came, we spoke, and now I’m leaving. I’ll see you in the morning, Your Highness. And then I’ll count myself lucky if I never have to see you again!”

“Your Highness?”

Ben turned to see three of his servants standing in the hallway, one of them with sword already drawn. “We heard the raising of voices, Your Highness,” Haskim said. “There is trouble?”

Ben grinned up at Eden, who was glaring at the servants with enough anger in her eyes to most probably stop a charging rhino in its tracks. “Do you want to see what would happen if I were to say ‘Sic her, boys’?” he murmured quietly, so that only Eden could hear. “Or maybe you would just rather sit down once more, and enjoy your Shamboorek.”

As Eden stood, and steamed, Ben waved the servants out of the room, wondering just how far Nadim had told them to go, how close Nadim had ordered them to stay.

With that thought in his mind, he excused himself from Eden and followed after the servants, shooing them along in front of him until they stood in front of the door to the kitchen. “You insult me, believing your sheikh could be overpowered by one small female,” he said sternly, then smiled. “Go eat your dinner, all right?”

He stopped to discard the kaffiyeh and aba on a chair in the hallway, smoothed his hair, and reentered the living room of the suite, saying, “I have convinced my attendants that you are not hiding a Glock under your jacket or a bomb in your purse. Although I would suggest you not raise your voice again, not if you want my servants to partake of their evening meal in peace.”

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” Eden snapped, picking up an eggroll and taking a whopping great bite out of it. She spoke around a mouthful of pastry and meat. “I see you lost the robe and…and headdress. When are you going to bring out the crown jewels, or the scepter, or whatever else in hell you think would impress me with how terrific you are?”

“I was trying to impress you, I admit it,” Ben said honestly. “But, as I could see it did not work, I decided to make myself more comfortable.”

“Well, bully for you. I’m not comfortable! Ben Ramsey, garden variety lawyer on vacation. Ha! I can’t believe I fell for that—although no one could blame me for not knowing you were really Sheikh Barakah Karif Ramir, now could they? I mean, how many sheikhs can ten thousand vacationing college girls hope to meet? What are the odds? But now, since we seem to be firmly on the subject I really didn’t want to talk about, let me take a wild guess as to why you left. You have a wife, don’t you, Ben? Or maybe six of them?”

“I have been married since last I saw you, Eden, and widowed three years ago. We had no children. But do not believe all you hear about sheikhs and harems, if you please. It makes for titillating press, but is far from the truth.”

“Widowed?” Eden bowed her head for a moment, then looked at him levelly. “I’m sorry, Ben, I didn’t know. It’s a good thing I don’t have any more eggroll in my mouth. It leaves more room for my foot.”

“An apology, Eden? I accept it with pleasure.” He sat once more, deftly picked up a grape leaf and popped it into his mouth. “So, are we being sociable now?”

“Sociable, Ben? I don’t know about that. But I suppose we could be civil, at the very least.” She sat back against the couch cushions, smiled at him. “So, how have you been? Is it difficult? Being a sheikh, that is. I should imagine it could be rather suffocating, if this evening’s events are any indication.”

“I manage,” he told her, “although I have never again been able to sneak away to Paris, as I did before my father died.”

“Died? Was that why you deserted…uh…why you left Paris so abruptly? Your father died?”

“He became quite ill, and never fully recovered until his death some six months later. That much is true. But I did not desert you, Eden. I wrote, had letters hand-delivered to your hotel. Those letters you told me today you had never received.”

“And I didn’t!” Eden declared, then winced, lowered her voice. “Sorry. I wouldn’t want to see the cavalry showing up again.”

“I wrote three letters, Eden,” he continued as she wiped at her fingers, avoided his eyes. “Three. Each one explaining who I was, why I had to leave. Three letters personally placed in my chief advisor’s hand and then couriered to Paris by one of his staff. And I saw your answer when I could at last return to Paris myself. How did it go? Oh, yes. Some nonsense about it being ‘better’ this way. Was it better that way, Eden? Better that you should leave, turn your back on what we had?”

Eden continued to stare at him, her blue eyes as honest as they were beautiful. “I never saw any letters from you, Ben. I already told you that. And you believe me, don’t you? You might not have believed me this morning, but you believe me now. What did you do, Ben, turn your trusted advisor over to the thumbscrews?”

“I am considering having him smeared with honey, staked out on the desert, and nibbled to death by toothless camels, even though I am sure he believes he was acting in the best interests of Kharmistan,” Ben said fatalistically, accepting what was impossible to change, as his father had taught him. Then he smiled, sadly. “All these years, Eden. Lost to both of us.”

Eden sighed, shook her head. “Not to you, Ben. You became a sheikh, a great prince. You married. I doubt you gave me a thought until you saw my name as you looked over the oil and gas deal. Just as I put my memories of you in my past and got on with my life.”

“Dinner is now to be served, if it is your pleasure, Your Highness,” Haskim said as he entered the room.

Ben continued to stare at Eden for another long moment, watching a flush kiss her cheeks as she so obviously lied to him. “Thank you, Haskim. Will you please be so kind as to seat Miss Fortune in the dining room? I will join her shortly.”

“Ben—I mean, Your Highness?” Eden said, her voice clouded by concern. “You—you aren’t going to fire the man or anything like that? Anything worse than that? I mean, you have absolute power, don’t you? I’m sure I read that somewhere in my notes.”

Ben stood as Eden did, motioned for her to follow Haskim into the dining room. “You overreact, Eden. I have a call coming from Kharmistan precisely at seven, and it is nearing that hour now. When I have completed my conversation with my minister of water and power, I shall join you. All right?”

“But I can see how angry you are, Ben. Like that day I was nearly run down by a horse-drawn carriage as we walked through Paris. Your eyes are all dark, the way they were then, and I can see a vein pulsing at the side of your throat. Please, don’t do anything rash. What’s done is done, and I’m sure your advisor had very good reasons for disobeying you. You said that, didn’t you? That he must have had the best interests of Kharmistan in mind?”

“You are much more forgiving than I am, Eden,” Ben said, pushing his temper back under his usual tight control, trying once more to remember his father’s words. He had suspected so earlier, but it was only Eden’s honesty tonight that finally convinced him that Nadim had disobeyed his direct orders. “There will be a punishment, I assure you, but I will listen first, then act. And I must act, Eden, as any show of weakness in one’s sheikh is reason to believe in one’s own ambitions. Nadim would expect no less from me. Is that all right with you?”

Eden licked at her lips, eyed him nervously. “I— I suppose so, Ben. And you’ll join me shortly? After your phone call?”

Another servant entered the room, carrying a portable phone on a lace doily placed in the center of a silver tray. Ben picked up the phone, nodded to Eden, then turned his back to her, speaking a fast and fluent Arabic into the phone.

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