Claiming his queen...

To legitimize his heir!

Playboy Sheikh Malak assumed he’d never inherit the throne but when his brother unexpectedly abdicates, he finds himself king! Now past indiscretions must be put aside...until he uncovers the hidden consequence of one delicious seduction with an innocent waitress. Malak will claim his heir, but fiercely protective Shona won’t let him just take their son. Malak’s only choice is to bind Shona to him—as his queen!

An intense royal romance with a secret baby twist!

USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award–nominated author CAITLIN CREWS loves writing romance. She even teaches her favourite romance novels in creative writing classes at places like UCLA Extension’s prestigious Writers’ Programme, where she finally gets to utilise the MA and PhD in English Literature she received from the University of York in England. She currently lives in the Pacific Northwest, with her very own hero and too many pets. Visit her at caitlincrews.com.

Also by Caitlin Crews

Undone by the Billionaire Duke

A Baby to Bind His Bride

Imprisoned by the Greek’s Ring

Scandalous Royal Brides miniseries

The Prince’s Nine-Month Scandal

The Billionaire’s Secret Princess

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

Sheikh’s Secret Love-Child

Caitlin Crews

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-07271-7

SHEIKH’S SECRET LOVE-CHILD

© 2018 Harlequin Books S.A.

Published in Great Britain 2018

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

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Version: 2020-03-02

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Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Extract

About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE

WHEN THE OTHER shoe finally dropped, and hard, Shona Sinclair couldn’t say she was entirely surprised.

Horrified, yes. Terrified—certainly.

But not surprised.

On some level, she had always known this day would come.

Get ready, she told herself stoutly. Because it’s finally here.

There were four men, cold-eyed and burly. She had never seen royal guards before, not in real life, but she hadn’t the slightest doubt that was exactly what they were. She knew it the moment she saw them. They came into the restaurant in a kind of rolling, lethal wave. They looked to the right and to the left, not looking for tables like everyone else who wandered in from the streets of the French Quarter, but more as if they were taking stock of every single person in the place.

If asked, Shona was certain they’d have an accurate count of all the busboys as well as the few patrons scattered amongst the tables who picked at their down-market gumbo and rubbery beignets.

Shona knew who they were. She knew. And more, she knew what their appearance meant. She could feel it like a shuddering thing that wrapped around her and shook her so hard she couldn’t breathe for a moment.

But she still held out hope. She caught her breath and she hoped.

It could be a celebrity, she told herself. That happened with some regularity here in New Orleans, even in a less than A-list place like this. But these men didn’t have that Hollywood look. They were too serious, for one thing.

And they were looking directly at her, for another.

It was early yet. The dinner service had yet to really kick into gear and the restaurant was still fairly empty. But this was the famous French Quarter in New Orleans. It could fill up at any time and frequently did, because “laissez les bon temps rouler” knew no set mealtimes.

Shona prayed for a crowd. Fervently.

But when the door opened, it wasn’t a gift from any god Shona knew. Another man walked in, flanked by two more guards, and that was it.

It was all over.

Her worst nightmare had come to pass.

Because she knew the man who stood there, adjusting the cuffs of his mind-numbingly expensive-looking suit with impatient little jerks, gazing around as if he found his surroundings deeply offensive. He took in the decor, which was aimed directly at the tourist trade with vintage New Orleans street signs and Saints football memorabilia plastering the walls.

Then he took his time redirecting that dark, arrogant gaze of his back to Shona.

Where it held.

And she knew too much about him. Things that crowded into her memory and flowed like a kind of painful lava all through her body no matter how she tried to tell herself he didn’t affect her.

He did.

He still did.

She knew that his eyes were not black, as they seemed from a distance, but were instead a breathtaking dark green she had only ever seen on one other human being. And that his face was even more of a marvel up close, all high cheekbones and that hard, tempting mouth. And his hands, elegant and strong all at once, could work magic.

Shona knew that his laugh could make a woman forget herself completely and his smile could make that same woman think that losing herself like that was worth it.

She’d forgotten many things since that searing night five years ago—her sense of humor, maybe, and any sense of who that silly girl had been that night she’d changed her life forever thanks to her own foolishness and a gorgeous stranger in a bar—but she hadn’t forgotten him.

Despite her best attempts.

“Hello, Shona,” he said, and even his voice was the same. “How nice to see you again.”

She had never forgotten the sound of him, either. That low, rich voice that washed over her like a caress, his cultured British accent layered with hints of his own country, the faraway kingdom of Khalia.

Shona had never heard of Khalia before she’d met him. And now she knew far more than she wanted about a place she had no intention of ever seeing firsthand. Such as where the kingdom was situated, tucked there on the Arabian Peninsula above the sparkling Arabian Sea. Its royal family. Its standing in the international community, even. She’d made it her business to know as much as possible ever since that terrible day five years ago, when she’d opened up a magazine in her obstetrician’s office to discover that the baby she was carrying—the result of a one-night stand with a stranger whose name she didn’t know in full and whom she’d assumed she’d never see again—belonged to Prince Malak of Khalia.

He had been right there on a glossy gossip magazine page, dripping in blonde supermodels in one of the many fancy European cities Shona had never visited and knew she never would. Places like Europe were little more than fantasies for a girl like Shona, who’d had no family, no prospects and a chip on her shoulder about both that she liked to think of as her own personal pet.

Princes were even more unattainable than trips to Europe, she was sure. She’d had absolutely no doubt that if she actually managed to reach him to tell him what had happened and that, surprise, he had a baby on the way—assuming a prince could be reached in the first place, because she doubted anyone could simply call the man at will—he would bluster back into her life the way men like him always seemed to do with women like her. He would do nothing but cause trouble, because that was what rich men did. Because they could. She’d seen it happen more than once. Women down on Shona’s level were good for a night or two, maybe, but certainly not good enough to carry a rich man’s child.

As far as Shona could tell, wealthy men seemed to travel with legal teams at the ready to draw up nondisclosure agreements and engineer payoffs at a moment’s notice—anything to keep the baby far away from the man’s real family and the wife who usually knew nothing about her husband’s extracurricular activities. As well as curtail any future blackmail scenarios. But those were the happy stories. Far scarier were the women who’d lost their babies altogether because they didn’t have the money to fight in court.

That wasn’t going to happen to her, Shona had vowed that day in the doctor’s office, the glossy magazine wrinkling in her panicked grip. She had nothing in the world but her baby and she’d be keeping him, come hell, high water or some random royal sheikh.

Shona had never wanted to lay eyes on Prince Malak of Khalia again.

That hadn’t changed.

“Do not pretend you do not remember me,” Malak said, as Shona started to tell that very lie. That mouth of his curved, and she thought there was something sardonic in the way he looked at her across the sticky floor of the restaurant. “I can see that you do. And besides, lying is so unbecoming, is it not?”

Her body melted at the sound of his voice. In ways that she planned to beat out of herself when she’d handled this, by hand, if necessary. But in the meantime, he certainly didn’t need to know that he still had that effect on her.

“I can’t say I particularly care if you find anything I do becoming or not,” Shona replied, the same way she would to any crazy person who wandered in off the streets. Her reward was instant expressions of outrage from his guards, though Malak’s dark eyes only gleamed. “I see you’ve come with friends this time. A social call, I can only assume. Too bad I’m so busy or I’d love to catch up.”

Malak smiled at that, though it was nothing like the smile she remembered from that night. This one was cool. Powerful, somehow. It made something deep inside her uncoil in a kind of white-hot panic. Worse, he didn’t dismiss his guards, which told Shona all she needed to know about whether or not this was just a weird kind of coincidence years too late. A thick sort of uneasiness wound its way around and around her, until it felt like a noose pulled tight.

Because while it was always possible that he’d come back because he cycled through all his affairs every few years or so and conducted reunions as a matter of course, she knew that was highly unlikely. This was a famous prince, for God’s sake. He was knee-deep in willing women wherever he went. Why would he need to repeat himself?

Which left exactly one reason he would be here in the restaurant where she worked, not at her home—likely, she thought in a sickening rush of understanding, because he’d already been to her little rental house on a not-great street a fifteen-minute walk from the French Quarter.

She was wildly, insanely happy she’d dropped Miles at her friend Ursula’s house before work. Though perhaps friend was a strong word. Ursula had a six-year-old and also worked strange hours. They’d met years ago, waiting tables in the same place a few blocks over, and had been swapping child care ever since. They were bound together by necessity and the odd drink here and there, that was all.

The truth was, Shona knew as little about friendship as she did about family.

“Is there somewhere we can talk?” Malak asked.

And she hadn’t known him more than that single, fateful night five years ago, it was true. But the man she’d thought he was during that long, impossibly carnal night that she refused to be ashamed of, no matter what had happened afterward, had never sounded like that.

As if he was not so much asking a question, but delivering orders.

And woe betide the person who did not obey them.

But Shona had never been very good at following orders. That was what came of growing up hard, the way she had. Her own mother had abandoned her to the state when she was a baby and she’d had nothing but indifferent foster care and what she liked to call opportunities, ever since.

Opportunities to learn how to be tough, no matter what came at her. Opportunities to figure out how to stand on her own two feet and take care of herself, because nobody else would. Or ever did.

She’d been eighteen when she’d been set free by the state at last. She’d made her own way ever since, before and after she’d found herself pregnant and yet again on her own.

And she wasn’t about to change that for some uppity prince in a suit that almost certainly cost more than a year’s rent.

“No,” she told him. She could tell by the way he raised his brow that it wasn’t a word he often heard. Or had ever heard, possibly. “There is no place we can talk.”

“No?” Malak echoed, as if she might have said it by accident and would reverse herself once she heard it repeated back to her.

She didn’t. “We have nothing to talk about.”

Shona folded her arms over her chest and she was fiercely glad that she looked like exactly what she was today. She wasn’t dressed up the way she had been when she’d met him that fateful night. She was a waitress, nothing more and nothing less, and she wasn’t the least bit ashamed of that. She wore the restaurant’s black T-shirt with the silly logo stamped on the front, a little black apron wrapped around her hips and the short red skirt the owner insisted upon, and Shona didn’t mind too much, because it helped with tips. She had scraped her hair back from her face and let it do its own thing at the back, like a high, black cloud of tight curls.

Shona imagined she looked as far beneath the notice of a fancy prince from a far-off country as she was, and that was a good thing. Maybe it would remind Malak why he’d disappeared that morning five years before. Maybe, if she made sure to trumpet her obvious lack of breeding and class, he’d repeat his disappearing act.

She could only hope.

“I’m afraid that we have quite a few things to talk about,” Malak said in that same way of his, that suggested he was speaking laws aloud, not having a conversation. There was something about it that clawed at her, making her feel a kind of restlessness she refused to acknowledge. “And there can be no avoiding it, much as you might wish otherwise.”

As he spoke, he thrust his hands into the pockets of his trousers and shifted the way he stood. And then he smiled as if he had come here to do nothing but charm her.

And this, then, was the man that Shona remembered so vividly from that night five years ago, there in that hotel bar she’d always wanted to go to, when she was growing up. It had almost gotten lost in the elegant suit and the security detail, but she remembered that smile. How infectious it was. How sensual. And how it had spurred her on to act so completely out of character.

She had steadfastly refused to regret what had happened there, all this time. But now, with her heart a wild drumbeat in her chest and her breath tight and a little too close to being labored, she was afraid that everything had changed.

Because the Malak she remembered—lazy and wicked, boneless and seductive—wasn’t a figment of her imagination, after all. He might look different now. He’d stood taller before and his mouth was far grimmer. He seemed less playful, less endlessly amused.

But it was still him, and when he stood more casually it was impossible to keep herself from remembering...everything.

And that was a big problem, because Shona had never reacted to any man the way she did to him. The truth was, she’d never touched any man but him.

She shoved aside that thought, because it was the least of her worries and really, something she ought to have done something about before now. Suddenly, all these years when she’d thought she was too tired, too stressed, too poor, too something to get out there and meet someone seemed like a character flaw, not simple self-protection. Because Shona hated the fact that Malak was the sum total of her experience of sex and men when he also had the power to ruin her life.

Again.

“Even if we had something to talk about, which we don’t, I’m at work,” she told him in the same tone she’d used before. As if the moment she could, she’d be dialing 911 to have him bodily removed and possibly subjected to a psychiatric evaluation. “This is neither the time nor the place for your goon squad or you. You should try calling, like a normal person.”

“A call would not have sufficed in this situation.”

“We have no situation,” Shona said, with a little more force.

Because there was only one thing that he could possibly be talking about, and Shona was not going to let this happen. She would die first.

She’d worried about this moment for years. And now that it was here, it was as if she had done all her panicking already. Maybe that was why, despite the pounding of her heart and that sick feeling in her belly, she found herself focusing hard on Malak instead of giving in to all the sick feelings churning around inside of her. She noticed the way his guards had blocked all the exits. She calculated what she had to do to make it through this so she could run, pick up Miles from Ursula’s and get the hell out of New Orleans.

The great thing about coming from nothing and having only slightly more than nothing to her name now was that disappearing would be no problem. She was barely on the grid as it was. All she had to do was get away from Malak tonight and she could go somewhere—anywhere—far away from here. It would be like she and Miles had never existed.

She was kicking herself for not doing exactly that five years ago.

“You are correct, of course,” Malak said, a dangerous light in those eyes of his. Miles’s eyes. “He is not a situation at all, is he? He’s a little boy. I believe you call him Miles, do you not?”

She wasn’t calm at all, Shona realized then. She was frozen solid, but not in fear. Or not only in fear. She was stitched through with fury, red and bright. “Miles is no concern of yours.”

“Something you must believe very strongly indeed,” he murmured, and there was something even harder about him then. It pricked at Shona like an accusation. “If you prefer to raise him in squalor rather than as what and who he is. The only son of a prince of Khalia.”

“I don’t know or care who his father is,” Shona gritted out at him. “What matters is that he’s mine.”

“Let me tell you what happens when a prince becomes king,” Malak told her, his voice soft with a different kind of menace. “No need to offer your condolences, as I am certain you were about to. Neither my father nor my brother died. They abdicated, one after the next, like royal dominos.”

And Shona couldn’t quite take that in. She didn’t want to make sense of what he was telling her. Because that would mean...

But he was still talking. “Transfers of power are always fraught with peril, I am sure, but perhaps never more so than when the new king was never meant to come anywhere near the throne. First, the palace advisors rend their garments and pray for deliverance, of course. That takes some time. But when they are done, when reality has set in on all sides, they launch a full investigation into the new monarch, a man who...how shall I say this—?”

“Couldn’t keep it in his pants?”

His mouth curved, though whether it was at her dry tone or because he actually found that description of himself amusing, she couldn’t tell.

“As you may recall, Shona, nobody wanted me to keep it in my pants. Least of all you.” He shrugged when her eyes narrowed at that. But it wasn’t as if she could argue. He wasn’t wrong. “The palace investigators had their hands full, I regret to say. They found every woman I’ve ever touched.”

“I wouldn’t think anyone could count that high.”

Malak inclined his head, but that gaze of his never left hers. And she was beginning to imagine it might leave marks. “Each lucky paramour was thoroughly investigated to make certain there was nothing about her or her liaison with me that could embarrass the kingdom. And of them all, Shona, this great and glorious legion of former lovers, only you were keeping the kind of secret that makes the average palace aide turn gray overnight.”

“You are mistaken.” She was gripping herself too hard. But she didn’t let up, even though she was half afraid she would crush her own ribs with her crossed arms. “Miles and I have nothing to do with you.”

“I admire your independence,” he told her in a tone that suggested the opposite. “I do. But I’m afraid there are no choices here. Or, I should say, none I expect you will like. The boy is mine. That makes him the heir to the Khalian throne. And that means he cannot stay here.”

She dug her fingers into her sides, but she didn’t wake up. This was a nightmare she’d had more than once since she’d given birth to Miles, but this time, she couldn’t jolt herself awake. She couldn’t make Malak go away.

“Let me make sure that you understand something,” Shona said, though there was a ringing in her ears. Her heart still pounded, but it had gone slow. Intense. And she was focused on Malak as if he was a target, if only she could find the right weapon. “You will not touch my child and if you try, six beefed-up goons with guns won’t save you. Nothing will.”

She didn’t know what she expected Malak to do then.

But it wasn’t the way he threw back his head and laughed, with all that infectious delight and lazy sensuality that had been her downfall five years ago. His laughter had not changed at all. The dark and somber suit was new, as were the guards surrounding him. That grave note in his voice, this talk of kings and thrones and palace advisors—all of that was new, too.

But that laugh... It was as dangerous as she remembered it.

More, maybe, because unlike back then, it was wholly unwelcome.

It curled into her like smoke. It wound through her, insinuating itself into every crevice and beneath every square inch of her skin. It licked into her like heat, and then worse, wound itself into a kind of fist between her legs. Then pulsed.

She’d told herself she’d been drunk that night. She’d told herself she’d imagined that pull she’d felt when she was near him, that irresistible urge to get closer no matter what. That aching, restless thing inside her that hummed for him only. She’d imagined all of that, she’d been so sure—because she’d never felt it again. She’d never felt anything the slightest bit like it, not with any man who’d come near her before or since.

But she hadn’t imagined it.

It turned out that he was the only man in the entire world who made her feel all those things. And if anything, she’d let time and memory mute his potency.

He was standing here with armed guards, threatening her baby and life as she knew it, and that didn’t keep her from feeling it. What the hell was the matter with her?

When his laughter faded and he looked at her again, Malak’s eyes were gleaming bright and she was breathless.

And in more trouble that she wanted to admit, she knew.

“There is a certain liberty in having so few choices,” he told her, almost sadly, and it felt like a cage closing, a lock turning. “This will all work out fine, Shona. One way or another.”

“There’s nothing to work out,” she said fiercely. Desperately. “You need to turn around and go back where you came from. Now.”

“I wish I could do that,” Malak said in that same resigned sort of way, and oddly enough, she believed him. “But it is impossible.”

“You can’t—”

“Miles is the son of the king of Khalia,” Malak said, and there was an implacable steel in that dark gaze and all through that body of his, lean and sculpted to a kind of perfection that spoke of actual fighting arts, brutal and intense, and not a gym.

And she believed that, too, though she didn’t want to. She believed that every part of him was powerful. Lethal. And that she was in over her head.

Again.

“Congratulations, Shona,” he continued, all steel and dark promise. “That makes you my queen.”

CHAPTER TWO

MALAK WAS FURIOUS.

That was too tame a word. He was nearly volcanic, and the worst part was, he was well aware he had no right to the feeling because he’d been the one to cause this situation in the first place. No one had asked him to carry on as he had, following pleasure wherever it led.

But knowing his own culpability only made it worse.

He hadn’t believed it when the palace advisors had put the photographs before him. He’d had enough on his plate, with his brother Zufar’s abdication following so soon after their father’s and the bracing news that after a life of being ignored—which he had always quite enjoyed, in fact, as it had meant he could do exactly as he pleased without anyone thundering at him about his responsibilities—he was to be king.

Malak had never wanted to be king. Who would want such a burden? He’d preferred his life of excess and extremes, thank you. But Zufar was happy, a thing that Malak would never have believed possible if he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes, not after the way they’d grown up. And Malak loved both his brother and his country, so the decision was simple.

The decision, perhaps, but not the execution of it. His initiation into his new role had thus far been all that he’d feared and more, starting with a close examination of his entire sybaritic existence. Laying all his exploits bare, one by one, until Malak was profoundly sick of himself and the great many salacious, debauched urges he’d never attempted to curb in the slightest.

He had never been much for shame, but it was difficult to avoid when faced with so many photographs and so many thick dossiers enumerating his indiscretions, one after the next, on into infinity. And particularly when so many of the women in those pages were nothing but vaguely pleasant blurs to him.

And yet he remembered Shona. Distinctly.

How could he not? Of the many beautiful women he’d been privileged enough to sample, she had been something else entirely. It had been his last night in New Orleans after a week of blues and all manner of questionable behavior. He had settled in for a quiet drink in the lobby of his quietly elegant hotel to prepare himself for the trip back home to see his family, who would all have been deeply disapproving of his antics if they’d ever spared him a moment’s notice.

And then there she was. She’d been almost unbearably pretty, with rich, creamy dark skin and a lush mouth that made him feel distinctly greedy at a glance. And her beautiful hair, arrayed in a great halo around her head with springy curls he’d longed to sink his hands into. She’d worn a skimpy little dress that had glittered like gold and had made a delectable poem out of her lean curves.

Better still, she’d walked to the gleaming wooden bar and taken the only empty seat, which had been directly next to his.

Malak was only a man. And not much of one, according to his family when they bothered to pay attention to him and all the newspapers that breathlessly recorded his every salacious move.

Which had made it the easiest thing in the world to smile at the prettiest girl he’d seen in ages, and lean in when she smiled back with what had seemed to him, as jaded as he was, like innocence.

It had been a revelation.

“This is my first time here,” she’d told him, angling her head toward his as if she was sharing a secret. “Tonight is my twenty-first birthday and I decided to celebrate in style.”

It had taken him a minute to remember where he was. And more, recall those American laws he found so strange, that called young boys and girls adults when they were eighteen and wished to head off to war, but restricted their drink.

“And you chose to celebrate it here?” he’d asked. “Surely there are more exciting places to go for such a grand occasion than a subdued hotel bar on a quiet street. This is New Orleans, after all.”

Her smile had only gotten better the longer she’d aimed it at him. “I used to walk past this hotel all the time when I was a kid and I always dreamed I’d come in here one day. This seemed like the perfect opportunity.”

Malak had known full well that he hadn’t been alone when he’d felt that spark between them. That fire.

It had never occurred to him to ignore such things back then, for some notion of a greater good. He hadn’t. He’d bought a pretty girl her first drink and then he’d happily divested her of her innocence in his suite upstairs. He could remember her wonder, her uncomplicated joy, as easily as if it had all happened yesterday.

Just as he was sure that if he tried, he would be able to remember her taste, too.

Because it wasn’t only Shona’s smile that had been a revelation to him.

The pictures his advisors had shown him—his aides bristling with officious dismay as they’d set each one before him—were of the only woman he remembered in such perfect detail. He knew time had passed—years, in fact—but he wouldn’t have known that by looking at the photographs they’d placed before him. Shona was as pretty as ever, whether she wore what appeared to be a server’s uniform or one of those long, flowing sundresses she seemed to prefer that Malak greatly approved of, so perfectly did they showcase those curves he could almost feel beneath his hands again.

Or perhaps she was even prettier because he found he could also remember the wild sounds of wonder and discovery she’d made as he’d explored her, and the sumptuous feel of her silky dark skin against his.

But his advisors had not been primarily interested in reacquainting Malak with his every mistake. Those forced marches down memory lane had become tense for all concerned, since Malak had resolutely refused to apologize or show the faintest shred of regret for the way he’d lived his life as the spare with no hope of ascending the throne. Ever.

It was the child his advisors were interested in.

The child, who was four years old and bore a striking resemblance not only to Malak, but also to every member of his family. And if there had been any doubt, the little boy sported the same dark green eyes that had been a gift from Malak’s great-grandmother. The same damn eyes Malak saw every time he looked at his reflection.

And he had never expected to be king, it was true. He’d never wanted such a burden. But he was a prince of Khalia whether his distant father ignored him while campaigning for his mother’s affections, or his mother ignored him because she’d preferred the son Malak had only recently learned she’d had and given away after falling in love with another man. Royal blood ran in his veins and despite his many heedless years of living down to everybody’s worst expectations of him, Malak had agreed to do his duty and was fully prepared to acquit himself well.

Without the issues that had plagued his parents, thank you, since Malak had no intention of ruining himself for love the way they each had, in their way.

He was getting his head around the constant surveillance, whether from his own security detail or the public that had always wanted a piece of him and now wanted everything. He was getting up to speed on current affairs and was learning to pick his way between competing agendas to find his own opinion on matters of state.

He was no one’s first choice to be king—he recognized that. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t do his best to be a good one.

And that meant that Malak did not have to be told what it meant that a one-night affair had borne such fruit. Not that this spared him numerous lectures on the topic from his affronted advisors, as if, left to his own devices, he would simply ignore the fact that he had a child out there in the world he’d never met.

He knew what it meant. And he was furious that Shona had concealed his son from him—even though he was fairly certain he hadn’t told her who he really was. That didn’t change the fact that he had missed years of his own child’s life.

Or that he was now trapped in a mess of his own making.

A mess that would have to become a marriage, regardless of any feelings he might have on the matter.

Furious barely began to cover his feelings on the topic, no matter how pretty Shona still was or how sweetly she’d surrendered her innocence to him all those years ago. There was not one part of Malak that wanted to marry a woman he hardly knew, or any woman at all if he was honest, simply because he’d clearly made a very big mistake five years back.

But it turned out he liked her horror at the same idea even less.

“I hope you mean your ‘queen’ in a metaphoric sense,” she snapped at him in obvious outrage, as if he’d suggested she prostitute herself on the nearest corner. Her arms were crossed, as if she was trying to ward off one of the many disreputable persons he’d had to step over on the street outside.

As if he was one of said disreputable persons.

New Orleans, it turned out, was a very different city in the light. And while sober.

And perhaps Shona was, too.

He studied her a moment while he fought to keep his temper in check. “You will find I rarely traffic in metaphors.”

“I don’t care.” She shook her head at him, very much as if he was insane. “What you do or don’t do is of no interest to me. You need to leave, now, or I’m calling the police. And believe me when I tell you that I’m not into metaphors, either.”

She pulled her mobile from the pocket of her apron and Malak believed her. If there was a woman alive on this earth who would dare summon the local police to attempt to handle him, it would be this one.

Shona was fierce, it turned out, and his was the blood of desert kings. Fierceness was appreciated—or it would be, eventually, if he could focus it in the right direction. She was threatening him, as if she had no fear at all of the armed men who would die to protect him, and he could appreciate that, too. Theoretically.

But the truth was, he wasn’t at all certain that an American waitress of questionable finances and a “career” in restaurants like this depressing, grotty pit should find the idea of marrying the king of Khalia quite so appalling.

What he found he was certain of was that he didn’t like it.

“I invite you to call all the police you imagine will help you,” he told her, and he could hear that volcanic rage in his voice, humming just there beneath the surface. The faint widening of her perfect brown eyes told him she could, too. “I’m sure they will enjoy a lesson in diplomatic immunity as much as they’ll enjoy discussions with you about wasting their time. But the end result will not change. Perhaps it is time you considered accepting the inevitable.”

She made an alternate, anatomically impossible suggestion that made Malak’s entire security team bristle to outraged attention.

“The disrespect, sire!” the man on his right growled.

Malak merely held up a hand, and his men subsided. Because no one was getting the fight they wanted today.

“I would advise you to remember that, like it or not, I am a king,” he told her softly. “It is possible I might find this irrepressible spirit of yours intriguing, in time, but my men most assuredly will not.”

She let out a short laugh that was almost as offensive as the off-color suggestion she’d just made. “The only thing I care about less than you is the opinion of your babysitters.”

Malak did not respond to that bit of impudence the way he wanted to do.

Because this was not Khalia. This was America, where, diplomatic immunity or not, people would likely take a dim view of him tossing a screaming woman over his shoulder and then throwing her into his waiting car.

Besides, that was no kind of strategy. Allowing her to think she could speak to him in this way was setting a dangerous precedent, but he could handle disrespect. He could think of several enjoyable ways to do just that even as he stood here in this distressingly dank hole that called itself a restaurant, the last place on earth he would ordinarily find himself feeling so...needy.

But he didn’t want to kidnap Shona and his own son. He would certainly do it if it came to that, but he knew that would do nothing but make him her enemy. Neither one of them wanted this unavoidable connection and the marriage that had to follow, that was plain enough, but it would be far better for him if she surrendered to the inevitable rather than fought him every step of the way.

At the very least it would be better for his relationship with the small child he had yet to meet whom he’d helped create—a notion he still couldn’t entirely get his head around.

After all, he knew more than he needed to know about what it was like to grow up in the shadow of a terrible marriage. He had no intention of passing on that feeling to his own child—even one he’d only learned existed a week ago.

“I will wait for you outside,” he said, with great magnanimity, as if he was bestowing upon her a tremendous favor. It made her eyes narrow. And then he could see the thoughts that spun through her head, so he addressed them. “My men are already at every exit, Shona, so escape is out of the question. What you need to ask yourself is if you want me to pay your boss to fire you, too. Simply because I can. With ease. And because it would suit me to speed up this process.”

“Of course you’d threaten me with losing my livelihood,” she replied, shaking her head at him as if he disgusted her. He found he did not enjoy the sensation. “After all, what’s a job to you? You don’t have to put food on any tables. You probably think it all just appears there, like magic.”

Malak did not dignify that with a response. He turned on his heel and went outside instead, where night was beginning to creep into the French Quarter, and as it did, as the soupy heat of the day began to ebb.

Outside in the thick, sweet twilight he could wrestle with his temper before he caused an international incident. Something that would not bother him in the slightest, he felt certain, because it would get him what he wanted that much quicker—but would cause the people of Khalia more alarm. And his people had been through enough already in these last few turbulent months.

He expected her to follow after him directly, but she didn’t. She made him wait. She not only did not walk away from her job as he expected she might, but she also worked her entire shift. And on her breaks she tested every single exit he’d told her he was having watched, which his men dutifully reported to him each time.

Malak almost admired her thoroughness and commitment.

Almost.

When she finally walked out of the restaurant and saw him waiting for her as he’d told her he would, she tilted up that belligerent little chin of hers and fixed him with the same scowl she’d used inside.

It took a great deal more self-control than it should have not to object to that...in a manner that involved his hands on her and the horizontal back seat of his vehicle. Malak complimented himself on his own restraint, because he very much doubted Shona would.

“I don’t know what you think is going to happen,” she began, her tone hot.

“I have already told you what’s going to happen.” Malak leaned against the pristine side of the Range Rover his security detail had driven here from the private airfield where his jet waited. The New Orleans night was sultry, just as he recalled it. There had been people around in the daylight, but they seemed wilder and brighter in the dark. Their laughter spiced the air as they wandered down the street and followed the seductive sound of the music that snaked around every corner.

In the middle of it, he and Shona stood there, studying each other with mutual dislike.

You do not dislike her, a voice inside challenged him at once. You dislike the fact she dislikes you, and so openly.

He opted to ignore that. He was unused to being disliked. Ignored or desired, that was what Malak was familiar with. But never this...hatred.

“I am not going to be your queen,” she told him, very distinctly. “I’m willing to let you see Miles, because, like it or not, you’re his father. And he deserves to know you, I suppose.”

He stopped admiring his restraint and forced himself to use it. “You suppose.”

“All you are to me is a man in a bar,” Shona said quietly, her dark gaze on his. And there was no reason that should have slammed into Malak like a blow when it was no more than the truth. “I don’t want anything from you. I never did. I never expected to see you again.”

“Clearly.” Every line of her body was defiant, but as Malak studied her, it wasn’t her defiance that got to him. It was that other thing. That spark that had bloomed between them in that bar long ago. The same fire still licked through him, and he didn’t like that at all. Wanting this woman would only complicate matters further. “But now I have returned. What I can’t understand is why you care so little for your own child you would consign him to a life of hardship rather than involve me.”

She let out a crack of laughter that felt a little too much like a slap. “Hardship? Did you just open your mouth and say something to me about hardship? What would you know about it?”

“You must know that I can provide for him in ways that you can only dream about. What mother wouldn’t want that?”

“My son wants for nothing.” Shona’s voice was quiet again, but certain. Absolutely certain. “He’s a happy kid. A good kid. And he’s mine.”

“What good is it to be yours if it means child care?” He nodded at the shoddy restaurant behind her. “A mother who must scramble for tips in a place like this?”

“Because an honest day’s work is beneath you, obviously.”

“Is this about honesty, Shona? Or your own bloody-mindedness?”

She rolled her eyes. Actually rolled her eyes, which Malak was not sure anyone had ever done to him in all his life.

“He’s four years old because guess what? Sometimes when people have sex, babies come of it. I’m surprised a worldly man like you didn’t know that.”

“I used a condom.” He had always used condoms. Always.

“They are not one-hundred-percent guaranteed. Apparently. And I dealt with the consequences of that all this time, all on my own. Except now you roll back into town talking about thrones and kings like I’m supposed to drop everything and what? Be grateful that you discovered we exist? I don’t think so.”

What bothered Malak the most about her words wasn’t her tone of voice, which bordered on scathing. It was the fact that nothing she said was untrue.

He hadn’t looked back when he’d left. He’d remembered her and her charming innocence, but had it not been for his father and brother’s abdications from the Khalian throne, something no one could possibly have predicted and Malak himself still did not quite believe, he would never have returned here.

But he didn’t say that. He found he couldn’t.

Because he didn’t like what it said about him—and wasn’t that funny? He had spent his whole life gleefully embracing the worst of his impulses. Was it his ascension to the throne that made it all seem squalid now?

Or was it the way Shona looked at him, as if squalid was all she saw?

“You could have reached out when you discovered you were pregnant,” he said stiffly.

The way she looked at him then was not exactly friendly. But Malak preferred that to the quiet certainty with which she’d dismissed him as nothing but a man in a bar.

Maybe that was the real lesson here, he thought with entirely too much sharp self-awareness. He could stand anything save anonymity.

“How would I have done that?” Shona asked coolly. “You never told me your full name. You didn’t leave me your telephone number. I discovered who you were entirely by accident.”

“You mean tonight?”

“I mean I saw a picture of you in a magazine about six months later.” She shook her head. “And no, before you ask, it did not cross my mind to try to chase down the Playboy Prince drowning in models across the world who came from some country I’ve never heard of. Why would I?”

Malak straightened from the side of the Range Rover. There were too many things competing inside of him for dominance, and he didn’t know quite what to do with any of them.

He settled on fury. It felt cleanest.

“If you knew who I was, then you had no excuse.”

“It was a one-night stand,” Shona replied, still with that same damn cool. That—more than anything—told him how different she was from that smiling, bright girl he’d met on the bar stool next to his. And he refused to ask himself if he was to blame for that change, because he was fairly certain he wouldn’t like the answer. “And as far as I could tell, you had those every night of the week. Why would you remember me?”

Why, indeed? And why was that a question Malak suddenly didn’t want to answer?

“I remember you now,” he told her with soft menace. “And even if I did not, the palace investigators found you all on their own. They informed me, in case I’d forgotten, that I was in New Orleans exactly nine months before you gave birth to a little boy who looks a good deal like me. And I might be tempted to believe in coincidences, especially because I’ve never gone without protection in my life, but they do not. It was simpler than I suspect you wish to know to get a sample of the child’s DNA to prove what is already obvious at a glance.”

Her brown gaze met his in a steady sort of challenge that no one else would dare. He told himself it was one more problem with this woman—her obvious inability to recognize her place—but that was not how it felt. “I thought you were supposed to be the king. Don’t you tell your people what to do?”

Malak didn’t want this. He had never really thought much of marriage at all, not for himself. Not after a front-row seat to his parents’ miserable one. And he had certainly never planned to find himself shackled to a woman he’d known for a single night long ago. He had not been raised to worry about continuing the bloodline. But from the moment Zufar had abdicated, Malak had found advisors in his ear, throwing out the names of eligible women of royal blood—Princess Amara of Bharathia, the Lady Suzette, and so on until it was all a blur of names and titles—and demanding he start thinking about his heirs.

Until it appeared he already had one.

And that reminded him who he was. He was no longer the Playboy Prince, the smirking star of a thousand tabloid articles. He was the king, with commitments to his people and their future whether he liked it or not, and it didn’t matter what had happened in the past few years. The only thing that mattered was what happened now.

“I understand your reluctance,” he told her, though he could tell that his tone was more cold than concerned by the way she stiffened. “But I am only here as a courtesy. I thought it would be better if I came to collect you myself instead of sending my men.”

“You can’t collect me. I’m not something you can pick up—”

She stopped, and the air changed between them. Something dark and dangerous seemed to loom there, just out of reach.

Malak did not state the obvious. That she was indeed something he could pick up, and he had.

But he might as well have yelled it.

“I should warn you that I have a limited amount of patience as it is,” he said softly, though not particularly carefully. “While I am aware of my own culpability in this, the fact remains that there is no possibility that my son and heir will be raised apart from me. The kings of Khalia are raised in the palace, under the care of the traditional tutors, the better to prepare for their eventual role. That is how it has been for centuries. That is how it will remain.”

She stood tall and still, her gaze on his and her hands in fists at her side. “My son is not a king.”

“No, he is a prince.” Malak gazed down at her, every inch of him the royal he had always been, though he had largely ignored it. But here, now, it was as if his ancestors roared in his blood. “The crown prince of Khalia, in point of fact. All that remains is to give him legitimacy. What that means, I am afraid, is that you will have to marry me. Whether you like it or not.”

Her breath left her in a kind of laugh. “I’m not going to marry you. I’m not going to hand my child over to you for random tutors to raise. You’re delusional.”

“That would make things easier for you, I’m sure. But I assure you, I am nothing of the kind.”

“Does everyone in Khalia marry a complete stranger? Is that also how it’s been for centuries?”

“As a matter of fact, many of the marriages in my family were arranged.” Malak didn’t think this was the time or place to comment on how those arrangements had worked out over time. His parents’ stormy marriage being the premiere case in point. “We are royal, after all. My brother was raised as the crown prince and was betrothed to an appropriate princess since her birth.”

Malak decided not to share how that had worked out, either. For either Zufar or Amira, the woman he’d been promised to but had not married, in the end. To say nothing of the half brother he’d never known he’d had, Adir, who had appeared from nowhere at their mother’s funeral and had spirited Amira away with him on the day of her wedding to Zufar.

None of those inconvenient truths would help him make his point here, to Shona. “Marrying strangers isn’t the barrier for me you might imagine.”

“Well, it’s a barrier for me,” she threw at him. “Because I’m not completely insane.”

“You have a choice before you, Shona. You can fight me all you like, but you will lose. And either way, I will be returning to Khalia with my son.” Malak let that sink in. He watched the way her chest rose and fell, too fast, and knew his edicts weren’t exactly landing well. “You can stay behind, if you wish. But I cannot tolerate any trouble or scandal. The kingdom cannot survive any more turmoil. So you need to ask yourself—are you willing to give up your child? To sign away all your rights and never speak of this again?”

“I would rather die,” she gritted out at him.

Malak felt that his smile was much too thin, but he aimed it at her, anyway. “Then again, let me offer my congratulations. For your only other choice is to return to Khalia with us and take your place as my queen.”

“I would rather—”

“Careful,” Malak warned her, his voice hardly more than a growl. “What I’m offering you is a great honor, whether you see it that way or not. Be very, very sure that you want to offend me. Be at peace with the inevitable consequences.”

Shona did not look anything like peaceful. “I’m not marrying you, Malak.”

“You will,” Malak said pitilessly. “Or you will remain behind, legally separated from your child and muzzled by a thousand contracts that ensure your silence, forevermore. Those are your choices.”

“You can’t force me to do any of these things,” Shona threw at him, as if amazed he thought otherwise. As if she expected the dirty streets of New Orleans to rise up on her behalf. “You can’t make me do anything!”

But Malak only smiled, and this time, it was real.

Because his patience was finally at an end.

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