Page 31 of Her Royal Daddy
Chapter Eleven
Norah
I was sitting on the sofa in my apartment, chewing my nails to the quick and wondering if I ought to start packing, when Mazi showed up at my door. He must have been to see his father, because there was a fierceness about him that caught me off guard. My heart stumbled, my already knotted stomach tightened so fast that it hurt, and I briefly wondered what I had done to set him off.
But then he smiled and, although still obviously irritated, if he was smiling then that meant I probably wasn’t fired.
“Can I come in?” he asked and I quickly jumped back, opening the door that much wider.
“Oh, yeah. Sorry. You just looked super annoyed there for a minute. I’m almost afraid to ask what happened.”
“I’m almost afraid to tell you,” he said, rolling his shoulders as he walked past me.
Conversations that started that way did not settle well in tummies already as tense as mine.
“Am I fired?” I asked, following him as far as the archway that separated my bedroom from the rest of the apartment.
“Nope.” Sinking down to sit on the foot of my bed, he tsked as he said, “They are prepared to make great exceptions in regards to me and you.”
My stomach sank even further. “I don’t know what that means.”
Whatever it was, it couldn’t be good, because he wasn’t even looking at me.
“What would you do if I asked you to marry me?” he asked.
My startled laugh came out more like a scoffing bark. Regardless, it pretty much answered his question.
“Are you serious?” I asked, not yet sure how appalled I ought to be.
Drawing a deep breath, he looked at me for the first time.
“Oh, shit,” I heard myself say, my knees turning instantly watery and weak. “You’re really serious.”
He beckoned to me. Six steps was all it took to close the distance enough for him to hook his arm around my waist and draw me in to stand between his slightly spread feet. He hugged me, and it felt so sad and yet so natural to wrap my arms around his shoulders too as he buried his face between my breasts. My fingers played in the tight curls at the nape of his neck. Nobody, not even daddies, could be strong all the time. I was more than willing to be here for him in this moment of fragility, but it scared me too, because I was starting to suspect I knew what had spawned it.
“They want me to get married,” he finally said, leaning back enough to look at me.
“I see,” I said, and I could. What I couldn’t do was breathe. “Did they say to who?”
“A Nigerian princess.” He looked at me. “Which brings me back to my original question, baby girl.”
The endearment felt like a sucker punch. Now not only could I not breathe, I couldn’t think very well either. My thoughts were a whirlwind, swirling wildly between ‘I can’t be a princess’ and ‘I’m losing my daddy.’ When I let go of his shoulders, he let go of my hips.
“What would you do,” he repeated, “if I asked you to marry me?”
What, and never go back to the States again? Never see my friends or my family? Live for the rest of my life in a beautiful palace, on a beautiful island, as the wife to a beautiful, dominant man who knew how to comfort me, and punish me, and who broke the bed with me more nights than not—all of which, on the surface of it, should have been all the reason I needed to say yes. But I wasn’t looking at the surface of it. I was looking at the shit underneath.
This was not a fairy tale. This was reality and the reality was that one wrong move on Mazi’s part could forever ruin his already struggling country. Marrying me was that wrong move.
I was not a princess.
I didn’t know the first thing about being a helpmate to a king.
