Page 29 of Sheikh's Unexpected Triplet Babies

"And of course, you always tend to look best in the colors that draw you in..."

"Copper," Bedelia said immediately. "Something really rich and bright."

While the woman was cooing over her good choice, Bedelia thought of Jahin's eyes. She felt a touch of defiance. If he was going to dress her, she might as well wear his colors like some lady in a goddamn ballad.

He noticed her choice right away when she went to dinner in a copper dress that fell in beautiful silken folds to her calves. The shoes matched the belt, which matched the copper ornaments in her hair, and she found herself looking up at him with a slightly arrogant tilt to her chin.

"Well?" she asked daringly, and he grinned.

"Why, you look quite beautiful, my lady..."

He told her she looked beautiful frequently, but he also showed her how beautiful he thought she was. His touch in the night, his kisses, the nearly worshipful way he brought her to climax after climax...she could never doubt his attraction. Somehow, it began to quiet the voice in her head that shouted at her that this was all temporary and that it would all go away sooner than she would believe, and perhaps that was when she started to get into trouble.

They were in the capital, and he was off doing the work he did with the government, administering to his country. They’d had a late night the evening before, and he was going to be late getting home. Left to her own devices, she went prowling through the city streets.

Miller was getting antsy, and she knew precisely why. Before she had met Jahin, she’d put everything into the reports. Sometimes, he demanded such avid research and such a large amount of writing from her that she guessed he intended to use her work whole cloth afterward.

Lately, however, she had been leaving things out. She always did a fairly decent report of the places that people could go to, telling him about the layout, the people, the number of administrative personnel that were wandering around the place. However, when the spots became more personal, when Jahin took her to houses that his family owned or to a goat ranch on the border of the country in the mountains, she couldn't bring herself to give Miller the deep and intimate details that she knew he craved. It had all become much too personal, much too close to her. This was something that belonged to her and Jahin, and when Jahin forgot about her to look for the woman who would rule beside him, they would belong to her alone. There was something in her that refused to share it with Miller and with his readers, and she could tell from his increasingly short and irritated emails, he was noticing.

That night, as she walked along the bright streets of the ultra-modern capital, she was thinking of nothing more complicated than Miller's last email before a newspaper caught her eye.

There were still plenty of older people in the capital who would have a newspaper with their tea or coffee, and this small box was such a one. With trembling hands, she slotted in some coins to make the box buzz and open, and she was able to remove a newspaper from within. She felt as if she was handling something foul or dangerous, and she tucked herself into a nearby cafe before she started to read.

Her ability to read Arabic was indifferent, but with the help of her phone, she figured out that her suspicions were confirmed.

SHEIKH DISCOVERED COURTING DUBAI ROYAL, WEDDING BELLS IN THE FUTURE?

It was all too easy to remember the trip that she and Jahin had taken to Dubai just a week ago. He had been so busy there for awhile. They had only had a few days to see what they wanted to see. The rest of the time, he was out with the trade delegation, greasing palms and making sure the interests of Muneazil were represented. There were nights when he had stumbled in late, too tired for words, and she had simply cuddled up with him in bed.

Apparently one of the things that had tired him out was someone by the name of Princess Layla Marid, a tall and willowy beauty with eyes as dark as black honey and whose hair curled down almost to her hips in the picture that was presented.

The article said very little, but it hinted at a lot. The two had been friends since childhood, and they had spent a great deal of time at the trade summit talking with one another, chatting, laughing, and passing the time as old friends, and perhaps more. The article said they were always noted for their closely related goals, and wondered if there was a hint of royal romance in the air. If there was, the article implied, it would be perhaps the best royal match to be seen in the past few decades...

Bedelia let the newspaper drop out of her cold hands, and she stumbled back into the street. Everything before had looked brightly gorgeous, full of life and sound, and now it felt as if a pane of glass had dropped down between her and the rest of it. The world had turned surprisingly dull, and the sound was all far away. She didn't realize that her steps had taken her to the penthouse before she was in front of it, and numbly she went up the elevator to find that Jahin had come home unexpectedly early and was waiting for her.

"Hello beautiful," he said, dropping a gentle kiss on her forehead. "I am glad I caught you. If we move quickly, we have some time to get some lunch in, and..."

He stopped for a moment, looking at her closely. "Is there anything wrong?

There was a choice in front of her. For a moment, all she wanted to do was ignore the newspaper and cling to whatever fun and excitement that she and Jahin might have left. She also wanted to pointedly ignore him, to be cold and distant until he begged her to tell him what was wrong, to reduce him to groveling.

At the end of it, however, both choices sounded terrible to her. She had entered into this strange arrangement with honesty and integrity, and she would be damned if she let it go now.

"Who is Princess Layla Marid?" she asked, her voice hollow, and he tilted his head, looking at her in confusion.

"Layla? An old friend of mine. She and I attended Oxford together..."

"That's not the answer that I want," she said heatedly, and Jahin looked at her with surprise, a dark frown hovering on his face.

"And pray tell, what kind of answer do you want?" Under the reasonable tone of his voice, she heard something else there, something dark and almost dangerous. A part of her, a primal and female part, told her to tread carefully, but she surged on, heedless.

"I want the truth," she said, her voice tightly controlled. "I want to know all about your...your romance, and what it means for your emirate and about how you have known each other since you were children, and..."

She meant to keep going, but her voice broke in the middle of it. Suddenly, Bedelia felt utterly drained, even a little dizzy, and she sat down suddenly on the couch. For a moment, Jahin stood in front of her, and all she could see were his legs, but then he came to sit down next to her.

They were silent for almost a full minute. She could feel that his breath was synced to hers, and they simply breathed in time with one another. It felt almost like an undeserved closeness, something fragile and precious that was slipping through her fingers.

Then, just when she was certain that the next few words out of Jahin's mouth were going to be to tell her to pack her bags, he pulled her quietly into his arms.

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