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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

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