LITMIR.BIZ

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Though he was often in a hurry in the morning because he had stayed up too late at a party the night before. And he was rushing to catch up from the moment his feet hit the ground to the moment he lay back down. He was very young, with a lot of weight on his shoulders.”

      “I am not so young, yet I find it quite the weight.”

      “How old are you?”

      “Thirty. I believe.”

      Little lines of concern wrinkled her brow. “You aren’t sure?”

      “I lose track. It isn’t as though anyone has ever baked me a birthday cake.”

      She frowned, the expression creating deep grooves by her mouth. She seemed, in his estimation, unduly distressed by his lack of baked goods. “No one?”

      “Perhaps,” he said, battling against a memory that was pushing against his brain. “But I would have been much younger.”

      It would have been when his parents were alive. And he never could remember back that far. Sometimes…sometimes he saw his father’s face… So serious. So earnest. And he was speaking. But the words were muddled. He could never hear them properly.

      He never tried.

      Mostly because accessing those memories required him to wade through the ones that immediately preceded them. The years spent in the palace before he had been sent to the desert.

      The years that had turned him to stone.

      “I always had a birthday cake. Though I didn’t always have anyone there to share it with me. When I was older I would go on trips with friends. Cruises and things. I made sure I didn’t lack for company when I got older.”

      “Why didn’t you always have people to share with when you were young?” He found he was interested.

      “My parents were busy,” she said, looking away. “I’m twenty-six. If you were curious.”

      “I wasn’t.” It was the truth. He was curious about her, but age meant little to him.

      “I suppose since you aren’t exceptionally curious about your own age, I can’t be surprised.”

      “Is age something people care about?”

      Her forehead wrinkled. “How long have you been out in the desert?”

      “Since I was fifteen, I would say. Not solely in the desert. Primarily. I returned to the palace periodically to speak to my brother. But I rarely stayed overnight.” He did not like this place. He had not liked to be in close quarters with Malik.

      He had the dark thought that he liked the entire world much better now he didn’t have to share it with his brother’s soul.

      “I’m amazed you can carry on a conversation as well as you do.”

      “I spent a lot of time with various Bedouin tribes. Off and on. Mostly I’ve lived alone. I don’t dislike it.”

      She tilted her head to the side. “Did you dream when you were alone?”

      Tarek frowned. “I don’t think so.”

      “Did you dream last night?”

      He tried to remember, but everything was fuzzy again. “It wasn’t a dream. Something else. Something woke me. Pain.” Memory. Not dreams. But he didn’t want to tell her that.

      Just then a servant appeared with a cup and an insulated pitcher, along with an assortment of rolls in a basket.

      Olivia arched a brow. “Have a seat.”

      It hit him then, one of the things that seemed so strange about her. “You are not afraid of me.” He took a seat where his food had been placed and set about pouring a cup of coffee.

      “Last night I felt afraid,” she said. “But you had a sword.”

      A sharp, hot pain lanced his chest. “I did not hurt you or threaten you, did I?”

      “Would you feel bad if you had?”

      He turned her question over slowly. “I have always taken the protection of women and children seriously. I would not like to hurt you. Or cause you fear.”

      “You speak like a man,” she said, “but I wonder if you feel things like a man.”

      “Why?”

      “You’re very deliberate in your responses. Most people would know right away how something made them feel.”

      “I have not spent much time examining my internal workings.”

      She pinched her lips, her expression assessing. “You are very well-spoken. It won’t be the manner in which you speak that we will find problematic, only the things you say.”

      “You could always write my speeches for me.”

      “I assume someone at the palace already does.”

      “I released the majority of the staff that worked under my brother.”

      “What did he do that made him so bad?” she asked.

      Pain lanced his skull. “He just was.”

      “Why do you sleepwalk?”

      Frustration boiled over inside him, sudden, hot. “I don’t know,” he said through clenched teeth. “I was not even aware that I did. How on earth would I know the reason?”

      “I had to take sleeping pills for a good six months after… Sometimes sleeping is hard.” She swallowed, her pale throat expanding and contracting. That part of her was pleasing, as well.

      “I’m not going to take sleeping tablets. It would compromise my ability to act if the need arose.”

      “You’re surrounded by guards here.”

      “You forget, I was used in addition to palace guards, and an army.”

      “True. But now you’re the king. And I only have thirty more days.”

      “Twenty-nine,” he said.

      “No. Definitely thirty. I was only here for a few short hours yesterday, and we barely interacted.”

      “Twenty-nine.”

      She let out an exasperated breath, rolling her eyes. “You working against me will not make this pleasant.”

      “Sadly for you, I am not pleasant.”

      She stood, her hands flat against the tabletop. “And I am not pleasant when provoked. I didn’t get where I am in life by being a shrinking violet.” She straightened, tapping her chin with her forefinger. “The first thing you need is a haircut. And a shave. Also a suit.”

      “All today?”

      “As I only have twenty-nine days, we may, in fact, squeeze more into this afternoon. I don’t know. It depends on how ambitious I’m feeling.”

      “Why does that sound ominous?”

      “Because,” she said, crossing her arms beneath her breasts, an action that drew his eye, “I’m also unpleasant when I’m ambitious. I have some phone calls to make. I will meet you in your office in a half hour.”

      With that, she turned on her heel and walked out of the room, leaving him sitting at the dining table alone.

       CHAPTER FOUR

      OLIVIA WAS TEMPTED to break into her antianxiety medication before meeting Tarek in his office. But no, she needed to save those for full-on panic attacks. Which, fortunately, only happened when she was boarding planes these days. She should have had one when confronted by a naked man with a sword. But panic had not been the dominant emotion.

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