LITMIR.BIZ

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acting very repressed,” Sayed said, censure in his tone.

      Ding. Ding. Ding. Give that man a prize. “Because I don’t want to talk about this!”

      “Last night’s transgressions cannot be ignored.”

      Any fleeting sense of romance still lingering in her wary emotions from the night before dissipated then. “I don’t talk about sex.”

      “Never?” Sayed’s disbelief was palpable.

      “No.”

      “But you are twenty-six and your mother died only recently.”

      “So?” Where did he think she got her discomfort with the subject from?

      “What about friends?” he pressed, like it mattered for some reason she could not fathom.

      “I was a scholarship student surrounded by peers who drove Beemers and wore designer jewelry with their school uniforms. I had very few friends, none I would have talked about regarding such a taboo subject.”

      Sayed was now looking at her strangely. “Sex is taboo?”

      “Yes, which is why I wish we could stop talking about it right now.”

      “But last night...”

      “Alcohol is apparently very effective at lowering my inhibitions.”

      “And in college?” Yusuf asked, still harping right along with his emir on the whole who-had-she-talked-about-sex-to thing.

      “What part of ‘taboo subject’ are you not getting?” she demanded with asperity.

      He shook his head, his expression pitying.

      Which she would not accept. She’d never allowed anyone to pity her and Liyah wasn’t about to start now. “I have hardly been deprived.”

      She’d had things a lot more important than sex, or a romantic relationship, to think about. Namely, making Hena proud and proving Liyah’s value as a student and later employee.

      “Condoms are not infallible as birth control.” Yusuf’s frown was for both her and Sayed.

      Sayed winced in acknowledgment and faced Liyah, his expression too serious. “The fact is, the nondisclosure agreement is the least of our worries right now, habibti.”

      “Don’t call me that.” It brought the night before into today where it had no place.

      Yusuf sighed and looked very tired all of a sudden. “Miss Amari, you have to face reality. You may well be pregnant with the next heir of Zeena Sahra.”

      “No,” she cried before panic had her spinning back into the bathroom and locking the door behind her.

      Nausea twisted her stomach, chills rushing up and down Liyah’s arms and legs. She could not be pregnant.

      She was not her mother. Liyah had worked so hard to build a life her mother would be proud of. Hena Amari would be devastated by this turn of events.

      The knowledge her mother was no longer around to witness Liyah’s fall from grace was no comfort.

      The fact she had no one to turn to for advice, for support, even for a good lecture, sliced open the wound of her mother’s death that had barely begun to heal.

      This could not be happening. Liyah would not allow it to happen.

      She charged back into the room. Yusuf and Sayed stopped talking and faced her, wearing twin expressions of surprise.

      “I am not pregnant. Do you hear me? I will not be pregnant.”

      Sayed’s dark eyes widened, his features moving into lines of unwelcome sympathy. “It is not something you can will away, Aaliyah, nor do I believe you truly wish to.”

      “I was not setting some sort of mantrap,” she all but shouted.

      “I believe you. That is not what I referred to.”

      “What, then?” she demanded belligerently

      “Would you will our child out of existence if you could?”

      She staggered back a step, her earlier nausea returning. How could she answer that?

      Of course she would never will a child out of existence. She’d spent a lifetime believing her father didn’t want her, no matter what Hena had tried to convince Liyah. She could never visit that lack of acceptance on her own child.

      Not even in the womb.

      But there was another truth she could not ignore. “I do not want to be pregnant.”

      And she didn’t care if those two attitudes seemed to be at odds. In her mind, one had nothing to do with the other.

      If she were pregnant, she would make the best of it, but Liyah categorically did not want to be pregnant.

      “Why did she have to die?” she asked of no one in particular, knowing only that she wanted to talk to Hena one last time with a pain that was tearing at her.

      Sayed laid his hand on her arm. “I know you miss her, but your mother didn’t leave you on purpose, ya ghazal.”

      Liyah jumped, not having realized he’d moved so close. She looked up at Sayed, unsure why his words, his very presence, was so comforting. It shouldn’t be. “Everything has been so hard since she left. Everything.”

      “It will be okay.”

      Confusion, grief and pain a maelstrom of emotion inside her, Liyah shook her head. “No. It can’t be. The Amaris will know they were right to reject me. They’ll want to take my baby away, too. She’ll grow up without her father like I did.”

      Liyah’s thoughts spun with dizzying speed, no chance for her to take hold of one.

      “But don’t you ever accuse her of blackmailing you,” Liyah demanded fiercely. “Don’t you dare pretend you don’t remember me. You don’t have to acknowledge her, but you won’t treat her like that, like she’s garbage under your shoe. Do you understand?”

       CHAPTER EIGHT

      “PERHAPS I SHOULD get Abdullah-Hasiba,” Yusuf said.

      Liyah spun toward him. “No. You won’t tell her. This is my business.”

      Her business. No one else’s. She was alone now.

      On one level, Liyah realized that she was flying apart, but she could do nothing to stop it. Her ability to repress her feelings and put on a cool front had deserted her completely.

      After a wary glance at her, Yusuf looked toward Sayed for direction.

      His emir ignored him, moving forward so Liyah had no choice but to back up until he had her pressed against the wall. She should have felt trapped, but her rampaging heart started to calm, her breathing slowing down to match his even inhalations.

      He filled her vision and dominated her other senses, leaving no room for anything else, including her escalating panic.

      Cupping her cheeks, Sayed waited until Liyah met his gaze and held it. “Listen to me, ya ghaliyah ghazal. If you carry my child, we will face this together. You are not alone.”

      If only that were true. He could call her his precious gazelle, but she wasn’t his. She wasn’t precious to him.

      No matter how beautiful he found her, women who didn’t come from money or royalty, women like Liyah, who worked for a living, didn’t exist for him in his world.

      She almost laughed with gallows humor. “You don’t even think I’m good enough for an affair. You aren’t going to raise a child with me.”

      And why were they even talking like this.

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