Six Sizzling Sheikhs. Оливия Гейтс

throat, on her tongue, and forced it down. She blinked, tried to focus, to think, but all she could hear or feel was Khaled’s threat echoing sickly through her head and heart.

      Resources. Custody. He was talking about legal action.

      Lucy rose unsteadily to her feet. With a few shaky steps she made it to the balcony, her fingers curling around the railing as she took several deep breaths of fragrant air.

      If Prince Khaled el Farrar of Biryal went against her in a custody battle, Lucy was sure she’d lose. At best, she’d gain partial custody, or perhaps only visiting rights.

      She choked back a gasp of horror, of terror, and heard Khaled rise from the table behind her. She felt his hand solid and firm on her shoulder and managed to choke out, ‘Don’t touch me.’

      After a moment, he removed his hand; her shoulder burned. ‘Lucy,’ he said quietly. ‘I don’t want to threaten you. I don’t know what kind of man you think I am—’ He broke off, sighing wearily. ‘No, I do know, and it seems it is a virtual monster—unfeeling, cruel.’

      ‘You aren’t giving me many reasons to believe otherwise,’ Lucy retorted.

      ‘And what recourse have you given me?’ he countered. ‘You came to Biryal, it seems, with the specific purpose of finding me, telling me about our child. Yet now you act as if I have hunted you down and forced the information from you! Why did you tell me, if you didn’t want anything from me? You could have kept the information to yourself.’ His voice rang with bitterness. ‘You’ve managed to do that for nearly four years.’

      ‘I didn’t think you’d want him!’ The words were ripped from her lungs, her heart. She felt tears crowd her eyes again and dashed them away angrily. ‘Why should I think you would? You walked away from me quickly enough.’

      ‘Sam is my child.’

      ‘As opposed to just your lover.’ She nodded with a mechanical jerking of her head. ‘Yes, I understand. Clearly I rated myself too highly.’

      ‘If you thought you could tell me I had a child and expect no repercussions at all, then you were naïve,’ Khaled told her brusquely. ‘A fool.’

      ‘Yes, I realise that now,’ Lucy replied dully. She felt weary, all the fight gone out of her, leaving her with nothing but an aching, accepting despair. ‘I was always a fool when it came to you,’ she added with a bleak, humourless smile. She moved back to the table and sat down. She took a sip of coffee. It was cold.

      Khaled leaned against the balcony, watching her with cool speculation. Lucy put her coffee cup down and forced herself to continue. ‘I don’t have much experience of fathers,’ she said, her voice flat and unemotional even though her heart was twisting painfully. ‘My own divorced my mother when I was six, and the last time I saw him was when I was nine.’ She had a sudden vision of his quick, easy smile, his promise that he’d see her soon—and then the waiting. So much waiting, followed by a deep, echoing despair when he hadn’t come.

      She pushed the memory away, managing a watery smile as she looked up at Khaled; his expression did not change. ‘If I indulge myself in a bit of pop psychology, I suppose I could say I thought you’d be just like him. He left my mother without a backward glance, and he had no interest or time for me either.’

      Khaled was silent for a long moment, and Lucy looked away. ‘I’m sorry for that,’ he finally said. ‘But I am not your father, and I have no intention of walking away from Sam now that I know about him. I will be in his life, Lucy, and, the more we can work together to love and support him, the happier I believe we will all be.’

      Lucy nodded; her heart still felt leaden. She supposed she should be grateful for Khaled’s reasoned response. Despite the way he’d treated her, she believed now that he wouldn’t let Sam down. She had no choice. And despite his earlier veiled threats she didn’t think he’d try to take Sam away from her completely. Still, it was too hard, too new, too much. She hadn’t expected this, hadn’t wanted it, even if that made her a blind fool.

      ‘Let’s eat,’ Khaled said, his voice almost brusque. ‘You look too thin.’

      Lucy smiled wryly. ‘Life with a busy three-year-old makes it easy to skip meals sometimes.’

      ‘You must take care of yourself. How can you take care of Sam otherwise?’

      Lucy did not respond, yet silently she wondered if she could now expect more of these imperious commands. This was Khaled the prince, the future king, not the feckless rugby star.

      Yusef must have been waiting for some kind of summons, for it only took a single flick of Khaled’s wrist for him to wheel in a silver domed trolley. Lucy watched as he placed several dishes on the table: scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, stewed tomatoes, sautéed mushrooms.

      ‘I forgot how much you liked the full fry-up,’ she said, and just the words caused a shaft of memory to pierce her: scrambling eggs in Khaled’s kitchen, barefoot, dressed only in his rugby jersey, laughing as she teased him that he never used his expensive pots and pans.

      Did Khaled remember? Was that memory as precious to him as it was to her?

      Watching as he served them both eggs—his face impersonal, blank—she knew it was not. He probably didn’t even remember it at all. The weeks they’d had together were as incidental and unimportant as the other days, weeks or months he’d had with no doubt dozens of other women. The only difference was that their weeks together had resulted in a child: Sam.

      They ate in silence for a few moments, and Lucy found her appetite had returned as she dug into her eggs and bacon. Yet questions still crowded her mind, worked their way up her throat.

      What now? What next?

      She knew what Khaled wanted, but what did he expect?

      Yusef had cleared their plates and brought fresh coffee when Khaled told her.

      ‘I’ve made arrangements for us to fly back to England together, on the Biryali royal jet.’

      Lucy’s mouth dropped open. ‘But—’

      ‘We leave tomorrow. We can have the DNA test done, and then I’d like to spend a few days with Sam in London, in his familiar surroundings. When he is comfortable and used to me, I’ll bring him back to Biryal.’

      Lucy was still struggling for words. ‘Biryal? You want to bring him here?’

      Khaled raised his eyebrows and took a sip of coffee. ‘This is my home, and therefore it must also be his home for at least part of the year.’

      ‘But…’ She shook her head, realising sickly that she should have anticipated this. What had she expected—that Khaled would come to London for weekend visits or take Sam to the zoo and the seaside once every few months? Had she actually thought it could be so simple? ‘Biryal is so…’ She couldn’t imagine Sam here, in this rugged and unforgiving land, in this palace.

      Terror struck Lucy’s soul as she realised the implications of that word, of who Khaled was: palace. Prince.

      Prince Sam.

      Khaled watched her carefully, and for a moment Lucy thought she saw compassion flicker in the golden depths of his eyes. ‘Sam is my heir, Lucy,’ he said. ‘One day he will be king.’

      ‘But—but he’s illegitimate,’ she protested, trying to sound reasonable. To feel reasonable. ‘If you marry—have other children—’

      He shook his head. ‘It is Biryali tradition that a king may choose which son he wishes to succeed him, legitimate or otherwise. As long as there is a son, it doesn’t matter which.’

      ‘But you may have other sons,’ Lucy insisted, even though the thought of Khaled with a wife or other children was unpleasant to contemplate. But it was better than considering the massive life changes that would lie in store for Sam…and her.

      ‘There won’t be