The Reluctant Queen. Caitlin Crews

to her. That she had embellished, exaggerated, as young girls did.

      “Thank you for the offer,” she said, as if she was placating him. As if she did not, in fact, remember him. “But I’m afraid I have a personal policy against marrying strange men who approach me in parking lots.”

      “I am Adel Qaderi,” he said, in that calm yet implacable voice, his gray eyes on hers, that name sounding within her like a gong. Her breath tangled in her throat. “I am no stranger to you. I am your betrothed, as you know very well.”

      It was such an odd, old word. Lara concentrated on that—pushing away the fluttering of her pulse, the constriction in her throat. The onslaught of too many memories she’d thought forgotten long ago.

      “I’m sorry,” she said, dismissing him. If she didn’t accept this was happening, it didn’t have to happen, did it? “I’m late for a—”

      “You are the Crown Princess of Alakkul,” Adel said in that low, commanding voice, somehow making it impossible for Lara to turn and get into her car as she knew she should. “The last of an ancient bloodline, warriors and kings throughout history. The only child of the great King Azat, may he rest in peace.”

      She felt the blood drain from her face. Her knees wobbled beneath her.

      “May he …?” she echoed. She shook her head, trying to clear it. What could this mean? How could it be true? Her father was the monster under her bed, the nightmare that lay in wait when she closed her eyes. Hadn’t her mother always told her so? “He’s … dead?”

      “At least you do not deny your own father,” Adel said, his expression stern. He moved closer to her but then stopped, as if he felt called to an action he chose not to take. Still, somehow, she knew he grieved for her father in all the ways she could not. It made a headache bloom to life in her temples. “Perhaps we can dispense with the rest of this game of pretend now.”

      “You approached me in a parking lot, like a vagrant,” Lara hissed. Unwilling to face what he’d just told her. Unwilling to imagine what it might mean. “What did you think my reaction would be?”

      “I did so deliberately.” His gaze was cool. Assessing. Dangerous. “I assumed you would feel more at ease in a public place. After all, you have spent most of your life running away at the slightest hint of your homeland.”

      Lara shifted the bag in her arms, and wished her head would stop spinning. How was she supposed to act? Feel? She had not heard from her autocratic father directly in twelve years. She had not wanted to hear from him. If asked even five minutes before, she would have announced without a qualm that she hated the man.

      But that did not mean she’d wanted him dead.

      “I need to inform my mother …” she began, her temples pounding, wondering how fragile, prone-to-hysteria Marlena would be likely to take such news. Wondering, too, what her mother would center her life around now there was no more King Azat to hate and fear and blame. But perhaps that was unkind.

      “Your mother is being notified even now,” Adel replied coolly.

      Lara found herself staring at the play of muscle in his strong arms, his hard abdomen. She felt her body’s treacherous heat, its instant response to the very sight of him, despite her emotions.

      “I am afraid your business is with me, Princess. I cannot allow you the necessary time to grieve.” Was his tone ironic? Or did she only imagine his judgment? Was that guilt she felt, pooling inside of her? “We must wed immediately.”

      “You are insane,” she told him, when she could speak. When the red haze of confusion and emotion receded slightly. When she could jerk her attention away from his warrior’s body. “You cannot really believe I’ll marry you!”

      Adel smiled again, though this time, there was nothing particularly sympathetic about it. Where was that younger man she remembered, who had been so eager to see her smile?

      “I understand that this is a shock,” he said. “But let me be clear. You have only two possible choices before you, and while I am aware neither one is necessarily easy, you must choose one of them.”

      “Your attempt at compassion is insulting,” Lara managed to say, her hands clenched tight into the bag she held. Part of her wanted to fling the sack at him as he stood near the trunk of her sensible sedan. And then run. Only the fact that he probably expected that reaction kept her from it.

      “Nonetheless, it is real,” he said. His storm-colored eyes moved to hers, and darkened. “It would never have been my choice to confront you in this way, with this news. I regret the necessity. But it does not change anything.”

      “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Lara said after a moment, her temper kicking in—replacing the wild swirl of far trickier feelings. Anger was better. Anger felt better—more productive. “And more important? I don’t care.”

      “Yet you must listen,” he told her. So quiet. So sure. And she could only stare at him. And obey. “I am sorry for that, too, but so it is.”

      There was something about the way he looked at her then that … bothered her, in a way she couldn’t quite categorize. As if he could see the buried truths she’d denied existed for years. The old dreams. The yearnings for a life, a family, the kind of things other girls took for granted while she trailed around after Marlena, cleaning up her messes. The way she’d felt about him all those years ago, the things she’d dreamed they’d do together—

      Lara blinked, and steeled herself against him—and the surprising swell of something like grief that she would have sworn she’d never feel.

      “What, then?” she asked, her voice too rough, as she fought back the unwieldy emotions that shifted and rolled within her. “What is it you think I need to hear?”

      “You have a choice to make,” he said again, and the worst part, Lara realized in a sort of horror, was that his voice was kind, his eyes the same. As if he understood exactly what she was going through—as if he knew.

      And yet he was continuing anyway, wasn’t he? He was an Alakkulian male. An Alakkulian king. Just like her father, he thought only of himself. That much was blatantly obvious, no matter how kind his eyes might seem. No matter her memories of his smile, of his tenderness.

      “The only choice I will be making,” she told him, enunciating clearly, deliberately, with razor-sharp precision, as if sounding tough would make her feel that way, too, “is to get in my car and drive away from here. From you. From this ridiculous conversation. I suggest you get out of the way, unless you’d like me to run you over.”

      “You did not merely promise to marry me, as any young girl might,” Adel said in the same calm, commanding tone, as if she had not just threatened him. “You entered into a binding legal contract.”

      “I was a teenager,” Lara retorted. “No court in the world would ever hold me to it. It’s absurd you would think otherwise—this is not the Stone Age!”

      “You overestimate the progressive nature of the world’s courts, I think,” he replied, something almost like humor flashing briefly across his face. But she did not want to think of him as human, as capable of humor as he’d been before, and ignored it. “But in any case, it does not matter. Your father signed for you when you were too young, as is the custom. When you came of age you did not withdraw your consent from the contract—which, according to the laws of Alakkul, means you thus agreed that you entered into the terms of the contract of your own free will.”

      “I will not marry you,” she said. Her shoulders tightened, her chin rose like a fighter’s. “I would rather die.”

      “There is no need for such theater,” Adel replied in a faintly reproving tone. Yet his mouth curved slightly—as if he found her amusing. It made her temper kick in again. That, she told herself, was the feeling that pounded through her, shaking her. “You may break the contract, if that is your wish. But there is a price.”