Cinderella and the Sheikh

chapter Sixteen



Sitting in the same room as him was slow torture, like a dull headache that wouldn’t go away, no matter how much aspirin a person took. The only thing that kept Libby to her studies in Prince Hani's well-stocked Western-style library was the knowledge that she was now responsible for the health and happiness of the hundred thousand citizens of the Sabr Valley.

Becoming responsible for her new people offered her the hard work she longed for. She had to learn Arabic so that she could communicate with them. She wouldn’t let anything come between her and being a good servant to those people who lived in her newly formed country. For them, she would put up with Rasyn sitting twenty feet away, pouring over his books, and with his long discussions of leadership with Prince Hani.

The prince claimed that Rasyn had asked to study statecraft under him. King Anwar was recovering, he had said, but it took all his energy to rule—with none to spare to train Rasyn to take his place.

So, Libby studied next to him, sometimes with her tutors and sometimes alone, in silence, except for the creaks of the ancient-looking ceiling fan that circulated stale air around the oval room stacked two floors high with leathery spines. She didn't speak to him, but she was always aware of his presence, even with her back turned. Even the crisp crinkle of the pages he turned stole her attention from the grammar she tried to absorb.

The sound of his deep voice in seemingly endless discussions with Prince Hani always distracted her. As it did now, with Hani pulling up a chair to join Rasyn at the mahogany table where no less than a dozen books lay open on their spines.

"I have brought something for you to look over," Prince Hani said.

The crackle of unfolding paper reached Libby's ears, even as she struggled to conjugate the verb "wahaba," to give. She couldn't keep herself from peeking at the men over her shoulder.

Rasyn's face reddened as his black eyes scanned the paper. "Women." His voice was half questioning, half angry.

"A list of potential wives."

Libby felt blood rise to her own face. She'd begun to sign the divorce papers a dozen times, only to put the pen down.

"No," Rasyn said.

"Come, you'll be single soon. None of these women will expect love. Only security and respect."

"No."

"A country's future should always be secure. You need to remarry and produce an heir."

"No."

Her skin tingled and the marks on the paper in front of her swam around like black goldfish in a pond. That one word, repeated, tugged at her heart. No. Plain and firm. Nothing more. He wasn't smiling and talking. He didn’t try to influence Prince Hani's thinking. He didn't use the persuasive powers that he'd used on her. He just said no.

A tight band contracted around her heart, threatening to burst it.

A chair scraped across the mosaic tile floor with an echo that rose to the vaulted library ceiling. For an instant, she scowled at the deafening noise—then she recognized that it was her chair that had made it.

Prince Hani and Rasyn both looked up at her. With as much dignity as she could muster, she smoothed her hands down her loose linen trousers and left the room.

Sanurah was in the hall. She made a pink moue with her mouth when she saw Libby emerge. "Is Hani in with Rasyn again?"

Libby nodded, that one word—no—racing through her brain.

"You know." Sanurah turned her thoughtful gaze on the door. "He's doing a lot to get you back."

"It's a show." But the words didn’t come out as forcefully as she would have liked.

"He's working very hard for it to be a show. It's been four weeks."

She knew she had to end it. The sooner she signed those divorce papers, the sooner he would give up and leave her alone.



***



Libby's vision blurred as she stared down at the paper that separated her from Rasyn forever. The moonlight falling across the desk tinted the document midnight blue, but her signature, above Prince Hani's witness, stood out in permanent black.

Done. It was done. She rubbed her damp palms over her linen pants.

If she felt an odd grief squeezing her heart, it was only because Rasyn had made her feel loved. An illusion, she reminded herself. A lie. Everything he'd done had been a tactic calculated to betray her.

It had felt real, her heart whispered, as soft as the night-blooming jasmine that scented the breeze. Even when he said he loved you.

More lies to get what he wanted. She didn't love him anyway. Her heart was safe from him.

But if it had been real, the insistent voice continued. What then?

Turning her back on the thought, Libby rose from her desk and stepped to the door that separated her apartment from Rasyn's. As she'd promised, she'd kept it locked against him. Now, taking a deep breath, she twisted the key in the ancient lock and opened it.

Her knock on his connecting door reverberated in the still room. She waited for what seemed like an age before trying the door. The knob twisted easily in her hand. The door swung inward, inviting her in.

Standing on the Persian rug in front of the door, she called his name. It was a wonder he didn’t hear her heart thudding against her ribs.

He didn't come.

She stepped off the carpet and felt the chill of the marble floor through her bare feet. She spoke his name louder, but the only sign of him was a shirt casually thrown over a little round table inlaid with dark and light tiles. Before she could stop herself, she ran her fingers through the fine silk of his shirt. The scent of him reached up to her, releasing a surge of memories.

Libby closed her eyes against the wave and went to find her ex-husband.



***



she found him in Prince Hani's library, his head resting on an open book, spotlighted by the only lit lamp in the room. His black hair spilled across the creamy pages. The corners of his lips turned up in a secret smile, as if he liked what he saw in his dream.

Her throat went dry. Shoving down the ache in her chest, she swallowed, and found she couldn’t wake him.

But when she turned to go, she found an unbreakable grasp bound her wrist.

"Princ—" The cracking voice broke off. "Libby," he said. "Amira."

She looked down into a pair of black eyes. She set her jaw and looked at Rasyn's hand around her wrist.

He immediately let her go. The smile slipped from his face. "Forgive me. I had no right."

"No, you didn't." Her own voice sounded hard to her. "'Amira.' What does that mean?"

"It's Arabic for 'female ruler.'"

A slight tint in Rasyn's tone warned her of something... She ran through the translations before hitting on one. "It means 'princess,' then."

"Yes, but you don’t like being called 'princess.' So, amira."

She searched his eyes. She saw no signs that he was mocking her, but noticed a slight ink mark on his sharp cheekbone. On anyone else, it would have looked ridiculous. On him, it looked like a mystic warrior's symbol.

A crinkled legal pad lay across the book. Smudged handwriting covered the paper.

"What are you writing?"

He glanced at the table before returning his attention to her. "It's nothing. Are you having trouble sleeping?"

He was hiding something, but she'd stopped falling for his misdirection. With her free hand, she reached for the legal pad. To her surprise, he didn’t stop her.

Also to her surprise, it was in English. Just barely. She muddled her way through the legalese. "This is a new marriage law. It requires witnesses."

For a long moment, he simply looked at her in silence, an unreadable look on his face. After a while, he spoke. "People should only get married if they want to." He stood. "Do you?"

How dare he ask her to marry him? After everything that had happened? Rage ripped through her. She narrowed her eyes at him.

"I meant to someone else." His taut, masculine body, aligned with hers.

She couldn't stop herself from remembering what it had been like to have his arms around her. How she'd felt both protected and strengthened by him. And loved. She would never be able to forget that. Would she ever find it again?

"I can't see myself with another husband." In the silence of the library, even her whisper seemed intrusive.

He reached for her cheek. Part of her wanted to slap his hand away, to scream for him not to touch her.

A greater part of her stilled and accepted the soft caress of his strong fingers.

"I want you to be happy, Libby. You deserve to be loved."

"Stop. I don't believe a word you say. So just stop." The Sabr Valley, she reminded herself. He just wanted the valley.

With a wooden gesture, she shoved the divorce papers at him. The moment when both their hands were on the document, an inch away from touching, seemed to stretch on like sand in the desert.

He placed the papers on the desk, slightly behind him, as if he didn’t want to have them in his sight. The hundred-pound weight on her chest seemed to ease. It was done. She was free again, even though something inside her felt empty.

Without another word, she turned her back on him and headed for the door.

"Libby."

She walked on, keeping her eye on the door. But she couldn’t ignore his voice.

"I stopped lying to you a long time ago," she heard, before she stepped out the library door.



***



That night, Libby didn't sleep for even a second. Her aching heart kept her body awake and her mind spinning. He claimed that he'd stopped lying to her. He'd claimed a lot of things over the weeks she'd known him.

Most of all, he'd claimed that he loved her. He even claimed it now, but that was only to get the Sabr Valley.

She didn’t go to the library the next day, studying in her room instead, working on her vocabulary. Before calling for dinner in her rooms, she even managed to absorb a few words. 'Wadi' was the word for valley. 'Qalb' meant heart.

At midnight, long after the sun disappeared below the sandy horizon, she finally gave up trying to concentrate and flipped randomly through the dictionary on her lap.

Amira. The word swam before her eyes, lyrical in swirling Arabic text. In her mind, she heard Rasyn's voice say it, deep with passion. And with something else. Respect.

Pain washed over her and she fought the urge to curl up into a ball. Her mother and father had built a relationship on mutual respect and love. All she'd ever wanted was the same thing for herself. To be an equal partner with the man she loved; to lean on each other and build a shared life together, one where neither partner was a lesser person, one where each of them contributed something that the other lacked.

She remembered his words in the library. You deserve to be loved.

There was only one person who could possibly understand. Her mom. Libby needed to talk to her. What time was it in Watertown? She quickly calculated the five hour difference and lifted the receiver. The palace operator connected her in half a minute.

"Libby?"

The sound of her mom's voice broke the last barrier holding back her misery and for a long time, all Libby could do was sob into the phone and listen to her mother's attempts to soothe her.

When she could speak at last, she poured out her heart to the one person who could comprehend how much she'd been betrayed, how Rasyn had taken everything from her, from her ideal job to her chance at love.

"Now I'll never have what you and Dad did," she told her Mom. "And he just won't go away.

"You say he wants you back to reunite his country with your valley?" Her mom's thoughtful 'hmmm' thrummed over the line. "Why would he want that?"

"Because it used to be part of Abbas."

"He doesn't want to rule the country. Why would he want to make it bigger?"

It was true, Libby realized. Her hand began to tremble as she reached for a cut glass tumbler of water to moisten her suddenly parched throat.

"Honey, it doesn't seem like he's lying to you now."

You deserve to be loved.

She couldn't erase his behavior of the last four weeks from her mind. "Mom, since he came back here, it's like he's changed. He's been nothing but honorable. He just sits there every day and studies." And he still says that he loves me.

"He did so much to make you fall in love with him." Her mom's voice was tentative, probing. "Why didn't it work?"

"I— I don’t know."

"Yes, you do."

"I guess..." Libby gulped, finally admitting the fear that had held her back. "I guess I didn't let myself fall for him because I knew we couldn’t have what you and Dad did."

Empty air hung over the phone for so long that Libby wondered if they'd been disconnected.

"What your father and I had, it was amazing. But it wasn't instantaneous. Love was only the start of it. It took us a long time to get to where we knew each other's strengths and weaknesses and we relied on each other. What we had, it was hard work. If you never open your heart to anyone, you'll never get to the place we did."

She stared at the intricate pattern of the carpet beneath her feet until the whorls threatened to hypnotize her.

"Libby, are you still there?"

"Yes, Mom."

"It's your decision, but I hope you'll give him a chance. I know you think you're too different, but maybe that is an advantage. He can open your mind to bigger dreams. You can keep him grounded in the little things."

As she said goodbye to her mother, the pain in her chest expanded. All the air seemed to disappear from the room. She felt like she stood in a spotlight, in front of thousands of people, her actions toward Rasyn on display. And she found she wasn't very proud of them. Whatever his reasons, he'd tried his hardest to make her fall in love with him, completely focusing all his energy on winning her. Nothing he'd done had come close.

Yes, he'd lied to her, but she'd been so busy protecting her heart that he couldn’t get through to it anyway.

She wasn’t a perfect person herself. Her new duties for the Sabr Valley would require traits she didn't have. She wasn't dignified. She wasn't diplomatic. She couldn’t keep quiet when times required it. Crowds made her chew her lip in nervousness.

The person who was good at all those things, who was always patient with her, was sleeping in the next room.

Without wasting any more time, she moved to the door between them. The lock chilled her hand, just as the tight lock she had kept over her heart threatened to chill her now.

As she entered the soft darkness of his room, the armor around her heart began to crack. His deception fell away. It had been wrong of him, but he'd done it for the best of reasons. He had put his cousin's desires and the fate of his country above his own future. That a man willing to make such sacrifices loved her seemed impossible.

But he'd said it. And she believed him.

As she stepped to his bed, Rasyn tossed in his sleep, turning his face toward her. His lips parted slightly, sending a flash of desire through her body. He stirred as she grew nearer.

"I thought I heard you come in." The gravel of sleep deepened his voice. "And I can smell your soap. If I open my eyes, will this dream end, like the others?"

She leaned down and softly kissed her sleeping prince's sensual mouth. To her surprise, he didn't let her deepen the kiss, but quickly broke it off.

"Love, I have promised never to lie to you again." In his voice was the slight tinge of arrogance of a man to whom a woman is offering herself. "So you must know that if you do not leave now, you are in danger of me tying you to my bed and making love to you until you agree to be my wife again."

"I can't agree to be your wife again, since I haven't done it once." She paused just long enough to make a worry line appear between his black eyebrows. "Yet."

With Rasyn's seductive, half-lidded gaze roving over her, she slipped the thin straps of her nightgown over her shoulders. The pale rose satin slid down her breasts, then the rounded curve of her belly, her smooth thighs and ended in a soft heap on the floor. Rasyn's nostrils flared and he looked as if he were about to jump out from under the covers.

"Come here. I want to touch you everywhere."

"No." She stepped toward the bed, but didn't take his outstretched hand. Instead, she pulled back the sheets to find him naked and ready for her, the moonlight layering shadow over solid muscle and dark whorls of hair.

She straddled his hips, and when he attempted to push her over on her back, she put a restraining hand on his stomach.

"No," she repeated. Leaning down over him, she pressed her breasts against his chest, thrilling at the contrast of her flesh against his firm muscle. "Let me touch you. I want to make you feel loved. Like you did for me."

A low half-moan came from his throat as she suckled her way down his chest. When she took his hard length into her mouth, swirling her tongue over the sweet spot under the tip of him, his hands fisted the sheets, fingers tight with tension. She licked and stroked every hard inch until Rasyn arched his back.

"Enough," he cried.

She was on her back before the word was finished, Rasyn plunging himself between her thighs—entering her without any other warning.

Her body softened, accepting him with moist warmth. She moaned in pleasure as he began to stroke inside. So good. So right.

Her world emptied except for the sensations he gave her. Skin on skin. Their scents mingled. The salty taste of kissing his flesh.

She looked into dark eyes that focused back at her with naked desire. He wanted to be with her. That was the truth. There could be no more lies between them, and there could be no armor around her heart.

With his body, he brought her to the peak of pleasure, and then beyond. Separately, they were too different. Together, they were one.

Afterward, he gathered her to him, his chest heaving to recover the breath that passion had stolen from him. Libby buried her face against a shoulder fragrant with the peppery spice of his cologne mixed with the sweat of his desire.

Nuzzling her neck, he whispered exotic words she couldn't understand.

"I love you, Rasyn. I think that I would have loved you from the first if I'd let myself. Tell me you still love me." At that moment, she needed the comfort of the words.

"No." His rakish smile belied his refusal—oh, how she had missed that smile. "Any man would say such a thing after what you have just done. I will tell you I love you tomorrow. And on our wedding day. And every day in between. And every day after."

She raised herself on her elbows and gazed into the depths of his eyes. "Rasyn, do you think we could learn to rely on each other, eventually? You could help me to rule the Sabr Valley and I—" She stopped. "Well, I don’t know what you have to learn from me."

Rasyn looked at her, a loving respect glowing on his face. He reached to stroke her cheek. "Hani pointed out to me that I need you to connect me to my people. You understand them in a way that I cannot. I should have known it the day you told me that there is an orphanage in my city that lacked for anything, but I left it to Imaran. More than that, I think that you connect me to my heart."

She wiggled closer to him, listening to the steady beat of the organ he claimed not to have. "You're connected to your heart. You just need to speak from it a little more often."

"To you, always." And he lowered his head for a soul-deep kiss.