The Sheikh's Rescued Baby - Leslie North Page 0,9

and an expression flashed into his face, startling her. Sadness. It looked almost like sadness, though she couldn’t picture the easygoing Nadim as being sad about any of this. Could he really feel that way?

Nadim stroked her cheek, the gesture so soft and gentle that her heart broke. Aisha held her breath, afraid to move. She didn’t want to give herself away and didn’t want to shatter the moment into a hundred pieces.

“I have to figure that out before I do anything else,” Nadim said, that same note of sadness in his voice.

His eyes lingered on her face, and for a wrenching heartbeat Aisha thought he might lean in and kiss her. Then she’d have to put a stop to things. She’d have to stand up, push him away, keep her head held high. She could not let the playboy from Raihan make her another notch on his belt. Not for anything.

But Nadim dropped his hands to his lap and took a deep breath. Then he stood, the movement graceful and strong. How could he be so handsome, so built, that even standing up was a work of art? He reached down and offered her his hand.

“I’m sure we should be getting back,” he said.

She put her hand lightly in his, barely using it to get to her feet.

“Yes,” she agreed, and they went back to the path, heading back to the entrance where the SUV waited to whisk them to the villa, where they would sleep in separate rooms. If she could fall asleep tonight. “It’s time we moved on.”

4

They rolled into the city of Basik and up to another royal villa—it could have been the sister to the first one and looked like it had been built by the same hands—in the late morning. Nadim got out of the car and stretched, watching Aisha repeat the same routine with the staff from this house. She knew all their names, kept up on all the goings-on of their lives, and asked at least one question of each of them.

She was very good at being the sultana.

And beautiful, too.

He shook hands with the butler and the cook, hardly registering their names after the long quiet of the car ride from Liddah. Aisha had stared out the window with a thoughtful look on her face. She’d said very little. And everything he thought to say sounded ridiculous, even in his head. Small talk was something of Nadim’s specialty. He had no problem approaching women at various bars and parties around the world. But alone in the car with Aisha, he couldn’t think of anything to say. Not with the memories from the previous night rushing through his head like the sound of the creek.

He thought of the curl of her fingers in his and the moonlight in her hair. He thought of how it had felt to touch the soft skin of her cheek. For one breathless instant, he had considered kissing her. But he hadn’t. He’d spent the ride to Basik regretting it. When he finally pushed aside the regret, he’d moved on to shoving his attraction for Aisha down where he could safely ignore it.

Once again, he found himself sitting across from her on the villa terrace, this time for brunch. The table was laden with fruit, pastries, and yogurt. Aisha filled her plate with a rainbow of fruits and a cinnamon roll.

“May I ask you a question?”

Her dark eyes flicked up to his, eyebrows perking up. “About what?”

“Do you dislike yogurt?”

Her eyes opened wider, and she cocked her head to the side. He knew that look. She was debating the answer.

Nadim raised both hands in the air, then pressed one to his chest. “I, for one, love yogurt. But I noticed that at the brunch in Liddah, you only ate a tiny amount, and now you’ve pushed it toward the center of the table.”

“I detest yogurt.” Aisha looked at him across the table, wearing a solemn expression. “Honestly, I can’t stand it. But I took a little at brunch so as not to offend anyone.” Her hands had frozen above her plate.

He laughed, and her face relaxed. “Not liking yogurt isn’t a crime. I only wondered.”

“Maybe detesting yogurt is a crime. I don’t know every local law in the country,” she said primly. “But I’ll remain polite. If you give away my secret to anyone, I’ll have to feed you to the wolves.”

“Oh, you wouldn’t hurt a fly. I’ve seen you with your staff. You’re the kindest, gentlest