Rihad had been there moments later, to see a woman he’d dismissed as nothing more than callous and calculating beaming down at the scrap of a girl she held in her arms, the look on her face so intimate, so filled with love, it had almost been too much to bear.
He’d had the strangest sensation then—the oddest regret. As if she really was meant to be his. As if this was meant to be his family in more than simply name. As if this was all wrong, somehow—that he should have been there with her, holding her hand, reminding her she wasn’t alone, sharing his strength so hers would seem that much more boundless. Not an intruder into these first moments between mother and child, but a part of it. That was all insane, of course. He’d tried to shake it off as he’d approached her, stiff and formal.
She’d glanced up at him, and that look on her face had altered. That wasn’t a surprise, but still, Rihad had felt it like a blow. Her mouth had flattened when she’d seen him. She’d hidden that naked joy in her gaze.
He’d hated it.
“Her name is Leyla,” Sterling had told him after a moment, as if she’d needed a breath or two to pull herself together before she could speak.
There had been nurses bustling in and out of the birthing suite behind him, doctors being paged incessantly from the intercom out in the corridor, but Sterling had been still. Rihad had had the notion that she’d been waiting for some kind of strike. From him.
As well she should, he’d thought.
It had made that sensation of inexplicable loss yawn open even wider within him. The baby had made tiny noises, more a creaking sound than actual crying, and Sterling had finally relented, her mouth curving into a sweet little smile as she looked down to soothe the little girl that almost undid him. When she’d looked up again, it had almost killed him. He’d never seen that expression on her face before, not even in those happy tabloid pictures of her and Omar. Open. Loving. Soft.
Something like pure.
Even then, at such a tender moment that had nothing at all to do with him, Rihad had wondered what it would be like if that look had been meant for him—and then he’d wondered if he’d utterly lost his mind.
Not if so much as when, he’d told himself then.
“It was Omar’s favorite name for a girl,” she’d continued after a moment, a faint line appearing between her brows. “That’s not... I mean, is there some royal naming tradition I should know about?”
“No.” He’d sounded so stiff. So altered. “Leyla is a lovely name.”
“She’s wonderful,” Sterling had whispered then, bending her face back down to the infant, fierce and maternal—and he’d had to leave. Because he hadn’t known what to do with that roaring, howling thing inside of him, so threaded through with emotions he didn’t know how to process.
Emotions he hardly recognized. What had emotions ever had to do with his life before now? His was a cool world, rational and logical and coldly reasoned. It was his weapon, his strength. The bedrock of his ability to rule his country. He didn’t know what the hell to do with all these feelings. He didn’t know what it made him, that he felt anything at all for this woman or her child. He didn’t know what he was supposed to do with any of it.
He’d waited until night fell before he returned, and he slipped in only after his security detail assured him she slept at last. He told himself a thousand different reasons why that was the proper, even respectful, thing to do for a woman he hardly knew who’d just given birth—but the truth was, he was completely off balance and he knew it. He wasn’t sure he knew himself, was the thing—as if he’d been a stranger to himself since Sterling had walked up to him outside that building half a world away. And that alone was enough to give him pause.
Enough to keep him standing there in the shadows.
The child moved in her swaddling then, making that tiny noise again. Part alien, he thought, and part feline, and still it tugged at him. Rihad moved over to the bassinet before he knew he meant to leave his post across the room, seating himself in the chair beside it.
“Hush, little one,” he murmured, stroking his fingers down the whisper-soft plushness of one newborn cheek, marveling at it as he did. “Let your mother sleep.”
Then he covered the baby’s soft little body with his hand, letting the warmth of his palm seep into the rounded swell of her tiny belly, and sure enough, she quieted. Just as he’d done for his half sister Amaya when she’d been an infant. Just as he remembered watching his mother do to baby Omar when Rihad had been a small boy.