And then, he was standing right in front of her, handsome, huge, concerned. “I need to marry you. I know it’s best for our child, and it’s what I need—what my country needs. So what I want to know is this: how can I make our marriage work for you? What do you need to agree to this?”
Her pulse shot up. He was being so reasonable. Even his voice was carefully muted of emotion whereas Cora felt the exact opposite. She wasexplodingwith feelings, just beneath her skin, and if she wasn’t careful, they’d come bursting out of her, all over him and this very beautiful room.
“There is a lot of latitude in what your role would be, as my Sheikha.”
Cora swallowed.
“If you wish to avoid the media, you could attend the bare minimum public engagements, perhaps four or five a year. Iwillprotect you, Cora.”
Her heart twisted. He knew her so well. He understood how much she hated being in the public eye, how much she hated the stories, but there was something she hated so much more, something that terrified her. The thought of their marriage going wrong, just as her first marriage had. The thought of loving Samir with all her heart, of loving theirfamily, and not being loved back. It was why she’d ended things with him in the first place: because Samir couldn’t give her what she needed. He still couldn’t, but this marriage would force her to face the absence of his feelings for her every single day. She would be trapped in a form of living hell.
Her fingers moved over her stomach, and a single tear dropped onto her hand. She startled, totally unaware until then that she’d started to silently weep.
“Cora, please,” he groaned, moving closer, lifting his hand and wiping away her tears. “I will give you whatever you want. I will make you happy.”
“You can’t,” she said, then bit down on her lip. It was too much. She’d admitted more than she’d intended. “But you were right before. This isn’t about us. Everything now is about our child. I can’t have our baby grow up in the world and think I tried to keep them from you. That I chose a life away from you, rather than at leasttryingto give them this, us, a family, a place in your kingdom. I can’t risk that you’ll sue me for custody, that your lawyers will drag every bit of dirt on me they can find into the courts, to prove that I’ll be a terrible mother, and I lose my parental rights—,”
“Stop,” he said quickly, the word like a whip in the room. “I would never—,”
“Maybe,” she lifted her shoulders, wishing she could see anything clearly through the haze of her heartbreak. “But you need an heir, and custody disputes are never pleasant, especially not the high profile ones.”
He shook his head. “I have no interest in discrediting you. You are to be the mother of my child but even before that, when you were simply Cora to me, I would have moved heaven and earth to protect you from the headlines you hate so much. How can you possibly think I would let any public custody battle take place?”
“If I choose not to marry you, you’ll have no alternative.”
A muscle throbbed in his jaw. “I will not let it happen.”
She wasn’t immediately clear what he meant. Her refusal to marry him? Or the inevitable dispute over their unborn child?
For the latter, Cora had no intention of letting it happen either.
“I need to understand,” she said softly, moving towards the buffet table simply because it wasawayfrom him. “How it would work.”
She heard his exhalation of breath and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up, as if he’d wrapped himself around her and held her tight.
“A press release would go out today announcing our engagement. The marriage would take place within the week—no need to delay, for obvious reasons. The timing of the birth will make it obvious that you were pregnant when we were married, but all that matters is that we are married before the baby is born.”
She twisted her hands together. “I meant our marriage. How willthatwork?”
She felt him right beside her but didn’t look his way. The air was heavy with silence. She swallowed past a nervous lump in her throat.
“I wouldn’t want to live with you like husband and wife. I would want my own suite, my freedom. I would need to know I could come and go as I please.”
“Within reason, of course.”
“And I would determine the ‘reason’.”
“Your place would be here, with me, and our child.”
Her eyes darted sharply to his face. “I need autonomy and I need space.”
“Cora.” If she didn’t know him as well as she did, she’d say there was hurt in his eyes. “Have I ever done anything to make you think I wouldn’t respect your wishes?”
“Like kidnapping me?”
His face was ashen; she knew he felt guilty about what he’d done. She almost felt sorry for him. Almost, but not quite.
“Do you want to leave?”