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  ‘Perhaps. Perhaps not.’ Rahim refused to admit to a certain compulsion in checking his mail once Allegra had started sending the offensive cheques. With each one, she’d written a small note expressing her remorse for what she’d done. He’d been mildly disconcerted when they’d stopped coming, as if a tenuous tie had been severed.

  ‘Why are you here, Rahim?’ she asked, her voice stronger now. As if she’d talked herself into facing him and whatever consequences her actions would bring.

  ‘I’m here because your actions need answering.’ And because I can’t stop craving you.

  His arms dropped like leaden weights as the unspoken words seeped like poison inside him. He’d jumped on his private jet and travelled thousands of miles at a time when his people should come first. And although the reason for his being here was for his people, he couldn’t deny that seeing Allegra in the flesh came a very close second.

  The similarity between his actions and how his own father had allowed Dar-Aman to fall to ruin because he’d been consumed by his mother powered through Rahim. He took a step back from her, then several. Finally he whirled and paced to the window.

  No, he wasn’t like his father. Khalid Al-Hadi had allowed so-called love to weaken him to the point where he’d been unable to function once he’d lost the object of that love to complications in childbirth. Neither his kingdom nor his living first-born son had been worth rallying himself from the pathetic depths of despair for.

  Rahim had watched his loving father turn into a husk so swiftly and completely that he might as well have been buried alongside his wife and unborn child.

  It had taken long, hell-raising years before Rahim had accepted that his father had had no room in his heart for the son that lived. The only abiding emotion had been the grief that consumed him.

  No, he was nothing like his father. He had never wanted a woman badly enough to contemplate throwing away everything for her. He never would.

  ‘Rahim?’

  He swerved from the view, his fingers spiking through his hair as he fought the tentacles of memory.

  ‘I came here to set a few things straight with you,’ he sneered, deeply resentful that she’d led him to question himself when there was no doubt where his destiny lay. ‘You thought what happened in Dar-Aman wouldn’t go unchallenged. You were wrong.’

  Allegra’s hand jerked to her stomach, her eyes more vivid against her ashen colour. ‘No. Please...’

  From across the room, Rahim saw her sway. With a curse, he charged forward and caught her as her legs gave way. It occurred to him then that she hadn’t answered him when he’d asked what ailed her. Swinging her up in his arms, he carried her to the sofa and laid her down.

  With a low moan, she tried to get up. Rahim stayed her with a firm hand. ‘I’m going to get you some water. Then you’ll tell me what’s wrong with you. And what the hell you’re doing giving long speeches and photo ops when you should be in bed.’

  Her mouth pursed mutinously for a moment before she gave a small nod.

  Rising, he crossed to the bar and poured a glass of water. She’d sat up by the time he returned. Silently she took the water and sipped, her wary eyes following him as he sat on the sturdy coffee table directly in front of her.

  ‘Now, tell me what’s wrong with you.’

  The sleek knot at her nape had come undone during the journey to the sofa, and twin falls of chocolate brown hair framed her face as she bent her head. Rahim gritted his teeth against the urge to brush it back, soothe whatever was troubling her, reassure her that he meant her no harm.

  He was so busy fighting his baser urges, and sternly reminding himself that he was in the right, and she in the wrong, that he didn’t hear her whispered words.

  ‘What did you say?’

  Her jerky inhale wobbled the glass in her hands. ‘I said I’m not sick, but I can’t go to prison because I’m pregnant.’ She raised her head then, and stared back at him with eyes black with despair. ‘I’m carrying your child, Rahim.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  WITH THE LIFE-ALTERING words uttered, Allegra held her breath, expecting the world to crash around her. After all, who would want a virtual stranger with questionable integrity to suddenly announce they were to be the mother of your unborn child in a little over seven months?

  Allegra hadn’t quite got over her shock of seeing Rahim again. She’d barely been able to keep it together on the stage after spotting him seated right in front of her, his body draped in a three-piece designer suit, and his face draped in volcanic rage.

  Conducting her speech, knowing she faced an epic battle for survival that could very well end her once the conference was over, had been the most difficult thing Allegra had done.

  Or so she’d thought...

  At the continued thick silence that chilled her to the soul, Allegra glanced up. ‘Say something. Please.’

  Rahim’s face was frozen. And ashen. Only his eyes moved. They searched her face, then dropped to her stomach for several tense heartbeats, before they snapped back up.

  ‘You’re pregnant.’ His voice was a rough husk, all emotion bled from it. ‘With my child. My heir?’

  ‘Y-yes.’

  He jumped to his feet, paced with jerky strides to the opposite sofa. Shrugging off his bespoke Savile Row suit jacket, he flung it down. His vest and pinstripe tie met the same fate. Then he was heading back for her, his face an icy, furious mask as he bent towards her, hands planted on either side of her. ‘We created a child together two months ago...and you were planning on telling me when?’ Eyes like twin black vortices filled her with blinding dread.

  Allegra nervously licked her lips. ‘I’d planned to get in touch after the conference.’

  ‘Because your schedule was too tight in the eight weeks prior to make time to deliver the news to the father of your child?’ he blazed down at her.

  ‘I didn’t find out until last month,’ she retorted.

  He gave a single dismissive shake of his head. ‘Don’t hide behind semantics. Did you plan this?’ he grated.

  She sucked in a horrified breath. ‘No!’

  ‘So we find ourselves in the position of being the one percent of individuals to suffer a failure of contraception.’ His eyes darkened and he straightened to his full, regal and bristling height. ‘Nevertheless, Allegra, you’ve known for a whole month.’

  ‘And it’s been a month of hell, I assure you,’ she countered before she could stop herself. ‘Don’t think I’ve had it easy, Rahim.’

  He stilled, his gaze narrow-eyed and piercing. ‘Define hell, if you please.’

  Despite the insanity of her situation, her pulse tripped at the exotic intonation of Rahim’s words. ‘You mean besides the twenty-four-hour nausea and the knowing I’d have to account to you at some point for what I did? Or that my child would suffer for any mistakes I make?’

  ‘Explain,’ he reiterated. ‘Make me understand how anything less than a personal catastrophe that rendered you deaf, dumb and blind excuses you from not telling me the moment you found out.’

  ‘How about being terrified that I’ll be a terrible parent?’ she slashed back, her innate flaw that had lived with her for so long surging to the surface.

  He propped his hands on his lean hips, a frown still wedged firmly between his brows. ‘I may be wrong in my assumption, but I doubt that expectant parents get the perfect blueprint detailing their potential brilliance in child rearing.’

  ‘Perhaps not, but templates matter. Whether we like it or not our pasts have a direct bearing on our future. It was why I never wanted children.’

  Colour leached from his usually vibrant complexion. ‘You want to get rid of the baby?’ he whispered jaggedly.

  ‘No!’ Allegra’s hand shot up, the very thought of not having this baby growing inside her filling her with desperate desolation. ‘It was what I believed I wanted before this happened. But now it’s here... I want it more than anything. Please believe me.’

  Rahim swall
owed hard, his chest moving deeply as he exhaled. ‘I’m sure you’ll agree that asking me to believe you on anything will be a leap for me. How do I know you won’t change your mind again a week or two down the road?’ he asked imperiously from his eagle-eyed stance across the room.

  ‘I won’t!’ Her hand cradled her flat belly, her words and gesture both woefully inadequate against the ire raining down on her.

  ‘And I’m just to take your word for it? After you’ve admitted contemplating not having children in the first place?’

  Allegra scrambled round for the words to explain how she felt without exposing herself and her many flaws. ‘That was because I don’t know... I don’t think I’ll be a good mother, Rahim. Some women are built to be mothers. I’m not one of them.’

  ‘Why not? Because you take drugs on a regular basis, perhaps?’ he asked. ‘Tear around New York City while off your head with booze, hurling abuse at every child you come across?’

  ‘Of course not!’

  ‘Do you plan to?’ he pressed.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Rahim.’ She stopped and calmed herself down. ‘I had planned to tell you about the baby, but I wasn’t sure how you would take it...whether you’d even want this child, especially...’

  ‘Especially what?’

  Her breath stuttered in her lungs. ‘With me as its mother.’

  He regarded her for a solid minute. His square jaw tilted upward, his whole body vibrating with suppressed anger. ‘I am a sheikh, Allegra, and you’re carrying the heir to my throne. That is the situation we find ourselves in. Wishing the reality we’re faced with to be different is a futile exercise.’

  Like a moth seeking a deadly flame, Allegra wanted to ask him to state in plain terms what he truly believed—that given the choice his heir would’ve been born by a different woman. A suitable woman. But she pulled back at the last moment, the sick dread and pain dredging through her already too much.

  ‘There is only one way to take this. For me to be fully involved in our child’s life,’ he stressed.

  ‘Rahim...’

  ‘There’s nothing more to say on the subject. If you truly want this child, then the only way is forward.’ Rahim’s frowning glance raked her from head to foot. ‘Is the morning sickness the reason you’ve lost so much weight?’

  She shrugged. ‘I guess.’

  ‘And you didn’t think to cancel this conference?’

  ‘I’m pregnant, Rahim, not suffering from a debilitating illness. This conference was important. Maybe even to Dar-Aman...’

  His head snapped up as if she’d offended him. ‘I see we’re back to dangling empty promises.’

  She sat forward and set the glass on the table. ‘It’s not an empty promise. I’ve done some more research since I got back. I think I can help the situation in Dar-Aman.’ She thought about what he was asking, and took a risky gamble. ‘If you could see it in your heart to let my grandfather keep the box, I’ll give you whatever...’

  ‘I don’t give a damn about the infernal box! Dammit, Allegra, you’re carrying my child. You think I care about a blasted trinket?’

  ‘I don’t know. Do you?’ she countered, unable to come right out and ask how he felt about the baby, besides the imperious and proprietorial claim he’d made on it.

  A single Arabic curse vaulted from his lips and he resumed pacing.

  Allegra stared, heart in her mouth, as he caught the top button of his pristine white shirt and ripped it open. His chest heaved, as if he was gripped in a fever. For endless minutes, he paced a tight circle in front of her. Just when she thought he’d rip a hole in the carpet, he snatched up his jacket.

  ‘I need to get out of here.’

  The breath exploded from her lungs at the thought that he was leaving. ‘What?’

  He launched a tight-lipped smile. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be back. And just in case you get it into your head to sneak off, I’ll be posting a bodyguard outside your suite. For your sake, I hope you don’t attempt anything foolhardy.’

  Allegra opened her mouth, but no words emerged. The sheer volley of emotions wrung from her in the past hour seemed to have affected her ability to speak. Silently, she watched him stab his arms through his jacket sleeves, the raised collar bracing his nape. For the first time since she met Rahim Al-Hadi, he looked dishevelled, but God, even that state was dangerously sexy enough to trigger a series of ripples through her belly.

  Her breathing altered, her pulse racing wildly as her gaze raked upward from his washboard torso, past his broad shoulders to his mouth.

  When her gaze clashed with his, Rahim froze, his eyes darkening dramatically as the air thickened and pulsed with volatile sensual charges.

  Pushing back the heavy fall of her hair, Allegra licked her tingling lower lip, the need cloying through her body almost unbearable.

  ‘Rahim...’

  ‘Careful,’ he growled. ‘You’re in no state to issue invitations with your eyes that your body can’t handle, habibi. And I’m in no state to be gentle with you. Stay put. Rest. If you need anything, Ahmed will be right outside. Or pick up the phone and dial my personal butler. But you are not to leave this suite. Is that understood?’

  Annoyance at his high-handedness snapped her spine straight, the lust wearing off a little. ‘You can’t keep me prisoner here, Rahim.’

  He raised sleek eyebrows. ‘Are you absolutely certain about that?’

  She gasped, but he was striding to the door. Before she could blink, he was gone. She sank back against the plush sofa, deflated and exhausted, her mind whirling at a thousand miles an hour.

  The only way is forward...

  Allegra had no idea what those words meant. But what she did know was that nothing about her pregnancy had brought Rahim anything even close to joy. His shocking disbelief, followed by a rigid acceptance, had done nothing to allay her own fears of the role her heart was already embracing but logic insisted she would fail at.

  Despair crushed harder, brimming her eyes with hopeless tears. She brushed them away, but they surged again.

  She knew how transient life could be. How volatile and uncertain.

  She was bringing a child into this world without knowing its father’s true feelings about being a parent, or even what he intended to do with the bombshell she’d dropped at his feet. Besides staking his ownership of their child, Rahim had done very little else.

  And there was still the issue over the stolen Fabergé box. Allegra groaned and stretched out on the sofa. She was trapped here till Rahim returned. She could either wallow in despair, or use the time to make further plans for her child’s future. Now that Rahim knew about the baby, there was the equally daunting matter of telling her family.

  She would tell them...as soon as she found a way to prevent Rahim from sending her to jail for stealing!

  * * *

  Rahim cradled the single-malt Scotch in his hand, his gaze lost in the swirls of the amber liquid. He had yet to take a drink in the six hours since he entered the private gentlemen’s club in the exclusive street in Geneva.

  He was to become a father.

  His level of alarm wasn’t as catastrophic as he’d imagined it would be. But neither had he believed a single night of madness would set his life on this roller-coaster path.

  And he’d yet to formulate a different plan than the single one blazing a path through his brain.

  In all things he made contingencies but for this he had none. Allegra was pregnant with his child. A child whose blood was already stamped with the same destiny Rahim had been born with. A child whose gestation and eventual birth carried the same risks his mother had been subjected to.

  The hand clutching his crystal tumbler shook. He tightened his grip and threw back the drink, welcoming its bracing sting.

  Glancing up for the first time in hours, Rahim saw that the club had filled. He recognised a few faces but didn’t return the greetings nodded his way. The scowl on his face discouraged patronage, but it drove home the fact
that he was recognised wherever he went in the world. People had seen him with Allegra, both in Dar-Aman and here in Geneva. Rahim had made it his business to confirm she hadn’t dated anyone in the past two months. Once evidence of her pregnancy became public knowledge, it wouldn’t take a genius to work out he was the father of her child. Not that he intended to hide that fact.

  Which brought him to the matter of how his subjects would take a child born out of wedlock. His people had been through the wringer economically and even socially.

  What kind of ruler would he be to throw another scandal into their lives when they were reeling from the legacy his father had left them with? Not to mention the further damage to his personal reputation that could set back months of negotiation for a better future for his people.

  He shook his head as his personal valet stepped forward bearing the silver tray that held the Scotch bottle. Rahim shook his head, knowing his choices couldn’t be found in drink. But the more he stared into the bottom of the empty glass, the larger the answer blazed.

  For his heir.

  For his people.

  For himself.

  There was only one choice.

  * * *

  ‘Marry me.’

  The shock wave that powered through her made Allegra grip the cushion beneath her as she struggled upright. The magazine she’d fallen asleep leafing through fell to the floor. ‘Rahim, you’re back!’

  ‘Marry me.’

  ‘What?’

  Rahim stood before her, still in his jacket, his hair spiked in all directions, like he’d run his fingers through it many times. ‘You’re carrying my child.’

  ‘So?’ she squeaked, her mind scrambling past the visual wallop he packed just by being him.

  Eyes turned a burnished bronze blazed at her. ‘Marry me.’

  Numbly she shook her head, the few words she’d managed so far the extent of her vocal ability as she tried to absorb what Rahim had just asked of her. She was still shaking her head when he reached forward and cupped her jaw.