The Desert King / An Affair with the Princess: The Desert King. Michelle Celmer

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      “So…you’re my sister, in just about every way, huh?”

      Aliyah cocked her head as she avidly examined the woman with the most artless, most infectious smile she’d ever seen.

      With hair in every gradation of bronze and gold, eyes the color of Judar’s emerald shores and the rest of her an unusual blend, Farah had an atypical beauty, another thing they had in common. And she wasn’t being smug here, about her own beauty.

      Personally she’d never seen what the big fuss was about. But the world had had another opinion, at least the world of Western media and advertisement. That had valued her exotic mix so much they’d paid big bucks for the privilege of plastering it on their campaigns and products, had made her able to support herself without her family’s money or power, and sponsor a dozen causes, too.

      Farah was also clearly of mixed ethnicity, though which ones, it was even harder to tell than with her. Was that why Anna had adopted her? To remind her of the girl she’d given up?

      Farah eagerly nodded. “Oh, yes. And I’m ecstatic about each and every one. Oh, God—I can’t begin to tell you what the last couple of months have been like. I was living this no-expectations life, then I met Shehab. And as if that wasn’t beyond dreams, this happens. It’s still hard to wrap my head around it all, when I spent my life wishing for any sort of family. Now I not only have a sister who’ll be my sister-in-law, too, but you’re American—well, half-American—my age and you’ll share the same residence.”

      “If you can call living in the palace a mile apart living in the same residence!”

      Farah chuckled. “Yeah, we’ll probably never bump into each other without a previous appointment.”

      Aliyah returned her smile, ignoring the spasm that constricted her heart. No reason to rain on Farah’s parade, inform her that within a year she’d be out of there, one way or another. It wouldn’t serve any purpose right now to say that her marriage to Kamal would have no resemblance to Farah’s marriage to his brother, Shehab, which had been born of love and the willingness to sacrifice anything for the other.