Heir to a Desert Legacy. Maisey Yates

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СКАЧАТЬ what?” She curled her lip, one rounded hip cocked to the side.

      “You conspired to invent the story about the surrogacy to cover up the relationship that you had with…”

      She held both hands up, palms out. “Hey! No. Oh… no. I gave birth to his child, as a surrogate. His and… Tamara’s.” There was a slight wobble in her voice now and she looked down.

      “Why didn’t you come to me?” He wasn’t certain he believed her answer, but he wasn’t going to press, either. Not now.

      “I don’t… I don’t know. I was scared. They were on their way… here when it happened. On their way to the hospital from the airport. I was already in labor, I went a little earlier than anticipated. They were going to have me moved to a private facility, and their doctor was with them during the… everyone who knew was with them.”

      He looked around the room, his top lip curling. “So you brought him here, to your very insecure apartment, to protect him?”

      “No one knew I was here.”

      “It took my men less than twenty-four hours from the discovery of your existence to pinpoint your location, and for me to come to your front door. You are lucky that I am the one who found you. Lucky that it wasn’t an enemy of my brother, of Attar.”

      “I couldn’t be sure that you wouldn’t be an enemy to Aden.”

      “Be sure of that now.”

      Chloe raised her gaze and met hard, dark eyes. She couldn’t believe that Sayid al Kadar was in her living room. She’d been watching the news about Attar carefully since Aden’s birth. Had seen the man assume power with ease and grace, an almost eerie calm, amidst a tragedy that had rocked a nation.

      The sheikh and his wife were dead. As was their unborn heir.

      So everyone had assumed.

      But what no one knew was that the sheikh and sheikha had used a surrogate. And that the surrogate, and the child, were safe.

      She’d had no idea what to do. When the royals’ private doctor hadn’t materialized during delivery, and then Tamara and Rashid hadn’t come, either…

      She could still feel it, the sick, cold dread that had washed over her. She’d known. She’d just known. And then she’d asked a nurse to turn the television on and it had been everywhere, on every channel. The loss of Attar’s royal family and the doctor to the royal family, killed in an accident on a highway in the Pacific Northwest.

      And all she’d been able to do was hold the baby—the baby that wasn’t hers, the baby that was never supposed to be hers, the baby who had no one but her—close to her chest and try not to dissolve completely.

      In the weeks since she’d been in a daze. Mourning her half sister, Tamara, though she’d barely known her, and trying to decide what she was supposed to do with Aden. Trying to decide if she should trust his uncle. Because if it was revealed that Aden was alive, then Sayid was not the ruler of Attar, he was merely regent.

      And the idea of what he might do to preserve his position had frightened her. She knew it was unlikely, ridiculous, even. Rashid had never spoken badly of his younger brother, and neither had Tamara.

      Still, this sort of strange, never-before-felt protectiveness had her in its grip, digging into her like claws, not releasing its hold. Aden was her nephew, and because of that, she did have a connection to him, but it was more. She’d imagined that it wouldn’t be. She didn’t want children, after all. Had never seen herself as the maternal type.

      But she’d carried him in her body. Nurtured him in that way. No matter what she’d believed, it wasn’t a bond that she could simply break. Her head knew one thing, but her body firmly believed another.

      “And you didn’t think to contact the palace?” Sayid asked, his voice deep. Hard.

      “Rashid asked that it be kept confidential. I signed legal documents saying that I would never divulge my involvement. If they had wanted to include you, they would have.”

      “So all of this was out of loyalty?”

      “Well… yes.”

      “And how much were you paid?” he asked.

      Her cheeks heated. “Enough.” She had accepted payment, and she was hardly going to apologize. Surrogates were paid for the service, and while she’d done it in part because Tamara was her half sister, she’d also done it out of a need for the money. Even with all of her scholarships, graduate school was costly. And independence was an absolute necessity for her, which meant money held a lot of importance in her world.

      “Loyalty. I see.”

      “Of course I was paid,” she said. “I wanted to do this for them, but honestly, carrying a child and giving birth? It’s a very big deal, as I have spent the past ten or so months now discovering. I won’t feel guilty for taking what I was offered.”

      “And why exactly did you want to do this for him?” He was still looking at her with a dark, angry light in his eyes and she had a feeling he still didn’t really believe that she’d had no involvement with Rashid.

      “Because of Tamara. She’s my half sister. And I’m not surprised you didn’t know. We didn’t meet until a couple of years ago, and we’ve never had the chance to become close.” Finding out she’d had a half sister had been such an extraordinary moment. Tamara had found her, using the new resources available to her as the sheikh’s wife.

      Chloe had been in awe of her when they first met. The sheikha, her sister. But it wasn’t her beauty or power that had captivated Chloe, it was the fact that she had a new chance at family. Something whole, tangible and shining where before there had been nothing but broken pieces, pain and regret.

      They hadn’t had the chance to spend a lot of time together. They lived a half a world away from each other, and meetings had been sporadic, but wonderful. A friendship that had been bursting with the possibility to be a bond she’d never had the chance to have before. And now she never would. That new, beautiful thing was shattered, too. There would never be any family for her, not ever.

      Except Aden.

      Her heart ached just thinking about the tiny baby sleeping in the bassinet in her room. She didn’t know what she felt for him. Didn’t know what to do with him. Didn’t know how she was supposed to give him up. Or keep him. She couldn’t imagine doing either, which put her right where she was now.

      Studying for midterms with a baby that wouldn’t let her sleep, living in fear of the moment she was currently standing in. For one brief, dark second she hated her life.

      A year ago she’d been starting grad school, on her way to getting her doctorate in theoretical physics, and now she was living in an existence that didn’t seem like it could possibly be hers.

      Grieving the sister she’d barely known, the possibility of something that had never gotten to be, struggling to finish her coursework. Raising a baby.

      And in that same, ugly moment, she imagined handing Aden to his uncle and telling him to take good care of him.

      When СКАЧАТЬ