Midnight in the Harem: For Duty's Sake / Banished to the Harem / The Tarnished Jewel of Jazaar. Carol Marinelli

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СКАЧАТЬ Good.

      He mentally ran through a list of things needed doing. Consulting an eminent obstetrician was top of the list. “You are not taking this seriously, what this pregnancy means.”

      “Oh, I’m taking it seriously all right. I know exactly what it means.”

      “Oh?” She certainly had not shown proper understanding so far.

      “Yes.” She shot daggers with her usually doe-soft eyes. “It means I’m agreeing to a marriage I don’t want.”

      “Why?”

      “Why what?” she asked, sounding genuinely confused.

      “Why agree to the marriage?” “Because I’m not a stone-cold bitch.” “I never said you were.”

      “My mother told me something a few years ago. It was after I found out about my father’s infidelities. I apologized to her for having to live in the States where I could know relative anonymity, instead of her home country of Brazil where she was better known. She’d done it to protect me.”

      “I am aware.”

      “Well, she told me I had nothing to apologize for, that from the moment a baby is conceived, his or her needs must come first.”

      “You are willing to marry me for the sake of our child.”

      “Under certain conditions, yes.” The limo pulled to a stop.

      She looked at him with that same sick expression she’d had before opening the sunroof. “We’re not at the restaurant. We’re hours too early for dinner.”

      She swallowed convulsively on the word dinner.

      “No, we are at your apartment building. I originally had planned to give you time to get ready for our date.”

      “More like, you intended to seduce me before dinner and hoped to cement the romantic proposal over dessert.” The words should have been mocking, but she merely sounded resigned.

      “You think you know me.” She was wrong. On the proposal over dessert part.

      He’d planned to woo her in person for two weeks before popping the question, so to speak.

      “What?” she asked. “It would have been a good plan, if unsuccessful.”

      “You do not think I could seduce you?”

      “I’m positive you could. Even feeling like my stomach is a jumping board for little green men right now, but I still wouldn’t have said yes to your proposal.”

      “But you will now, because of the pregnancy.”

      “Neither of us has a choice. This baby deserves better than to be shunted to the side as the unacknowledged offspring to a future king.”

      “I would never refuse to acknowledge my child.”

      “You know what I mean.”

      “No, in fact, I do not.”

      “Never mind. This arguing is making me even more nauseated than usual.”

      The sickly pallor to her skin lent truth to her claim. He mentally shook himself. Now was not the time for recriminations. What was done, was done.

      He had been right earlier; she clearly needed taking care of.

      “Then we will not argue.”

      “Thank you.” She sighed again, letting her eyes close as she seemed to concentrate on her breathing.

      When the driver opened the door, Zahir wasted no time exiting and then leaning back inside to help Angele alight from the car. Once she’d cleared the vehicle, he bent and lifted her into his arms.

      She gasped. “What are you doing?”

      Flashbulbs went off and he knew this picture would show up in the media sooner than later.

      “I am caring for you. You clearly need looking after.”

      “The papers are going to have a field day with speculation accompanying those shots.”

      “They’ll have more than enough juicy tidbits of truth to publish over the next weeks.”

      “We’re not going public with the …” She looked around and closed her mouth.

      He carried her toward the building allowing his bodyguard to go inside first and the rest of the detail to bring up their rear. “These things have a way of making it to the light. Better to announce the happy event than scramble to respond when some tabloid does.”

      She let her head fall onto his shoulder. “I don’t want to.”

      “We will talk about it later,” he said in his newly formed determination not to cause her stress with further disagreements.

      Angele sat at the bistro-style table in her kitchen and watched with bemusement as Zahir efficiently prepared a pot of peppermint tea.

      “You are awfully comfortable in the kitchen for a Crown Prince,” she observed, happy to focus on anything but recent revelations.

      She’d done a lot of facing reality and growing up over the past weeks. Realizing she was pregnant at all, but much less with the probable heir to the Zohrian throne, was all the catalyst she’d needed to shed the last of her naiveté. She’d been shocked by her own joy, even in the face of all this pregnancy would mean.

      Like she’d told Zahir, the baby came first, but more than that, she already loved her child and always would.

      Angele would do what needed doing to make sure her child’s life was all it should be, but that didn’t mean she wanted to talk about it right then. She was just starting to feel something other than nauseated.

      Zahir shrugged as he finished pouring the boiling water through the infuser into the teapot. “According to my mother, the inability to do something as basic as make a cup of tea is the mark of laziness rather than wealth.”

      “I’m sure Lou-Belia would agree with her.”

      “Your mother is an imminently sensible woman.”

      “You think it sensible to stay with a man who chose infidelity over argument in the attempt to convince her to have another child?” she asked, curiosity rather than bitterness in her voice.

      Between discovering she was pregnant and accepting the inevitable consequences that would have for her life, Angele had come to terms with a lot of things. Her present required all her energy; she didn’t have any left over to dwell on her family’s past.

      Zahir carried the teapot and two mugs to the small wrought-iron table. “Life is what it is.”

      “I think I’m finally learning what that really means.”

      “She chose what she considered the lesser of two evils.” СКАЧАТЬ