He turned away again and her feet carried her, without her volition, quickly, to where he was going. She put her hands on his shoulders and tugged him backward. His shoulders were thick and muscled, his frame solid and immovable beneath her hands. The kind of man she normally feared.
For a blinding second, she had a flash of what it would be like if he swept the back of his hand across her face. She knew just how that looked. Hard packed muscle coming up against a petite frame. Knew what it looked like to see a woman crumbled on the ground, broken and bleeding, the victim of masculine power.
Sayid didn’t do that. He stopped, not because she’d had any effect on him. He could have shrugged her off of him with ease, but he didn’t. Instead, he turned back to her slowly, his eyes dark, filled with heat and fury. “What are you doing?” he asked.
“You’re not just going to go in there and scoop him up and carry him off to the desert,” she said, her pulse pounding in her throat. “You might be the sheikh in your country but here you’re just an intruder in my house and if I have to mace your ass and then call the cops I will do it.” Anger drove her, a rage that made her shake, made her body quiver down to her bones. It banished her fear, fear of retribution, of violence at his hands.
Because right now, Aden was the weakest one here. And if she didn’t stand for him then no one would.
“Interesting,” he said, his voice coated in ice, “your file said you were a scientist, I expected more reserve.”
“And you’re supposed to be a leader, I expected you to have a little more of a deft hand at negotiation.” For some reason, he reacted to that. A small reaction, a small flare of something much deeper and more frightening than the anger from before. But it didn’t stop her. “Did you honestly think I would let you walk in and take my baby?”
Sayid straightened, his eyes black, blank again, absent of malice, or anything else. “He is not your baby.”
The truth hit, cold and hard, at the same time as the realization of what she’d said. “I know that. But I’ve been caring for him. I breastfeed him,” she said, desperation building in her chest, “you can’t just come in and take him.”
“You were meant to surrender him, and you know it to be true.”
“To Tamara,” she said, her voice rough. “I was meant to hand him to his mother, my sister, but she wasn’t there. His mother is dead. And no one knew about him. I didn’t know what to do, who to tell. The only other person who’s ever held him have been medical personnel, and you want to… to take him away.”
“I don’t want to take him from you,” he said, his jaw tight, his tone hard. “I must do what is best for Attar. I am not here to disrupt your little game of house. But Aden is not your son, and he does not belong here.”
“Then let me go there.”
“And reveal the secret that Rashid was so desperate to protect?”
She shook her head. “No. No… I could be… the nanny.”
“For the next sixteen years? Until he comes of age?”
She didn’t have the next sixteen years to spend in Attar. She had a life here. She had friends. And school. A student teacher position starting in the fall. All she had to do was wean herself away. There was no other choice, no other choice beyond making a clean break now, and that she knew she couldn’t do.
She shook her head. “No… not that I…” She swallowed and looked down. “But maybe… if he could be here with me for a few months even. Six months.” She didn’t know why she’d said six months. Only that it was time. More time to try and wrap her head around everything that had happened to her. More time to hold on to Aden when she really should just let go.
She started to walk into the room, toward Aden, and Sayid caught her arm, dark eyes blazing into hers. “Tell me this,” he said, his tone hard, “and be honest. You were only the surrogate, right? There was nothing between you and my brother?”
“Nothing,” she said.
“I need to know. Because there can be no surprises. No scandal.”
“Rashid loved Tamara. He would never…”
Sayid nodded. “He did. It’s true. But I have seen the things men can do, thoughtless things that cause a world of pain, and I would not put it past him. Not even him. Everyone is capable of evil.”
Evil, she had seen. In the most seemingly innocuous of men. His hard hold on her, fingers biting into her skin, was a reminder of that. “Even you?”
“Everyone is capable of evil,” he repeated.
“Well, your brother did no such evil. Not with me.” The idea was completely laughable. Or it would have been if Sayid hadn’t been so serious. “I did this because of Tamara. Because she was my family. And now Aden is my family.”
He released his hold on her. “Good. I cannot afford any complications.”
Anger spiked in her again, a welcome reprieve from the hopelessness that was starting to overwhelm her. “Well, I couldn’t afford any complications, either, Your Royal Sheikhiness. Yet I seem to have nothing but complications at the moment.”
“I could make them go away,” he said, his voice cold, uncompromising. “Can make it so your life goes back to the way it was before.”
“Could you take the pain with you?” she said, desperation tearing at her as she realized, fully, just how impossible a situation she was in. “Can you make it so it’s like it never happened? Make me forget that I carried a child and gave birth to him? That I cared for him for the first six weeks of his life? Can you make him forget?”
“He will be given everything in Attar. No comfort will be denied him. This is not a decision to make with your emotions. This is a decision that you must think about logically.”
Logic had long been a comfort to her. Fact, reason, had carried her through a childhood filled with chaos. But logic couldn’t win here. For the first time, her heart was louder than her head. “Will you love him?” she asked.
His black eyes were cold. “I would die for him.”
“It’s not the same thing.”
“But it is the promise I can make.” Men, men and their promises, had been something she’d spent a lifetime avoiding. She’d watched men break their promises, again and again, and as an adult she’d chosen to never put stock in them. But this promise, this vow, that seemed to come from deep inside of him, from his soul, was something she couldn’t doubt. She felt it echoing inside of her, down on a subatomic level. “He is my king. The heir to the throne of Attar. He has my allegiance, both as my future leader and as a member of my family.”
“He’s a baby,” she said, the word catching in her throat. “Right now, that’s the important thing.”
“He is a child,” Sayid said, “I know that. But he will never be like other children. He is meant to rule, it is a part of who he is. Who he was born to be. We all have a burden to bear in this life,” he continued, his voice softer now. “We all have a purpose that must be met. This is his.”
“But… but,” she stuttered, desperation digging its claws into her. She took a breath and redirected, scrolling through her mind for information she could use. Knowledge was power, now and always. “I understand that he’s the heir, but fundamentally, he’s a baby. Taking him from me, from his care-giver, now could cause damage, especially as I assume there will be staff caring for him?”
Sayid shrugged broad shoulders. “Of course.” Because Sayid would not be involved, not on a personal level. He might be willing to lay down his life for his nephew, but changing