The Secret Heir Of Alazar. Кейт Хьюит

seeming one of forbidding judgement. ‘You should have told me.’

      ‘About what, exactly?’ She folded her arms and met him with as challenging a look as she could muster. She wouldn’t be cowed by this cold, haughty attitude. ‘Maybe you should have told me you were a sultan.’

      ‘Heir to the throne,’ he dismissed, and she let out a laugh that sounded a little too high and wild.

      ‘Oh, okay, then.’

      Malik arched an eyebrow in an eloquent gesture of silent incredulity. He was so different than she remembered. Yes, he was just as devastatingly attractive, but he was colder now. Sharper, too, and more hidden. Remote and unreachable, without the warmth and friendliness, the tenderness that she’d once revelled in. Except that had all been an act, she reminded herself. This was the real Malik. He’d shown his true colours when he’d kicked her out of his bed.

      ‘Don’t play me for a fool a second time, Grace. You know what I’m talking about. My son.’

      The Grace hurt. She was Gracie. He knew that. And as for his son... Sam was hers.

      ‘I never played you for a fool,’ Gracie replied. Her voice thankfully came out cool, if not as cold as his. ‘If anyone was tricked, it was me.’

      ‘With fifty thousand dollars in your pocket?’

      Colour and heat flared in her face. So he knew about the cheque Asad had thrust at her. He must have learned everything, no doubt from Asad. But why? His grandfather hadn’t wanted Gracie, cheap tramp that he’d thought her, in Malik’s life. Why tell Malik now? Or had he discovered it on his own? And why did she now feel guilty for taking that money?

      When Asad had found her in Prague just hours after she’d sent a desperate email to an anonymous government address, she’d been both shocked and afraid. He’d bundled her into his blacked-out sedan and told her point-blank to get rid of the baby. When, horrified, she’d refused, he’d handed her the cheque with the stipulation that she never contact anyone in Alazar again.

      Gracie had been so overwhelmed, so frightened, that she’d signed the paper he’d waved in front of her nose and taken the cheque. And yes, she’d cashed it. She’d considered it eighteen years of child maintenance payments. And she’d needed that money, for both her and Sam’s independence. It had enabled her to stay at home with him until he’d started school.