Carrying the Sheikh's Heir(24)

                He almost said yes. The word hovered on his tongue and he bit it back. Shock coursed through him at that near slip. Why would he want to spend any time with her? Why would he ever do such a thing? It was not in him. It was not what he did, regardless that he’d thought of that kiss for half the night during the flight home. He’d told himself it had simply been too long since he’d been with a woman and that was why he kept thinking about it.

                But this woman was not the one he was going to break his fast with. That road was fraught with too many dangers. Too many complications.

                “I think that is unnecessary,” he said curtly. “I have a kingdom to run and very little time.”

                “I think it is necessary.” Her voice was soft and filled with a hurt he didn’t understand.

                He refused to let her get to him. She was a stranger, a vessel who might be carrying his child. He did not care for her. He would not care for her.

                “Yet this, too, is nonnegotiable,” he told her before turning and striding from the room.





                                      CHAPTER FIVE

                SHERIDAN DIDN’T KNOW why it hurt so much to watch him walk out, but it did. She didn’t care about him at all—she actively disliked him, in fact—but his rejection stung. She might be carrying his child and he didn’t even care about who she was as a person. He didn’t want to know her, and he didn’t seem to want her to know him.

                She didn’t move when the workmen came back inside to continue cleaning the glass, or when Fatima—the woman who’d brought her food and had returned after Sheridan broke the window—came over and took the cloth from her to wipe the remaining cuts. They were small, but they stung.

                Oh, she’d been so stupid. So emotional. She’d behaved crazily—but it had worked because he’d come. And he’d promised her a small measure of freedom. That had to be a triumph. Fatima dabbed some ointment on her cuts, and then disappeared into the bathroom to put everything away.

                How had it come to this? Sheridan was a nice person. She was friendly to everyone, she loved talking to people and she’d never met anyone she didn’t like. Until yesterday when Rashid al-Hassan had shown up, she hadn’t even thought it was possible to dislike someone.

                There were people she got mad at, certainly. She got mad at Annie for not being stronger, but that only made her feel guilty. Annie hadn’t had all the advantages that Sheridan had—she wasn’t as outgoing, she hadn’t been popular, she didn’t know how to talk to people and make friends and now she couldn’t even have a baby—so it was wrong of Sheridan to get angry with her. Sheridan could hear her mother’s answer when she’d been a teen complaining that it wasn’t fair she had to stay home from the party because her friends hadn’t invited Annie, too.

                Annie’s not like you, Sheri. We have to be gentle with her. We have to watch out for her.

                Not for the first time, Sheridan wondered if maybe Annie would be tougher if everyone in her life hadn’t coddled her. If she’d had to stand up for herself, make her own friends, fight her own battles.

                Sheridan clenched her hand into a fist and sat there as still as a statue for what seemed the longest time. Even now, she felt like she should be calling Annie to ask how she was instead of worrying about her own situation.

                She looked up to see yet more men arriving in her room. They chattered in fast, musical Arabic, dragging out measuring tapes and writing things down on paper. Then they disappeared.