Rising Stars & It Started With… Collections. Кейт Хьюит
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as the door opened and out stepped Emir. She had expected him to be wearing his uniform, but instead he was dressed in a more standard thick white towelling robe.
‘I will say that I’m looking for the twins if someone sees me in the corridor.’ He had already worked out how to discard all evidence. ‘If you can pack my uniform …?’
‘Of course.’ Amy nodded, telling herself that this was what it would be like were they to continue.
The twins let out a squeal of delight as they realised the two people they loved most in the world were together in the same room. And the man who had asked her to believe that he had his daughters’ best interests at heart, even if he did not always show it, the man who so often did not reveal his feelings, confused her again as he picked up the girls and greeted them tenderly.
He went to hand them to Amy, but changed his mind.
‘I hear you take them swimming at the palace?’
‘Every day,’ Amy said. ‘They love it.’
Go, her eyes begged him.
‘Show me,’ he said.
And so she dressed them in their little costumes, put on yesterday’s red bikini, and now he wasn’t a distant sheikh king who watched from the poolside. Instead he made do with his surprisingly modern black hipsters and took to the water with his daughters.
Amy was suddenly shy.
It felt wrong at first to be in the water with him—wrong to join them, wrong when he splashed her, when he caught her unguarded, when he pulled her into the trio. But after a moment she joined in.
Amy knew what was wrong—it was because it felt right. For a little while they were a family—a family on vacation, perhaps—and they left their troubles behind.
Emir was a father to his daughters this morning, and the twins delighted at the love and affection surrounding them. Emir splashed around with Nakia, hoisted Clemira on his shoulders as she giggled in delight. And in the water with them was Amy, and he did not leave her out. They stopped for a kiss.
The pool was shaded by the palms, but the sun did not let them be. It dotted through the criss-cross of leaves and glimmered on the water. It chased and it caught up and there was nothing they could do.
‘Let me get a photo,’ Amy said. ‘For the nursery.’ She wanted the girls to have a picture with their father—a picture of the three of them together and happy.
This was how it could be, Amy realised as she looked at the image on her phone, looked at the people she felt were her family.
An almost family.
It wasn’t enough.
‘Get the girls ready,’ Emir said as they walked back inside. ‘And then bring them down to breakfast.’
She blinked at the change in him, and then she understood—in a few moments they would face each other at the breakfast table, would be expected to carry on as if nothing was between them.
Emir was back to being King.
AND so the feast continued.
The birth of the new Prince demanded an extensive celebration, and Amy could see the tiredness in Natasha’s eyes as she greeted the never ending stream of guests.
It was a semi-formal breakfast. There was a long, low table groaning with all the food Amy had come to love in her time there, but she was not here to socialise or to eat, but to make sure that the twins behaved. It was assumed she would have eaten before the Princesses rose.
Of course, she was starving.
Starving, her eyes told him. He watched them linger on the sfiha he reached for. He was at Rakhal’s table, and it would be rude not to indulge, but it tasted of guilt on his tongue.
He was weak for her. Emir knew that.
And weak kings did not make good decisions.
‘Have something!’ Natasha insisted, sitting next to Amy as she fed the girls. ‘For goodness’ sake.’
‘I already ate,’ Amy responded. ‘But thank you.’
‘I insist,’ Natasha said. She saw her husband’s eyes shoot her a warning but she smiled sweetly back, for there was something that Rakhal did not know—something she had not had time to tell him.
When he had gone riding that morning she had taken tea on the balcony—had heard the sound of a family together, had felt the love in the air. She knew only too well the strain of being considered an unsuitable bride, yet things were changing here in Alzirz and they could change too in Alzan.
Amy did her best to forget she was hungry as she fed the twins. Did her best not to give in to the lure of his voice, nor turn her head when he spoke. She tried to treat him with the distant, quiet reverence that any servant would.
The twins were a little too loud, but very funny, smiling at their audience as they entertained, basking in the attention. As the breakfast started to conclude she wiped their faces, ready to take them back to their room and to pack for the journey home.
Not home, she reminded herself. She was returning to the palace.
With the evidence of last night in her case.
Just for a brief moment she lost focus, daydreamed for a second too long, considering the impossible as she recalled last night. Of course Clemira noticed her distraction.
Clemira demanded attention. ‘Ummi!’
Amy snapped her eyes open, prayed for a futile second that no one had heard. But just in case they hadn’t Nakia followed the leader as she always did.
‘Ummi!’
‘Amy!’ She forced out the correction, tried to sound bright and matter of fact, but her eyes were filling with tears, her heart squeezing as still the twins insisted on using the Arabic word for mummy.
‘I’ll go and get them ready for the journey home.’ She picked up Clemira, her hands shaking, grateful when Natasha stood and picked up Nakia.
Natasha was the perfect hostess, instantly realising the faux pas the little girls had made. Doing her best to smooth things over, she followed Amy out of the room with Nakia. But as Amy fled past the table she caught a brief glimpse of Emir. His face was as grey as the incoming storm—and there would be a storm. Amy was certain of it.
The tension chased her from the room. The realisation that continuing on was becoming increasingly impossible surrounded her now. She wished Natasha would leave when they reached the nursery, wished she would not try to make conversation, because Amy was very close to tears.
‘I will go back and explain to them.’ Natasha was practical. ‘I know how difficult things can be at times, but once I explain how similar the words are …’ She tried to make things better and, perhaps selfishly, yearned for Amy to confide in her. The only thing missing in her life was a girlfriend—someone from home to chat to, to compare the country’s ways with. ‘Anyway, it’s surely natural that they would think of you in that way.’
‘I’m not their mother.’
‘I know.’ Natasha misinterpreted Amy’s tears as she cuddled Clemira into her—or perhaps she didn’t. Her words were the truth. After all, she had heard them as a family that morning. ‘It must be so hard for you—to detach, I mean, you’ve known them since the day they were born.’
‘Why would it be hard for me to detach?’ Amy met the Queen’s eyes and frowned, her guard suddenly up. Natasha sounded as if she really did know how hard it was for her, and she must never know—no one must ever know. But Amy was suddenly certain that Natasha did, and