Surgeon Prince, Cinderella Bride. Ann McIntosh
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skepticism and at least listen to what he had to say.
If even two months earlier someone had said her roots lay in the small kingdom of Kalyana, she wouldn’t have had a clue where they were talking about. After getting her DNA results she’d had to look it up online.
Lying on her bed, computer on her lap, she’d fallen in love with the pictures of the country and the faces of the people. A chain of thirty-plus small islands in the Indian Ocean, it was a melting pot, she’d learned from her research. A mixture of Indian, Arab, African and European, which lent her DNA breakdown credence.
The need to understand where her ancestors came from had been growing inside her for a long time, and had become a compulsion. It wasn’t anything she could discuss with her adoptive parents or younger sisters. How could she explain, although they were her family, the yearning to have a biological connection to other people, to an ancestral home, was overwhelming? Although they knew she’d looked up her birth parents’ names and had done the DNA test, it wasn’t something they’d talked about much, as though it wasn’t that important.
Her parents had a commendable, egalitarian outlook on life.
“Everyone’s the same, under their skin,” was one of her mom’s favorite sayings, but knowing that hadn’t helped Sara when she’d been a kid, going to school, trying to field questions about her origins.
With her burnt-caramel skin tone, thick, kinky black hair, dark brown eyes and plump build, she’d stood out, especially when compared to her tall, thin, fair-skinned, blonde sisters. There had been a few other children of color in the schools she’d gone to, but the difference had been that they had all known what their roots were. Sara never had.
It had left a hole inside; empty spots in her soul.
Crown Prince Farhan seemed able to fill in some of those blanks, although she found it difficult to comprehend what he was saying.
“Explain it to me again,” she said.
Sitting in a slightly seedy coffee shop down the road from her house, she was supremely aware of the man across the table, and the avid stares of the other early evening customers. Who could blame them for being curious?
With his beautifully fitting coat, even in jeans and with a silk scarf looped informally around his throat, there was nothing casual about the overall effect Crown Prince Farhan projected.
Everything about him, from his aura of wealth to the bodyguard, who he’d introduced as Kavan, sitting at an adjacent table, was beyond Sara’s, and no doubt the other patrons’, ken.
It made her aware of the slightly rundown aura of her blue-collar neighborhood. Heightened her discomfort and confusion.
With exaggerated patience he replied, “In a nutshell, you’re part of the Kalyanese royal family. A part that was thought to have died off.”
“But I looked at my adoption records. My father was Brian Haskell, not this...”
“Bhaskar Ahuja,” he helpfully supplied.
“Right. Him. So I can’t be who you think I am.”
“According to the DNA results, you’re definitely the granddaughter of Queen Nargis, and Bhaskar was her only child. Ergo...”
She shook her poor befuddled head.
“This is crazy. And how does any of this relate to your proposition that we marry?”
Just saying the words made her blood pressure skyrocket, bringing a slow-building headache.
“Through your father, you could, if you wish to exercise it, have a claim to the throne. Should certain factions find that out, you may be used as a rallying point for a revolution.”
“I—I don’t want the throne,” she’d said, quite sure it would be the end of the conversation. The craziness.
But Crown Prince Farhan had simply shaken his head.
Apparently, in the worlds of royalty and politics, nothing was that simple. She wouldn’t even have to participate in the rebellion, could denounce it, and that still wouldn’t be enough.
Farhan wrapped long, nimble fingers around the disposable cup half-filled with coffee and leaned closer across the small table. At that distance, in the garish light, she realized his eyes weren’t as dark as she’d thought.
Or as cold.
In the rich brown tones there was, she thought, a hint of sympathy, although what she interpreted as determination took precedence.
“Even though there is no way to connect Brian Haskell with Bhaskar, except through your DNA, some might consider you the true Queen of Kalyana. My father hopes that, should your lineage become public knowledge, uniting the bloodlines through our marriage would appease those inclined to overthrow his reign.”
At least some semblance of her logical brain was still functioning. Not that she knew much about royalty and rights of inheritance, but she did know enough to ask, “But don’t thrones pass from father to son? And if my father ran off rather than take the throne, shouldn’t he be considered to have abdicated?”
He surprised her with the briefest hint of a smile. Just enough to chase the solemn, arrogant expression from his face and create deep, slashing laugh lines in his cheeks. With just that small change his face, already gorgeous, became shockingly beautiful.
Tingles of awareness shot through her veins, and heat settled low in her belly.
“Not in Kalyana. It’s always been the oldest child, irrespective of gender. And there are people who might say Bhaskar was forced to run away by my family, rather than him leaving of his own accord.”
A little chill ran up her spine at his words, and she had to ask, “Could there possibly be any truth to that? And if we’re both part of the royal family, aren’t we related?”
His face tightened, became forbidding, yet he replied, “No, we’re not related and I think it doubtful my grandfather even knew he was next in line, since we’d cut off all contact with the kingdom by that point. My branch of the family had left Kalyana about a century before, and was living prosperously in Australia. By all accounts, my grandfather, his wife and children underwent great upheaval when he agreed to take the throne. And their transition was difficult, because of the suspicion surrounding your father’s disappearance.”
Her mind was going a million miles an hour, and she latched onto a subject that felt distant enough to be tenable. “How old was your father when they moved there?”
His eyebrows rose slightly, as though the question caught him off-guard. “About nine or so, I think.”
“Poor soul,” she murmured, imagining herself at that age moving halfway across the world into a new and hostile environment. She’d had life changes happen at about the same age, and the effects still lingered, even after so many years. “That must have been rough on him.”
Prince Farhan’s eyes widened slightly, then he dropped his gaze to his cup, not replying.
There were too many threads to unravel, but one thing was foremost in her mind.
“Why can’t I just sign a document saying I promise not to try to take over the country? Wouldn’t that work as well?”
He looked up at her again, but it felt as though he’d pulled his mind back to their conversation from somewhere far away.
“The vast majority of the Kalyanese people have no problem with the monarchy. However, even after more than fifty years, the suspicions about my family have lingered, so having you aligned with our side of the family would...should...put all that to rest, once and for all.”
It was too much to take in, and she struggled to contain her anxiety, the panic making her pre-ulcerous stomach burn and her hands shake.
Sara wasn’t impulsive. She’d had neither the luxury nor the inclination to be. In life,