The Sheikh's Secret Son Read Online Free PDF Page A

America.
    He may have let her believe he had never gotten a letter from her, but he had. The concierge at the hotel had handed him a small envelope when he had inquired about Eden at the front desk. It’s better this way. Eden. He had taken that to mean that she’d wanted nothing to do with him once he had told her, in his letters, of his true identity, of the privilege and the burden that he carried as heir to the throne of Kharmistan.
    For nearly six years he had believed he had done the right thing to walk away, to not look back. To forget. His father had never fully recovered from his stroke, and Ben had been forced to work night and day to try to fill his shoes, to keep their subjects calm, to eventually step into those shoes completely when his father died.
    There had been no time for romance, for fond memories, for much of anything except the work of ruling his country.
    He had married Nadim’s daughter because it had been a politically advantageous move that had solidified the populace. But neither Leila nor Ben had been in love. Her death three years later had saddened him greatly, but he had barely noticed a difference in his always busy days. For he was thesheikh, and the sheikh lived for the state, not for personal happiness.
    And then he had seen the memo from one Eden Fortune that Nadim had placed on his desk….
    â€œNadim?” he called out now as he went to the small bar in the corner of the living room of the suite, helping himself to an ice-cold bottle of spring water. “Nadim, are you there?”
    A servant dressed in the traditional white linen tobe, his kaffiyeh secured to his head with an agal fashioned of thick woolen cords, appeared in the doorway, bowed to him. “His Excellency will be with you momentarily, Your Highness, and begs your pardon for inconveniencing you by even a moment’s absence,” he said, then bowed himself out of the room.
    â€œYeah, right,” Ben muttered under his breath as he pulled the kaffiyeh from his own head, suddenly impatient with the formality with which he was treated as the Sheikh of Kharmistan. It was as if he lived inside a bubble, and no one was allowed to approach too closely, speak too plainly, say what the devil was on his or her mind.
    He had a sudden longing for that long-ago summer in Paris, for the days and nights he had spent with Eden. That was probably because she had looked today as she had looked then, only evenmore beautiful, more assured, more amazingly intelligent and independent.
    Although not so independent that she could refuse his request—his ultimatum—to come here tonight, to meet with him again. She had been angry with him, certainly, but she had also seemed frightened. Frightened for her job? No. It had been more than that, he was sure of it.
    But what? What?
    â€œYour Highness requested my presence? I ask forgiveness for being unprepared for your seemingly precipitate return. Things did not go so well at the meeting?”
    Ben turned to look at his closest advisor. Yusuf Nadim was a tall, extraordinarily handsome man in his mid-sixties. Dark skin, dark hair without a strand of gray, a thin mustache over his full upper lip. Nadim wore Western clothing well, but seldom, and looked quite impressive now in his sheer white silk kibr ornamented with a gold neckband and tasseled cord. He wore the flowing kibr over a fine linen tobe. His kaffiyeh was constructed of the same sheer material as his kibr, and anchored in place with an elaborate agal wrapped in gold thread.
    He bowed to Ben, but his dignity did not bow with him.
    My third cousin, the man who would be sheikh, Ben thought idly, then dismissed the reflection as itdid not give him pleasure. Neither did the subject at hand.
    â€œYou would like me to say yes, it did not go well. Would you not, Nadim?” Ben asked, smiling quite deliberately. “That way you could remind me of how very indispensable you are to the Sheikhs of Kharmistan,