Working With Cinderella

They lay for a suitable while, waiting for normality to return, for the madness to subside, for him to rise from her bed and head to his own. But as he went to do so Amy’s hand reached out to him and it was then that she cried, for she had proved that she lied.

Her fierce vow that it would end tonight had already been downgraded to the morning.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

MORNING came whether she wanted it to or not.

The sun did not care that it ended them.

It did what it was born to—it rose and dictated that their time was over.

She knew Emir was awake next to her. She watched the fingers of light spread across the floor and before they reached the bed she felt his hand on her hip, then her waist. She closed her eyes as he tucked her body towards him, felt his erection and wanted to wake every morning to him. She did not want to be a woman who settled for a slice of his life—didn’t want to fit into allocated times. Yet had the phone not rung Amy knew that she would have.

‘The twins are on their way.’ Her voice was urgent as she hung up, ‘Kuma is bringing them now.’

There was no time for Emir to dress and leave, but he dealt with it instantly. Picking up the uniform he had so readily discarded last night, he headed to her en suite bathroom. This time it was he who hid there.

More than a little breathless, Amy searched for something to put on. Her panic was broken by a smile as a well-manicured hand appeared from the bathroom, holding her robe.

‘You need to relax,’ he warned her.

It was far easier said than done, because even as she tied the knot on her robe there was a knock on the door. When she opened it, there stood Kuma holding the smiling twins, who were clearly delighted to see Amy.

‘They had a wonderful night,’ Kuma explained, putting them down. The twins crawled happily in. ‘Clemira is really taken with the new Prince, but I think they both want someone more familiar this morning. How was your night?’ Kuma beamed. ‘I hear you were asked to join in the celebrations.’

‘I was.’ Amy nodded, nervous and trying not to show it, attempting to carry on the conversation as if she didn’t have the King of Alzan hiding in her room.

But thankfully Kuma did not prolong things. She wanted to get back to her young charge, so she wished Amy good morning and reminded her that the twins were expected to join the royals for breakfast in hour. ‘I hope that your time in Alzirz has been pleasant,’ Kuma said and then she was gone.

As was their time.

Like two homing devices, or observant kittens, the twins had made a beeline for the bathroom door, their dear little hands banging, calling out to the rather big secret behind it.

‘She’s gone.’ Amy’s face was burning 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.

CHAPTER TWELVE

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 her attempt to refute it was desperate. ‘I’m a royal nanny—as Kuma is.’

Natasha knew she had meddled too far, but she stepped back a little too late. ‘Of course you have to keep a professional detachment.’ Natasha nodded. Amy was not going to confide in her, she realised, so she tried to salvage the conversation as best she could. ‘After all, you will have your own babies one day.’

Amy was tired—so tired of women who assumed, who thought it was so straightforward, that parenthood was a God-given right. Maybe, too, she was tired of covering up, tired of saying the right thing, tired of putting others at ease as they stomped right over her heart.

She looked up at Natasha. ‘Actually, I can’t have children.’ She watched the blush flood Natasha’s cheeks and then fade till her skin was pale. She knew then that somehow Natasha knew about herself and Emir—perhaps they had given themselves away last night at the celebration? Perhaps they’d ignored each other just a touch too much? Or was their love simply visible to all?

Yes, love, Amy thought with a sob of bitterness—a bitterness that carried through to her words. ‘So, yes, while it might have been a touch awkward for everyone at breakfast to hear the twins call me Ummi, for me it hurts like hell. Now …’ She wanted her tears to fall in private, for Natasha was not her friend. ‘If you’ll excuse me …?’

‘Amy—’

‘Please!’ Amy didn’t care if it was the Queen she was dismissing, didn’t care if this was Natasha’s home. She just wanted some privacy, some space. ‘Can you please just leave it?’

Had she looked up she would have seen tears in Natasha’s eyes too as she nodded and left her. And Natasha’s eyes filled again when she took her place back at the table and saw Emir sit tall and proud, but removed.

Natasha had seen that expression before. It was the same as it had been when he had lost Hannah. Grey and strained, his features etched in grief.

As Emir looked up, as he saw the sympathy in Natasha’s expression, he knew she had been told—that Amy must have somehow confided the truth.

That it was impossible for her to be Queen.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

HE MET the day he dreaded and rose at dawn.

His prayers were deep.

Guilt lashed like a whip to his back. He had not allowed a year to pass before he touched another woman and deep was Emir’s prayer for forgiveness; yet there was nothing to forgive, his soul told him. That wasn’t the prayer that she needed to hear.

He could feel Hannah reaching from the grave, desperate for him to say it, for without those words how could she rest?

‘I will make the best decision.’

Still it was not what she wanted; still he was forced to look deeper. Yet he dared not.

He visited the nursery. There was Amy, curled up on the sofa, reading a book with the twins. He could not look at her. Later they rode with him in the back of a car to the edge of the desert, to visit Hannah and pay their respects.

Amy sat in the vehicle and watched the trio. When he turned to walk back to the car she watched him unseen, for the windows were heavily tinted. She ached to comfort him, to say the right thing, but it was not and could never be her place.

It had been five days since they’d returned from Alzirz.

Five days of ignoring her, Emir thought as they drove back.

Five days of denial.

And a lifetime of it to look forward to.

She could see his pain, could feel his pain as they walked back into the palace, and she proved herself a liar again.

‘I’m sorry today is so hard.’

He could not look at her.

‘If …’ She stopped herself, but with a single word it was out there: If it gets too tough, if things get too hard, if the night is too long …

He turned and did not wait for the guards to open his office door; instead he strode in, saw Patel and the elders quickly shuffle some papers. But Emir knew. He did not attempt politeness, nor even ask to see what was written. He just strode to the desk and picked them up. He looked through them for a moment, a muscle flickering in his cheek as he read them.

‘Sheikha Princess Jannah of Idam?’ He looked to Patel—a look that demanded a rapid answer.

‘She has many brothers.’ Patel’s voice was a touch high from fear. It was his turn to be on the receiving end of the King’s anger and he did not like it one bit. ‘She has many brothers. Her father too has many brothers …’

‘Sheikha Noor?’ Emir’s voice was low, but no less ferocious.

‘A strong male lineage also …’ Patel’s words were rapid. ‘And a family of longevity.’

‘Today is the anniversary of the death of Queen Hannah, and instead of being on your knees in prayer you sit and discuss the next royal intake.’

‘In my defence, Your Highness, we really need to address this. The people are impatient. Today they mourn, but tomorrow they will start asking …’

‘Silence!’ Emir roared. It was not today that he dreaded, he realised, but tomorrow, when he must move on, and the tomorrow after that one and the next. ‘You will show respect to your departed Sheikha Queen. You will give thanks for the Royal Princesses’s mother.’

‘Of course.’

‘You do not mention the Princesses here, I note,’ Emir said. ‘You do not seem concerned in the least as to the new Queen’s suitability for them.’ He cursed his aide and Patel did not wait to be told to leave. Neither did the elders. Within a moment the room was cleared and he stood alone. He did not want the day over—did not want it to be tonight. For it was killing him not to go to Amy, not to draw on the comfort she would give, not to have her again and again.

He was an honourable man.

And soon he must take a wife.

He looked again to the list that had been drawn up, tried to picture himself standing with his new bride at his side while his lover, the woman he really wanted, stood next to him, holding his children as he made solemn vows.

It had never been harder to be King.

He picked up his phone. It was answered in an instant and he was grateful, for given two seconds he might have paused and changed his mind.

‘Send the children’s nanny to speak with me,’ Emir said, and then specified, ‘the English one.’ He could only stand and wait to do this to her, to himself, but once, Emir needed it done this very moment. He had to bring things to a conclusion tonight—needed a clear head with which to make his decision. And with Amy in the palace it was an impossible ask. He could not get through this night with her near and yet out of reach to him.

Not an army, only distance could hold him back from her tonight.

‘Are you in trouble again?’ Fatima asked the minute Amy returned from her swim with the twins.

Amy was starting to warm to Fatima, and the twins were too—she was very firm, but she was also fair and kind and, perhaps more importantly, she had grown fond of the twins. They were taking over her heart, which was something they could easily do.

‘Trouble?’ Amy smiled, assuming the kitchen had rung again to complain about her meal choices for the twins. Or perhaps they had made too much noise when they were swimming on such a revered day. ‘Probably. Why?’

‘I just took a phone call and the King wishes to speak with you immediately.’

At some level she had known this was coming. Deep down she had known it was only a matter of time before it happened. She just hadn’t expected it today.

She had thought they might have this night, but she could not hope for anything as Fatima suggested that she tidy herself before she met with him, because Amy’s hair was still wet from the pool.

‘I don’t think that will be necessary,’ Amy said—there seemed no point having a mini makeover when you were about to be fired.

She looked around the nursery to the twins, who were now hungrily eating the grapes Fatima was passing to them, counting them out in Arabic as she did so.

They would be okay, Amy told herself as she took the long walk through the palace.

The guards opened the door as she approached, and reminded her to bow her head until the King spoke.

She discarded that advice.

Amy walked in with her head held high, determined she would leave with grace. Except the sight of him, standing tall but so remote, made her want to be his lover again, to salvage what little they had. She opened her mouth to plead her case, but his eyes forbade her to speak and it was Emir who spoke first.

‘You will leave late this afternoon. I have arranged all transport. That gives you some time to spend with the girls. I have a new nanny starting. She will assist Fatima.’

Yes, she’d wanted to do this with grace, but at the final hurdle she faltered—could not stand the thought of yet another woman taking care of her girls. ‘No! You know the girls are better off with me—you said it yourself.’

‘I did not realise then that they were learning only to speak in English, that they knew nothing of our ways …’

‘They would know a whole lot more if you spent more time with them. They don’t need another nanny!’

‘She will be more suitable. We must hold on to the ways of old.’

‘What about London? What about their education and all Queen Hannah wanted for them?’

‘This is their land.’

She really would never see them. Amy knew this was a goodbye for ever, and she forgot to be brave and strong. ‘What you said before … about me being your lover …’ She could not bear to leave—would give anything, even her pride, if it meant that she could stay. Because it was three times her heart was being broken here. She was losing three of the people she most loved. ‘What you said about me raising the girls in London …’

‘It is the type of thing men say when they want a woman in their bed. It is the type of thing a man says when his thoughts are not clear.’ Completely devoid of emotion, he threw the most hurtful words at her, a round of bullets shot rapidly straight to her heart. He didn’t stop firing. ‘You really think I would choose you for that role?’ He let out an incredulous laugh at the very thought. ‘Here a mistress is a man’s respite—a woman he can go to to relax and not be bombarded with everyday trivialities. You would be most unsuitable.’

He was right.

Amy felt the colour flood back to her cheeks, and she felt the fire in her soul return too—a fire that had been doused by the accident, that had flared only on occasion in recent times. But it was back now, and burning even more brightly, fuelling her to stand up to him.

‘I would be a most unsuitable mistress.’ She gathered her dignity and held on to it tightly, determined that she would never let it go again. She could hardly believe the offer she had made him just a few moments before and she told him why. ‘I’d be a terrible mistress, in fact. I’d bombard you with news about your daughters. Every achievement, every tear I would share with you. I would busy your distinguished brain with my voice and my opinions, and …’ She walked over to him—right over to where he stood. He lifted his jaw, did not look at her as she spoke, but it did not stop her. Her words told him all he would be missing. ‘And there would be no relaxing.’

‘Go!’ Emir said, and still he could not look at her.

Amy knew why. He was resisting his need for her, refusing the comfort that was within his grasp.

‘Go and spend time with the twins.’

‘I’m going now to pack,’ Amy said. ‘I’ll spend the afternoon at the airport.’

There was nothing left to say to him, no point pleading with him, nothing she could do for the twins. She was an employee, that was all.

But she had been his lover.

‘We both know why you need me out of here today, Emir. We both know you’d be in my bed tonight, and heaven forbid you might show emotion—might tell me what’s going on in the forbidden zone of your mind. You can stop worrying about that now—I’ll be gone within the hour,’ Amy said. ‘All temptation will be removed.’

‘You flatter yourself.’

‘Actually, I haven’t for a while. But I will from now on.’

Amy had once read that people who had been shot sometimes didn’t even know, that they could carry on, fuelled by adrenaline, without realising they had been wounded. She hadn’t believed it at the time, but she knew it to be true now.

She packed her belongings and rang down to arrange a car to take her to the airport. There wasn’t an awful lot to pack. She’d arrived with hardly anything and left with little more—save a heart so broken she didn’t dare feel it.

And because it was a royal nanny leaving, because in this land there were certain ways that had to be adhered to, Emir came out and held Clemira while Fatima held Nakia.

Amy did the hardest thing she had ever done, but it was necessary, she realised, the right thing to do. She kissed the little girls goodbye and managed to smile and not scare them. She should probably curtsy to him, but Amy chose not to. Instead she climbed into the car, and after a wave to the twins she deliberately didn’t look back.

Never again would she let him see her cry.

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