Amira paced the quarters of the elegant tent Fahad had escorted her to an hour ago. Abdullah had been right when he'd said he'd give her every possible comfort: the spacious tent had a wide double bed on its own wooden dais, the soft mattress piled high with silk and satin covers and pillows. There were also several teak chairs and a bureau for clothes she didn't even have.Had they brought her luggage from the jet? She doubted it. Not that she'd even brought much from Muscat. She'd only been intending to stay for three days: a quiet ceremony, a quick honeymoon, and then a return to Muscat, Sultanate of Oman to introduce Sheikh Omer Ibrahim to her people.Abdullah stepped inside the tent. Amira had already retreated to the far side, the copper tub between them like a barrier, her slight body swallowed up by the robe.'I'm sorry,' Abdullah said. 'I didn't know you were in the bath.''So you said.''You don't believe me?''Why should I believe anything you say?' she retorted. 'You haven

After Abdullah had left, riding off into the desert with several of his men, great clouds of dust and sand billowing behind them, Amira went back to her tent. To her surprise, she saw a book—The Making of Modern United Arab Emirates—had been placed on her bedside table. Was Abdullah being thoughtful, she wondered, or mocking?Curious, she flipped through the book. She already knew the basics of UAE's history: its many years of peace, isolated as it was on a remote peninsula, jutting out into the Arabian Sea. While war had passed it by, so had technology, and for centuries it had remained as it had always been, a cluster of tribal communities with little interest beyond their nomadic life of shepherding. Then, in the early 1800s, Sheikh Ahmad al Bakir Ibrahim, the great-great-grandfather of Hashem Abu Bakir Ibrahim, had united the tribes and created a monarchy. He'd ruled the Arab States for nearly fifty years, and since then there had only been peace and prosperity.None of it told he

She looked up, her gaze unfocused as she recalled the way Abdullah had held her; the soft words he had spoken; the way he’d stroked her hair; the thud of his heart against her cheek.She felt deep in her bones that he’d been sincere, and the realization both terrified and thrilled her. She didn’t have real relationships. She didn’t know how. She’d been shy as a child, her parents’ distant figures, her only company a nanny, and then a governess. Even if she’d wanted, yearned, for such things, she hadn’t known how to go about getting them—and then Paulo had broken her trust and destroyed her faith in other people and, even worse, her faith in herself and her judgment.Was she misjudging Abdullah now? Was it simply her pathetic inexperience with men and life that made her crave more of that moment, more tenderness, more contact?Nothing about their relationship, if she could even use that word, was real.Yet it felt real. She felt as if Abdullah understood and even liked her for who she

Abdullah’s gaze had blazed anger but Amira saw something beneath the fury: grief. A grief she understood and felt herself. And, even though she didn’t want to, she felt a sympathy for Abdullah, a compassion and even an anger on his behalf. He’d been terribly wronged, just as Leila had said.She thought of him as a boy, being banished from his family and home. She imagined his confusion and fear, the utter heartbreak of losing everything he’d known and held dear.Just as she had.She’d been a bit older, but her family had been wrenched from her in a matter of moments, just as Abdullah’s had. She was fighting to keep her rightful title, just as Abdullah was.With a jolt she realized what this meant: she believed him. She believed he was the rightful heir. For a second everything in her rebelled. You believed before. You trusted before. And this man has kidnapped you—how can you be so stupid?Yet she’d heard the sincerity in Abdullah’s voice. She’d felt his pain. She knew him in a way sh

Amira felt the kind of thrill of exhilaration she hadn’t experienced since she’d been a child riding in Muscat as she followed Abdullah. It felt wonderful to be on a horse again, the desert flashing by in a blur of rocks and sand. She had had no time for such pursuits since she’d been queen. She hadn’t ridden like this in years.The only sound was her horse’s hooves galloping across the sand. She spurred the beast on, eager to catch up with Abdullah —or even pass him. Although he hadn’t said, she knew it had become a race.Glancing behind him, Abdullah pointed to a towering, needle-like boulder in the distance that Amira knew must be the finish line. She nodded back and crouched low over the horse as the wind whistled past. She was only a length behind him, and in the last dash to the finish line she made up half a length, but Abdullah’s horse still crossed a beat before hers.Laughing, she reined the animal in and patted his sweat-soaked neck. ‘That was close.’‘Very close,’ Abdullah