Sheikh's Secret Love-Child--A Secret Baby Romance by Caitlin Crews

Author:Caitlin Crews
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2018-08-13T15:14:32+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE CORONATION CEREMONY went off smoothly. Far better than anyone, including Malak, could have hoped after the surprise of his ascension and the even bigger shock of Miles’s existence. He was fairly certain his top ministers had expected something along the lines of an American reality show.

But Malak had opted instead for a private, deliberately quiet affair, because he thought it was important that Khalia’s second major transfer of power in the past few months seemed so smooth it hardly merited any publicity—aside, of course, from what the papers might say about it.

Besides, he had other plans for grand, sweeping public ceremonies.

A coronation was a ritual steeped in age-old tradition of a far more prosaic sort—the consolidation of authority into a single man. Less myth, more might. Malak had planned his down to the barest, most minute detail, because he wanted the somber images he planned to release to live in his people’s heads and hearts as if they had always been there.

Malak himself, looking quietly authoritative, accepted his place on the ancient throne in traditional Khalian dress. The ritual naming of his heir, that he knew would inspire his people to raptures. For who could resist tiny, fierce-faced Miles, staring up at his father with an identical look of concentration in those same dark green eyes?

And everything went as it should. Precisely as Malak had planned.

Except for Shona.

She had disappeared into her room with her servant earlier, looking shaken. Malak had found he didn’t like it. He preferred Shona bright and ferocious, not quietly obedient—though he hardly knew where to put such a thought after all the effort he’d expended attempting to break her even a little. And then she had emerged again some time later dressed appropriately for her station.

At last.

And he’d forgotten what he liked or didn’t like about her emotional state, because he was, after all, just a man.

And she was so gorgeous it made his lungs hurt.

Malak had gone to significant trouble to find the perfect dress that encompassed both the sort of Western chic that would broadcast Shona’s beauty to the whole world and the suggestion of the kind of modesty his people would expect from a woman who had already borne him a son and would soon take her place at his side.

And she had exceeded his wildest expectations.

Shona was always beautiful. But it had never occurred to him how much she tried to hide that. With her aloofness. With her toughness. With her refusal to back down, ever, even so much as an inch. It wasn’t simply the way she dressed, it was how she carried herself.

As if she dared any man, even him, to find her beautiful when she could be a thorn in the side instead.

But it was as if the dress brought out a different side of her. A Shona he’d never met before, this one as soft as she was determined. No longer disguising her stunning beauty, but owning it at long last.

“Are you satisfied?” she’d

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