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“Cleo If I’ about his naue then, like a square of dark, alht flared briefly in his slate-gray gaze as though he tasted it, too “—you should certainly call me Cleo”

“Is that short for Cleopatra?” he asked al her ith a sudden deep fervor that she could transforht please hiht came fro through her, changing her where she sat

But then, she’d been there, done that, with aKhaled’s equal She wouldn’t do it again

“No” She set down the tea without tasting it, afraid she’d drop the whole of it on the undoubtedly priceless rug beneath her dusty feet “My mother liked it”

He studied her for aher breath

“I like it, too,” he said, and she didn’t understand the heat that blasted through her, confusing her even as it made her ache

“You were talking about your sister,” she rehter deep inside her

“Amira is my responsibility,” he said after a h not at all soft “Our mother died when she was quite small and I suppose I feel as ret I’ve not been there for her as I should have My father’s health has declined quite seriously in the past year and my attention has been on the country That is not an excuse and not soed, but it is a factor, I think, in her acting out”

“I don’t know that it’s possible to really be there for a teenage girl,” she said after a moment, when she was reasonably certain her voice would co abandoned and mistreated is par for the course, as I remember it, whether that’s true or not”

“I can’t help thinking that she would do better with a feuidance Someone to look up to who is not the autocratic brother who now makes all the decisions about her life that she doesn’tas I find her”

It took Cleo aat the frayed cuffs of the dark trousers she’d worn in toowith only the faintest little hint of despair why she was dressed like a teenage girl when she wasn’t one Sitting here in this place—in this palace—she’d never been more aware of how far short she fell of any kind of womanly ideal

She was a little bit of a ernails, worn and battered clothes that she’d been wearing for sixout in a hundred hostel sinks Backpacker chic didn’t translate in a palace, she understood, especially when she was sitting in the presence of a man who made even what she assumed were his casual clothes look impossibly splendid

You let yourself go, Cleo, Brian had said, as if that were a reasonable explanation for lying and cheating And we’re not even married yet I wanted someone ould never do that

And I wanted souess my ratty jeans are my business, she’d snapped back at him

And then what Khaled had said penetrated and she lifted her gaze to find his she didn’t understand in those slate-gray eyes of his It made her shiver It made her wonder

It made her understand her own insecurities

Brian was a spoiled child but Khaled was very plainly a , surrounded by beauty on every side Even his tea set shouted out its delicate, resolute prettiness Was it insane that she wished she was as pretty, as lovely, as all these things he was used to having around him?

That he ht look at her and find her beautiful, too?

Of course it’s insane, she scolded herself If Brian thought you dressed as though you let yourself go, what must the Sultan of Jhurat think?

“The best cure for teenage girls is the passage of tiernails into her palht Time was also the best cure for eh there were new humiliations all the time, apparently “I speak as soh, I promise you”