Page 11 of Sheikh's Quarantine Triplet Baby Daughters

"No, and if this was unexpected, you might have been doing anything else, right?"

"Honestly the only thing everyone's letting me off the hook for at the moment is sleep," Samyar confessed. "Most of them will forgive me anything if I was only getting some sleep."

Something remarkably tender swept over Diane's face. When he had known her all those years ago, she had been clever, sharp as a knife, beautiful like ice, but he wasn't sure she had ever been so tender with him, and the sweetness of it could drown him.

"All right, come here."

Still carrying his phone, she led him back through the greenhouse, towards the koi pond. It was a pristine place, surrounded by a lush green lawn, and Diane went to sit on the edge of the pond, patting the soft grass beside her.

"Come here."

Curiously, Samyar went to sit beside her, and then he grunted with surprise when she placed a hand to the center of his chest, pushing him onto his back.

"Get some sleep," she said. "I could go all the way back to Paris with those bags under your eyes."

"You say the kindest things," Samyar grumbled, but his eyes were already beginning to droop. The grass was soft, the greenhouse was warm, and the woman he had never stopped loving was right next to him. The combination was making a deep lassitude fill his limbs, and he yawned widely.

"Go on, get some sleep," she said, looking out over the water. "I'll be right here."

"Wake me up in twenty minutes," he said, shifting to his side. "There are things I should be doing."

She waggled his phone at him.

"Short of a national emergency, I'm going to wake you up in an hour," she said firmly. "The world can probably get along without you for sixty minutes."

The advice was so close to what his own personal assistants had said that he laughed, shaking his head and conceding defeat.

"All right. An hour. But no more."

"I promise. Now get to sleep."

To his surprise, she dropped a hand lightly to his head, combing her fingers through his hair. The feeling sent slow sleepy tingles down his spine, and he caught the soft scent of her soap.

She still uses herbal soap,he thought idly, even as his eyelids drooped. She still smells so green and alive.

He fell asleep with almost shocking speed, thinking of green plants, and growing among them, Diane herself, as sweet as a flower and thorny as a rose.

Exactly an hour later, Samyar awakened when Diane shook him by the shoulder.

"Time's up," she said. "Your publicist texted to say that the interview's been knocked back to this evening, so you know. You have that to look forward to."

"The man works very hard, and sometimes, I wish he didn't," Samyar said, turning onto his back and stretching out. His clothes were probably rumpled and stained with grass, and he didn't care in the least.

"Did you get a good nap?"

"Did I snore?"

"Dreadfully. You frightened the fish."

He rose to his feet, giving Diane a hand up as well. Even when she was on her feet, he didn't want to relinquish her hand, instead holding it with his thumb stroking gently over the cup of her palm.

For just a moment, he thought there was a chance that one of them would lean in. Her lips in the soft greenhouse light looked astonishingly kissable, and Diane was a woman who deserved to be kissed, to be rolled in pleasure and held and protected and—

Diane took a step back, pulling her hand from his and shaking her head.

"We're not those people anymore," she said firmly, and reluctantly Samyar nodded. There was a voice inside him that disagreed violently, that she was still her and he was still him, and that they belonged with one another, but he kept it firmly in check. It had no place in the relationship they were building with one another, and he wasn't a tyrant.

"All right," he said softly. "But thank you for the nap. It was greatly appreciated."

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