Page 14 of Her Irresistible Sheik
But her delicate beauty was like a thorn beneath his skin.The gentle curve of her jaw, the quiet strength in her refusal to be a burden, the flicker of vulnerability when she thought no one was watching.She stirred something in him that he didn’t know how to handle.
And now she was wandering his palace, wearing his sunlight, eating lemon tart, leaving behind the scent of jasmine and trouble.
Mikail sat down, scowled at the plate the staff set in front of him, and tried very hard not to picture her sitting in this very chair, her lips curving around a smile she hadn’t yet shown him.
God help him if she ever did.
Chapter 8
Mikail was losing his damn mind.
Five days.That’s all it had been.
Five days since Nahla had stepped foot into his palace—and he was starting to question everything: his sanity, his priorities, his HVAC system—because her scent lingered in every hallway like she’d spritzed perfume directly into the air vents.
He turned the corner outside the council room and inhaled automatically.Gardenias?Vanilla?Whatever it was, it haunted him like a seductive ghost.
Every glimpse of her threw off his schedule.One time, he spotted her curled up with a mystery novel in the library and spent the next three hours “revising” a shipping tax memo by writing the word “Nahla” repeatedly in the margins like some schoolboy with a crush.
Worse, she waschanging things.
His perfectly organized, blissfully rigid world had developed…frayed edges.Sure, she stayed tucked in the library for hours, reading who-knew-what.And yeah,maybehe’d ordered fifty new books to make the place “more interesting.”And okay,maybehe’d arranged for them to be subtly displayed where she could find them, like a literary Easter egg hunt.
But now—now he’d just been informed she was in thekitchen.
The kitchen!
Pinching the bridge of his nose, Mikail exhaled slowly and dropped his head back in frustration.What was a royal princess doing in a kitchen?Did she think his chef wasn’t feeding her properly?Was she dissatisfied?Malnourished?
The very idea made his blood pressure spike.If this was some silent protest over under-seasoned chicken, he’d fire every damn person in that kitchenpersonally.
He turned his glare on his personal assistant, Desmond, who blinked back at him in confusion.
“Why,” Mikail ground out, “is the Princess elbow-deep in flour?”
Desmond blinked.“She…said she was craving lemon cookies?”
Mikail narrowed his eyes.“Lemon cookies.”
Desmond nodded.
“Does she not have access to snacks?Fruit?Cake?A five-star chef with a literal Michelin background?”
“She, uh, said she wanted to try baking.Said it calms her.”
Mikail stared at him.“You know what else is calming?Reading.Long walks.Yoga.”
Desmond shifted uncomfortably.“She also said she doesn’t like yoga.Says it’s a cult.”
Mikail grunted.He couldn’t argue with that.
He shoved his chair back with a force that made the wheels skid.The hospital plans for the northwest region lay forgotten on his desk, next to his pen—now ink-stained with the imprint of his teeth, thanks to a momentary lapse in judgment where he’d tried to chew through his own annoyance.
He hadn’t made it past the first paragraph of those plans.How could he, when all he could think about was Nahla laughing over cookie dough, with flour dusting her cheeks and her sleeves rolled up to reveal those maddeningly elegant wrists?
And then—the worst thought of all—what if the chef was flirting with her?
His blood pressure spiked again.Some smug bastard with the too-white teeth and the “I studied in Lyon” attitude better not be winking at Nahla or he’d find himself reassigned to the royal kennel.
