But sometimes Nara wheedled her way into helping with the wives even when it didn’t make sense. Which was how Calla found herself with Nara emerging from the curtains in the formal sitting room of the palace only moments before a journalist was scheduled to arrive.
“Nara!” Calla hissed. Her nerves had been jangling all day—all week, really—worrying about the details of the gala and every other thing on her plate. Keeping an eye on Nara hadn’t been in her schedule for this afternoon. “What are you doing here? I sent you with Uli to get the ribbons organized.”
“It’s so boring,” Nara whined. “I just want to be with you. Some of those other ladies smell funny.”
Encouraging Nara to find her voice had a mixed bag of results. But Calla couldn’t complain about her honesty. “Fair enough. But I need you to be very quiet. Very still. A very important man is coming to interview us. I mean, me. He’ll be interviewing me.”
Nara gasped, clapping her hands together. “An interview!”
A knock sounded on the grand wooden doors of the sitting room, and a palace employee poked her head in. The journalist was here. He came through a moment later, grinning and friendly. Calla shook his hand and introduced Nara, who fidgeted by Calla’s side as the interview began.
The journalist had basic questions about the upcoming gala and who would be in attendance. The idea was to put out an article to generate buzz, so that word would start traveling about some of the recent shifts in leadership within the tribe. But when the journalist asked about who was more excited about the gala—Fatim or Calla—Nara piped up.
“My Calla is more excited because she and Daddy will get to dress up and kiss,” she said proudly.
Calla laughed weakly, sending an apologetic look to the journalist. “Well, that’s certainly a natural byproduct of the gala,” she said.
“Do your daddy and Calla often have a good time together?” the journalist asked, directly to Nara.
Nara nodded vehemently. “They are so in love. Like the most in love people I have ever, ever seen.”
Calla felt her neck heat up. Good lord, this was embarrassing on so many levels. Thankfully, the journalist and Nara weren’t aware just how awful this was for her.
“How sweet.” The journalist offered Calla a genuine smile. “The people love when the king is in love.”
Calla swallowed hard. Except he wasn’t. Maybe it was better his people didn’t know that. Calla tried to steer the interview back toward safer waters. When the journalist had concluded his questions and excused himself, Calla and Nara sat in the sitting room.
“I want to read the article!” Nara hopped around the room a few times repeating this while Calla smiled wanly. Surely the journalist wouldn’t take a six-year-old’s outburst as journalistic fact?
As she herded Nara through the palace and back toward the tents, where they’d spend the remainder of the afternoon working on the gala, Calla tried her best to calm herself down.
But it was hard, when the big ugly beast of Their Love That Actually Wasn’t was thrown back in her face.
If anything, they had a lust for the ages. Fatim had no problem eating her out—he’d done so plenty of times over the past week—but somehow continuously dodged real sex. She wondered if this was his ploy to make her forget that he still hadn’t said he loved her, or even brought it up.
She couldn’t complain about the ploy, if that’s what it was.
But it certainly didn’t make her forget. If anything, it only drove home how one-sided their relationship was. And how much more one-sided it was sure to become as time went on.
The next morning, Fatim and Calla were trudging through their morning routine, bleary-eyed and yawning as usual. Ever since gala planning had taken over the palace, they’d both been keeping longer hours and arriving to bed much more stressed than usual.
Fatim watched as Calla brushed her teeth. She stared dully into the mirror. Stressed or not, Calla had seemed sad the past few days. Uncharacteristically low. He stepped into the brightly lit bathroom, tugging his kaftan over his head before taking his spot at the sink beside her.
“Are you okay, Calla?” He reached for his toothbrush.
She barely looked his way as she paused in her brushing. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” He struggled to find his words. “You’ve seemed a little low the past few days. Is it gala planning stress?”
His heart hammered in his chest as he awaited her response. He may have unwittingly opened Pandora’s box. She was quiet for a few moments as she spit out her toothpaste and rinsed. Then she turned to him.
“I think I’m sad. I’ve been thinking about things the last few days. Running over what my life looks now and…” A sigh escaped her. “I have all the makings of the life and career that I’ve always wanted without even knowing exactly what I wanted. I mean, I have it all here.” Her eyes were wide, earnest. “And yet nothing feels right. My designs aren’t coming together as they should. I don’t know what’s wrong, what’s missing.”
Fatim let her words cycle inside of him as he brushed his own teeth and spit. His phone pinged from the bedroom just before he spoke. “Sometimes, it’s the ‘everything’ that’s the problem,” he said, squeezing her shoulder before heading into the bedroom. Over his shoulder, he added, “It’s an adjustment period. You might still be feeling the growing pains.”
He didn’t hear if Calla responded while he reached for his phone. A new email had arrived from the journalist that Calla met with yesterday. He had the draft of the article he planned to submit to the newspaper. As tradition called for, all published items about the sheikh had to pass through him first.
“The article is ready,” Fatim called out as he swiped to open it up. He sat on the edge of the bed and started reading. Calla came out a moment later, heading toward the closet to pick out her clothes.