The Sheikh's Secret Princess Read Online Free Page B

talking to the Sheikh tonight. Is this true?”
     
    She nodded. She wanted to add something in her defense, about how they had just been making the usual waitress-customer small talk, but it wouldn’t have been true, and she had a feeling that excuses would only have made things worse.
     
    “And am I to assume,” he continued, with the same glowing coal of anger in his eyes, “that your good mood is due to something he has said?”
     
    Anita nodded again, but this time Fadi looked like he was waiting for further explanation. She gave it to him, her voice sounding quiet and weak in the light of her father’s anger.
     
    “He lost his ring. I returned it to him. He said he wanted to take me out to dinner to thank me.”
     
    Fadi looked like he was about to boil over again, but he held it in. There was something else in his expression that Anita couldn’t quite make out.
     
    And then she placed it. It was fear.
     
    “You’re not going,” he said, then he turned away, as though that was the end of the discussion.
     
    Anita was worn out from a day that had been an endless roller coaster of emotions. She was in no mood to have one of the greatest feelings she had felt in her young life yanked away from her with no explanation.
     
    “I am going,” she replied. Her voice shook when she said it.
     
    Fadi’s voice shook when he answered, but with anger rather than trepidation. “You have no idea what I’ve given up for you.”
     
    Anita felt her own anger rising to meet his. “And how would I? You never tell me anything!”
     
    He turned back to face her, the hot coal in his eyes again.
     
    Anita continued, her own emotions rising. “Hakim taught me more about my family in two sentences than you have in eighteen years! I have a right to know!”
     
    He started stepping towards her, now, and the fear she’d felt earlier was coming back. He was like a powerful beast, she thought. She’d never given much thought to how strong he was, but he was more musclebound than a cook had any right to be.
     
    “Right?” he bellowed. “What right? You don’t have a right to anything, girl. You only think you do because I raised you like a little princess!”
     
    Anita felt her rage turn into righteous anger. He’d done nothing of the sort. She’d worked alongside him for everything they’d ever got. Yes, he’d struggled to make a life for them, but she’d always struggled with him. Nothing had ever been handed to her. And he had the nerve to insult her that way now, just because she had talked to a man that he didn’t approve of?
     
    “Well, I’m not a little princess anymore. I’m not a little anything anymore. And I deserve to know.”
     
    She could see the conflict in him. It was like he wanted to say two things at once, but he couldn’t say either. Instead, his rage boiled over. He grabbed a glass candleholder of the nearest table, and hurled it across the restaurant.
     
    The sudden movement seemed to break the spell. All Anita could think was that that was quite a lot of rage for her never to have seen in the last eighteen years.
     
    Fadi turned back to face her. The emotions had drained from his face, his anger broken with the glass candle holder.
     
    “It’s dangerous for you to talk to those men. You won’t do it. You can’t. That’s all you need to know.”
     
    And then he walked away, leaving Anita alone in the empty restaurant.

 
     
    FIVE

Anita began trying to get the restaurant back into order, but realized very quickly that she had no chance of doing it by herself. The day was hitting her, hard, and the second wind she’d gotten at Hakim’s invitation was completely gone now she knew she couldn’t accept it.
     
    She wanted to rage at Fadi. She wanted to rebel, and tell him he had no power over her, and he couldn’t tell her what to do. But tonight had been so different. It had been like she didn’t even know him. The strangers had brought out a side to him that she’d