"I think you're wrong," his grandmother said. "I think he cares about you very much. You must speak with him and get this settled."

"No," Heidi said, drawing away and straightening up. She brushed away her tears. "I'll never forgive him. He cheated on me all the while he was laughing at me."

Fatimapressed her lips together in a gesture of frustration. "He spent time with you, and he enjoyed what you offered. If he knew it was you being Honey, then he wasn't unfaithful. Where exactly did Jamal sin so badly?"

Heidi couldn't answer. Maybe it didn't make sense to anyone else, but to her it was perfectly clear. Her entire world had been destroyed, and her heart was broken. She'd taken the biggest and probably only risk of her life, and she'd failed. It all came down to one simple truth.

"He doesn't love me," she said simply.

Fatimastared at her. "And you love him."

"Yes. That's what makes all of this so horrible."

The older woman sighed. "You have to give it time," she said at last.

"Jamal will come around."

If only it were that simple, Heidi thought sadly. But she'd learned her lesson about wishing for the moon.

Heidi curled up on her bed and waited for her stomach to settle down.

She'd just thrown up again. That was twice in twenty-four hours. She wished with all her heart that it was something simple like stress or the stomach flu, but she had a bad feeling it was much worse. She was pregnant.

She counted back to her last period,then thought about all the times she and Jamal had made love. They'd been intimate daily for the past month. In fact there were several days they'd done it more than once. They'd never discussed birth control. The concept had never crossed her mind. Besides, she was married. Getting pregnant was part of her job.

Just yesterday morning Jamal had talked about wanting children. He'd urged her to think about the idea. Looked like it was too late for that.

Regardless of whether or not she was ready, she was going to have a baby.Which meant she wasn't going to be leaving El Bahar anytime soon. El Baharian law did not permit a wife to leave her husband while she was pregnant. The only exception was if that husband physically abused her.

Then she was free to go. Heidi figured it was highly unlikely to imagine Jamal taking a hand to her. So here she stayed...probably for the rest of her life.

She rolled onto her back and stared up at the ceiling. What was she going to do? In less than a day her entire world had changed and not for the better. After her talk withFatima, she'd retreated to this room and had refused to leave. Jamal had knocked several times, asking her to speak with him, but she wouldn't. He was too proud to carry on a conversation through a closed door, so he'd eventually left. But she knew she couldn't stay in here forever.

She was going to have to come to terms with the new circumstances in her life. She was going to have to get used to the fact that she'd put herself in a humiliating position and that the man she loved was laughing at her.

Then she was going to have to figure out a way to find peace in her marriage.For her own sake as well as the sake of her child.

She didn't have a choice. A regular woman could divorce her husband after the birth of her child and work out custody arrangements. But she was a princess, married to a son of the king. There would be no joint custody for her. If she left after the baby was born, she would leave alone. Heidi couldn't imagine abandoning her child, which meant she had to stay married to Jamal. Even if neither of them wanted the marriage.

A sharp pain ripped through her chest. She knew its cause and wondered if it would ever go away. Despite everything, she didn't want her marriage to end. She still loved Jamal.Which made her the biggest idiot on the planet.

Her heart was on the line-given to a man still in love with someone else.

There was a knock on the door. She raised herself up on one elbow. Rihana had been appearing at regular intervals, bringing Heidi trays of food. As much as she didn't want to eat, she forced herself to choke down the food for the sake of the baby.

"Who is it?" she asked.

"Malik."

Heidi sat up and stared at the door in surprise.Malik? She scrambled to her feet and let him in.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, unable to believe that the Crown Prince of El Bahar stood in her bedroom. He was only an inch or two taller than Jamal and Khalil, but he appeared bigger. Perhaps it was his responsibilities and his destiny that made him appear larger than life.

Again Heidi breathed a prayer of thanks that the king hadn't asked her to marry Malik. She had no desire to be queen.

"I wanted to talk to you," Malik said, shifting his weight from foot to foot, as if he felt awkward about the conversation. He shoved his hands into his slacks pockets and stared at her. "Whatever Jamal did, it's not his fault."

Heidi returned to her bed, where she sat cross-legged in her jeans. She motioned to the single chair by the window, but Malik shook his head in refusal.

"How like a man," she began, "to side with another man without getting the facts straight."

Malik looked at her. He was as darkly handsome as Jamal, and for a moment Heidi felt a stab of longing to see her husband. She pushed away the thought-it would only weaken her.

"Jamal's a good man," his brother said. "You knowthat as well as I do ."

He hesitated,then looked at her. "I have a question. It's going to sound very strange, but please answer it. I think it might be significant."

"All right."

"That first night you were here in El Bahar. You had dinner with Jamal and the family. Later he took you out into the garden. Did he kiss you?"

She didn't need any prompting to remember that night. She'd been terrified that she was going to be forced into a marriage she didn't want. She'd been desperate to avoid the situation...right up until Jamal had kissed her. That had been her first kiss, and she'd found herself loving the experience.

Everything had felt so right in his arms.

Despite her pain, she smiled at the memory. "Yes, he did."

Malik swore under his breath. "I knew it. But he never said a word."

"Why would he?"

"Because we had a bet."

Malik quickly explained how he'd bet his brother that Jamal couldn't coax a smile out of Heidi, let alone a kiss. "There was a lot on the line,"

Malik continued. "If he won, I'd give him my car for a week. But if I won and he didn't kiss you, then I had use of his prize stallion for six of my mares. The next morning he swore nothing had happened."

She frowned. "He denied kissing me?"

"Exactly."Malik looked pleased with himself, as if that explained everything.

"You're saying I should be happy that my husband was ashamed to admit he'd kissed me?" she asked.

"No. You don't understand. The fact that he wouldn't talk about it meant that the kiss mattered. Men don't talk about relationships when they're important to us. If a man is telling everyone about a woman he's being intimate with, then she's a meaningless fling. My point is you mattered to Jamal even then."

Heidi looked doubtfully at her brother-in-law. "That's very twisted logic."

"No. It makes perfect sense." He took another step toward her. "I don't know what happened between the two of you. Jamal won't tell me. But he feels horrible about whatever it is. I just wanted you to know that even at the beginning you mattered to him. You still matter, and you should give him a break."

He shrugged. "That's it. That's all I had to say." He turned on his heel and left.

Heidi stared at the closed door. Had her brother-in-law, the future king, just given her marital counseling? More importantly, was he right? Did she matter to Jamal?

She turned the idea over in her mind and wished there was a way to be sure.Because while she desperately wanted love, she would accept caring, if Jamal really felt the emotion. At this point she would be thrilled with caring because she was trapped in this marriage, and she hated the idea of living her life with a man who despised her.

Love might never be in the cards for her. Could she live with that?

She stretched out on the bed and closed her eyes. She carefully relived as much of her relationship with Jamal as she could remember. She would have to take Malik's word on the significance of her husband not mentioning the kissing. Her brother-in-law had no reason to lie to her. There was also the time Jamal had brought her the computer disk containing the information on the El Baharian general she'd been researching. And the way he'd changed her office to one with a view of the ocean. He'd been good to her, and kind, dozens of times. It wasn't love, but it was something positive. Was it enough?

Could she forget that she'd been humiliated and played for a fool?

WasFatimaright? Had Jamal done it for all the right reasons? Had she misunderstood? After all, her heart was still tender with her new love.

Perhaps she'd overreacted to the situation.

She continued to mull over the past and tried to figure out the best course of action. She would have sold her soul to be able to believe in Jamal, but she always came back to one unavoidable truth-he still loved Yasmin.

Jamal sat drinking alone. It wasn't something he did often, but at this point he would do anything to forget. Yet no matter how much he consumed he could not erase the look of pain on Heidi's face when he'd told her he'd known all along that she was Honey Martin. Nor could he block out her words or the sound of her sobs. All he'd wanted was to make things right between them. Instead everything was wrong.

He stared up at the stars visible in the clear night. Heat surrounded him but he barely felt it. The balcony was the only place he could be sure of solitude and right now he needed to be alone. Like a wild animal, he wanted to curl up and lick his wounds.

She wouldn't see him or speak with him. Since yesterday afternoon, there had been nothing but silence from her.Fatimapreached patience, but he wasn't sure he had any left. Unfortunately, he didn't have a better solution.

He'd never wanted to hurt her, he thought grimly. She was the brightest light in his world. He couldn't imagine being with anyone else. For a man who feared his wife would reject him physically, her open sensuality had been a healing balm to his wounds. Her eagerness in bed had allowed him to believe they were going to have a good life together.

He thought he might be falling in love with her. And then he'd hurt her, and he'd known with all his heart that he loved her, and it was too late to tell her the truth.

Hating himself for doing it, yet unable to stop, he replayed that last conversation in the hotel suite. He worked out a thousand different responses to her angry confession. Each of them started with the simple phrase "I love you."

Would that have made a difference? Would she have listened? Was it really too late for him to fix what could have been between them?

There were no answers, and he was tired of questions. Jamal set his glass on the table. He would try to sleep, although he doubted he would be able to. In the morning he would reconsider his options and come up with a plan to make her understand how much she meant to him and how he'd never intended to hurt her.

He walked into the living room of their suite and moved through the darkness to his bedroom. The bed would be empty and cold again tonight because she would not be with him. It had been so easy to get used to her warm body pressing against him. Yasmin had always clung to her side of the mattress, as if even in sleep she feared being touched. Heidi was completely different. She slept more on him than next to him. He often awoke to find their bodies entwined. He'd grown used to having her near, and it would take a long time to be comfortable sleeping alone again.

He stepped into his bedroom and reached for the light. When it clicked on, he reached for the buttons on his shirt.And froze. Heidi was in a chair in a corner of the room.

She sat with her knees pulled up to her chest. She wore jeans and a T-shirt. Her face and feet were bare and her hair was loose. She looked tired and pale. Her hazel eyes were huge behind her glasses.

He tried to think of something to say, but he couldn't, and longing tightened his throat until he knew he wouldn't be able to speak even if he tried.

"I have a prepared speech," she said, barely meeting his gaze. "It would be easier for me if you just let me talk and saved your comments to the end." She looked at the floor, then back at him. "I've been working on it most of the afternoon and evening, so I think I'm going to hit all the important points. But if I forget something just tell me."

What he really wanted to do was cross the room andpull her into his arms.

He wanted to tell her that he loved her, and he was sorry that he hurt her.

But he sensed that would be the wrong move, so he held his ground and instead said, "All right."

She nodded,then cleared her throat. "I'm sorry I acted like a child yesterday at the hotel. When you told me you'd known the whole time that I was Honey, I felt incredibly stupid. It was like being slapped in the face.

I was caught off guard and therefore really lost it."