The Sheikh's Secret Princess Read Free Page A

her for accepting his ordering off-menu, and let her go around the table collecting everyone else’s orders.
     
    Anita tried to shake off the strangeness of the conversation as she went about her duties. Luckily, the restaurant would likely only get emptier, and she was a little less run off her feet than she had been earlier in the night. But still, she found that her attention was constantly drawn to the party on the patio in the alley, wondering how they were doing, and hoping they were having a good time.
     
    She was peering out the windows, trying to get a look at their faces from across the restaurant, when another of the waitresses interrupted her thoughts.
     
    “Your father wants to see you.”
     
    Anita was startled. “What? why?”
     
    The waitress, a small curvy blonde called Lauren, shrugged. She looked like she’d had a busy night, too, and didn’t have the mental energy for this conversation. “I don’t know, but he does. You should ask him.”
     
    Anita thanked Lauren, and shrugged off her slightly terse manner—it had been a strange night for everyone.
     
    When she went back to the kitchen, Anita was struck by how much it looked like a war zone. Fadi insisted they run a clean kitchen, but even so, in the course of service on a busy night, there was always this or that that went wrong and wasn’t able to be taken care of right away. A workstation splattered with a red sauce here, a collection of eggshells swept back behind a table there, until they could be properly cleaned up at night’s end.
     
    It was always that way, and the kitchen staff were always a little bit on edge after a busy night like this. But when she saw Fadi, Anita knew that something was different.
     
    He was chopping up a piece of meat, coming down just a little bit too hard with every cleave. He was not usually this angry. He was never this angry.
     
    “Who has ordered off-menu?” he barked. “Who ordered the chakchouka?”
     
    Anita paused. Something made her hesitant to respond. She got the sense that Fadi already knew the answer, and for some reason, it made him angry as sin.
     
    She couldn’t remember having seen him angry often. She’d seen him play angry, as in their little game earlier. But he had this quiet, barely contained intensity to him now, with fire in his eyes.
     
    She swallowed hard. “The prince did. Sheikh Hakim al Kamal bin Masfari, of Az Kajir.”
     
    The words dripped off her tongue so easily. She hadn’t realized his full name and title had stuck so well in her mind.
     
    Fadi’s knife came down hard on the meat. “And you just decided to serve these men? You know of the bad blood between their kingdom and ours.”
     
    Anita frowned. “Well… yes. But that all happened a long time ago—”
     
    “No!”
     
    Her father’s shout reverberated through the kitchen in much the same was as his laugh often did. It made her jump. Her eyes quickly scanned the room, and she saw that the other cooks were likewise startled.
     
    Fadi saw their reactions too. He continued, but with his voice markedly lower. “Nothing of the old world is very long ago or far away. It may seem that way to you, but it’s a trick. You can never think it is.”
     
    Anita was shaken. It had already been a strange night, but Fadi’s reaction was infinitely stranger. She couldn’t think of a response, and he didn’t wait for her.
     
    “You will not serve them,” he said, turning his attention back to the meat in front of him.
     
    Anita let out a little sound of protest, and Fadi’s eyes shot back to her. They were still so angry.
     
    “I have to,” she lied. “No one else can cover it. They’re all too loaded down with their own tables.”
     
    He saw straight through her. He always could. But everyone was still watching, and the defiant set of her face must have changed his mind, because he didn’t insist further.
     
    “And you’ll make the chakchouka?” Anita felt she was pushing her luck now,