Page 27

“Where the hell is she?” Rafi hissed, glaring at the head of his security team. “She didn’t call me when she finished her coffee date with her friend. We were supposed to meet up after I got through the airport!”

“I’m sorry, Your Highness,” the man bowed, shaking his head. “We haven’t found her yet. I’ve stationed two men to watch her apartment. She hasn’t entered or left her apartment since I stationed someone there.”

“Did you go into her apartment?” Rafi demanded, wondering if Carys was hurt and couldn’t call for help. Was she lying helplessly on the floor of her apartment? Wounded and scared?

“No, Your Highness. But if you are authorizing us to enter, we’ll do so immediately.”

Rafi ran a hand through his hair, frustration driving him crazy. He was worried now. The sun was just coming up. There were glimmers of light shimmering on the horizon and the day promised to be beautiful.

But not without Carys. Every minute of not knowing if Carys was okay felt like a year. His Carys was hurt. He could feel it in his bones. She wasn’t answering her cell phone, hadn’t responded to his text messages, and she wasn’t in her apartment.

“Start interviewing her friends,” Rafi demanded.

“Find out if anyone has seen her. Check into the office security system and find out if she worked today. I know it’s Saturday,” he paused and sighed.

“I guess it’s Sunday actually.” He clenched his teeth for a moment, then ran his hand through his hair again.

He spun around, glaring at his lead bodyguard.

“She might be carrying my child. And if that’s the case, then she could be in danger. ”

He couldn’t consider the possibility that Carys had already been taken by someone hoping to harm him or his family. The thought of Carys, tied up and scared, maybe being tortured, was more than he could handle.

Rafi thought about all the times he’d made love to Carys over the past few months, and the number of times he hadn’t remembered to use protection.

Had he done that on purpose? Had he subconsciously understood that Carys would run from him?

Had he unconsciously manipulated the situation so that she had to stay in his life forever?

No, he didn’t think so. The passion between them had been too hot, too fast and furious.

Still, that was no excuse for not protecting his woman.

He should have been smarter, slower, and more careful.

But there was just something about Carys that drove him wild.

She was…his life! She was everything to him. And he wasn’t ashamed to say it.

Hell, he should have mentioned that to his bodyguards before now.

He should have ordered them to organize protection for Carys sooner.

He’d known early on in their relationship that she was significant to him.

Rafi had known that Carys was it for him.

He remembered his mother and father talking about how they’d found each other again after almost a year.

Was history repeating itself? Rafi smiled at the thought of Carys carrying his child, but the smile vanished at the possibility of Carys being pregnant and kidnapped. The kidnappers would hurt her. They might even harm her unborn child, especially if Carys didn’t even realize she was pregnant.

“Damn it!” he muttered, pressing his palms to his temples, trying to alleviate the pain in his head and chest. But the pain didn’t go away. Rafi knew the pain couldn’t go away until he had Carys back, safe and sound.

Rafi wondered what it would be like to have a child.

To be a father. He loved his twin brother and all of his younger cousins.

Granted, Rafi wasn’t as close to Rylan, Ramzi, Nahla, or Saif as he was to his brother, Angela, and Zayn.

There had been a large gap between the older four and the younger four grandkids.

Still, he’d been old enough to appreciate how cute his baby cousins had been.

Rafi considered calling his brother. He and Laith always shared every part of their lives, but something held him back.

Instead, he stared out the window, watching as the city of Philadelphia slowly woke up. What would it be like to wake up slowly with Carys in his arms? To see her stretch and smile at him, to feel her stomach round and ripe with their child?

The thought sent a jolt of lust through his body.

He wanted that reality. He wanted that future with Carys.

Now that she’d explained her past, about the way her father had abandoned her when she was only twelve years old, at the height of her impressionable years, Rafi finally understood.

He got why she’d been pulling away from him over the past few weeks.

He understood that, any sort of true attention to Carys would result in her pulling back, not being able to trust the joy in her life.

Because her bastard of a father had stomped on her trust, destroyed the safety of her childhood. Those kinds of wounds were difficult to heal.