“Your Highness?”
Karim bit back a groan. His flight crew was small and efficient. Two pilots, one flight attendant—but this attendant was new and still visibly thrilled to be on the royal staff.
She knew only what everyone else knew: that the duty of settling his brother’s affairs had fallen to him. He assumed she misread his tight-lipped silence for grief when the truth was that his pain warred with rage.
It was difficult to know which emotion had the upper hand.
“Sir?”
As if all that weren’t enough, she couldn’t seem to absorb the fact that he hated being hovered over.
“Yes, Miss Sterling?”
“It’s Moira, sir, and we’ll be landing within the hour.”
“Thank you,” he said politely.
“Is there anything I can do for you before then?”
Could she turn back the calendar and return his brother to life so he could shake some sense into him?
Better still, could she bring back the carefree, laughing Rami from their childhood?
“Thank you, I’m fine.”
“Yes, Your Highness—but if you should change your mind—”
“I’ll ring.”
The girl did a little knee-bob that was not quite the curtsy he was sure his chief of staff had warned her against.
“Most certainly, Your Highness.”
Another dip of the knee and then, mercifully, she walked back up the aisle and disappeared into the galley.
He’d have to remember to have his chief of staff remind her that the world was long past the time when people bowed to royalty.
Hell.
Karim laid his head back against the head-rest.
The girl was only doing what she saw as her duty. He, better than anyone, understood that.
He had been raised to honor his obligations. His father and mother had instilled that in him from childhood on.
His father had been and still was a stern man, a king first and a father second.
His mother had been a sometime movie-star-cum-Boston-debutante with great beauty, impeccable manners and, ultimately, a burning need to spend her life as far from her husband and sons as possible.