thick, but it was significant.
Kasim’s cheeks were hollow, his mouth flat.
Maurice was with them, so Angelique kept her own counsel. Her guard went through Kasim’s new flat ahead of them, even though Kasim’s team had been here all day, ensuring it was not only clean and secure, but furnished and well stocked.
The layout was similar to her family’s suite with a lounge opening onto a balcony overlooking the Thames. She imagined the door next to the wet bar led to the kitchen, as it did in their own. Down the hall would be the bedrooms and baths.
This one smelled faintly of paint and was filled with contemporary furniture and a handful of decent art pieces. His decorator was competent, if unimaginative, having fallen back on the latest issue of Colors of the Year for lack of inspiration.
The moment Maurice left them alone, Kasim drew her into his arms again and kissed her quite passionately. Almost aggressively, questing for a response. It was as if he was trying to propel them into the mindless state they’d experienced last night in Paris.
It was breathlessly exciting, yet made her feel… She wasn’t sure and, as her blood began to heat, started not to care.
“Do I not even get a chance to explore the place myself?” she gasped when his mouth traveled to the side of her neck. Arousal suffused her, but she had the sense she was being used as much as desired. It scraped her insides raw.
“If you like,” he said, straightening and not looking pleased.
“Have you even seen it?” she asked, trying to recover and stung by the distance she sensed between them.
“I’m more interested in this.” His lashes cut downward as he slid his gaze to her toes and came back to her lips.
His ravenous gaze made her skin tighten, but her heart squeezed at the same time. She knew he was sublimating something.
“Kasim.” She cupped his jaw. “What has upset you?”
“I’m not upset.” He pulled away from her touch and moved to the bar. “Children get upset. Do you want wine?”
He was speaking shortly. Irritably. Like he was upset, she thought drily.
“Something about the bracelet bothered you. Did you recognize it?” She was intuitive that way. She just was. “You can tell me what it was, or I can make up stories of my own to explain your reaction.”
“I’ve never seen it,” he said flatly, setting out two wineglasses. “But the workmanship reminded me of Jamal’s. He designed jewelry.”
He wound the screw into the cork with a little squeaking noise and pulled it out with a pop, movements jerky, facial muscles still tense.
“My father hated it. He took it as a reflection against his own masculinity. An insult. He was ashamed to have a son who was…artistic,” he pronounced with disdain. “My mother used that to her advantage.”
“What do you mean?”
He poured, steadying the bottoms of each glass with two fingers as he did.
“Jamal is—was Fatina’s son. My father’s second wife. My mother…”
He set aside the bottle. For a moment he was a man on the verge of exploding, wrapped tightly, but packed to the eyebrows with dynamite, fuse burning in his eyes.
“Children should not be used as weapons, but my mother loved to find fault with him. To his face, to my father, in public. However she could humiliate him and Fatina, she did it. In sly ways, though. Small little stabs. Death by a thousand cuts,” he said grimly.
“That’s horrible.”
“It was. And my father was determined to turn him into something he could be proud of. That was his way of countering my mother’s attacks, by telling Jamal he was to blame for her criticisms. If he only changed, we would all have peace. I’m furious every time I’m reminded of how it was for him.”
“You couldn’t make your father see reason?”
He snorted. “This?” He lifted his glass and touched it to the rim of hers. “I don’t care one way or another for alcohol, but it is completely outlawed in Zhamair. It’s not a religious restriction. We have as many citizens who are Christian or Jewish as we do Muslims in our country, but my father’s word is rule. My father is a dictator in the way that political scientists define one.”
“But you do what you want when you’re away,” she noted with a glance at his Western clothes. “Couldn’t your brother have done that? I’m sorry, I know it’s very easy to say that he should leave his country and turn his back on his father. It’s not something anyone would do without deep struggle, but…”
“No,” Kasim agreed in a hard, grim voice. “It’s not. Especially since it meant leaving his mother and the rest of his siblings. Fatina has four younger children, as well. And he felt my father’s rejection very deeply. He wanted desperately to earn his respect. It was an impossible situation for him.”
“That’s so awful.” Her heart ached for not just his brother, but for Kasim. No wonder he wanted to take the reins from a man who possessed no hint of compassion or empathy. No wonder he had fought so hard for Hasna to have a love marriage.
“How did he die?” she asked softly, then clutched where the pang in her chest had intensified. She could see the anguish still fresh in Kasim’s face. “It wasn’t suicide, was it?”
Kasim didn’t speak, only stared into his wine for a long moment. His fingernails were so white where he clutched the stem of his glass, she though he would snap the crystal. His gaze came up and she thought he looked about to say something.
In the next second, he shut down, mouth flattening into a sealed line before he finally said in a neutral, almost practiced, voice, “It was a car crash. We were in Morocco on business. He was out on his own along a stretch of road near the ocean. He wasn’t reckless by nature, but he was under a lot of pressure from my father to give up the jewelry design, work with me full-time and marry suitably.”
His expression was filled with perturbed memories.
“The car went through the guardrail into the rocks below. Calling my father with the news was hard, but facing Fatina and Hasna, and my younger brothers and sisters…”
The torment in his expression was too much to bear. So much guilt, but how could he have prevented it? It was just a terrible accident. He shouldn’t blame himself.
She set aside her glass and came around the bar to slide her arms around his waist. “I’m sorry.”
“Why? You had nothing to do with it.” He continued to hold his glass, his other arm hanging at his side, stiff and unresponsive to her embrace. He looked down his nose at her.
“I shouldn’t have forced you to revisit his loss.”
She felt the flinch go through him. He sipped, stony as a column of marble that didn’t give under the lean of her weight, only supported her with cold, indifferent strength. “The bracelet did that.”
“And you wanted
