there was nothing to be gained by crying over something she couldn’t change. Despite the hurt that existed inside her like a living, breathing creature, she forced herself into her workroom and picked up the scissors she’d dropped the day before.
She had to do something until she figured out how to handle the situation with Tariq, the man whom she’d married in a blind haze of love. Perhaps she’d made the biggest mistake of her life, but she didn’t want to think about that now. Neither did she want to think about the way her old fears and insecurities had tormented her last night.
An hour into her work, she heard a telephone ring, but ignored it. There was a knock on her door a minute later.
“Madam?”
She looked up to find one of the palace staff at the door. “Yes, Shazana?”
“Sheik Zamanat wishes to speak with you.”
Jasmine’s throat locked. About to ask Shazana to tell Tariq that she was busy, she recognized the possible consequences of asking a loyal staff member to lie, and nodded.
“Please transfer the call to this phone.” She indicated the one near the door of the turret.
Shazana nodded and left. The phone rang seconds later. Jasmine stood up and walked over. She picked up the receiver…then hung up. Heart thudding, she hurried down the hallway, into her bedroom and out into the garden. The phone rang again just as she escaped. She hid under her tree.
It was cowardly to hide from Tariq but she couldn’t bear to talk to him, couldn’t bear to hear the voice that she’d dreamed about for years rip her to pieces with the painful truth about her inadequacy. Last night, she’d believed that all her illusions had been destroyed, but today she realized she couldn’t face the total loss of hope. Not yet. Not yet.
Perhaps an hour later, she emerged and made her way back to her workroom. There was a message on the table by the phone. She picked it up with shaking hands. It instructed her to call Tariq at a given number.
“Go to hell!” She crunched the note into a ball and threw it into the wastebasket, then began to work on the top she was making. Her movements were jerky and uncoordinated, as for the first time, anger began to simmer under the hurt and sorrow. So Sheik Zamanat expected her to come to heel when he hollered? She almost stabbed the material with her scissors. He was about to learn that his wife was not some toy he could throw aside and pick up whenever he felt like it.
Tariq hung up the phone for the fourth time. He was annoyed by his wife’s subtle rebellion, but another, more dangerous emotion threatened. That emotion would not let him forget the naked pain in Mina’s eyes when he’d last spoken to her.
After so long, the anger and hurt he’d ruthlessly controlled for years had shattered its bonds and lashed out. When Mina had voiced her love, he’d felt as if she’d torn open wounds that had barely begun to heal. The almost unbearable pain had sprung from a need that he didn’t want to accept. It had caused him to say things he shouldn’t have.
Guilt was not something he was familiar with, but pangs of it had been stabbing him since the moment Mina hadn’t appeared on the balcony to bid him goodbye. His sense of loss had shaken him. He felt as if he’d damaged something fragile between them. Only angry pride had kept him from returning to her.
But Mina didn’t hold grudges. Once he spoke to her, she would return to normal. And the next time he picked up that phone, he would talk to her.
Jasmine felt as if she was getting ready for a knock-down, drag-out fight. She’d ignored Tariq for two days. At first, it had been blind instinct, an attempt to save herself from rejection. She’d had enough of that in her lifetime. Later, when she’d calmed down, she’d realized that she needed some time and distance to sort out her feelings. Tariq had given her a rude shock, waking her up forever to the fact that the man she loved was not the man she’d married.
Did she love this Tariq?
Her mind wasn’t completely made up, but her anger refused to be ignored any longer. This time, Tariq would get an answer to his call. A call that came as soon as dawn was breaking over Zulheil. She picked up the phone on the second ring.
“Prized possession speaking.” It slipped out without thought. She was horrified, but just a little proud of herself.
There was complete and utter silence on the other end of the phone. “I am not amused, Jasmine,” he said finally.
“Well, since I’m not a comedienne, my ego isn’t too badly wounded.” Sitting in bed, her legs hanging off the edge, she felt the simmering anger start to bubble. “Did you have anything to say or did you just ring to remind me of my place?” Where had that come from?
“You are being obstinate.”
“Yup.”
“What did you expect when you returned?” A thread of anger crept into his so far calm tone. “That nothing would have changed? That I would lay my trust in your lap?”
“No. I expected you to have forgotten me.” It was a cruel truth. “But you didn’t. You took me and you married me, giving me a place in your life. How dare you now treat me like…like an object? Like something to scrape off the bottom of your royal shoe? How dare you?” Tears threatened, riding the crest of her anger.
“Never have I treated you as such!” His response was a harsh reproof.
“Yes, you have. And you know what? I don’t want to talk to a man who treats me like that. I could almost hate you. Don’t call me anymore. Maybe by the time you get home I’ll have calmed down. Right now, I have nothing for you. Nothing!” It was the raw pain of her emotions speaking.
“We will talk when I return.” His voice held a note she’d never before heard, a note she couldn’t understand.
Jasmine hung up the phone with shaking hands, surprised by her own outburst. She’d planned belligerence, but had ended up ripping apart the shields protecting her heart. She hurt. And yet it felt cleansing. She was worth more than this treatment. She might not be loved but she was worthy of respect.
Something her husband might never give her.
I could almost hate you.
Tariq stared out at the cobbled streets of Paris, Jasmine’s words ringing in his head. He was used to being adored by her, being the center of her attention, as he’d been since their first meeting. He’d never considered being with a Jasmine who didn’t treat him that way.
He didn’t like the sensation. Not when his need for her ran so deep that he missed her every moment she wasn’t by his side. He’d only survived the four years without her by working night and day, striving for mindless exhaustion. Her laughter and affection since her return had been a balm to the hunger inside him. Now she was furious with him.
He’d underestimated the woman she’d become. A woman who apparently felt things more deeply and wildly than he’d given her credit for. She’d always had quiet feminine courage, but this was the first time she’d dared to rebuke him for his actions with such blunt honesty. He finally listened to the inner voices he’d been ignoring, accepting that she’d changed dramatically from the Jasmine he’d known.
That Jasmine would never have hated him.
That
