looking at her right now hurt. For the first time she was showing him the impulsive, passionate side he’d believed slumbered deep inside her, and it was for Alim.
Of course it was for Alim; why should he expect anything else? In all these years, she’d only shown emotion once: when she’d asked—no, demanded—that he end her public shame, and give her a child. When he’d said no, she’d sworn at him for the first time.
But she’d just sworn at him again.
‘You still care for him so much?’ he asked, his voice low and throbbing with the white-hot betrayal he barely managed to hide.
She sighed. ‘I’m not nineteen any more. I’m your wife. Please, just give me a chance. It’s all I’m asking.’
A chance for what? he wanted to ask, but remained silent.
Something to the left of him caught his attention. Her bags were being stowed in the hold. With a sense of fatalism, he swept a hand before him. ‘By all means, come and see him. I’m sure he’ll appreciate your care.’
No part of her touched him as she pushed past him and into the jet. Her chin was high, her eyes as cold as they’d always been for him … except on that fateful night last year—and a moment ago, because she wanted to see Alim.
Damn her. Damn them both.
Yet something like regret trailed in the wake of the warm Gulf wind behind her. Harun breathed it in, refusing to yet again indulge in the wish that things could be different for them. It was far too late.
She was sitting upright and straight in the plush, wide seat, her belt already buckled. He sat beside her, and saw her hands gripping the armrests. He’d seen this on the times they’d had to go to another country for a state visit. She really hated flying.
His hand moved to hers, then stopped. It wasn’t his comfort she wanted.
During the final safety check of the jet the silence stretched out. The awkwardness between them was never more evident than when they sat side by side and could find nothing to talk about: he because all he could think of was touching her and hating himself for it, and she presumably because all she wanted was to get away from him, as fast and as far as possible.
How she must hate this life, trapped in this submissive woman’s role, tied to a man she despised.
‘You are not Brother Number Three.’
Startled, he turned to face her, prompted by a tone of voice he’d never known from his cold, proud wife. The fierce words seemed to burst from her; the passion he’d always felt slumbering in her came to blazing life in a few restrained words. ‘I’m sorry I ever said it, and sorrier still that you heard stupid words said in my own shock and grief, and took them so literally. I humiliated you before my father, and I’m sorry, Harun.’
Surprise and regret, remembered humiliation, yearning and a dozen other emotions flew around in him, their edges hitting him like the wings of a wild bird caged. He could only think of one thing to say, and he couldn’t possibly say it to his stranger wife. What am I to you now? As ever, he resorted to his fall-back, the cool diplomacy that told her nothing about what he was thinking or feeling. ‘It’s all right.’
‘No, it isn’t. It’s not all right between us. It never has been, and I never knew why. But we’ve been married for three years. In all this time, why didn’t you try, even once, to talk to me?’ Touching his cheek, she turned him to face her before he could school his stunned surprise that her hands were on his skin. ‘I always wanted to know why you hated me. You were outside the door that day.’
Taken aback, he could only answer with truth. ‘I don’t hate you.’
An encyclopaedia could be written on the doubt in her eyes. ‘Really? You don’t?’
Reluctant understanding touched a heart shrouded in ice too long. ‘No,’ was all he said.
She sighed. ‘But you don’t trust me. You won’t treat me even as a friend, let alone your wife.’ She shook her head. ‘I thought you were a servant when I heard your footsteps behind the door. I would never have done that to you—don’t you know that?’
Her face was vivid with the force of her anger and her regret. She thought she wanted to know about his emotions—but she didn’t have a clue. If he let out one iota of his feelings, it might break a dam of everything he’d repressed since he was eight years old.
I need you to be strong for me again, little akh, Fadi had said at his mother’s funeral, only three months after their father died, and Alim had stormed off within minutes of the service beginning. We have to stand together, and show the world what we ‘re made of.
I need you to stay home and help me, little akh, he’d said when Alim was seventeen, and his first race on the circuit gave him the nickname the Racing Sheikh. What Alim’s doing could change the nation for us, economically and socially. You can study by correspondence, right? It won’t make a difference to you.
I need you to come home, little akh. I feel like I’m drowning under the weight of all this, Fadi had said when Harun was nineteen, and had to go on a dig to pass his archaeology course. I’ll fix it with the university, don’t worry. You’ll pass, which is all you want, right?
‘I suppose I should have known,’ he answered Amber now. From the vague memories he had of his mother, he knew that it was dangerous not to answer an angry woman, but it was worse to answer with a truth she didn’t want to hear.
‘And—and you heard what my father said about—’ her cheeks blazed, but her chin lifted again, and she said it ‘—about the—the feelings I had for Alim back then.’
As a passion-killer, hearing his wife say she had feelings for the brother who’d abandoned him to this halflife had to rank up there as number one. ‘Yes,’ he said, quiet. Dead inside.
‘Harun, don’t.’ She gripped his chin in her hand, her eyes fairly blazing with emotion. ‘Do you hate me for it?’
He closed his eyes against the passion always beneath the surface with her, but never for him. ‘No.’ So many times, he’d wished he could hate her, or just take her for the higher duty of making an heir, but he could do neither. Yes, he still desired her; he could live with that. But he’d shut off his heart years ago. There was no way he’d open it up, only to have her walk all over it again with her careless rejections and stinging rebukes.
‘Stop it, Harun,’ she burst out, startling him into opening his eyes again. ‘Hate me if you want, but stop showing me this uncaring wall of ice! I don’t know how to talk to you or what to do when you’re so cold with me, always pushing me away!’
Cold? He felt as if he were bleeding agony whenever he looked at her, and she thought his feelings for her were cold? Harun stared at her, the wife he barely knew, and wondered if she was blind, or if it was because he really had covered his need too well. But wasn’t that what he’d always done? How could he stop doing what had always been expected of him?
So he frowned again. ‘I don’t know what you want me to say.’
‘Talk to me for once. Tell me how it hurt you.’ Though she spoke softly, almost beneath her breath, it felt like a dam bursting, the release of a long-held pressure valve.
