me on the phone that you had changed your mind, that returning was not realistic and you preferred to focus on your career, how do you think that made me feel? It was like a bomb exploding in my face!’
‘It wasn’t just because I wanted to focus on my career. My mother died unexpectedly just a couple of days after she was taken into hospital… I told you, remember? My father needed me to stay at home after that…to give him some support. We were both grieving…I hardly knew what I was doing. Kabuyadir seemed like a dream…’
Observing the harshness of Zahir’s expression, Gina decided right then wasn’t the time to tell him that her father had pleaded with her to stay in the UK and focus on her career in memory of her mother…told her that she shouldn’t trust that life in Kabuyadir, living in a strange culture with a man she barely knew, could yield something better. Gina had buckled under the pressure of guilt and responsibility and agreed to stay, even when it had meant denying her desire to return to Zahir and the extraordinary passion they’d shared.
Now she was reeling at his confession that he’d fallen in love with her. There was a big part of her that could hardly believe such a handsome, charismatic man could truly have cared for her like that. To hear him say the words after all this time, compounding what a colossal mistake she’d made in not coming back to him, was like having her insides scraped raw with a sharpened blade.
‘Whatever happened, clearly you thought my regard for you wasn’t important enough to make you come back to Kabuyadir. Knowing that, I wonder that you have decided to return now three years later? If I had known that you were the antiquities expert I’d hired to research the jewel I would have taken steps to prevent your coming and hired someone else. My secretary Masoud would normally have acquainted me with such details, but he was suddenly taken ill and had to return to his family, otherwise I would have realised.’
‘So…how are we to proceed from here on? Do you want me to act as though I never met you before?’
He abruptly turned away for a moment, as if to gather his thoughts. The sudden motion made the midnight-blue jalabiya he wore swirl round his leather-booted calves. ‘What I want…what I wish…is that you had vanished off the face of the earth, if you want to know the truth! Then I wouldn’t have to deal with the fact that you live and the possibility that you have chosen some other man to spend your life with rather than me.’
Gina gasped at the bitterness and passion she heard in his voice. ‘There is no other man, Zahir…there never was. That’s the truth.’
When he turned his gaze on her again his eyes regarded her with such disdain that she curled up inside. Somehow, no matter how hard she tried, she seemed to have great difficulty in inspiring love in the people closest to her.
‘It is of no account to me any more. It is all too late now.’
Distressed and dry-mouthed at the bleakness in his tone, she darted out her tongue to moisten her lips. She wrapped her arms tightly round herself to subdue the pain that vibrated inside. ‘Why didn’t you tell me who you were?’ she asked quietly. ‘Have you any idea how hard it is for me to see you again and discover that you’re practically a—a king?
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