wondered if a normal man might feel shame over that. Over the fact that he could scarcely recall the woman who’d given birth to his child. Yes, a normal man would probably be ashamed. But Alik had spent too many years discovering that doing the right thing often meant going hungry, while doing the wrong thing could net you a hotel room and enough food for a week. He’d learned long ago that he would have to define right and wrong in his own way. The best way he’d been able to navigate life had been to chase all of the good feelings he could find.
Food and shelter made him comfortable, so whatever he’d had to do to get it, he had. Later on he’d discovered that sex made him feel good. So he had a lot of it. He was never cruel to his partners, never promised more than he was willing to deliver. And until recently, he’d imagined he’d left his lovers with nothing more than a smile on their face and a post-orgasmic buzz.
That turned out not to be strictly true. It made him feel unsettled. Made him question things it was far too late to question.
His palace was on the coast of Attar, facing the sea. The sun washed the sea a pale green, the rocks and sand red. And his home stood on the hill, a stunning contrast to the landscape. White walls and a golden, domed roof that shone bright in the midday heat.
Here, by the sea, the air was more breathable. Not as likely to burn you from the inside out.
“This is my home,” he said. “Your home now, if you wish.”
He wanted to take the invitation back as soon as he’d issued it. There was a reason he’d not mentioned the Attari palace in his initial list of homes Leena might live in. The heat was one reason, but there was another. This was his sanctuary. The one place he didn’t bring women. The one place he brought no one.
Not now. Now he was bringing his daughter and the woman who was to become his wife. For the first time in his memory, he seriously questioned the decisions that he’d made.
CHAPTER FOUR
JADA COULD SCARCELY take in all of her surroundings. She clutched a sweaty, sleeping Leena to her chest and tried to ignore the heat of her daughter’s body against hers, far too much in the arid Attari weather, and continued through the palace courtyard and into the opulent, cool, foyer.
“This is…like nothing I’ve ever seen.”
“I felt the same way when I first came here. To Attar. It is like another world. Although, it’s funny, I find some of the architecture so similar to what you find in Russia, but with dunes in the background instead of snow.”
“Do you keep a home there?” she asked. She realized suddenly that it was not in the list of places he’d named earlier.
“I do,” he said. “But I don’t go there.”
“Why?” The question applied to both parts of the statement. Why would he keep a home he never went to? And why would he not go there?
“I have no need to revisit my past.”
“And yet you keep a house there?”
“Holding on to a piece of it, I suppose. But then, we all do that, do we not?”
“I suppose,” she said. She flexed her fingers, became suddenly very conscious of the ring that was now on her right finger. She’d removed her wedding ring about a year after Sunil’s death. And then a few months later she’d put it back on, but on her other hand. A way to remember, while acknowledging that the marriage bond was gone.
A way to hold on to a past that she could never reclaim. She knew all about holding on to what you couldn’t go back to.
“I asked that my staff have rooms prepared for you and Leena. Rooms that are next to each other. I will call my housekeeper and see that she leads you to them.”
“Not you?”
“I don’t know where she installed you,” he said, his total lack of interest almost fascinating to her. She wondered what it would be like to live like him. No ties, no cares. Even when it came to Leena, he seemed to simply think and act. None of it came from his heart and because of that there was no hesitation. No pain.
But there was also no conviction. Not true conviction. Not like she felt when she’d made the decision to come here, knowing that, no matter the cost she couldn’t turn her back on her child.
As attractive as his brand of numbness seemed in some ways, she knew she would never really want it. There was no strength in it. Not true strength. It was better to hurt for lost love, and far better to have had it in the first place. Even in the lowest point of her grief she wouldn’t have traded away her years with her husband. Even facing the potential loss of Leena, she would never regret the bond.
“Well, then how am I supposed to find you in this massive palace if you don’t know where I am and I don’t know where you are?” Everything about Attar was massive. The desert stretched on forever, ending at a sea that continued until it met sky. The palace was no less impressive. Expansive rooms and ceilings that curved high overhead. It made her long for the small coziness of her home. For the buildings back in Portland that hemmed them in a bit, the mountains that surrounded those.
Here, everything just seemed laid bare and exposed. She didn’t like the feeling.
“I hardly thought you would want to find me,” he said.
She had thought so, as well, but the idea of not being able to find the only person she knew in this vast, cold stone building didn’t sit well with her at all.
“Better than getting lost forever in this fortress you call a home.”
He looked up, his focus on the domed ceiling. Sunbursts of gold, inlaid with jasper, jade and onyx. “A fortress? I would hardly call it that. I have spent time in fortresses. Prisons. Dungeons.”
“I don’t need to know what you do in your off time,” she snapped, not sure what had prompted her to make the remark.
A slow smile curved his lips. “But what I do in my off time is so very fascinating. I’m sure you could benefit from a little off time yourself.”
Her body reacted to the words with heat, with increased heart rate and sweaty palms. Her body was a filthy traitor. Her mind, on the other hand, came to her rescue. Sensible and suitably outraged.
“I already told you, I’m not going there with you. I’ve agreed to marry you, but I’m not sharing your bed. This marriage won’t be real.” It couldn’t be real. She’d had a real marriage. A marriage filled with laughing and shouting and making love, and this, this union with a stranger, no matter that it was legal, would never be that.
There had been security in her marriage. Even at the low points, there had been an element of safety. Alik possessed nothing even slightly resembling safety. He was a law unto himself, much like the desert she found herself stranded in.
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