Not that it made her feel any more wretched than she already did—nothing could.
‘I’m sorry. That was a terrible thing to say to you and I’m very sorry about your father.’
Karim nodded his head and said, ‘Apology accepted.’ She wasn’t sure if he meant it or if he was just going through the motions, but she felt even more of an outsider than ever.
‘I’d like to go back to Azharim with you if the offer is still open.’
Her grandfather looked at her, concern in his eyes, and said, ‘Of course it is.’
‘Right,’ she said, pushing her chair away from the table. ‘I’ll just go and pack.’ She couldn’t wait to escape the room and Karim’s disapproval.
‘Someone can pack for you,’ her grandfather protested, throwing a look towards Karim.
Eva shook her head. ‘I like to feel as if I actually have a purpose in life,’ she said, thinking, Could I sound more self-pitying?
She just made it to the door before the tears began.
The flight the next morning was an early one to fit in with her grandfather’s schedule. Knowing King Hassan’s dislike of tardiness, she was packed and ready and feeling mad with herself because she minded that Karim had made no attempt to say goodbye or even wish her a safe journey.
The Brownie points she had gained from being early were lost when, on the point of leaving, Eva realised she had left her toiletry bag upstairs.
Her grandfather clicked his tongue in irritation as she flew up the stairs two at a time.
Typically, given the urgency, she could see it nowhere; having ransacked her bedroom and bathroom she suddenly remembered the dressing room!
It was actually a small antechamber lined with mirrors that joined her suite of rooms to Karim’s. It had not seen a lot of use recently, but she had gone in trying to see the back of her hair as she had attempted a swept-up style she had copied from a magazine that morning.
It had not made her look elegant; it had made her look about five!
Had she carried the bag in there with her?
She ran through the bathroom and into the corridor. She was inside before she realised that she was not alone.
Karim was standing there wearing nothing but a very small towel looped around his middle.
‘I … I …’ Losing the fight not to look, her eyes slid down his body. Things deep inside her tightened; he really was beautiful. A deep throb of longing slid through her. ‘I left my … This … I’m late.’
He was looking at her in a way that made her heart race. He cleared his throat and ran a hand across his stubble-covered jaw.
Eva thought about the stubble grazing her skin and the tactile image was so strong she had to grab the radiator to steady herself.
‘Have a safe journey.’
The anticlimax was intense. ‘You too,’ she heard herself babble stupidly. Then she improved on her impersonation of a total fool by clutching her head and groaning.
‘Are you ill?’
His voice, rough with concern, was close by; she knew all she had to do was turn around and she could lay her head on his chest.
She fought off the mad impulse and shook her head. ‘No, just …’ Her eyes brushed his. ‘Totally … totally … Goodbye.’ Eyes on the ground, she brushed past him and grabbed the offending item and then, like a scared rabbit, she thought, wincing every time she mentally replayed the scene later, she scuttled away, her heart pounding like a piston.
It was actually good to meet up with her new and bewilderingly large family when she arrived in Azharim; fielding comments on her marriage was less enjoyable. It was a veritable minefield of potential embarrassment. Keeping up the pretence in front of her clearly curious relatives—who only stopped asking direct questions in deference to an edict by her grandfather—gave her a permanent headache.
After the first couple of days time began to drag heavily and, as crazy as it seemed, she missed Karim—if the combination of the achy feeling lodged behind her breastbone, feeling restless, distracted and unable to concentrate constituted missing?
You chose to come here, she reminded herself.
And he didn’t try and stop you.
The necessary distraction came in the form of her neglected thesis. Instead of moping and soul-searching, Eva decided to put some serious work in on her almost-completed doctoral dissertation.
Never had she shown more enthusiasm for the boring detail of collating statistics, and, despite her initial scepticism on her ability to concentrate, the work did get done.
She was putting the finishing touches to her thesis, an occasion that only recently had been her total focus in life, when she received news that Karim and Amira had been allowed to fly home by the doctors.
The urgency to get the final draft printed and bound faded.
They hoped, so the message said, to see Eva very soon.
It was as impersonal as the rest of the communications she had received from Karim. While he had made contact regularly during the three weeks she had been here, there was nothing in the impersonal e-mails she had received that could not have been read by her grandfather.
But as she had asked herself—What else do you expect, Eva?
Her problem was she had lost the ability to separate expectations and fantasies.
He wasn’t likely to confide a yearning to hear her voice. Or indulge in a lot of gushing stuff about not being able to stop thinking about her.
They had not exactly parted on the best of terms and the man had a lot of things, more important things, on his mind.
But then maybe the things they needed to discuss were better spoken of face to face.
She tried to view the opportunity to do just that with hope rather than fear … and managed excitement and exhilaration that tipped over without warning into open gibbering panic.
As Eva arranged to leave on the next flight, she was on the excitement stomach-clenching stage, until, that was, a casual remark by one of her cousins revealed that Karim and his daughter had already been home a week.
Talk about being brought to earth with a bump!
Eva struggled to hide the sharp stab of hurt as the news drained away every last trace of her buoyant mood. She was too depressed to manage even gibbering panic.
It must have shown in her face because good-natured Ruhi added, ‘I expect he wanted to give the little one time to settle in before producing a new stepmother … That’s always tricky.’
‘I expect you’re right.’ And thank you, Ruhi, she thought, for giving me something else to worry about. She’d given so much time to the wife issue she’d not paused to
