“Do we really have to talk about this?”
“Yes. I want to know.” He sure didn’t sound like it, though.
“You couldn’t be like other men and just pretend this part of my life is a great mystery, could you?” she asked hopefully.
“No,” he practically snarled.
“Don’t get mad.” He was such a caveman sometimes. “It’s not a big deal. I just had difficult periods and wanted to do something about it. My doctor suggested the insert, and I don’t have any bleeding at all now. It’s a huge relief, considering how much time I spend in the field and a lot of it in more primitive conditions than this.”
She was sure that was more than he ever wanted to know, but she got a perverse pleasure in giving him the gritty details. After all, he was the one who insisted on knowing and got all cranky when she’d hesitated telling him.
“Will it affect your ability to have children?”
“I doubt I’ll ever be a mother, but not because I won’t be capable of getting pregnant. There’s no risk of infertility.” She frowned at him, letting him know that this was not her favorite topic of conversation. “Can we be done with this conversation now?”
“Yes.” He looked far too complacent.
Maybe that explained what popped out of her mouth next. “Did you bring Badra here?” she asked, realizing almost immediately how much she wanted to bite her own tongue off.
First, because of course he’d brought Badra here; the princess had been his wife. And second, because Iris really didn’t want to know about it. Not even a little.
Idiot.
“No.”
“What?” No?
“My grandfather showed me this place on the eve of my wedding, but Badra insisted on being married in her father’s palace.”
“Wouldn’t that be traditional?” And why would it prevent Asad from bringing his wife to the private bathing chamber when they returned to his city of tents?
“Not for a sheikh of my people. Even my parents were married here.”
“Oh, but she wanted to get married with the traditions of her family?” That was understandable.
“She wanted to put off joining the encampment for as long as possible, though I did not realize it at the time. She’d convinced me to take her on a tour of Europe for our honeymoon.”
“Um, sounds special?” Iris’s comment came out more a question than a statement because he sounded so disdainful of their honeymoon plans.
“Our tradition would have dictated I take her into the desert for a time of privacy and bonding. She refused.”
“So she wasn’t much of a camper.”
“She was a poor wife and even worse Bedouin. Badra was not a virgin on our wedding night.”
“THAT must have been a shock to you.” A really unpleasant one, too.
Remembering back to their breakup, she knew how important sexual innocence had been to Asad. Probably still was. Iris hadn’t realized it when they were dating, but when he told her it was over he’d made a lot of things clear that had been hazy before that. Like the fact that Iris could never be in the running for Asad’s future wife because she’d had a sexual partner before him.
Even now, with their friendship firmly intact, she couldn’t think of Darren as a former lover. There had been no love in the loss of her virginity. Not even on her part.
Iris had thought Asad’s attitude pretty much prehistoric, but her opinion hadn’t counted. And he’d walked away to marry the not-so-perfect Badra.
“She was also pregnant.”
“What? Nawar isn’t yours?” Iris asked in shock. But there was no doubting the bond between the beautiful little girl and her father.
“She is mine,” Asad fiercely contradicted. “Though she carries none of my genetic makeup, Nawar is in all ways that count my beloved daughter.”
“But that’s.” Unbelievable.
Or kind of funny in a gallows-humor kind of way. Not that his daughter didn’t share his gene pool, but because of the way he’d rejected Iris so completely based on her lack of innocence. Only, Iris had been way more virginal in the ways that counted than the already-pregnant Badra. That was for sure.
But mostly, the whole situation with Badra seemed really, really sad. She’d deceived Asad and Nawar had been made a pawn in a marriage paved with bad intention before she’d ever been born.
“I’m sorry.” Iris really, really was.
“Do not be. The one good thing I got out of my marriage to Badra was my precious gem, Nawar.”
Iris liked hearing that; it gave her confidence that under the more cynical and dour exterior, Asad was still the same man who had once really been her best and truest friend. His willingness to share what had to be his deepest secret with her showed that regardless of the intervening years of silence, he still saw her in that light.
“Nawar said you named her.”
“Badra had no interest in parenting from the very beginning. Though at the time, I believed she allowed me to name Nawar to make her more my own. I was wrong about that, just as I had mistaken so much about Badra. At first I believed Badra’s lack of interest in my daughter was due to her shame at bearing another man’s child. I told her repeatedly how much I loved Nawar. That I did not resent her.”
“That’s kind of amazing.” And so not what Iris would have expected of the arrogant, proud man.
She’d loved Asad, but she hadn’t been blind to his faults. Or so she had believed. Perhaps she’d been blinder to more things than even their subsequent break-up had forced her to accept.
“I was not there for the birth, as is the custom of our people, but my grandmother brought the babe to me when she was less than an hour old. I looked down into her beautiful little face and fell in love.”
Emotion caught in Iris’s throat. “She’s very lucky to have you for a father.”
“I am far more blessed to have her as a daughter.”
Iris thought maybe it was a draw, but forbore saying so.
“I named her flower after the one woman I knew had more honor than my wife ever would.”
The import of Asad’s words finally registered and Iris gasped in shock. “You named your daughter after me. That’s not possible.”
“I assure
