you with the best bargaining chip to propose? And you didn’t propose before because you never had enough leverage?”
Mohab shrugged, tension killing him. “Do I have enough now?”
Kamal’s smile became definite. “If I disregard the stench of your paternal lineage and consider you based on your own merits, this might be a good idea. A perfect one, even. Knowing Jala, she’d never marry of her own accord and I hate to think she’ll end up alone. And you, apart from the despicable flaw of having the Aal Ghaanem blood and name, seem like a...reasonably good match for her.”
“So you’re saying yes?”
“A yes isn’t mine to say. I can’t force her to marry you and wouldn’t even if I could. Clearly this marriage quest of yours is hardly a done deal, since you require my intervention to even reach her. I won’t ask what earned you a place on Jala’s viciously strict no-approach list. Ullah knows I’m the last man to go all holier-than-thou on you for whatever transgression you committed to deserve this kind of treatment.”
What would Kamal say if Mohab told him he didn’t know exactly why he’d deserved that till this day?
Kamal gazed into the distance as if peering into a distasteful past. “I once did unforgivable things to the one woman who’d captured my fancy and wouldn’t let go, and it took the intervention of others to give me that second chance with her.”
“So you’re paying it forward.”
Kamal’s eyes returned to his, the crooked smile back. “I am. But if she agrees to marry you, I’ll take sixty percent as her mahr. If she refuses, the whole deal is off—and we’ll draw up another treaty that saves your king’s face so he can go sit in his throne and stop throwing war-agitating tantrums.”
Mohab’s first impulse was to kiss Kamal on both cheeks. This was beyond anything he’d come here expecting.
He extended his hand to Kamal instead, his smile the widest it had been in...six years. “Deal. You won’t regret this.”
Kamal shook his hand slowly. “You were wrong when you said you don’t know much about business. You know nothing. You could have gotten me to agree to thirty percent. You’re holding all the cards after all.”
Mohab’s smiled widened more. “I’m not so oblivious that I don’t know the power I wield. But I would never haggle over Jala’s mahr. If my decision didn’t affect millions of people in both Saraya and Jareer, I would have given you the whole thing.”
“You got it that bad?” Kamal drilled him with an incredulous gaze. “Do you love her?”
Love? He once had...or thought he had. But now he knew it hadn’t been real. Because nothing real could ever exist for a man like him. He only knew he couldn’t move on. And that she hadn’t moved on, either. He was still obsessed with their every touch, had starved for her every pleasure. Love didn’t enter into the equation. Not only was it an illusion, it was one he couldn’t afford.
But the pact he’d struck with Kamal was real. As was his hunger for Jala. That was more than enough. In fact, that was everything.
Kamal waved his hand. “Don’t answer that. I don’t think you can answer. If you haven’t seen her in years, whatever you felt for her back then might be totally moot once you come face-to-face with each other again. So I won’t hold you to this proposal for now. But since Jala is the most intractable entity I have the misfortune to know and love...” At Mohab’s raised eyebrow, Kamal sighed. “Aih, she takes after her older brother, as Aliyah tells me.”
Mohab did a double take. It was amazing, the change that came over Kamal’s face as he mentioned his wife and queen. It was as if he glowed inside just thinking of her.
Kamal went on. “But for this to have a prayer of working, I need to give you much more of a helping hand than putting you in the same room with her. I need to give her a shove. I’ll make it sound as if refusal isn’t an option. Of course, if she really wants to refuse, she will, no matter what.” His lips spread into a smile again. “All I can hope is that if I make things sound drastic enough, it’ll give you that chance to make your approach. The rest...is up to you.”
Two
“You...what?”
Jala stared at Kamal, her shrill cry ringing in her own ears.
Staggering, she collapsed on the nearest horizontal surface, gaping up at Kamal who came to stand over her.
“I lied.”
Ya Ullah. She had heard right the first time.
Another cry of sheer incredulity scratched her throat raw. “How could you do this to me? Are you insane?”
Kamal shrugged, not looking in the least repentant. “I had to get you here. Sorry.”
“Sorry? You let me have a thousand panic attacks during the hours it took me to get here, thinking that Farooq was lying in hospital, critically injured, and you say...sorry?”
Even now that she knew Farooq was safe, the horror still reverberated in her bones. She’d never known such desperation, not even when she’d been held hostage and thought she’d die a violent death.
Fury seethed inside of her. “Don’t you know what you did to me? As I thought of beautiful, vital Farooq lying broken, struggling for his life, how I wept as I thought how much he had to live for, as I thought of Carmen losing her soul mate, of Mennah growing up without her father.... You’re a monstrous pig, Kamal!”
Kamal winced. “I said he was injured but that he was stable. I wanted you here, but didn’t want to scare you more than necessary. How am I responsible for your exaggerations?”
“How? How?” She threw her hands up in the air in frustration. “How does Aliyah bear you?”
Kamal had the temerity to flash her that wolfish grin of his. “I never ask. I just wallow in the miracle of her, and that she thinks I’m the best thing that ever walked the earth.”
“Then Aliyah, although she looks sane, is clearly deranged. Or under a spell....”
“It’s called love.” Kamal raised his hands before she exploded again. “I am sorry. But you said you’d never set foot here again, and I knew you wouldn’t come unless you thought one of us was dying.”
“I know you’re ruthless and manipulative and a dozen other inhuman adjectives but...argh! Whatever you needed to drag me here for, you could have tried telling me the truth first!”
Kamal smirked. “Aih, and when that didn’t work, I would have tried the lie next. I would have ordered you to come, but knowing you, you would have probably renounced your Judarian citizenship just so I’d stop being your king. If you weren’t that intractable I wouldn’t have had to lie, and you wouldn’t have had those harrowing sixteen hours.”
“So it’s now my fault? You—you humongous, malignant rat! What could possibly be enough reason for you to drag me back here with this terrible lie?”
“Just that Judar is about to go to war.”
She
