“I had a hard labor,” she said. “There were…some complications. I was depressed, scared.” She had had postpartum depression on top of her physical ailments, of course, but it had not seemed, at the time, like something she could ever come out of whole. She snuck a look at him then. He had found his way to the couch opposite, but he did not look at her as he sat there, sprawled out before the fire. He aimed his deep frown toward the dark red Persian carpet at his feet.
Jessa wondered what he was thinking. Did this seem unreal to him? Impossible? That they could be sitting in a Parisian room, so many miles and years away from the heartache that they had caused together? It boggled the mind. It made her feel dizzy.
“I had no job, and no idea where I might go to get one,” Jessa continued, ignoring the thickness in her voice, the twist in her belly. “I had this perfect baby boy, the son of a king, and I couldn’t give him the life that he needed. That he deserved.” Her voice cracked, and she sighed, then cleared her throat. “I thought at first that it was just hormonal—just first-time mother fears, but as time went on, the feeling grew stronger.”
“Why?” Tariq’s voice was barely a whisper, and still so full of anguish. “What was missing in the life you gave him?”
Me, Jessa thought. You. But she said neither.
“I was…not myself,” she said instead. “I cried all the time. I was so lost.” It had been more than she could handle. The baby’s constant demands. The lack of sleep. The lack of help, even though her sister had tried. Had she not been so terribly, terribly depressed—near suicidal, perhaps…But she had been. There was no point in wishing. “And how could I be a good parent? The single decision I’d made that led to my being a parent in the first place had been…” Her voice trailed off, and her gaze flew to his.
“To get pregnant accidentally,” he finished for her, so matter-of-factly, so coldly. “With my child.”
“Yes.” Something shimmered between them, a kind of bond, though it was fragile and painful. Jessa forged on, determined to get the rest out at last. “And I had had all this time to read about you in the news, to watch you on the television, to really and truly see that nothing you had ever told me was true. That I’d made up our relationship in my head. That I was a silly girl with foolish dreams, not fit to be someone’s parent.”
He raked his hands through his hair, his expression unreadable. But he did not look away.
“Meanwhile,” she continued, her voice barely a thread of sound, “there were people with intact families already. People who had done everything right, made all the right choices, and just couldn’t have a baby. Why should Jeremy suffer just because his mother was a mess? How was that fair to him?”
“You gave him up for adoption,” Tariq said, sounding almost dazed. “You gave him away to strangers?”
“He deserved to have everything,” Jessa said fiercely, hating the emphasis he put on strangers—and not wanting to correct him. “Love, two adoring parents, a family. A real chance at a good life! Not…a devastated single mother who could barely take care of herself, much less him.”
Tariq did not speak, though Jessa could hear his ragged breathing and see the turmoil in his expression.
“I wanted him to be happy more than I wanted him to be happy with me,” she whispered.
“I thought…” Tariq stopped and rubbed his hands over his face. “I believed it was customary in an adoption to seek the permission of both parents.”
Jessa bit her lower lip and braced herself. “Jeremy has only one birth parent listed on his birth certificate,” she said quietly. “Me.”
Tariq simply looked at her, a deep anger that verged on a grief she recognized evident in the dark depths of his troubled gaze. Jessa raised her shoulders and then let them drop. Why should she feel guilty now? And yet she did. Because neither of them had had all the choices they should have had. Neither one of them was blameless.
“I saw no reason to claim a relationship to a king for a baby when I could not claim one myself,” she said.
Tariq’s gaze seemed to burn, but Jessa did not look away.
“I can almost understand why you did not inform me that you were pregnant,” he said after a long, tense moment. “Or I can try to understand this. But to give the child away? To give him to someone else without even allowing me to know that he existed in the first—”
“I tried to find you,” she cut in, her voice thick with emotion. “I went to the firm and begged them to contact you. I had no way to locate you!”
“No way to locate me?” He shook his head. Temper cracked like lightning in his eyes, his voice. “I am not exactly in hiding!”
“You have no idea, do you?” she asked, closing her eyes briefly. “I cannot even imagine how many young, single women must throw themselves at you. How many must tell tales to members of your staff, or your government officials, in a desperate bid for your attention. Why should I be treated any differently?” She shifted in her seat, wanting nothing more than to get up and run, end this uncomfortable conversation. Hadn’t she been running from it for ages? “It’s not possible to simply look you up in the phone book and give you a ring, Tariq. You must know that.”
His expression told her that he didn’t wish to know it. He swallowed, and she didn’t know how to feel about the fact he was clearly as uncomfortable as she was. As emotional.
“I went to the firm,” she said again, remembering that day some months after Jeremy had been born, when she’d been desperate and on the brink of making her decision but wanted to reach Tariq first, if she could. “They laughed at me.”
It had been worse than the day they’d sacked her. The speculation in their eyes, the disdain—they had looked at her like she was dirt. Like she was worse than dirt.
“They laughed at you?” As if he didn’t understand.
“Of course.” She found the courage to meet his eyes. “To them I was nothing more than the slutty intern, still gold digging. One of them offered to take me out to dinner—wink wink.”
“Wink—?” Tariq began, frowning, and then comprehension dawned and his expression turned glacial.
“Yes,” Jessa confirmed. “He was happy to see if he could sample the goods. After all, I’d been good enough for a king, for a while. But he certainly wasn’t going to help me contact you.”
“Who?” Tariq asked, his voice like thunder. “Who was the man?”
“It doesn’t really matter, does it? I doubt very much he was the only one who thought that way.” Jessa shook her head and looked back into the fire, sinking further into the embrace of the cashmere over her shoulders. “I realized that I would have to make the decision on my own. That there was absolutely no way I could talk to you about it. We might as well have never met.”
“So you did it.” There was no question in his voice. Only that scratchiness and a heavy kind of resignation.
“When he was four months old,” Jessa said, surprised to feel herself get choked up. “I kissed him goodbye and I gave him what he could never have if I kept him.” She closed her eyes against the pain that never really left her, no matter what she did or what she told herself. “And now he has everything any child could hope for. Two parents who dote on him, who treat him like a miracle—not a mistake. Not something unplanned that had to be dealt with.” She could feel the wetness on her cheeks but made no move to wipe it away.
“You don’t regret this decision?” His voice seemed to come from far away. Jessa turned to look at him, her heart so raw she thought it might burst from within.
“I regret it every day!” she whispered at him fiercely. Unequivocally. “I miss him every moment!”
Tariq sat forward, his eyes intent on hers. “Then I do not see why we cannot—”
“He is happy!” she interrupted him, emotion making her forceful. But he had to hear her. “He is happy, Tariq. Content. I know that I did the right thing for him, and that’s the only thing that matters. Not what I feel. And not what you feel, either, no matte
r if you are a king or not. He is a happy, healthy little boy with two parents who are not us.” Her voice trembled then, and the tears spilled over and trailed across her cheeks. “Who will never be us.”
She buried her face in her hands, not entirely sure why she was crying like this—as desperately as if it had just happened, as if she had just accepted that it was real. It had to do with telling Tariq the truth finally. Or most of the truth, in any case—all the most important parts of the truth. It was as if some part of her she’d scarcely known existed had held on to the fantasy that as long as he did not know, it could not have happened. It could not be true. And now she had lost even that lie to tell herself.
Jessa did not know how long she wept, but she knew when he came to sit beside her, his much heavier body next to hers on the leather making her sag toward him. He did not whisper false words of encouragement. He did not rant or rave or rail against her. He did not plot ways to change this harsh reality, or ask questions she could not answer.
He merely put his arm around her, guided her head to his shoulder and let her cry.
It was late when Tariq got off the phone with his attorneys, having confirmed what he’d suspected but still didn’t quite want to accept: British adoptions were relatively rare, and well-nigh irreversible. When the child came of age, he could seek out his parents through a national register if he chose, but not before. And British courts were notoriously unsympathetic to anyone who tried to reverse the adoption process—claiming they acted in the best interests of the child and sought to cause as little disruption as possible.
He left his office and made his way back to the small library where he’d left Jessa when she’d finally succumbed to the stress and emotion of the day and had drifted off to sleep. He found her curled up on the leather sofa, her hands beneath her cheek, looking more like a child than a woman who could have borne one. Much less borne his.
Some part of him still wanted to unleash the temper that rolled and burned inside of him on her, to hurt her because he hurt, but he found he could not. He looked at her and felt only a deep sadness and a growing possessiveness that he wasn’t sure he understood. He knew he wanted to blame her because it would be convenient, nothing more.
The truth was that he blamed himself. He was everything his uncle had accused him of being, and while he had known that enough so that he’d altered his life to honor his uncle’s passing, he had not understood the true scope of it until now.
He might have spent years haunted by her, but he had not wanted to deal with the young woman who had made his dissipated heart ask questions he hadn’t wanted to answer, and so he had excised her when he left England just as he had excised everything that reminded him of his old life. He had transformed himself into the man his uncle wanted him to be, and he’d done it brutally. What would it have cost him to seek her out after the accident, even for something as little as a phone call? What kind of man left a young, obviously infatuated girl in the lurch like that? Had he allowed himself to think about it for even a moment, he would have known that she’d have been devastated first by his disappearance, and then by the shocking truth about who he was. How could he now turn around and blame her for making what she’d thought were the best decisions she could under those circumstances?
After all, she had not known how deeply she had touched him then, and how she had continued to prey on his thoughts for all of those years. Only he had known it, and he had barely allowed the truth of his feelings for her to register. He had buried them with his uncle, buried them with all the remnants of his former life, buried them all and told himself that he preferred his life that way. That Jessa herself was tainted by her association with his former, profligate self, and thus could never be considered a possible consort or queen for the King of Nur. The kind of woman who would fall in love with Tariq the black sheep was by definition unfit for the king. And if he woke in the night and heard her voice, or felt phantom fingers trail along his skin, no one had ever needed to know that but him.
And yet he had still gone to find her, breaking all of his own rules, telling himself any number of lies—anything to be near her once again. Had he known even then that one night could never be enough? Had that been why he had fought against it for so long?
He stooped to shift her from the couch into his arms, lifting her high against his chest and carrying her with him through the house, aware that something in him whispered that she belonged there, that she fit there perfectly. She nestled against him, her body easy with him in sleep in a way she would never be were she awake. He felt a sudden pang of nostalgia for the freely given love of the young girl he’d so callously thrown away. She felt good so close against him. She felt like his.
In his rooms, he deposited her gently on the bed, removing her shoes and pulling the coverlet over her. For a moment he gazed down at her, watching her breathe, and let the strange tenderness he felt wash through him. He did not try to judge it, or deny it. He thought of what it must have been like for her, to be so alone, abandoned and forced into so difficult a position. They were not that different, the two of them, he thought. Each of them thrust, alone, into positions they had never meant to occupy.
Without letting himself think it through, he climbed into the bed behind her, pulling her close, so her back was flush against his chest, her bottom nestled between his thighs. He inhaled deeply, letting her distinct scents wash over him, soothing him, letting him imagine that they could both heal. Jasmine in her hair, and something sweet and warm beneath that he knew was simply Jessa. Vanilla and heat.
She stirred, and he knew when she woke by the sudden tension in her body where before there was only languor. He smoothed a hand down her side, tracing the curves of her body, as if he could erase what she had suffered so easily.
“I did not mean to fall asleep,” she whispered into the dark room. She moved under his hands, as if testing her boundaries, as if she thought she was his prisoner.
Tariq did not respond. He only held her and pretended he did not know why he could not let her go.
“In the morning,” she continued, her voice much too careful, much too polite, “I will head home. I think it’s best.” She moved as if to separate from him, and he let his arm fall away from her when he wanted only to hold on, to keep her close, as if she was sunlight and he was an acre of frozen earth, desperate for winter to end.
“Tariq?” She turned toward him. He twisted over onto his back, aware of a different kind of need surging through him. A need for peace, the peace that only holding her close had ever brought him. “Should I find somewhere else to sleep?” she asked, her voice tentative. Scared. Of him. And why shouldn’t she be, after the things he had done?
He could not bear it. And he refused to think about why.
And then, from that place inside him that he could not fully admit existed, yet could no longer ignore, he whispered, “I do not want you to go, Jessa. Not yet.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ONE week passed, and then another, and the subject of Jessa’s departure did not come up again. Jessa had made the necessary calls home to her sister and to her boss, and had taken the long overdue vacation time she was owed that she had never bothered to take before.
“Where are you?” her sister Sharon had asked, shocked, when Jessa got her on the phone. “Since when do you run off on a holiday at the drop of a hat?”
“I had an urge to see Paris, that’s all,” Jessa had lied.
“I wish I could swan off to Paris on a lark!” Sharon had said. And then the time to mention who she was with and why she was with him had passed the moment Sharon put down the phone, so it had remained Jessa’s secret.
It wasn’t that she was trying to hide the fact that she was with Tariq from her sister, necessarily, but she wasn’t planning to trumpet it from the rooftops, either. She told herself that there was nothing unusual in it; she and Tariq were simply giving themselves some space and time to process the loss of Jeremy together rather than apart. Who
else could understand how it felt? They were being healthy, she thought, modern; and part of her believed it.
Jessa had all of Paris to explore each day, as Tariq spent his time closeted in meetings or on the telephone with his advisors, political allies, and business contacts—tending to his kingdom from afar.
“Tell me what you saw today,” Tariq asked each evening, and Jessa would relate stories of freshly baked baguettes, lazy afternoons in cafés, or walking tours of famous monuments. Each evening she tried harder to make him smile. Each evening she found herself more and more invested in whether or not she succeeded.
“I have always loved Paris,” Tariq told her one night as they lingered over coffee out in one of the city’s famous restaurants, where the service was so impeccable that Jessa almost felt compelled to apologize every time she shifted in her chair. “My uncle used this residence as a vacation home, but I prefer to use it as a base for my European business concerns.” He leaned back against his chair in an indolent way that called attention to all the power he kept caged in his lean, muscled frame.
“What isn’t to love?” Jessa agreed with a happy smile, propping her elbow on the table and resting her chin on her hand. She could look at him for hours. His face alone compelled her—all that harshness and cruelty tempered by the keen intelligence in his eyes. “It mixes magic with practicality.”
It was as if she had forgotten they had ever felt like adversaries, though, of course, she had not. This sweet truce between them was far more dangerous than the wars they had already fought and survived. She was so much more at risk when he looked at her the way he did tonight, with something she so desperately wanted to call tenderness.
“Indeed,” he agreed now, and their eyes caught, something more potent than the rich brew in their cups surging between them, making Jessa’s pulse race.
“Tariq,” she said softly, not wishing to break the spell between them but knowing she should speak, knowing she should acknowledge the truth of things, “you know that I—”
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