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 matter 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—”
“Come,” he said, pushing back from the table. “We shall walk home along the Seine and you will tell me which Van Gogh in the Musée d’Orsay you prefer.”
“I cannot possibly choose,” she said, but she let him pull her to her feet, exulting in the slide of his palm against hers. Why not dream a little longer? she asked herself. Who would it hurt?
“Then you must tell me about the Musée Rodin instead,” he said, taking a moment too long before releasing her hand and stepping back to pull out her chair. “I have not been in many years.”
Jessa had studied every luscious, supple curve of stone in the museum he mentioned, and had marveled at the raw sensual power of marble statues that should have seemed cold and dead yet instead begged to be touched, caressed. As she thought she might do at any moment.
But Tariq only took her arm and ushered her out into the soft Parisian night.
Sharing Jeremy’s adoption with him had changed something, Jessa realized as they walked together along the banks of the Seine in a silence that was not quite comfortable—too charged was it with their simmering chemistry and the restraint they had shown in not touching each other in so long. Not since that first night.
Later, back at the grand house, when Tariq had politely excused himself and she was left in the lonely expanse of the bedroom suite, she thought more about the evening’s revelation. Jeremy was not her private pain now, to hoard and to hurt herself with. It was theirs to share, and the sharing not only lessened the hurt, it removed all the walls she’d built around it. In place of those walls was something far too delicate and shimmering to name. She did not want to think about when she had felt this way before, and what had become of her.
“You are such a fool,” she whispered aloud, her voice swallowed up by the ornate furnishings all around her.
But she also did not want to think about the one crucial bit of information she had withheld from him. The one small yet crucial fact about Jeremy she had not been able to bring herself to share. She could not quite trust him with it, could she? Not when she knew deep down that this was a fantasy she was living in, something that would not, could not last. Protecting Jeremy was forever. It had to be.
It was as if, Jessa thought as she changed her clothes for dinner a few nights later, having hurt each other so terribly and so irrevocably they were now both easing their way into enjoying each other’s company, as if that might make the pain lessen. As if it could make it bearable somehow. She twisted her hair into a chignon, gathering her heavy copper curls at the nape of her neck and pinning them into place, then looked at herself in the mirror of the dressing room. She felt like Cinderella. With her hair up in the casually elegant bun, she thought she looked a bit like Cinderella, too. It was so easy to get used to the life she’d been living these past weeks, without a care in the world, wandering Paris by day and exploring the many facets of Tariq’s beguiling mind at night. The dressing room contained an array of clothes tailored to her precise measurements, all of which fit perfectly and made her look like someone other than Jessa Heath of Fulford: office manager in a letting agency and all-around nobody.
The Jessa she saw in the mirror was no ordinary Yorkshire lass. Tariq had mentioned the evening would be formal, and so she wore a floor-length satin gown the color of buttercream. It whispered and murmured seductively as she moved, the neckline plunging to hint at her breasts and the perfumed hollow between, then catching her at the waist before falling in lush folds to the ground. Her back was very nearly bare, with only thin angled shoulder straps to hold the gown in place. Though Jess
a would have thought her very English paleness would look sickly in a gown so light, the color instead seemed to make her skin glow. Her freckles seemed like bursts of vibrant color rather than an embarrassment.
“You are lovely,” a familiar voice said from behind her, causing Jessa to start, though of course she knew who she would see when she looked in the mirror. Her body knew without having to hear the words he spoke. It reacted to the very sound of his voice, the hint of his nearness, with the now familiar rush of wild heat that suffused her.
Tariq stood in the entry to the dressing room, mouthwateringly debonair in his tuxedo, his long, strong body packaged to breathtaking perfection. His eyes seemed more green than usual, standing out from his dark hair and the black suit like some kind of deep forest beacon. His hard features seemed more handsome than fierce tonight, more approachable. Jessa felt a little stunned herself.
“Am I late?” she asked, feeling unaccountably shy suddenly in the face of so much steely male beauty. It was unfair that any one man could exude as much raw magnetism as he did, and so carelessly. She met his gaze in the mirror and then looked away, heat staining in her cheeks.
“Not at all,” he said, and she knew he lied. There was a certain tenderness in his eyes that she could not account for, and could not seem to handle—it made it hard to breathe.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
The room around them seemed to contract and she pretended she was unaffected, that her nipples did not tighten to rigid points, that she could not feel the pull low in her belly. Sometimes he put his hand in the small of her back to guide her, or helped her out of a car, and though she felt even his smallest touch in every part of her being, that had been the extent of it. Though they had spent their first night together in every conceivable position, a vivid and carnal exploration of their passion, they had spent the weeks since merely talking—a curious inversion that was starting to make her shaky with need. He did not sleep with her at night and yet she knew with a deep, feminine certainty that he wanted her as much, if not more, than before.
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