“Of course. This is a cultural difference. For us, we like to have a place that is our own. Somewhere to sit and read, and to dress. We believe it keeps marriage fresh when there is some degree of separation and … preparation.”
Abi flushed. “I see.”
“Here.” Lilah flung open two gleaming white doors and then stepped back to allow Abi an unadulterated view of the room. The carpet was an ornate gold and cream pattern. The chairs were leather with footstools and there was yet another bookshelf, this one filled with leather bound titles. The view was exquisite; beyond her the ocean dazzled like a magical blanket.
And to her left was a room that seemed reasonably unimpressive until she poked her head through the cavity and saw the sheer quantity of clothes Kiral had bought to be hung in her wardrobe.
Her duffel bag had been transported to the palace somehow, by someone, and it lay on the floor of the wardrobe, looking completely out of place in the midst of such glamour.
Stars were beginning to form in Abi’s eyes. It was hot, and she was tired. Everything was overwhelming and terrifying, but she kept her expression carefully neutral. Lilah was watching her closely and Abi certainly didn’t want anyone else to know how hugely difficult she was finding this turn of events to contemplate.
But Lilah had always been intuitive and she took an unexpected pity on the woman. “Come to your sitting room,” she urged, moving efficiently through another set of doors into a lounge area that was light and bright. “Why don’t you tell me about Michael?”
Abi nodded. “Michael, yes.” That was the reason she was here. That was why Lilah was being so kind to her, and more importantly, why Kiral was marrying her. He had left her three years earlier and not looked back. If there had been no Michael, he would have gone through with his marriage to the far more suitable Melania.
“Is he tall? Dark?”
Abi startled back to the situation. “You’ve seen a picture, surely?”
“No,” Lilah grimaced. “My brother is not one for happy snaps. No doubt you know this. And he has had the child’s existence guarded as a fierce secret. Do you have a picture you can show me?”
“Are you kidding? On my phone I have about ten thousand,” she grinned distractedly despite the anxiety that was gnawing at her gut.
“Tell me about him then,” Lilah invited, curling her legs up beneath her. And as she listened to the American woman describe the two year old, she felt herself falling completely head over heels with the little boy who would one day become King. And more importantly, she began to like Abigail McClean, and to want to help her.
“Abi,” she interrupted after almost an hour had passed. “Has my brother prepared you for what lies ahead?”
Abi flushed and shook her head. “Only that we … will … marry.” The words sounded strange on her lips. Like an odd fantasy she felt guilty for having somehow turned into reality.
“Yes, yes, you must marry,” Lilah agreed, standing and pacing the room thoughtfully. “It is perhaps not what you wish, and not what my brother might have wished, but it is clearly best for Michael and the country.”
Abi felt her heart squeeze. For her own self? She had wanted to spend the rest of her life with Kiral. Only time and abandonment had exhausted that hope. But now? The thought of being his wife filled her with a sense of fulfilment that was a betrayal to how she ought to feel. And as for him? The realisation that had begun as a creeping suspicion had turned into a full-blown comprehension and she couldn’t forget it now. He didn’t want to marry her. He was doing it out of duty and honour and a sense of what was right.
“And while our people are very loyal to Kiral — they love him like a God, almost — they will not easily accept you.”
Abi’s face didn’t react though her pulse was firing. “Kiral did tell me I would be universally despised,” she said thickly.
Lilah burst out laughing. “I think you might bring out the worst in my brother,” she said, when she’d calmed down. “You will not be universally despised. But you will have to work to be accepted, more than you might have had to if you’d been honest from the start.”
Abi didn’t respond to the implied censure. She couldn’t have said if she’d make a different decision, were the choice before her now. She knew only that she acted in a way she believed to be in her son’s best interests. Even when she came to Delani, it was for Michael, and in spite of her own reservations.
“But you engender great sympathy because of Michael’s illness. And you are pretty, and likeable. I think that if we are seen together, and it is obvious that I have welcomed you with open arms, it will help you.”
Since the wheels of this life had been set in motion, Abi hadn’t experienced kindness. Certainly not from Kiral. Finding it so readily in his sister made her well up with emotion. But she contained it, and managed to speak with a clear voice. “I am Michael’s mother. I just want him to be okay. Beyond that, nothing matters.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
“I like her,” Lilah said with a smile. “I truly do, Ki.”
He grunted. The sun had dipped down over the ocean; it was dark now, and rapidly becoming cool in the way only such a vast desert could. “Why?”
“Why?” Lilah’s laugh was like tiny little bells in the breeze. “Because you are marrying her. She is to be my sister. And your wife. I hope that you and she make many more little babies together.”
He expelled a disapproving sigh but the sudden image of Abi growing fat with another of his children did something strange to his equilibrium. “You know why I am marrying her.”
“Because of Michael, yes.”
“Because I have no choice,” he clarified, linking his fingers together on the balustrade of the balcony so that he could dip his head lower. Beneath them, the formal courtyard stretched along both sides of the palace, before giving way to a manicured lawn. The gardens in both directions were generously bathed in a dusky purple grey that spoke of the end of another day.
“There is always a choice,” she contradicted, coming to stand beside him. “You loved her once. You will feel that for her again.”
Ki tilted his head to study his sister carefully. “Is this my cynical sister speaking? What’s going on with you?”
Lilah was glad that the evening was upon them so that he could not see the effect his words had on her. The secret she carried was too precious to risk sharing at that stage. “Nothing. Don’t be absurd,” she denied a little shakily. “I told you. I like her. I am worried for her. If you do not help her adjust to life here, she will find it very difficult. In fact, she will be miserable.”
He grunted again and turned back to his brooding watchfulness. “She will have our son to occupy her.”
“You’ve hired a team of doctors and nurses and nannies to be with the child!” Lilah scoffed. “You cannot take away Abigail’s place in his life without offering her another challenge.”
“I have offered her one. She will be my wife.”
Lilah shook her head sadly. “You say that as though you mean to punish her. Such a sentiment is beneath you. You are being unkind. Cruel, even. That’s not like you at all.”
Her words surprised him. They were a completely frank and accurate assessment of the situation and Lilah was, perhaps, one of the only people on earth who was able to deliver it.
“You do not think I have a right to feel aggrieved?”
Lilah sighed heavily on the breeze. “Aggrieved, perhaps. Vengeful, no. It does you no credit and serves little purpose. What do you seek from her? For how long must she castigate herself for your benefit?”
He arched a brow in surprise. “Is she castigating herself?”
“She is a good and decent person. She has been to hell and back worrying about her son – your son. Have you stopped and thought of what her life must have been like? Pregnant and alone? Then to discover that Michael had this heart condition? I do not condone her choice to keep him from you. But I do believe she had no chance to properly analy
se what she ought to have done.”
“What she ought to have done?” He retorted darkly. “She discovered she was pregnant with my child; she should have told me immediately. It was a black and white situation.”
Lilah made a sound of disbelief. “Of course it wasn’t. She was a poor waitress and you were a powerful Emir engaged to a gorgeous, famous princess. Shame on you, brother. You belittle the difficulties she faced because it suits you to turn away from your own errors.”
The outburst shocked them both. Lilah had never quarrelled with her brother. For as long as she could remember, she’d idolised him. Only recent events had given her a new idol; and though she loved her brother she now contrasted his behavior to another’s and found it wanting. The last few months had been an awakening and Lilah’s heart had been forever changed.
As for Kiral, he pushed his sister’s analysis aside swiftly. The sentiment was not one he was willing to embrace. “No fault on my part could possibly justify hers,” he said finally. And because it pained him to argue with his sister, he smiled to soften his words. “You like her and I am glad. You will be the kindness you say she needs, so that I am relieved of any burden towards her.”
“My God,” Lilah stared at Kiral as if he’d become some sort of alien. “You really hate her, don’t you?”
* * *
“Tonight we marry.” He said the words as though they were completely irrelevant. As though he was offering her a cup of tea or asking if she liked purple flowers.
Abi, mid-way through lifting a piece of dry toast to her lips, began to cough. Her eyes clashed with his and her skin paled. “Tonight?”
“Yes. Tonight.”
She placed the toast down on her plate and clasped her hands together beneath the table. “Why so soon?”
“We must marry before the truth about Michael is discovered. Once our wedding has been accepted, we will reveal to the world that we have a son.”
She swallowed. Her throat was thick and dry. “Why can’t we wait until he is out of hospital? Why can’t we …”
“It is as it must be,” he responded darkly. “Word is already spreading that I cancelled my wedding because of a young American woman. You have been seen by too many people.”
“You never struck me as someone who cares what people think,” she mused sarcastically, but her heart was hammering in her chest.
“For my part, I don’t. But I do want this to be an easy adjustment for our son. Don’t you care what people say about him? Do you not care that he is going to grow up with a speculation that perhaps he is not really mine? That he was adopted to produce an heir?”
“No. Because that’s not true,” Abi said simply. “He is your son. Anyone who’s seen him would recognise that as fact.”
“Of course. But people can be cruel.” His sister’s accusation of his own cruelty came pounding back to him. “I should have thought you would wish to spare him any unnecessary pain.”
“Don’t,” she said with a quiet strength. “Don’t use Michael to manipulate me.” She lifted her head proudly. “Not more than you already have.”
Another accusation that cut through his thick skin and scored deep into his heart. “You think that is what I am doing?”
She nodded. “Of course it is. Even before you knew of Michael you were using my desperation to manipulate me. I came to you begging for your help and the first thing you did was to use it as leverage to get me into your bed. Now you’re doing exactly the same thing, but the stakes are way, way higher.”
His stomach rolled. “You agreed to marry me.”
“I know. And I’m not trying to get out of that commitment,” she said with heartbreaking stoicism. “I don’t believe you’d let me go, anyway.”
His eyes flared. “Do you want me to let you go?”
Pain filled her senses. “I want Michael,” she conceded bleakly. “And you do too.”
He studied her thoughtfully for several minutes. His eyes were intense as they stared into hers. “I want Michael, yes,” he admitted huskily. “But I also want you, Abi.”
She was stricken. It was a dangerous, terrifying comment. “Meaning?” She cleared her throat; the word had barely been a whisper. “Meaning?” She tried again.
“What do you think I mean?”
She bit down on her lip and shrugged.
“This marriage is not what I had planned, but it does not have to be as dreadful as we are anticipating. We do not need love; or even to like one another. We have Michael. As for our sex life, we have never found it difficult to find harmony in bed.”
Abigail had to swivel her head away from him. Her breathing was rushed now. She stared out of the dining room towards the city in the distance, and beyond it the ocean. “I had not … I did not think … I never …”
“What, Abi?”
“I didn’t think this would be a normal marriage,” she finished finally, her chest rising and falling visibly with the effort.
“A normal marriage?” He prompted, studying her profile. He tried not to feel the kick of desire but it was there, as it was every time he looked at her.
She nodded. She looked so fragile, silhouetted by the expensive furnishings behind her. “We’re getting married for Michael.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “But we are marrying and I intend to honour the pledge we make. You will be the only woman in my bed, Abigail, and I am going to want you there.”
Her blood was pounding through her body so hard and fast that she could hardly hear anything else. “What about what I want?”
He laughed. “Do not insult us both by denying your attraction to me.”
Her cheeks were pink. “I’m not,” she said so softly he had to lean forward to hear. “Like you said, when it comes to … sex … we’ve always … anyway.” She let the sentence trail off into nothing. “But I don’t know if I can do this.” She was being as honest with him as she could be. “To sleep with you knowing you wish you had married someone else … knowing that you hate me. It will kill me.”
At one time, Kiral had loved Abi intensely. That part of Kiral wanted to ease the pain she was feeling and reassure her by any means possible. But Abigail had done the worst thing to him imaginable. Weakness would be very dangerous for him to show. “The sex will compensate,” he said simply.
She dipped her head forward. Was she so transparent? He was right. She wanted him with a strength that didn’t allow pride. She wished she could tell him to get stuffed. To tell him that she would never sleep with him again. But it would have been a lie. He was the only man she’d ever been with, and her body had somehow been programmed to crave his in a way that was almost crippling.
“I hate that I still want you,” she said simply, and the admission broke through his shroud of dark anger like a knife in warm butter.
“Why?” He was genuinely startled by the statement.
“Because it means that maybe I never loved you at all,” she said slowly. “Maybe I just loved having sex with you.” She finally turned her face back towards his, and he saw the swirling angst in her expression. “I always told myself that Michael was created from love. That was some consolation to everything else that I was dealing with. Now? I doubt I knew how I really felt. I was overwhelmed by it all. I had no chance! And you? You’ve claimed that you loved me then. But if that were true, there’s no way you could treat me like this now.”
He set her words aside to analyse later. There was a kernel of fear spreading through him and he did not wish to encourage it. “Have you not heard that hate is the flip side to love?”
“A stupid, banal cliché,” she dismissed with a wave of her hand. “Love is love; hate is hate. Respect is the companion of love, and you have never loved nor respected me.” Her eyes widened. “I look back on what we were and wonder now how I could ever have felt otherwise. You encouraged me to love you; you seduced me even when you knew I was completely innocent. You let me fall in love with you, and all along you knew I had no clue who you were. Not un
til the very end, when you told me, as though it wouldn’t half-kill-me, that you were nothing like the man I thought I’d fallen for. That’s not love. And it’s sure as hell not respect.”
“I left because I didn’t want you to get hurt.” Unease crept around his heart. Her words were perfectly formed bullets piercing the certainty he’d held for years that he’d done what was right and best in the circumstances.
“And when I came to you desperately in need of your help, what did you do? Blackmail me. You bartered money for sex. With me! That is not the act of a man who once loved a woman.”
His stomach rolled. On that score, she had an excellent point. “I did not want to lose you again.”
“You never had me. You should never have approached me. Not when there was always Melania in the background. Right?” she said with condemnation.
He dipped his head forward in silent concession.
She swallowed. “Then let’s never again make the mistake of thinking we actually loved each other. We were two people who had sex. Great sex. And that’s all we are now.”
He himself had said virtually the same thing only moments earlier, but when he heard the words fly out of her beautiful mouth he ached to contradict them. He ached to correct her. To pull her into his arms and beg her to take the statement back. Knowing that she loved him had become a hallmark in his life. Unbeknownst to him until she took the knowledge of that love away, he had come to think that Abigail’s loving him had made him a better person. That it had meant he was worthy of something so incredibly special as her love.
He didn’t want to contemplate a world in which that was not the truth. The orbit of his self-perception was slipping.
“Fine,” he said, ignoring his instincts and holding firm on the position he’d set forth. “Tonight we marry, and afterwards you come to my bed.”
Though her skin was tingling and her heart was throbbing with pain and despair, she nodded. “Yes.”
* * *
The Sheikh's Secret Baby: Nothing stays hidden forever ... Page 10