Hana blinked, opened her mouth and closed it. He’d dissected her again—but once more, he was right. Innate honesty demanded she stop arguing, so she turned and looked out again—and saw people pointing at the crest on the doors of the saloon, speculating…waving…
‘I’ve got a present for you.’
Startled, she turned to him. She said, hard and flat, ‘I don’t want it.’
A tiny smile played around the corners of his mouth. ‘Don’t judge my gift before you see it.’ He handed her a gorgeously wrapped box, tied with a golden ribbon. ‘Just open it, Hana, before you judge me or what I’ve given.’
Shamed by the reminder, she kept her eyes on the box as she untied the ribbon and opened it—and burst into startled laughter. Inside the intricately crafted sandalwood box lay a card saying ‘Hana’s Emergency Escape Kit.’ Beneath that were a few dozen energy bars, four canteens…and two little dropper bottles of lavender.
She looked up at him, still laughing. ‘Um, thank you?’
He leaned forward and brushed his mouth over hers. ‘I accept that some time soon you’re going to want to run, my star. But as the song says, if you leave me, can I come too?’
Huskily, knowing it was a pipe dream, she murmured, ‘I’d like that.’
‘We’re going to be okay, Sahar Thurayya.’ He kissed her again. ‘Souls entwined bring us greater strength than one alone.’
The shining happiness in his eyes lodged her breath in her throat. She touched his hand. ‘Thank you. Thank you for accepting me as I am.’
Then she saw they’d already swept through the two sets of ornate, protective gates, and were at the private rear entrance of the palace.
Suddenly she understood what he’d done for her. He’d taken her mind from her family just when she couldn’t stand thinking about them any more. He’d planned the gift before she’d even agreed to come, knowing she’d need her mind turned from the turmoil within.
‘Thank you for distracting me,’ she murmured, her stomach filled with bats without sonar, crashing around inside her; but she turned to him and, before she could chicken out, leaned into him and kissed his mouth. ‘You’re a truly good man, Alim El-Kanar.’
His eyes, dark with emotion as she kissed him, turned bleak. ‘I wish I could believe that.’ The moment the car stopped he was out, not waiting for a servant to open it and hand him out as custom demanded. He waved the servant away, and turned to help her. ‘Your family’s waiting inside, in an antechamber to the left.’
Her legs turned to jelly and she wanted to throw up. She clung to his hand, just trying to breathe. ‘Come with me. Please,’ she whispered.
He led her up the wide marble stairs and through the gold-lined oak doors. ‘I can’t stay beyond introductions. Unfortunately, I have my own ghosts to face.’ Swiftly his mouth brushed hers. ‘We’ll survive this, Hana. We can meet for recon after.’ He showed her to the wide double doors where her family waited, and led her inside.
Five people on luxurious woven settees jumped to their feet the moment the doors opened. Five people dressed in their best, either for her or to impress Alim, she didn’t know. People who’d once meant the world to her—and her heart jerked, as if telling her what she wanted to forget: they still meant so much…too much.
‘Hana,’ her mother murmured, voice cracking with emotion. Her plump, comfortable frame had lessened; her face was lined, her eyes weary and filled with tears. A hand reached out to Hana, and hovered there, as if asking a question her mouth couldn’t ask.
‘Hello, Mum,’ she greeted her mother in stilted English, bowing her head. The word fell from her lips, rusted with disuse. She kept her hands by her sides: keeping a distance for the sake of safety. The last time she’d seen her mother, she’d been wringing her hands and asking why, why hadn’t she come to her mother and said she wanted Mukhtar instead of Latif…
She couldn’t look at her father—then she couldn’t not look at him. A flicked glance—enough to see the painful guilt and eagerness to make amends—and she looked away. ‘Amal and Malik Al-Sud, this is…’ Now her uncertain gaze swung to Alim, taking in the utter opulence of the white-and-gold room as she turned. How did she introduce him?
‘Alim El-Kanar,’ Alim went on so smoothly it was as if he were on the other side of a mirror from her, able to finish her sentences. He moved forward, hand extended to her father. ‘I’m very pleased to meet you. You’ve raised a daughter of amazing strength and courage.’
After the men gripped hands to the elbow, a custom of respect here, and Alim bowed to her mother, there was an awkward moment. ‘Hana,’ her mother said again, taking a step forward.
Hana closed her eyes, shook her head. She didn’t want contact. Who sees how alone you are in your strength? She’d given her time, strength and self away, but no one but Alim had held her, comforted her in years; she’d been alone.
A hand rested on her shoulder, warm and strong. Alim. ‘Were you given coffee?’ he asked, giving her time, space from the emotion.
She wanted to rest back against him, to lay her hand over his and thank him for again coming to her rescue. How well he knew her, even when she’d done her best to lock him out—and she knew then that his accusation in the jet had been a hollow drum, a distraction for her sake: her heart was laid bare for him to see.
‘Yes, thank you, my lord.’ Her father’s voice, the first words of his she’d heard since that fateful night. You will marry Mukhtar, Hana, for your sister’s sake. It’s not Fatima’s fault you couldn’t control your passions!
‘I can’t do this. I—I have to—’ Hana whirled for the door.
‘Hana, don’t go. Please. We love you. We’ve missed you so much.’
Fatima’s voice, choked up. Hana stopped as if frozen in place. Slowly, her hands curled into fists. ‘At least you all had each other.’ Flat words, locking her sister out; she had no alternative unless she wanted to cry like a baby. ‘I hope you had a lovely wedding, Fatima. Better than mine was…or so I hear mine was. I missed the party.’ She turned, looked at her father for a moment, saw the anguish. ‘Perhaps we can have a family celebration of the annulment. I’d really like to be there to celebrate one major event in my life.’
Another stretch of silence that felt like dead calm water after a long storm, and she felt their pain as clearly as her own, and she tried to strengthen herself, to harden her heart. She felt close to breaking…
‘You’re thinner.’ Her mother’s voice quivered.
Still she couldn’t turn around, or look at them. ‘Rather hard to get enough to eat at times,’ she said, light and shadow together. ‘You either toughen up or fall apart in the Sahel.’
‘You served in the Sahel,’ Fatima said, her voice faint. ‘It’s the most dangerous place on earth…’
Hana shrugged. ‘As I said, you get tough when just finding enough to eat each day is the greatest challenge facing you. It makes other problems, like being forced into marriage with a drug runner, seem…insignificant.’
‘Excuse me, please. I have to meet my brother,’ Alim said quietly, and left the massive room, closing the doors behind him.
Hana watched him go, and hated him for leaving her here with these people…her family, half strangers now, just people she’d once known.
‘You saved his life,’ her brother Khalid muttered, shaking his head. ‘My little sister saved our sheikh and brought him back to his people.’
She shrugged, and didn’t answer. In this place, talking about Alim seemed too hard.
‘You are being touted as a national heroine,’ her mother said, shaky, emotional. Again her hand lifted, reached out to her.
Hana stepped back, aching, angry. ‘That’ll only last until the media finds out about Mukhtar. Then I’ll be a national disgrace, won’t I? Will you disown me then, too?’
‘Hana, please.’ Her father spoke, his voice pleading. ‘I know what I’ve done to you. When Mukhtar was arrested, and we knew you spoke the truth, I looked for you—’
‘Oh, only then?’ she asked lightly. ‘You didn’t try to find me before, force me back to my lawful master to spare you all any more family embarrassment? How long did it take you to work out that I didn’t lie to you, that I couldn’t possibly have slept with my fiancé’s brother?’
Her oldest sister Tanihah said quietly, ‘Hana, it’s over now, we know the woman you are. Now you’re back with us, where you belong. Can’t we move past this?’
‘I belong nowhere.’ Hana shook her head. Just don’t cry, don’t cry… ‘There’s nowhere to move to. You can’t possibly understand what it’s like to live as I have the past five years.’ Always running, terrified of being forced into Mukhtar’s bed—‘The damage is done, Tanihah.’ Saying her sister’s name—they’d once been so close—broke her. ‘I have to go.’
She ran to the door, yanked it open, and fled through into the main entrance, heading with unerring instinct for the nearest escape.
A burly guard blocked the way. ‘Miss al-Sud, my lord Sheikh has asked that you await him in his private chamber when your meeting was over.’
The look on the man’s face—calm, implacable—told her there was no way out. Alim had anticipated her escape, and made certain she couldn’t outrun her ghosts. She lifted her chin, nodded and followed the man to another room, knowing her family watched her through the open doors. She felt their hunger, their pain—the guilt eating at them.
Yet if it weren’t for what had happened, she’d never have met Alim…
With all her heart she yearned to go back in that room, to tell them it was all right, she forgave them, would be part of the family circle again. But the circle had fractured five years before, and, even if she could make peace, the cracks in the join would always show.
The damage is done.
‘Welcome home, Alim,’ Amber said in her quiet way. Alim felt the repressed emotion beneath. ‘It’s good to have you back.’
Is it? He smiled and played the game with his beautiful, cold sister-in-law. Truth was vulgar. Sweep all the dirt under the carpet and believe it never happened. ‘Thank you, Amber.’
This room had been Fadi’s reception room where he met foreign dignitaries. Alim had thought it would be too hard to be here, to see the reminders, but Hana’s painful reunion had somehow changed things for him. He felt warm, comforted by the memories…and if he still hadn’t forgiven himself for his part in Fadi’s death, and maybe never would, he knew it was time to come back to stay—and Fadi wouldn’t want it any other way. Fadi would always have wanted him to do his duty, and care for their people as they’d shared the care for their little brother…
He saw Harun watching his wife, cautious, reserved—his pride hiding the hunger only his big brother would know. Harun noticed Alim watching him, and said—they’d done the emotional thirty seconds when Sh’ellah released him—‘I’ve moved out of your room. It’s ready for you, as is your office, as soon as you want to resume your duties.’
Alim felt the savagery repressed inside his brother, a seething cauldron of resentment beneath. ‘Let’s not pretend. Don’t talk as if I’ve been sick for a few weeks. I was gone for years, and left all the grief and duty to you. Harun…’
His brother shrugged with eloquent understatement. ‘It wasn’t so bad.’
Wasn’t it? He saw the distance between husband and wife, lying there like all the arid wasteland of the Sahel. ‘I wanted to say, the choice is yours now. You’ve done a magnificent job of running the country, of picking up the pieces after Fadi’s death and my disappearance. If you want to remain the sheikh—’
‘No.’
The snarl took him by surprise—because it came from both Harun and Amber. He took the easier option, looking at Amber. Sure that her reasons would be easier to hear than Harun’s.
She flushed, and glanced at Harun; fiddled with her hands, shuffled a foot, and burst out, ‘I won’t play sheikh’s happy wife for anyone’s sake. I’m tired of the pretence that everything’s all right. I don’t care what my father wants any more. I want a divorce.’
She turned and walked out of the room with regal grace, as if she hadn’t just thrown a live bomb between the brothers.
Stunned, Alim could hardly bear to look at Harun, but when he did he saw Harun had been waiting for him to turn; his brother didn’t even look surprised. ‘And that’s why I said no,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m also tired of pretending everything’s all right. I’ve been standing in your place since long before Fadi died, helping him run the country while you were off playing the glamorous racing star, and again when you took off to play the hero. I’ve had ten years of living your life for you, Alim, including the wife who wanted you, not me. I’ve left everything you need to know in your office. I want my own life. The country’s yours, brother.’
Harun followed in his wife’s wake, leaving Alim to face the consequences of ten years of loving and respecting his brother without truly seeing him. ‘Fadi, where are you?’ he muttered, and rubbed his temples. The welcome home for the prodigal brother was far from what he’d hoped.
As he entered his office where she waited for him, one look at Alim’s face told Hana his meeting had been as devastating for him as hers had been for her. The blank, dark eyes, the lost misery melted her heart; his need was hers.
She walked into his arms, holding him close. ‘That bad?’
He nuzzled her hair with his lips. ‘Probably worse. You?’
‘Horrible,’ she whispered, and shuddered.
‘Harun and Amber are separating. Harun expects me to begin my duties immediately.’
She hugged him, wordless comfort—what could she say? ‘My family wants me to move past it and forgive them, and be a family again.’
‘They expect us to behave as if all these years never happened.’ There was a curious note in his voice. ‘For me, that’s only what I deserve. But you…’
She held him closer. ‘I want to forgive them, Alim. I just can’t look at them…’
Softly, he said, ‘Then maybe you should close your eyes and say it, really fast—and see how you feel when it’s out.’
‘I—’ Hana blinked and stared up at him, awed. ‘That just might work.’ She grabbed him by the hand and strode into the room where her family still waited; they knew her, knew she couldn’t hold out against them for long, no matter what they’d done.
‘Hana, my darling, if you’ll just listen—’
She lifted a shaking hand to stop her mother’s rush of words, trying to make better what would never be truly mended. She closed her eyes and said, hard and fast while clinging to Alim’s hand, ‘I forgive you. I want to be part of the family again, but I don’t want to be rushed. Don’t crowd me and don’t expect me to hug you and act like everything’s fine.’
A stifled sound from her mother was drowned out by her father’s voice. ‘We understand, nuur il-’en. If you will try to find true forgiveness in your heart one day, we can wait.’
Nuur il-’en: light of my eyes. Her father hadn’t called her that since the day Mukhtar—
Suddenly her breaths caught over and over until she was wheezing and hiccupping at once, and she couldn’t do anything but gulp while tears flowed unchecked, and broken words poured from her. ‘You thought I could cheat on Latif within weeks of the engagement, hurt you all, and risk my little sister’s future. You believed a stranger over your own daughter. You sacrificed me for Fatima’s sake, when I’d done nothing wrong. Why, why did you believe him, why?’
After a moment, her father said, simple and sad, ‘You have so much inside your heart to give, nuur il-’en. We always knew that when you gave your heart, it would be for life—but you didn’t give your heart to Latif. You merely liked him. You only agreed to marry him to please everyone. Then Mukhtar came along, and he was ten years younger, handsome and charming. We didn’t believe it at first—not until Latif said he’d always known you didn’t love him, and you and Mukhtar seemed to get on so well, always laughing and joking.’
&n
bsp; Hana stilled at the innate truth she hadn’t wanted to hear. She hadn’t loved Latif. She’d been willing to cheat him of a real, loving wife because she’d wanted to make everyone happy. And, yes, she had found Mukhtar a fun companion at first, until she saw the real person beneath the surface charm. That was why Mukhtar had been so convincing.
Then her father’s words slammed inside her soul like iron doors clanging. When you gave your heart, it would be for life.
Strong arms around her waist held her up when her knees shook. She turned into Alim’s warm, strong body, trying to gain composure, but she couldn’t stop crying. Since she’d met him all the emotion she’d stored deep inside her heart had begun flowing, and something deep inside told her she couldn’t find that safe place of distance ever again. She’d given her heart to Alim and would never have it back. She’d spend her life yearning for a man she couldn’t have…
‘My lord, you and our daughter seem very close,’ Hana’s mother said quietly.
Alim felt Amal al-Sud’s gaze on him, searching. In fact all five members of Hana’s family were staring at him. Hana moved as if to leave his arms, but he held her there. ‘Yes, we are.’ He made no apology for it.
‘You both must have gone through a life-changing experience,’ Hana’s brother Khalid said in a thoughtful tone, ‘but, my lord, you know…’
‘You’re aware we’re ordinary people,’ her father finished the sentence for his son, ‘and our daughter’s happiness is more precious to us now than ever.’
‘I want her happiness, too, because that’s what she’s brought to me.’ He thought of the meaning of her name, and smiled at Malik al-Sud. ‘I’ve already asked her to marry me, sir.’
‘Ordered me, you mean,’ the cheeky mumble came from the depths of his chest, but loud enough to make the entire family gasp.
He chuckled, and caressed her hair. ‘She’s right, I did—and I will marry her.’ He smiled down at Hana, knowing the effect it had on her. ‘Just as soon as she says yes.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Sheikh's Destiny (Harlequin Romance) Page 15