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He just stood there, staring at her, and she stared back, eight years of hunger ripping through all her stupid defenses.
Jet-black eyes set deep in his face, and even more now with the dark shadows beneath, gazed at her, a maelstrom of emotions blazing within. His aristocratic nose had a bump to it that hadn’t been there before. It looked as if it had been broken and had never healed right.
And then came the most sensuous, cruelest mouth she had ever seen. Even before the terrorist attack, even before she had left him without looking back, he had had a fierce, dark smile that stole into her very skin and lodged there.
Being at the receiving end of that smile had been like being in the desert at night. When the Prince of Dahaar had looked at you, he demanded every inch of your focus and you gave it to him, willingly.
Right now, the same mouth was flattened into a rigid line.
The white, long-sleeved shirt he wore was open halfway through, showing his thin frame. His long hair curled over his collar.
“Leave, Nikhat. Now,” he said, drawing her attention back to him. His gaze didn’t linger on her face. He didn’t meet her eyes, either. “Or I won’t be responsible for what I do next.”
“Apologize to me. That bottle could have done serious damage,” she said, giving up the fight against herself.
The moment she had stepped out of her suite into the dimly lighted corridor, unable to sleep a wink, and wandered through this wing of the palace, wondering if he was nearby, exposing herself to the guard outside, she had given up any sense she’d ever had.
Only, she had thought she would take a quick look and slink away in the dark of the night. Self-delusion had never been her weakness and she couldn’t let it take root now.
“No,” Azeez said without compunction. “Didn’t my brother warn you? You took the risk of visiting a savage animal in the middle of the night.”
“I’m not afraid of you, Azeez. I never will be.”
She took another step, bracing herself for the changes in him. He had lost weight and it showed in his face. The sharp bridge of his nose, and those hollowed-out cheekbones, they stood out, giving him a gaunt, hard look.
“Ayaan told me about you last night,” she said, opting for truth. One gut-wrenching lie was enough for this lifetime. “I couldn’t wait. I…couldn’t wait till morning.”
He fisted his hands at his sides, his fury stamped into his features. “And?” he said in a low growl that gave her instant goose bumps. He clasped her cheek with his fingers, moving fast for a man in obvious pain. His grip was infuriatingly gentle yet she knew he was holding back a storm of fury.
His gaze collided with hers and what she saw there twisted her stomach; it was the one thing that did scare her. His eyes were empty, as though the spark that had been him, the very force of life that he had been, had died out.
“Have you seen enough, latifa? Is your curiosity satisfied?”
She clutched his wrists with her fingers, refusing to let him push her away.
And it wasn’t for him. It was for her.
She hadn’t cried when she had learned the news of the terrorist attack and of his death. Her heart had solidified into hard rock long before then. And she wouldn’t cry now. But she allowed herself to touch him. She needed to know he was standing there. She touched his face, his shoulders, his chest, ignoring his sucked-in breath. “I’m so sorry. About Amira, about Ayaan, about you.”
With a gentle grip, he pushed her back. There was nothing in his gaze when he looked at her. Not fury, not contempt, not even resentment. His initial shock had faded fast and he looked as if nothing she said would ever touch him. “Are you, truly?” he whispered.
“Yes.”
“Why, Nikhat?”
She wasn’t responsible for the terrorist attack, she knew that. And yet, nothing she had said to herself had prepared her for the tumult of seeing him like this.
“You’re not responsible for what I’ve become. But if you want, you can do me a favor.”
The force of his request didn’t scare her. If she could do something to help him, she would. Ayaan had been right. She owed it to Azeez. “Anything, Azeez.”
“Leave Dahaar before the sun is up. Leave and never come back. If you have ever felt anything true for me, Nikhat, do not show me your face ever again.”
Nikhat stood rooted to the spot as he walked away from her. It seemed she was always going to disappoint him.
She couldn’t leave now, just as she hadn’t been able to stay when he had asked her eight years ago.
CHAPTER TWO
AYAAN PUT HIS coffee cup down on the breakfast table when he heard the sound that hammered at him with relentless guilt. The sound of his brother’s approach.
Catching his wife’s gaze, he saw the same shock coursing through him reflected in her eyes.
In the four months since he had practically dragged his brother to the palace, Azeez hadn’t stepped foot into the breakfast hall once. Despite Ayaan’s innumerable pleas. And today…
Ayaan signaled for the waiting staff to leave just as the sound of Azeez’s harsh breathing neared the vast table. He pushed his chair back and looked up. Suddenly, the morning seemed brighter. “Would you like some cof—”
He never saw the punch coming. Shooting pain danced up and down his jaw as it landed, his vision blanking out for a few seconds.
Her loud, abrasive curse word ringing around them, his wife reached him instantly. Ayaan rubbed his jaw and looked up just in time to see Zohra march around his chair and push his brother in the chest.
Azeez’s mouth was curved into a fiendish smile, and Ayaan was about to interfere, when Azeez stepped back from Zohra. He mocked a curtsy, his mouth curled into a sneer. “Good morning, Your Highness, you look…lovely.”
“You are acting like an uncivilized thug,” Zohra said, her gaze furious.
“I am an uncivilized thug, Princess Zohra,” his brother replied with a hollow laugh. “And it is your husband who is keeping me here.”
Flexing his jaw, Ayaan turned to his brother and froze.
Ferocious anger blazed out of that jet-black gaze he knew so well. The same gaze that had been filled with emptiness, indifference, for four months. The constant, hard knot in his gut relented just a little. “What was that for?”
“You are the future king of Dahaar, Ayaan, not of me. Keep your arrogant head out of my affairs.”
Settling back down into his chair, Ayaan took a sip of his coffee. “I have no idea what you refer to, Azeez.”
“I want her out of here.”
The vehemence in his brother’s words doubled his doubts. “Why are you so concerned about Nikhat’s presence?”
Leaning his hip on the solid wood, Azeez bent. “I think all this power is going to your head. Don’t manipulate me, little brother. Or I will—”
“What, Azeez?” Ayaan refused to back down. His cup clanged on the saucer in the ensuing silence, hot liquid spilling onto his fingers.
“You’ll shoot yourself? I fell for that until now, but not anymore. If you were going to kill yourself, you had numerous chances to do it over the past six years. You would have been killed by that bullet. And yet here you are, stubborn as ever and intent on destroying yourself the hard way.” Silence snarled between them. “Nikhat is not going anywhere. Not for at least six more months.”
Emotion flashed in his brother’s gaze but Ayaan had no idea which one.
“If your plan is to bring back memories that will suddenly fill me with a love for life, how about some good ones, Ayaan? Why don’t you invite one of the numerous women I slept with six years ago to the palace?” He slanted a wicked glance at Zohra before looking at Ayaan again. “There used to be a particularly sexy stripper in that nightclub in Monaco who could do the wildest things with her tongue. If you want to see me rejoin the living, send the starchy doctor away, build a pole in my wing and have that stripper on a…”
His words tapering off, his brother looked as if he was the one dealt a punch.
Nikhat stood at the entrance to the hall. Against the colorful, blood-red rug on the wall behind her, she looked deathly pale. Their gazes locked on each other, Azeez and Nikhat stood unmoving, as if they were bound to each other.
Tension coiled tighter and tighter in the air around them.
His brother recovered first. And watching him closely, seeing a dark light come to life in his eyes, Ayaan realized that he’d made a terrible mistake.
“I’m regaling my brother and his wife with stories about Monaco. Was it the year right after you left?”
Beneath the humor, something else reverberated in Azeez’s words, filling the vast hall with it.
“Does it matter when it was that you went around seducing the entire female population in Monaco, shaming Dahaar and your father with your wild exploits?” Nikhat delivered with equally lethal smoothness, even as her skin failed to recover its color.
Walking around Ayaan to Zohra’s side, Nikhat whispered something to her. And walked out of the hall without another glance at his brother.
“Enough games, Ayaan. Why is she here?” Azeez roared the moment she left.
“Zohra is pregnant and is having complications. Nikhat is one of the best obstetricians in the country today. I need her to take care of my wife.”
Azeez turned toward Zohra, his gaze assessing. “Congratulations to both of you. If she has to be here, keep her out of my way. Tell her she’s forbidden from seeing me.”
“I won’t tell her any such thing. Nikhat is practically a member of this family. And she’s doing me a favor. So unless you want to be my personal prisoner for the rest of your life, you better behave yourself.”
“You’ve become a damn bastard, brother.”
Ayaan laughed, the first in a long time he had truly done that. “I had to become one for Dahaar, Azeez. See, I wasn’t born one like you are. It’s the reason why you were so good at being the Crown Prince too. The minute you want it back, the crown’s yours.”
“That was a lifetime ago.” Tight lines fanning around his mouth, Azeez stepped back. As if Ayaan had asked him to jump into the fiery pit of hell. “It’s all yours now.”
Azeez left the room, leaving a dark silence in his wake.
Once, his brother would have given his life to Dahaar. Once, a fire had shone in his eyes at the mere mention of it.
“Something’s changed in him,” Zohra said, a hint of warning in her voice. “And…Nikhat looked like she would break apart with one word from him.”
Reaching for her outstretched hand on the table, Ayaan nodded. In four months of banging his head against the intractable wall that his brother had become, this was the first time there was a faint crack. He felt tremulous hope and excruciating guilt.
“Did you know if they were more than friends?”
Ayaan shook his head. He hadn’t known before, but something his servant Khaleef had said in a throwaway comment had stuck with him. So he had taken a gamble and commanded Nikhat’s father to summon her.
Being right had never left such an ugly taste in his mouth.
* * *
After a couple of wrong turns, Nikhat reached the courtyard behind the wing she had been shown to three days ago. High walls surrounded the courtyard, shielding it from any curious gazes.
It was only ten in the morning but the sun was already bright and hot. Wiping the beads of sweat on her forehead, she sat down on the bench near a magnificent fountain. The rhythmic swish of the water, the scent of roses coating the air…it was a feast for the senses, but she couldn’t get her stretched nerves to relax.
For three days, she had been busy with Princess Zohra and yet going out of her mind, intensely curious to see Azeez again.
She had dreamed of him so many times when she had thought him dead, had imagined all the things she would say if she had one more chance to see him, to touch him, to hold him…
Reality, however, didn’t afford her the same recklessness.
Closing her eyes, she leaned back and felt the sun caress her face. She couldn’t let him unsettle her any more than she could weave silly dreams again just because he was back from the dead.
She would be of no use to Ayaan either way.
Taking her Crocs off, she dipped her toes in the water. It was forbidden to do so, but the cold water tickled her feet. Drops splashed onto her leggings. Her jet lag was gone, but she still wasn’t used to the quiet that surrounded her after the mad rush back in the hospital in New York. Nor was she happy with the way things were run here, even though she had known to expect it.
Even with Ayaan’s command that she was solely in charge of Zohra’s care, her instructions had been met with resistance from the numerous medical advisers and staff that surrounded the Princess. Which only made her realize how much she would need the royal family’s backing to succeed in Dahaar and even more resolute to make a difference.
It couldn’t have been more than two minutes when her skin prickled in alarm. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. The relentless heat of the day receded for a minute. A shadow. Her heart stuttering in her chest, she realized who stood over here, stealing the warmth from around her.
Keeping her eyes closed, she took a moment to pull herself together. She opened her eyes slowly and sat up straighter on the bench.
His gait uneven, Azeez walked to the bench on her left. His face tightened, his right hand flexing into a fist as he slowly slid into the seat.
He hadn’t shaved and the beard coming in made him look even more dangerous. His eyes still had that haggard, bruised look, the planes of his cheekbones prominent.
The pristine white shirt hung loose on his frame while his cotton trousers hung low and loose on his hips. They made him look darker than usual, but not enough to hide the tiredness from his face.
His will was a force of nature and offense was her best course if she wanted to get through. She made no effort to curb the stinging comment that rose to her lips. “That hip will be permanently useless if you continue like this. Even in the state you’re in, I believe…”
Those thickly lashed eyes trapped hers, a puzzle in it. She couldn’t have looked away for anything in the world. Everything else she could control, curb, but not the greediness with which she wanted to look at him. “I believe you still have enough sense to know that.”
“Ya Allah, stop looking at me like that.” His low growl rumbled over the silent courtyard.
“How am I looking at you?” she said, tucking her feet beneath her legs.
He leaned his head back, giving her a perfect view of the strong column of his neck. Even dressed in the most casual clothes, he epitomized supreme male arrogance and confidence that had always messed with her usually practical personality. And continued to do so, if she was ready to admit the truth. “Like you cannot stop, like you want to eat me up alive.”
The heat rising through her cheeks had nothing to do with the sun. “That’s not true.”
He leaned forward, his gaze thoughtful. “Yes, it is. There’s a temerity in your gaze now. You always knew your own mind, but now, it’s like your body has caught up.”
She shrugged, holding herself tight and still under his scrutiny. The look he cast in her direction was thorough. “I’m not a shy twenty-two-year-old anymore.”
“I can see that.” A lick of something came alive in his gaze. “I can almost see you staring down your patients into good health.”
She laughed, half to hide the little tremble that went through her. “I do have a reputation as the scary doctor. If only things could be fixed so simply. And you’re right. I can’t stop looking at you. I can’t stop wondering what in Allah’s name you think you’re doing to yourself.”
His jaw tightened, his nostrils flared.
For anyone looking from afar, they would seem like two old friends chatting up each other. And yet the courtyard felt like a minefield. She had to take every step carefully with him. And not because she was scared of him, but of herself.
Her stupid midnight jaunt had already proved her brain wasn’t functioning at its normal, rational level.
He ran his palm over his jaw, his gaze never moving from her. “Is it true?”
“Is what true?”
“The palace has been ringing with it. And apparently, it is the first time in three days that you have a minute to yourself.”
“So you’re not completely oblivious to the world around you? That’s always a good sign.”
“Don’t show off your credentials with me, Nikhat. Is Princess Zohra having complications with the pregnancy?”
There was no nuance to his words. She had no idea if he was worried for the Princess, no way to gauge how deep the emptiness in him was. And more than anything, the very thought she might not be of any use to him scared her. “Yes.”
“How serious is it?”
“I have ordered some more tests for her. Her blood pressure is at dangerous levels. She needs rest and she needs to take it easy. Stress is adding to her complications. From what I’ve seen in the last two days, you’re at the root of it.”
“Just because I punched her husband?”
“You punched Ayaan? Why?”
Because Ayaan had brought her here, the answer came to her in the taut silence.
Do you hate me so much?
The pathetic, self-indulgent question lingered on her lips. But there was no point in asking it. There was no point in giving the past even a passing thought.
“You have really changed,” she said, hoping to find a hole in that indifference he wore like armor, hoping to land a blow. “The Azeez I knew would have never lifted his hand against his brother, would have never thrown a bottle at an innocent, harmless woman.”
He chuckled, and the unexpected sound of it shocked her. Sharp grooves appeared in his cheeks. “You are neither innocent nor harmless. I was drunk. It was your own fault for walking into a man’s wing in the middle of the night where you’re forbidden.”
“And you throw bottles at imaginary figures when you are drunk?”
“Only at you.”
The barb cut through her, knocking her air from her lungs. She drew in a jagged breath, swiping her gaze away from him. This was the future she had wanted to avoid eight years ago—his resentment, his bitterness. Because Azeez had never hidden from what he felt, neither had he let her. And yet, after everything she had done, she was right where she didn’t want to be—the cause of that resentment.
She looked up and found him studying her with a curious intensity. “I’m serious, Azeez. Princess Zohra needs to rest and relax. Unless you do something that allays her concerns for Ayaan, she’s only going to get worse.
“She…loves Ayaan very much. And the fact that he’s worried about you is directly transferring to her.”
“She’s the future of Dahaar. I don’t want anything to happen to her.”
Did he realize he had betrayed himself? From everything Ayaan had said, Azeez had claimed he didn’t care about anything. “Is it only the future of Dahaar that concerns you? Not what you are doing to Ayaan, to your parents? To yourself?”
He shot to his feet so quickly that Nikhat jerked her head up. Just in to time to see the flash of pain in his face. “This is where this session ends. You’re not my friend. You’re definitely not my doctor.
“You’re a servant to the royal family. Do your job. Look after Princess Zohra. Believe me, there’s nothing you can do to help me. Except disappear, maybe.”
“I’m not leaving, Azeez. Not until I accomplish my job. And as to Ayaan’s belief in me, I’ve never let down the royal family’s trust in me until now and I never will.”
“Never, Nikhat?”
Her breath trapped in her throat, Nikhat hugged herself. “Never.”
Nodding, he came to a stop at the wide arched entrance, the sun shining behind him casting shadows on his features. She had no idea what he saw in the mirror when he looked at himself, what tormented him from the past. But the fact that he was here, concerned for the Princess, gave her hope like nothing else could.
“I never thought of you as naive.”
Uncoiling her legs from under her, she took a moment to compose herself. The last thing she wanted was him talking about her. “I used to be. But not anymore. I’m not the girl you once knew, Azeez.”
“Why obstetrics of all the specializations? Why not cardiology?”
She stayed painfully still, amazed at how easily, even after all these years, he could drill down to the heart of the matter. How well he knew her.
“Your mother’s been dead for eighteen years, Nikhat. You cannot save her or the child she died giving birth to.”
It took everything in her for Nikhat to stay standing.
“Do I need to have your case history checked?”
“What do you mean?”
“Princess Zohra is valuable to Ayaan and Dahaar.” This time, Dahaar was the afterthought to his brother. “Will you be able to keep your objectivity when the time comes? Or are you fighting a never-ending battle with yourself and trying to save your mother again and again?”
She flinched, his words finding their mark. She could feel the blood leaving her face, but in this, she would not keep quiet. In this, she would not let him find fault.
“Hate me all you want, Azeez, but don’t you dare insult my ability as a doctor or my reasons for it. I chose obstetrics because, with all the progress your family has made for Dahaar, there are so many things in women’s health that are still backward, so many antiquated notions that dictate a woman’s life.
“My profession has nothing to do with the past. It’s my life, my future.”
“As long as you are remember that, Dr. Zakhari. Because you paid a high price for that, didn’t you?”
Nikhat sank back to the seat, her own lie coming back to haunt her.
He still thought she had left him because her love for her dream had been more than her love for him. And crushed under the weight of the truth, she had let him believe the lie.
She had paid a high price. She had paid with her heart, with her love. She had paid for something she couldn’t change. And she had meticulously built her life from all the broken pieces to let even the Prince of Dahaar shatter it.
CHAPTER THREE
AZEEZ LEANED AGAINST the wall outside Ayaan’s office and sucked in a harsh breath. Sweat trickled down his shoulder blades after the long walk from his wing to this side of the palace. Closing his eyes, he rubbed his palm over the right hip, willing the shooting pain to relent.
But of course it didn’t. He’d spent the past four months drinking himself into oblivion, uncaring of if he ate or moved. His negligence was coming back to him in the form of excruciating pain. His hip was sore from months of inactivity, from lack of exercise. Breathing in and out through the dots dancing in front of him, he slowly sank to the floor.
His brother had been right. There had been more than one occasion when he had wished himself dead. But he hadn’t actually indulged the thought of killing himself.
His list of sins was already long enough without committing one against God, too. So he had carried on, uncaring of anything, uncaring of what a wasteland his life had become.
But his self-loathing, his lack of interest in his life, his lack of respect for his own body—as long as it had been only him who faced the consequences, he had been fine with it. But now…
Now it was beginning to fester into his brother and his wife.
After everything he had gone through, after recovering from the blood loss because of the bullet wound he had taken during the terrorist attack, waking up amidst strangers with a useless leg, realizing what he had become, after the excruciating pain of keeping himself away from his family, he could not allow this.
Whatever rot was in him couldn’t be allowed to spread, couldn’t be allowed to contaminate the good that was finally happening in his family. He couldn’t be allowed to take more from them, from Dahaar.