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“I’ll see you there,” she said, hoping he didn’t notice just how delayed her response was.
The woman didn’t take hints well. When he walked into his office, she was there, perched in the chair adjacent to his desk, her posture perfect, her legs crossed at those dainty ankles of hers. She didn’t wear nylons, though. Her legs were bare.
That stuck out to him. Mostly because it was rare for a woman in her position. But then, it was much hotter here than it was in Austrich. It could also account for what seemed to be a wardrobe entirely populated by brief, fitted dresses. All very modest in the technical sense, but showing just enough to light his imagination on fire.
It would almost have been better if she’d been dressed in something completely transparent. At least then the mysteries would be solved. If she was as pale and smooth all over as she looked, how full and round her breasts were without the aid of undergarments … important questions that were now overtaking his brain.
If he had known that all it would take was the presence of a woman to reawaken his hibernating sex drive he might have brought one in a long time ago.
To what end? To treat her to a front row show of your inner demons? To watch her run away screaming?
Like Amarah had done.
He couldn’t even blame her. He might be edging into beast territory now, but then … just after the attack … he had been nothing short of a monster.
He pushed all thoughts of Katharine’s body to the side and chose instead to embrace the extreme annoyance, the muscle-clenching tension that crowded in on him when she was around.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she said.
“Like what?” He rounded his desk and sat in the plush leather chair that was positioned behind it. It was too short for him. Made for another man. His brother. He had never replaced it.
“Like you’re shocked to see me here. I said I’d meet you here to discuss the agreement, and I am. It’s complicated stuff. With my father’s history of health problems there has always been the chance that whoever I married would have to stand in as Regent until Alexander reaches age, and that was, of course, taken into account when Malik was selected to be my … “
“Let me see.” He held out his hand, palm up, and she produced a folded stack of papers, placing them in his hand.
He skimmed the documents. Most of the information pertained to the marriage. Heirs. Alliances and trade agreements. Toward the end was the section talking about what might happen if the king died prior to his heir coming of age.
“The decision-making power is yours. I don’t want it,” he said. “Write that in.” He pointed to the spot.
She blinked rapidly, looking a bit like a stunned owl for a moment before shaking her head and leaning forward in her chair. “I can’t. Not without bringing it to parliament. And I would need my father’s permission and I … I don’t think you’ll get it.”
“Is he too ill to hold a pen?”
Color crept up her neck, into her cheeks. “He would rather have the power rest with you.”
“He doesn’t trust you?”
She sucked in a breath, her hands clenched tightly in her lap. “Well, I’m a woman.”
“I fail to see why that should matter. You have more guts than most men I’ve met.”
Her lips curved slightly and a strange, heated sensation, almost like satisfaction, spread through his chest. It was warm, almost too much after so many years of experiencing nothing more than bitter cold.
She almost made him want to feel. Made him want to let go.
“He’s a product of a different generation,” she said. “I don’t hold it against him.” And yet he could tell she did. That it lived in her, drove her forward. He knew about things like that. All too well. “This is my responsibility as far as he’s concerned. Protect the country by marrying a man capable of serving as Regent.”
He looked at her face, so earnest, so determined. So beautiful. His pulse sped up, the heat spreading through him. “I have my own country to run, I would be absentee at best, negligent at worst.”
“You couldn’t be as negligent as my cousin would be in your sleep.”
“Austrich will be your responsibility, whether we write it in the paperwork or not.”
“I … thank you.” She looked down at her hands, feigning an interest in her fingernails. “We have a parliament in place. It isn’t as though I can change laws or budgets or anything like that. It’s not terribly involved. Stand on the balcony and wave to the crowd.”
The crowd.
He closed his eyes and braced himself, a sharp flash, hazy, fast-moving images assaulting his mind as reality, his office, the desk, broke away piece by piece to make room for the memories. The crowd. Thick and loud. Surrounding the motorcade. It took a moment to realize that the barricade had been broken. That the people surrounding them weren’t citizens offering their greetings to the royal family.
It was all he could see. The sound deafening, roaring in his ears. The smell of smoke and sulfur filling his nose, the smoke choking him, his lungs burning. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think.
“Zahir?” Her voice broke through the fog.
He opened his eyes again and saw only his office. And Katharine, sitting there, looking at him. He could see concern in her clear green eyes. She had noticed. What had he done? He realized then that his fist was clenched tight, resting on the desk, so tight that his tendons were screaming at him.
He had lost himself for a moment. Lost where he was.
It didn’t happen as often now as it had. Because he knew better than to let his guard down now. Than to let emotion take over control. She had distracted him. And now she’d seen him … She had seen his weakness.
“I don’t do that,” he said, his throat constricted. Dammit. “The crowd thing, I mean.” He took a breath and tried to reorient himself. “I have more of a face for radio.”
She smiled again, this time the expression was tinged with a bit of discomfort, as if she wasn’t certain what the appropriate response was.
“You can laugh, it’s okay,” he grated.
She did then, a soft laugh, but it brought that feeling back, the warm one, stronger, spreading. He stopped it this time, cutting it off with the force of a tourniquet on a wound.
“Well, I make a lot of appearances,” she said.
“I know. You always seem to be in the news. Your fashion sense is much written about.”
She nodded. “Of course. Although, I often wonder if anyone would care what color tie I wore if I was a man, but I can’t really complain. It’s nice to have my country featured in international news. Even if it is just for my shoes. It boosts tourism.”
“Do you have a lot of tourism in Austrich?” He reached deep for control, for total control, to find that kind of blessed numbness he was so accustomed to.
“Only recently. But that’s been part of what I’ve been involved with over the past five years.”
Since his brother’s death. She needed to stay busy, he supposed. If everything had gone according to plan, she would have married Malik on her twenty-first birthday.
She seemed to miss his train of thought, because she breezed on. “We have a tram system that takes people up into the Alps. You can’t beat the views. And then there’s various resort properties I personally have funded the development of. We were in need of luxury vacation spots, and now, Austrich has become a very popular spot for vacationing royalty.”
“And that is partly due to your personal campaigning, I would think.”
“Do you think I go to all those parties for the canapés?” She arched her brow.
“I did. But I would not think so now.”
Katharine swallowed, hard to do around the sudden lump in her throat. Zahir, who wanted her here about as much as he might want a root canal, had just had a longer conversation with her about what she did than anyone in her family ever had.
Not only that, he seemed to understand. To see her as more than just a peripheral. Oh, her father was counting on her, he’d made that very clear. But he was counting on her to marry someone. Not to do anything that required her specifically. This had nothing to do with her skills or talents.
You’re beautiful. Of course he will say yes.
Oh, yes, she was beautiful. Her father had been confident in that being her ticket to marriage with Zahir. Funny, but Zahir didn’t seem to care at all. And if she didn’t possess anything more than a pretty face she would have failed.
Something her father would probably never know. She loved him, she truly did, but he saw so little of her it was stunning at times. Heartbreaking at others. But she didn’t have any energy to waste on feeling sorry for herself. Dealing with Zahir took everything she had.
“You might be surprised that some people do invite me to parties, though. Seeing as you’ve spent the better part of two days hoping to evict me.”
“I have agreed to this now, Katharine, I will not back out. You have my word. My protection, as does your country. I don’t give any of those things lightly.” His hand tightened into a fist and she wondered if he was going to pound it on the desk again, as he had done a few minutes earlier. It had been so strange, as though he wasn’t looking at her anymore. Like he was seeing something else. And then he’d been back, she’d seen the change in him.
It had scared her a little. Not for herself, but for him.
“This agreement,” he said, “it is what my father saw as the right thing for Hajar. What Malik saw as right. Who am I to disagree?”
“Then I suppose it’s time for me to call my family with the good news.”
Zahir looked at her for a moment, those searing, dark eyes boring into her. “Why exactly are you doing this, Katharine? For honor? Truly and simply for the good of your people?”
“Yes,” she said. She thought for a moment about whether or not this was the place to speak words she’d never dare say out loud before. But why not? In this room she’d given him honesty, and he had listened. He hadn’t pretended there was no way she could have accomplished what she had.
“For that, and because it’s the light at the end of the tunnel.” She couldn’t believe for a moment she’d truly said it. Because it was something she’d hardly acknowledged to herself. She’d been too afraid to. Afraid that if she admitted she was becoming unhappy with a purely duty-filled life she would find herself unable to complete the tasks set before her.
“In what way?”
“After our marriage ends … Alexander will be king. And I’ll be … I will always feel responsibility for my people, loyalty to my family. I will always work for the improvement of my country, but … It won’t have to be my sole focus anymore.” Maybe then she would be free of that feeling. That gnawing sensation that no matter what she did, she wasn’t doing enough.
He only looked at her, his expression unreadable.
“What about you?” she asked. “Do you have a light you’re aiming for?”
His hands curled into fists again and his gaze shifted slightly, his throat working. “I’m glad you see a light, Katharine. For me, there is only darkness.” He looked down then, shifted his focus to the computer screen that sat on his desk. “Now that we have all that settled, I have work do to.”
CHAPTER FOUR
KATHARINE hated being at a loose end. She never was back in Austrich. Her days were packed from start to finish. She reviewed their budget for charitable contributions, went to committee meetings and spent time volunteering at the largest hospital in the country. She never had a moment of her own, and that was fine with her. It made her feel … it made her feel useful.
But in Hajar there was nothing to do. No, specifically, in the palace there was nothing to do. She could only read for so long during the day before her eyes felt scratchy, and it was too hot in the middle of the day to do anything in the garden. She’d been out earlier, cutting flowers to add to the vacant vases she’d noticed when she’d first arrived. But the weather had moved past the point of sweltering, so now she was wandering the halls, staying cool thanks to the thick stone walls and that lovely air-conditioning they’d put in when they’d brought the palace out of the dark ages.
She was used to much cooler weather, crisp mountain air, not air that burned your lungs like fire when you sucked in a breath. Another part of the arrangement she hadn’t calculated. Not back when she’d been intending to marry Malik in the true sense of the word, and not when she’d come and proposed to Zahir.
Everything was so different. And she was starting to feel different.
A loud curse and shattering porcelain broke the lull of boredom she’d fallen into.
She quickened her pace, weaving through the labyrinthine halls until she saw Zahir, standing in front of the massive stone table that was placed against the wall there, the antique vase she’d place flowers in earlier shattered into uncountable, unfixable pieces. The flowers didn’t look like they’d survived the attack.
He looked up, his eyes black with rage. “Did you do this?”
“Did I do what? Maul those flowers?”
“Did you put the flowers here?”
“Yes, I put them in three vases that were empty. Here, in my room and in the entryway. Is that a dungeon offense these days?”
He walked over the ruined vase, his hard soled shoes grinding the shards of ceramic into powder, his gait uneven, the slight limp more pronounced than normal. “Do not change things like that without my permission.” He spoke slowly, his voice low, deadly. “You had no right to do this.”
A trickle of fear dripped through her, followed by a flood of anger that washed it away with its hot, fast tide. She stood, hands planted on her hips. “Don’t be such a … “
“Beast?” he growled.
“I was going to say bastard, but whatever works best for you. You might not mind living in that dark, sparse palace but I do. And it’s my home now, per your royal command, and it’s going to be my home until the end of our arrangement. I am not asking your permission to make changes in my own home.”
“It is not your home, latifa, make no mistake.”
“Is this some kind of stupid testosterone thing? Have I impinged on your territory there, lone wolf?” Anger was controlling her now, making her reckless, making her heart pound hard.
“Do not mock me.”
“Then don’t behave in a way that’s so … mockable.”
“You don’t understand. If you move things … “
“I didn’t move anything I … “
“You moved this.” He slammed his hand, palm down, onto the stone table.
“And?”
“And I ran into the damn thing!” he roared.
His words echoed in the corridor, hanging there between them, the reality slowly sinking into her mind. It stopped any response she might have had cold in her throat.
He lifted his hand from the table and she noticed, for the first time, that his palm was bleeding. Both of his palms were bleeding.
“What … ?”
“Stay back.”
“Zahir … “
He swallowed. “I know where things are in my home. I should not have to worry about anything being misplaced.”
She felt dizzy, mortified. A heavy weight crushed her chest. She had moved the table out from the wall, maybe two inches, so that the blossoms wouldn’t be squished. Such a stupid, shortsighted thing.
Now it made sense. Now she could picture it. Him coming out of his room, turning left. It would have been in the line of his blind eye, where he could not see. And he would have no reason to think anything had changed.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice muted. “Your hands …” She almost choked. He had fallen into the glass after knocking the vase over. What if he had hit his head? All because she’d wanted to add flowers to the room.
“Don’t move things,” he said again, a tremor running through his rough voice as he stood looking at her, black eyes fierce, his chest rising and falling sharply.
She tried to speak again, to say more impotent words of apology, but he turned and left her there, alone in the hall, pain spreading through her chest.
Not exactly a stellar way to start the day.
The best thing to do would probably be going after him But she didn’t want to. She wanted to curl up in a ball and hide from her own uselessness. From the whole situation. She hadn’t ever resorted to that tactic before, and she wasn’t going to do it now.
On a shaky breath, she bent down, careful to avoid the glass, and gathered the flowers back up. She felt sick, defeated. Like the kind of idiot woman her father imagined her to be. Although, failing at household tasks like decorating might make her even lower on his personal totem pole.
For one, terrifying moment, she believed it. She believed she couldn’t really do anything right. That she couldn’t do this.
No. You have to. You will do this.
Her own personal pity party wasn’t the important thing here anyway. What did matter was what that had cost Zahir.
“I’m sorry,” she said to the empty space, her throat tightening over the words.
He didn’t want to hear it from her, she knew that. He walked with a slight limp, one he did his best to mask, but she had noticed it. And she knew that something like this, something that forced him to acknowledge a weakness, a limitation, was the worst of nightmares. It was his pride that had suffered worst of all.
She just knew it, deep in her bones, as sure as she knew anything about herself.
She’d caused a problem, made a mistake, and now she was going to fix it.
* * *
Zahir took his fury, his humiliation, out on the pool in his gym. At least in the water his movements were smooth. He knew the length, knew just how many strokes it took to get to the end. Here there was no limp, his sight didn’t matter.
He stopped and gripped the edge of the pool cursing loudly, dragging his hand and droplets of water down his face, his palm burning where his flesh had been left raw and cut by the broken vase. But he welcomed that pain. Physical pain meant little to him. He’d survived more of it than any man should be able to.
But making such a fool of himself, showing such weakness, that was a true blow. He never did that. Now he had done it twice with her.
He looked up and saw pale, delicate ankles, then up farther to a set of shapely legs. Had she been any closer to the edge of the pool, he would have been treated to a lot more.
The woman had no sense of boundaries. “What is it you want, latifa?”
He tightened his jaw, grinding his teeth. His towel was across the gym, and she was there, standing, staring. Another chance to shock herself with his ravaged body? She hadn’t run the first time, but he did not go out of his way to show the scars that marred his body. Not out of vanity. But because they shamed him. Reminded him, every day, in every way, that he was less than he had been. That he shouldn’t be here.
Survivor’s guilt, his first doctor had called it. Naming it didn’t change anything. How else was he supposed to feel? Should he forget? Move on from the event that had taken everyone? If he forgot, who would remember? Who would carry it with them? He felt as though he was keeping them here. Anchoring them to this world.
Impossible, he knew. And yet the feelings remained.
“What does that mean?” she asked.
He placed his palms flat on the rough cement surrounding the pool, welcoming the pain it brought, the distraction, as he hauled himself out of the water in one fluid motion, bracing himself for the less than agile feeling that came with having his own two feet beneath him. Putting weight on legs that didn’t feel like they belonged to him.
Her eyes were glued to his torso and he fought the urge to cover himself. A strange, weak response. It should not concern him, what she thought of his body, of the scars that marked his skin, the deep groove that showed the loss of muscle and strength in his thigh.
He simply stood for a moment, daring her to look away. She didn’t. But then, she never did anything he expected—why should she start now? He would almost be disappointed if she descended into predictability. Almost.
He reached over to the nearby towel rack to pull off a black towel, dragging it over his chest, then around to his back. She watched him the whole time, and he felt his body responding to the open, female appraisal. It had been so long since he had felt a woman’s hands on his skin, and just as long since one had looked at him as though he were a man.
No one, other than his physician, had ever seen his body uncovered since the wounds had healed. Amarah had seen him when they were fresh. When there had been a hope of healing. They had been too much for her to handle then. Or, perhaps she could have handled the scars if the attack had only stolen his physical attraction. If it had not taken the very soul of who he was. Good that she’d run early so he hadn’t had the chance to bring her down with him.
Of course, unlike his ex, Katharine wouldn’t be running.
“It means beauty,” he said, discarding the towel, crossing his arms over his chest.
She looked slightly surprised to hear the translation. “Oh. Well, I thought it might mean ‘pain in the rear’ or something.”
A sharp twinge of amusement forced a laugh to climb his throat. “Not quite.”
Full, pink lips curved into a smile and cut through the defense he’d put up between them. She appealed to his body, as a woman did to a man. A whole man. And for a brief moment, he felt as though he were.
It only took a sharp, shooting pain from his diminished thigh muscle to remind him that wasn’t the case. Just like the desert would wilt a rose, he would wither Katharine, would steal the life from her.
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