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He stopped abruptly and looked at her. ‘Yes, we’ll have to postpone the honeymoon.’ The tightness behind his words drew unease but it was the way he loosened his tie a moment later that caught her attention.
She’d never seen Zufar even a little bit dishevelled, and that included the moment he had found out his betrothed had disappeared through a window only hours before they had been due to wed. Now she watched as he released the first two buttons of his shirt with an angry flick of his elegant hands.
‘Oh?’
‘Only by a few days, perhaps a week.’
‘May I ask why?’
He exhaled harshly. ‘It seems one scandal in twenty-four hours isn’t enough for my family,’ he said by way of explanation. Ice-cold anger bathed his words and she watched, utterly fascinated, as he clawed a hand through his dark hair, upsetting its usually neat order.
He paced to the end of the room and abruptly reversed course.
Was it something to do with Amira? Unable to stand the suspense, she spoke. ‘Zufar...’
He froze, his eyes meeting hers across the wide space at her use of his name.
Nervous at the intensity of his gaze and the unsettling need to ease his angst, she slicked her tongue over her upper lip and plunged ahead. ‘Can...can I help?’
Surprise flickered over his face even as his gaze lowered to lock on her mouth. After a moment, he lifted his head.
‘I’m being blackmailed,’ he pronounced icily.
She gasped. ‘What? Is it about Amira?’ she forced herself to ask.
He frowned, then his jaw rippled. ‘No. It looks like her choice was definitive. I’ve seen security footage of her leaving the palace, which confirms she went of her own free will. I will no longer be wasting time and attention on her.’
The cold dismissal sent tremors through her, probably because of the quiet fury that lingered in his voice when he spoke of her. Perhaps he wouldn’t take her back but he wasn’t as unaffected as his words suggested.
‘Unfortunately, the new set of issues involves my sister.’
Niesha refocused, and frowned. ‘Princess Galila? What did she do? Is she okay?’
Zufar exhaled another breath full of ire. ‘She’s in the middle of what can politely be termed as a hissy fit. One she’s blindly refusing to admit is the result of her own actions.’ He started pacing again. ‘Apparently, she saw fit to get blind drunk at the wedding reception and let loose a few family secrets to a complete stranger,’ he snarled as he reached the far wall of the dressing room and reversed direction.
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‘What secrets?’
Zufar eyed her with narrow-eyed ferocity. About to pre-empt a response to mind her own business, she swallowed her words as he slowly advanced to tower over her. He seemed to be weighing his options. After a moment, his fist unfurled and he lowered his formidable length into the sofa next to her.
‘You’re part of this family now. If this gets out it will be better that you are armed with a response rather than caught off guard.’
It hurt a little to know the only reason he was confiding in her was because he didn’t trust her to react properly in public.
But then she reminded herself that she was barely twenty-four hours into this marriage. To Zufar al Khalia she was little more than a stranger thrust into his life by exceptional circumstances.
Niesha composed a nod, her spine straightening as she returned his gaze. ‘Very well.’
She waited.
For several heartbeats he assessed her. Then, ‘She revealed that our mother had an affair with Sheikh Karim’s father over three decades ago.’ He took a deep, hissing breath. ‘That the affair bore a son. The same son who took Amira yesterday. So Karim not only knows my family’s secrets, but he’s been made aware of the existence of his half-brother.’
Niesha’s jaw dropped, then her heart dropped lower. ‘What?’
He didn’t respond, letting the shock waves sink in.
She wasn’t aware how protectively she’d held the bubble of a happy-ever-after dream until Zufar callously burst it with his words. The royal family she’d spun her teenage dreams around was nothing more than a broken façade.
