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Her lips trembled and so did her body, responding instantly to his touch, and silently she raged against her traitorous hormones. But it was a sign of her weariness that she let him guide her over to the sofa.
Heavily, she slumped down and looked up at him. ‘Well?’
He sat down beside her, seeing the momentary suspicion which clouded her eyes as, casting around in his mind, he struggled to find the right words to say. Clumsy sentences hovered at the edges of his lips until he realised that nobody really gave a damn about the words—only about the sentiment behind them. ‘I want to tell you how sorry I am, Izzy. Truly sorry.’
She shook her head. ‘You’ve said sorry before,’ she said, blinking back the stupid tears which were springing to her eyes and which seemed never far away these days.
‘That was back then—when neither of us was thinking straight. When the air was full of confusion and hurt. But it’s important to me that you understand that I mean it. That in the cold light of day I wish I could take back those words I should never have said. And that I wish I could make it up to you in some way.’
She stared at him, thinking how strange it was to hear him sounding so genuinely contrite. Because Tariq didn’t do apology. In his arrogance he thought he was always right. But he didn’t look arrogant now, she realised, and something in that discovery made her want to meet him halfway.
‘We both said things we shouldn’t have said,’ she conceded. ‘Things we can’t unsay which are probably best forgotten. I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you about the baby sooner.’
‘I don’t care about that. Your reasons for that are perfectly understandable.’ There was a pause. The heavy lids of his eyes almost concealed their hectic ebony glitter. ‘There’s only one thing I really care about, Izzy—and that’s whether you can ever find it in your heart to forgive me?’
She bit her lip as hurt pride fought with an instinctive desire to make amends. Because wasn’t this something she was going to have to teach her baby—that forgiveness should always follow repentance? And there was absolutely no doubt from the stricken expression on Tariq’s face that his remorse was genuine.
‘Yes, Tariq,’ she said softly. ‘I can forgive you.’
He stared at her, but her generous clemency only heightened his sense of disquiet. It made him realise then that if they wanted some kind of future together he had to go one step further.
But it wasn’t easy—because everything in him rebelled against further disclosure. Wasn’t it his ability to close off the painful experiences in his life which made him so single-minded? Wasn’t it his reluctance to actually feel things which had protected him from the knocks and isolation of his childhood? Success had come easily to Tariq because he hadn’t allowed himself to be influenced by emotion. To him, emotion was something that you blocked out. Because how else could he have survived if he had not done that?
Yet if he failed to find the courage to confront all the darkness he’d locked away so long ago then wouldn’t he be left with this terrible lack of resolution? As if he could never really get close to Izzy again? As if he was seeing her through a thick wall of glass? And what was the point of trying to protect himself from emotional pain if he was going to experience it anyway?
‘There are some things you need to know about me,’ he said. ‘Things which may explain the monster I have been.’
‘You’re no monster,’ she breathed instantly. ‘My baby’s not having a monster for a father!’
‘There are things you need to know,’ he repeated, even though his lips curved in a brief smile at her passionate defence. ‘Things about me and my life that I need to explain—to try to make you understand.’
He frowned. He struggled to put his feelings into words—because in a way wasn’t he trying to make himself understand his own past?
‘I’ve never had a problem with the way I live,’ he said. ‘My work life was a triumph and my personal life was...manageable. I was happy enough with the affairs I had. I liked women and they liked me. But as soon as they started getting close—well, I wanted out. Always.’
Isobel nodded. Hadn’t she witnessed it enough times before experiencing it for herself? ‘And why do you think that was?’ she questioned quietly.
‘Because I had no idea how to relate to people. I had no idea how to do real relationships,’ he answered simply. ‘My mother was so ill after my birth that I was kept away from her. My father was run off his feet with the ongoing wars with Sharifah—so my relationship with him was pretty non-existent, too. And the nurses and nannies who were employed to look after me would never dare to show love towards a royal child, for that would be considered presumptuous. Children only know their own experience—but even if at times I felt lost or lonely I did not ever show it. In that strongly driven and very masculine environment it was always frowned on to show any weakness or vulnerability.’
Vulnerability. The word stuck to her like a piece of dry grass. It took her back to when she’d seen him lying injured on the hospital bed—for hadn’t it been that self-same vulnerability which had made her feelings towards him change and her heart start to melt? Hadn’t it been in that moment when she’d started to fall in love with Tariq? When he’d shown a side of himself which he’d always kept hidden before?
‘Go on,’ she said softly.
‘You know that they sent me away to school in England at seven? In a way, my life was just as isolated as it had been in the palace. For a while I was the only foreign pupil—and I was the only royal one. And of course I was bullied.’
‘You? Bullied? Oh, come on, Tariq! As if anyone would dare try.’
He gave a wry smile. ‘There are more ways to hurt someone than with your fists. I was certainly excluded on a social level—never invited to the homes of my classmates. My saving grace was that I made every sports team going and I had first pick of all the girls.’ He shrugged as he realised that was about the time when he had begun to use the veneer of arrogance to protect him. ‘Though of course that only increased the feelings of resentment against me.’
?
?I can imagine.’ She sighed as she looked at him, longing to take him in her arms but too scared to dare try. Still afraid that nothing had really changed and that he would hurt her again as he had hurt her before. And besides, if he really meant it then didn’t he have to come to her?
He saw the fear and the pain which clouded her face, and it mirrored the aching deep inside him. A terrible sense of frustration washed over him as he looked into her tawny eyes.
‘Oh, Izzy—can’t you see that I’m a novice at all this stuff? That for the first time in my life I don’t know what to do or what to say? I’ve never dared love anyone before, because I didn’t want to. And then when I did—I didn’t know how to.’
She blinked at him, unsure whether she’d just imagined that. Love? Who’d said anything about love?
