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CHAPTER THIRTEEN
HER hands flew to her mouth, covering a gasp of horror.
‘My intended wedding day,’ he continued. ‘Definitely not a day of joy for anyone. It took the authorities three weeks to recover their bodies and those of their two companions, three weeks where I didn’t know whether to hope they would be alive or to hope their bodies would just be found as soon as possible. Three weeks of hell.’
She stepped closer, placing her hand on his arm. ‘Khaled, I’m so sorry.’
‘Are you? Then maybe you understand now why I set out to do what I did. My parents had been in London for the wedding preparations but two days before the bride was spirited away to marry someone else. My mother was distraught, my father embarrassed. There was no point them staying in London to sort out the mess. It wasn’t their mess to sort out. My father took her to her favourite resort in an effort to cheer her up, only…’
She squeezed his arm. ‘Khaled, I don’t know what to say—that’s a terrible thing to happen. But you have to realise, it was an accident. You can’t blame Paolo.’
‘Can’t I? Their deaths were the direct consequence of his actions. He didn’t just cost me a bride. He cost me my parents. He might as well have killed them himself!’ He moved away, just far enough away that she had to let go of his arm.
He didn’t want anyone touching him, he felt too raw, just as he had when he’d received the visit from the police, their faces glum, their eyes averted, coming to relate the message from the Swiss authorities that his parents had been swept away and they were doing everything humanly possible to save them.
Just like back then it felt that someone had grated the skin off his body—every part of him felt exposed and raw and weeping.
Her heart was breaking, her anger now tempered with sympathy. It was clear what his parents’ deaths had cost him. The young prince had lost his youth, had lost his chance to become his own person before being thrust prematurely into the leadership of the sheikhdom of Jebbai against the backdrop of tragedy.
No wonder he’d focused so much on the circumstances that led to his parents’ deaths. No wonder he’d dwelt so much on how he could seek retribution. Paolo was the obvious target.
But his words and the depth of his feeling were shocking. ‘Khaled,’ she said, ‘your parents died in tragic circumstances. But don’t let that spoil your whole life. Don’t let hate consume you. Don’t you think your parents would want you to get on with your life and not dwell on the circumstances of their deaths?’
‘You do not understand.’
‘I understand that it was fate that took your parents from you, and had it not been that day it might well have been another. What if the wedding had gone on as planned and they were killed in a motorway accident on their way to the wedding—who would you have blamed then, the bride for agreeing to marry you?’
‘That doesn’t make sense.’
‘Neither does pursuing someone to the ends of the earth for something they had no control over.’ He opened his mouth to protest and she launched straight into the next sentence without giving ground. ‘Yes, he spoilt your wedding plans, but don’t you see, he didn’t send your parents to the mountains? It was their choice, you said, to go there. They chose to be on that mountain, not Paolo. You can’t blame him for what happened next.’
‘And you don’t blame your mother for what’s happened between you and your sisters?’
His words took her by surprise and she reeled back. ‘That’s hardly the same thing…’
‘Isn’t it? She comes back from the dead and now you have competition for your sisters’ affections and you don’t like it. You actually resent her for being alive. Ironic, isn’t it, that I would have given anything for my mother to live and you would be quite happy if your mother had remained safely “dead”.’
‘Khaled! What a horrible thing to say.’
It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true. Sure, she wanted things to be the way they’d always been before, but that was hardly the same thing.
He took a deep breath and dropped his head back. He felt weary and sick. Heartsick. Was that the word for how it felt when your insides ached as though they’d been pulped?
There was nothing for it now. He had no other means of convincing her to stay, no other words he could say. She’d taken his declaration of love as a lie and why should she suddenly change her mind and believe him now? Attacking her just now would have been the last straw.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I should never have said that.’ He sighed, long and loud, with the aching tiredness of someone who had hated for far too long. ‘I think it’s best that I take you to the airport right away. Do you need help packing?’
She looked at him, all wide-eyed and pale, barely moving.
‘You have no need to fear. I will not stop you leaving tonight. I’ll arrange for the jet and crew to be on standby and send someone to pick up your bags in, say, half an hour?’
This time she nodded, her murmured assent the barest whisper. And then he let himself out of her rooms, letting his eyes drink in until the last click of the door the sight of her in the crumpled gown, committing her sweet lines to memory, knowing that he had forever lost the battle to make her his bride.
They were silent on the way to the airport and for that she was grateful. She doubted she could have spoken anyway, her throat chokingly tight, her chest feeling as if someone had squeezed all the air from it, so there would have been precious little anyway to give sound to her words.
Khaled sat brooding one seat’s width and yet an entire world away. He had given up and for that she should be happy. No more lies, no more promises or entreaties. No more declarations of love. She’d thought he might try to convince her that at least that much had been true, that he’d fallen in love with her and that there was still a chance for them, still a future together. She’d been expecting it. She’d even hoped that much was true.
But there had been nothing and the emptiness inside her grew as did her certainty that that, too, had been a lie.
