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And in the dark, where he couldn’t see her, Cleo’s eyes filled with tears.
She waited. She kept herself from crying—which she was certain he would notice no matter how drowsy he was—by sheer force of will. The minutes ticked by, and Khaled drifted off to sleep. And soon enough the clock on the nightstand told her it was nearing three o’clock, which meant it was finally time.
This is it, she told herself, oddly paralyzed now that the moment had come. Now that this was actually happening. It’s now or never.
She told herself that the thing she felt, heavy and bristly and painful, was anything at all but grief.
He didn’t wake when she sat up. He didn’t even twitch, and still she had to order herself to climb out of the bed and do this.
She moved carefully across the floor and crept into the dressing room, closing the door behind her. In the corner stood a selection of wrapped gift boxes, which the odious Margery had selected and Cleo had announced she wanted to inspect personally before they handed them out to Khaled’s business associates on this trip. Playing the good wife all the way to the hilt. She’d swapped one of them for her own box back in Jhurat, and that was the one she opened now, expecting to feel nothing but sheer triumph when she pulled out her battered backpack.
Instead, she felt a rush of something far too bittersweet to name.
She shoved it aside and unzipped the pack, dressing quickly. Her favorite jeans, a bit baggier now then she remembered. A long-sleeved T-shirt she knew was comfortable for long trips and a zip-up hooded sweater over it for warmth. Her old Chuck Taylors.
All the emotion that Cleo was fighting so hard to keep at bay swamped her. She screwed her eyes shut, forced herself to breathe past the constriction in her throat, and then she swung the backpack over her shoulders and moved back into the bedroom.
Carefully. Quietly.
Faint light from an outside streetlamp peeked through the drawn curtains, and Khaled lay sprawled in the center of the bed the way he always did, as impressive in sleep as he was awake and aware. As formidably, ruinously beautiful.
More so, perhaps, because it was only when he slept that she could look at him without any mask. Without having to play these terrible games. When she could simply admire him. When he looked softer, more approachable. More hers.
And standing there in the gloom of the late night, dressed like the backpacker nobody she’d been when he’d found her, Cleo stared at him for far too long and wished this wasn’t so hard. That it didn’t hurt.
How could she have fallen in love with this man?
And why, when he’d made it perfectly clear how little he felt for her and how pathetic her romantic dreams were, hadn’t it gone away by now?
He shifted in his sleep then and Cleo froze—certain that her hesitation had ruined everything.
But he didn’t wake, and this time, with her heart clattering against her ribs and holding her breath against the fear that she’d lost her only chance to do this, she started for the door and the private elevator that would whisk her away from him.
It was the longest walk of her life.
And when she reached the door, put her hand on the doorknob, she knew.
If she looked at him again, she’d stay. It was that helpless addiction that racked her to her bones. It was that need she couldn’t seem to banish, even now. If she looked at all at his fierce, proud beauty one more time she’d keep gambling that somehow she could break through to him—and that it was worth trying. She’d keep lying to herself about what this marriage was and lose herself completely in the role she’d taught herself to play for him.
How soon would it cease being an act? How soon would she simply become that perfect, empty shell with none of her inside?
Wanting him wasn’t enough. He was the Sultan of Jhurat, and he could replace her. She had no doubt at all that he would—he’d told her that himself. He’d been perfectly, hideously clear. It was long past time she took him at his word.
Cleo pulled in a very deep breath, then let it out slowly.
She ignored the wetness that spilled over from her eyes and down her cheeks, kept her blurry gaze straight ahead of her, and when she walked out on Khaled bin Aziz, Sultan of Jhurat, she didn’t let herself look back.
* * *
Khaled didn’t think anything of it when he woke to discover that Cleo had left their bed. She did that sometimes, didn’t she, he thought with more than a little irritation as he stood beneath the pounding heat of the shower. It was more of that slick, to-the-letter obedience of hers that rubbed like a hair shirt against his skin, leaving him nothing but raw and grim.
