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“Do you have friends? People you can trust enough to talk to?”
“I have my parents and Yusuf. Perhaps Bilal will become one now that he will be back in Zeena Sahra.”
“That is a short list.” Even with his cousin added to it.
“Trust for a man in my position cannot be offered on a whim.”
She could well imagine. Last night would not have helped with that, either. “I’m sorry.”
“For?”
“Last night.”
“I am not.” He shrugged. “I should be, but I enjoyed it too much to allow for genuine regret.”
He sounded like he thought that was a terrible weakness.
“You’re awfully hard on yourself.”
“My father says I feel the weight of the world on my shoulders.”
“Not carry?”
“No. He insists I do not need to carry the burden of responsibility that I do, but one day soon, I will rule in his place when I was never meant to do so. For his sake and that of my brother, I can offer nothing less than everything to my country.”
A brother’s death in childhood would have been devastating to any child, but for Sayed and the way it changed the course of his life? Even more so.
Looking into eyes filled with gravity to match his declarations, Liyah felt a twinge of emotion she refused to call love. “Maybe you are a little awe-inspiring, anyway.”
“I am glad you think so.” He grinned, the expression so unguarded it took her breath away.
CHAPTER TEN
“SO GENE CHATSFIELD was your mother’s lover?” Sayed asked, sounding pretty sure of her answer.
“Yes.”
“I imagine he has reasons for his distrustful attitude,” Sayed said mildly.
She still frowned. “But I wasn’t lying to him.”
“You and I know that, but he did not.”
Sayed’s belief in her honesty helped soothe the sting of her father’s blatant rejection and hurtful accusations.
“He didn’t even remember what she looked like,” Liyah said, still unable to grasp that particular reality.
How could he have forgotten such a special, wonderful woman?
“It sounds like he was in a bad place in his life when they met,” Sayed said, as if reading Liyah’s thoughts.
“That doesn’t excuse him seducing an innocent young woman and then forgetting about her as if she never mattered.”
“Many errors in judgment cannot be excused, but that does not mean they can never be forgiven.”
“So, you’re going to forgive Tahira?”
“Eventually,” he said, shocking Liyah. “But probably not until everything her defection has caused has been dealt with, and in a way that is not to the detriment of my people.”
