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A brittle laugh escaped her. “I like certainty,” she said after a moment’s consideration. And refusing to be cowered by the directness of his stare, she continued, “I knew what I was getting when we married. I knew you would have your concerns, your life, and that you wouldn’t want me to be a part of it. Not more than was necessary, in any event.” Unconsciously, she lifted her left hand and stared at the enormous engagement ring. “And while you were busy being Sheikh, I would be free to live my own life.”
There was a hollow ring to the words that had the Sheikh wondering at what kind of messed up lack of independence had led her to believe that a royal lifestyle, under the microscope of a fascinated press and adoring public, would be preferable to being single?
“So despite your parents, you still have faith in the institution of marriage?”
“Our marriage is nothing like theirs,” she said with a grim smile.
“How did it differ?”
“Our marriage is barely a marriage,” she pointed out, distracting herself by reaching for a small wedge of peach and sliding it between her lips. His focused attention on the action almost threw her train of thought. “Up until a few nights ago, we hadn’t seen one another in six months.”
“Whose fault is that?” He prompted.
She laughed in spite of herself. “Oh, no, you don’t! You don’t get to rewrite history, Rafiq Al-Khalil. You wanted me here about as much as I wanted to be here – which is to say, barely at all. I think it suited us both to have a degree of separation in our marriage.”
He nodded slowly, but there was something like regret in his face. “And yet how quickly you’ve become an addiction in my blood. How did that happen?”
She was startled – startled, shocked, pleased, surprised. She swallowed, and looked upwards, towards the stars overhead.
“I like to know what’s expected of me,” she said, returning to their earlier, safer conversation.
“You like safety,” he said with a nod that was rich with approval.
“Yes.”
“I understand that.” He pushed up a little straighter. “In this way, we are the same. For me, surprises are to be abhorred. Even the good ones.”
She shifted her shoulders. “I don’t think there’s any such thing.”
“True.”
“It was hard on me, though. The divorce. Then again, what six year old wouldn’t have been devastated?”
“Did you want to stay with your father?”
“No.” Her shiver was involuntary. “I hardly knew him. Besides, my mother was adamant.”
“He was saddened by the breakup.”
“Don’t.” Her look was unspeakably intense. “Don’t make excuses for him. I know your father adored him, and you probably did too. But my father was a serial womanizer. A philanderer. He broke every heart that ever gave itself to him…”
“Yours included.”
She wanted to deny it, but there was something about the space they were in, the clarity of the night sky, the connection they’d forged in bed and now, over dinner, that had her nodding. She couldn’t meet his eyes though. “Mine too, yes.”
“Your mother didn’t remarry?”
“No.”
“She never met anyone else?”
“Oh, she met many someone elses,” Chloe whispered gravely. “A different man every week. Sometimes two.” Chloe sighed. “My mother was very beautiful, Raffa.” She bit down on her full, lower lip, but Raffa didn’t notice. His eyes were trained on her face, her anguished, haunted face. “She had no shortage of men who caught her eye, and vice versa. But none of them lasted long. She told me once, after she’d had a bottle of champagne, that there was no one on earth like Diego. My father, she told me, was the only man alive who’d ever made her heart sing.” Chloe rolled her eyes. “And so she drank herself into an early grave, sleeping with whomever took her fancy, never caring for what a sad spectacle she’d made of herse
lf.”
To her surprise, tears had pricked Chloe’s eyes without her notice. It wasn’t until one rolled down her cheek and Raffa reached across the table to pad his thumb over it, catching the moistness on his tip and dragging it sideways, that she recognized her emotional state.
“Sorry,” she murmured. “I make it a rule never to talk about my messed-up family.”
