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The first time Zamir had heard that advice had been the day after losing his mother. The words had been said repeatedly, whenever he felt tears at the ready. Only Ra’if had encouraged them to fall, and held Zamir until the sadness ebbed.
“I have heard from my cousin in Marosin,” Faisal said, reaching for his tumbler of water. His fingers were shaking and he knocked it. He swore as water spilled everywhere.
“Don’t worry,” Zamir murmured patiently. “It is only water.” He pressed a button beside the bed and then stripped the wet blankets off his father’s slender frame.
“My cousin Neir has invited you to visit.”
Zamir bundled the blankets into a ball and dropped them onto a nearby chair. “Are your clothes wet?”
“No.”
“Can you move to this seat so the sheets can be changed?”
“Damn it, Zamir, stop fussing and answer my question.”
Zamir’s amber eyes glinted in his head as he gazed at his father. “Did you ask one?”
Faisal, once more, was impressed by his younger son’s strength. There had been a time when Zamir had seemed timid and easily intimidated. Not anymore. “With my health as it is, and Ra’if indisposed, you will feel more pressure than ever before to marry. To choose a wife who will bear children for our Kingdom to look to for the future.”
“I am the future,” Zamir said stiffly.
“You are the present,” Faisal said with a shake of his head. “And I am the past. An anachronism now. Two generations ago, I would be dead, and you would be Sultan already. But I am not. And so you must humour me for a little longer.”
Zamir crossed his arms. “I am humouring you,” he said with shortness of temper.
Faisal’s laugh was a throaty sound. “You are barely keeping your tongue in check. I can tell.” His dark grey eyes locked with his son’s. “This is because of the American woman.”
Zamir was careful not to react, though inside, his stomach felt like he’d dipped off a roller coaster.
“Which American woman?”
“The one who was in your bed every night,” Faisal responded quickly. There was no judgement in his tone, just fact.
Zamir arched a brow. He maintained his silence, though it cost him great personal effort.
“Marook told me of her,” Faisal finished.
“Marook.” Zamir’s laugh was one of disbelief. “He is a gossip.”
“He is loyal,” Faisal corrected, “And he loves you like a son of his own.”
“The American woman was nothing,” Zamir said with a coldness to his tone, if not his heart.
“Marook tells me she is very beautiful.”
“What is beauty? Many women are beautiful.”
But Faisal wasn’t convinced. “But you do not spend night after night with many women. Do you?”
“No.” He rubbed a hand across his jaw. “You do not need to worry about Olivia. She was a welcome distraction, but that was in Vegas. She is nothing to do with my life here.”
He waited until his father’s servants had changed the bed linen and freshened his clothes, and then he left. With every fibre of his being, he avoided thinking about Olivia. She was in the past. She was in Vegas. For all he knew, she’d moved on to someone else by now.
No, that thought was too unpalatable to contemplate. He pushed it aside, and instead, thought of Ra’if.
Once he’d reached his desk, he lifted the phone from its cradle and dialled the number for the clinic by heart. Unlike most calls he made, which he routed through his switchboard to save the effort of dialling, he made this call himself. It was yet another step he had taken to protect his brother’s privacy.
When a man answered at the other end, Zamir spoke, switching easily back to English. “Doctor Swan.”
