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She’d thought she’d seen the Cairo she knew in there. Just the faintest glimpse of him, behind all that dark amber. It had made her foolish.
“I know this isn’t you,” she’d said.
“Do you?” he’d asked icily, dangerously. “Because I find I have no idea what awaits me in that mirror every morning. I was meant to be a king, but I made myself a clown. A disgrace to my name. I have no earthly idea who I am—but you think you do?”
She’d shaken at that, but she’d met his tortured gaze. “I know you are a good man.”
“You know nothing of the sort,” he’d said coldly, furiously. “What you know is that I am good in bed, as I told you I was when we met. Do not paint me with all your feverish little fantasies, Brittany. I am not a good man. I have only ever been a monster, and it hardly matters why.”
“Cairo—”
“You are no use to me run-down and dragging,” he’d said then, cutting her off. “My suggestion to you is that you see a doctor and sort yourself out, or leave. Your choice.”
The bastard.
She’d only realized she’d said that out loud when his mouth had curved in a far icier smile than the ones she’d known and basked in on their island. It made her heart ache inside her chest.
“I am afraid I am distressingly legitimate,” he’d replied. As if it hurt him. His mouth had been grim, his caramel gaze dark. “Therein lies the problem.”
Yesterday, she’d summoned Cairo’s private physician. She’d paged through articles on her phone while the brisk woman bustled around her and gave her the news, and she’d tried to imagine what it must feel like for Cairo with the general finally dead and a kingdom he’d made certain he couldn’t claim clamoring for his return. She’d told herself to be calm, to be understanding, and if all of that failed, to be quiet.
Because she’d known going into this that it would hurt. Why was she surprised that, sure enough, it did—if in a different way than she’d anticipated?
“What are you doing here, Brittany?”
She jerked back into the present to find herself on the little upholstered bench in the hall outside Cairo’s bedroom. He stood a few feet away, dressed in one of his three-piece bespoke suits and his hair a calculated mess, his expression as distant as if they’d never met.
Brittany told herself she should hate him. But she didn’t.
She didn’t. She couldn’t.
I have only ever been a monster,he’d said, and that made her want nothing more than to prove him wrong. It made her want to do all kinds of foolish things, like tell him she loved him.
She didn’t dare.
“It’s lovely to see you, too,” she gritted out.
He managed to look as if he was sighing heavily while not actually moving, a skill she might have admired under different circumstances.
“We do not have an appointment,” he told her. “If we did, it would not be in my bedroom. I will see you this evening as planned, for the—”
“Will we just pretend that it never happened?” she demanded, and she was horrified to hear her voice crack. But she pushed on. “That whole month was nothing more than a dream, is that it? Have you truly convinced yourself of that?”
“The honeymoon is over.” His voice was like steel. “It never should have happened in the first place. This was always a business arrangement. We should have kept it on that level.”
“It’s a bit late for that,” she said, and couldn’t help the laugh that bubbled up then. “Much too late.”
Another look of impatience flashed over his beautiful face, and he shook his head at her.
“Do you know who I am, Brittany? Have you met me? Read about me in any tabloid?”
She had an inkling of where he was going, of what he might say, and it felt like a car crash. As if she’d spun out of control already and there was nothing she could do to stop it—all the while perfectly cognizant of the tree she was seconds away from smashing against.
“What,” Cairo asked, ruthless and cold, “ever gave you the impression that sex with you would distinguish you in any way from the thousands of women who came before you?”
Everything inside of Brittany went horribly still, then. Frozen solid.
It occurred to her that was a blessing.
