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“That’s not your fault! You were an innocent child, and your uncle chose to raise you as his own son. Her heart should have been big enough to expand and include you. I think you’re cutting her way too much slack.”
Surprise crossed his features, as though it were the last thing he’d expected Millie to say. “It was a long time ago,” he said, eventually. “It no longer matters.”
“I beg to differ,” Millie insisted. “I think the way your mother made you feel has plagued you all your life. I think you blame yourself for her misery and their divorce, and I think your father’s next wife could have been a balm to those emotions but instead, she reinforced them. Your whole childhood was marred by a sense of being unwanted, and that’s not easy for anyone to bear.”
“My father wanted me,” he said quietly, but the words were defensive, and Millie knew then how close she was to the truth.
“But not enough. Not enough to overcome the coldness of the other two women, and the desertion of your birth parents. Oh, Zafar, you deserved so much better than that.” Tears prickled against her lashes, as she realised how long-reaching the shadows of his youth were. He’d moved heaven and earth to be sure their child would never know that rejection. He’d insisted on marriage, so their baby would believe they were born out of love, a wanted, needed member of a family, and yet he’d acquiesced to her demand for an immediate divorce because he hadn’t wanted their child to grow up with a mother who wasn’t happy. He was running from the mistakes the adults in his life had made, desperately trying to avoid repeating his own fate.
So where did that leave Millie? A mistake in his past, a fling from years-ago that had turned into convenient sex, and now he was saddled with as a wife because of his desperate need to escape his emotional demons?
Millie pulled away from him physically as well as mentally, crossing her arms over her chest and staring at the tabletop, every aspect of their relationship playing out. Millie had been running from her past too. She’d fallen in love with Zafar as a teenager and she’d been determined to hold onto him forever, terrified of being alone, wanting to avoid her mother’s fate. Was that why she’d been so infatuated with Zafar? Or had she really loved him?
Nothing made sense, and the fact she was pregnant with Zafar’s child felt, for a moment, as though it were a suffocating reality. Darkness was surrounding her.
“When I discovered the letter from my birth father, my uncle told me the truth about it all. I realised that everything I’d believed, my whole life, was a lie. I was not the heir to the throne – not legitimately. I had been raised to assume a birthright that was not mine. I felt like a fraud.”
Her eyes dragged to Zafar’s face as realisation sunk in for Millie. “You still do,” she groaned. “That’s why you swore you’d never marry or have children – because you don’t feel like it’s your place to provide the heir of Abu Qara.”
His jaw squared as he stared across at her, something in his features she didn’t comprehend. “I see myself as a caretaker of the throne,” he said firmly. “Aziz has made it clear he’s not interested.” Zafar’s appraisal was kinder than Farrah’s had been – Millie’s best friend had said time and again that Aziz had no skills whatsoever that would predispose him to taking on the duties as Sheikh. “I made my peace with being Sheikh, and working to be the best Sheikh I could be, to make my adoptive father truly proud of me. That has always been the most important consideration in my life.”
Not women. Not her.
“My intention was, until recently, to live out my days as ruler and upon my death, the throne would return to Aziz’s firstborn. If he should die childless, then Farrah’s children would become heirs. Thus I would right the mistake of my birth once and for all.”
Millie sucked in a deep breath. “Please don’t speak of yourself that way,” she said quietly.
“Why not? It is the truth. I was a mistake – regretted by all parties.” He shrugged, as though it meant nothing. “But I’m not blind to my abilities. I am aware that I’m the Sheikh this country needs, that whether by genetics or upbringing, I am, strangely enough, more like my uncle than either Aziz or Farrah. I must be Sheikh.”
“But you regret our baby, just as you believe you were regretted,” she whispered, her heart splintering.
His eyes flashed to hers as he chose his words with care. Millie’s stomach plummeted to her toes. This was so much worse than she’d thought. He was doing what he considered to be the right thing, but their baby represented something terrible for him – would he always see their child as illegitimate in the same way he viewed himself?
“Zafar, your uncle adopted you. From the minute you were born, he considered you his legal son and heir. The fact that your adoptive mother and step mother were too closed-minded and selfish to extend the same love and courtesy to you is neither here nor there. You are the rightful Sheikh of Abu Qara, and have been from the minute your uncle adopted you. Our child – your son – has every right to be born, and to one day inherit all that you have. You have done nothing wrong.”
“That is a very generous sentiment from a woman I wronged greatly.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” she snapped. “It takes two to tango. I could have told you how I felt sooner, I could have spoken to you about my feelings and made sure we wanted the same thing, but I didn’t. I never thought to ask, because —,” because I thought it was so obvious we didn’t need to talk about it. More fool her. “Because I just didn’t,” she amended awkwardly. “And it was years ago. I’m over it.”
“Are you? Then how come you never dated?”
“Like you said, I learned not to trust men,” she muttered.
“Yet you still slept with me on the night of the funeral.”
She was trapped against a wall, unable to explain away that inconvenient truth. “Old habits,” she said with a wave of her hand, as though it hardly mattered. “Besides, that was just sex. That’s not about trust or love, it’s just a physical act.”
His eyes narrowed, as though he were processing that, factoring it into their past, adding it into what he knew of her.
“That does not sound like you,” he said eventually.
“What other explanation is there?”
He frowned, rubbing a hand over his jaw. “I don’t know. I have been trying to answer that question ever since.”
“Then let me answer it for you: it meant nothing.” She pushed her chair back, her pulse rushing through her, a strange urgency making her movements jerky, a desperate need to escape cloying Millie. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go for a walk.”
“It is far too hot. Wait until the evening and then I will show you the ridge properly.”
She opened her mouth to object but then clamped it shut. There was no sense arguing with him when he was, after all, obviously correct. And yet she needed to be alone, to work her way through his admissions, to understand the implications for her, them, and their child. “I’m going to read then,” she said, shoulders squared. “I would appreciate it if you’d give me some privacy.”
