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CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ZAINHADLEFT before she woke. She had a vague memory of him kissing her goodbye, but that must have been hours ago, as the bed beside her was now cold.
It wasn’t the first time Abby had woken alone since she came to Aarifa and she never liked it, but during the last four weeks she had come to realise that Zain worked harder than anyone she knew.
Having a greater grasp of Aarifan politics after four weeks of immersion therapy on the subject, Abby understood why he worked as hard as he did. He had no choice.
At first Zain had seemed surprised by her questions and Abby suspected he had initially doubted her interest was genuine, as his early responses had been pretty monosyllabic, but as he’d come to realise that her interest was real he had opened up and become more expansive. Now it had reached the point where he volunteered information—be it a breakthrough or an obstacle—without actually waiting for her to ask.
A couple of times recently he’d even asked her opinion. It gave her a little glow to know that he valued it, or, at least, it seemed he did to her.
But they never discussed the widowed princess, Kayla. Over the last few weeks malicious rumours had started to spread, which as far as Abby could make out were intended to harm her reputation. Luckily, the wife of a courtier she had become friendly with had warned Abby that it was Kayla spreading these, and Abby had been able to minimise the damage. There were also rumours that Zain and Kayla had once had a relationship before Kayla’s marriage, which had made Abby burn with jealousy. When she had asked the woman why Kayla hated her so much, she’d needed pushing but had finally expanded on her initial diplomatic, It’s not my place to say.
‘Kayla wants what you have, Amira. I went to school with her, and she will do anything to get what she wants. Tell the Prince,’ she’d said.
But Abby knew Zain would only tell her to stay away from Kayla. And, besides, she wanted to show him she was strong enough to confront this on her own. It certainly wasn’t her place to be jealous of whatever might have happened in the past. Nevertheless, it gave her comfort to know that every night it was their bedroom Zain came to.
Sliding out of bed, she headed for the bathroom, humming softly under her breath, but she stopped humming when she became aware of the familiar monthly ache low down in her belly. Since that first night they had slept together they had been careful to use protection, but a tiny part of her had been nagging at her, aware there was some chance she might be pregnant. But now, the evidence to the contrary was clear and suddenly overwhelming.
Without warning, the tears just kept coming, gushing out from some unidentified region deep inside her, before finally they dried to an occasional burble of misery. Sniffing, Abby walked across to the marble washbasin and turned the cold tap on full, telling her red-eyed image sternly to, ‘Get a grip!’
She splashed her face with water and switched off the tap but stayed where she was, leaning on the basin, looking at herself, a questioning frown furrowing her smooth brow.
Her reaction had been inexplicable, and not just the reaction but also the strength of it.
This was a good outcome, the desired outcome, she reminded herself. She knew that, and yes, she was relieved, or at least part of her was. But there was another part that felt oddly...what...? Bereft. The recognition deepened her frown and increased her growing sense of unease.
She hadn’t wanted to be pregnant—it would have complicated an already complicated situation and she’d been too scared to even imagine the consequences of an accidental baby, considering their arrangement. Not that the idea of pregnancy scared her; she wanted a child one day but she wanted that baby to be the product of a loving relationship. She wanted to give the man she would eventually love in a ‘forever after’ sort of way the ultimate gift of his child.
Another sob began working its way past her trembling lips but it never escaped. Instead her eyes flew wide and she literally stopped breathing, the blood seeping from her face and leaving it paper-pale!
The truth hit Abby with the force of a tsunami blast and continued to reverberate through her body: some secret part of her had wanted a child because she loved Zain!
Because she did love him. As the denial fell away the pain rushed in to fill the vacuum it left. Loving a man who would never return those feelings was always going to hurt, which was why she supposed she had been in denial, filling her thoughts with enough irrelevant chatter to drown out the words that were now shouting inside her head.
Zain was the last man she would have expected to fall in love with. No matter what he said, Zain was wrong—there was no choice involved; love defied all logic.
* * *
Patience was not one of Zain’s strengths and Aarifan politics seemed a slow-moving machine. The past few weeks had been at times incredibly frustrating—there had been moments when he had struggled to retain control in the face of the obstacles being put in his way by the powerful politicians who opposed his reforms in any and all ways they could.
But today had been a good day and it was still early, he saw, glancing down at his wrist. The early breakfast meeting had been an unexpected breakthrough. He had brought a previously obstinate opponent around to his way of thinking and he was buzzing with a sense of purpose.
It took days like this to keep him going through all the days when it felt as if he was being blocked at every turn, days when progress seemed impossible and the tightrope of diplomacy slippery as ice. Days when, if it wasn’t for the fact he vented in private with Abby, he might have been tempted to forget the advent of civilisation and throw the whole avaricious bunch in a deep dungeon. Abby had proved a very effective sounding board, listening to him rage and talking him down.
She was going to be thrilled when she heard about this advance...he couldn’t wait to—His footsteps slowed, a thunderstruck expression crossing his face...
He couldn’t wait!
It was literally true.
He wanted so badly to share the victory with Abby, just as he had shared the defeats and setbacks, and it was something he could not imagine feeling a few short weeks ago.
How far had he strayed from his original game plan...what had it even been? He had rewritten the rules to fit the circumstances and his needs so often it was hard to remember. It was easy to justify his first diversion from the plan because it had been totally unrealistic to expect to fight the intense sexual attraction between them. He couldn’t get enough of her and actually he couldn’t even see why it had ever seemed so important to take such a masochistic stance, why he had seen danger where in fact there was pleasure.
Sex he could rationalise; what made him more uneasy was the recognition of the emotional, almost symbiotic, connection they seemed to have developed...if this was how he felt now, what was it going to be like when the eighteen months was up?
He made himself walk slowly to the door. It wasn’t as if he needed her here; she liked to be involved...she was lonely, and it would have been cruel, he told himself, to leave her to her own devices.
