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“You are going to marry Riyaz,” the woman said. “We pray for our sheikh.”
“Yes,” she said. “I will too.”
She had to hope for...something to come from Riyaz. Compassion that Cairo certainly wasn’t showing her. Something.
She hadn’t had a choice about whether or not she came here. She didn’t have a choice about whether or not she’d be sent to Riyaz. Cairo hadn’t savedher. And if Riyaz wasn’t sane...if he was bent on vengeance, well, she didn’t know what that meant for her fate.
CHAPTER FIVE
“HEISN’TWELL.”
He looked at Brianna’s worried golden eyes. “No improvement?”
“He does not sleep in a bed, Cairo. He outright refuses the meals that we serve. He works out, punishing his body day and night...”
“I have freed him,” Cairo said. “I do not understand why he persists in acting this way.”
“Because in his mind he is still in a cage, Cairo. And I do not know how to reach him.”
“I have faith in you,” he said.
Brianna’s expression softened. He had often thought that perhaps if he were to marry a woman it might’ve been her. But he worried that she had been treated too harshly, and he wanted to protect her. Not expose her to more harm.
Brianna deserved a different sort of man. A man who could love.
His own had been killed one night out in the desert.
She deserved to be well rid of him and Riyaz as soon as she finished her work.
He knew that she admired him. He knew that he would’ve been able to seduce her easily. But he actually knew her. Cared for her. So he had never done so. She was more a sister to him. Though he knew the description would likely cause her distress.
“It’s difficult,” Brianna said. “I can’t force him to talk about what he doesn’t want to remember.”
“Keep trying.”
He heard footsteps and looked up over his phone screen. And there she was, standing in the doorway. Her presence was a punch of pure adrenaline that took his breath away. The blue that she was wearing made her eyes look like jewels lit on fire. And it was the strip of her revealed midriff that caused his body to stir. How long had it been since such a simple show of skin on a woman had created such a response in him? Perhaps never.
“Let me show you something.”
Her eyes went round. “What?”
“A secret.” She looked at him as if he were magic, and he felt like he’d won a prize, even though he knew that he was risking much by taking her hand this way and leading her down the cool palace corridor.
He pushed open the door to the room that held the wedding gems.
He didn’t know why he wanted to show her these.
Perhaps because he found himself imagining giving them to her.
But they would never be his to give. Not to her or anyone.
“What are they?” she asked, approaching the glass case, her eyes alight with wonder as she looked at the jewels. Bracelets, a necklace, glittering ruby red. And the red silk scarf...
“Wedding jewels. For the sheikha and the sheikh.”
Her eyes met his then, and he saw pain there.
“I have to go,” he said, ending the call abruptly.
