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She looked away and wrapped her arms around her middle. She couldn’t handle the lack of intimacy in his dark eyes. She already missed the aura of shared secrets that cocooned them for a year.
She felt as if she was being tugged into a sandstorm and had nothing to hold on to. She could only rely on herself. It had always been that way. When she first met Hafiz, she thought she wouldn’t be so alone in the world. Now she understood that it had been an illusion.
“I was having tea with a couple of my friends,” she said, hating how her voice cracked.
“Why is this the first I’ve heard about these so-called friends?”
“You never asked.” Lacey felt the flare of anger. “You never asked about my day or how I was coping living in this country.” The anger burned hotter, and she ducked under his arm and walked away. “You just assumed I spent every waking moment in my apartment. Did you think I powered down until you returned?”
“If you wanted to share something, there was nothing and no one holding you back.” Hafiz’s eyes narrowed as he watched her move to one end of the table. “Why am I hearing about this now?”
She shrugged. Some of it was her fault. She was reacting in the same way as when she had felt her parents’ interest slipping. She’d known if she wanted to retain Hafiz’s attention, have him keep coming back, she needed to be positive. She had to be entertaining, and put all of the focus on him. If she had been too needy, he would start to distance himself.
“How is someone like you friends with an ambassador’s wife? Or the wife of a deputy minister?”
Lacey raised her eyebrow and met his gaze. She would not show how much those words hurt. “Someone like me?”
“You know what I mean.” Hafiz rubbed the back of his neck with impatience. “You don’t share the same status or have the same interests.”
“So, what you’re really asking is how a mistress became friends with respectable women?” she asked in a cool tone.
“Yes.” Hafiz crossed his arms. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
The room tilted sickeningly for a moment. Did he know what he was saying? Did he care? She closed her eyes and swallowed. “You do realize that you’re the one who made me a mistress.”
“And you accepted the offer.”
His indifference cut like a knife. A sarcastic rejoinder danced on her tongue like a hot pepper.
“Why are you friends with these women,” he asked, “and why did you meet with them today?”
“Do you know why I play the piano?” Lacey asked as she pulled out a chair and sat down at the head of the table.
Hafiz gave her an incredulous look and spread his arms out wide. “What does this have to do with the women you were with?”
“A lot of people think I play piano because I grew up in a musical environment,” Lacey continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “My parents are musicians, so, therefore, I must have their interests rub off on me.”
Hafiz leaned his shoulder against the wall. “Get to the point, Lacey.”
“My parents didn’t care if I took up a musical instrument or not. I thought that if I learned how to play the piano, and played exceptionally well, I could be part of their lives. They would take me on the road with them and I wouldn’t be left behind all the time.”
“And?”
The corner of her mouth twitched as she remembered her parents’ harsh and immediate rejection to that plan. How her father had declared that one of the benefits of the road trips was taking a break from being parents. “It didn’t work. But for some reason, I thought it would work this time.”
Hafiz frowned. “This time?”
“When you invited me to live here, I thought we were building toward a future. A life together.” She hastily looked away. She was embarrassed by her ignorance, her belief that they would live happily ever after. “And I worked to make this my new home. Inas is very proud of her heritage and she used to be a teacher. She’s been my Arabic and history tutor.”
“You’ve been learning Arabic? I’ve never heard you speak it.”
She saw the deep suspicion in his eyes and a dull ache of disappointment spread through her chest. “I wasn’t ready to show off my language skills just yet. I’m nowhere near fluent.”
