The Sheikh's Jewel

‘And—and you heard what my father said about—’ her cheeks blazed, but her chin lifted again, and she said it ‘—about the—the feelings I had for Alim back then.’

As a passion-killer, hearing his wife say she had feelings for the brother who’d abandoned him to this halflife had to rank up there as number one. ‘Yes,’ he said, quiet. Dead inside.

‘Harun, don’t.’ She gripped his chin in her hand, her eyes fairly blazing with emotion. ‘Do you hate me for it?’

He closed his eyes against the passion always beneath the surface with her, but never for him. ‘No.’ So many times, he’d wished he could hate her, or just take her for the higher duty of making an heir, but he could do neither. Yes, he still desired her; he could live with that. But he’d shut off his heart years ago. There was no way he’d open it up, only to have her walk all over it again with her careless rejections and stinging rebukes.

‘Stop it, Harun,’ she burst out, startling him into opening his eyes again. ‘Hate me if you want, but stop showing me this uncaring wall of ice! I don’t know how to talk to you or what to do when you’re so cold with me, always pushing me away!’

Cold? He felt as if he were bleeding agony whenever he looked at her, and she thought his feelings for her were cold? Harun stared at her, the wife he barely knew, and wondered if she was blind, or if it was because he really had covered his need too well. But wasn’t that what he’d always done? How could he stop doing what had always been expected of him?

So he frowned again. ‘I don’t know what you want me to say.’

‘Talk to me for once. Tell me how it hurt you.’ Though she spoke softly, almost beneath her breath, it felt like a dam bursting, the release of a long-held pressure valve. ‘I was nineteen, Harun, one of a legion of girls that dreamed of capturing the heart of the world-famous Racing Sheikh. I didn’t know him any more than I could touch or talk to a literal star.’

She hadn’t said so many words to him at one time since he’d rejected her one attempt at connection last year—and the bitter self-mockery in her voice and her eyes lashed even harder at him than herself.

So she thought of Alim as a star. Well, why not? Even now, years later, it was how the world saw him. The headlines were filled with adoring references to the missing sheikh, reinforcing his own aching emptiness. He’s my brother. Not one of you misses him like I do