Had she always loved him? Had she never fallen out of love with him? He had left and she had been forced to carry on, and she had had reason enough to be furious with him in the abstract, but she had still found her way into his bed within days of laying eyes on him again. She had told herself it was for her own purposes, but the reality was, she hadn’t leaped into bed with anyone else. She had never wanted anyone else the way she wanted Tariq.
She wondered if on some level she had deliberately left her bag with her bank card behind when she’d set out for the train—because she hadn’t really wanted to leave him.
She wanted to go with him wherever he wanted to take her, even though she knew it was highly likely that he would break her heart when he married someone more appropriate, but she couldn’t find it in her to be as worried about that eventuality as she ought to be. It was clear to her now that she had been desperately in love with Tariq since the day she’d first seen him all those years ago, and there was no point in pretending otherwise. Just as there was no point attempting to be noble and leave him first—she might as well enjoy what little time with him she had, the better to hold on to in the lonely years to come.
Because Jessa knew that Tariq could never love her, not after what she had done in giving Jeremy away. How could he, when it was obvious to her that he had wanted his own family so desperately for all of his life? The truth was that she knew, deep down, that she had no right to him. She had been given the opportunity for a second chance, and she was not strong enough to resist it, even though it was clear to her that he would leave her once again.
Jessa uncurled from her chair and stood, staring out at the view but seeing instead his hard, proud face. He didn’t have to love her. She would love him enough for them both. She was no stranger to hard love, love like stone, all immovable surfaces and impossibilities. She loved Jeremy more than she had ever thought it possible to love another person, and yet she had given him away, and knew with every breath and every regret that it had been the right decision no matter how much it hurt. She was used to love that bit back and left marks and forced her to be strong.
She could be strong for Tariq, too.
Her sister Sharon was a different story.
“Have you gone mad?” Sharon demanded down the telephone line, sounding scandalized—and uncharacteristically shrill.
Jessa had fortified herself with several cups of the hot, rich coffee from the breakfast service, but it seemed to have done nothing but make her agitated. Or perhaps she was already agitated. She had dressed with extra care, as if Sharon might be able to see her through the telephone and perhaps intuit what Jessa had been doing, but she found that the simple silk blouse and A-line skirt made her feel as insane as Sharon accused her of being. Was she dressing up, pretending to be someone else? Someone more sophisticated that Tariq could love? Foolish, she scolded herself, and adjusted her position, holding her mobile close to her ear.
“I don’t know how to answer that,” she told her sister, which was no more than the truth. She’d settled in for this conversation in the sitting room off the master suite, on the prim settee next to the windows, her back to the breathtaking view of Paris and angled away from the stunning Cézanne painting that took up most of the far wall—she wanted no distractions.
“I thought it was strange enough that you’d run off on a holiday with no advance warning,” Sharon continued. “But to get mixed up with that man again? Jessa, how could you?”
“You don’t know him,” Jessa said evenly, feeling called to protect Tariq, even from her sister who could do him no real harm. Quite the opposite, in fact.
“I know quite enough!” Sharon said with a snort. “I know that he lied to you and left you! I know that men like him think they can swan in and out of people’s lives as they please, with no thought to the consequences!”
“Tariq is not the same person he was then,” Jessa said. She sighed. “And nothing is really as simple as it might have seemed back then.”
“You can do whatever you like with your own life, no matter how reckless, but this isn’t just about you, is it?” Sharon let out a ragged breath. “Selfish!” she half whispered, but Jessa heard her perfectly. She could even picture what her sister was doing—pacing the kitchen in her cottage with one arm wrapped around her waist, her face set in a terrible frown—as if she was there to see it in person.
Jessa told herself not to snap back at Sharon. Of course her sister was terrified by the prospect of Jessa with Tariq again. How could she not be? Jessa closed her eyes and lay her palm flat against her chest, just above her heart, as if she could massage away the ache that bloomed there. She could love Sharon, too, because she knew full well that beneath her sister’s prickly exterior she loved Jessa in return. Sharon had always been there for Jessa. And wasn’t that what love was for, in the end? To embrace others when they most needed it, whether they appreciated it or not?
“I would never do anything to hurt you,” Jessa said softly, pinching the top of her nose between her fingers, hoping the headache that had bloomed there would fade. “Any of you. As you should know already. But I am going to go with him.” She braced herself. “I have to.”
“I can’t believe this!” Sharon hissed. “What is it about this man that turns you so dense, Jessa? People don’t change. He will hurt you all over again. That’s a promise.”
Jessa felt as if she’d been in suspended animation for years, with nothing but ice water and regret in her veins, until Tariq had roared back into her life and filled her with heat and life and love. How could she ever regret that, no matter what happened? But she couldn’t share that with Sharon.
“I only phoned to let you know that I’ll be traveling,” Jessa said after a moment, fighting to keep her voice steady, and not to give in to the kick of adrenaline and insecurity that made her want to slap back at her sister. “I’m not asking for your permission.”
She opened her eyes again and let them fall on the glorious painting on the wall across from her seat. It was a mountain scene, blues and greens and none of it soothing, somehow, with Sharon so angry.
“I cannot believe that you would risk so much on what? Your hope that things might be different?” Sharon made a bitter sort of sound. “I hope you haven’t gone off the deep end!”
“I hope so, too,” Jessa murmured, because there was nothing she could say that could make Sharon feel any better.
Sharon hung up the phone. Jessa let hers drop into her lap, and ordered herself to breathe. Her eyes were wide open this time. She had loved him when nothing about him was true, and she loved him now. Still. Did that make her the fool her sister thought her? Did she mind terribly if it did?
“Who were you talking to?” Tariq asked from the doorway, his low voice making Jessa jump in her seat as if scalded. Her eyes flew to his and she felt the blood drain from her face. She felt raw. Exposed. Had she said anything incriminating? Had she mentioned Jeremy?
“How long have you been standing there?” she asked, trying to sound calm, but her voice was far too highpitched. Her heart pounded as if she’d just run a mile. It was too much—Sharon’s frustrated anger and her own realizations about her feelings for Tariq. How could she face him before she had time to pull herself back together?
But it was too late—he was standing right in front of her, and Jessa was suddenly terrified that he could read her like a book.
Guilty. That was the look on her face, he realized after a moment of confusion. Guilty and pale.
“What is the matter?” he asked, searching her expression, all of his senses on red alert. He had finished a meeting more quickly than he’d expected, and had come here hoping to convince her to help him while away the time before the next meeting more pleasurably. He had not expected that he would find her secretive and jumpy. While he watched, she surged to her feet and held her mobile phone behind her, as if hiding it.
“Nothing is the matter,” she said, but her voice was too uneven. Tariq felt his instincts kick in, the one
s that served him well in politics as well as in combat situations. He moved closer to her.
“Who was that on the phone?” he asked again, this time with less curiosity and more command.
“No one,” she said. Then she blinked and smiled, but it was not a real smile. It was far too strained. “It was my sister, Sharon, that’s all.”
“Did your sister upset you?” he asked. He searched her face. “With your parents gone, you must be close to her and her family.”
She flinched, that guilty look stealing across her face again, though this time she tried to hide it. It was an absurd, over-the-top reaction, and he reached out a hand toward her, frowning, worried that something was truly the matter—
And suddenly, somehow, he knew.
The photograph he’d seen in her house flashed before his eyes, the one he’d snatched from the mantel and given only a cursory glance. The sister who looked like Jessa—the same copper-colored hair, the same chin. Her fair-haired, freckled husband.
And their olive-skinned, dark-haired child.
No. He felt himself freeze solid from the inside out, as if he’d been thrown headfirst into a glacier. She could not have done this and not have told me, not after all of this—
“Tell me,” he said, feeling still, quiet, empty and bleak. “What is the name of your sister’s child?”
It was as if he saw her from a great distance then. He saw her face twist into misery. Her hands clenched together in front of her. She was the very picture of distress.
“Tariq,” she said, her voice heavy, and he knew it was true. “You don’t understand.”
All this time he had believed the child lost to him forever, believed that was no more than what he deserved—the reward for his wasted life. And all this time she had smiled so sweetly, made him feel as if she was the family he had longed for—all while knowing exactly where his child, his son, was!
“What exactly is it that I do not understand?” he asked her icily, his gaze boring into her. He held himself carefully, afraid that if he moved he would shatter into a rage so hot it would burn him, her, the whole house, the entire damned city. “Were you planning to tell me? Ever?”
“I couldn’t,” she said, her voice thick, her eyes bright with tears. “It is not my secret to tell.”
“That excuse might work, Jessa, were I not the only other person on this earth who has a right to know at least as much about the child I never knew I had as you!”
“It is not about you!” she cried, throwing her arms wide. “It’s about him, Tariq! It’s about what he needs!”
“You let me think that he was lost to us forever. You let me think it!” His whisper was fierce, furious. He could taste the acrid flavor of betrayal in his mouth, feel it corroding him, turning everything he had believed about her—about the two of them—to burned-out husks and charred remains.
“This is exactly the reaction I was trying to prevent!” she cried.
“You have said enough.” He silenced her with a slash of his hand through the air, and then he turned and stalked toward the door.
She had never planned to tell him. She had made love to him, comforted him, and had had no intention of telling him that all the while she knew where his son—his heir—was. He stopped walking when he reached the doorway, and stood there for a moment, fighting for control.
“Don’t you think I would have noticed the resemblance at some point?” he asked, not turning back to her. “What story did you plan to tell me then?”
“When would you have seen him?” she asked after a moment, sounding genuinely confused. He turned then and stared at her in disbelief.
“Are you ashamed to be seen with me?” he asked acidly. “I think it is too late for these protestations, Jessa. You have been photographed in my company.”
“I don’t understand what you’re talking about!” she cried. “I didn’t think you’d ever lay eyes on him. Why would you spend time with my family?”
“I told you I was taking you to my country,” he snapped at her. “What do you think that entails?”
“I’m sure you take a thousand women to your country!” she threw back at him, color high in her cheeks, her eyes dark.
“You are incorrect,” he said icily, each word cutting. “I would never take a woman to my people unless I planned to keep her. Though that is no longer a subject you need concern yourself with.”
She stared at him in shocked silence. He felt something move in him, but stamped it down. No. Damn her. Her pain did not, could not, matter—not anymore.
Tariq shook his head and turned back toward the door.
“Please…” she said, though it sounded more like a sob. “Where are you going?”
The look he threw back at her should have burned her alive.
“To see my son,” he bit out.
And then he strode from the room before he broke something. Before she broke him any further than she already had.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
OTHER than informing her that her presence was required only to assure him access to the child, Tariq cut her off completely. He did not speak to her on the plane, he merely sat in a thunderous silence that made Jessa ache in ways she would have thought impossible, though she would not let herself dissolve into tears as she wished. He did not speak to her in the car that took them from Leeds to York and then up the York Road toward the North Yorkshire Moors, and the small village along the way where Sharon had moved almost four years ago. Jessa could hardly stand to look at the cultivated fields that spread out on all sides, that intense British green against the cold gray skies. She could see only the coming heartbreak, the doom, the end of everything she had fought so hard to provide for the son she had loved enough to let go. She knew that no one could emerge from it unscathed, not her sister and Barry, not Tariq, not herself.
And worst of all, not Jeremy.
“I don’t know what your plan is,” Jessa said in a low voice as the car turned into the village and made its way along the high street. It was not the first time she had attempted to speak to him, but there was a desperation in her voice that had not been there before. “You cannot simply arrive at my sister’s house and make demands!”
“Watch me,” Tariq said, his voice vibrating with the same fury that had gripped him since Paris. He did not look at Jessa. He kept his brooding gaze fixed on the village that slid by outside the window, one elegant hand tapping out his agitation against the armrest.
“Tariq, this is madness!” Jessa cried. “My sister has adopted him! It is all quite legal, and cannot be undone!”
“You will not tell me what can and cannot be undone,” he bit out, turning his head to pierce her with his dark, imperious gaze. He was angrier than she’d ever seen him, and all of it so brutally cold, so bitter. “You, who would lie about something like this? Who would conceal a child from his own father? I have no interest in what you think I should or should not do!”
“I understand that you’re angry,” Jessa said, fighting to keep her voice level. He laughed slightly, in disbelief. She set her jaw and forged ahead anyway. “I understand that you think you’ve been betrayed.”
“That I think I have been betrayed?” he echoed, his eyes burning into her. He sat as far away from her as it was possible to sit in the enclosed space of the car, and yet she could feel him invading her space, taking her over, crowding her. “I would hate to see what you consider a real betrayal, Jessa, if this does not qualify.”
“This is not about you,” Jessa said as firmly as she could when she was trembling. “Don’t you see? This has nothing to do with me or you. This is about—”
“We are here,” he said dismissively, cutting her off as the car pulled up at Sharon’s front gate. Tariq did not wait for the driver to get out of the car, he simply threw open his door and climbed out.
Jessa threw herself out after him, her chest heaving as if she’d run a marathon. Tariq paused for a moment outside the gate, and she knew it was now or never. After
everything she had sacrificed—including, though it made her want to weep, Tariq himself—she could not let him wreck it all. She had to try one last time.
She lunged forward and grabbed on to his arm, holding him when he might have walked through the gate.
“Release my arm,” he said almost tonelessly, though she did not mistake the menace underneath, nor the way he tensed his strong muscles beneath her hands.
“You have to listen to me!” she gasped. “You have to!”
“I have listened to you, and I have listened to you,” Tariq said coldly, his eyes black with his anger. “I have watched you weep and I have heard you talk about how much you regret what you had to do, what you did because of me. I did not realize you were still punishing me!”
“It was not because of you!” Jessa cried as the wind cut into her, chilling her. “It was because of me!” She dragged in a wild breath, all the tears she’d been fighting off surging forth, and she simply let them. “I am the one who was so deficient that you left me in the first place, and I am the one who failed so completely as a mother that I couldn’t keep my own baby! Me.”
She had his attention then. He stilled, his dark eyes intense on hers.
“But I did one thing right,” Jessa continued, fighting to keep the tears from her voice. “I made sure he was with people who loved him—who already loved him—who could give him the world. And he is happy here, Tariq, happier than I ever could have made him.”
“A child is happiest with his own parents,” Tariq said. Did she imagine that his voice was a trifle less cold? Was it possible?
Jessa stared at him, her fingers flexing into his arm, demanding that he hear her now if he heard her at all.
“He is with his parents,” she whispered fiercely.
Tariq made a noise that might have been a roar of anger, checked behind the muscle that worked in his jaw. He shook her hands off his arm. Jessa let them drop to her sides.
“He is my blood,” he snarled at her. “Mine!”
Desert Jewels & Rising Stars Page 292
