The Sheikh's Jewel

by Melissa James

  The finality in her words dropped him into a well of unexpected darkness. Don’t you understand, Amber? If he’d been anyone else, I could have ignored it. ‘What could we have had, Amber?’ he asked, as quietly as she’d spoken.

  Her left shoulder lifted in a delicate shrug. ‘We married because you were a sheikh and I was a sheikh’s daughter, for the sake of our nations. Harun, you’ve been so amazing the past three years. You’ve been a strong and loving leader for your people in their need, giving them everything they asked of you. But the only good part of our marriage was for the cameras and in front of the people. Now, if Alim comes back—well, what’s left for us?’

  Us. She’d said us. As if there were an us—or could have been. She’d admired him for the things he’d done? He couldn’t get his head around it.

  ‘I don’t want a sham for the cameras any more. I don’t want to live the rest of my life alone, tied to a man who never touches me, who doesn’t want me.’

  Harun had never cursed his habit of silence more than now. Strong, brave, lovely Amber had burst out with everything they’d kept locked in silence all these years, and his mind was totally blank. He’d been too busy keeping his nation intact and his heart from bearing any more scars to say a word to her about his wants and needs, and he’d presumed she didn’t care what he wanted anyway, because she still loved Alim.

  But if that wasn’t the truth, why had she walled off from him so completely? He’d thought it was because she found him repulsive—but now?

  But last year, she’d come to him. She’d asked him to make love to her…

  ‘I never knew you wanted me to desire you,’ he said, fighting the husky note of long-hated yearning with all he had. His pride had taken enough battering from this woman, and he’d been celibate far too long. Say it, Amber, tell me if you want me—

  But with a jerky movement Amber unlocked her seat belt and got to her feet. Her eyes blazed down at him, thwarted passion burning bright. ‘Can’t you just talk to me like you’re a normal man, and show me some human feeling? Can’t you stop—stop fencing with words, asking questions instead of answering me honestly? Can’t you stop being so cold all the time? I’m not your enemy, I’m your wife!’

  Stop reading books, Harun! Stop saying yes and do it, be a real man like your brothers!

  He rubbed at his forehead in frustration. ‘Amber, stop talking in circles and tell me what you want,’ he grated, knowing he sounded harsh but no longer caring. He felt as if he had enough to deal with right now without her baffling dramatics. Couldn’t she see that she was expecting too much, too fast? ‘Can we do this thing later? In a few hours I’ll be facing my brother for the first time in years. Alim’s my only family, all I have left.’

  ‘It only needed that.’ With a slow nod, those beautiful, liquid-honey eyes iced over, frozen in time like her namesake. ‘We don’t have to do this thing at all. Thank you, Harun. You’ve made my decision easy.’ And she walked—that beautiful swaying dance she put into every effortless step—into the cockpit and asked in a voice as curt as her walk had been shimmering, ‘I don’t want to go now. Open the exit door, please.’

  When it was open, she moved to the exit, her head high. At the opening, she turned—only her head—and glanced at him. She spoke with regal dignity, the deposed queen she was about to become. ‘I hope your reunion with Alim is all you wish it to be. I hope he comes home to be your family.’

  He opened his mouth, but she rushed on, as if unable to bear hearing his formal thank-you. ‘When Alim becomes the sheikh again, I hope you find what you want out of your life. I hope you find a way to be happy, Harun, because I’m going to find my own life from now on, without you or anyone else telling me what to do.’

  Then, like a dream of beauty abruptly awakened, she was gone.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Fifteen Days Later

  The Sheikh’s Palace, Sar Abbas

  HARUN had asked Amber to be here at this private handover of the nation to the real Sheikh of Abbas al-Din, and so she’d come, from curiosity if nothing else—but it seemed as if nobody else would begin speaking, so she’d have to.

  Maybe that was what Harun wanted from her, to break the ice?

  Right now she felt as if she’d give anything to be able to do just that—to break the ice of Harun’s withdrawn politeness. In the last fifteen days she’d come to regret her outburst. When would she learn to control her tongue and temper? Neither had got her anywhere with the el-Kanar brothers, least of all Harun.

  ‘Welcome home, Alim,’ she said, trying to smile, to repress the emotion boiling like a pot beneath the surface. ‘It’s good to have you back.’

  Her long-lost brother-in-law looked older than the handsome, daring racing driver she remembered. The scars on his face and neck, the mementoes of the race that took Fadi’s life, weren’t as bad as she’d feared. He was still the kind of man who’d draw admiring looks from women wherever he went, though, from the wariness in his stance when any woman was nearby, she suspected he didn’t know it.

  Alim flicked a glance at Harun, but he stood impassive, neither moving nor speaking. After a few moments Alim bowed to her, a smile on his mouth as stressed as the look in his eyes. ‘Thank you, Amber.’

  It seemed the charming daredevil who’d grabbed her youthful fancy was gone—like her long-disappeared crush. But this man was her brother-in-law, a stranger to her—and this was not her reunion. So she waited, casting small glances about the room. The awkward tension between the brothers was too hard to keep watching.

  This beautiful, airy but neutral room was almost as hard to look at. This had been Fadi’s reception room to meet foreign dignitaries, and it was where she’d met all three el-Kanar brothers for the first time. The dear friend who’d loved another woman, the glamorous racing hero who’d disappeared rather than wed her, and the man of ice who’d done his duty by her in public, but would do anything rather than talk to her or touch her.

  Harun must have noticed that she and Alim were both awaiting their cue from him. He spoke with an odd note in his voice. ‘I’ve moved out of your room, Alim. It’s ready for you, as is your office, as soon as you want to resume your duties.’

  Alim took a step towards his brother. ‘Let’s not pretend. Don’t talk as if I’ve been sick for a few weeks. I was gone for three years. I left all the grief and duty to you. Harun, I wanted to say that…’

  Harun shrugged, with all his eloquent understatement, and she realised he did it with Alim, not just with her. It seemed he was skilled at cutting off more people than her alone. He shut off anyone’s attempts at emotional connection, freezing them out with that hint of blue-blooded frost. Come no further. ‘There’s no need to say anything, Alim. It wasn’t as if I had anywhere better to be at the time.’

  But Alim wasn’t having it. With a determined tone, he went on, ‘I wanted to say, the choice is yours now. You’ve done a magnificent job of running the country, of picking up the pieces after Fadi’s death and my disappearance. You’re the nation’s hero now, not me. If you want to remain the sheikh—’

  ‘No.’

  The snarl burst from her mouth, shaking her to the core, but it had a masculine note as well. Harun had echoed it even more forcefully than she had; he sounded almost savage.

  Amber felt Alim staring at her, waiting. Maybe it was easier for him to hear her out first than to know what he’d done to Harun by his disappearance.

  She flushed, and glanced at Harun—but as usual, he stood locked inside those walls of silence she couldn’t knock down, even with catapults and cannons.

  She fiddled with her hands, shuffled a foot. Did she want to hear Harun’s reasons for wanting out before she’d spoken? Suddenly she couldn’t bear to know, to hear all the reasons why she’d failed him, and heard words tumbling from her lips.

  ‘I won’t play sheikh’s happy wife for anyone’s sake any more. I’m tired of the pretence that everything’s all right. I don’t care what my father says. I wan
t a divorce.’

  She turned and walked out of the room, trying to contain the trembling in every part of her body. She reached her suite of rooms and closed the door behind her. It almost felt like a miracle to make it this far without being stopped, but she’d managed it by staring down anyone that approached her. She encountered more than twenty people, staffers or servants, all asking if they could serve her—all burning to know the answer to one question. Who was the sheikh now, Alim or Harun?

  Sitting on the straight-backed chair at her desk, she counted in silence. If he didn’t come this time—

  In less than three minutes, the door swung wide open without announcement. ‘Guard every possible listening place, but stay well away from it,’ Harun snapped to someone outside, and several masculine voices lifted in assent. From behind the walls of her suite, she heard the soft shuffling of feminine feet moving away in haste, and smiled to herself.

  ‘He comes to my rooms twice in a month of his own free will,’ she murmured, as if to herself. ‘Will the walls fall flat in shock?’

  Harun’s gaze narrowed. ‘Is that really how you want to conduct this conversation, Amber, in sarcasm and anger?’

  She lifted her chin. ‘If it actually makes you feel something, I’ll risk it.’

  ‘You needn’t worry about that,’ he said grimly. ‘I’m feeling quite a lot of things right about now.’

  ‘Then I’m glad,’ she said with sweet mockery. It seemed the only way to break through that invisible, impenetrable wall of concrete around him.

  And it worked. With a few steps he was right in front of her, his chest rising and falling in abrupt motion, his normally forest-green eyes black with intensity. The emotion she’d hungered to see for so long had risen from his self-dug grave and the satisfaction hit her like a punch to the stomach. ‘How dare you make an announcement like that with my brother there?’

  ‘I had to,’ she said with false calm, heart hammering. ‘Without him there it would have done no good, because it seems to me that you don’t care what I say or what I think. You’ve never once asked or cared what I want. What’s right for Abbas al-Din is all that matters to you.’

  Ah, why did there have to be that little catch in her voice, giving her away?

  But it seemed he didn’t even notice it. ‘He wants to marry the nurse that rescued him. He loves her, just so you know,’ he replied in a measured, even tone—but the fire in his eyes showed the struggle he was having in commanding his emotions.

  Incensed, she jerked to her feet. ‘Is that all you can say? I tell you I want a divorce, and you only want to remind me of a stupid crush I had when I was nineteen? How long will you keep punishing me for words I said and feelings I had when I was barely out of childhood? I was grieving too, you know. I cared for Fadi. He was like a big brother to me.’ Afraid she’d burst into unseemly tears in front of him, she wheeled away, staring hard out of that beautifully carved window, blinking the stinging from her eyes. She’d rather die than cry in front of him. ‘I’ve always known I meant nothing to you beyond the political gain to your country, but I hoped you respected me a little more than that.’

  The silence stretched out so long, she wondered if he’d left. He had the knack of moving without sound. Then he spoke. ‘You’re right. I apologise, Amber.’ As she whirled around he gave her a small smile. ‘I had my own stupid crush at nineteen—but I didn’t marry you while I was in love with your sister. Do you understand?’

  They were the first words he’d ever spoken that felt real to her, and she put a hand on the chair to feel something solid; the truth had hit her that hard. She’d thought of it as a silly crush on a superstar all this time—but Alim was his brother. Though he’d said it simply, it sickened her. She’d married him with a crush on his brother—the brother that had publicly humiliated her. As far as deeply personal insults went, it probably couldn’t get much worse.

  ‘I understand,’ she said, her voice croaky.

  He nodded. ‘We both know you can’t divorce me, Amber. It would bring dishonour on the family and threaten the stability of the country, so I don’t believe that was what you want most.’

  Hating that he’d called her on her little power-game, she said wearily, ‘I don’t have to live here, Harun.’ She rubbed her eyes, heedless of make-up. What did it matter what she looked like? He didn’t want her, had never wanted her.

  His jaw hardened. ‘You’d make our problems public by leaving me?’

  ‘I was never with you to leave you, My Lord. The little scar in your armpit is evidence enough of that.’ But instead of feeling triumph at the taunt, she just wanted to cry. Why did she always have to attack? And why did it take attacking him to make him talk?

  ‘So you’re saying you’ll drag us both through the mud by proving I didn’t consummate the marriage?’

  She lifted her face, staring at him in disbelief. ‘Is that all you care about—if I embarrass you in public? When you’ve been humiliating me publicly for years!’ she flung at him. ‘Everyone in the palace knows you don’t come to my bedroom! I’m known as the bad-luck bride, who’s ruined the lives of all three el-Kanar brothers. Even my parents bemoan my inability to entice you—not to mention the lack of grandchildren—every time they visit or call me!’ She was quite proud of herself, laying her deepest, bleeding wound before him with such flaming sarcasm instead of crying or wailing like a weak woman. ‘And of course everyone’s very well aware your lack of interest must be my fault, since our wedding night was apparently consummated, and you never came back.’ She paused, and looked at him reproachfully, before delivering the final blow. ‘Oh, and nobody in the palace has hesitated to tell me about your lover and daughter. Do you know how it feels to know that while you continue to leave me alone, you gave another woman the only thing I’ve ever asked of you—and even the servants know about it?’

  Harun closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead, shoulders bent. He looked unutterably weary, and part of her ached to take the words back, to make this conversation any time but now. ‘I would have thought you’d know by now that servants only ever get things half-right. The child’s name is Naima. Her mother is Buhjah, and she’s a good woman.’ His words were tight, locking her out again.

  Amber stared in disbelief. She’d just bared her greatest shame to him, the very public and family humiliation she had to endure daily, and he could only speak of his daughter and lover—the family he’d allowed her to learn about from the servants?

  Did he love Buhjah? Was that why he’d never cared how she felt or what she needed? Just like Fadi, all over again. Oh, these el-Kanar brothers were so faithful to the women they loved. And so good at doing their public duty by her and then leaving her in no-man’s-land, stuck in a life she could no longer bear.

  ‘Get out,’ she said, her voice wobbling. She wheeled away, her breast heaving with her choppy breathing. ‘Just go. Oh, and you’d better lock me in, because it’s the only way your precious name won’t be dragged through the mud you’re so afraid of.’

  ‘No, I won’t leave it like this,’ he said, hard and unbending. Oh, no, he wouldn’t plead, not with her. Probably the mother of his child roused his gentleness and touch and had the man on his knees for her. For Amber, there was only an unending wall of ice. But then, why should she expect more? She was only the wife.

  She buried her face in her hands. ‘Oh, by all means, master, stay, and force me to keep humiliating myself before you. You’re in control by law and religion. I can’t stop you.’ The words scraped across a throat as raw as the desert, but she no longer cared. It wasn’t as if he gave a fig if she did weep or how she felt about anything—but the embarrassment at her less than regal behaviour might just get rid of him for a little while.

  ‘Amber, I don’t want to keep going like this. I can see you’re hurting, but I don’t know how to help you.’

  Seconds later she heard the door close softly behind him, and heaved a sigh—whether in relief or from the greatest misery she’d ever k
nown, she wasn’t sure. Had she got her point across to him at last, or had she driven him away?

  There would be no divorce. Her father would see her dead before he’d allow it, and she couldn’t just disappear. Even if she weren’t hemmed in by servants, she’d put her family through public shame, the scandal would leave her younger sisters unmarriageable and, worst of all, she’d have to leave her family behind for ever.

  Unthinkable. Impossible. They were all she had, and, despite her ongoing conflicts with her father, she loved them all dearly.

  So she was stuck here, for ever bound to this man—

  ‘So why do I keep driving him away?’ she muttered through her fingers. If she wanted any kind of amity in her life—and, most importantly, a child to fill the hole in her heart and end her public shame—she had to let Harun know the truth. That, far from hating him, she punished him for his neglect of her because she admired and desired him, and had since before their wedding day. Even now she pushed him in some desperate attempt to get him to really speak to her, to feel something, anything—

  No. She’d die before she told him. He had to give her some sign first! But how to—?

  The rag crossed her mouth with shocking suddenness. Panic clawed at her and she struggled, but within moments it was tied at the back of her head. Another bound her hands together behind her. She kept fighting, but then a sickly sweet stench filled her nostrils, and made her head spin before everything turned black.

  * * *

  Three steps from her door, Harun stopped and wheeled around. What was he doing?

  Amber was crying, and he’d left her. He’d never believed he’d ever have the power to make her cry, but he had…talking of Naima and Buhjah—

  ‘Idiot!’ he muttered when at last a light went on in his brain and his heart after years of darkness. Was it possible? Could Amber be jealous? He struggled to think. Did she yearn for the child she’d demanded of him last year, the child he’d never given her—his children that were her right as his wife…or—dear God in heaven…he’d let her keep thinking Buhjah was Rafa’s real name—that she was his lover, not Fadi’s—