‘Close.’ The grin grew. ‘Archaeologist.’
‘Really?’ Alim laughed. ‘You want to spend your life digging up old bones and bits of pottery?’
‘Hey, big kid, you played with cars for years,’ he retorted, laughing.
Alim chuckled. ‘Well, if you put it that way…okay, I’m growing up and you’re getting to go make mud pies.’
The laughter relaxed them both. ‘So you have no objections?’
‘I have no right to object to anything you want to do, even if I have the power.’ Alim came around the desk, and gave Harun a cocky grin. ‘I promise to get the job right, and not bother you or force you home for at least the next thirteen years.’
Harun looked up, his expression hardening. ‘Thanks, but I’m not applying for digs just yet. I have something I need to do first.’
Alim tilted his head.
‘You just said you wouldn’t object to anything I wanted.’ Harun shook off Alim’s hands as they landed on his shoulders, and stood. ‘First, I have to renounce my position formally, publicly state I don’t want the job.’ He met his brother’s eyes. ‘I have to disappear until everyone in the nation accepts you in the position, or our friends will try again…and this time they might get it right.’
‘I guess I’d better let you do it…but you’re all I have left, Harun.’ Alim’s face seemed to take on a few more lines, or maybe the scars were more pronounced. ‘Take care with your life, little akh. Don’t leave me alone to grieve at your funeral.’
The words were raw, but still Alim squared up to him, looking him in the eye. And Harun realised he was the taller brother—something he’d never noticed before. ‘I’m doing this for you. I’m the soldier in the family. I have to hunt them down.’ He spoke through a throat hurting with unspoken emotion. ‘Until the group’s disabled, you’ll never be safe—and neither will the woman you love.’
‘And if I don’t want you to do this? If I say that without you, I have nothing?’
Too late, he heard the choked emotion, and understood what Alim wasn’t saying. ‘What about Hana?’
His brother’s jaw hardened still more. ‘That’s no more open to discussion than your private life with Amber. But let me say this now, while I can, because I know you’re going to disappear, no matter what I say. Are you leaving because you hate me for Fadi’s death—or can I hope one day you’ll forgive me?’
The words sliced Harun when he’d least expected it. He wheeled away, just trying to breathe for a minute, but his chest felt constricted.
‘I have to know, Harun.’ The hand that landed on his shoulder was shaking. ‘Despite the fact that you were his favourite, I loved him. He was more father than brother to us both from the time we were little.’
All he could do was nod once.
After a stretch of quiet, Alim asked, ‘Do you blame me for his death?’
‘Stop,’ he croaked, feeling as if Alim had torn him in half.
‘I need to know, Harun.’
There were so many replies he could make to that assertion, but he’d been where Alim was now. He knew better than Alim did that staffers and servants and all the personal and national wealth that oil and gas could bring, even the adoration of a nation, the whole world, didn’t halt the simple loneliness of not having the woman you wanted love you for who you really were inside.
It seemed this was a week of unburdening, whether he wanted to or not.
‘Fadi made his own decision,’ he said eventually, staring out of the window. ‘I always knew that. He was so unhappy at the political marriage he had to make—not just with Amber, but any suitable woman. He loved Rafa with all his heart. I don’t think he wanted to die, just to escape from inevitability for a few days.’
After a long time, Alim answered, sounding constricted. ‘Thank you.’
He shrugged again. ‘You saw how unhappy he was, didn’t you? I saw it too, but I didn’t know what to do; I had nothing to offer him. You gave him escape for a little while, because you loved him. His death was a terrible accident, one that scars you more than me. I never blamed you for it.’ Only for running off when I needed someone the most, he thought but didn’t say. Alim had more burdens on his shoulders than he’d ever dreamed. He found himself hoping Hana would come back to him, and make him happy.
‘Thanks, akh.’
Two words straight from the heart, the word brother filled with choked emotion, bringing them both a measure of healing—and yet Harun wondered when it was that he’d last heard someone speak to him that way. Fadi had never been one for pretty words, just a clasp on the shoulder in thanks for a job well done.
Do you think…we could maybe go on a honeymoon? Just us, you and me?
Amber had spoken to him from the heart, probably as much as she’d dared when he’d never once told her what he wanted with her—and he realised what he’d done by making his decision without involving her.
He turned back to Alim. ‘I need to find Amber.’
Alim nodded. ‘That you do, brother. I think it’s time—or way past time, actually—that you told her how you feel about her.’ Startled, Harun stared at him, and Alim gave a small smile. ‘I saw it on your face the day you first saw her, and even in the way you looked at her today. I knew then, but I understand it now. It’s how I felt when I first saw Hana. It’s how I still feel even though she’s gone.’
‘You…knew how I felt about Amber?’ he asked slowly, taken aback by his brother’s insight. Alim saw more about him than he’d ever realised.
Alim shrugged. ‘Why do you think I left so quickly after meeting her? I saw the way she looked at me—but the crush was on the Racing Sheikh.’
‘So you knew that, too,’ he jerked out.
Alim nodded. ‘Of course I knew. Do you really think I’d have left you with all this responsibility three years ago if I didn’t think you were going to be rewarded with your heart’s desire? Leaving without a word to either of you would make her turn to you, because you were as hurt as she was by my disappearance.’ By now they were both staring hard out the window, looking at the city view as if it held the answers to life’s mysteries.
‘Why?’ Harun asked eventually. ‘Didn’t you know I’d rather have had you?’
‘Not then, I didn’t. I do now.’ From the corner of his eye, he saw Alim shrug. ‘I was the wrong man for her. I knew you’d step up, take the marriage and position I couldn’t bear to. It was selfish, yes, and I wanted to run; but I couldn’t stand the thought of taking someone so precious from you—again.’
Fadi. Oh, the guilt Alim carried on his shoulders…
Beyond an answer, Harun shook his head. Unable to stand any more emotion, he joked mildly, ‘You always did have the gift of the gab. The only one of us who did.’
‘It hasn’t got me very far with Hana,’ Alim muttered.
Harun resisted the urge to touch his brother’s shoulder, and asked again, brother to brother. ‘She won’t marry you?’
This time Alim shook his head. ‘She’s running from all the stories. She thinks she isn’t worthy to be my wife. I hoped when I met the family that they’d know her worth, but they agreed with her. Her father all but told me to forget her. I can’t do that, I’ll never do that! As if bloodlines matter when we’re all descendants of the one man!’
Harun shrugged. ‘There’s a world of practical difference between the theory of being a fellow descendant of Abraham, and the reality of being royalty or a miner’s daughter.’
‘Not to me,’ Alim growled. ‘Would your ice princess have risked her life to save you—not once, but a half-dozen times?’
‘I was only saying what she might be thinking,’ Harun replied mildly. He knew when a man spoke from love and pain, and the foolishness of words regretted later, but unable to take back. ‘I agree with you. Hana’s a heroine, and she has a courage far more suited to the role you want her to take than any pampered princess—but it’s what she thinks that counts.’
Mollified, Alim nodded. ‘So
rry I jumped on you.’
‘Forgiven—but I’d appreciate it if you’d never call Amber an ice princess again,’ he added, gently frigid. ‘She might not have saved any lives, but she’s put up with quite a lot from the el-Kanar brothers, mostly without complaint, and with the kind of loyalty not one of us have earned from her. She forgave you not half an hour ago without even telling you about the very public embarrassment she suffered when you disappeared rather than marry her.’
Alim sobered once more. ‘You’re right. I apologise—and I think it’s time you did, too. Go,’ he said, half forceful, half laughing as Harun turned on his heel to stalk down his quarry.
* * *
It took him over an hour to find her—and in a night of surprises, she was sitting at a desk in the extensive library, her nose buried in a book on the archaeology of the Near East local area. She glanced up at his approach, but, with a flash of defiance in her eyes, she lowered her gaze to her book, and kept reading.
Fervently wishing for Alim’s gift of the gab about now, his ability to turn a phrase into something emotional and beautiful, Harun could only find his own words. ‘I’m sorry. I know you were only trying to help.’
With careful precision, she turned a page, as if she was absorbed by the book. ‘What is your plan?’
He didn’t hesitate. ‘I’m leaving tonight. I have a few leads—I have to find out who abducted us and why. Alim and the entire royal household cannot be safe until they have been brought to justice.’
Her gaze drifted a little further down the page. ‘Goodbye, then. Enjoy your escape.’
‘Amber, please understand. I have to do this.’
‘And of course I’m far safer here, left alone in the place where I was kidnapped last time,’ she remarked idly, turning another page. ‘But then, I don’t suppose my fears and wishes come into this. You’re going, and leaving me here, no matter how I feel about it.’
The observation jolted him. ‘I thought you of all people would understand. You said there wasn’t anything you wouldn’t do to save your family.’
‘Hmm? What was that?’ She ran her finger down a page before she looked up with a cloudy-eyed expression.
‘Don’t be childish,’ he rebuked in an undertone.
Her brows lifted in a look of mild surprise. ‘Sorry, I can hardly believe you’re still here talking to me. You should be off saving your brother, your nation or anything else. After all, isn’t he all you have? Isn’t your duty to your brother and country above everything, especially me?’
That hit hard. ‘I have to do this, Amber. If I don’t disappear and hunt them down, they’ll just take us again—or kill Alim to make me step up, now they know we’re lovers.’
‘We were lovers,’ she replied, still in that indolent, I-don’t-care voice. ‘Rather hard to be anything when you’re going undercover commando on me.’
Right now he wished she’d just say what she wanted, but she’d gone Ice Queen on him again, and it was taking all he had left after this long, very hard day not to respond in kind, or just walk away. ‘When I’m done with this, I’m coming back for you.’ He tried to smile. ‘I want that honeymoon we agreed on.’
At that, she closed the book with a tiny snapping sound. ‘Again, it’s rather hard to believe that there will be a future at all when you’re going to be outnumbered and if they find you, they’ll probably kill you—’ With a choking sound, she jumped up, wheeled around and ran from the room.
But not before he’d heard her gasp for breath on a sob, and seen her dash the tears from her eyes—and when he tried to find her, to make things right somehow, she’d retired to the section of the palace reserved only for women, where even Alim could not enter.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Four months later
‘I UNEQUIVOCALLY refuse any position that belongs rightfully to my brother. I was never more than his caretaker while he healed. I have now handed over the full power to my brother Alim. I am leaving Abbas al-Din tonight, and will not be returning for a long time. I wish my beloved brother happiness in the life ordained for him by God, and fully approve of his choice of bride. Hana al-Sud is a fine, strong woman of faith, worthy of the highest position. Thank you and good evening.’
For the five hundredth time Amber felt the potent cocktail of hunger and fury as she watched the re-run of the security closed circuit TV. Harun stepped down from the podium at the ruling congress, refusing to answer any questions after reading his statement. A five-minute presentation before the people he suspected of abducting them, and then he’d disappeared. No one had heard from him since.
At least, she hadn’t. She assumed Alim would tell her something if he knew, but he was very busy, taking the reins of power, planning his wedding—and since coming to the palace to accept Alim’s proposal, Hana had a terrible habit of dragging him into secret corners to kiss and touch him whenever he had a minute to himself.
Why didn’t I think of doing that with Harun years ago?
Because Hana’s secure; she knows Alim loves her. She’s a blessed woman.
With an angry snap she switched off the TV, resolving for the five hundredth time to never watch again, but she knew she would. Again before bed tonight, leaving her to pace the floor until exhaustion drove her to bed; again tomorrow when she’d finished the studies she loved, but he did too—and before dinner, driving her to eat next to nothing as she uttered polite inanities with the family to prove to them that she was coping with her isolated life, studying an archaeology course in half the time, and living in the old women’s quarters with only one maid and guard for company.
Hana and Alim’s wedding was to take place in two days. She didn’t even assume Harun would return for that event. She’d made that mistake for their engagement party, dressing in her finest, making sure she looked her best…and it was all for nothing.
Alim had no best man. He said if Harun didn’t come he didn’t want anyone.
She knew exactly how Alim felt. Why, why couldn’t she just leave him behind, as he’d done with her? Why didn’t she just get on with her life?
‘Because I have nowhere to go,’ she muttered, leaping to her feet and crossing the room rather than give in to the temptation to throw something at the TV. Despite her station, she had no personal fortune, or even a bank account. Not one of the staff in the palace, even a foreign worker, would help her, at the risk of deportation; her face was too well known. Her father refused to allow her to stay with them, or even send the jet for a week’s visit.
Come when your husband returns to claim you, he’d said inflexibly.
And unless it was to family, the law of the land forbade her from leaving her husband unless she could prove ongoing physical abuse. She had no friends outside her family circle, nobody close that would offer her shelter, or believe her if she tried to claim abuse; they’d all loved Harun from the start.
No, she was a royal wife in a traditional land: just another possession left unwanted in the treasure room until her owner remembered her.
Instead of pacing the floor for the five hundredth time, she stared fiercely out of the window. What she wouldn’t give to grow wings right now! She’d escaped once, but this time she was surrounded less by snipers than a thousand servants catering to her every need, and watching her every move. They were her protectors until her husband came back to take over the job. So until Harun chose to return from his wanderings and release her, she was caged as effectively as she’d been for her abductors.
Two days later
‘So, akh, I hear you’re one best man short.’
With an hour until the wedding Alim, standing alone in the sheikh’s magnificent bedchamber and dressed in his groom’s finery, whirled around to see Harun in the doorway, with a cheeky grin. Tired to the point of falling down, he was still ready to give his brother support during his day of days.
He threw Alim a mock salute. ‘Your Highness.’
And found himself smothered in a hard embrace. ‘Akh, little akh
, praise God you’re alive.’ Alim was trembling. ‘I thought…feared…’
‘I can hardly breathe here,’ he complained with a laugh. ‘I’m okay, akh, really—and when you come back from your honeymoon, I have good news to report.’
Alim pulled back, but hugged him again. ‘I’ll be grateful for that later. Right now, my little brother’s back from the dead… It was so damn hard going through my transition and engagement alone. I wanted you with me, to share my happiness and hardships.’
Harun willed away the sense of irony in everything Alim had just said. Telling Alim he’d felt the same for years would only damage their fragile relationship; he understood, and that was enough. ‘If it helps, I worked day and night the past few months to get here today.’
Alim peered at his face, and frowned. ‘You do look like you’re ready to fall down. Come, take some coffee. I can’t have you falling asleep on me during the ceremony.’ Alim led him inside, and poured him a cup of thick, syrupy black coffee. ‘There’s more. I’ve been drinking it all day.’
Harun chuckled and shook his head. ‘No wonder you seem like one of those wind-up toys. Why are you so nervous? You know Hana loves you.’
Alim sobered. ‘You know her first marriage was a sham. It’s her first time tonight, as well as our first time. If I don’t—’
Harun silenced him with a lifted hand, smiling. ‘I was there a few months ago, akh. Take it from one who knows now. I’ve seen the way she looks at you in news reports, and heard how she drags you into cupboards.’ Alim chuckled at that, as Harun intended. ‘She loves you, Alim; she’s ready. It will be everything she’s dreamed of, because in her eyes, that’s what you are.’
‘That was—the perfect thing to say.’ He was taken aback by Alim’s hand cupping his cheek. ‘I can’t believe you came back for me.’
So much left unsaid, but it no longer needed to be said. ‘Ah, you know me. I’m always hanging around just waiting to be useful.’
Alim grabbed the coffee cup from him and drew him into the stranglehold hug again, thumping him on the back. ‘I don’t deserve you, but I thank Allah every day for the gifts you’ve given me.’
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