She nodded, still not looking at him.
‘I apologise to you, from the bottom of my heart.’
Now, her gaze met his, but it hurt too much to hold. The look of pity there was the worst thing. She didn’t want him to pity her. She wanted his love.
‘I should never have slept with you in Manhattan. I have been selfish this whole time. I hope one day you will forgive me.’
‘I can forgive you for almost everything,’ she said with a small lift of her chin. ‘Manhattan. The embassy. Our marriage. Those were decisions you made because you felt.’ She pressed a finger into his chest, her eyes like little galaxies. ‘Agreeing to divorce me is because you refuse to feel. I don’t know if I’ll ever get past that.’
‘Damn it, Daisy.’ He dropped his head then, his forehead to hers, his breathing ragged. ‘You ask too much of me.’
‘I ask nothing of you,’ she corrected. ‘Except your heart.’ But he wasn’t going to give it. Daisy could see that. Slowly, she stood, her fingers finding the keys once more, pressing two together. ‘It’s a beautiful instrument. Don’t make the same mistake your father did—don’t shut music from your life once I’m gone.’
Her words chased themselves through his mind for days. They whispered to him overnight, waking him before dawn, they spoke to him at the strangest times. When he was running or working, meeting with foreign politicians. Always that strange parting statement settled around him.
‘Don’t make the same mistake your father did.’
He kept the piano and he went to it often. Every day the sun rose and he went through the motions of his day, just as he had before Daisy. He remained committed to his schedule. He didn’t enter her suite of rooms. Nor did he use their adjoining balcony. But the piano he visited. He sat at the stool once, pressed the keys, remembered her fingers in those exact same places, the passion that ran through her.
And he thought about the life she should have been living, and would have been leading had her own plans not been so thoroughly derailed by those who were all too willing to take what they could from her without a second thought for what Daisy needed.
He’d been right to refuse to complicate their marriage. Right to insist he wouldn’t use her. How much easier that would have been! To pretend there was hope for them. To sleep with her each night, to fold her into his life only so far as he was willing, but all the while remaining steadfastly committed to his duties as ruler of the RKH.
‘Let me help you.’
She didn’t understand the pressures he lived with. He hadn’t been raised to share that burden. Daisy was gone, and he was glad. Not because he wanted her to be anywhere else but because he hoped whatever she thought she felt for him would pass.
Except it wouldn’t.
She wasn’t like that.
She loved him and she always would.
His gut clenched. Guilt cut through him. He turned away from the piano and stalked to his apartment. Malik was there but Sariq dismissed him quickly. ‘Not now.’
Forty sunrises had passed without Daisy. Forty mornings, forty nights, forty days that each seemed to stretch for weeks. Time practically stopped. Only in sleep, when she filled his dreams, did he relax.
He craved sleep. Each day, he longed for it, and all because of Daisy. But it wasn’t enough. Forty days after she left, he felt broken enough by missing her to accept that the solution to their marriage wasn’t so simple. He couldn’t send her away and forget about her.
He wasn’t the same as he’d been before. She’d changed him, and he’d never change back. Everything was different now.
Cursing, he strode from his room. ‘Malik? The helicopter. Immediately.’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
‘YOU ARE NOT EATING.’
Daisy regarded Zahrah over her water glass. ‘I am.’
‘Not like before,’ Zahrah chided affectionately. ‘When you first came to Haleth you could not get enough of our food.’
Daisy’s smile was thin. She had nothing in common with the woman she’d been then. ‘I’m eating.’
Zahrah compressed her lips but Daisy was saved from an argument she couldn’t be bothered having by the sound of helicopter rotor blades. At the same time, a knock sounded at the door. Zahrah moved to intercept it, and a moment later, returned.
‘His Highness is here.’
Daisy’s pulse was like a tsunami. She curved a hand over her stomach, her eyes flying wide open, her lips parting in surprise. It had been over a month since she’d left the palace. Their last conversation was painfully formal. He’d spoken to her as though she were a stranger.
Why was he here now? She couldn’t bear the idea of another stilted, businesslike interaction.
She stood uneasily, pacing towards the windows where she might get a glimpse of him. But the doors opened and she turned, her flowing turquoise dress blowing in the breeze created by his entrance. And she stood there and stared at him, her face too disobedient to flatten of all expression completely.
Butterflies beat against her and she hated that. She hated how reliably he could stir her to a response when she wanted to feel nothing for him.
‘What are you doing here?’
There was no point with civility, was there? Perhaps there was, but she couldn’t be bothered. She was tired, so tired.
He didn’t speak though. He stared at her and with every second that passed, her blood moved faster and harder so that it was almost strangling her with its intensity.
‘Your Highness?’ It was like waking him from a dream. He straightened, turning to Zahrah, then back to Daisy.
‘I’d like to speak to you. Is now a good time?’
She startled. His uncertainty was completely unusual. ‘I’m...yes.’ She nodded a little uneasily. ‘I suppose so. Zahrah?’
‘Yes, Your Highness.’ Zahrah bowed low. ‘Would you like any refreshments, sir?’
‘No.’ The word was swift. ‘Thank you.’
Zahrah left, and still Sariq didn’t move. It unsettled Daisy, so she wiped her hands down her front, drawing his gaze to her belly. In the forty days since she’d left the palace, her bump had ‘popped’.
She waited for him to speak but he didn’t and the silence was agonising. So eventually, she snapped. ‘Please tell me why you’re here, Sariq.’
He nodded, moving deeper into the room. ‘I came—’ He shook his head.
‘What is it?’
‘I came because...’
Nothing. She ground her teeth together. ‘What? Is everything okay?’
Emotion, heavy, obvious emotion, moved on his face. ‘No.’ So simple. ‘It’s not.’
Daisy’s heart rate doubled. ‘Why not?’
He stepped towards her, then froze. ‘I came because I couldn’t not.’
‘You’re not making any sense.’
‘I know.’ His throat shifted as he swallowed. ‘I came to apologise, because I cannot live with what I said and I did, with how I made you feel. I came because it occurs to me you’re living here believing that I don’t love you, that I won’t love you, when you were right. I do.’ Again he pulled at his hair, shaking his head, his eyes heavy with his emotions.
Daisy couldn’t move.
‘The night of the ball, when those men were apprehended for what they intended to do to you, I went to see them. I wanted to kill them, Daisy. There was nothing measured or calm in my response. Because of how I feel for you I risked undoing all of my father and grandfather’s work and dissolving our entire legal system so I could take my revenge. Even my father didn’t do this when my mother was murdered.’ He swallowed once more.
Daisy was incapable of speech or movement.
‘Loving you terrifies me because there is no limit to what I would do for you if you asked it of me. If anyone hurt so much as a finger on your hand, I would have the kingdom turn
ed upside down until they were found and brought to justice. I’m terrified that I cannot be what my country needs of me when I feel this way for you.’
A strangled noise escaped Daisy’s throat.
‘But if the last forty days have taught me anything, it’s that I cannot live without you either. Perhaps it’s the smart thing to do, but I cannot be smart if it means losing you. I won’t.’ He crossed the room, lifting her face in his palms, staring down at her with such obvious amazement that her heart turned over as though it were being stitched into a new position. ‘You are so brave. Fearless and strong, courageous, incredible. You faced up to how you felt about me even after what you’ve been through. After what I put you through. You are generous and good and I pushed at you, just like you said, pushing you away, unable to see a middle ground with you. Perhaps there isn’t one. Perhaps loving you will mean I cannot rule as I otherwise might have. I don’t care.’
But a sob burst through her. ‘I care. I won’t have you choose a life with me if you believe it weakens you.’ She lifted a hand to his chest though, softening her statement with a gentle touch. ‘I have too much faith in you for that.’ Her fingers moved gently across the flesh that concealed his heart. ‘You didn’t kill those men. You stayed within the bounds of the law, because you are a good sheikh and an excellent man. You will rule this kingdom with all your goodness, and I will be at your side, making sure of that. I have no intention of being your weakness, Sariq. I want to be your biggest support and your greatest strength. Understood?’
He groaned, shaking his head. ‘How can you be so good to forgive me after what I put you through?’
She bit down on her lip. ‘I didn’t say I’d forgiven you.’
His features tightened. ‘No, of course not. I misunderstood. I know it will take time for me to make it right between us, but I want to do that, Daisy.’
Her stomach flipped. ‘I believe you.’
‘And because you are clearly so much wiser than I in these matters, I ask only that you tell me how. What do I do to make amends?’
His hands dropped to her stomach and he closed his eyes, inhaling. ‘I want you and our child to be in my life. Please, Daisy.’
And she smiled because she knew he meant it, and because she wanted, more than anything, to grab the dream of this future with both hands.
‘Well...’ She pretended to think about it. ‘Perhaps we should put the divorce on hold. At least while I consider my options.’
He was disappointed, and there was a tiny part of her that enjoyed that. But she couldn’t string it out any longer—it was too cruel.
‘There are some things you could do to help me with that, you know.’
Hope flicked in his eyes. ‘Oh?’ Then, more seriously, his voice gruff, ‘Anything.’
She lifted a finger to his lips, silencing him.
‘Love me.’ That was it. Nothing more complex than that.
‘I do.’
‘Good.’ Her smile beamed from her. ‘Love me with all your heart, for all your life, and don’t ever stop.’
He pulled her against his chest, holding her tight, breathing her in. Their hearts beat in unison. Happiness burst through her.
‘Not only is that something I can manage, it turns out it’s completely non-negotiable.’
His kiss sealed that promise, and she surrendered to it, to him and to the future she knew they’d lead.
A year later, she stared out at the packed auditorium, anxiety a drum in her soul that was lessened only by the presence in the front row of her husband, the powerful Sheikh Sariq Al Antarah. Since returning to the palace, he’d insisted she further her piano studies. Leaving to attend a school like the Juilliard wasn’t possible—once their son Kadir was born, named for his grandfather, she found she didn’t want to go anywhere anyway. But Sariq saw no obstacle to that. He engaged world-famous pianists to come to the palace and work with her.
And now, all that effort had culminated in this. A performance that had sold out within minutes, the proceeds of which were going towards the charitable institution she’d established, helping women with mental health issues. Nerves were like fireflies in her veins but she closed her eyes and lifted her hands to the keyboard.
It was a perfect moment with infinite possibilities. She began to play and felt all the hopes of her childhood, the aspirations she’d nurtured for so long, bearing fruit. Who she’d been then, who she was now, unified in one dazzling, magical moment. She smiled, because she was truly happy, and suspected she would be for ever after.
Coming next month
BEAUTY AND HER ONE-NIGHT BABY
Dani Collins
Scarlett dropped her phone with a clatter.
She had been trying to call Kiara. Now she was taking in the livid claw marks across Javiero’s face, each pocked on either side with the pinpricks of recently removed stitches. His dark brown hair was longer than she’d ever seen it, perhaps gelled back from the widow’s peak at some point this morning, but it was mussed and held a jagged part. He wore a black eye patch like a pirate, its narrow band cutting a thin stripe across his temple and into his hair.
Maybe that’s why his features looked as though they had been set askew? His mouth was…not right. His upper lip was uneven and the claw marks drew lines through his unkempt stubble all the way down into his neck.
That was dangerously close to his jugular! Dear God, he had nearly been killed.
She grasped at the edge of the sink, trying to stay on her feet while she grew so light-headed at the thought of him dying that she feared she would faint.
The ravages of his attack weren’t what made him look so forbidding and grim, though, she computed through her haze of panic and anguish. No. The contemptuous glare in his one eye was for her. For this.
He flicked another outraged glance at her middle.
“I thought we were meeting in the boardroom.” His voice sounded gravelly. Damaged as well? Or was that simply his true feelings toward her now? Deadly and completely devoid of any of the sensual admiration she’d sometimes heard in his tone.
Not that he’d ever been particularly warm toward her. He’d been aloof, indifferent, irritated, impatient, explosively passionate. Generous in the giving of pleasure. Of compliments. Then cold as she left. Disapproving. Malevolent.
Damningly silent.
And now he was…what? Ignoring that she was as big as a barn?
Her arteries were on fire with straight adrenaline, her heart pounding and her brain spinning with the way she was having to switch gears so fast. Her eyes were hot and her throat tight. Everything in her wanted to scream Help me, but she’d been in enough tight spots to know this was all on her. Everything was always on her. She fought to keep her head and get through the next few minutes before she moved on to the next challenge.
Which was just a tiny trial called childbirth, but she would worry about that when she got to the hospital.
As the tingle of a fresh contraction began to pang in her lower back, she tightened her grip on the edge of the sink and gritted her teeth, trying to ignore the coming pain and hang on to what dregs of dignity she had left.
“I’m in labor,” she said tightly. “It’s yours.”
Continue reading
BEAUTY AND HER ONE-NIGHT BABY
Dani Collins
Available next month
Copyright ©2020 by Dani Collins
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The Secret Kept From The King (Mills & Boon Modern) Page 17
