Clare Connelly Pairs II

by Connelly, Clare

She swallowed, her eyes wide. “I dreamed we were married. That you never left. That Michael was healthy and we were in love; I dreamed that we were a fairy tale. I dreamed that you weren’t a prince; a powerful leader of a foreign country. In my dreams you were always just ‘Ki’. The man I thought I loved.”

  Every single one of her words wounded him like a poisoned arrow; he knew she didn’t mean it to have affected him so. In fact, he was certain she had no concept of the power she wielded over him.

  “And now that we’re here, and we’re married, I can’t quite believe it’s like this.”

  “Like what?”

  Her laugh was without humour. “Like this.” She didn’t elaborate further. And Kiral didn’t need her to. She’d dreamed of the fairytale and instead he’d piled onto her nightmares.

  I’m sorry.

  Those were the words he should have said. But he had them bottled inside his chest. In his defense, Kiral Mazroui had not grown up with the expectation that he ought to apologise for his wrongdoings. He had never learned to be humble nor apologetic, and so he had no real mechanism for processing the sensations that were arrowing through him.

  He knew only that he needed to fix things. And giving in to what his body wanted every time he was near her was not the way. He’d done too much of that; now that he’d begun to feel remorse, the floodgates of regret were well and truly opened. Kiral had seduced her and overpowered her common sense at every turn of their time together.

  “I hate being away from him,” she said softly. Her eyes skittered from the palace wall beyond them then up to his face, and away again. “I know that we’re married and that you have conventions. I’m not trying to avoid what we agreed to. I’m your wife. But Kiral, I have to go to him.” Her lips quivered with emotion. “I’ve never been away from him. I’m trying to cope; I know that he’s got great care. And mom says he’s sleeping almost the whole time, and I know that’s normal. And I also know you’d tell me if anything happened —.”

  “Nothing is going to happen,” he interrupted to assure her.

  “It’s going to take me a long time to accept that.” Her lips were grim. “But he must be wondering where I am. When he wakes, I’m not there. And he’s never had that before. I need to go to him. Surely you can see that.”

  Kiral’s sigh was wrenched from his chest. “I will have him moved to the palace tomorrow.”

  Her eyes were saucer-wide in her face. “I thought you didn’t want people to know about him yet.”

  “No,” he shrugged. “I had thought it would be better to wait.” He pressed a finger beneath her chin, angling her face to his. “But nothing is worth seeing you in this pain. We are married. He is our son. It is time for him to come home and be acknowledged.”

  Abi’s heart squeezed. Excitement and elation zipped through her. “You mean it?”

  “Of course.” He studied her expression thoughtfully. “You seem surprised.”

  She lowered her gaze immediately; he could practically see her pulling her emotions together, wrapping a mask over her face. “I’m relieved,” she corrected.

  But that wasn’t it.

  “Abi? Why should you be surprised that I am bringing Michael to the palace?”

  She squeezed her eyes shut to gather her thoughts. When she opened them again, they clashed with Kiral’s copper gaze.

  “I just didn’t know if you’d…” she sucked in a deep breath. “I wasn’t sure you’d actually want me to be in his life.”

  Kiral frowned. “I married you so we would be able to raise him here together.”

  She nodded jerkily. “I know that’s what you said. I just …”

  “You do not trust me,” he surmised darkly.

  And Abi nodded. There was no other way to say it.

  The indictment hurt Kiral, but not as much as the realisation that she had every reason to feel as she did. Had he not threatened her with separation? Had he not told her that she could only remain in Michael’s life if she were to marry him immediately?

  “You probably don’t trust me either,” she said with a shrug. She was aiming for nonchalance and executed it expertly. Kiral couldn’t have said if she was at all bothered by this fact. “I mean, I know you’ll never understand why I kept Michael from you. And I’ll never understand why you felt you had to force me into marriage.” She shrugged again. “But here we are. Two people who don’t trust one another, with every reason in the world to at least try to look like we care.”

  At his look of prompting, she smiled.

  “Michael.”

  11

  “He’s beautiful.”

  Abi tilted her head towards her sister-in-law. Jalilah, effortlessly chic in a pair of wide-bottomed pants and a matching blouse, breezed into the apartment with a grin on her beautiful face.

  “You’re right on time.”

  “As if I would be late the first time I get to spend time with my favourite nephew.” Lilah walked into the room, her eyes trained to the toddling child. “I thought he was supposed to be sick?” She joked good-naturedly. “He’s the healthiest little boy I have ever seen.”

  Abi’s heart turned over with pleasure. “He’s done remarkably well. To think, his surgery was only two weeks ago. Look at him now!”

  “Mama,” the little boy spoke, moving quickly towards Abi.

  “Yes, darling?” She lifted him up and cuddled him, breathing in his sweet scent from the curls on his head.

  “My want Nanny.”

  “Oh,” Abi kissed his forehead. “Nanny will be back soon.”

  “Your mother?” Lilah prompted.

  “Yes. She flew back to the States yesterday.”

  “What a shame.”

  Abi nodded. She’d tried to change Annette’s mind but Annette had simply smiled sagely. The last thing you need now is me. You and Kiral have to work this out. Abi had denied it; she’d insisted that there was nothing to sort out with her husband. Only Annette had known better.

  You love him. And he loves you. Michael makes you a family, but you’re one even without him. And Annette had kissed Abi on the forehead. I know what you have, darling, because I never did. No one has ever looked at me as he does you. That man is fighting you because he’s been sidelined in your life; because he was kept from his son. But he loves you. And the best thing for both of you is to have time to remember that.

  “Yes. We’ll miss her.” Her voice was thick with emotion. Kiral loved her? That was a joke.

  Since the night of their wedding, he’d barely been near Abigail, and it was breaking her heart all over again. A marriage in which he didn’t love her was hard enough to endure, but at least she had taken comfort in the pleasure their bodies were capable of giving. But without that, they were virtually strangers. It was as though some kind of invisible electric fence had been erected. She couldn’t find a way to cross it and he didn’t seem to want to.

  She lifted her head and her eyes were dragged to his as if by an invisible magnetic force. He was watching her, his expression giving little away.

  Yet he watched her always as though trying to find the woman he had once loved.

  “Abigail,” he said, stepping forward into the room. “It is time to go.”

  She nodded jerkily. Just what she didn’t need! An interview with a journalist. She hardly trusted herself to speak without crying these days. “You’ll be okay with him?”

  “Of course,” Lilah sat down, cross-legged on the floor. Her long dark hair fell like a silk curtain down her back. “We are going to read some stories and I will teach him some of my favourite songs. And his nanny is just next door.”

  “Just do not teach him to sing them off-key, as you do.”

  Lilah laughed. “I’ll try.” She winked at Abi. “I’m really not that bad.”

  Abi smiled, but she was distracted. “Mummy will be back soon, darling. Auntie Lilah is going to play with you.”

  She placed him gently on to the floor and stood up. Kiral’s eyes were trained on her move
ments.

  They walked in a silence that was far from comfortable. Every step drove insecurity and anxiety further into Abi’s being.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” She murmured when they were almost at the Eflianan room she’d been shown to that first fateful day.

  He angled his face towards her. “You don’t?”

  “I don’t know,” her smile was distracted. “What does he want to know?”

  “Whatever he asks, you need not concern yourself. You do not need to speak on any matter that offends you.”

  She bit down on her lip. “Is it really necessary?”

  Kiral sighed and stopped walking. He turned to face her, his expression grim. “You must conduct some press, Abigail. It is required of you. And I believe this will be an easy first interview.”

  “Why? Why do you think that?”

  “Because Will is writing a social commentary for a weekend paper. He does not want difficult, emotional, dramatic details. He is looking for a love story. So let us give him one.”

  Her heart began to pound against her chest. A love story. How could she convince anyone that they were living out a fairy tale when she knew it was so far from the truth?

  She nodded, her throat almost closing over in anxiety.

  Compunction perforated Kiral’s conviction. “What is it that you are afraid of?”

  “I’m not afraid,” she corrected. “I’ve just never been interested in becoming a celebrity.”

  “You are not a celebrity; you are the Emira. There is a difference. If you are uncomfortable at any time, simply stand and walk out.”

  “You can’t be serious?”

  He nodded gravely. “It is one of the perks of being royal.”

  The door opened inwards and Will stood, grinning, on the other side. He was dressed casually, in a pair of dark pants and a button-down shirt with the sleeves pushed up to the elbows to reveal his tanned forearms.

  “I thought I heard voices.” He stepped backwards and Kiral followed, his smile natural and his manner perfectly at ease. Of course, he had done this a thousand times. Abigail had not. “I’m glad you could make time for this.” His eyes were drawn to Abigail.

  Abi was beyond nervous. Her face was pale and her slender fingers shook uncontrollably. As a rule of thumb, Will enjoyed it when his interview subjects were on an uneven footing. It made it a lot easier for him to ask the hard questions if they were thrown off balance. A journalist of his standing had little difficulty in justifying this approach. And yet the sight of Abi engendered pity and kindness for, perhaps, only the second time in his career. To use her anxiety against her felt utterly wrong. He sent her a reassuring smile – she only paled in response.

  “Have a seat,” he urged, frowning towards Kiral. Their eyes locked over the new Emira’s head but Kiral found he was unable to return the gaze for long. There was such obvious concern in the journalist’s bearing that Kiral felt an unwelcome surge of guilt. If a relative stranger to Abi could identify how unhappy his wife was, then her misery must have saturated her soul indeed.

  “There’s been a lot of speculation about you two, as a couple. You met several years ago. Abi, a lot of the focus has been on you, in particular, and why you kept your son from his father.”

  Abi’s eyes flew to Kiral’s face but he put a hand out to calm her. “Is it necessary to discuss that?” He asked, taking the seat beside Abigail and pretending not to notice when she flinched away from him.

  She was as jumpy as anything. Her eyes were enormous, and she looked as though she might pass out at any moment.

  “The speculation is natural,” Will said shrewdly. “You have been in need of an heir and here one has appeared, two years old and your spitting image.”

  Ki frowned. He trusted Will and owed him an enormous debt of gratitude, but the question was unwelcome. “Will,” he cautioned darkly.

  “This is an opportunity to tell your story,” Will pointed out. “Rather than allowing people to make up their own.”

  Kiral dragged a hand through his hair. “I don’t think we ought to care what people choose to believe.”

  Abi turned to regard her husband. “You care,” she said softly, but with a note of steel underlying the words.

  “Not so much,” he contradicted.

  “It’s fine.” She blanked him out and turned back to Will. Her expression was autocratic. Something fired in Kiral.

  “No.” He put a hand on her knee and her eyes flew to it, as though he’d electrocuted her. They’d barely touched in weeks. He felt it too. The zing of recognition and the sluggish desire of their bodies needing to feel more. To be given more. “Your reasons for keeping Michael in America are your own.”

  She ignored him. “I was afraid.” She swallowed and her delicate neck knotted visibly with the action. “I was young — only nineteen — and I didn’t know much about Delani. Only that Kiral has an incomparable degree of power. I was terrified that he would take Michael and that I would have no recourse to stop him.”

  “Do you regret that decision now?”

  “Be careful, friend,” Kiral’s voice held a note of warning.

  Abigail was beyond caring. She was going to be honest. She needed to say what she’d been feeling. She had no issues getting it off her chest. “Yes.”

  Will nodded and made a note in his book. “So if you could do it all again?”

  She shook her head. “I can’t.” Her tone was bleak; Kiral heard the emotion and he felt a corresponding ache in his gut.

  “Abi,” he squeezed her leg gently. “You made the only decisions you could at the time. You are an excellent mother.”

  Abi’s smile showed her disbelief. Kiral was speaking for the journalist’s benefit. He faulted her decisions as strongly as she did herself.

  “And so it was Michael’s health that brought you together?”

  “Enough,” Kiral held a hand up imperiously. “No more about our son.”

  Will looked at Kiral with frustration but nodded curtly. “Then why not speak a little about your life away from the palace.” He consulted his notepad. “I understand you were studying literature when you met?”

  “Yes,” she said simply, her fingers knotting in her lap. “And history.” There was no sense in not answering his questions fully. “I left college when I found I was pregnant.” She couldn’t look at Kiral.

  “To work?”

  “Yes.”

  She felt Kiral stiffen beside her.

  “And what did you do?”

  “Waitressing, at first. I had been waitressing when we met, to help with college tuition. The restaurant gave me enough shifts.”

  Kiral’s temper was spiking. He had stranded her pregnant at nineteen; she had dropped out of college because of him.

  “And then?”

  “I was fortunate to have met, through the restaurant, an editor from one of the big publishing houses. She hired me to do freelance editing. It meant I could work from home when Michael was little. Or hospital, as the case may be,” she finished with an attempt at a joke but it fell flat.

  “Editing what?” Will queried, shifting his position slightly. He leaned forward in his chair, and tapped his pen against his knee.

  “Books.” She smiled. “I’ve always been a big reader. It’s related to what I was studying. I was good at it.”

  “I did not know this,” Kiral said, his voice gruff.

  “No,” she kept her face averted. Her slender neck pulsed as she swallowed. “Anyway, it paid the bills. Well, most of them. And it gave me the time to be with Mikey.”

  “Michael. You know that’s a Hebrew name meaning Gift from God. Do you feel that about your son?”

  She couldn’t help but roll her eyes. “I’m pretty sure all mothers would feel that.”

  Will’s grin was disarming. “Touché. I meant, is that why you named him that.”

  She thought of the elderly man who’d spoken to her in the hospital. Lost on his way to see his great grandson, he�
�d paused a little to console a young, sobbing mother. Be brave. This child is a gift from God and you were chosen to raise him. This is a blessing. “I liked the name.”

  Ki’s tone was thick with unspoken feelings. “It is perfectly suited to him.”

  “Do you worry about what Michael will feel, when he’s older? When he knows he was kept from his father?”

  “Enough.” Kiral stood abruptly, and turned his back on them. “Will, you know I would do just about anything for you. But right now … I need you to leave us.”

  Will closed his notebook over. “Sure.” He stood, his manner at-ease. His shirt was fitted, buttoned up to his neck, but his firm physique was obvious beneath the cotton. He moved with a casual stroll from the room. It was abundantly clear that he was not intimidated by Kiral’s position in the slightest.

  “How was Michael born?” The question was torn from him as though each word pained him.

  “What do you mean?” Abi frowned. Had something been lost in translation?

  “You were pregnant. And then you had my baby. What happened between? How was the pregnancy? Were you sick? Uncomfortable?” And because his back was turned to her, Abi didn’t see the way he shuttered his eyes closed. “Where did you live?”

  Every fibre of her being was tensed. His questions were sparking memories that she didn’t like to examine often. “Why? Why does any of that matter?”

  He angled his head so that she could see his autocratic profile. But he did not turn around. “There is so much I do not know. So many gaps since I left you. Abi, I must understand …”

  She toyed with an invisible fleck of dust on her dress. “I don’t see any point in rehashing the past.”

  “I need to know,” he said simply, but his desperation was obvious.

  Abigail stared at him for a long, silent moment and finally nodded. “I was only a little sick. But I was scared. Terrified, actually.”

  “That I would take your baby?”

  “Yes, definitely.” He turned fully now to look down at her. “I’m sorry,” she shrugged, but her chin was tilted defiantly. “You have all the power and money in the world and I absolutely didn’t. It would have been the easiest thing in the world for you to claim him.” She gripped her fingers together in her lap and stared straight ahead. The chair opposite her, that had recently been occupied by Will, was the very same one she’d been sleeping in the night she’d seen Kiral again. “But it wasn't just that. It was all new. I wanted our baby, but I didn’t know if I’d have any clue what to do with him. And then when I found out about his condition …”