He thundered up the steps, and she led him into her room and shut the door. “You have a lot of nerve, threatening a sweet woman like that,” she hissed quietly as she whirled around. “Are you concerned that I’m going to disappear in the middle of the night? I want to be paid, remember.”
The words he’d so carefully rehearsed left him as soon as she mentioned the money. Icy cold betrayal spread slowly and painfully through his chest. Angrily, he reached out for her and pulled her against his body. “Are you going to miss this when you’re gone, rolling in all that money?” he whispered in her ear.
"Have you no feelings at all?"
He released her. “I could ask you the same question. You are hot and then you are cold." He arched a brow. “I just want to know why.”
"Why do you care? I'm your toy, bought and paid for. Why do you care what I feel?"
Clenching his jaw, his eyes bored into her. "Are you a woman with no intuition? Do you see the way I watch your every move? Merge my soul with you when we make love? Do you think me so low that I would pretend to want you? I do not have to pretend. I own you, but I would not have to pretend, even if I didn't."
She took a step back, and there was nothing but raw pain on her face. “You do not own me. You're enjoying me for the period of our contract terms. And you have, haven't you? You've enjoyed me. Many times. I’m surprised you're not bored right now."
This was a mistake. He should never have come here. Taking a shaky step back, he wondered if he could outrun her rage, escape the cutting remarks. “You will not get paid if you do not show up tomorrow,” he warned her.
“Trust me, I’ll be there. I didn’t go through all of this just to skip the best part.”
Three hours before the wedding, Liyah’s mother finally called her back and tearfully apologized for missing her wedding. “I’ll be there in spirit,” she said.
“Mom, why haven’t you called me back? I’ve been so worried,” Liyah muttered.
“Oh, sweetheart, you’ll understand after your own wedding. Time will just slip on by and you won’t even have realized it. That’s what love does.”
Liyah felt completely alone. All her life, she and her mother had been side by side, and now, when she needed her mother the most, not because she was getting married but because she was in pain, her mother wasn’t there.
She’d been abandoned for a virtual stranger.
Two hours before the wedding, she cried and blew into a paper bag while Mila and Sahaar tried to finish her hair and make-up. When she got up and started pacing in a panic, they got so disgusted that they told her to get married looking just like she did. It would serve the bastard right, anyway.
One hour before the wedding, she was calm and collected. She politely asked Sahaar and Mila to finish helping her get ready. Chances were looking good that this would be her only wedding ever, and she didn’t want to look like a complete disaster.
When the door to her dressing room opened and Amira stuck her head in, Liyah felt her heart skip a beat.
“It’s time,” Asad’s sister said quietly, and there was so much sadness in those words that Liyah feared she would be crushed beneath them.
15
Lightbulbs flashed as the press took their pictures, and Liyah tried desperately to focus. Asad held her hands, rubbing his fingers over her knuckles during the ceremony, and smiled gently at her. How ironic that she was marrying the man she loved with all her heart, and all she wanted to do was throw up.
“I vow to love and cherish you until the day that I die,” he said softly, his eyes boring into hers. The whole crowd fell silent. “From the moment I laid eyes on you, I knew that you were special, and I’ve spent this whole time trying to figure out how to make you mine. Now I have you here, and I am never letting you go. You are my heart, Liyah. Every beat of it beats for you. You are my breath. With every breath, I’m filled with you. And I vow that none of this will change, so long as I live.”
He slid the ring on her finger, and she nearly burst into tears. How long she had been waiting to hear those words, and now that he’d said them, she knew that he didn’t mean them.
Digging deep, she reinforced her spine and straightened her body. Mila passed her the ring, and Liyah kept her head high.
“I vow to stand by your side and support you in everything that you do,” she murmured. The words failed her, and for a moment, she was silent. Everyone stared at her, and she briefly closed her eyes. She’d practiced this moment, these impersonal vows that she’d written, but this was the one time that she could be honest with him and still pretend that she was hiding behind a lie. If she let the moment slip away, she might regret it.
“You have changed my life,” she said hoarsely. “You’ve shown me a love that I never thought was possible, to be loved and to love in return. You’ve given me a hope that I never thought was possible, a hope that true love really does exist. I know in my heart that, no matter what
, you’ll be the only man that I will ever love, and even though I’m sliding this ring onto your finger at this moment, it’s something that I could have told you a long time ago, and it still would have been true.”
He looked completely stunned, and for a moment, she thought she might faint. The rest of the Westernized ceremony was nothing more than a roaring in her ears until Asad led her away. Next, instead of the ceremony being over, they were seated at the head of a large table in exquisite plush seats and given two goblets with which to exchange a toast. Only then did the festivities start. Belly dancers. Singers. Jugglers. It was a huge affair, and as usual, she felt herself lost in the crowd.
The whole affair lasted three days, and in those three days, she barely saw her husband. Everyone drank and laughed and danced, and even Liyah let the alcoholic spirits dull the pain. She danced with Amira and Mila, and when she turned around, she was horrified to see Bashar watching her.
“I thought I was doing what was best,” he whispered in her ear. She could barely hear him over the music. “But you are not happy. Perhaps you need more than a marriage to the man you love to make you smile.”
She was about to demand that he explain himself, but someone grabbed her arm, and she was dragged away.