One Reckless Decision

“I came back,” Jessa said, her voice a low throb, rich with a pain she would have said was long forgotten. “You didn’t.”

There was an odd, arrested silence.

“You will have heard of my uncle’s passing, of course,” Tariq said, his gaze hooded. His tone was light, conversational. At odds with the tension that held Jessa in a viselike grip.

“Yes,” she said, struggling to match his tone. “It was in all the papers right after you left. It was such a terrible accident.” She took care to keep her voice level. “Imagine my surprise when I discovered that the man I’d known as simply the son of a doctor was, as it happened, a member of the royal family and the new king of Nur.”

“My father was a doctor.” His brows rose. “Or do you think I impugned his honor after his death merely for my own amusement?”

“I think you deliberately misled me,” she replied evenly, trying not to let her temper get the best of her. “Yes, your father was a doctor. But he was also the younger brother of a king!”

“You will forgive me,” Tariq said with great hauteur, “if your feelings did not supercede legitimate safety concerns at the time.”

How could he do that? How could he make her feel as if she had wronged him when he was the one who had lied and then abandoned her? What was the matter with her?

“Safety concerns?” she asked with a little laugh, as if none of this mattered to her. Because none of it should have mattered to her. She had come to terms with her relationship with Tariq years ago. “Is that what you call it? You invented a man who did not exist. Who never existed. And then you pretended to be that man.”

He smiled. Jessa thought of wolves. And she was suddenly certain that she did not wish to hear whatever he might say next.

“I’m sorry about your uncle,” she murmured instead, her voice soft. Softer than it should have been, when she wanted only to be strong.

“My uncle, his wife, and both of their sons were killed,” Tariq said coolly, brushing off her words of condolence. The wolf smile was gone. “And so I am not just King of Nur now, but the very last of its ancient, founding bloodline. Do you know what that means?”

She was suddenly terrified that she knew exactly what that meant, and, more terrifying, what he would think it meant. She could not allow it.

“I imagine it means that you have great responsibilities,” Jessa said. She couldn’t think of any reason he would drop by her office in Yorkshire to discuss the line of succession in his far-off desert kingdom, save one. But surely, if he knew the truth, he would not be wasting his time here with her, would he? Perhaps he only suspected. Either way, she wanted him gone. “Though what would I know about it?” She spread her hands out, to encompass the letting office. “I am an office manager, not a king.”

“Indeed.” He watched her and yet he made no move. He only kept that dark green gaze trained upon her while the rest of his big, lean body seemed too still, too much raw power unnaturally leashed. As if he was poised and ready to pounce. “I am responsible to my people, to my country, in a way that I was not before. It means that I must think about the future.” His voice, his expression, was mocking, but did he mock her, or him? “I must marry and produce heirs. The sooner the better.”

All the breath left Jessa’s body in a sudden rush. She felt light-headed. Surely he could not mean…? But there was a secret, hidden part of her that desperately hoped he did and yearned for him to say so—to make sense of these past lonely, bittersweet years by claiming her, finally, as his. To fulfill the foolish dream she’d always held close to her heart, and fervently denied. His wife. Tariq’s wife.

“Don’t be absurd,” she chided him—and herself. She was nothing. A no one. He was the King of Nur. And even if he had been a regular, accessible man, he was also the only one with whom she had so much tangled history. It was impossible. It had always been impossible. “You cannot marry me!”

“First you mock me,” Tariq said gently, almost conversationally. And yet the nape of Jessa’s neck prickled in warning. “You call me a pathetic playboy. Then you order me to leave this place, like some insignificant insect, and now you scold me like a child.” His lips curved into a smile that did not reach his eyes. “Perhaps you forget who I am.”

She knew exactly who he was. She knew too well what he could do to her. What he had done already. She was much more afraid of what he might do now.

“I have not forgotten anything, Tariq,” she said, glad that her voice was calm yet strong, as it ought to be. Glad that she sounded capable and unmoved, as she should. “Which is why I must ask you to leave. Again.”