“Did he not make any financial arrangements for you and the baby?”
Rachel put down her cup.
“I appreciate your concern, Your Highness, but as I said, that’s in the past.”
“And this is the future with which my brother should have been concerned. He made no provisions for you or the boy, did he?”
She stared at him. His face was taut with anger. At Rami, she realized, not at her.
It made her feel guilty about the lies she’d told him, the one enormous lie, and wasn’t that ridiculous?
“Did he walk out? Did he at least tell you he was leaving?”
Rachel shook her head.
“No,” she said softly. That, at least, was true.
There was a silence.
“But he cared for you,” Karim finally said.
Rachel didn’t answer. A couple of seconds went by. Then he cleared his throat.
“I know it won’t change things but you should know that he was not always so—so uncaring. Our childhoods were—difficult. The things we experienced changed him.”
“And they didn’t change you?”
“I am sure they did, but we chose different ways of dealing with those experiences.” A shrug of those wide, masculine shoulders. “Who can explain why one sibling takes one approach to life and the other—”
“No one can explain it,” Rachel heard herself say.
“That’s kind of you, but—”
“It isn’t kind at all. It’s just a fact. I have—I have a sister. And—and I have better memories of her when we were little than I do of the years after.”
Karim nodded. “She is not like you,” he said quietly.
“No. We’ve always been very different.”
“And she would not fight me to keep her child, as you surely will, even though I will raise him as a prince.”
“No,” Rachel said quickly, “I don’t care that he’s a prince. He’s—he’s—”
She clamped her lips together,
but it was too late.
Karim’s eyes were dark and unreadable, but there was a harshness in his voice that hadn’t been there a moment ago.