Duty, Desire and the Desert King

She studied his face in the restaurant’s candlelight. The new fine lines and shadows she was seeing there only heightened his appeal. He looked older, stronger, more mature. “You will miss your old life, I think.”

His lips twisted. “I loved living in Monte Carlo and having apartments in London and New York. I enjoyed business and travel. But I think what I loved best was that my family seemed safe. I realize now it was an illusion—anything bad can happen at any time—but I was under the impression that as long as I stayed away, they were protected.” His bitter smile faded. “I will miss that secure thought more than Monte Carlo or my freedom. I know now none of us will ever be safe.”

“Life is never safe,” she said softly. “But just because it’s not safe, doesn’t mean it’s cursed.”

“No, I am cursed. I know the moment it happened. Even my family will tell you.”

She pushed her empty water glass away from her. “Jesslyn did say something,” she admitted.

“When?”

“The morning of our wedding. She came to my room with a gift, and as she was leaving she told me not to listen to the gossip about you…about the curse.” Rou looked at him, unable to hide her worry. “I understand from the little she said that something happened in your past. She didn’t go into details and I didn’t ask, but I’d like to know what this dark cloud is that hangs above you.”

“It’s more than a dark cloud. The curse has struck again. It killed Sharif.”

“Jesslyn said Sharif didn’t believe in the curse.”

He made a rough sound. “Fine. He didn’t believe in the curse, but where is he today?”

Her eyes met his and held. “Tell me what happened. Please.”

“It’s a terrible story, especially for a romantic night out.”

“But we have time, and no one will interrupt us.”

His gaze searched hers. “It might change how you feel about me.”

She made a face. “Maybe for the better.”

He grimaced. “Was that a joke, Dr. Tornell?”

“A bad one.”

“Well, I liked it. A little humor can go a long way when things are difficult.” He reached out, took her hand in his and held it for a moment before letting it go. “You really want to know?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’ll give you the short version. It’s all I think I can manage tonight.” He paused, stared off across the restaurant, already lost in thought.

After a moment he opened his mouth to speak, but closed it without uttering a word. Zayed shook his head slowly, rubbed his brow, and then his lip and then looked at Rou. “I fell in love with a neighbor’s wife. I was seventeen. She was twenty-four. She was very beautiful. Very, very beautiful. And very elegant and kind and charming. When she laughed I thought it was the most wonderful sound in the world.”

He stopped, looked down at the table where his hand was splayed, fingers pressed to the surface. “Nur was from Dubai, a princess, and her marriage to this neighboring sheikh was arranged. Her husband wasn’t a close friend of my father’s, but an acquaintance, and we would see them several times a year. I never spent time alone with her, just bumping into her at the horse races, at parties, formal dinners, things like that.”

Rou watched his face as he talked, watched the emotion and agony flicker across, one after the other. She couldn’t have interrupted him now even if she wanted to.

“Being seventeen, I had to let her know how I felt. I loved her. I loved her as much as I have ever loved anyone. I knew she was married. But I wanted her for myself.”

He looked up, into Rou’s eyes. “We never slept together. I never even kissed her. There was no physical contact, nothing other than my professed love…” His voice faded, and he sat, jaw clenched, skin pulled taut over hard cheekbones. “And then she disappeared. Gone. For a couple weeks no one knew what had happened. And then word came that she was dead. Her husband, suspecting her of infidelity, had her killed.”

Zayed’s jaw worked, eyes narrowed in tangible pain. “I would have given my life for her. I wanted nothing more than to love her. And my love, my stupidity, my impulsiveness and arrogance killed her. He had her stoned all because I lacked self-control.”

Rou sat, hands pressed to her chest. She couldn’t speak. Couldn’t. She’d dealt with guilt and tragedies as part of her practice, but this, this was the kind of guilt that crushed a man.

“She was innocent,” he added quietly. “She viewed me as a younger brother. She treated me kindly, and yes, she’d smile her dazzling smiles at me, but it was because I amused her. And I still sometimes think of her, and her final day…her final hours. I imagine her terror. I can almost feel her pain.”

“But if you didn’t ever touch her…if you never slept with her…?” Rou whispered her questions.

“It was a matter of shame. Hshuma,” he said, using the Arabic word, his long black eyelashes dropping, brushing the sweep of his high, hard cheekbones. “It’s a concept you don’t have in the West, not the way we do. While you may have guilt, we have hshuma, and it means that others know you’ve done wrong, and that is for us the worst sin of all. One must make atonement, set things right, and the way you do that is to destroy what has brought shame on you. If your eye has sinned, you pluck out the eye. If the hand has sinned, you cut off the hand.”

“And if the wife has sinned?”

He smiled a ghostly smile, while the gold eyes revealed hatred and horror. “You put her to death.”

She knew he was being sarcastic, but still, his words sent a shudder down her spine.

“Her husband and his family feel they acted properly,” he continued after a moment. “But I paid no price. So we were cursed.”

“But you did pay a price,” she said softly after a moment. “You lost the person you loved most. No price could be greater than that.”

“There are many who believe it wasn’t enough. Our neighbor, the sheikh, demanded my father hold me accountable. My father refused to condemn me to death. Instead he sent me away to England to finish school. People believe that my father’s refusal to hold me accountable cursed us. Thus the deaths of my sisters, my father, and now Sharif.”

It made sense in a terribly nightmarish, stomach-churning sort of way. It also finally explained why Zayed avoided close ties and ended relationships when they turned serious. And little wonder he asked her to

find him a bride when it became apparent he needed to marry. He wasn’t marrying for love, he wasn’t offering his heart, he couldn’t. He was still in love with Nur.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, thinking the words sounded pathetic at best. “I’m sorry for all of you—”

“Don’t be sorry for me,” he interrupted, eyes blazing. “I deserve every wretched punishment, but my family, especially my sisters, my brother…they were innocent, just like Nur.”

“What if it’s not a curse? What if it’s just really lousy luck?”

“Another Western word for fate or karma.”

“Yes, there’s cause and effect, everything has cause and effect, but no one in your family believes that you have anything to do with the family’s losses.”

“But I believe, and that is enough.”

In that moment, all the pieces came together for Rou. She saw him clearly, the outline and shape as well as the smaller pieces that made the man.

He wasn’t cold and arrogant, wasn’t selfish. He wasn’t spoiled and egotistical. He was a man who was alone and lonely, a man tormented by a past, a man so afraid of hurting those he loved that he’d closed himself off from everyone.

This is why she’d been so afraid of him. He was hurt just like her.

It broke another bit of her heart, damaging that armor she’d once kept so tightly around herself. What armor could protect her against him?

Her chest tightened, ached, and she realized that little by little she was falling for him. A man who would never love her back.

As the waiter approached, Rou told herself that she didn’t need his love. She told herself that a partnership would be enough. Maybe romantic love wasn’t as important in this case, not if they respected and supported each other.

Maybe respect and shared goals would be enough.

There was a very good chance it’d have to be enough.

Suppressing her doubts, suppressing her emotions, suppressing all her needs, she reached for his hand. Zayed needed a wife. She would find a way to be that wife.

“Let’s eat and leave,” she said softly. “Let’s just go back to the palace and be quiet and not think. Not think about curses or losses, not tonight. There’ll be plenty of time for that tomorrow.”