One Reckless Decision

“I would never do anything to hurt you,” Jessa said softly, pinching the top of her nose between her fingers, hoping the headache that had bloomed there would fade. “Any of you. As you should know already. But I am going to go with him.” She braced herself. “I have to.”

“I can’t believe this!” Sharon hissed. “What is it about this man that turns you so dense, Jessa? People don’t change. He will hurt you all over again. That’s a promise.”

Jessa felt as if she’d been in suspended animation for years, with nothing but ice water and regret in her veins, until Tariq had roared back into her life and filled her with heat and life and love. How could she ever regret that, no matter what happened? But she couldn’t share that with Sharon.

“I only phoned to let you know that I’ll be traveling,” Jessa said after a moment, fighting to keep her voice steady, and not to give in to the kick of adrenaline and insecurity that made her want to slap back at her sister. “I’m not asking for your permission.”

She opened her eyes again and let them fall on the glorious painting on the wall across from her seat. It was a mountain scene, blues and greens and none of it soothing, somehow, with Sharon so angry.

“I cannot believe that you would risk so much on what? Your hope that things might be different?” Sharon made a bitter sort of sound. “I hope you haven’t gone off the deep end!”

“I hope so, too,” Jessa murmured, because there was nothing she could say that could make Sharon feel any better.

Sharon hung up the phone. Jessa let hers drop into her lap, and ordered herself to breathe. Her eyes were wide open this time. She had loved him when nothing about him was true, and she loved him now. Still. Did that make her the fool her sister thought her? Did she mind terribly if it did?

“Who were you talking to?” Tariq asked from the doorway, his low voice making Jessa jump in her seat as if scalded. Her eyes flew to his and she felt the blood drain from her face. She felt raw. Exposed. Had she said anything incriminating? Had she mentioned Jeremy?

“How long have you been standing there?” she asked, trying to sound calm, but her voice was far too highpitched. Her heart pounded as if she’d just run a mile. It was too much—Sharon’s frustrated anger and her own realizations about her feelings for Tariq. How could she face him before she had time to pull herself back together?

But it was too late—he was standing right in front of her, and Jessa was suddenly terrified that he could read her like a book.

Guilty. That was the look on her face, he realized after a moment of confusion. Guilty and pale.

“What is the matter?” he asked, searching her expression, all of his senses on red alert. He had finished a meeting more quickly than he’d expected, and had come here hoping to convince her to help him while away the time before the next meeting more pleasurably. He had not expected that he would find her secretive and jumpy. While he watched, she surged to her feet and held her mobile phone behind her, as if hiding it.

“Nothing is the matter,” she said, but her voice was too uneven. Tariq felt his instincts kick in, the ones that served him well in politics as well as in combat situations. He moved closer to her.

“Who was that on the phone?” he asked again, this time with less curiosity and more command.

“No one,” she said. Then she blinked and smiled, but it was not a real smile. It was far too strained. “It was my sister, Sharon, that’s all.”

“Did your sister upset you?” he asked. He searched her face. “With your parents gone, you must be close to her and her family.”

She flinched, that guilty look stealing across her face again, though this time she tried to hide it. It was an absurd, over-the-top reaction, and he reached out a hand toward her, frowning, worried that something was truly the matter—

And suddenly, somehow, he knew.

The photograph he’d seen in her house flashed before his eyes, the one he’d snatched from the mantel and given only a cursory glance. The sister who looked like Jessa—the same copper-colored hair, the same chin. Her fair-haired, freckled husband.

And their olive-skinned, dark-haired child.

No. He felt himself freeze solid from the inside out, as if he’d been thrown headfirst into a glacier. She could not have done this and not have told me, not after all of this—

“Tell me,” he said, feeling still, quiet, empty and bleak. “What is the name of your sister’s child?”

It was as if he saw her from a great distance then. He saw her face twist into misery. Her hands clenched together in front of her. She was the very picture of distress.