“No,” she cut him off harshly. “You don’t.”
“But Jasmine…” he started, then stopped. He’d offered her everything. His kingdom. His name. He’d offered her everything he had, and she’d refused.
But he hadn’t offered her everything. There was one risk he hadn’t taken.
“But you have to marry me, Jasmine,” he said. “You have to be my wife, because I…” He took a deep breath and looked straight into her eyes. “I love you.”
Her eyes widened. He saw her tremble. Then slowly, ruthlessly, she squared her shoulders.
“Then you’re a fool,” she said evenly. “I pity you with all my heart.”
With a growl, he started toward her. “But you love me,” he said. “Tell the truth. You love me, as I love you!”
She held up her hand.
“The truth is that I want what you cannot give me.” Her voice was cold as ice, like a sharp icicle through his heart. “Marrying Umar might be my only chance to ever have children.” Her eyes narrowed as she delivered the killing blow. “You took away my chance to be a mother, Kareef,” she whispered. “You took away my chance to ever have a child.”
It was his greatest grief. His greatest fear. The guilty thought he’d whispered silently around the desert fire by night. Only this was a thousand times worse, since the accusation fell from the lips of the woman he loved.
His agonized blue eyes were focused on her. He took a single stumbling step backward, bumping a nearby silver champagne bucket on a table. It crashed to the floor in an explosion of ice. The bottle rolled against the wall, scattering ice and champagne across the carpet.
But he didn’t notice. Pain racked his body, ripping him into little pieces more completely and ruthlessly than any sandstorm.
You took away my chance to ever have a child.
Pain and grief poured through him, burning like lava.
She’d told him it had been an accident. She’d told him he was forgiven.
Lies—all lies!
Suddenly, he could not contain the rage and grief inside his own body. Savagely, he turned and smashed a hole in a nearby wall. She flinched back, gasping.
“Teach me how to feel nothing, like you,” he said in a low voice. “I’m tired of having a heart. From the moment I loved you, it has never stopped breaking.”
Walking away from her, he paused in the doorway without looking back. He didn’t want her to see his face. When he spoke, his voice was choked with grief.
“Goodbye, Jasmine,” he said, leaning his head against the door as he closed his eyes. “I wish you a life filled with every happiness.”
And he left her.
CHAPTER TEN
AN HOUR later, Jasmine looked blankly at her own image in the large gilded mirror of the late Mrs. Hajjar’s pink bedroom.
“Oh, my daughter,” her father said tenderly as he pulled the veil over her head. “You’re the most beautiful bride I’ve ever seen.”
“So beautiful,” her plump, gray-haired mother agreed, beaming at her. “I’ll go tell them you’re ready.”
Jasmine stared at herself in the mirror. The round window behind her lit up her white veil with afternoon sunlight, leaving her face in shadow. She was having trouble breathing and could barely move, laced into a tight corset, locked into a wide hoop skirt beneath the layers of tulle.
Umar had ordered every component of this gown for her, even her underwear, from a Paris couture house six months before she’d agreed to be his bride. She looked at the mirror. The perfect gilded princess for this garish palace.
She could see the desert through the window behind her. She could almost imagine, in a far distance, a low-slung ranch house of brown wood, with trees and simply tended flowers beside a swimming pool of endless blue, and a loggia where she’d once held the man she loved, naked against her body.
Here in the desert, the harsh sun burned away all the lies.
Except for one.
The lie Jasmine had told to drive Kareef away.
Staring at the perfect bride in the mirror, she felt dizzy from the frantic beat of her heart.
Kareef had told her he’d loved her.
And she’d tossed his love back in his face!
I had no choice, she told herself as her knees shook beneath her. I had no choice! He asked to marry me. He would have been forced to abdicate the throne for me!
To push him away, she’d conjured the most cruel spell, the most vicious accusation she could imagine to drive him away from her. She’d used his own grief and guilt against him.
It made her sick inside. No matter how pure her motives, she knew she’d committed the deepest betrayal of the heart. And if she married Umar today, she would be committing suicide of the soul.