To Tempt a Sheikh (Pride of Zohayd 2)

She heard the acid that now filled her arteries drip from her voice. “That wasn’t too far to go to make you help an innocent man prove his innocence, don’t you think?”

She’d seen him get shot. He hadn’t reacted this spectacularly then. After his recoil, he stilled, seeming to loom larger, his vibe darkening until it was deeper than the night enveloping them.

Then he finally snarled, “It is I who has gone far farther to help a guilty man get away with his crimes.”

For a moment she didn’t get his meaning. Just as it dawned on her, he gritted out, “I guess committing fraud runs in your family, after all.”

She staggered out of his hold. “I didn’t think even you would go that far.”

“Even me? What is that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. None of it meant anything.” She’d crumble at his feet any moment now. Get away from him.

She groped for the rails. He caught her back, twisted her around to face him. His face was a conflagration of every distraught emotion humanly achievable.

You’re seeing what you want to see.

Pain skewered her, tearing the last tatters of her sanity.

“What is it?” she rasped. “Is your ego smarting? You want me to go but still want me to beg to stay? Or maybe you want another payment for Todd’s freedom? On board your jet? I can give you one last go if you want to cross another fantasy off your list, with a reluctant woman this time.”

For an eternity, it seemed, horror froze his features. Then his phone rang. He lurched, looked down as if not understanding where the sound was coming from, or its significance.

She broke away from his now loose hold, ran up the stairs. She wanted to keep running, out of her very skin.

Then she had to stop, heaped on the farthest seat in the jet. She begged the first person who came offering her services to please, leave her alone. She wanted nothing.

She only wanted to let the pain eat her up.

And for the duration of the flight toward a home she’d forgotten, a home no longer for now she’d remain forever homeless, she let it.

“Talia! You did it!”

Talia slumped against the door she’d just closed.

Todd.

She swung around, and there he was zooming toward her, his eyes filled with tears as he pounced on her and snatched her into a crushing embrace.

She shook, her battered mind unable to grasp the reality of his presence, here, so soon. How…?

She must have voiced her shock. He pulled back, held her at arm’s length, his eyes, so much like hers, unsteady and avid over her face. “How did you do it? Mark told me you were trying to get me out, but I didn’t dare hope that you would actually do it.”

She almost told him, I sold my soul to the devil for your freedom. But that wouldn’t be accurate. She’d given her soul of her own free will to said devil. And she’d asked for nothing in return. Todd’s freedom hadn’t been the price of her soul, just another strand in a convoluted, undetectable web of manipulation.

Yet to see him, free, here, was worth anything.

Not that she could bear more turmoil now, or contact, with even the brother who’d always felt like a physical part of her. Every nerve in her body felt exposed.

She pushed away, shrugged. “It doesn’t matter what I did. What’s important is that you’re free and exonerated.”

“How can you say that? I need to know if you got yourself in trouble for me.”

“What’s important is you’re out and can resume your life.”

“Oh, God, you did do something terrible, didn’t you?” He caught her by the shoulders, his agitation mounting, shaking his whole slight frame. “Whatever you did, undo it. I’ll go back to prison, serve the rest of my sentence.”

“Don’t worry, Todd. I’ll deal.”

But the lie must have been blatant on her face. Todd’s tears flowed down his shuddering, flushed face. “Please, Talia, take it back. I’m not worth it.”

“Of course you are. You’re my brother, my twin. And the most important thing is that you’re innocent.”

“But I’m not.”

She’d thought she’d depleted her reserves for shock, that all that was left in her was oceans of grief and agony.

She stared at Todd, denial still fighting to ward off comprehension. His next words ended its struggle.

“I—I committed all the crimes I was convicted for. I hacked into accounts I found out about when Ghada once let me fix her computer. She was just a good friend, and I made up the whole thing about us to give you a story you’d believe and sympathize with. I embezzled millions, sold dozens of vital secrets. I did far more than what they found out. But I couldn’t admit it to you. It was part shame, part needing you to stand by me, to help me get out of this nightmare. I feared that if you knew I deserved what I got and worse, even with loving me, your sense of honor would stop you from trying. But I no longer care. I’ll go back so you can stop paying the price for the freedom I don’t deserve. I only hope you can one day forgive me.”

She stared at him. This was too much.

It was all a lie.

The two men she loved more than life had both used her and exploited her unconditional love for them.

She tore herself away from Todd’s pleading hands.

He sobbed as she staggered away. Before she stumbled into her room, to hide from the world and never exit again, she turned numbly. “Just don’t get yourself in trouble again. I don’t have any more in me to pay. And what I paid is for ever gone.”

The heart, the soul, the faith, the will to live.

All gone.

Seemed she was more resilient than she thought.

At the crack of dawn she was up, crackling with an unstoppable need. To confront Harres.

She’d thought she’d die rather than do it. But when she’d slept, her dreams had crowded with faithful replays of their time together. The contradiction between what she’d lived firsthand and the words she’d heard him say was so staggering, she knew something didn’t add up. She hadn’t been in any condition to realize that yesterday, too worn-out in every way, too shocked, too ready for bad news, too insecure, too you-name-it, that her mind hadn’t functioned properly.

Now she was back to her scientific, logical, gotta-have-answers-that-fit self. More or less. And she would settle this, would ask the question she’d been too raw to ask before.

Why had he said those things?

She’d take any chance that he’d have a perfect explanation and remain the man she loved with all her soul, the memory of whom would enrich her life even if she could never see him again. Far better than believing he had no reason but the obvious one, and was the monster she couldn’t bear living believing he was.