His Defiant Desert Queen(61)

                Her fingers curled against his chest. “Did you go live with her?”

                “No. I stayed with my father.”

                “You wanted to?”

                “I didn’t have a choice. I had to stay with my father.” He glanced at her. “In Saidia, like many Arab countries, mothers do not retain custody of the children in a divorce. The children usually go to the father, or the closest male relative, and the sons always remain with the father.”

                She rolled closer to him, both hands against his chest now. “But you saw your mom sometimes?”

                “No.”

                “Never?”

                “She was expelled from Saidia.” He reached out and caught her hair again, playing with the strand. “I wouldn’t see her again for almost twenty years. In fact not until just a few months before your sister Morgan’s wedding.”

                “What?”

                He let go of the strand. “I couldn’t see her after she left, and then, I wouldn’t see her.”

                Jemma just stared at him, eyes wide, her expression shocked. “You punished her for the divorce.”

                He shrugged. “I had a hard time forgiving her for divorcing my father. Because yes, she knew that by divorcing my father, she’d lose me. He made it clear he wouldn’t let me leave with her. But she divorced him anyway. She chose to leave Saidia and leave me behind.” Mikael abruptly pulled away, rolling from the low cushions to stand up, and offered her his hand. “It’s hot. We talked. I think it’s time to cool off with a swim.”

                * * *

                They swam and splashed for a half hour until their lunch was brought to them. They sat in their wet swimsuits beneath the shade of a palm tree eating lunch.

                As Jemma nibbled on her salad she watched Mikael from beneath her lashes.

                She was still processing everything he’d told her in the pavilion about his parents’ marriage and divorce. Knowing that his mother was an American made it worse as Jemma found it so easy to identify with the woman, and how she must have felt in this Arab country with her powerful royal husband. And yet, even though his mother was an American and unhappy here, how could she leave her child behind?

                How could she adore her son but then walk away from him?

                “Do you look like your father?” she asked Mikael as they finished their meal.

                Mikael ran his hand through his short black hair. “I wish I hadn’t told you about the divorce.”

                “Why?”

                “I’m not comfortable with it. Or proud of my father. Or myself. Or of any of the decisions made.”

                Jemma understood, more than he knew. She’d wanted to go live with her mother when her parents divorced, but she hadn’t wanted to lose her father. And for years after the divorce, she’d still looked forward to seeing him, and she’d cherished the gifts he’d sent in the early years after the divorce—the dolls, the pretty clothes, the hot pink bike for her twelfth birthday—but then her parents quarreled again when she was thirteen, and all contact stopped. Her father disappeared from her life completely.

                She hated him, and yet she loved him. She missed him and needed him. She went to London to start over, to get away from her past and herself, and she thought she had. Until the news broke that he’d stolen hundreds of millions of dollars of his clients’ money.