His Defiant Desert Queen(86)

                “You don’t even know her.”

                “I met her at Morgan’s wedding. She was kind to me. I liked her. She reminded me of my mother.”

                * * *

                Mikael left her to check on the status of the house and Jemma showered and dressed, slipping into the long ruby beaded skirt and matching ruby top laid out on the bed. Breakfast was served in the courtyard. She’d just sat down and had her first coffee when Mikael returned.

                “Escrow closed. The paperwork has been signed. The house is hers,” he said, taking the chair opposite Jemma’s.

                “Thank you,” Jemma said. “Thank you for caring for her. Thank you for wanting the best for her.”

                “I do for her what I should have done for my mother.” His brow furrowed, and his voice dropped, cracking. “I was not good to my mother. I failed her, and I will carry that pain, and that shame, with me forever.”

                She reached across the table, and covered his hand with hers. “How did you fail her? What did you do?”

                “Nothing. That is what I did. Absolutely nothing.”

                “I don’t understand.”

                “When I explain, you’ll be appalled. And you should be. My behavior was selfish and it still disgusts me, but it’s too late to fix things. Too late to make amends.”

                Jemma winced at his sharp tone, his voice laced with self-loathing and scorn. “Explain to me.”

                “I was twenty-two when I learned the truth about my father and mother, that my father had lied to her, and had destroyed their wedding contract so he could take another wife. I was furious with my father,” he said, “but I’d lost my mother years ago, when I was just a boy, eleven, and I was terrified of losing my father, too. He had so many other children, so many other sons he could admire and love, and so I pretended I didn’t know the truth about the divorce. I pretended that I didn’t know who my father was—a liar, a cheat—and I acted as if my father was this wonderful man.”

                “You were his son,” she said. “You were showing him respect.”

                “My father had turned his back on my mother. I understood he expected me to do the same. And so I did, even when she came to me on my twenty-fifth birthday, asking for help. She was nervous about her future. She wanted financial assistance, and advice. She was worried she wasn’t managing her money well. She was worried she’d run out if she didn’t have the right investments.”

                “Did you help her?”

                “No.”

                “No?”

                His jaw tightened. “I took her to coffee and told her I couldn’t help her, that she’d created this situation by leaving my father. I told her there was nothing I could do.” Mikael averted his face, staring off across the courtyard, his features set. “She didn’t cry. She didn’t beg. She just folded up her papers and slipped them back into her purse, then kissed me, and left.”

                Jemma’s eyes burned. “You were young.”

                “I wasn’t young. I was angry.” He turned to look at her, expression fierce. “I wanted to punish her for leaving me all those years ago, for leaving me with a father who barely remembered me because he had so many wives and sons and daughters, all clamoring for his attention. So I rejected her, wanting her to hurt as I had hurt.”