His Defiant Desert Queen(10)
He didn’t answer immediately, and when he did, his answer was short, brusque. “Drakon.”
She picked her next words with care. “You must know he won’t approve of you locking me up, for six months or six years. I’m his sister-in-law.”
“His ex-sister-in-law. Morgan and Drakon are divorced, or separated, or something of that nature.”
“But he likes me. He has a soft spot for me.”
Mikael’s lips compressed. “Perhaps, but you’re a felon. Even as protective as he is, he will still have to come to terms with the fact that you broke the law, and there are consequences. There must be consequences. Saidia cannot be lawless. Nor can I govern at whim.” His head turned, and his dark eyes met hers. For a long moment there was just silence, and then he shrugged. “And at last, the Copelands will be held accountable for their crimes.”
Her stomach flipped. Her heart lurched. “You want to see me suffer,” she whispered.
“Your father should have accepted responsibility and answered for his actions. Instead he ran away.”
“I hate what he did, Sheikh Karim. I hate that he betrayed his customers and clients...friends. His choices sicken me—”
“There was a reason your visa was denied. The refusal was a warning. The refusal should have protected you. You should not have come.”
She turned her head and swiftly wiped away tears before they could fall.
No, she shouldn’t have come to Saidia. She shouldn’t have broken laws.
But she had.
And now she’d pay. And pay dearly.
She felt Mikael’s gaze. She knew he was watching her. His close, critical scrutiny made her pulse race. She felt cornered. Trapped.
She hated the feeling. It was suffocating. Jemma’s fingers wrapped around the door handle and gripped it tight. If only she could jump from the car. Fling herself into the desert. Hide. Disappear.
But of course it wouldn’t work like that.
Her father had tried to evade arrest and he’d taken off in his yacht, setting across the ocean in hopes of finding some bit of paradise somewhere.
Instead his yacht had been commandeered off the coast of Africa and he’d been taken hostage and held for ransom. No one had paid. He’d been hostage for months now and the public loved it. They loved his shame and pain.
Jemma flinched and pressed her hands together, fingers lacing. She didn’t like thinking about him, and especially didn’t like to think of him helpless in some African coastal village.
If only he hadn’t run.
If only he hadn’t stolen his clients’ money.
If only...
“The doors are locked,” Mikael said flatly. “There is no escape.”
Her eyes burned. She swallowed around the lump in her throat. “No,” she murmured, “there isn’t, is there?”
She turned her head away again, trembling inwardly. It had been such a bad, bad year. She still felt wrecked. Trashed. Devastated by her father’s duplicity and deceit. And then heartbroken by Damien’s rejection.
To have your own father destroy so many people’s lives, and then to have the love of your life abruptly cast you off...
She couldn’t have imagined that her life would derail so completely. One day everything was normal and then the next, absolute chaos and mayhem.
The media had converged on her immediately in London, camping outside her flat, the journalists three rows deep, each with cameras and microphones and questions they shouted at her every time she opened her front door.
“Jemma, how does it feel to know that your father is one of the biggest con artists in American history?”
“Do you or your family have any plans to pay all these bankrupt people back?”
“Where is all the money, Jemma?”
“Did your father use stolen money to pay for this flat?”
It had been difficult enduring the constant barrage of questions, but she came and went, determined to work, to keep life as normal as possible.
But within a week, the jobs disappeared.
She was no longer just Jemma, the face of Farrinelli, but that American, that Jemma Copeland.
Every major magazine and fashion house she’d been booked to work for had cancelled on her in quick succession.
It was bad enough that six months of work was lost, but then Damien had started losing jobs, too.
Damien couldn’t get work.
Farrinelli cancelled Jemma’s contract as the face of Farrinelli Fragrance. Damien didn’t wait for Farrinelli to replace him too. He left Jemma, their flat, their life.
Jemma understood. She was bad for his career. Bad for business. For Damien. Farrinelli. Everyone.
Heartsick, miserable, she opened her eyes to discover Sheikh Karim watching her.
Tears filled her eyes. She was ashamed of the tears, ashamed for being weak. How could she cry or feel sorry for herself? She was better off than most people. Certainly better off than the thousands of people her father had impoverished.