“You look stunning,” he said.
She smiled, hiding her nervousness. “Thank you.”
“Do you know what we are doing for dinner?” he asked, leading her from the room, and down the outer corridor.
“No.”
He smiled down at her. “Good.”
He escorted her all the way to the front of the Kasbah, and out through the grand wooden doors. A car and driver waited for them.
The driver opened the back door of the black sedan. Jemma glanced at Mikael before climbing in. But he said nothing and his expression gave nothing away.
With Mikael seated next to her, the driver left the walled Kasbah. Soon they were driving through the desert, the car flying down the ribbon of asphalt. Moonlight bathed the miles of undulating sand.
Mikael pointed to the landscape beyond the tinted window. “This, my queen, is all yours.”
She looked out the window, at the vast desert, and then back at Mikael, struggling to keep a straight face. “It is truly lovely sand.”
“Are you making fun of my desert?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Good.” His eyes gleamed. “Because I value every single grain in this desert.”
She smiled, and he smiled back and then his smile faded. He reached out and lightly touched the ornate gold chandelier dangling from her lobe. “These look beautiful on you.”
“They are exquisite,” she agreed.
“But you said you do not value jewels.”
She looked at him warily. “Not as much as some women, no.”
“But you value...talking.”
He sounded so pained that her lips curved and her heart turned over. “Sharing,” she explained.
“How do you feel about apologies?”
She lifted her brows. “In my experience, women love them. Men tend to hate them.”
He smiled faintly. “That seems true in my experience as well.” He hesitated. “And as difficult as it is for me to say I’m sorry, I owe you an apology. I was curt with you earlier, at the pool, and I focused my anger on you, when it’s your father I am angry with.”
She shifted uncomfortably. “You don’t have to apologize. Every word you said was true. Your mother was treated terribly—”
“Yes,” he interrupted quietly. “But that doesn’t excuse how I spoke to you. And it doesn’t make my behavior acceptable. You were reaching out to me, and sharing your experiences, and your feelings, and I lashed out, hurtfully. I am sorry for that. I take no pride in my faults, and as you have seen, I’ve many.”
For a long moment Jemma could think of nothing to say. It was hard to speak when her eyes burned and her throat ached. She was surprised, and touched, by his honesty, never mind the humility. “Of course I forgive you. We all have things that hurt us.”
His dark head inclined. “I am sensitive with regards to my mother, because my father mistreated her, and then I mistreated her, too.”
“You were just a boy at the time of their divorce.”
His features tightened. “I hated her for getting the divorce.” The words were said bluntly, sharply. “Was her pride so important? Was her pride more important than me? She knew when the divorce was finalized, she’d leave the country, without me.” He extended his legs as much as he could. “I’d be lying if I said that I understand now. Because I don’t. Maybe I won’t ever. But it was terrible then, being eleven, and knowing my mother chose to leave me.”
Jemma reached to him, put her hand on his arm. “Perhaps she didn’t think she’d really lose you. Maybe she thought things would turn out differently.”
“How?”
“Maybe she thought your father would back down, change his mind, not move forward and marry a second wife. Or maybe she had worked out some sort of alternative custody arrangement. Maybe your father had agreed to share you...or even grant her custody while you were a child.” Jemma leaned toward him, the delicate gold and diamond earring tinkling. “If your father had deceived her about the marriage contract, who knows what he might have said to her? Or promised her?”
He glanced at her. “But I didn’t know that as a boy. I didn’t know he was to blame. That he was the one who’d lied. So I blamed her.”
“You were angry with her.”
“I hated her.”
“And then as an adult you learned the truth.”
“Yes.” His lips curved but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. “And I hated him.”
“You told him that?”
“No, not then.”
“But you did go to your mother? You tried to make amends?”
He sat still, expression blank. “I waited a long time. I waited too long. If I’d gone to her earlier, and tried to help her earlier, she might not have relied so much on others. On outsiders.”