His tortured memory of that night threw harsh shadows into his face.
“He’d thought she felt the same, but she broke it off. He couldn’t go on without her. Refused to.”
Galila tried to speak and realized her hand was over her mouth. She lowered it. “You were six years old. What was he thinking, putting all of that on you?”
“He wasn’t thinking. He was out of his mind with agony.”
Karim’s own agony was written in deep lines of anguished grief, painful memory and a lifetime of confusion and regret.
“It was years before I understood it properly, but he wanted me to know why he was leaving it all in my hands. He couldn’t leave a note. My mother would have seen it.”
“Are you saying—Karim,” she breathed, gripping the arms of her chair and leaning forward. “His death was deliberate.” Please, no.
He flashed one tortured flare of his gaze her direction, then showed her his grim profile. “My mother can never know. I’ve always let her believe he stumbled.”
“You saw that?” The words tore a strip from the back of her heart to the back of her throat, leaving a streak of burning anguish on his behalf. “That’s horrible! He never should have—”
Her entire composure was crumpling in empathy for him. She rose anyway, but he stiffened as she approached, telling her he didn’t want her comfort. It was an excruciating rejection.
“Karim...” She held out a hand. “I had to tell you, but I would never, ever tell anyone any of this. Certainly not your mother.”
He jerked his chin in a nod of acknowledgment, but when she came closer, he again stiffened and held up a hand this time, warding her off.
His harshly voiced declaration came back to her. Why do you think I married you? Surely, they had built something beyond that, though? She was carrying his child.
“I’m going to put that in my personal safe,” he said. “I don’t want anyone else to see it and come to the same conclusions you have.”
“Of course.” She moved to take up the linen, but he took it from her and wrapped it himself, disappearing to his own side.
She stood there waiting for his return. And waited and waited.
He didn’t come back.
* * *
Galila entered the breakfast room to find a handful of aides doing exactly what her husband wanted them to do—they were creating a buffer between him and his wife.
She had spent a restless night missing his heat beside her in the bed, trying to take in the fact Karim had known all along that his father had had an affair with her mother. That he had lied to her about his reasons for marrying her and hadn’t trusted her enough to tell her the truth. Not until she figured it out for herself.
Now she had, he was turning his back on her again. Why? Shouldn’t this shared secret draw them closer?
As she sank into her chair, he rose, almost as if they were on different ends of a child’s seesaw.
“I have a busy morning,” he said, looking to the door rather than at her. “If you have questions about our schedule with the duke and duchess, we should cover that now, before we greet them at the airport.”
Why do you think I married you?
They had grown close despite his initial motives, though. Hadn’t they? He had seemed happy about her pregnancy. Until last night, they had made love unreservedly. That meant she was a source of pleasure for him, didn’t it? Surely, he felt something toward her? He wasn’t going to reject her out of hand, now that she had uncovered the truth about his father’s infidelity. Was he?
He didn’t give her time to ask any of her questions, rushing out to start his day. They were both tied up for the next few days as they hosted several dignitaries around an international competition for child athletes recovering from land mines and other war-related injuries.
Galila did what she had done for years. She ensured her appearance was scrupulously balanced between flawless elegance and warm benevolence. The cameras adored her. All of Zyria praised Karim for his choice in bride. They dubbed her the Queen of Compassion.
She was miserable, taking no pleasure in the adulation. Thankfully, the car windows were tinted and the madly waving crowd couldn’t see that she wore such a long face.
Karim finished his call beside her, one he hadn’t needed to make. It was yet another brick in the wall he was building against her.
Before he could cement another into place, she asked, “Are you so angry with me for figuring it out that you can’t even speak to me about it?”
He paused in placing another call. “There’s nothing left to say.”
“Is there nothing left of our marriage, either? Because you’re avoiding me. You’re—” He was avoiding their bed.
He sighed. It was the sigh that cut through her like a blade. Don’t be needy, it said.
“Why aren’t you sleeping with me?” She swung her face toward him, refusing to guess at his reasons. “Is it because I’m pregnant? Because you don’t trust me? Because you’re angry? What did I do to make you turn your back on me, Karim?”
“Nothing,” he said from behind clenched teeth. “I was simply reminded by our...discussion the other night that...” He polished the screen of his phone on his thigh. “This passion between us is dangerous,” he stated more firmly.
She studied his craggy profile. He was staring straight ahead at the closed privacy window. There might as well be one between them, holding her apart from his thoughts and feelings. From his heart.
“Is that all it is?” She felt as though she inched onto thin ice. “Because I had begun to hope it was more than merely passion.”
His jaw pulsed. “I told you not to expect that.”
Don’t be needy.
Swallowing, she looked to the palm trees that lined the boulevard as they approached the palace. The archway and fountain, the flower garden and flags, the columns and carpeted steps that formed the impressive entrance of the Zyrian palace.
He offered her a home as beautiful as the one she’d grown up in, and as equally empty of love.
“Why?” Her voice broke. “I don’t understand why I should never expect to feel loved, Karim. What is wrong with me that I must lower my expectations and stop believing I deserve that?”
“It’s not you.” The car stopped and he said, “I don’t want to talk about this right now.”
“You don’t want to talk about it ever. Be honest about that much, please.” She slid out of the car as the door was opened for her.
Karim threw himself from the far side and flashed her a look across the roof of the car, one that accused her of pushing him to the very limits of his control.
“You want me to be honest? Come, then.” He snapped his fingers at her as he started down the walkway alongside the palace.
She knew eyes followed them, but they were left to walk alone through the garden and around the corner of the public wing to the side of the palace that faced the sea. Here the grounds were a narrow band of beach, a triangle of garden and a courtyard—
Oh. She realized where they were when he stopped in the middle of a ruthlessly straight path and looked upward.
“Karim,” she breathed. The sun beat down on them so hot it dried the air in her lungs. Her shoulders stung through the silk of her dress and her scalp tingled as though burning along the part in her hair.
“He was so in love—” his inflection made the emotion sound like a case of leprosy “—he could not live without her. He preferred to plunge to his death, in front of his son, than face another day without her. Is that what you want me to feel for you, Galila? Unable to live without you?”
The reflection off the building was so hot it burned her face, even though the sun was behind her.
“They weren’t able to be together.” And she knew her mother. There was every chance she didn’t love Jamil in the same way, not that she would dare say so. “Our situation is different. I—I’m falling in love with you.”
His body jolted as though struck. “Do not,” he said grittily. “We have the foundation for something that can work. If we hold ourselves at arm’s length.”
“No, we don’t!” She grabbed his sleeve and shook his arm, as if she could shake some sense into him. “We almost did and now you’re pushing me away again. Karim, are you really saying you will never love me? That you would rather break my heart by refusing to? By your logic, that means I should go drown myself right now.” She thumbed toward the nearby waves washing the shore.
His gaze flashed from her to the water. He flinched, then his expression hardened. “I’m putting a stop to your feelings before they get any worse.”
Worse? He really didn’t understand love at all. Which was, perhaps, the real problem.
“You aren’t just refusing to love me, you can’t. Can you?” He didn’t know how.
“Cannot and will not. I’m protecting both of us. All of Zyria.”
He had told her this before, but some tiny thing inside her—smaller even than the child she carried—had hoped. Now she knew how foolish that hope had been. Now she believed him when he said he would never love her.
Her next breath was deep. It was the kind one took to absorb the sting of a deep cut or the reverberation from a cracked head. The kind that felt like a knife going into her throat and staying there.