To Tempt a Sheikh(30)

Her eyes panned around, unseeing. She was alone.

Her escorts must have led her back, turned on the phone's speaker. Their  master, her informant, was pulling at the hook embedded inside her,  shredding her insides.

Then at some point, the mutilation stopped. And silence decimated what was left intact of her.

She found herself on her side on the bed, a discarded body paralyzed  with pain too huge to register yet. Her eyes were open and bone-dry.  Harres's words revolved like a serrated wheel inside her skull, mashing  her brain to tinier fragments.

He didn't mean it. Whimpers of denial spun in a countering direction.  There's an explanation. He was placating Amjad, his odious brother, to  get him off his back, off my case. Or something. It must have killed him  to say those things. He'll explain why he did. He loves me. I won't  believe otherwise …                        
       
           



       

"Talia."

Harres. Here? Or in her feverish hopes?

She jerked up. He was here. Looking down at her.

Please, my love, take it back, explain it away. Just look at me with love in your eyes and it will all go away.

But for the first time since she'd laid eyes on him, his were empty.

No. Give me something.

He gave her nothing, his face as expressionless as his voice. "Sorry to interrupt your rest, but my private jet is ready."

"Ready for what?" She heard her bleeding whisper, wondered how she could still talk.

"To take you home."

She stared up at him, the void emanating from him engulfing her. Then  she found herself rising, as if a closer look would make her see inside  him, decipher the truth.

She saw nothing. Only the abyss of uncaring he'd professed to feel for her.

And it all crashed down on her, the full weight of his betrayal, of his heartless exploitation. It crushed her.

But she realized one thing. Even hurt beyond expression or endurance,  injured beyond healing, she couldn't retaliate in kind. She wouldn't.  This was the one thing her informant hadn't taken into consideration in  his quest to destroy the Aal Shalaans.

Harres had systematically destroyed her, for his duty, his family. But  even had she wanted to exact revenge on him, she wouldn't destroy the  royal family and the whole kingdom along with him. And she didn't want  to avenge herself. She just wanted to curl up and die, far away from  this land where she'd lost her heart and her faith in anything forever.

One thing was left in her wreckage. "What about Todd?"

"The procedures of his release are ongoing as we speak."

She saw the truth of this at least in his eyes. Or maybe she imagined it as she'd imagined everything between them so far.

And she gave him what he'd ruined her for. "The conspiracy's mastermind is Yusuf Aal Waaked, prince of Ossaylan."

His eyes flared. But she'd lost the ability to read them. She'd never  had it. And she no longer cared. She just wanted out of his orbit.  Wanted to go somewhere far to perish in peace.

"I know," he finally said in the same expressionless voice.

He did? How?

One thing explained everything. He'd monitored her phone call and got his coveted information the moment she had.

So the master secret-service man had adjusted his plan on the fly every  second since they'd met, according to her reactions and based on an  unerring reading of her character. She'd fallen in step with his every  undetectable nudge. His masterstroke had been that last bit of reverse  psychology. While indirectly stressing the danger Zohayd was in, he'd  forbidden her to reinstate contact with her informant, knowing the first  thing she'd do was just that. As the coup de grâce, he'd secured Todd's  release. It clearly had required no effort or sacrifice on his part,  had been insurance to make sure she would do anything for him.

Now her purpose to him was over. He couldn't wait to get rid of her.

It made sense. Far more sense than this all-powerful prince falling in love with her, so totally.

With this last shard of rationalization tearing into her heart, it was  like a dampener dissolved and every memory of the past twenty days  bombarded her, rewritten in the macabre new perspective.

Agony mushroomed to unmanageable levels, humiliation inundating her. She felt she'd suffocate, shatter.

She lashed out with all her disillusion and devastation. "So you know.  But you can't say I didn't give you something in return for my brother's  freedom and redemption. Now that I have them, I can't wait to leave  this godforsaken land."

There was no mistaking what slammed into his eyes now. Shock.

Of course. He must have thought she'd simper and fawn and beg for him to  keep her on any degrading terms he wished to impose. As he'd reassured  his brother, he was an old hand at using and discarding women. He must  have fully expected the dumping to be one-sided.

Before he could say anything, Amjad stuck his head around the door. "What's taking you so long?"

Harres tore his stunned eyes from hers, turned them to his brother. He still said nothing.

Then he shook his head, as if trying to credit what she'd said. She  could only imagine how she'd sounded, looked as she'd said it. If a  fraction of what was stampeding inside her had been apparent, he must be  flabbergasted at the seemingly out-of-the-blue change that had seized  her.

He stood aside, staring at her with eyes crowded with so many things it  made her sick trying to fathom them. She gave up, on everything,  preceded him out of the room.

Amjad was leaning on the wall outside the door in an immaculate sports jacket, his arms folded over his chest.                       
       
           



       

As she passed him, his eyes gleamed ruthlessly. "Give my … regards to your  brother. He's to be congratulated for having a sister like you."

She stared at him, felt the urge to ask for an explanation. It fizzled out as it formed.

Feeling ice spreading from her center outward, she turned away, let Harres steer her outside the palace.

He sat beside her in his limo, the eerie silence that had replaced their  animated conversations, his feigned interest and indulgence, deepening  her freeze.

They arrived at the private airport they'd landed in only hours ago. What a difference that time had made.

He rushed out of the limo before it came to a full stop. He materialized  on her side in seconds, handed her out of the limo, led her to the  sleek silver Boeing 737 purring like a giant alien bird on the pristine  tarmac.

His movements were measured, his hold the epitome of composure. The vibes emanating from him were the opposite.

At the stairs he turned to her. But though the move was controlled, his  eyes were anything but, storming with emotions barely held in check. His  voice sounded even more agitated. "What was that back at the palace?"

It couldn't be just his displeasure at her rewriting his expected dumping scene, could it?

Stop it. She must stop casting anything she felt from him through the  prism of nobility and sincerity. She'd heard the truth with her own  ears. What was she waiting for? To have it said to her face?

She wouldn't survive that. End this. Now.

She shrugged, started to turn away, to run away.

His hand snagged hers. But it was the confusion and hurt she thought she  saw eclipsing the twin suns of his eyes that stopped her, captured her.  "You're saying it was all for your brother? To manipulate me into  setting him free?"

How could he still sound so genuine? How could she still be so pathetic  that she wanted to believe him, melt into his arms, to answer her  walking orders with proclamations of undying love?

Ghabeyah. Stupid. That was what her informant had called her.

No. She wouldn't give him the satisfaction of seeing her weep for him.  She was so far beneath him, so disadvantaged, in every way, but  especially in the depth of her involvement. She could only try to leave  him on equal ground in at least that.

She heard the acid that now filled her arteries drip from her voice.  "That wasn't too far to go to make you help an innocent man prove his  innocence, don't you think?"

She'd seen him get shot. He hadn't reacted this spectacularly then.  After his recoil, he stilled, seeming to loom larger, his vibe darkening  until it was deeper than the night enveloping them.

Then he finally snarled, "It is I who has gone far farther to help a guilty man get away with his crimes."

For a moment she didn't get his meaning. Just as it dawned on her, he  gritted out, "I guess committing fraud runs in your family, after all."

She staggered out of his hold. "I didn't think even you would go that far."

"Even me? What is that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing. None of it meant anything." She'd crumble at his feet any moment now. Get away from him.

She groped for the rails. He caught her back, twisted her around to face  him. His face was a conflagration of every distraught emotion humanly  achievable.