Midnight in Arabia. Trish Morey
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wasn’t sure she wanted that to happen, but she was equally unsure if she wanted to hold herself back from him while she was in Kadar. Iris had spent six years avoiding intimacy, taking no other lovers and dreaming of Asad more nights than she cared to count.
Could having what he called a liaison with him help her to let go of him forever? Just being away from him hadn’t done the trick. Psychobabble said people needed closure to move on. If she ever wanted to break the lonely boundaries of her life, Iris had to move forward. She had to take a chance again.
So, maybe that was exactly what she needed … closure on a relationship that was never meant to be in the first place.
One truth she could not escape: Iris had missed this man every day since he had walked away.
Losing him the first time had nearly destroyed her, but maybe being with him again, knowing it was temporary, would help to heal her now. Maybe letting him in again was the only way to break the boundaries she’d set around her lonely life.
She’d like to believe she could refuse him, but recognized that putting it to the test might see her disappointed. Regardless, she realized she didn’t really want to.
Understanding better what had been going through his head six years ago—and realizing how betrayed he’d been by Badra—changed Iris’s view of their shared past. At the very least, it made her realize Asad was not invulnerable to hurt.
Why that should matter, she was not sure, but it did.
And she wanted him, more than she would have believed possible after everything that had happened. But there it was.
She had a choice, one that only she could make. If she got back into Asad’s bed, it would be with her eyes open to both the reality of the past and what the future would hold.
Could she live with that? She thought maybe she really could. She was almost positive she couldn’t live with the other … the not having him and the richness he brought to her life for whatever time available to them.
When the silence stretched between them as her thoughts whirled inside her head, Asad slipped his hand beneath the scarf covering her head and cupped her nape. “It is not in me to lose you again.”
Asad saw the flash of disbelief in Iris’s blue gaze before she pushed the peacock curtain aside to return to the feast.
He wanted to draw her back, demand she acknowledge the truth of his claim, but now was not the time. She was skittish, and perhaps he understood that better now. But he would woo her and convince her that the past’s mistakes could be left there.
He had brought her to Kadar for the reason he’d given her, to help her career, but also because he’d never forgotten her. Not her friendship and not her passionate fire in the bedroom.
He wanted to be warmed by that fire again.
Where that might lead, he did not know, but one certainty existed. He was no longer looking for a perfect princess to share his life.
Iris’s reflections on her childhood horrified him. If the two lived among the Sha’b Al’najid, they would have lost not just their daughter, but also their place in the tribe for such unnatural behavior. That parents could be so dismissive of a child was bad enough, but that the child should be his sensitive former lover infuriated him.
One of the first things he had noticed about Iris was the vulnerability she hid behind her shy demeanor. The sensitive child she would have been must have been tormented endlessly by her parents’ indifference.
He could not fathom it.
Iris had been right. Asad had not been pleased at his own father’s rejection of their heritage and he had determined at a young age never to make a choice that required leaving a child behind, as his parents had him. Yet Asad had never felt ignored by his parents, or that he did not matter to them.
They had made the journey back to the Sha’b Al’najid much more frequently than was convenient for them in order to spend time with their oldest son. And while they had agreed Asad would be raised to be sheikh of his people one day, his father had demanded Asad be allowed to come to Geneva at least one weekend per month throughout his childhood.
Though Asad was not supposed to know it, his mother cried when he left—each and every time.
Still, Asad had fought against more frequent visits, even at the earliest age. He was sure now that his parents had been hurt by that, but then the choice to leave the Sha’b Al’najid—and him, their son—had been theirs.
Regardless, they had been so different from the soulless couple who had given life to his beautiful geologist.
His parents’ choice had cost them. Of that he was certain, despite the fact he was equally certain he could never have made that choice himself. The thought of letting Nawar go had been thoroughly untenable from the first time he held her, despite the fact that they shared no actual blood tie.
An inexplicable protectiveness burning in his gut, Asad kept Iris by his side during the rest of the feast, thoroughly enjoying her reaction to his family’s way of celebrating.
Badra had always found the ways of the Sha’b Al’najid provincial and never hesitated to say so. The youngest, spoiled daughter of a neighboring country’s king, she had rejected Asad’s first proposal, saying she would never marry an ignorant goatherd.
Asad, who at eighteen had herded the animals only to learn lessons his grandfather said could not be taught with words, was hugely offended. And equally intrigued by this beautiful, spoiled creature who thought she was too good for him.
Any among the women of his people, or those he had met visiting his parents in Switzerland, would have been more than honored to receive such an offer of marriage. Badra, who was a year his senior, had unaccountably turned him down.
She couldn’t have conceived a move more suited to garnering his interest and determination to woo her successfully.
They’d met during a trade negotiation between Asad’s grandfather and Badra’s father. As was custom, the negotiations had occurred in the home of the king wanting his grandfather’s services in moving goods between his country and those nearby.
Asad had found the city-bred and sophisticated young woman fascinating. Besides, she was a princess, and as a future sheikh, he should marry a woman of such standing.
Asad allowed himself a small, bitter smile at his own naïveté and arrogance.
Badra had not been impressed with his pedigree, thereby cementing his interest in her. Then and there, he had determined to win her hand. He would attend university and build his tribe into a people others would envy.
And that the Princess Badra would want to belong to.
So he’d gone to university and graduate school, all the while working to build his family’s business interests with the help of his father and grandfather. When Asad returned to his desert family permanently, he was determined to do so with Badra at his side.
The only stumbling block to that outcome had been his growing affection for his lover, Iris Carpenter. But a man of considerable will, Asad had forced himself to cut her out of his life and pursue his original goal. It was what was best for his people.
Badra’s father would make a powerful political and business ally, the innocent and protected Badra a beautiful and admired lady of his people.
He shook his head. He’d been a fool.
Asad had not been in the least surprised when she accepted his second proposal. He’d assumed her father had convinced her of the advantageousness of the match. It was on Asad’s wedding night that he’d discovered the true reason for Badra’s capitulation.
Far from the innocent virgin he’d expected to bed, Badra was well versed in the art of sexual encounters.
She was also pregnant. Which he had realized when she woke the next morning nauseated in a way he had witnessed only among the pregnant