Pregnant by the Sheikh Page 15

  “You should have told me the truth the moment you realized it.”

  Everything inside him stilled. Had she somehow found out the truth and it was too late to be the one to tell her? Was that the reaction he’d been dreading?

  He finally choked out, “What truth?”

  “That you no longer want me.”

  This was literally the last thing he’d expected her to say. It hit him so hard, everything in his mind fractured.

  “Jenan, this is insane...”

  “Yes, it seems my name is quite apt. I must be insane to feel crushed now when you already told me what you wanted from the get-go. But you don’t want it from me anymore, and I’m here to tell you it’s your right to change your mind. But it isn’t your right to drag this out, to not just release me. If you think evading me is letting me down easy, it’s far more painful than if you’d just looked me in the eye and told me it’s over.”

  Every word fell on him like a sledgehammer.

  He’d been so consumed in his worries and efforts to put things right, he’d made things catastrophically worse. He hadn’t even thought how his evasions would seem to her, but she’d found them so inexplicable, so hurtful, she’d reached the worst possible conclusion.

  Before he could think of anything to say, she strode past him, heading toward where Najeeb was seated.

  He pounced to stop her. “Where are you going?”

  The spasm of pain that twisted her face almost tore his heart apart. “I said not to worry. I won’t try to stay or to impose on you. I’ll just get some stuff I need. You can send the rest later. Or just throw it away.”

  He wanted to blurt out a thousand protests, but only one thing made it out of the churning mess in his mind. “This is your place.”

  Her forlorn expression deepened, widening the wound her pain had gouged in his being. “I only considered it mine when I thought you were, too, when we were together. But you’re not, and we won’t be again. Tomorrow I’ll send you the papers reverting the ownership to you.” She tried to move again, and his hand tightened convulsively on her arm with horror at the terrible things she believed. And suspicion blossomed like an ink stain in her eyes. “You have someone inside?”

  Shocked all over again at her horrific assumption, more evidence of how disastrously he’d messed up, he could only stare at her helplessly.

  And everything in her eyes died. It felt far worse than anything he’d endured in captivity, seeing that look in her eyes.

  “Jenan, please...”

  Tears arrowed down her cheeks, drowning her words and his. “I never expected you to love me as I loved you. I only ever wanted you to be honest with me.”

  Hearing her for the first time say she loved him—only for her to make it in the past tense—was unbearable. Like knowing he could have saved someone’s life, and out of his own negligence, he’d arrived just moments too late.

  This time he didn’t let her resist him, but crushed her in his arms. “Jenan, Jenan, what have I done to you, to us? I damaged your trust in me so much you think I have a woman in there?” A tear splashed over his chest, corroding its way through to his heart as she shook all over and struggled to escape his embrace. He crushed her to him harder, groaned between feverish kisses all over her face. “Everything you think is the absolute opposite of the truth. It agonizes me to know I made you think it. But it’s true I don’t love you like you love me.” At her lurching sob, he squeezed her tighter, as if he’d merge her into his body. “After all I’ve suffered in my life, I love you far more than you can ever love me.”

  This time when she struggled, it was to look up.

  Her eyes looked so fragile and inflamed she had to have been weeping long before she’d come. But that dreadful grief was giving way to hope. His heart swelled with impending relief only to shrivel the next second.

  “It’s true he doesn’t have a woman in there. The secrets he’s been hiding are far, far worse than that.”

  Both he and Jenan swung around at the dark drawl.

  Numair’s arms loosened around Jenan with dismay, letting her go as her face went slack with surprise. “Najeeb.”

  He couldn’t have them both here now. It might cause a chain reaction he wouldn’t be able to control.

  Numair turned urgently to Jenan. “I do have secrets, but they have nothing to do with us, with what I feel for you. I also have reasons for the way I’ve been behaving, and I’ll explain everything, only later. Please, ya habibati, just go now, let me conclude this with Najeeb and trust that everything I do is for you, for us.”

  As Jenan’s eyes softened with such relief and tension left her body, Najeeb’s harsh sarcasm washed over them once more, stiffening her all over again.

  “Your powers of manipulation border on magic, don’t they, Numair?” Najeeb’s steps were measured, his face as hard as stone, his eyes simmering with rage. Then he turned his gaze to Jenan. “When I heard your anguish as I approached, I thought he’d told you everything.” His gaze swung back to Numair. “But then I realized you were still playing her. What I felt the moment I saw you was right. There are far darker things to you, and colder, more terrible motives to your being with her than even I feared. But you realized I was on to you, and you poured on the pretense, conned me like you conned her from the start.”

  “I might have hidden some truths—”

  “Some truths?” Najeeb scoffed. “You hid every truth. All the time we’ve been dealing with a total fabrication.”

  “This is the real me. I only had to settle things with you first before I told her everything.”

  “About that.” Najeeb flicked him a contemptuous look. “I sat in there wondering why you revealed your truth now, and I realized it’s because you’ve reached the point in your meticulous plans when it suited you to do so, when you were ready to strike. But when you looked so shaken by Jenan’s arrival, and so anxiously asked me to stay inside, I realized this was one thing you didn’t account for. For us to meet at this delicate point, exposing everything to her prematurely. According to your plans, she would have been the last to know the truth, right? When it was too late for her to do anything about it.”

  Unable to act on his rising dread and aggression, Numair said, “You have this all wrong, Najeeb.”

  Until this moment, Jenan had been mutely gaping at them. Now she came between them, her voice a brittle tremolo. “What plans? What truth?”

  Before Numair could try to mollify her again, Najeeb ended any hope for containing this disaster.

  “That his name isn’t Numair, but ironically, a synonym of that, what I’m sure he meant. It’s Fahad. Fahad Aal Ghaanem.”

  After seconds of nonreaction, the widening of Jenan’s eyes said that she recognized the name. The confusion that flooded them right after said she couldn’t process, or believe, the connotations of that name.

  Najeeb ended her uncertainty. “Yes, that Fahad Aal Ghaanem. The cousin we all thought long dead.”

  It took frozen moments before Jenan shook her head, her bewilderment deepening, not lessening. “How?”

  In answer, Najeeb succinctly recounted the story he’d told him. As he spoke, Jenan’s eyes were riveted to Numair, as if struggling to superimpose the new truths on what she’d known of him, what she’d had with him, till now.

  When Najeeb fell silent, she asked shakily, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  It was Najeeb who answered again. “This was another thing I sat in there trying to understand. Then I worked it all out. You see, right before you arrived, Numair—or should I say Fahad—told me he was here to exact revenge. On my father, whom he accused of having his father killed. The other reason he mentioned was to reclaim his birthright. And it all became clear. He had a convoluted plan to come here, hurt my father as much as possible until he had solid proof of his lineage. Once h
e did, he’d accuse my father of murder, deposing him in a scandal and of course getting rid of me as the current crown prince, and claiming the throne for himself.” Najeeb turned to Numair, arctic challenge in those eyes that had been all warmth such a short while ago. “Did I miss anything?”

  “It’s not like that anymore...”

  “What about me?”

  Jenan’s voice, so smothered in trepidation, drove a jagged edge in his gut, cutting short his protestations.

  “Jenan, I said I’ll explain everything later...”

  “Will you?” Najeeb’s words cut through his entreaty like a knife. “Why not do it now? She’s asking a very simple question after all. Why did you approach her in the first place? Or should we say, target her? That was the other thing I sat in there trying to figure out, until I finally realized that your heritage isn’t only in Saraya, but Zafrana. Your mother was Princess Safeyah Aal Ghamdi, and half of your blood is royal Zafranian blood. Being the powermonger that you are, and with the state the kingdom is in, you must consider you’re the one who has both the right and the power to rule it. But since you don’t have a direct claim to the throne as you do in Saraya, you concocted a more convoluted plan. You weren’t saving Jenan from my father, or even trying to hurt him by decimating his power over Zafrana and the massive resources he’d expended to gain it. You wanted Jenan only to use her in the exact same way he intended to.” Najeeb turned his pained gaze to Jenan. “Claiming you, having an heir from you, would make him control Zafrana’s throne during your father’s life, then after his death, until his heir, your father’s heir, comes of age.”

  Jenan turned her gaze toward Numair. There was no shock or pain or accusation in there. Just emptiness.

  As everything collided inside him, the vacuum in her eyes intensified, as if her essence had totally departed his body. A body that had nothing more to prop it up, and collapsed to the ground in a boneless mass.

  “Jenan!”

  Lightning-fast reflexes honed through decades of merciless training kicked in, fighting off the paralysis. He caught her before she hit the ground. But Najeeb had also charged to save her.

  Finding Najeeb’s hands crowding his on Jenan’s inert body almost made his head burst with rage.

  As soon as he laid her down with trembling care on the ground, he flung Najeeb away and tackled him there.

  Najeeb was so stunned by his attack, Numair got a few jaw-cracking punches in before Najeeb pulled himself together enough to retaliate. At the first blow that connected with Numair’s own jaw, something crashed in place inside him, rousing him from his blind wrath.

  Najeeb was a powerful man, could hold his own with anyone else, but he wasn’t a violent man, and certainly not a killer. But Numair was. Najeeb was no match for him. If he didn’t curb himself, he would kill him.

  Flinging himself off him and rebounding to his feet, he watched Najeeb rise to his, rubbing his already swelling jaw as if to make sure it was still hinged. Numair had pulled his punches, or it would have been pulverized now.

  Looking at him as if at a horrific monster, Najeeb rasped with obvious difficulty, “What are you?”

  “Something you can’t even imagine in your worst nightmares. Consider yourself lucky. I have destroyed men for causing me far, far less than the incalculable damage you just caused me with Jenan.”

  As Numair moved, Najeeb’s body stiffened in readiness for confrontation. “Stay where you are, you maniac.”

  Numair shot him a baleful glance as he rushed back to Jenan, scooped her unconscious form up and took her to their bed, where he’d missed having her like he’d miss a vital organ. She was warm, breathing easily. It seemed her nervous system had sought the refuge of oblivion to protect her from the brunt of Najeeb’s revelations.

  After minutes of trying to rouse her and failing, but knowing she was in no danger, he rose and turned to Najeeb, who’d followed him, as if not trusting him with Jenan now.

  “I’m over my murderous fury, which thanks to your punch—” he rubbed his own jaw; Najeeb’s punch would have felled any other man “—I realized was directed at myself. You only exposed the truth about what I once intended.”

  Najeeb tried a bitter laugh, and it came out a pained groan. “You know where you went wrong? If you’d come clean to me, to Jenan, if you weren’t a cold, manipulative bastard, we would have gladly given you everything you wanted. I would have recognized your right to the throne, would have made my father relinquish it to you.” He nodded toward Jenan. “And she would have loved you. Of her own free will, and would have considered you the one who deserves Zafrana’s throne. Now I wouldn’t entrust the fate of a heap of dirt to you, let alone that of my kingdom. And if you spread your vicious lies about my father and try to destroy my family, I’ll fight you till my dying breath. As for her, don’t hold your breath you’ll be able to con her again.”

  Numair exhaled. “Though you might not believe it now, I got you here so I can resolve this with minimum damage to everyone. But you didn’t let me finish what I had to say, and now anything you think is irrelevant. Fixing things with you will have to wait until I deal with this disaster you’ve caused me with Jenan.”

  Najeeb’s antipathy wavered, before his gaze panned to Jenan and it turned to steel again. “You can try. But this woman would have died for you. If I know anything about her, she’d now rather die than let you near her again.”

  Turning to Najeeb fully, he let him see the monster he had inside him, and that he could no longer harness it. “You better pray that your prediction doesn’t come to pass. If I lose her, I will have nothing else to lose in this world. Not even I can predict what I’d do then.”

  Najeeb must have realized it was dangerous to continue antagonizing him, and was clearly uncertain if he even should, because with a last glance full of confusion, he turned and walked out.

  He fell off Numair’s radar at once as he swooped down to Jenan, wrapping himself around her.

  He wasn’t losing her. Najeeb underestimated the power of what they had. She’d listen to him, and she’d understand, and she’d believe him again, trust him again.

  Love him again.

  * * *

  Something hot and hard spread over Jenan, as smothering and inescapable as a shroud of burning steel.

  Panic flooded her as she started to struggle, even when she knew there could be no escape. Sobs tore from her depths, gurgled to the surface.

  “Shh, shh, ya hayati, calm down, everything is all right, you’re safe. I’m here, and I’m yours.”

  That voice... Numair’s voice. It had been the one thing she wanted to hear, the one thing to make her feel invincible. But now it made her suffocate with betrayal and misery.

  The surge of memories tore her from the abyss she’d plummeted into and catapulted her into the far more horrible reality.

  But she couldn’t hide within oblivion anymore. She had to open her eyes and face him. Face the fact that her life would be nothing like she’d hoped or planned, but rather like everything she’d dreaded in other women’s lives. Having the child of a man who cared nothing for her, suffering the perpetual heartaches and conflicts of being tied to him through that child for life.

  But it was even worse in her condition. For even after finding out the truth, she knew she’d never stop yearning for him. For the Numair she’d loved. The Numair who didn’t exist.

  She opened her eyes and found him there, like dozens of times before, wrapped around her, looking down at her as if only she mattered to him. When she now knew she never did at all.

  “He’s no longer here.”

  If desolation had a sound, this had to be it. The bleeding whisper that issued from her.

  He blinked. “Yes, Najeeb left...”

  “Numair.” When she said his name, he sat up carefully, uncertain what she meant. She
left him in doubt. “He was never here. He was a phantom.”

  He started at her description, looked stricken. “Jenan...”

  She spoke over his ragged protest. “Everything I shared with him was a lie.” She looked him in the eyes, and it almost ruptured her heart that they still looked like those of the Numair she adored, still uncannily hid the true nature of the malicious manipulator she now knew him to be. “I was a means to your ends. A chess piece you used and would have sacrificed as soon as you achieved your goal. But when you discovered you could do so now rather than later, you just cut me off.”

  His fingers sank into her shoulders, his eyes raging like infernos. “Don’t even think that. None of that is true. Let me explain what Najeeb—”

  “Najeeb only told me who you really are.” She removed his hands from her flesh and pulled herself away from him. “I worked out the rest. For Najeeb doesn’t know what I do. That you no longer have to marry me, or impregnate me to rule Zafrana, that you do have a direct claim to its throne, just like you do to Saraya’s.”

  The need became desperation to escape the distress of his nearness and of being in the bed where he’d given her her life’s only true and total pleasures, and then ruined her for life. She rose as if she’d been smashed and put back together with a precarious glue.

  As he rose after her, she went on, “It’s no wonder it took you a while to find out. It was almost four decades ago, and most people in Zafrana don’t know about it. Those who do probably don’t remember it.”

  “Remember what? Jenan, habibati, just let me—”

  “But I remember.” Her choking whisper again silenced him. “How my father always lamented that he shouldn’t have been king, that if not for a fluke accident, he wouldn’t have been the rightful heir. He told me so many times when I was growing up that the late King Zayd had an heir who was tragically lost as an infant. The son of Princess Safeyah, a distant relative to the king by blood, but his sister in nursing, his mother having nursed her when her mother died in childbirth. This relationship superseded the much closer link of blood between him and my father, making her son his closest male relative, and his heir. You.”