The Sheikh's Destiny (20 page)

So he’d written his confessions in what had amounted to a small volume, which had been fated to the bin.

And he’d been forced to do what he’d thought impossible.

He’d poured his heart out to anyone who’d listen. That ultimate exposure
had
felt like he’d “stripped himself down to the bone” as Amjad had said. Not that it had any effect.

She’d treated the explanations everyone transmitted with the same disdain she had his written ones. She’d had to grudgingly believe he hadn’t orchestrated the attack on her, under the deluge of proof he’d provided. But she believed his withdrawal from the race for the throne to be another convoluted plan to gain more sympathy and strengthen his position.

He’d hit rock bottom when he’d realized how completely she’d lost her faith in him.

“There is no line you won’t cross, is there?”

His whole being seized in shock. In delight. Laylah. Here.

His heart boomed so hard it swung him around to her.

“Laylah...”

She was closing the suite’s door and turning to him, indescribable in a floor-length silk turquoise dress that offset the perfection of every inch of skin it didn’t cover, intensified the burnished gloss of her hair.

Brutal longing paralyzed him as she stopped two feet away, her eyes those of a stranger.

“It was almost embarrassing, watching how far you went in ‘exposing’ your ‘inner self’ in your damage-control efforts. But what really surprises me is how totally you’ve taken my family in. I thought they, especially Amjad, were shrewd. I guess no one is immune to your powers of emotional manipulation.”

“They are shrewd people,” he rasped. “That’s why they recognize my sincerity against all damning evidence.”

Her laugh was mirthless. “You know, I was delusional to think someone with your life experiences had any emotions left. Logically, you can’t be faulted for that. The first thing you must have learned in order to deal with your personal situation, then your life as a soldier, was to turn off your emotions. It only makes sense that you feel nothing but ambition and hunger for power now.”

He reached an aching hand to the thick lock of hair undulating over her breast. “If only that was true.”

She stepped away, making the silk slip through his fingers just as she kept doing. “Please, stop the pretense. I’m not angry at you anymore.” She wasn’t? “Actually, most of my anger was directed at myself. For believing what I so fiercely wanted to believe. Nothing you did ever added up, but I was so desperate for you, I silenced my disbelief that you could fall for me at all, let alone that fast, that you’d tie yourself to me for life. Disillusion and damage were the only possible outcome for my stupidity.”

He took her by the shoulders, wouldn’t let her shake him off this time, his grip gentling until she let him hold her.

“Laylah, you have to listen to me. Not so that I can beg your forgiveness or exonerate myself. You need to listen for
you.
What pains me most is that this has reinforced your belief that no one has ever wanted you for you, when the reverse is true. You are valued and loved by everyone who knows you. You are worshipped by me. Even if you choose to never forgive me, please be secure in that, and that my crimes are a reflection on me, never on you.”

For a long moment, as the setting sun struck russet in eyes that gazed at him as if realizing something profound, he started to hope that at least he’d succeeded in this endeavor.

Then they filled with cool disdain as she removed his hands with utmost tranquility. “That’s your latest strategy? Feed my need for validation and heal my fractured self-image? Sorry, but I’ve beaten you to it. I’ve come to terms with the fact that my worth has nothing to do with how others see it, starting with my parents and ending with the queue of men like you.
I
value me. If others don’t, no matter who they are, screw them.”

“I’ll do anything to solidify your certainty. Ask for the impossible, impose any punishment...”

“It’s me who’ll be punished. When I marry you.”

Was his mind disintegrating at last? He’d thought he heard her say...

“I’ve already told my family that the wedding is on again.”

He could only stare at her.

“I’m pregnant.”

Power drained from his body, coherence from his mind, beats from his heart.

The wall suddenly slammed into his back. He’d staggered under the blow of shock. Of joy. And grief. At the way she’d said it. As if it was the worst thing that had ever happened to her.

“Laylah,
habibati...
”

She warded off his embrace. “I’m not sharing the happy news with my adoring groom, I’m informing my ingenious manipulator that your plan has worked to the last detail.”

“It was
not
a plan—”

“I don’t care what you call it. But you were not only right in predicting the outcome of me ‘shredding your ironclad control,’ but in anticipating what I’d do, even if I discovered your plot prematurely. You knew me well enough to realize that even if I kept saying I don’t care about my family, I do. Even if I don’t care about tradition, they do. Especially when it comes to legitimacy. I won’t impose illegitimacy on my baby, when there’s a father so eager to put his claim on it, even for all the wrong reasons.”

Could he have destroyed her love so absolutely he’d become so unredeemable in her eyes?

Her cold stare said he had and was. “Go ahead, Rashid, don’t struggle to keep a straight face. Your charade is out in the open and it won’t hurt your agenda anymore to celebrate your success. An Aal Shalaan blood bond, and after the masterful lovelorn, honorable knight act you plied my family with, a sure path to the throne of Azmahar. If the baby turns out to be male—and I bet it will, since you seem to will fate to obey you—you’ll even get the heir you need right away.”

“None of this has any truth to it anymore.”

“The only truth here is that history is repeating itself. I was the result of a toxic marriage of convenience and I swore no child of mine would ever suffer anything like that. And here I am, repeating my parents’ terrible pattern. But I’ll be damned if I’ll live a life filled with hostility and resentment. I’ll play into your hands willingly. I will give you the one thing you wanted from me and suffer through this wedding,
only
so that it will legitimize the baby in our society’s eyes. This ordeal will assure that our baby gets all its rights from you, no matter what happens, so after we announce my pregnancy and convince people the baby was conceived within wedlock, this travesty of a marriage ends.”

Leaving him suffocating on her rejection again, she turned and walked away. The need to rush after her, catch her back, kiss her and melt her almost had him roaring.

Two things held him back. Knowing that he could swear and beg and produce a thousand proofs, and she’d remain immovably distant and irretrievably injured.

And that in spite of everything, she was going to marry him.

That she would, for any reason, was a miracle. That she carried his child was beyond imagining.

This cold, finite arrangement she’d made was still more than he’d dreamed he would have.

It was another chance.

Fourteen

“H
ave I told you lately how much I hate you?”

Laylah gazed at Aliyah, her cousin and that third precious Aal Shalaan female. Aliyah was scowling at her after wheeling in a hanger teeming with wedding dresses for Laylah to try on.

Laylah sighed. “In the last hour? No.”

The other women in the room chuckled. The wives of her cousins had all been recruited for the emergency wedding preparations. It was surreal to be home among so many women, with whom she had so much in common, from age to education to temperament.

There was one thing, however, she didn’t share with them. They all had the unequivocal love of their men, and they all ranged from being ecstatically pregnant to delighted mothers many times over.

Johara, whom Laylah had helped prepare for her wedding to her cousin Shaheen almost three years ago, grinned. “Give it up, Aliyah. Every time we say we’re never going to put together a royal wedding on short notice again, we end up with even less time in which to do it. Maybe next time we should say we’ll do it in hours, and we’ll end up with months on our hands?”

The women looked among themselves then snorted a collective,
“Nah.”

Roxanne, Haidar’s wife, chuckled. “Those men of ours end up crowding us for time no matter what we do.”

Lujayn, Jalal’s wife and the most recent bride, though she had a two-year-old with Jalal, raised an eyebrow at Laylah. “But for a change it was Laylah who squeezed us for time.”

“Two days is not a squeeze,” Aliyah lamented. “It’s cruel.”

Maram laughed. “Talk about leaving it to the last moment, then wham.” She gave Laylah a shrewd look. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for making those impossible and impossibly luscious men sweat it. It can only do their overriding souls good. But you
could
have given
us
some advance notice so we could restart preparations discretely while he stewed—as he needed to.”

Laylah sighed, deciding to come clean. “I couldn’t really. Strictly between us please, ladies, but the pink strip only appeared yesterday.”

Gasps of delight echoed around her room, followed by cooing, if uncomfortable, congratulations. They could see she wasn’t happy about the pregnancy, that it made necessary a marriage she didn’t want.

All of the ladies had been in varied positions of reluctance during their weddings, too. But the problems and misunderstandings in their relationships had been resolved. Hers wouldn’t be.

From then on, the women did all they could to reinstate the cheerfulness of the proceedings and lift her spirits.

She cooperated, pretended interest as they talked color coordination, bridal procession dresses and table trimmings. She kept up her pretense until they took her around the royal palace of Azmahar, deciding decorations.

Knowing this place, and the power it signified, was what Rashid really wanted and not her was suffocating, literally, and the world started to fade. Cries rang out in the dimness before everything turned to black.

* * *

Exiting a dark tunnel filled with sounds of distress, Laylah opened her eyes to see beautiful faces coated with concern.

She’d fainted. And the ladies had taken her back to her room.

“How are you feeling now, Laylah?” Maram asked, her voice soft and soothing as she continued to massage her hands.

Laylah tried to sit up, found Johara and Aliyah helping her. “I’m fine. Sorry for that.”

“That first trimester can be a pain,” Roxanne said, shuddering, no doubt remembering her own. “Good news is, you’ll feel the best you ever did during the second one.”

Not wanting to inform them her fainting spell had nothing to do with her pregnancy, she went along. “Can’t wait.”

“Wait until you see what we came back to the room to find!” Lujayn exclaimed as she rushed away.

Laylah’s eyes widened as she saw what she came back holding.

Johara sighed. “You remember when Shaheen did this for me? Rashid, even though you’re not ready to forgive him yet, is certainly as thoughtful and his choice is as perfect for you as Shaheen’s was for me.”

Laylah gaped at Rashid’s “choice.” A creation the likes of which she’d never imagined.

A one-piece Arabian/Indian masterpiece, it had a sleeveless bodice that nipped to a waist she was certain was the exact size of hers, with a décolleté that would emphasize her breasts and expose her neck and most of her shoulders and any necklace she would wear. With its base a golden mahogany the exact color of her hair and eyes, it was almost covered in breathtaking hand-embroidery of sequins, beads, pearls, crystals, semi-precious stones and appliqué, from the lightest coral to the deepest vermillion to the most vivid crimson, all intertwined with gold.

A skirt in hues echoing the top’s embroidery cascaded in multiple layers of tulle and chiffon over a shimmering mahogany silk taffeta lining, its embellishments in the range of gold and russet, with ingenious scalloping at the hemline. A veil with heavily embellished borders was crimson where it would rest on her hair, gradually transforming to a luminescent golden-brown where it would trail on the floor.

But it was the patterns covering the whole outfit that robbed her of breath again. Those of Rashid’s house.

It was as if he was...putting his
brand
on her with that dress, just like he had branded her body and soul.

The ladies interrupted her heavy-hearted musings, clamoring for her to try on the outfit at once. Just as she’d expected, it fit her perfectly. Rashid always knew exactly what he wanted, down to the last detail.

As Maram and Aliyah contacted their husbands to demand jewelry that would match the outfit, from Zohayd’s and Judar’s royal collections no less, Laylah watched the other ladies flipping through catalogues to pick their complementary dresses, and wondered.

If she felt this terrible just preparing for this farce, how would she feel on the day itself?

* * *

The day was here. The
minute
she had to marry Rashid. And not really marry him.

The distinctive percussive music of her
zaffah—
her bridal procession—was already reverberating through the palace. Hundreds of voices were raised in the traditional congratulatory songs.

Aliyah and Maram were adorning her neck, arms and head in legendary jewels while Johara, Talia, Roxanne and Lujayn fussed with her veil, hairdo and makeup. They all looked stunning with their glowing beauty and bright spirits, their lithe bodies wrapped in sarilike dresses as exquisite as they were, in reds and golds to complement her own gown.

She almost didn’t recognize the splendid creature staring back at her in the mirror.

Rashid knew just how to package the royal acquisition he’d flaunt to the world tonight. The last piece in his master plan.

Her heavy-hearted musings halted as everyone rushed her out to lead her procession to the ballroom where the ceremonies were to be held. She hadn’t seen any of the preparations as she’d been holed up in her quarters for the past two days. Now she felt she had entered a fantasy setting from Arabian Nights.