“It was all I could do. I couldn’t ransom you.”
“Wouldn’t, you mean.”
“No, I mean couldn’t. None of this is as you all think.”
“Okay, rewind and replay here. You’re telling me you have nothing to do with stealing the Pride of Zohayd and replacing them with fakes?”
“That’s…that’s not what I meant.”
“Not the right time to be coy, Father. Just own up.”
“You won’t understand, Maram.”
“Because I never went out on a mile-long limb to understand and accommodate your most self-serving actions? All right, you understand this. Amjad pretended to kidnap me to scare you into handing back the jewels. But because I’m clearly worth nowhere near as much to you, I’ll tell you why you have to return them. I’m…” The word, the lie, the notion lanced through her. She spat it out before it tore through her cocoon of numbness. “Pregnant.”
He staggered as if she’d hit him with a bat. “What?”
“That’s what you always wanted, isn’t it? To use me as an in to the Aal Shalaan gene pool? And when you gave up on that, you adjusted from matchmaking to conspiring. But now, through your power over the future king—aka your future grandchild’s rattle toy—you’ll have all the influence over Zohayd that you wished for, and without pissing off some of the world’s most powerful men and plunging the region into a war whose first casualty would probably be you.”
Her father seemed to age two decades before her eyes. “It—it isn’t as it looks. And it all started with my seeking the best for you.”
“My ‘best’ lay in usurping Amjad’s throne?”
“I mean when I…offered you to him. The world might think Amjad mad, but I’ve always thought him the only one who is man enough for you. So I arranged for you to meet him, and knew I was right when he looked at you with something I’d never seen before in his eyes. I approached him because I knew he’d never make the first move. He refused me, but I knew he was resisting his true desires. I kept trying because you also thought him the only man for you. I was distraught when I failed, and more so when I thought I was wrong all along, when I thought he’d kidnapped you for real.”
Maram contemplated his revelations, discounted the best interpretation, one she would have jumped at a day ago. “So you didn’t hope to gain anything from the alliance?”
“I didn’t say that. Ossaylan is nowhere as powerful as Zohayd, and I need all the backup I can get to keep predators away.”
“That’s why you targeted Haidar when you gave up on Amjad?”
He…blushed? “That…wasn’t my idea.”
“Don’t waste both of our time telling me it was Haidar’s.”
His color deepened. “No.”
“Just…no? Fine, suit yourself. It isn’t your matchmaking efforts I want you to own up to anyway.”
“I am not behind the theft of the Pride of Zohayd jewels.” His eyes grew imploring. “I was just the…tool.”
She almost said, You’re a tool, all right.
She didn’t, shook her head. It would have been funny, if she could feel anything, seeing her father trying to exonerate himself from his potentially region-destroying actions like a kid trying to pin the responsibility of a schoolyard prank on his susceptibility and a bigger kid’s influence.
“It doesn’t matter what you were. You financed the whole thing, you have the jewels—”
“I don’t!”
She stared at him. And no matter how lost her faith in him was, she was certain of one thing.
He was telling the truth.
“You didn’t really believe I had them and wouldn’t ransom you?” he exclaimed. “You think so little of my love, of me? I’ve been trying to contact Amjad to tell him that. I’ve been swearing it to his brothers.”
Something moved in her depths. Curiosity, she told herself. She wouldn’t open herself for anything more…dangerous, ever again.
She held up her hands. “Okay, Father. Tell me the whole story. From the beginning.”
“Did you know my father was quite the Don Juan?”
Amjad watched Maram advance into his office, and the shackles he’d placed on himself so that he wouldn’t rush her, hurl her over his shoulder and take her to his bed threatened to break.
The five hours it had taken her to arrive at his mansion, since she’d called to say she had something important enough to discuss that it required a face-to-face disclosure, had scraped off another layer of his sanity.
He realized she’d said something. About her father.
He didn’t care. About Yusuf or the information.
He only cared that… “I miss you.”
She stopped, the maddening neutrality she’d been eyeing him with wobbling before it slammed back in place.
He bridged the distance between them. “I miss everything about you, with you, from you. The missing is gnawing me hollow, body and mind, Maram. And it’s only been a day since I last saw you. Two since I last touched you.”
She gave him the pragmatic look he’d seen her give others in negotiations. “It’s called frustration. You need to get laid.”
Even though the rebuff was crude and suggested he was as base, it tickled his humor as anything she said always did.
“I will.” He hoped for a reaction. Something to prove she cared what he did. She gave him nothing. He pressed closer until his aching body got gossamer glimpses of her through her business pantsuit. “When I get through to you again.”
She moved away, depriving him of her nearness. “No chance of that. But there’s a chance you can still get to save your throne.”
He stuffed his hands in his pockets, to stop himself from grabbing her and doing whatever it took to end their alienation. “You actually got Prince Absent Brain to choke on the jewels?”
“No, but he told me who you can choke for them. Your queen.”
That jolted him out of being lost in her eyes. “Sondoss?”
“Yeah, you had her pegged.” At his mute stare, she raised those beautifully dense arches he couldn’t bear never to trace and kiss again. “You don’t believe me?”
That made him find words. “If you believe it, that’s enough for me.”
Her expression said she thought him patronizing and didn’t appreciate it. “Sure, ’cause my track record of believing the most blatant lies doesn’t precede me.”