Crowned At The Desert King's Command (Mills & Boon Modern) Read online

  So if he expected her to soothe and placate him, to beg him to let her stay, he was in for a surprise. Because she wasn’t going to. She wasn’t going to demand he tell her why he’d changed his mind either. If he wanted to sit here in splendid isolation, in his arid life in a vacuum, then he could.

  She wouldn’t stop him, not this time.

  Charlotte drew herself up, looking him in the eye even as her heart shredded itself in her chest. ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Then you can arrange for me to fly out tonight.’

  A fleeting look of shock crossed his face before it was quickly masked. ‘Charlotte—’

  ‘No,’ she interrupted, furious and heartbroken, everything hot and raw. ‘You will damn well listen to what I have to say. I’m not choosing to leave because I want to. I’m choosing to leave because you haven’t given me one single reason to stay.’

  She found she was shaking.

  ‘You made it clear what our marriage was. Right from the beginning you told me, and I thought I was okay with it. I thought I didn’t want more. But I’ve changed my mind.’

  She met his gaze head-on.

  ‘I’ve decided I do want more. I want a real marriage, Tariq, emotional as well as physical. I want love. Give me that and I swear no power on earth will make me leave you.’

  He was suddenly still, as if she’d turned him to stone. And the silence deepened, lengthened.

  ‘I cannot,’ he said at last, roughly, as if it had been dragged from him. ‘That is the one thing I cannot give you.’

  It wasn’t a shock. It wasn’t even a surprise. And maybe that was what hurt most of all. She knew he couldn’t. And whether it was a case of him not being able to or simply not wanting to, it didn’t matter.

  The outcome was still the same.

  Charlotte ignored the desert that had taken the place of her heart. She didn’t plead with him, didn’t beg. Didn’t ask him why. All she said was, ‘Then I have to leave.’

  The mask of the sheikh had settled back over his strong features once again, and there was no emotion at all in his eyes. ‘I will have Faisal handle your travel arrangements,’ he said, without any discernible emotion. ‘You will, of course, let me know if you discover you are pregnant.’

  That hurt—as he must have known it would.

  But she didn’t let it show.

  She turned on her heel and left him there.

  Tariq stood in front of the window for a long time after she’d gone, staring out at his beautiful gardens and the fountains playing, desperate for the peaceful scene to calm the sudden and terrible rage that clawed up inside him. Desperate to find his detachment, the black silence of his vacuum.

  But it was nowhere to be found, so he stayed where he was, unmoving. Because if he moved even a muscle he wasn’t sure that he wouldn’t go running after Charlotte, pick her up and toss her over his shoulder, carry her into his bedroom, lock the door, throw away the key.

  He couldn’t do that, though. No matter how much he wanted to. No matter how much the pain in her silver-blue eyes had felt like glass sliding under his skin. Or how her request for love had made that glass slice through his soul. Or how her leaving had made him feel suffocated, left to bear the crushing weight of his isolation alone.

  No, he couldn’t go after her. Couldn’t give her the one thing—the only thing—she’d ever asked of him.

  He couldn’t give her love.

  He’d worked too hard, borne too much, to give in to those terrible betraying feelings. Being true to his father’s teachings, keeping himself isolated—that was all he could do now. And if he felt as if he was dying inside, then that was his own fault. He’d been the one to think he could have friendship and pleasure, that he could have her smile and her laughter—all the things he’d been missing in his life and all without consequence.

  Little by little she’d got past his walls and he should have stopped her days ago. He’d let her get too far and this was the result: his detachment, the thing he needed to be a good king, cracked and broken.

  ‘Does what I want not matter at all?’

  Tariq stared sightlessly at the fountain, her voice and the break in it replaying in his head. He’d told her that she was his, that he would never let her go, but the moment she’d said those words and he’d felt something inside him twist and crack he’d understood.

  She had to leave. She made him feel too much. She made him feel, full stop. And that was a very bad thing. It compromised the very foundation he’d built his life upon, not to mention his reign, and that he wouldn’t allow. He couldn’t put himself and what he wanted first because he was responsible for an entire nation. And keeping it safe was his primary objective.

  Even if that meant keeping it safe from himself.

  He’d put his country at risk once before because he’d been too much a slave to his emotions. He couldn’t do it again.

  ‘I want love, Tariq. Give me that.’

  No, not even for her.

  It was a long time before he permitted himself to move. A long time before he turned away from the window, forcing himself to make a few calls, arranging the travel details for her himself.

  Then, once that was done, he shut himself in his office, leaving instructions with his guards that he was not to be disturbed under any circumstances.

  And he threw himself into work.

  A week later and he still hadn’t granted anyone an audience or interview. He’d refused meetings. Even requests for casual conversation had been ignored.

  Everyone had been turned away from his door.

  He didn’t want to see anyone. He didn’t want to talk to anyone.

  He had to shore up the cracks in his armour that Charlotte had created and he could only do that alone.

  The week turned into two and then three.

  Faisal came at least once every day, demanding admittance, but Tariq ignored him.

  Yet he still couldn’t find any peace.

  One evening he headed to the palace baths, as he had every night since Charlotte had left, unable to sleep and tortured by a warmth that wasn’t there. By memories of soft curves and hair like moonlight. Of deep blue eyes that had looked at him as if there was something worthy in him when he knew there wasn’t.

  He flung himself into the water, driving his hands through it as if he was digging himself out of a hole, or pulling himself up a sharp cliff, swimming on and on. Driving himself into the spurious peace of exhaustion.

  That exhaustion never lasted, though, and once it had passed the ache would return, bringing with it the intense longing and the sense of suffocation. As if the air he needed to breathe was being depleted and he was slowly choking and by inches dying.

  You need air. You need her.

  He forced that thought from his head, driving himself harder through the water.

  No, he’d been fine before she came to him and he would be fine again. All he needed to do was hold fast to his detachment and these sensations would pass. They had after Catherine and they would again—he was sure of it.

  His hand hit the end of the pool again, but this time, sensing someone standing there, he stopped and stood up, pushing his hair back from his eyes.

  Faisal stood at the edge, his expression impassive.

  ‘How did you get past the guards?’ Tariq demanded gracelessly. His temper these days was on a hair trigger. ‘No one is permitted to enter.’

  ‘I knocked them out.’ Faisal’s tone was short. ‘You need new guards.’

  Tariq scowled. He didn’t want Faisal here. He didn’t want to talk. He wanted to continue swimming until his muscles ached and he was exhausted, the feeling of being suffocated gone.

  ‘What do you want?’ he asked. ‘Tell me, then get out.’

  Faisal stared at him a moment, then said with unexpected savagery, ‘You’re a fool, Tariq. Sulking in your p
alace alone. Why did you send her away?’

  Tariq felt his hands clench into fists and he had to force the anger away, get himself under control. ‘I do not recall asking for your opinion, Faisal. And be careful what you say—’

  ‘Your father was a fool too,’ the old man interrupted harshly. ‘He closed himself down completely after your mother died—did you know that? He never got over it. He isolated himself and then he did the same to you.’

  Tariq went still.

  ‘I told him it was wrong,’ Faisal went on. ‘That just because he had lost his wife it did not mean that his son should not find happiness and companionship. But he ignored me. And now look what has happened.’ The old advisor virtually spat the words. ‘You have closed the borders of your country and your heart. You are him in everything but name.’

  Abruptly the weight sitting on Tariq’s chest increased, like a vice crushing him, the vacuum pressing in. He should command Faisal’s silence, tell him to get out, but he couldn’t speak.

  ‘Do you know what happens to a tree with its roots cut?’ Faisal asked, suddenly quiet. ‘Or to a fire starved of oxygen? It dies.’ There was a pause. ‘Your insistence on your father’s outdated lessons may not end up killing this country, Tariq. But it will certainly end up killing you.’

  The water was cool, but suddenly he was burning up. The emotions inside him, the anger and desperation and longing, were too strong and too powerful. They were inescapable and there was nowhere for them to go but inward. And now they were eating him alive.

  ‘Perhaps,’ he heard himself say roughly, ‘that should have happened years ago. Before I betrayed Ashkaraz in a rush of foolish temper.’

  Faisal was silent, but Tariq couldn’t look at him. He couldn’t bear to see what was on the old man’s face.

  ‘No,’ Faisal said at last. ‘No, that is not true. It was your father who betrayed Ashkaraz. If he had brought you up with love, rather than harshness, you would not have been so lonely. And if you had not been so lonely you would not have been angry with him. You would not have turned to Catherine.’

  ‘You cannot say that—’

  ‘I can and I will,’ the old man interrupted. ‘You are a good king, Tariq. But you could be a great one. Better than your father ever was. Because you have what he lacked: a strong and passionate heart. You just need to use it.’

  His jaw ached, along with every muscle in his body. He felt as if he was standing on the edge of a cliff, the ledge crumbling beneath him. ‘Detachment is what makes a great king, Faisal. Not a strong and passionate heart.’

  ‘That is your father talking.’ Faisal’s voice was uncompromising. ‘And he was wrong. Love is what makes a great king.’

  A few weeks ago he would have ignored the words. Now they settled into him, through the chink in his armour that Charlotte had left there.

  He didn’t know how long he stood in the chilly waters of the baths after Faisal had gone, watching the light filter down from the hidden windows in the ceiling, his heart beating fast and getting faster, the emotions inside him burning him alive.

  If love was what made a great king, then that was something he couldn’t be. Because what did he know of love? It was his father’s grief and pain. It was Catherine’s empty promises. His own anger and betrayal...

  That’s not all it is.

  He caught his breath, memories coiling through him. Charlotte’s gentle hand on his skin. Charlotte’s smile as she looked up at him. Charlotte’s arms around him, holding him close.

  ‘I want love,’ she’d said—as if she knew exactly what it was, as if it was something to be deeply desired and longed for and not something that led to pain and betrayal.

  Faisal isn’t wrong. If your father had even let you have one friend, one connection, would you have gone to Catherine that night?

  Perhaps he wouldn’t. Perhaps he wouldn’t have been so lonely and so angry. So desperate for any connection that he’d let his father’s mistress seduce him. Perhaps if his father had brought him up with love he’d understand what Charlotte wanted.

  You can understand now.

  The thought made air rush abruptly into his lungs and he found himself gasping, as if he’d forgotten how to breathe.

  ‘You have what he lacked...’ Faisal had said. ‘A strong and passionate heart. You just need to use it.’

  And to do that he needed to open it. To stop fighting his emotions. To embrace them, make them part of him.

  So he did. He stood in the water, his hands in fists, his skin getting cold, and instead of fighting the feelings inside him he set them free, let them rush through him like oxygen down an air line.

  And suddenly everything became clear.

  He loved Charlotte Devereaux.

  He’d loved her for weeks.

  She made him better. She made him stronger. She made him compassionate and merciful and protective. She made him humble.

  She made him whole.

  She made him the king he should be for his people.

  And if he wanted to be that king he needed her at his side.

  Give her a reason to be there, then.

  His heart was beating far too fast and his hands were shaking—because there was only one thing he could offer her and that was himself, and he was honest enough to admit that probably wasn’t enough. She’d told him she’d wanted love from him, but maybe after the way she’d left, after the way he’d treated her, she had changed her mind.

  But he had to go to her and offer it anyway. He needed to show her that what she wanted mattered to him. He needed to tell her that she was loved. That she was his queen, and to death and beyond would remain so.

  Tariq moved to the edge of the pool and hauled himself out. It was late, and he should go to bed, but he wasn’t tired. Instead he dried himself off and went straight to his office.

  He worked through the night, putting various and very necessary things in motion. And then, just as dawn was breaking, he finally put through the call he’d been waiting all night to make.

  ‘Ready my jet,’ he ordered, when one of his assistants answered. ‘I will be flying to London as soon as possible.’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHARLOTTE SMOOTHED THE blanket over her father’s knees as he sat in his favourite armchair beside the fire in the living room and ignored his fussing. Luckily the heart attack had been mild, and the doctor was incredibly pleased with his progress—but he was a terrible patient. He wanted to be back in his office at the university, putting together a new lecture or organising a new dig, not sitting ‘mouldering’ at home. At least, that was what he kept saying to her, as if he was expecting her to do something about it.

  ‘I don’t have my laptop,’ he said peevishly, readjusting the blanket. ‘How am I supposed to prepare anything when I don’t have my laptop? I need you to go into my office and get—’

  ‘No, Dad.’ Charlotte interrupted, before he could get into a list of all the things he needed. ‘I have a job interview tomorrow, so you’ll have to wait.’

  It was for an office job, doing administrative tasks, and she’d been surprised she’d got an interview, given her lack of work experience. But she’d felt a vague sense of satisfaction that she’d managed to score it. Now her father was better, and would be returning to work in the next week or so, her own life could resume. Not that she knew quite what that life was going to look like.

  One thing was clear, though: it wasn’t going to be what she’d had before.

  When she’d come back to England she’d been caught up in her father’s illness and looking after him, too busy to think about what her next move might be. But since he’d been released from hospital, and she’d had to move into her father’s mews house in order to look after him, she’d had time to make a few decisions. And one of those was that she wasn’t going to be returning to work for him.

  She was
done with men who did nothing but take.

  She was going to do what she wanted for a change.

  ‘You don’t need a job.’ He fussed with his blanket yet again. ‘You can be my assistant. The new one isn’t working out as well as I’d hoped.’

  Once upon a time Charlotte might have leapt at the opportunity. But not now.

  Not since Tariq.

  The thought of the man she’d left behind made the wound deep inside her soul ache, but she shoved the pain away. She’d made her choice and she didn’t regret it. And if sometimes at night, when she couldn’t sleep, she wished she’d confronted him when he’d told her he couldn’t give her love, then what of it? It didn’t change what had happened, and it was far too late to confront him now anyway.

  The borders of Ashkaraz were closed to her and so was its sheikh’s heart.

  ‘Thanks, Dad, but, no,’ Charlotte said firmly. ‘It’s time I started living my own life, making my own choices.’

  Her father scowled. ‘The new girl doesn’t do things the way I like them.’

  ‘Then I’m afraid that’s your problem, not mine.’

  ‘Charlotte...’

  ‘What?’ She gave him a very direct look. ‘I’m your daughter, not your servant. Not your dogsbody. Not any more. I have things I want to do.’

  He was silent a moment. Then, ‘You’ve changed. What happened in Ashkaraz?’

  It was the first time he’d asked her, and Charlotte debated for a moment whether or not he deserved an explanation. But perhaps it would be good for him to hear a few home truths.

  ‘I had my heart broken,’ she said flatly. ‘And I realised that for years I’ve been trying to prove myself to a man who took what I had to give him and never saw me as anything more than a nuisance. And even though I gave up a piece of my soul to come back and help him recover, he hasn’t even said thank you. Not once. Is that enough of an explanation for you?’