Sheikh's Ex-Girlfriend (Khayyam Sheikh Series #1) (10 page)

“I don't want to go back to your place tonight,” he said softly. “I want you to come home with me.”

 His request mystified her until she realized that he did not mean his penthouse apartment downtown. Instead, he meant the family estate a short distance away from Dalal's center. He meant the house where they had split with such brutal finality five years ago.

“Please,” he said, and after that, there was nothing she could do. She would never be able to resist him when he looked at her with eyes like pools of ink, a touch of vulnerability in the curve of his lips. She agreed, and then she wondered what in the world she was getting in to when they got into his car.

She felt a tickle of anxiety run through her heart, but Nasim didn't give her enough time to focus on it. Instead, he was guiding her into the home, showing her around with a pride that was clear in every line of his body.

Before long, Ella felt herself becoming swept away. The fortress that he had taken her to was history that had come and gone. Its time was over. When he showed her the rooms where he had grown up, where he had learned with personal tutors before being sent to school, she could feel history as a living thing that was still shaping the world.

Finally, he led her to the library, a place of deep quiet and peace.

“This library was put together by my great-grandfather, whose three passions were supposedly fighting the French, my great-grandmother, and the written word. He was the one who created this space, and though succeeding generations have added on to it, it will always be very much his.”

There was a tablet on the desk, but that was the only concession to modern technology. The rest of the collection was weighted with age and love of literature. Tilting her head, she scanned the titles, most of which were in Arabic, but a fair number were also in English, German, and French.

“What an extraordinary room,” she murmured. “He must have been a great man.”

“We like to think so,” Nasim allowed. “Do you know why I have brought you here, Ella?”

She looked up, somehow feeling a little wary. “I don't,” she said slowly. “But I would like to know very much, please.”

He nodded. Instead of coming to stand beside her, he sat down at the desk. He was dressed simply that day in black slacks and a dark wine-colored shirt that made his dark skin look even more vibrant. It occurred to her that he could have been a man out of time, a man of his father's generation or perhaps even his grandfather's generation. He sat in his library, pondering the puzzles of his kingdom and how to protect it from the people who would threaten it.

“This is me,” Nasim said abruptly. “There is no way to separate me from Khayyam, and even if there was, I would not want that. When we first knew each other, I barely understood this. I saw this country, when I thought of it at all, as something that held me back, that chained me to a corner of the world even when I would rather be exploring elsewhere.”

“Do you still believe that?” she asked softly.

He shot her a look, the smile at the corner of his mouth slightly rueful.

“No. I grew up. I like to think that it would have happened even if my brothers hadn't died, but who knows? I had the ability to keep on exactly as I was if I wished. When they died and I was forced into the leadership of the country, everything changed, along with my view of the world.”

Ella's throat closed up. Somehow, she could intuit what was being said behind those words. The transition had not be easy, and even if he was pleased with the result now, there were still sleepless nights and frantic days of trying to get used to a role that he was never prepared for. The fact that he now filled that role so well was a testament to his own will, rather than proof that the process was simple.

“And what are you today, my love?” she asked quietly.

“Today this country is me. I wake up thinking of it, and I go to sleep thinking of it. The only times when I do not are when I am with you. You take me from this place—no, you do not take me from it, I think, instead you allow me to see it with an outsider's eyes.”

Nasim shook his head as if confused by his own thoughts, but he continued.

“When we first met, I thought nothing of how you would fit into my life,” he said. “That was my fault, and it is something I will always think upon with sorrow and regret. Now, I find that I can think of nothing but. I want you to have a place here, by my side—”

“I never needed that,” she protested. “I want to live in the moment, Nasim. I know that our moments are precious, and I want to treasure them for what they are. I am not asking anything of you.”

Nasim rose to his feet, pacing through the room towards her.  “Will you listen to what I am offering you?”

Ella felt a deep unsettled feeling in her belly. Things were changing again, and though she had told herself that she would welcome any changes as they came, she was still frightened. They had just created something lovely between them, and now it seemed as if Nasim wanted to throw it all away. Still, she nodded, because he deserved to say what he wished.

“You are a beautiful woman, and any man would be proud to have you on his arm, by his side. Ella, I want you there on a permanent basis.”

“Nasim …”

“I can't offer you marriage,” he said harshly. “Khayyam is modern enough, but there are things that will make the whole of society balk. Instead, I want to give you everything else. Let me give you a home that we can share together. Let me give you pleasure every night we can find each other …”

“Let you get married while I watch from the shadows,” Ella said through numb lips. This was something that she had somehow feared in her heart from the beginning, and now here it was.

“Ella—”

She shook her head blindly. “That's not what I want,” she said, her voice breaking. “Why can't we just continue as we have? Why can we simply not enjoy each other for what we have?”

“Because what you want is tenuous and fleeting,” he retorted. “It feels as if you are building escape hatches in every encounter we have. You want to say that you will be here today, but that you do not know if you will be here tomorrow? Can you even comprehend how terrible it is to try to love someone who might have disappeared like moonlight in the morning?”

“Perhaps as terrible as it is to be a permanent part of someone's life while they are living it with other people,” she said angrily. “My god, do you know what you're offering me, Nasim?”

“I am offering you what I thought you wanted. I am offering you a life at my side—”

“As your … your mistress! Do you even understand how demeaning that is? I'm my own woman, and I have never been able to live in the shadows,” she cried. “I want you, Nasim, I want you with my entire soul, and I want you to want me just as much. But I refuse to be worth less to you. I refuse to be something that you can put away when you are done, as if I were some kind of toy.”

“That isn't what you would be,” he growled. “Why can't you understand that? This is what I have to offer you. This is what I can give you while keeping the both of us safe and happy while doing what is right for my country and my family. Is it so easy to throw away?”

To her shock. Ella felt tears clogging the back of her throat. “I'm not throwing anything away,” she said as clearly as she could. “I just cannot take what you are offering. Thank you. I know that you didn't mean to hurt me. I know that this offer was what you could give me, and I know that it was meant with all the … the love and care that you have for me.

“It simply isn't enough. Thank you. I'm sorry.”

Nasim stared at her, struck to silence by her words.

Ella squared her shoulders and walked away. For a moment, she thought that he was going to call her back, to berate her if nothing else, but there was nothing but silence.

Blindly she made her way through the mansion, at last finding herself in the garage. There was a chauffeur there polishing the headlights on a car, but he straightened when he saw her. She wondered if he was the same man that offered her a ride home five years ago. There would be a kind of stunning circularity to it if he was.

“Miss? Can I help you?”

“Yes,” she said. “I need a ride out of here. Down to the Old Quarter.”

***

Nasim stood in the library, barely able to believe that she had left. Still, the silence in the air and the heavy atmosphere of the room confirmed it, and slowly he sat down at the desk again. Everything felt unreal, but he wondered if it had felt that way since he had met her.

When she had appeared in Dalal, it felt as if he had entered into a beautifully strange world, things where nothing mattered except for love. Now reality had intruded, and left them both hurt. There was no way to reconcile their differences, there was nothing they could do to come together again.

Without thinking about what he was doing, he balled up his fist and slammed it down on the desk. The ancient wood groaned, but didn't give, and he struck it again and again.

By the end, his fists were bloodied, but his head no clearer, and he still had to face the reality of a world without Ella.

Chapter 8

The first few days after she left Nasim were hard. The days after that became even harder. She woke up in the morning with a lead weight in her heart. Sometimes she could distract herself when the work got tough, but then she would see something that reminded her of him, or simply find herself thinking about him in the middle of the day.

Somehow, she managed to find a calm inside her that she could show to the rest of the office, but when she climbed the stairs to her apartment late at night, all of those emotions were there waiting for her.

Calls to Emmaline helped, and they Skyped nearly nightly, though sometimes Ella preferred to talk rather than to video. Her eyes were simply swollen with tears too often, and if Emmaline had seen that, Ella suspected that nothing would keep her sister off of the plane.

“It's all right to grieve,” Emmaline said one night. “It's the only way that you can get better. Just remember that you need to take care of yourself when you do so, all right? You're doing a very hard job out there, and you're doing it when you've just taken a real shot to the heart.”

“I'm doing my best,” Ella said defiantly. “It's just that it's … it's hard not to be reminded, you know? It's like everywhere I look and everywhere I go, there's something that reminds me of him.”

“Maybe it's time to start looking?”

Ella stiffened.

“What are you talking about?”

“I think you know exactly what I'm talking about, honey. You said it yourself, he is his country. Since he's the sheikh, it makes perfect sense that you would see him everywhere. Now what that says to me is that if you need to get away from him, you need to get away from Khayyam.”

“No. Out of the question. I have worked too long and too hard to create this space and this opportunity for myself. I am doing exactly what I want to be doing, exactly where I want to do it.”

“Just listen to me. Yes, you are doing what you want to be doing, but as far as I can tell from what you've told me, you're doing it in hell. Maybe this will pass, but from what I've seen? I don't think it will. You love him, and if you want to grow, it might be best to go to a place where you just aren't reminded of it over and over and over again.”

“But, my job needs—”

“Your job needs you,” Emmaline said crisply. “I have a feeling that when it comes to jobs, you can basically write your own ticket with Quill Publishing right now, and that ticket might take you to Dubai, to Abu Dhabi, maybe even to Arana.”

In spite of her own grief, Ella's ears perked up at the mention of Arana.

“That's quite a list,” she said slowly. “I don't suppose you have any ulterior motive for mentioning Arana?”

“I …of course I don't. I was reeling off UAE cities where you might want to work.”

“And it has nothing to do with a certain sheikh who managed to get under your skin so badly five years ago?”

“Him? Oh god, I've not thought about Marid in years!” Emmaline said fiercely, but to Ella, it sounded more than a little overdone.

It made her smile a little, to think of her serious, workaholic sister's fluster over Marid, who had flirted and to his shock, been turned down by the spitfire Emmaline. It didn't please her that her sister might be mooning over someone who was so far away and so untouchable, though, and that brought her mood straight back to the ground.

“I'm sorry, I didn't mean to tease,” she said regretfully.

“Don't worry about it. The fact remains that I'm right though. When you're in a situation like this, remember. You can decide to do a thing, you can decide not to do a thing, or you can just avoid deciding, and that's what it sounds like you're doing. And you know that is painful, sis.”

Ella agreed, and her sister's words stayed with her for the next few days. She could decide to stay in Dalal, or she could decide to leave. Refusing to do either meant living on a trapeze made of tension and heartache, and that in turn meant that she would never move her life forward in any significant way.

Or she could decide to accept Nasim's offer. The thought came back and played at the edge of her consciousness. It reminded her that there was a life here waiting for her, even if it wasn't one that she had anticipated. She knew that Nasim would take good care of her. She could pursue her work. Most importantly, she could have him.

But that wasn't the truth, and she knew it. It would be creating a shadow of the life they could have had together, one that would only grow more bitter and more hard once he married, as he had so callously informed her he would.

She shivered. That she could see so easily. She could see the passion of the next few years. She could see him marrying and she could see herself growing more bitter, more furious with every passing moment. It would be a kind of living hell, and she knew instinctively that she both needed and deserved better.

Make a decision
, she whispered softly to herself.
Make a decision, dammit
!

Still the days rolled on, and still she couldn't.