The Sheikh's Jewel (13 page)

CHAPTER TWELVE

The Sheikh’s Palace, Sar Abbas, a few hours later

I
N
THE
opulent office that had been Harun’s but was now his, Alim stared at Harun when he walked in the door unannounced, and then ran headlong for him. ‘Praise Allah, you’re back, you’re alive!
Akh, mee habib akh!
’

Brother, my beloved brother.
Harun had the strangest sense of déjà vu with Alim’s outburst, the echo of words he himself had spoken only a few weeks ago in Africa. But Alim sounded so overwhelmingly relieved, and Alim’s arms were gripping his shoulders hard enough to hurt. He didn’t know what to make of it. ‘So you were given demands?’

‘No.’ His brother’s face was dark with stress and exhaustion as they all sat down on respective chairs around his—
Alim’s
desk. ‘This never went public, but two guards were found drugged in the palace the night you disappeared, and another almost died saving me from an abduction attempt. I came to check on you and you were gone—and Amber too. We sent all our usual guards away, and filled the palace with elite marine guards. Under the guise of army exercises I’ve had the best in the country looking for you, and hunting down your abductors. How did you get away? What happened?’

‘I wish I knew.’ Harun frowned. ‘It was like they wanted us to get away. The guards disappeared, and we rappelled down a rope of sheets and curtains. We ran to the highway into the city and I called in a favour from an army captain who drove us the rest of the way.’ He grinned. ‘We only stopped to change, since our attire wasn’t quite up to palace standards.’ He flicked the grin over to Amber, who was watching him with a look of mingled pride and exasperation—at his cut-down version of events, he supposed.

‘Maybe their plan was contingent on us all being taken,’ Alim said quietly. ‘Any thoughts on that,
akh?
You’re the tactician in the family.’

‘He’s more than that,’ Amber interjected sharply, the first words she’d spoken.

‘Alim didn’t mean anything by it, Amber.’ He reached over, touched her hand to quiet the protest he felt wasn’t yet done.

‘I meant it as a compliment, actually, Amber.’ Alim was frowning. ‘Harun’s the one that saved the country while I was lying in a bed in Switzerland, and he ran the country while I drove a truck.’ He met Harun’s eyes with an odd mix of admiration and resentment. ‘I’ve only been here a few days and I’ve got no idea how you did it all so well.’

Harun felt Amber gearing up for another comment born of exhaustion and—it made him want to smile—the urge to protect him, and he pressed her hand this time. ‘We think it might have been some el-Kanar supporters who wanted an heir.’

‘You mean they wanted an heir from you and Amber?’ At his nod, he earned a sharp look from Alim. ‘And who don’t support my, shall we say, less than traditional ways, and my choice of bride.’ When Harun didn’t answer, he was forced to go on. ‘Then I can assume the rumours about the state of your marriage were correct?’

Neither moved nor spoke in answer.

After a flicked glance at them both, Alim avoided the obvious question. Amber’s face was rosy, her eyes downcast. It was obvious she was no longer the ice maiden she’d seemed to be the week before…and Harun could almost swear Alim’s left eye drooped in a wink. He certainly seemed a little brighter than before.

‘So I’d guess you think the plan was to kill me and install you as permanent ruler.’

It wasn’t a question, but still Harun nodded and shrugged. ‘That’s what they planned, but they left one thing out of the equation.’ He met his brother’s enquiring look with a hard expression. ‘I never wanted the position in the first place. I still don’t want it. Stepping into Fadi’s dead shoes was the last thing I wanted three years ago. Less still do I want to be in your shoes now.’

Alim stilled, staring at him. ‘You don’t want to be here at all, do you.’

Again, it was a statement of fact.

‘He never did.’ Amber spoke with the quiet venom of stored anger. ‘Tell him, Harun. Tell him the truth about what you’ve sacrificed the last thirteen years so he could do whatever he wanted.’

Alim only said, almost pleading,
‘Akh?’

‘Amber, please,’ Harun said quietly, turning only his head. ‘I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but this is not the time.’

‘If not now, when…?’ Then Amber’s eyes swivelled to meet his, and she paled beyond her state of exhaustion. ‘You’re going to sacrifice yourself again—you’ll sacrifice us, even—to fulfil your sacred duty. And for
him.
’ She jerked her head in Alim’s direction. ‘Is he
still
all you’ve got?’

‘Harun?’ Alim’s voice sounded uncertain.

Harun couldn’t answer either of them. He was lost in the humbling knowledge that she could read him so easily now—that he had no time to formulate an explanation; she knew it all. And she wasn’t going to support him.

When he didn’t speak Amber made a choking sound, and turned on Alim. There was no trace of her old crush as she snarled at his brother, ‘You’ll let him do it for you again, won’t you? Just as you let him do everything
you
were supposed to do, all these years. He gave up
everything
for you, while you were off playing the superstar, or feeling sorry for yourself in Africa, playing the hero again. Did you ever
care
about what he wanted? Did you think to ask him, even once?’

In the aftermath of Amber’s outburst, all that was audible in this soundproof room was her harsh breathing. She stared at Alim in cold accusation; Alim’s gaze was on Harun, tortured by guilt. Then Amber turned to him, her eyes challenging. She wasn’t backing down, wasn’t going to let him smooth this over with pretty half-truths.

The trouble was, his mind had gone totally blank. It had been so long since anyone asked him for unvarnished truth or stripped his feelings bare as she’d just done, she’d left him with nothing to say.

At length she turned back on Alim. ‘Harun never told me any of it, just so you know. Fadi did. I hope you’ve appreciated your life, because Harun gave it to you! And he’s going to do it again. For once, Alim, be a real man instead of a shiny image!’

Then, pulling her hand from Harun’s, she turned and ran from the room.

Harun watched her go, completely beyond words. Devastated and betrayed, she was still loyal to him to the end. Why was it only now that he realised how loyal she’d always been to him?

Loyalty, courage and duty…Amber epitomised all of them, and he’d never deserved it.

‘Have you hated me all these years?’ asked Alim.

The low question made him turn back. Alim’s eyes were black, tortured with guilt. ‘Don’t,’ he said wearily when Harun was about to deny it. ‘Don’t be polite, don’t be the perfect sheikh or the perfect brother, just this once. Answer me honestly. Have you hated me for having the life I wanted at your expense?’

For years he’d waited for Alim to see what he’d done, to ask. For years he’d borne the chains that should have been his brother’s—and yet, now the question was finally asked, he couldn’t feel the weight any more. ‘I hated that you never asked me what I wanted.’ Then he frowned. ‘What do you mean, the perfect brother?’

Alim pulled a face of obvious pain, and rubbed at the scars on his neck and cheek. ‘I need some of Hana’s balsam,’ he muttered. ‘Don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean. It was always you with Fadi—Harun this and that, you did such a wonderful job of something I should have done or been there to do. Even if I’d come home, I’d have done a second-rate job. I was always well aware you were the one Fadi wanted, and I was second-best.’

It was funny how the old adage about walking in another’s shoes always seemed so fresh and new when you were the ones in the shoes. ‘I never knew he did that.’

Alim shrugged, retreating into silence, and it looked like a mirror of his own actions. So it meant that much to Alim. It had hurt him that much.

He’d just never realised they were so alike.

‘It must have hurt,’ he said eventually, when it was obvious Alim wasn’t going to speak. This was new to him, being forced to reach out.

Another shrug as his brother’s face hardened and he rubbed at the scarring. Though it wasn’t quite the same, it was a defence mechanism he recognised. He thought Amber would, too…and she’d have tried again from a different position. Poking and prodding at the wound until he was forced to lance it.

Suddenly Harun wanted to smile. All the things he’d been blind to for so long… Amber knew him so well. How, he didn’t know. She must have studied him at a distance—or maybe it was just destiny. Or love.

That the word even came to him with such clarity shocked him. What did it mean?

‘Do you know what it’s like to be inadequate beside your little brother at your mother’s funeral?’ Alim suddenly burst out. ‘Fadi never let me forget it. No matter what I achieved or did, I never measured up to you.’

Harun stared at him. ‘
Fadi
said that?’

‘All the time,’ Alim snarled.

It was hard to get his head around it: the brother he’d always adored and looked up to had played favourites, just as their mother and father had. The insight turned all his lifelong beliefs on their heads—and the indestructible Racing Sheikh became a man like any other, his big brother who was lost and hurting.

The trouble was he didn’t have a clue what to do with the knowledge that the brother he’d resented so long was the only one who could understand how it felt to be him. ‘Did you hate me for that?’ he faltered. A weary half-shake, half-nod was his only answer, yet he understood. ‘I’m sorry, Alim,’ he said awkwardly in the end, but he wasn’t sure what he was apologising for.

Alim gave another careless shrug, but he saw straight through it. Some scars bled only when pulled open. Others just kept bleeding.

‘So, what did you want to do with your life that you didn’t get to do, while I was off being rich and famous?’ Alim tried to snap, but it came out with a humorous bent somehow.

Willing them both to get past what had only hurt them all these years, Harun grinned. ‘Come on,
akh.
I don’t change. Think. Remember.’

Alim frowned, looking at him with quizzical eyes…and slowly they lit. ‘The books, the history you always had your nose stuck in as a kid? Do you want to be a professor?’

‘Close.’ The grin grew. ‘Archaeologist.’

‘Really?’ Alim laughed. ‘You want to spend your life digging up old bones and bits of pottery?’

‘Hey, big kid, you played with cars for years,’ he retorted, laughing.

Alim chuckled. ‘Well, if you put it that way…okay, I’m growing up and you’re getting to go make mud pies.’

The laughter relaxed them both. ‘So you have no objections?’

‘I have no right to object to anything you want to do, even if I have the power.’ Alim came around the desk, and gave Harun a cocky grin. ‘I promise to get the job right, and not bother you or force you home for at least the next thirteen years.’

Harun looked up, his expression hardening. ‘Thanks, but I’m not applying for digs just yet. I have something I need to do first.’

Alim tilted his head.

‘You just said you wouldn’t object to anything I wanted.’ Harun shook off Alim’s hands as they landed on his shoulders, and stood. ‘First, I have to renounce my position formally, publicly state I don’t want the job.’ He met his brother’s eyes. ‘I have to disappear until everyone in the nation accepts you in the position, or our friends will try again…and this time they might get it right.’

‘I guess I’d better let you do it…but you’re all I have left, Harun.’ Alim’s face seemed to take on a few more lines, or maybe the scars were more pronounced. ‘Take care with your life, little
akh.
Don’t leave me alone to grieve at your funeral.’

The words were raw, but still Alim squared up to him, looking him in the eye. And Harun realised he was the taller brother—something he’d never noticed before. ‘I’m doing this
for
you. I’m the soldier in the family. I have to hunt them down.’ He spoke through a throat hurting with unspoken emotion. ‘Until the group’s disabled, you’ll never be safe—and neither will the woman you love.’

‘And if I don’t want you to do this? If I say that without you, I have nothing?’

Too late, he heard the choked emotion, and understood what Alim wasn’t saying. ‘What about Hana?’

His brother’s jaw hardened still more. ‘That’s no more open to discussion than your private life with Amber. But let me say this now, while I can, because I know you’re going to disappear, no matter what I say. Are you leaving because you hate me for Fadi’s death—or can I hope one day you’ll forgive me?’

The words sliced Harun when he’d least expected it. He wheeled away, just trying to breathe for a minute, but his chest felt constricted.

‘I have to know, Harun.’ The hand that landed on his shoulder was shaking. ‘Despite the fact that you were his favourite, I loved him. He was more father than brother to us both from the time we were little.’

All he could do was nod once.

After a stretch of quiet, Alim asked, ‘Do you blame me for his death?’

‘Stop,’ he croaked, feeling as if Alim had torn him in half.

‘I need to know, Harun.’

There were so many replies he could make to that assertion, but he’d been where Alim was now. He knew better than Alim did that staffers and servants and all the personal and national wealth that oil and gas could bring, even the adoration of a nation, the whole world, didn’t halt the simple loneliness of not having the woman you wanted love you for who you really were inside.

It seemed this was a week of unburdening, whether he wanted to or not.

‘Fadi made his own decision,’ he said eventually, staring out of the window. ‘I always knew that. He was so unhappy at the political marriage he had to make—not just with Amber, but any suitable woman. He loved Rafa with all his heart. I don’t think he wanted to die, just to escape from inevitability for a few days.’

After a long time, Alim answered, sounding constricted. ‘Thank you.’

He shrugged again. ‘You saw how unhappy he was, didn’t you? I saw it too, but I didn’t know what to do; I had nothing to offer him. You gave him escape for a little while, because you loved him. His death was a terrible accident, one that scars you more than me. I never blamed you for it.’
Only for running off when I needed someone the most,
he thought but didn’t say. Alim had more burdens on his shoulders than he’d ever dreamed. He found himself hoping Hana would come back to him, and make him happy.