To Touch a Sheikh (16 page)

“Now…the details your theatrics interrupted.” Amjad turned back to Maram, feeling like a tennis ball being smashed from one pro to another. “We set up a ruse to make her believe her original plan was working, that her son and her planned future husband's daughter were allying with each other and would still sway my father to take his place in her game.”

“Because she wouldn't believe I'd turn against you of my own accord,” Haidar said, “we had to convince her that Maram—who now hates your guts—has become sympathetic with her plans, has me so blinded by love I'll do anything to please her.”

He turned to Maram. “I don't care why you set this up or what can be gained. End it.”

She scowled at him, clearly not buying his agitation.

It was Haidar who put him out of his misery. “Although you
really
don't deserve to get off the hook, big bro, Maram and I don't have to share melting sighs anymore. My news about our
engagement made Mother reminisce about how ‘our love' must have begun, during an incident when we were fourteen. It was in a cave on the Azmaharian borders. We were almost eaten alive by hyenas and escaped by hiding inside a chamber that a slab of stone closes off when a geyser blows periodically. I told the others to look there and Harres called minutes ago. They found the jewels!”

Amjad grasped what Haidar had said. The conspiracy was over.

All he registered was that Maram had once again done whatever it took to do what her unswerving sense of justice dictated.

All he cared about was that she wasn't lost to him.

Not yet.

Having made his momentous declaration, Haidar gave them one final excited look, then exited the room, clearly confident they'd follow.

Maram did move to follow him. Amjad lunged after her, intercepted her. “Maram, we
must
talk.”

She frowned down at the hand trembling on her arm, before looking up at him, her eyes stained with distance and deadness. “There's nothing more to talk about. Your plan worked, Amjad. Your future throne is safe. Congratulations. You've won.”

Before he could grit out that his plan and future throne—his very future—could go to hell, that he cared only about winning
her
back, she bolted out of his grasp. He forced himself not to pounce on her, drag her back into the room and make her admit her need and give him another chance.

He shadowed her as she followed Haidar. But though he kept no more than a stride between them, he felt her receding with each stiff step, deepening his dread that he might have hoped too soon. That he might lose her anyway.

And with her, everything worth living for.

 

Amjad watched his brothers walk into their father's stateroom. He barely noticed Shaheen and Harres as they patted Haidar
on the back and thanked Maram for breaking the unbreakable queen's silence. He barely registered Haidar and Jalal, once again drawn and silent. His focus centered on a more withdrawn Maram.

A hush fell over their gathering.

Jalal suddenly spoke, his voice dark, pained. “I know she doesn't deserve it, but she's our mother and we have to ask for leniency for her.”

Haidar moved toward him, as if unable to be near him yet needing to be. “Exile instead of imprisonment. We will guarantee that she won't cause you or Zohayd trouble again.”

“Are you sure you want to take on such a…responsibility?” Shaheen had clearly already granted them what they asked on his own behalf, but feared the consequences of their misplaced compassion, for them.

“She won't give up that easily, if at all.” Harres corroborated Shaheen's view. “Who knows what damages she'll cause you next as she plots your ‘trio's' best interests.”

Haidar shook his head. “We can't have her in prison.”

“You might not condone, but at least understand,” Jalal said.

“We understand.” Shaheen exhaled. “
Ya Ullah,
what a mess.”

Harres echoed his sympathy. “I'm more sorry than I can say for the heartache she's caused you, Haidar, Jalal.”

Haidar huffed a bitter laugh. “We'll survive. We survived having her as a mother after all.”

“And grew up to be mushy fools anyway, apparently.” Jalal smirked, reminding Amjad too much of himself. “My mind is screaming, lock her in a dungeon, away from any sentient beings she can suck dry and gain more power from, but…” Jalal threw his hands up in self-disgust, cocked his head at them. “So what will it be?”

They all turned to their father, who'd stayed silent, eyes downcast through it all. He hadn't spoken one complete sentence to any of them since he'd been brought into the situation.

He raised his eyes to his youngest sons. “She's your mother. I will sanction whatever you decide to do with her.”

Haidar nodded, turned, gave Maram a brief hug and exited the room as if escaping suffocation.

Jalal thanked his father in a more collected way, settling back into his famous nonchalance before he turned to them. “How about we wrap up this disaster?”

 

Wrapping up the disaster turned out to be far more trouble than anyone had anticipated.

The scandal of the queen's conspiracy erupted in the region.

As the
Damned
Prince, and with his father withdrawing from the scene and relegating all his powers to him, Amjad had to be the one to assure every prince and minister and their dog with convoluted new treaties to guarantee that Zohayd wouldn't seek vengeance on the conspirators' kingdoms and their allies. His most trying times was with the king of Azmahar, Queen Sondoss's weakling of a brother.

The man was as whiny and irritating as his sister was ruthless and devastating. Amjad wasn't in any mood to reassure him he wouldn't blow him and his kingdom to smithereens in retaliation for exporting the plague of Sondoss to Zohayd all those years ago.

After two weeks of nonstop inanities, Amjad knew he'd become dangerous. Anyone standing in his way to being with Maram would be pulverized. Maram, who'd gone back to Ossaylan. Where he had to get to her before she carried out her threat of disappearing forever.

He'd called Harres and Shaheen from their cleanup assignments. He was waiting for them on the palace's steps. He had a roomful of delegates to throw in their lap and instructions for his open-ended absence from Zohayd. He wanted to do this in person.

They were getting out of their cars, so slowly, as if taunting him. Then they approached, and he knew they were.

“My, Amjad,” Harres drawled, walking backward once he neared him for good measure. “Aren't you in deep—”

He bared his teeth. “Don't. Say. It.”

“—love.” Harres guffawed uncontrollably. “You're in
love.
”

Shaheen placed a hand on his heart, pretending to stagger. “You've found the woman who makes you want to delete yourself from existence for her.”

Shaheen was taunting him with his own words, from when Shaheen had been about to give up everything he was to be with his Johara.

“Aih,”
Amjad harrumphed. “It's clear that Atef Aal Shalaan can beget nothing
but
idiots.”

Shaheen laughed at Amjad's reminder that he'd called him an idiot then, and Amjad considered himself one now. “Happy idiots, though.”

Harres nodded, dreamy teasing lighting up his ruggedness. “
Ecstatic
morons.”

Amjad gritted his teeth. “Do turn down the blast of your bliss. It's too abrasive when I'm in the category of inconsolable idiots and miserable morons for now.”

Shaheen tsked. “Man, you are potent, if you managed to demolish her obsession with you.”

Amjad exhaled heavily. “I was actually doing shockingly well until she found out about this trivial matter of kidnapping her.”

“I know you're insane and all, Amjad—” Harres placed his arm on his brother's shoulder, as if searching for a visible evidence of his madness “—but you
told
her?”

Shaheen whistled. “That comes under idiot for sure.”

Amjad's lips twisted. “That comes under sloppy, actually. I was in no condition to be careful anymore.”

Shaheen shook his head in amazement. “And that's an admission far bigger than jumping on a sofa and shouting you love her on TV.”

Harres gave him a firm tug. “But chin up, oldest and biggest idiot brother. She'll forgive you.”

“She says she doesn't want to see me ever again.”

“Wow, she loves you that much, eh?” Shaheen's amazement deepened. “I wonder how she did it.”

Amjad sighed his dejection. “She isn't doing it anymore.”

Harres waved. “Nah, she's just hurt as deeply as she loves you. It's like the saying ‘you're the wound, and you're the cure.'”

That was what Amjad lived in hope of.

 

On arriving at the royal palace in Ossaylan, officials stumbled around him, thinking he was there to enforce embargos in punishment for the emirate's role in the conspiracy.

If only they knew he was here as a supplicant.

He demanded Maram's whereabouts, and they were only too happy to offer their princess in return for their collective sparring.

He soon walked into Maram's office. He found her standing by a sofa that echoed the color of her eyes, sorting through envelopes. Eyes that betrayed momentary shock, quickly replaced by realization and resignation.

He rushed to her and she put down the envelopes, turned to him. “Are marriage traditions in Zohayd the same as they are in Ossaylan?”

His advance faltered. She went on and it stopped.

Along with the whole world.

“Provide me with a list of differences. I want to know if there's anything I should wear or not wear or do or not do for our wedding.”

O
ur wedding.

That was what he'd heard Maram say.

Jubilation detonated…only to freeze in mid-explosion.

She'd said it as if she was mentioning a prison sentence.

“I should have known my father would run to you with the news. He'll do anything to stack up any good points with you. I wanted to be the one to tell you, but…” She gave a resigned shrug. “Before you make your demands, I'll state my own terms.”

Terms. She had terms. Her father had news.
He
had no idea what was going on.

“I wouldn't have considered marriage as an option again, let alone between us, but what I want isn't important now.”

It wasn't?

“As for your own abhorrence of marriage, what you want isn't important either. It all boils down to what's best for our baby.”

Our
baby?

“Even if you're not father material, I'm not doing to my baby what my mother did to me. I won't deprive it of its father.”

Father.

He felt his muscles loosen, losing tension, his mind flicker, his awareness following suit. The world blurred, dimmed.

Was he going to
faint?

He couldn't. He had to say something…even if he no longer found words or thoughts, had lost his voice, his coherence.

From a collapsing tunnel he heard a strangulated rasp. Had to be his. Only from the evidence that no one else was present.

“You're…you're
pregnant?
”

She cast him an irritated look. “You know I am. Precautions were no match for our combined fertility. That's why you're here.”

“I'm here to…to…” He shook his head, the revelation reverberating inside him in shockwaves.

Maram was carrying…
his baby.

One of those times when she'd begged him to fill her, when he'd felt he wouldn't survive if he didn't, they'd forged more than a deeper bond of need. They'd made a miracle. Against all odds and intentions. But no.
His
intentions had been there. He'd evaded focusing on them, and not because he'd doubted he'd found the woman in whose love and happiness he wanted to invest all of himself. It had been because he'd had no right to wish it, with the deception he'd perpetrated bearing down on him.

Seemed he'd still wished it too hard, it had come true. Which she seemed desolate about, even as she tried to be pragmatic.

While that turned the knife in his guts, it was still far better than anything he'd come here hoping for. He'd feared that she might have kept eluding him until her wounds sealed on forgetfulness and he faded from her mind and heart.

Now he would have a lifetime of closeness, of chances…

She went on, destroying his hopes. “The marriage is only to legitimize the baby, to give it not only a father but an identity, a family, a background. I grew up without any, and I won't let my baby suffer the same alienation. After the ceremony, I'll leave. I won't come back until it's time to have it. We can divorce after
it's born, but I'll stay close by so you'd have constant access to the baby, raise it with me, if you choose to.”

So there
were
more vitals to shred.

“My terms are nonnegotiable. You can make your own now.”

He stared at her, almost huffed with the irony.

Five weeks ago, if anyone had told him he couldn't have something he wanted a fraction as much as he wanted Maram, he would have brought them to their knees with one of the retaliations that had gained him a reputation for being mad.

Funny how five
days
with her had transformed him into someone willing to go down on his knees, figuratively and literally, if only she would take him back.

But she wouldn't. As long as it appeared she was nothing but a chess piece that had the misfortune of being vital to his coups, a catalyst he needed for its impact, not its own value.

And he asked himself. If he abided by her terms, and her hurt and disillusion waned until she was free of him, was there a possibility he'd have the same remission? Would he revert to the encased-in-ice being he'd been content to be?

The answer was unequivocal.

Never.

She was embedded into his being, had become its vital spark.

It would have been funny to contemplate how far he'd fallen if it wasn't agonizing to be deprived of the freefall of her love, the gravity-defying power of her belief.

That brought him back to the terms she wanted him to state.

He wouldn't make any. For the first time ever, he would let someone else—her—have all the power.

He rose on legs that felt weaker than when he'd been at death's door. He stood before her, struggled not to sway with the force of letting go. “If you want to leave after the ceremony, Maram, leave. You never have to return.”

 

So this was Amjad's final knife turn.

Apparently Maram
had
been hoping he'd prove she wasn't less than nothing to him after all.

But as long as he had—preferably long-distance—rights to his heir, she could go and never come back for all he cared.

Her tormentor was continuing. “You don't have to come back to have me near. I'll follow you wherever you go, if you want me to, be there for you and the baby as long as you'll have me.”

She blinked, and her heart stuttered. Before his fervent words could douse her blaze of misery, mistrust fanned it once again.

“And
that's
my cue to say I don't want you to, and that I won't have you, so you can pin letting me go on me, and come out the winner, riding the higher moral ground to boot. Ingenious.”

He huffed bleakly. “And I thought
I
was into extremes of black or white. Congratulations. You've just surpassed me.”

“If all you're going to contribute to this discussion are empty offers and cryptic remarks, I assume you agree to my terms. Guess it doesn't matter to you, as long as you have your royal and personal tag on the baby you don't want too near.”

Silence. For a long moment. Then he spoke, his voice the darkest she'd heard it. “You always prove I can never predict anything you'll say or do. Before or after your turnabout. The contrast never ceases to…jar me. Before, no matter what I did, you were ready with the best possible explanation, loving me more for it. After, you switched to demonizing everything I say or do. But even in your blackest doubts, you must realize even I can't be that bad.”

He had a look of such…defeat, her heart, quivering with disbelief as it was, lurched in its inability to suffer his pain.

She struggled not to give in to its demands. “Maybe. And maybe you're worse. That's the problem with doubt, Amjad. It's open to just about anything.”

“And there's no chance of doubting your doubt? Of ever giving me its benefit again?”

“Every time I try, I remember you always had huge things to gain by manipulating me, things you
are
securing one after the other, with me as the piece you have to maneuver to secure them. A throne, a sibling rivalry with a half brother from an abhorred stepmother and now an heir.”

He winced at every enumeration. She felt his spasms transmit to her own heart.

It finally hurt enough to make her stop.

Was she taking her doubts too far?

But letting go of despair was as difficult as giving up hope. Despair provided a refuge of no expectations and accustomed pain. Letting it go meant relinquishing its shield and possibly sustaining more devastating injuries.

But the temptation to believe again was becoming brutal. She'd always felt he was a part of her. Now a part of him was growing inside her, and she felt that he was integrated into her being more than ever.

But it was also because of that part that she was even more afraid of believing again. She couldn't gamble with her emotional and psychological survival now that a new life would depend on her.

She struggled to continue. “After what happened, I feel I will never know why you do and say what you…” Suddenly, she reached her limit. Air tore through her lungs, left them on a lament. “Oh, God, Amjad, I
want
to trust you again. I'm
dying
because I can't see my way back to you.”

Grief lashed out of him, enveloped her, had tears welling from her soul. He reached out trembling hands to cup her face, wiping their flow, soothing the dread of surrender.

“You stuck with me through the worst, took my worst and never gave up, got me out of the maze of alienation I was lost in. You pulled me out only to stumble into it yourself. You believed in me so deeply, so completely, when the blow to your faith came, it penetrated you with the same depth and totality.”

His hands dropped away from her face, fisted at his side. “You were right. I
was
frozen. And you thawed me. Melted me. I thought I was content in my suspended animation until you dragged my eyes open to my wasteland of a soul, of an existence. Then you yanked me out of it all, forced me to see and experience and
live
through our…togetherness. I can't be alone again, Maram.”

His voice broke. His eyes filled.

And the shackles holding her back broke, the heart that had emptied of belief, her lifeblood, filled again.

A tear, something she'd never thought she'd ever see, slid from the eclipsed jewel of his left eye. “But I also can't ask to be with you again either, not when I don't deserve it yet. But I will, Maram. Like you once told me I would, I
will
prove to you that I am worthy of your trust, again and forever.”

He turned then, walked away. Every step dragged her heart farther from her body.

And she wailed, “Amjad…
don't go.
”

He turned back to her with suffering as terrible as hers muddying his eyes, running down his face.

She flew to him, threw herself at him, weeping, quaking apart. “I can't be without you anymore. I—I believe you…”

He held her away with hands that shook. “No, you don't. And you're right. You have no reason to trust me, not the absolute kind of trust you need to thrive. Not yet.”

“It was my own insecurities that kept fanning the doubts. I take it all back.”

“Don't. Every word you lashed me with could have been the truth. It's up to me to prove beyond doubt they aren't. You gave me incontrovertible proof. I can't live with giving you less.”

“You don't have to give me more proof. I do believe you.”

“
Still
too generous…” He tugged a lock in gentle scolding. “Too gullible. All I gave you was ‘some persistence, a few well-placed touches and a couple of strategically timed tears.'” Hearing her exact taunt surprised her so much, a laugh coughed through the sobs. “All I was here to ask for was a chance. But you again do the unexpected and drown me in undeserved and unreserved pardon. You made it too easy for me for too long, Maram. I had hopes you could develop the grit needed to keep me in line when you put me through the wringer. Don't go soft on me now.”

“I want to.” She flung her arms around him. The emotions in his eyes were undeniable anymore, fierce and profound, releasing
the reserves of love and longing she'd been suppressing. “I'm dying to revert to my natural state and go soft all over you.”

Two more unbelievable tears spilled from his eyes.

Before she could beg him not to punish her with the sight of his suffering, a smile quivered on his lips as he stepped away, brooking no clinging. “Hold that thought.”

He was at the door before she squeaked, “Just what is this incontrovertible proof you intend to provide?”

He looked over his shoulder, and she gasped.

Her Amjad, bedeviling and beloved, looked back at her. “As if I'd tell you and have you meddle with it.”

Her legs gave out at his sudden wink.

She collapsed on the sofa, heard him say before he disappeared, “Stand back and watch the Mad Prince work.”

 

“What the
hell
did you do to Amjad, Maram?”

Maram almost dropped the phone. A lion had roared in her ear.

“Harres, is that you?”

“I'm not sure.” His sarcasm almost hurt. “I woke up this morning as me, Zohayd's minister of interior. An hour ago I found myself its Crown Prince.”

Confusion hit her. “What?” Then alarm rose. “How?” Then dread detonated. “
Amjad!
Where is he?”

“
You
tell
me,
” Harres growled. “He said something about proving to you that only you matter, dragged me to a general assembly council meeting, announced that he was abdicating his title to me effective immediately and irreversibly, terrorized everyone, starting with our father, into supplying their tribal seals on his petition, then disappeared off the face of the earth.”

Maram stared down at the papers clutched in her hands.

She'd gotten them minutes ago. Her mind had already been stalled by the enormity of their contents. Amjad, proclaiming his paternity of their baby, his responsibility, yet forfeiting any rights, giving them to her, also irrevocably. Now this.

“So again…” Harres's bark jogged her out of her stupor. “How did you drive him out of his mind, for real this time?”

“I—I didn't…”

She stopped. Because she had. When she'd accused him of using her to secure his throne and heir. Relinquishing both was his incontrovertible proof that, to him, only she mattered.

“Don't give me any bull, Maram. I'm worried about him for the first time since his ex almost killed him. You may not have hurt him physically, but you did an even worse number on him in every other way. He said he wasn't coming back, and it scares the hell out of me that I believe him. So whatever you did, Maram, undo it, or I'll be your enemy for—”