The Sheikh's Claim (Desert Nights 2)

So if it had been her choice, her child would have been her husband’s. She’d had his only by mistake.

“Then he died, and sex was the last thing on my mind, so when you popped up out of nowhere and we ended up in bed, repercussions didn’t even occur to me except when my period was a month late. So it’s really none of your business that I got pregnant. Adam is none of your business, just like I never was.”

Bitterness choked him. “You were never my business? I was unable to have a moment, waking or sleeping, for eight years without thinking of you, craving you…obsessing about you.”

“Lighten up on the exaggerations, please,” she sneered. “I was there, remember? At least through the years we had together. I know for a fact that during those, you spent weeks, sometimes months, without doing any of that.”

“I never stayed away by choice, and all the time we were apart, I did all that. Then you left me, and the moment I thought it possible to come to you again, I did.”

Her eyes flared silver fire. “And you came to have closure or sex or both, not father a child.”

“I told myself I came for the first. But what I really wanted was to clear away the bitterness, at least come to terms with it so I can…reconnect with you, claim you again.”

“You never connected with me or claimed me to start with.”

“That’s your version. Or maybe it was the truth, for you. My truth was that I did. As much as you claimed me. I was yours.”

She looked as if he’d punched her in the gut.

When she spoke, her voice was as strangled as if he had. “Are you implying that during our time together you had no one but me?”

“That’s not an implication. That’s a fact.”

She gaped at him as if she’d never heard anything so preposterous.

Heart aching with affront and frustration he hissed, “What could have possibly raised any doubts about my faithfulness to you?”

That shattered the stasis of incredulity, hardening her eyes and voice again. “Oh, I don’t know. Probably the dozens of nubile, and let’s not forget to mention ‘suitably ranked,’ bodies hanging on your arm in every public appearance. While I was safely tucked a world away to be brought out to play with, in secret.”

“Those ‘bodies’ sought me out, because of who I am, not for myself. I didn’t want anyone, starting with my mother, to speculate if I rebuffed their public advances. I told you that.” Disappointment seared through him as he saw it in her eyes. She hadn’t considered believing him, then or now. “So you believed I was sleeping around, yet took me back into your arms, welcomed me into your body when I came back to you?”

“Pathetic, isn’t it? What’s more sickening is that I would have indefinitely put up with being one of your steady stream of exchangeable bodies if I wasn’t the only one you wouldn’t stoop to associating with in public. Now you know that my anger and disgust weren’t all directed toward you.”

His lips twisted. “You gifted me with more than enough of it. You started by leaving me, then turned Patrick against me....”

Her eyes turned to steel at Patrick’s mention. “It was your unethical business practices that cultivated his enmity, not me.”

Everything inside him went still, to ward off yet another unexpected and unearned blow. “He told you that?”

Her gaze wavered. No. Patrick hadn’t told her that. She would have said yes if she could. But she couldn’t lie—for Patrick. She wouldn’t mind saying anything to hurt him.

Was all this hatred for him? Or was he paying the collective price for his family?

Her shoulders jerked. “Patrick only made me face facts I’d been avoiding for years—about how you manipulated me for your conveniences, made me consent to being one of your…entertainments. I applied your methods with me to your dealings with Patrick and extrapolated his reasons for ending your partnerships. Why else would he have endured all those losses if it wasn’t to stop you from manipulating him anymore?”

“How about that he was so jealous of me, he was making sure I was out of your life, even after he was gone?” Bile filled him up to his eyes. “And I thought him a good friend and a man of honor. All the time he’d been plotting to take you away from me. And he did.”

“I had to be with you in the first place for him to take me away from you. I never was.”

“B’Ellahi, that’s a lie. You were closer to me than any other person in my life.”

“That is a testimony to how superficial it all was. You’re light-years distant from everyone in your life. You have formed no closeness with anyone starting with your twin. As for what we shared, it was nothing resembling a relationship.”

“What did you think I was doing with you for four years, if that wasn’t a relationship?”

“Anyone hearing you saying four years over and over would think we lived together or something. Do you know how many days out of those four years we had together?”

His heart compressed at yet another proof of how differently they’d perceived the past, how much she held against him that he’d been unaware of. “You counted?”

“Not at the time, but I went back and looked over my schedule, and all the last-minute cancellations I had to make when you had an opening and could grace me with your presence. You acted with the conviction that my life and commitments were of no consequence, and the only one who should be accommodated at the drop of a hat was you.”

“You never told me you had to cancel plans to be with me.”

She gave a furious laugh. “So you didn’t listen when I did. Or you did and it only fed your ego, that I’d drop everything, at whatever cost to me, to jump back in bed with you.”

Had they both lived through the same past? Or was she talking about some parallel earth to his?

“I believed you only rescheduled. You never made it sound important, so I assumed your plans were flexible, unlike mine.”

“And he says that with a straight face. Wow. You’re really something. You assumed that I, a struggling model trying to build a name for myself in a sea of women with better qualifications and looks, had the luxury of canceling shoots or even rescheduling them? While you, the prince whom everyone would sacrifice their firstborn for a handshake from, couldn’t change your plans at your whim? If you gave it a moment’s thought you would have seen the truth, but you didn’t bother. You had everything compartmentalized for your convenience. Your business and power games, your sports tournaments, your political and promotional schmoozing, and when you needed to unwind in a sex marathon, you called me, expected me to be there where and when you dictated. And self-degrading fool that I was, I was there. Every single time.”