She sank her fingers into her hair and pushed at it, a strange fear gripping her limbs all of a sudden.
Some sort of sound must have escaped her because Rashid peered down at her.
“Do you require medical assistance, Ms. Hamby?”
“I’m not Miss Hamby anymore.” Her response was instant, defensive, like a screech of wind in the silence.
“Yet you’re here, thousands of miles away when your place is by my son.” Dry and derisive, his voice scraped at her nerves. “For six years I’ve been in a coma and little has changed in Western society’s perception of marriage.”
“You’ve no idea what happened between us. Nor do I owe you an explanation.”
“I can see why my son indulged in this nonsense with you.” His gaze lingered on her face thoughtfully, then shifted to her belly for a fraction of a second. “But that he lets you have this reckless freedom in this dangerous city when every minute of every day, you court the media’s eye or even harm. I reminded him that you’re his wife, that he should command you to be back in—”
“I’m not a possession, Your Highness.”
“Is it my grandson’s safety that you’re so careless about?”
Fury rattled along Lauren’s nerves. “You’ve no right to speak to me that way. And that it’s a...” She slapped a hand over her mouth and glared at him. “I won’t share that with you. Not before I tell Zafir.”
Because she had broken their agreement and asked the ultrasound technician to tell her.
She’d waited for him to call so that she could share the news. Had been dismayed that he hadn’t. Instead, he’d had Farrah call her and confirm that everything was all right.
As if he was completely through with her.
“Is my son aware that you know then?”
Shocked at how easily he’d manipulated her, she tried to corral her thoughts. “My child will not be yours to mold, Your Highness. I won’t allow it and neither will Zafir.”
He bristled at her reckless statement.
“You seem to be certain of a lot of things about a husband you have fled. In secret, with a bitter old woman’s support, a woman that wishes him no less than a painful death. Do you have any idea the risk you took in trusting her with your child, my grandchild’s, safety? Or how it torments my son, night after night, as if your reckless actions were his fault?”
“Stop it, please,” she whispered, sweat pooling over her. God, what had she done? What had she turned her back on? “Just...tell me why you’re here. Or leave.”
Arrogant pride filled the gaunt crevices of his face. “All of Behraat is at Zafir’s feet today, as it always should have been. Yet there is no joy, no pride in his eyes. You...” His gaze seemed to spear her, and with doubts eating away at her, she struggled to hold it. “...have weakened him, crippled him in a way I can’t seem to fix. My son will not be brought down by a selfish, spoiled, so-called independent American who doesn’t understand the first thing about duty and—”
“Maybe it’s you who did that to him,” she attacked, loathing herself as much as he seemed to. Because, the galling thing, the bitter truth was that he was right.
For a moment, her words suspended there in the room, like bullets stilled on their way to the target in some 3-D action flick before shattering away.
His eyes widened in disbelief but she didn’t care anymore. Not when every cell in her ached to see Zafir and hold him. “Maybe it’s time to stop asking Zafir to give more of himself to you and Behraat. Maybe if someone, for once, thinks of him, instead of sucking him dry in the name of duty, he’ll smile and laugh again. Maybe what he needs is someone who loves him unconditionally for the kind, honorable, generous man that he is, then he will...”
And in her own desperate, impassioned words, Lauren found the truth that she’d been so blind to see. As if it was there all along inside her, clawing to get out.
A whimper fell from her mouth.
It was herself she’d never believed in.
For all her promises, she’d been waiting for a reason to believe that Zafir would abandon her like her parents had done, waiting for it all to fall apart. And the moment their relationship had been tested, at the first hurdle, she’d run away.
As if life and love were a fantasy she’d could dabble at, just like Zafir had mocked her.
That he’d chosen to unite Behraat didn’t cancel out all that he’d shown her. Didn’t corrupt all the promises he’d made her.
She buried her face in her hands, the scope of the damage she had wreaked a lead weight on her chest.