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In the four months since he had practically dragged his brother to the palace, Azeez hadn’t stepped foot into the breakfast hall once. Despite Ayaan’s innumerable pleas. And today…
Ayaan signaled for the waiting staff to leave just as the sound of Azeez’s harsh breathing neared the vast table. He pushed his chair back and looked up. Suddenly, the morning seemed brighter. “Would you like some cof—”
He never saw the punch coming. Shooting pain danced up and down his jaw as it landed, his vision blanking out for a few seconds.
Her loud, abrasive curse word ringing around them, his wife reached him instantly. Ayaan rubbed his jaw and looked up just in time to see Zohra march around his chair and push his brother in the chest.
Azeez’s mouth was curved into a fiendish smile, and Ayaan was about to interfere, when Azeez stepped back from Zohra. He mocked a curtsy, his mouth curled into a sneer. “Good morning, Your Highness, you look…lovely.”
“You are acting like an uncivilized thug,” Zohra said, her gaze furious.
“I am an uncivilized thug, Princess Zohra,” his brother replied with a hollow laugh. “And it is your husband who is keeping me here.”
Flexing his jaw, Ayaan turned to his brother and froze.
Ferocious anger blazed out of that jet-black gaze he knew so well. The same gaze that had been filled with emptiness, indifference, for four months. The constant, hard knot in his gut relented just a little. “What was that for?”
“You are the future king of Dahaar, Ayaan, not of me. Keep your arrogant head out of my affairs.”
Settling back down into his chair, Ayaan took a sip of his coffee. “I have no idea what you refer to, Azeez.”
“I want her out of here.”
The vehemence in his brother’s words doubled his doubts. “Why are you so concerned about Nikhat’s presence?”
Leaning his hip on the solid wood, Azeez bent. “I think all this power is going to your head. Don’t manipulate me, little brother. Or I will—”
“What, Azeez?” Ayaan refused to back down. His cup clanged on the saucer in the ensuing silence, hot liquid spilling onto his fingers.
“You’ll shoot yourself? I fell for that until now, but not anymore. If you were going to kill yourself, you had numerous chances to do it over the past six years. You would have been killed by that bullet. And yet here you are, stubborn as ever and intent on destroying yourself the hard way.” Silence snarled between them. “Nikhat is not going anywhere. Not for at least six more months.”
Emotion flashed in his brother’s gaze but Ayaan had no idea which one.
“If your plan is to bring back memories that will suddenly fill me with a love for life, how about some good ones, Ayaan? Why don’t you invite one of the numerous women I slept with six years ago to the palace?” He slanted a wicked glance at Zohra before looking at Ayaan again. “There used to be a particularly sexy stripper in that nightclub in Monaco who could do the wildest things with her tongue. If you want to see me rejoin the living, send the starchy doctor away, build a pole in my wing and have that stripper on a…”
His words tapering off, his brother looked as if he was the one dealt a punch.
Nikhat stood at the entrance to the hall. Against the colorful, blood-red rug on the wall behind her, she looked deathly pale. Their gazes locked on each other, Azeez and Nikhat stood unmoving, as if they were bound to each other.
Tension coiled tighter and tighter in the air around them.
His brother recovered first. And watching him closely, seeing a dark light come to life in his eyes, Ayaan realized that he’d made a terrible mistake.
“I’m regaling my brother and his wife with stories about Monaco. Was it the year right after you left?”
Beneath the humor, something else reverberated in Azeez’s words, filling the vast hall with it.
“Does it matter when it was that you went around seducing the entire female population in Monaco, shaming Dahaar and your father with your wild exploits?” Nikhat delivered with equally lethal smoothness, even as her skin failed to recover its color.
Walking around Ayaan to Zohra’s side, Nikhat whispered something to her. And walked out of the hall without another glance at his brother.
“Enough games, Ayaan. Why is she here?” Azeez roared the moment she left.
“Zohra is pregnant and is having complications. Nikhat is one of the best obstetricians in the country today. I need her to take care of my wife.”
Azeez turned toward Zohra, his gaze assessing. “Congratulations to both of you. If she has to be here, keep her out of my way. Tell her she’s forbidden from seeing me.”
“I won’t tell her any such thing. Nikhat is practically a member of this family. And she’s doing me a favor. So unless you want to be my personal prisoner for the rest of your life, you better behave yourself.”
“You’ve become a damn bastard, brother.”
Ayaan laughed, the first in a long time he had truly done that. “I had to become one for Dahaar, Azeez. See, I wasn’t born one like you are. It’s the reason why you were so good at being the Crown Prince too. The minute you want it back, the crown’s yours.”
“That was a lifetime ago.” Tight lines fanning around his mouth, Azeez stepped back. As if Ayaan had asked him to jump into the fiery pit of hell. “It’s all yours now.”
Azeez left the room, leaving a dark silence in his wake.
Once, his brother would have given his life to Dahaar. Once, a fire had shone in his eyes at the mere mention of it.
“Something’s changed in him,” Zohra said, a hint of warning in her voice. “And…Nikhat looked like she would break apart with one word from him.”
Reaching for her outstretched hand on the table, Ayaan nodded. In four months of banging his head against the intractable wall that his brother had become, this was the first time there was a faint crack. He felt tremulous hope and excruciating guilt.
“Did you know if they were more than friends?”
Ayaan shook his head. He hadn’t known before, but something his servant Khaleef had said in a throwaway comment had stuck with him. So he had taken a gamble and commanded Nikhat’s father to summon her.
Being right had never left such an ugly taste in his mouth.
* * *
After a couple of wrong turns, Nikhat reached the courtyard behind the wing she had been shown to three days ago. High walls surrounded the courtyard, shielding it from any curious gazes.
It was only ten in the morning but the sun was already bright and hot. Wiping the beads of sweat on her forehead, she sat down on the bench near a magnificent fountain. The rhythmic swish of the water, the scent of roses coating the air…it was a feast for the senses, but she couldn’t get her stretched nerves to relax.
For three days, she had been busy with Princess Zohra and yet going out of her mind, intensely curious to see Azeez again.
She had dreamed of him so many times when she had thought him dead, had imagined all the things she would say if she had one more chance to see him, to touch him, to hold him…
Reality, however, didn’t afford her the same recklessness.
Closing her eyes, she leaned back and felt the sun caress her face. She couldn’t let him unsettle her any more than she could weave silly dreams again just because he was back from the dead.
She would be of no use to Ayaan either way.
Taking her Crocs off, she dipped her toes in the water. It was forbidden to do so, but the cold water tickled her feet. Drops splashed onto her leggings. Her jet lag was gone, but she still wasn’t used to the quiet that surrounded her after the mad rush back in the hospital in New York. Nor was she happy with the way things were run here, even though she had known to expect it.
Even with Ayaan’s command that she was solely in charge of Zohra’s care, her instructions had been met with resistance from the numerous medical advisers and staff that surrounded the Princess. Which only made her realize how much she would need the royal family’s backing to succeed in Dahaar and even more resolute to make a difference.
It couldn’t have been more than two minutes when her skin prickled in alarm. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. The relentless heat of the day receded for a minute. A shadow. Her heart stuttering in her chest, she realized who stood over here, stealing the warmth from around her.
Keeping her eyes closed, she took a moment to pull herself together. She opened her eyes slowly and sat up straighter on the bench.
His gait uneven, Azeez walked to the bench on her left. His face tightened, his right hand flexing into a fist as he slowly slid into the seat.
He hadn’t shaved and the beard coming in made him look even more dangerous. His eyes still had that haggard, bruised look, the planes of his cheekbones prominent.
The pristine white shirt hung loose on his frame while his cotton trousers hung low and loose on his hips. They made him look darker than usual, but not enough to hide the tiredness from his face.
His will was a force of nature and offense was her best course if she wanted to get through. She made no effort to curb the stinging comment that rose to her lips. “That hip will be permanently useless if you continue like this. Even in the state you’re in, I believe…”
Those thickly lashed eyes trapped hers, a puzzle in it. She couldn’t have looked away for anything in the world. Everything else she could control, curb, but not the greediness with which she wanted to look at him. “I believe you still have enough sense to know that.”
“Ya Allah, stop looking at me like that.” His low growl rumbled over the silent courtyard.
“How am I looking at you?” she said, tucking her feet beneath her legs.
He leaned his head back, giving her a perfect view of the strong column of his neck. Even dressed in the most casual clothes, he epitomized supreme male arrogance and confidence that had always messed with her usually practical personality. And continued to do so, if she was ready to admit the truth. “Like you cannot stop, like you want to eat me up alive.”
The heat rising through her cheeks had nothing to do with the sun. “That’s not true.”
He leaned forward, his gaze thoughtful. “Yes, it is. There’s a temerity in your gaze now. You always knew your own mind, but now, it’s like your body has caught up.”
She shrugged, holding herself tight and still under his scrutiny. The look he cast in her direction was thorough. “I’m not a shy twenty-two-year-old anymore.”
“I can see that.” A lick of something came alive in his gaze. “I can almost see you staring down your patients into good health.”
She laughed, half to hide the little tremble that went through her. “I do have a reputation as the scary doctor. If only things could be fixed so simply. And you’re right. I can’t stop looking at you. I can’t stop wondering what in Allah’s name you think you’re doing to yourself.”
His jaw tightened, his nostrils flared.
For anyone looking from afar, they would seem like two old friends chatting up each other. And yet the courtyard felt like a minefield. She had to take every step carefully with him. And not because she was scared of him, but of herself.
Her stupid midnight jaunt had already proved her brain wasn’t functioning at its normal, rational level.
He ran his palm over his jaw, his gaze never moving from her. “Is it true?”
“Is what true?”
“The palace has been ringing with it. And apparently, it is the first time in three days that you have a minute to yourself.”
“So you’re not completely oblivious to the world around you? That’s always a good sign.”
“Don’t show off your credentials with me, Nikhat. Is Princess Zohra having complications with the pregnancy?”
There was no nuance to his words. She had no idea if he was worried for the Princess, no way to gauge how deep the emptiness in him was. And more than anything, the very thought she might not be of any use to him scared her. “Yes.”
“How serious is it?”
“I have ordered some more tests for her. Her blood pressure is at dangerous levels. She needs rest and she needs to take it easy. Stress is adding to her complications. From what I’ve seen in the last two days, you’re at the root of it.”
“Just because I punched her husband?”
“You punched Ayaan? Why?”
Because Ayaan had brought her here, the answer came to her in the taut silence.
Do you hate me so much?
The pathetic, self-indulgent question lingered on her lips. But there was no point in asking it. There was no point in giving the past even a passing thought.
“You have really changed,” she said, hoping to find a hole in that indifference he wore like armor, hoping to land a blow. “The Azeez I knew would have never lifted his hand against his brother, would have never thrown a bottle at an innocent, harmless woman.”
He chuckled, and the unexpected sound of it shocked her. Sharp grooves appeared in his cheeks. “You are neither innocent nor harmless. I was drunk. It was your own fault for walking into a man’s wing in the middle of the night where you’re forbidden.”
“And you throw bottles at imaginary figures when you are drunk?”
“Only at you.”
The barb cut through her, knocking her air from her lungs. She drew in a jagged breath, swiping her gaze away from him. This was the future she had wanted to avoid eight years ago—his resentment, his bitterness. Because Azeez had never hidden from what he felt, neither had he let her. And yet, after everything she had done, she was right where she didn’t want to be—the cause of that resentment.
She looked up and found him studying her with a curious intensity. “I’m serious, Azeez. Princess Zohra needs to rest and relax. Unless you do something that allays her concerns for Ayaan, she’s only going to get worse.
“She…loves Ayaan very much. And the fact that he’s worried about you is directly transferring to her.”
“She’s the future of Dahaar. I don’t want anything to happen to her.”
Did he realize he had betrayed himself? From everything Ayaan had said, Azeez had claimed he didn’t care about anything. “Is it only the future of Dahaar that concerns you? Not what you are doing to Ayaan, to your parents? To yourself?”
He shot to his feet so quickly that Nikhat jerked her head up. Just in to time to see the flash of pain in his face. “This is where this session ends. You’re not my friend. You’re definitely not my doctor.
“You’re a servant to the royal family. Do your job. Look after Princess Zohra. Believe me, there’s nothing you can do to help me. Except disappear, maybe.”
“I’m not leaving, Azeez. Not until I accomplish my job. And as to Ayaan’s belief in me, I’ve never let down the royal family’s trust in me until now and I never will.”
“Never, Nikhat?”
Her breath trapped in her throat, Nikhat hugged herself. “Never.”
Nodding, he came to a stop at the wide arched entrance, the sun shining behind him casting shadows on his features. She had no idea what he saw in the mirror when he looked at himself, what tormented him from the past. But the fact that he was here, concerned for the Princess, gave her hope like nothing else could.
“I never thought of you as naive.”
Uncoiling her legs from under her, she took a moment to compose herself. The last thing she wanted was him talking about her. “I used to be. But not anymore. I’m not the girl you once knew, Azeez.”
“Why obstetrics of all the specializations? Why not cardiology?”
She stayed painfully still, amazed at how easily, even after all these years, he could drill down to the heart of the matter. How well he knew her.
