The Inherited Bride (20 page)

“Go, Isabella.”

“What?”

“Get out. I don’t want your love. I don’t want you.”

Her heart squeezed tight, and her lungs felt caved in, as though she couldn’t breathe. “I …”

And that was when she was sure she saw fear in Adham al bin Sudar’s eyes. Her warrior husband was genuinely afraid. Of her. Of her feelings. Of what they might mean to him, do to him. She remembered what he’d said about his mother—how her love for his father had made her act recklessly, how it had stolen her from him. And she knew he saw anything that had the power to control a person as a weakness.

“You’re afraid, Adham. You’re afraid of what you can’t control, and you know that you can’t tame an emotion as strong as love. You think it makes you weak, but it doesn’t. I’m stronger because I love you. I’m stronger than you are because I’m not afraid, even though it hurts.”

She inclined her head and turned, walking away from him, her heart feeling as though it was slowly cracking, breaking into thousands of tiny pieces.

“Where are you going?” he asked, when she reached the door.

“If you don’t want me here, Adham, I won’t stay.” And she closed the door behind her and went back to her own room.

Adham’s feet pounded on the desert sand. The night air was cold and dry in his lungs as he tried to force himself into a state of exhaustion that was strong enough to erase the last few moments of his life.

She had said he could not stop her from loving him, but he was certain that he had. The look in her eyes before she’d turned away from him had been so bleak, so desolate, he had felt the pain—her pain—reach into him and grab his heart from his chest.

She had taken it with her. But then, he suspected that Isabella had had his heart long before tonight.

And he had hurt her. He had told her the ring meant nothing. The ring … it was everything. The act of creating the design, of working with the jeweler to come up with the perfect thing for her. He had wanted so badly to remain distant from it, but it had been impossible. So he had poured everything into that design, had hoped it would get those memories, those feelings, out of him.

If anything, they had grown stronger.

He stopped and leaned forward, gripping his shins, trying to catch his breath. He didn’t know how far he’d run, only that he had been desperate to drive every rational thought from his mind. It was impossible, though. No matter how hard he tried, he could only see Isabella.

She was in him. A part of him. What he felt for her was more powerful than anything he could ever remember feeling in his life. And she was right. It did terrify him. To his core.

He had faced down men holding guns, had been forced to make split-second decisions to save his life, had endured torture, and this was more frightening than any of that. To let someone mean so much to him.

Losing his parents—his mother, especially—had been so altering, so destructive to him. If not for Hassan, if not for the fact that he’d been able to pour all of his anger into protecting his brother, his country, he did not know that he would have survived it.

What would happen if he lost Isabella? Did he even know how to give her love? He had spent so many years traveling, working, burying himself in his sense of duty and honor so he didn’t have to deal with real relationships. He didn’t know if he would have any idea of how to open himself up now—not when he’d spent so long shutting himself down.

And she didn’t deserve that. She deserved better than him. She deserved a man who had never been forced to choose between his life and the life of another man. She deserved someone who had not been so scarred by tragedy, both inside and out. Life hadn’t touched her. She was beautiful. Pure and perfect. And being with him … he was afraid he might damage her in some way.

He heard the pounding of rotor blades as a helicopter flew overhead, away from the palace toward the city.

Bella.

What if she had gone? He had told her to go. He had not meant for her to leave, but he had said it. And he had hurt her. But if she left … if she left him.

He let out a fierce growl of desperation and turned back to the palace, running as though the very devil was at his heels, her name pounding in his mind in time with his footfalls.

He could not lose her. He needed her.

His heart thundered in his chest as he ran, each beat putting a crack in the protective stone until it fell away completely, leaving him raw and exposed, vulnerable. And he could feel. He could feel everything. There was no protection, no numbness, no buffer against himself and his emotions.

The pain was intense, the feeling of loss so overwhelming it stole his already shortened breath. And with that there was something else—an emotion that made him feel as though his heart might burst straight from his chest because he didn’t think it could be contained inside him. It was too big, too much.

When he reached the wall of the palace he pressed in the key code and went in through the back door, hurrying quickly inside and moving around through the garden so that he could access one of the entrances near the bedchambers.

He slipped inside into Isabella’s room. It was empty. The bed pristine, untouched. He saw a small dark shape on the center of the bed and he bent down to look at it. It was the ring box. And in it was the ring, along with the wedding band.

Despair gripped him. He had driven her away. He had finally done it. All of the times he had tried to rid himself of her, if not physically then emotionally, and now that he knew he needed her he had finally succeeded.

He needed her. His lovely Bella. His wife. She had shown him so many things, had taught him to see the world with new eyes. With her, things were beautiful again, fresh. He saw hope, goodness, where before he had seen nothing but the evil of the world.

She had said he had helped her become the person she was, that he had helped her grow up. But she had fixed him. Had helped him find redemption. Had pulled
him from the mire he had been stuck in, from that dark hopelessness he had grown so accustomed to. He had not even realized how much he needed to be saved.

And still, in the end, he had lost her.

He picked up the box and walked outside, into the gardens. The sun was rising now; golden light shining over the palace walls, mist rising off the small pond that helped provide a cool respite from the midday heat.

He walked along the edge of it, aimless, directionless for the first time in his memory. The pain in his chest was blinding, agonizing. But he felt it.

Then he saw her. Sitting there in the midst of the garden on one of the benches, her hands folded in her lap, her cheeks wet with tears, her shoulders shaking as she sobbed.

The rose-gold light was shining on her, creating a halo around her dark hair, casting an angelic glow on her beautiful face. His wife. His love.

He loved her.

The realization staggered him. Was enough to bring him to his knees.

He walked toward her, and then he did go down on his knees, placing the ring box on the stone bench, taking her small, soft hands in his rough, scarred ones.

“Bella,” he said, feeling his throat tighten, “I thought you’d left me.”

She bit her lip to hold back a sob and shook her head. “No. I told you I wouldn’t.”

“But I said. I should not have said I didn’t want you, Bella. It was a lie.” He brought her hands up to his lips, pressed them against his mouth before speaking again. “And you were right. I was afraid. I was afraid of what loving you would do to me. I was afraid of what touching you would do to me. I thought it was a weakness in me
that made me unable to control myself with you. But you are right. Love is not weak. Love is strong. My mother was brave. She did what she felt she had to do. I didn’t see it before. I didn’t understand. I do now. What she felt was beyond rational thought, beyond duty. Love is above any of those things. You helped me see that. Your strength humbles me, Bella. You’re stronger than I am.”

She let out a watery laugh. “No, I’m not. I’m a mess.”

“Your strength inspires me,” he said, raising his hand so that he could cup her cheek. “I feel as though I’m alive again for the first time since my parents died. I hadn’t realized how much of myself I let die with them. Now it’s like … like seeing in color when I had no clue I’d only been seeing in black and white. I love you, Sheikha Isabella Rossi al bin Sudar.”

She laughed, and a tear spilled down her cheek. “That’s a mouthful.”

“Yes, it is, but I love saying it.”

“I love
you,
Adham. I love you so much. I’m so glad I didn’t check the peephole when you knocked on my hotel room door.”

A hoarse chuckle escaped his lips. “I am too.” He leaned in and pressed a kiss to her lips, and when he pulled away she reached forward and brushed her fingers over his cheek, wiping away moisture he hadn’t realized was there.

“I love you,” he whispered again. Now that he could say it, now that he knew it was true, he would never stop telling her. “I want you to know that if there was no marriage contract you would still be the woman I chose. I am not whole without you. You are my other half. I realize now that I could never have let you marry another man.”

Her eyes widened. “Not even if it violated your duty?”

“Not even if it did. There is nothing greater than my love for you.”