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Her curse rattled in the silence between them. She looked stricken and yet she rallied. “I’m not an easy fix you can use when you’re overwhelmed and then throw away like some dirty Band-Aid when you’re done. You threw me out of her life, Nasir. You told me to never return.”
“So you’ll punish Zara for my mistakes?”
“I’m not.” She pressed a hand to her chest as if it physically hurt. “There’s bad blood between us. It won’t be long before she catches on to it. That’s more confusion you’re dumping on her.”
“Then we’ll start afresh with a clean slate.”
She laughed then and it wasn’t just mockery. The glint of tears in her eyes, the bitter twist to her mouth, spoke eloquently. “Hell has more chance of freezing over before you’ll see me as anything more than—”
“So this is about your ego, then?” Frustration and a powerless feeling burst out of Nasir. That he was being a beast to Yana was unforgivable. But that his past actions should now so adversely affect Zara, too, made him sick to his stomach. That he had forever calcified his heart as an unhealthy coping mechanism for an early loss in life, resulting in his worry that he wouldn’t be able to connect with his own daughter, was a constant niggle at the back of his head.
“That I rejected your seduction attempt all those years ago? That I lost my temper over your continued lies about Jacqueline’s affairs? That I’m telling you to your face that you’re reckless and irresponsible and that you should get your life under control after you fainted in my arms?” he said, unraveling under the onslaught of a perfect storm of worries. “You’re so insecure about one rejection ten years ago that you would abandon a child you claim to love when she needs you the most? Are you still just as desperate as you were back then for my approval?”
He couldn’t bear to look at Yana’s stricken face at his harsh words. He couldn’t swallow the bitter lump in his throat that said he was no better a parent for Zara than Jacqueline had ever been.
“I don’t want anything from you.” Her whisper could have been a shout.
“Whether you accept my incentives or not is moot now. I know how to get you on the plane.”
Large brown eyes searched his.
“I’ll leak news of your debt to your sisters.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“I will do anything to make Zara smile again,” he said, grabbing the jacket he’d discarded earlier. “To not repeat the mistakes I’ve already made. So yes, I would tell the world that the incomparable Yana Reddy is so deep in debt that she can’t even afford her own medication. That her team has jumped ship. Your sisters will pity you and—”
“You’re a bastard.”
“You know I am. So why sound so surprised?”
“And how do you know I won’t fill Zara’s mind with lies against you?” He didn’t miss the cornered look on her face. A bitter smile pinched her mouth. “You’ve given me enough material over the years.”
Some uncivilized part of him only she brought out wanted to growl like some wild animal at the threat. He was still fixing all the damage Jacqueline had caused by filling his daughter’s tender heart with horrible lies about his apathy as a father. Still fixing his own blunders. For Yana to threaten him...
Nasir made himself take a deep breath. Forced himself to go with his instinct, to listen to his heart and his gut, instead of the more rational facts and fears. “I don’t know that for certain,” he said, the words coming more easily than he’d have imagined. Coming from some place he’d shut down a long time ago. “But I do know that however much you loathe me, you care deeply about Zara.”
It was the dig about her wanting approval from Nasir that stuck like a craw in Yana’s throat.
His words had cut her open as if he’d taken a scalpel to her skin. But examined again, out of his infuriating and overwhelming presence, as the blistering-hot water pounded out the soreness in her muscles that always accompanied her fainting spells, Yana acknowledged that it was the very truth that she’d spent years running from.
She’d always chased approval and validation—from her mother, from her grandparents, from her career, from Jacqueline. And she’d sought it in the most harmful, chaotic, childish ways possible.
For years, she’d wished she’d been smart and self-sufficient and self-composed like her older sister Mira. Then Nush had come into their lives and she’d wished she were full of hope and love and magic like her little sister was. Not forgetting that genius brain of hers.
Yana had always wished she were someone else. Someone more grounded, someone cleverer, someone more easygoing, someone less chaotic, someone healthier... The list of things she wasn’t yet wanted to be was as long as the number of thugs Diana owed money to.
Even as Yana desperately wanted to be seen and appreciated and loved for herself at the same time.
Talk about confusing her little brain.
What Nasir was wrong about, though—and how she’d have liked to tell him that to his face—was that she’d sought his approval all those years ago with her pathetic seduction attempt. Or that she’d offered herself as some kind of cheap bargain. Or that she’d wreaked some sort of petty revenge afterward because he’d dented her ego.
As the hot water restored her sense and composure, she saw the root of her obsession with the blasted man.
Nasir was one of three people—her sisters Mira and Nush being the other two—who’d given her approval without her having to earn it with good behavior or better grades or by making restitutions because she’d ruined her mother’s career simply by being born.
He hadn’t judged her for being her mother’s daughter or criticized her for being her chaotic, messy self, or mocked her for following him around with puppy-dog eyes anytime he’d visited. The four years she’d spent under the same roof as his father, the few months Nasir had joined them in between assignments and visits to his mother, he’d been unflinchingly kind to her.
