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“You’re springing this on me at the last minute,” he said, pushing for time.
Her brown gaze was pure challenge. “My relationship with Zara needs to exist outside of my relationship or lack thereof with you, Nasir. That’s what adults should do. Put their differences, their egos, aside, for the sake of a child. I don’t know what the future or the aftermath of these three months—” she said, laughing, with no actual humor in the sound “—is going to look like. This way, I’m ensuring that regardless of what happens between you and me, Zara always has me in her life. And not just as some patch-up you bring in when things get bad.”
For the first time in his life, Nasir was speechless. Golden hair flying around her face as she bit out each word, Yana looked like a lioness defending her cub. “You’re a natural at this, despite the fact both your parents neglected you.”
She tilted her chin. Whatever fragility he had seen that first evening at the nightclub was all gone now. “It makes me even more empathetic to Zara’s plight. She’s just a child. No child should have to starve for attention or affection. Or get lost in adults’ mind games.” She played with the ends of her hair, her thrust delivered with an efficient, but impersonal bluntness he was coming to appreciate about her. He couldn’t even get mad because she was right; Zara had gotten lost among his and Jacqueline’s conflicts. “As for Diana messing up...” Her throat moved hard. “I’ve realized there have been good things in my life, too. It’s on me whether I move forward with gratitude or bitterness.”
“You sound very wise,” he said.
“You sound shocked,” she retorted with a cutting smile.
Clearly, in the past month she had returned to some sort of routine. He hadn’t missed the fact, seeing he’d shadowed her wherever she went. Meals, regular exercise and medication on time, he could see the changes in her face. That gaunt, lost waif look was gone, leaving her effervescently beautiful.
He liked her like this—full of passion and conviction. Suddenly, he realized he had seen her like this before. Before she’d entered the modeling world as a far too naive and impressionable girl with only her mother’s greedy, grasping behavior as a guide. Forced to grow up too fast. Acting out in the form of reckless, paparazzi-attracting, almost orchestrated publicity stunts.
There was a contentment to her now that he found extremely satisfying and that in turn was disconcerting, to say the least. He didn’t want to be invested in Yana’s happiness or well-being. Or only so far as it affected her relationship with Zara. God, that made him sound like an utter bastard.
“You look different,” he said, unable to help himself.
She scrunched her nose, and even that twitch was sexy. “Good different?”
“Good different, yes.” He didn’t miss the hungry expectation in her eyes for more, but refused to cater to it. It was better if they behaved like polite strangers.
“Maybe the fact that—” she giggled, moving her hands in an arc toward him, encompassing the aircraft and the notepad, and everything else, her gestures getting wilder and more expansive with each passing second “—I’m making you pay through the nose is the cause of the change?”
“A small price to pay, then. Your happiness is quite the halo around you.”
She gave him a regal nod in response. Then she studied her fingernails, going for that casual vibe that she never could quite pull off. “I think sometimes we have to hit our lowest point to see that things aren’t as bad as we thought, that they can still be fixed.”
He returned her somber nod, marveling at how deeply her words reached inside him. He’d been at that lowest point once. But unlike dreaming on a different vision as Yana was doing or moving forward, he’d simply shut the world out. Had stopped caring about anyone. Had withdrawn into his mind, into his books, into his career. Even when he’d met and married Jacqueline, he’d designed his marriage to fit around his life. And of course, it had fallen apart in a spectacular fashion.
Because somewhere in the past fifteen years, he’d stored away his heart outside himself. And then, suddenly, he didn’t know how to forge a connection with his own child.
“I know a little about being in dark places, feeling like you’ll never crawl out of them.” The words flew out of his mouth. “Or feeling as if you deserve to be there.”
“Don’t tell me the great Nasir Hadeed hit points of low confidence in his esteemed life.”
“I will save you from the gory details, then,” he said, trying to inject humor back into his voice. “It is not a good feeling when our idols turn out to be hollow, no?”
“I didn’t idolize you,” she said with a fake outrage he didn’t buy.
He worried that she’d probe. It was unfounded.
It was becoming more and more apparent that Yana wasn’t anything like the flimsy illusion she weaved for the entire world.
“So, are you in agreement about me having Zara for a month?”
“If I insist on being present while you do?”
“Because you don’t trust me to look after her?” she asked with big eyes. In that moment she looked as beguilingly naive and full of insecurities as his five-year-old. “I’d never put Zara at risk.”
That it was a promise and not some outraged declaration made his chest ache. “No. I want Zara to see that we’re not at each other’s throats.”
She nodded, taking his lies for the truth.
He had no intention of spending time with her on a regular basis, no intention of seeing her again after these three months were up.
And still, he wasn’t able to help himself from prodding her. From poking at her sudden composure.
