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God, she and Zara would have so much fun here. And yet, she didn’t miss the fact that it was also quite the deserted location for a five-year-old. Zara would need other kids and activities to engage with. But she couldn’t bring that up now. She’d love to never bring it up and not give him a chance to put her in her place but that wasn’t an option.
Zara was, and would always be, a priority, even if that meant courting Nasir’s special kind of disapproval. She made a mental note for later.
Apparently, they weren’t going to walk in through the main entrance, which boasted two solid iron doors with knockers the size of her head. She felt like she was entering a fantasy world.
“It’s a small village near Bavaria,” he finally answered. “Close to the Alps. You’ll see the view tomorrow.”
The remoteness of the location was exactly how she’d imagined he lived. Had Jacqueline played queen of the castle?
Jacqueline had been quite the party animal, and their relationship had never made sense to Yana. But she’d put it down to her own conflicted past with him.
Now she knew that she’d been right in her intuition.
The closer they got, the larger the castle loomed with dark gray stone, and tall turrets and, oh, my God, a tower at the back that seemed to look down on the rest of the castle. “There’s a tower in your castle?”
“Yes.” His laughter at her enthusiasm reverberated in that single word.
“Please tell me you’re renting it or I don’t know...housesitting it?”
It was all a little too close to one of her fantasies. Fantasies involving castles and Nasir and dark, fairy-tale-esque romance had been the staple of her teenage years. Fantasies she needed to keep convincing herself she’d grown out of.
It was as if all her darkest dreams were taking shape in reality—she and Nasir in a castle, she and Nasir with a lovely little girl, she and Nasir finally meeting under one roof as equals. But there was no danger of that, she reminded herself bitterly.
When Nasir didn’t loathe her, apparently he was busy feeling sorry for her.
She sensed his reluctance before he answered her. “No. I bought it. Recently.”
“How recently?”
“Right after Jacqueline died,” he said, meeting her gaze. Letting her know that he knew what she was doing. “We moved here from her Paris apartment once I took care of the legalities.”
She took a shot in the dark. “You bought it to impress Zara?”
The moonlight didn’t hide his grimace. “She wouldn’t stop talking about castles and fairy tales and dark creatures. You’d left us—” he raised his hand, forestalling her protest and shook his head. “You’re right. I shouldn’t rewrite history.Imade you leave. Jacqueline was gone. All Zara would talk about was living in a huge castle with three monstrous dogs and with a forest in the back and...” A long sigh seemed to emerge from the very depths of him. “It was the only bridge I had to build toward her.”
“Oh.”
He nudged her shoulder with his. The playful gesture stunned her. As did his teasing tone when he said, “I know where she gets that fixation from.”
“I just shared everything that fascinated me at her age,” she whispered, her mind scattering in a thousand directions.
What had changed in how he saw her? Had he finally understood that she’d always had Zara’s best interests at heart? Was that enough to redeem her multitude of sins? And what happened when they didn’t agree on something regarding Zara? Would his approval vanish?
“Stories saved me when I was a little girl.Your storieshelped me escape my own life.”
“I’m glad, then, that I got something right with you. Even if it was done unknowingly.” His gruff tone hit her low in her belly, the soft underside she sometimes forgot existed.
Something built in the silence between them as he opened the relatively small but actually giant side door, and ushered her toward a dark staircase. And it seemed to stretch and stretch and stretch upward. Endlessly.
Without rancor or contempt or anger or intense mutual dislike coloring and cluttering the space between them, they were unmoored suddenly. As if anything was possible in that space now. As if they were any other couple who were trying to do their best for a little girl they both adored.
“I... I wanted Zara to have the same anchor during a hard time in her own life,” she said, clearing her suddenly thick throat. “I didn’t mean to create an obsession you’d have to deal with.”
“No. I’m grateful for the spark of the obsession you planted. It became a lifesaver for us both.”
He rubbed a hand over his face, and suddenly, in the dark corridor, Yana saw his own exhaustion, the emotional toll the past few years must have taken on him. Jacqueline’s infidelities, her long battle with cancer, then her death and the full responsibility of Zara’s well-being. Then suddenly, he’d lost his beloved father.
It was a lot for one man to take.
