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Even someone like Nasir, who was fully in control of himself and his emotions and the people around him and even his own circumstances. He was judgmental, ruthless, exacting in his standards for himself and others. And yet, now, beneath all of that, she saw something else, too. Something like regret.
Even just within the past month, he’d followed her wherever she went around the globe, all the while giving time to his own work and returning to see Zara every weekend so that she didn’t feel abandoned yet again. It annoyed her how her heart ached for a man she needed to hate.
“Nasir, I’m—”
“You were a better parent to Zara than Jacqueline or I have ever been. For that, you have my eternal gratitude.”
Stunned beyond words, she stared at him. That arch of electricity, that taut tug of connection, came again. This time it built faster and louder and stronger.
She nodded and walked on up the stairs, his words sitting like rigid boulders on her chest. Of course, he’d recognized that she loved Zara. And being the man he was, he’d immediately thank her for it, would give her the place she wanted in Zara’s life. It was more than she’d expected when she’d said yes to this...contract, the best outcome she could’ve hoped for.
Relief should have come. Or at least some kind of vindication. All she felt, however, was a confusion, an ache.
“I feel like Maria fromThe Sound of Music,” she said, forcing a giggle into her tone. The last thing she wanted was to have an emotional breakdown in front of him, for him to see the wretched confusion in her soul. “Please tell me you don’t have several children waiting for me to look after.”
“That’s a nice fantasy,” he said, a thread of some deep, dark, cavernous thing dancing in his words.
Yana stumbled so hard that she almost fell on her face.
His fast reflexes meant his hand on her jacket held her upright just as they reached the landing on the second floor.
“What? Lording over me and Zara like Captain Von Trapp with his whistle? Finding fault with everything I do? Because let me tell you that particular fantasy’s already come true.”
He opened the door, a grin on his face. There was something really different about him, here in this place. Or was it simply relief that he finally had her where he needed her? “Why do you always assume that I want to think the worst of you?”
“My dear stepbrother,” she said, using the term she knew he loathed, placing her palm on his chest in an exaggerated pout, pouring on her fake charm thick, to dissipate the fizzy bubbles in her own chest more than anything else, “it’s our history that says that.”
His long fingers wrapped around her wrist but he didn’t drag her touch away. Her pulse raced under his fingertips, playing a symphony for his favor. “I don’t remember it always being quite like that.”
“Weren’t you the one who taught me that history always has another version? Probably from the one who didn’t originally have a voice?”
“What is your version, then, Yana?”
“Does it matter anymore?”
“It clearly does. To both of us.”
She shook her head, telling herself it was a lie. “I made a ghastly, horrible mistake, no doubt about it. I knew I’d done something wrong the minute I told Diana you kissed me. I want you to know that I did eventually tell Izaz the truth. I was... I own my part in that, even though I’d like to say I was also a product of insecurity and codependency and...” She sighed and blew out a long breath. “You meted out a rather cruel punishment that would’ve lasted a lifetime if not for the fact that I came into Zara’s life, quite by accident, which ended up,luckilyfor me, perhaps redeeming me a little bit in your eyes.”
If she thought he’d dig into the very painful past and pick at the scabs of herghastly, horrible mistake, Yana was proved wrong. If she thought he’d jump at the truth she’d just revealed that his punishment to cut her out of his life had hurt her, she was safe from that, too.
He simply stared at her for a long time, as if weighing her words. “You are right. And you’re a better person than I am, clearly, for not holding it over my head.”
A humorless snort escaped her. “That’s what you expected when you came to see me, wasn’t it? Me to hold your own behavior over your head? That’s why you were so fast to use all the leverage you had on me.”
“And you refused me, again and again, even though I know you want to be here for Zara. Don’t think it escaped me that the possibility of being here with me was so distasteful to you that it sent you into a faint.”
“Nasir—”
“Don’t think I forget for one minute that my beastly behavior toward you might have cost Zara the stability she needs, the love of the one person she desperately craves. I might have failed my daughter all over again.”
There was such a note of anguish in those words that Yana found herself reaching for him automatically. In that moment Yana remembered why she’d once admired him so much. There was a quiet dignity to him, even in defeat. “I didn’t mean—”
“My relationship with my daughter is a mess I created. I let my unhappiness with Jacqueline, my distaste for her drama, create a divide between Zara and me. I assumed she was better off with her mother than being used as a pawn in a power play between us.”
“A little girl would only see it as apathy,” she said, unable to help herself.
His throat moved on a hard swallow and his mouth curved in a bitter smile. “I realized that too late. I got so good at keeping people out of my life that I succeeded with my daughter, too.”
